Pausanias Analysis

Boeotia borders the Athenians in various places along Attica, and near Eleutherae, the Plataeans are neighbors. As for the Boeotians, the whole nation received its name from Boeotus, who was the son of Itonus and the nymph Melanippe; Itonus, they say, was the son of Amphictyon. The people of the individual cities are named chiefly after men, but in most cases after women. The Plataeans, however, seem to me from the beginning to have been indigenous; their name comes from Plataea, whom they regard as a daughter of the river Asopus.

That indeed the Plataeans were also anciently ruled by kings is clear; for in every region of Greece kingdoms and not democracies were formerly established. But of their kings the Plataeans know none apart from Asopus, and earlier still Cithaeron; they say that the latter gave his own name to the mountain and the former to the river. In my opinion, Plataea as well, from whom the city derives its name, was a daughter of King Asopus and not of the river.

The Plataeans held no great reputation before the battle in which the Athenians fought at Marathon. But after participating in the fight at Marathon, and later, when Xerxes had already retreated to his ships, they even dared to embark alongside the Athenians. Furthermore, in their own territory they repelled Mardonius, the son of Gobryas, who commanded the armies of Xerxes. Twice, however, it fell to their lot to be driven from their homes into exile and again to return to Boeotia.

Indeed, during the war which arose between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, the Lacedaemonians captured Plataea by siege. Afterwards, in the course of that peace arranged for the Greeks with the Persian king by the negotiations of Antalcidas, a Spartan, Plataea was resettled, and its inhabitants returned from Athens; yet they were again destined to suffer a second calamity. Although no declared war openly existed yet against the Thebans, nevertheless the Plataeans asserted that peace still held for them, since they had taken no part, either by planning or by action, in the Lacedaemonians' occupation of the Theban Cadmea.

The Thebans declared that the Lacedaemonians had been responsible for making peace, and later, when they violated it, the treaty was therefore dissolved. They accordingly claimed that the truce was broken for all. Thus the Plataeans, suspecting hostility from the Thebans, kept their city under careful guard; even those who had their farms farther from the city would not venture to visit them at all hours of the day. Moreover—for they knew that the Thebans usually deliberated altogether and at length—they would watch carefully the times when the Thebans met in their assemblies, and in those intervals, even those farming the furthest land tended their fields in peace.

Neocles, who was then serving as Boeotarch in Thebes—for the Plataeans had not been unaware of his stratagem—ordered each of the Thebans to come to the assembly fully armed, and immediately led them not directly from Thebes across the plain, but rather by a way toward Hysiae, in the direction of Eleutherae and the Attic border, where no guard had been stationed by the Plataeans. He planned to arrive at the city walls at about midday.

The Plataeans, thinking that the Thebans were holding an assembly, had gone out to their fields and were shut out from the city gates. The Thebans made an agreement with those who had been trapped within the city, permitting the men to depart before sunset, each wearing a single garment, and the women each permitted two garments. Thus fortune gave the Plataeans an experience precisely opposite to their earlier capture by Archidamus and the Lacedaemonians. At that former time, the Lacedaemonians had besieged them, enclosing them within a double wall to prevent their leaving the city; but now, conversely, the Thebans prevented them from re-entering their own walls.

The second capture of Plataea occurred two years before the battle of Leuctra, in the archonship at Athens of Asteius. The city was razed to the ground by the Thebans, except for the sacred precincts. As for the Plataeans themselves, the manner of the city's fall provided equal safety for all of them, and after their exile the Athenians once more received them. Later, when Philip prevailed at Chaeronea and placed a garrison in Thebes, taking further measures leading to the overthrow of the Thebans, the Plataeans also were restored by him to their homeland.