"Son of Miltiades," said Pausanias loftily, "your wit outruns your experience. But my time is short. To the matter!"
"If you will have it so, I will speak," said Aristides, raising his voice. "Before your own Spartans, our comrades in arms, I proclaim our causes of complaint. Firstly, then, I demand release and compensation to seven Athenians, free-born and citizens, whom your orders have condemned to the unworthy punishment of standing all day in the open sun with the weight of iron anchors on their shoulders."
"The mutinous knaves!" exclaimed the Spartan. "They introduced into the camp the insolence of their own agora, and were publicly heard in the streets inveighing against myself as a favourer of the Persians."
"It was easy to confute the charge; it was tyrannical to punish words in men whose deeds had raised you to the command of Greece."
"Their deeds! Ye Gods, give me patience! By the help of Juno the protectress it was this brain and this arm that—But I will not justify myself by imitating the Athenian fashion of wordy boasting. Pass on to your next complaint."
"You have placed slaves—yes, Helots—around the springs, to drive away with scourges the soldiers that come for water."
"Not so, but merely to prevent others from filling their vases until the Spartans are supplied."
"And by what right—?" began Cimon, but Aristides checked him with a gesture, and proceeded.
"That precedence is not warranted by custom, nor by the terms of our alliance; and the springs, O Pausanias, are bounteous enough to provide for all. I proceed. You have formally sentenced citizens and soldiers to the scourge. Nay, this very day you have extended the sentence to one in actual command amongst the Chians. Is it not so, Antagoras?"
"It is," said the young Chian, coming forward boldly; "and in the name of my countrymen I demand justice."