2.
For fourteen years the thirty years' peace which was concluded after the recovery of
Euboea1 remained unbroken.
But in the fifteenth year, when Chrysis the high-priestess of Argos was in the
forty-eighth year of her priesthood, Aenesias being Ephor at Sparta, and at Athens
Pythodorus having two months of his archonship to run2, in the sixth
month after the engagement at Potidaea and at the beginning of spring, about the first
watch of the night an armed force of somewhat more than three hundred Thebans entered
Plataea, a city of Boeotia, which was an ally of Athens, under the command of two
Boeotarchs, Pythangelus the son of Phyleides, and Diemporus the son of Onetorides.
[2]
They were invited by Naucleides, a Plataean, and his partisans, who opened the gates to
them.
These men wanted to kill certain citizens of the opposite faction and to make over the
city to the Thebans, in the hope of getting the power into their own hands.
[3]
The intrigue had been conducted by Eurymachus the son of Leontiades, one
of the chief citizens of Thebes.
There was an old3 quarrel between the
two cities, and the Thebans, seeing that war was inevitable, were anxious to surprise
the place while the peace lasted and before hostilities had actually broken out.
No watch had been set;
[4]
and so they were enabled to enter the city unperceived.
They grounded their arms in the Agora, but instead of going to work at once and making
their way into the houses of their enemies, as those who invited them suggested, they
resolved to issue a conciliatory proclamation and try to make friends with the citizens.
The herald announced that if any one wished to become their ally and return to the
ancient constitution of Boeotia, he should join their ranks.
In this way they thought that the inhabitants would easily be induced to come over to
them.
Thucydides translated into English; with introduction, marginal analysis, notes, and indices. Volume 1. Thucydides. Benjamin Jowett. translator. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1881.
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