CHAPTER I

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Bœotia is contiguous to Attica, and Platæa to Eleutheræ. The Bœotians got that name for all the race from Bœotus, who they say was the son of Itonus the son of Amphictyon and the Nymph Melanippe. Their towns are called sometimes after men but more frequently after women. The Platæans were I think the original inhabitants of the land, and they got their name from Platæa the daughter of the river-god Asopus. That they were originally ruled over by kings is I think clear: for in old times kingdoms were all over Greece, there were no democratic governments. But the Platæans know of no other kings but Asopus and still earlier Cithæron, one of whom gave his name to the mountain and the other to the river. And I cannot but think that Platæa, who gave her name to the town, was the daughter of the king Asopus and not of the river-god.

The Platæans did nothing memorable before the battle which the Athenians fought at Marathon, but they took part in that struggle after the landing of Xerxes, and ventured to embark on ships with the Athenians, and repelled on their own soil Mardonius, the son of Gobryas, the General of Xerxes. And it twice happened to them to be driven from their country and again restored to it. For in the Peloponnesian war the Lacedæmonians besieged and took Platæa: and when, after the peace which Antalcidas the Spartan negotiated between the Greeks and the king of the Persians, it was reinhabited by the Platæans who returned from Athens, a second misfortune was it seems destined to come upon them. For war was not openly declared against the Thebans, but the Platæans said that they were still at peace with them, because when the Lacedæmonians occupied Cadmea, they had no share either in suggesting it or in bringing it about. The Thebans on the other hand said that it was the Lacedæmonians who had brought about the peace, and who afterwards when they had violated it thought that all had broken truce. The Platæans therefore, thinking the conduct of the Thebans rather suspicious, occupied their town with a strong garrison, and the farmers did not even go into the fields which were at some distance from the town at every period of the day, but watched for the times when the Thebans held their general meetings, and at such times tilled their farms in quiet. But Neocles, who was at that time Bœotarch at Thebes, and had noticed this cunning on the part of the Platæans, told all the Thebans to go armed to the assembly, and led them from Thebes not straight across the plain but in the direction of Hysiæ and Eleutheræ and Attica, where no outposts had been placed by the Platæans, and got to the walls about mid-day. For the Platæans, thinking the Thebans were at their meeting, had shut the gates and gone out to the fields. And the Thebans made conditions with those who were in the town that they should leave the place before sunset, the men with one dress and the women with two. At this time the fortune of the Platæans was rather different from the former occasion when the town was taken by the Lacedæmonians and Archidamus. For then the Lacedæmonians blockaded them and shut them in by a double wall so that they could not get out, whereas now the Thebans prevented their getting into the town at all. This second capture of Platæa was the third year after Leuctra, when Asteus was Archon at Athens. And the town was rased to the ground by the Thebans entirely except the temples, but there was no sack, and the Athenians took in the Platæans a second time. But when Philip was victorious at Chæronea, he introduced a garrison into Thebes, and among other things to destroy the Theban power, restored the Platæans.

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