Mention has been made of this even by Aristophanes, the poet of the Old Comedy, who lived in the period of Pericles, in the following tetrameters note:
O ye farmers, wretched creatures,
listen now and understand,
If you fain would learn the reason
why it was Peace left the land.
Pheidias began the mischief,
having come to grief and shame,
Pericles was next in order,
fearing he might share the blame,
By his Megara-enactment
lighting first a little flame,
Such a bitter smoke ascended
while the flames of war he blew,
That from every eye in Hellas
everywhere the tears it drew.
And again in another place:
The Olympian Pericles
Thundered and lightened and confounded Hellas.
Aristoph. Ach. 531-532And Eupolis the poet wrote note:
One might say Persuasion rested
On his lips; such charm he'd bring,
And alone of all the speakers
In his list'ners left his sting.
ch. 41 note
12.41.1Now the causes of the Peloponnesian War were in general what I have described, as Ephorus has recorded them. And when the leading states had become embroiled in war in this fashion, the Lacedaemonians, sitting in council with the Peloponnesians, voted to make war upon the Athenians, and dispatching ambassadors to the king of the Persians, urged him to ally himself with them, while they also treated by means of ambassadors with their allies in Sicily and Italy and persuaded them to come to their aid with two hundred triremes;
12.41.2and for their own part they, together with the Peloponnesians, got ready their land forces, made all other preparations for the war, and were the first to commence the conflict. For in Boeotia the city of the Plataeans was an independent state and had an alliance with the Athenians. note
12.41.3But certain of its citizens, wishing to destroy its independence, had engaged in parleys with the Boeotians, promising that they would range that state under the confederacy note organized by the Thebans and hand Plataea over to them if they would send soldiers to aid in the undertaking.
12.41.4Consequently, when the Boeotians dispatched by night three hundred picked soldiers, the traitors got them inside the walls and made them masters of the city.
12.41.5The Plataeans, wishing to maintain their alliance with the Athenians, since at first they assumed that the Thebans were present in full force, began negotiations with the captors of the city and urged them to agree to a truce; but as the night wore on and they perceived that the Thebans were few in number, they rallied en masse and began putting up a vigorous struggle for their freedom.
12.41.6The fighting took place in the streets, and at first the Thebans held the upper hand because of their valour and were slaying many of their opponents; but when the slaves and children began pelting the Thebans with tiles from the houses and wounding them, they turned in flight; and some of them escaped from the city to safety, but some who found refuge in a house were forced to give themselves up.
12.41.7When the Thebans learned the outcome of the attempt from the survivors of the battle, they at once marched forth in all haste in full force. And since the Plataeans who dwelt in the rural districts were unprepared because they were not expecting the attack, many of them were slain and not a small number were taken captive alive, and the whole land was filled with tumult and plundering.
ch. 42
12.42.1The Plataeans dispatched ambassadors to the Thebans demanding that they leave Plataean territory and receive their own captives back. And so, when this had been agreed upon, the Thebans received their captives back, note restored the booty they had taken, and returned to Thebes. The Plataeans dispatched ambassadors to the Athenians asking for aid, while they themselves gathered the larger part of their possessions into the city.
12.42.2The Athenians, when they learned of what had taken place in Plataea, at once sent a considerable body of soldiers; these arrived in haste, although not before the Thebans, and gathered the rest of the property from the countryside into the city, and then, collecting both the children and women and the rabble, note sent them off to Athens.
