History of the Peloponnesian War

Indeed the Boeotians, and most others who had driven out any people and taken forcible possession of their country, had at first attacked the temples as alien but now possessed them as their own.

And they themselves, if they had been able to conquer more of the Boeotian territory, would have held it; but as it was, they would not depart from that portion in which they were, at least of their free will, considering it their own.

The water, moreover, they had disturbed in their sore need, which they had not wantonly brought upon themselves; they had been forced to use the water while defending themselves against the Boeotians who had first invaded their land.

And anything done under the constraint of war and danger might reasonably meet with some indulgence, even from the god. For altars were a refuge in cases of involuntary misdeeds, and transgression was a term applied to those who do evil without compulsion and not to those who are driven by misfortunes to some act of daring.

Moreover, the Boeotians in presuming to give up the bodies of the dead in return for temples were impious in a much higher degree than they who refused by the exchange of temples to procure that which they had a right to recover.