The five Spartans having taken their seat as judges, doubtless in full presence of the blockading army, and especially with the Thebans, the great enemies of Platæa, by their side,—the prisoners taken, two hundred Platæans and twenty-five Athenians, were brought up for trial, or sentence. No accusation was preferred against them by any one: but the simple question was put to them by the judges: “Have you, during the present war, rendered any service to the Lacedæmonians or to their allies?” The Platæans were confounded at a question alike unexpected and preposterous: it admitted but of one answer,—but before returning any categorical answer at all, they entreated permission to plead their cause at length. In spite of the opposition of the Thebans,[433] their request was granted: and Astymachus and Lakon, the latter proxenus of Sparta at Platæa, were appointed to speak on behalf of the body. Possibly, both these delegates may have spoken: if so, Thucydidês has blended the two speeches into one.
A more desperate position cannot be imagined, for the interrogatory was expressly so framed as to exclude allusion to any facts preceding the Peloponnesian war,—but the speakers, though fully conscious how slight was their chance of success, disregarded the limits of the question itself, and while upholding with unshaken courage the dignity of their little city, neglected no topic which could touch the sympathies of their judges. After remonstrating against the mere mockery of trial and judgment to which they were submitted, they appealed to the Hellenic sympathies, and lofty reputation for commanding virtue, of the Lacedæmonians,—they adverted to the first alliance of Platæa with Athens, concluded at the recommendation of the Lacedæmonians themselves, who had then declined, though formally solicited, to undertake the protection of the town against Theban oppression. They next turned to the Persian war, wherein Platæan patriotism towards Greece was not less conspicuous than Theban treason,[434]—to the victory gained over the Persians on their soil, whereby it had become hallowed under the promises of Pausanias, and by solemn appeals to the local gods. From the Persian war, they passed on to the flagitious attack made by the Thebans on Platæa, in the midst of the truce,—nor did they omit to remind the judges of an obligation personal to Sparta,—the aid which they had rendered, along with the Athenians, to Sparta, when pressed by the revolt of the Helots at Ithôme. This speech is as touching as any which we find in Thucydidês, and the skill of it consists in the frequency with which the hearers are brought back, time after time, and by well-managed transitions, to these same topics.[435] And such was the impression which it seemed to make on the five Lacedæmonian judges, that the Thebans near at hand found themselves under the necessity of making a reply to it: although we see plainly that the whole scheme of proceeding—the formal and insulting question, as well as the sentence destined to follow upon answer given—had been settled beforehand between them and the Lacedæmonians.
The Theban speakers contended that the Platæans had deserved, and brought upon themselves by their own fault, the enmity of Thebes,—that they had stood forward earnestly against the Persians, only because Athens had done so too, and that all the merit, whatever it might be, which they had thereby acquired, was counterbalanced and cancelled by their having allied themselves with Athens afterwards for the oppression and enslavement of the Æginetans, and of other Greeks equally conspicuous for zeal against Xerxes, and equally entitled to protection under the promises of Pausanias. The Thebans went on to vindicate their nocturnal surprise of Platæa, by maintaining that they had been invited by the most respectable citizens of the town,[436] who were anxious only to bring back Platæa from its alliance with a stranger to its natural Bœotian home,—and that they had abstained from anything like injurious treatment of the inhabitants, until constrained to use force in their own defence. They then reproached the Platæans, in their turn, with that breach of faith whereby ultimately the Theban prisoners in the town had been put to death. And while they excused their alliance with Xerxes, at the time of the Persian invasion, by affirming that Thebes was then under a dishonest party-oligarchy, who took this side for their own factious purposes, and carried the people with them by force,—they at the same time charged the Platæans with permanent treason against the Bœotian customs and brotherhood.[437] All this was farther enforced by setting forth the claims of Thebes to the gratitude of Lacedæmon, both for having brought Bœotia into the Lacedæmonian alliance, at the time of the battle of Korôneia, and for having furnished so large a portion of the common force in the war then going on.[438]
The discourse of the Thebans, inspired by bitter, and as yet unsatisfied hatred against Platæa, proved effectual: or rather it was superfluous,—the minds of the Lacedæmonians having before been made up. After the proposition twice made by Archidamus to the Platæans, inviting them to remain neutral, and even offering to guarantee their neutrality,—after the solemn apologetic protest tendered by him upon their refusal, to the gods, before he began the siege,—the Lacedæmonians conceived themselves exonerated from all obligation to respect the sanctity of the place;[439] looking upon the inhabitants as having voluntarily renounced their inviolability and sealed their own ruin. Hence the importance attached to that protest, and the emphatic detail with which it is set forth in Thucydidês. The five judges, as their only reply to the two harangues, again called the Platæans before them, and repeated to every one of them individually, the same question which had before been put: each one of them, as he successively replied in the negative,[440] was taken away and killed, together with the twenty-five Athenian prisoners. The women captured were sold as slaves: and the town and territory of Platæa were handed over to the Thebans, who at first established in them a few oligarchical Platæan exiles, together with some Megarian exiles,—but after a few months recalled this step, and blotted out Platæa,[441] as a separate town and territory, from the muster-roll of Hellas. They pulled down all the private buildings and employed the materials to build a vast barrack all round the Heræum, or temple of Hêrê, two hundred feet in every direction, with apartments of two stories above and below; partly as accommodation for visitors to the temple, partly as an abode for the tenant-farmers or graziers who were to occupy the land. A new temple of one hundred feet in length, was also built in honor of Hêrê, and ornamented with couches, prepared from the brass and iron furniture found in the private houses of the Platæans.[442] The Platæan territory was let out for ten years, as public property belonging to Thebes, and was hired by private Theban cultivators.
Such was the melancholy fate of Platæa, after sustaining a blockade of about two years.[443] Its identity and local traditions seemed thus extinguished, and the sacrifices, in honor of the deceased victors who had fought under Pausanias, suspended,—which the Platæan speakers had urged upon the Lacedæmonians as an impiety not to be tolerated,[444] and which perhaps the latter would hardly have consented to under any other circumstances except from an anxious desire of conciliating the Thebans in their prominent antipathy. It is in this way that Thucydidês explains the conduct of Sparta, which he pronounces to have been rigorous in the extreme.[445] And in truth it was more rigorous, considering only the principle of the case, and apart from the number of victims, than even the first unexecuted sentence of Athens against the Mitylenæans: for neither Sparta, nor even Thebes, had any fair pretence for considering Platæa as a revolted town, whereas Mitylênê was a city which had revolted under circumstances peculiarly offensive to Athens. Moreover, Sparta promised trial and justice to the Platæans on their surrender: Pachês promised nothing to the Mitylenæans, except that their fate should be reserved for the decision of the Athenian people. This little city—interesting from its Hellenic patriotism, its grateful and tenacious attachments, and its unmerited suffering—now existed only in the persons of its citizens harbored at Athens: we shall find it hereafter restored, destroyed again, and finally again restored: so checkered was the fate of a little Grecian state swept away by the contending politics of the greater neighbors. The slaughter of the twenty-five Athenian prisoners, like that of Salæthus by the Athenians, was not beyond the rigor admitted and tolerated, though not always practised, on both sides, towards prisoners of war.
We have now gone through the circumstances, painfully illustrating the manners of the age, which followed on the surrender of Mitylênê and Platæa. We next pass to the west of Greece,—the island of Korkyra,—where we shall find scenes not less bloody, and even more revolting.
It has been already mentioned,[446] that in the naval combats between the Corinthians and Korkyræans during the year before the Peloponnesian war, the former had captured two hundred and fifty Korkyræan prisoners, men of the first rank and consequence in the island. Instead of following the impulse of blind hatred in slaughtering their prisoners, the Corinthians displayed, if not greater humanity, at least a more long-sighted calculation: they had treated the prisoners well, and made every effort to gain them over, with a view of employing them on the first opportunity to effect a revolution in the island,—to bring it into alliance with Corinth,[447] and disconnect it from Athens. Such an opportunity appears first to have occurred during the winter or spring of the present year, while both Mitylênê and Platæa were under blockade; probably about the time when Alkidas departed for Ionia, and when it was hoped that not only Mitylênê would be relieved, but the neighboring dependencies of Athens excited to revolt, and her whole attention thus occupied in that quarter. Accordingly, the Korkyræan prisoners were then sent home from Corinth, nominally under a heavy ransom of eight hundred talents, for which those Korkyræan citizens who acted as proxeni to Corinth made themselves responsible:[448] the proxeni, lending themselves thus to the deception, were doubtless participant in the entire design.
But it was soon seen in what form the ransom was really to be paid. The new-comers, probably at first heartily welcomed, after so long a detention, employed all their influence, combined with the most active personal canvass, to bring about a complete rupture of all alliance with Athens. Intimation being sent to Athens of what was going on, an Athenian trireme arrived with envoys to try and defeat these manœuvres; while a Corinthian trireme also brought envoys from Corinth to aid the views of the opposite party. The mere presence of Corinthian envoys indicated a change in the political feeling of the island: but still more conspicuous did this change become, when a formal public assembly, after hearing both envoys, decided,—that Korkyra would maintain her alliance with Athens according to the limited terms of simple mutual defence originally stipulated;[449] but would at the same time be in relations of friendship with the Peloponnesians, as she had been before the Epidamnian quarrel. But the alliance between Athens and Korkyra had since become practically more intimate, and the Korkyræan fleet had aided the Athenians in the invasion of Peloponnesus:[450] accordingly, the resolution, now adopted, abandoned the present to go back to the past,—and to a past which could not be restored.
Looking to the war then raging between Athens and the Peloponnesians, such a declaration was self-contradictory: nor, indeed, did the oligarchical party intend it as anything else than a step to a more complete revolution, both foreign and domestic. They followed it up by a political prosecution against Peithias, the citizen of greatest personal influence among the people, who acted by his own choice as proxenus to the Athenians. They accused him of practising to bring Korkyra into slavery to Athens. What were the judicial institutions of the island, under which he was tried, we do not know: but he was acquitted of the charge; and he then revenged himself by accusing in his turn five of the richest among his oligarchical prosecutors, of the crime of sacrilege,—as having violated the sanctity of the sacred grove of Zeus and Alkinous, by causing stakes, for their vine-props, to be cut in it.[451] This was an act distinctly forbidden by law, under penalty of a stater or four drachms for every stake so cut: but it is no uncommon phenomenon, even in societies politically better organized than Korkyra, to find laws existing and unrepealed, yet habitually violated, sometimes even by every one, but still oftener by men of wealth and power, whom most people would be afraid to prosecute: moreover, in this case, no individual was injured by the act, and any one who came forward to prosecute would incur the odium of an informer,—which probably Peithias might not have chosen to brave under ordinary circumstances, though he thought himself justified in adopting this mode of retaliation against those who had prosecuted him. The language of Thucydidês implies that the fact was not denied: nor is there any difficulty in conceiving that these rich men may have habitually resorted to the sacred property for vine-stakes. On being found guilty and condemned, they cast themselves as suppliants at the temples, and entreated the indulgence of being allowed to pay the fine by instalments: but Peithias, then a member of the (annual) senate, to whom the petition was referred, opposed it, and caused its rejection, leaving the law to take its course. It was moreover understood, that he was about to avail himself of his character of senator,—and of his increased favor, probably arising from the recent judicial acquittal,—to propose in the public assembly a reversal of the resolution recently passed, and a new resolution to recognize only the same friends and the same enemies as Athens.
Pressed by the ruinous fine upon the five persons condemned, as well as by the fear that Peithias might carry his point and thus completely defeat their project of Corinthian alliance, the oligarchical party resolved to carry their point by violence and murder. They collected a party armed with daggers, burst suddenly into the senate-house during full sitting, and there slew Peithias with sixty other persons, partly senators, partly private individuals: some others of his friends escaped the same fate by getting aboard the Attic trireme which had brought the envoys, and which was still in the harbor, but now departed forthwith to Athens. These assassins, under the fresh terror arising from their recent act, convoked an assembly, affirmed that what they had done was unavoidable to guard Korkyra against being made the slave of Athens, and proposed a resolution of full neutrality, both towards Athens and towards the Peloponnesians,—to receive no visit from either of the belligerents, except of a pacific character, and with one single ship at a time. And this resolution the assembly was constrained to pass,—it probably was not very numerous, and the oligarchical partisans were at hand in arms.[452] At the same time they sent envoys to Athens, to communicate the recent events with such coloring as suited their views, and to dissuade the fugitive partisans of Peithias from provoking any armed Athenian intervention, such as might occasion a counter-revolution in the island.[453] With some of the fugitives, representations of this sort, or perhaps the fear of compromising their own families, left behind, prevailed: but most of them, and the Athenians along with them, appreciated better both what had been done, and what was likely to follow. The oligarchical envoys, together with such of the fugitives as had been induced to adopt their views, were seized by the Athenians as conspirators, and placed in detention at Ægina; while a fleet of sixty Athenian triremes, under Eurymedon, was immediately fitted out to sail for Korkyra,—for which there was the greater necessity, as the Lacedæmonian fleet, under Alkidas, lately mustered at Kyllênê after its return from Ionia, was understood to be on the point of sailing thither.[454]