Thebans

weeping, supplicating you, angry not so much at those who are taking vengeance upon them, as at the men who are responsible for it all and calling on you by no means to crown the curse of Hellas, but rather to guard yourselves against the evil genius and the fate that ever pursue the man.

The Thebans suspect him, because he keeps a garrison at Nicaea and has stolen into the Amphictyonic Council, and because he attracts to his court the embassies of the Peloponnesian powers and secures their allies for himself.

But when, in the course of its march, the army had come into Boeotia, the Thebans attempted to stay Mardonius, advising him that he could find no country better fitted than theirs for encampment;

Thus when peace was made among the Grecian states, the Thebans retained Plataea, observing that they neither owed their possession of it to violence, nor treachery, but to the free surrender of those, to whom it belonged.

The Thebans, fearing that the Lacedaemonians might somewhat relent in consequence of their words, came forward, and said that they also wished to address them, since, contrary to their expectation, the Plataeans had had a longer speech allowed them than a simple answer to the question.