58.
'Yet once more for the sake of those Gods in whose name we made a league of old, and
for1 our services to the cause of Hellas, relent and change your minds, if the
Thebans have at all influenced you:2 in return for the wicked
request which they make of you, ask of them the righteous boon that you should not slay
us to your own dishonour3.
Do not bring upon yourselves an evil name merely to gratify others.
[2]
For, although you may quickly take our lives, you will not so easily obliterate the
infamy of the deed.
We are not enemies whom you might justly punish, but friends who were compelled to go
to war with you;
[3]
and therefore piety demands that you should spare our lives.
Before you pass judgment, consider that we surrendered ourselves, and stretched out our
hands to you; the custom of Hellas does not allow the suppliant to be put to death.
[4]
Remember too that we have ever been your benefactors: Cast your eyes upon the
sepulchres of your fathers slain by the Persians and buried in our land, whom we have
honoured by a yearly public offering of garments, and other customary
gifts.
We were their friends, and we gave them the firstfruits in their season of that
friendly land in which they rest; we were their allies too, who in times past had fought
at their side;
[5]
and if you now pass an unjust sentence, will not your conduct strangely contrast with
ours?
Reflect: when Pausanias buried them here, he thought that he was laying them among
friends and in friendly earth.
But if you put us to death, and make Plataea one with Thebes, are you not robbing your
fathers and kindred of the honour which they enjoy, and leaving them in a hostile land
inhabited by their murderers?
Nay more, you will enslave the land in which the Hellenes won their liberty; you bring
desolation upon the temples in which they prayed when they conquered the Persians; and
you will take away the sacrifices which our fathers instituted from the city which
ordained and established them.
1 Do not bring infamy upon yourselves by slaying suppliants. Your ancestors an buried in our land, and we have honoured them by yearly gifts. Will you give them up to their murderers and enslave the country in which the freedom of Hellas was won?
2 Or, 'ask of them the boon that you should not kill those whom you ought not, and receive an honest gratitude from us, instead of a disgraceful gratitude from them.'
3 Or, 'ask of them the boon that you should not kill those whom you ought not, and receive an honest gratitude from us, instead of a disgraceful gratitude from 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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