The course of our narrative will show how
easily the Athenians might have emerged triumphant from the struggle
with their enemies, if they had followed the line of conduct marked
out by Pericles. They might, indeed, have avoided the occasion of
offence which led immediately to the war, and thus have escaped the
necessity of fighting altogether; and this, as we have seen, was the
one fatal mistake made by Pericles. But, once launched in the
conflict, they were sure of an easy victory, if they had only shown a
very moderate degree of prudence and self-restraint. And we need not
blame the great statesmen too harshly for not foreseeing the wild
excesses of folly and extravagance which we shall have to record in
the following pages.
INVESTMENT OF PLATAEA
In the third year of the war the usual invasion of Attica was omitted,
and the Peloponnesian army under Archidamus marched against Plataea.
Having pitched their camp before the walls they prepared to lay waste
the territory; but before the work of havoc began, the Plataeans sent
envoys to remonstrate. "Unrighteous are your deeds," said the
spokesman of the embassy, "ye men of Sparta, and unworthy of the men
whose sons ye are. After the victory of Plataea, which ended the
struggle against Persia, Pausanias, the chief captain of the
confederate Greeks, offered sacrifice and thanksgiving at Plataea to
Zeus the Liberator, and swore a solemn oath, both he, and all the
Greeks whom he led, to maintain the independence of our city against
all who should assail it.
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