The Unpersuasive Thebans (Thucydides 3.61-67)

THUCYDIDES 3.52-68 concludes the story of Plataea begun in Book2. Weakened by two years of siege, the Plataeans surrender to the Lacedaemonians with the understanding that the guilty will be punished, but no one icapa ixrtiv (3.52.2).1 When the Spartan judges arrive, however, they do not conduct a conventional trial, but simply ask their prisoners whether they have done the Lacedaemonians and their allies any good in the current war.2 The Plataeans realize that they are about to be sacrificed for the benefit of the Thebans, since there is only one answer they can give. They therefore request and obtain permission to address the judges at greater length. Critical admiration of the Plataeans' speech has been almost universal. Dionysius of Halicarnassus gives it his highest praise: But more than all the speeches presented in the seven books I admire the defense of the Plataeans .... The arguments are presented with a great deal of feeling, and the language is not repulsive to the ear. For the composition is euphonious and the figures are appropriate to the matter.3 Like other Thucydidean speakers, the Plataeans are not above using their rhetorical skills to magnify achievements and minimize misdeeds.4 Their cause, however, is worthy of sympathy,5 and their appeal is one of the most moving in the History. The speech is notable not only for its pathos, but also for the deference it pays to its audience's values.6 The Plataeans invoke Spartan piety not only by calling on the Spartan dead buried at Plataea (3.58.4-5, 59.2), but also by warning their audience of the opprobrium they will incur should they dedicate spoils from the Plataeans, benefactors of Greece, in temples sacred to all Greeks (3.57.1).7

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