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Athenian Silence and the Fate of Plataea 6 i. introduction In the summer of the Wfth year of the Peloponnesian War, the remaining inhabitants of the small Boeotian city of Plataea, at the end of a lengthy siege and after the heroic escape of a number of their fellows, give themselves over to the mercy of the Peloponnesian allies. Though they allow the captives a lengthy speech, the Wve Spartans who subsequently sit in judgment in the end put a simple question to each: Have you done anything for Sparta in the current war? Long and loyal allies of the Athenians, some of whom surrender with them, none of the Plataeans can (or will) answer in the afWrmative. The Spartans execute the men of Plataea—“they made no exceptions,” Thucydides says—and they enslave the women (3.68). That Thucydides records this sham trial almost immediately after he presents the decision of the Athenian assembly to spare the majority of the Mitylenians seems obviously to invite some sort of comparison. By themselves, the sentences imposed on the smaller cities by Athens and Sparta present a striking contrast. Thucydides appears intentionally to heighten that contrast not only by placing the fall of Mitylene and the fall of Plataea in such close proximity, but also, more generally, by structuring his narratives of the two affairs similarly. Thucydides’ accounts of the two episodes follow a common pattern. As in the matter of Mitylene (which I discussed at length in Chapter 2), Thucydides presents the affair of Plataea as developing episodically, by Wts and starts. In both cases, interludes on other matters separate the beginning of the siege from a period of renewed hostilities and increased deprivations for the besieged. Also, another set of intervals precedes the respective surrenders and (again in both instances ) the paired speeches that yield decisions on the captives’ fates. Finally, Thucydides brings the two matters to a close with “rounding off sentences.”1 On Mitylene: “This was how things turned out regarding Lesbos” (3.50). On Plataea: “Such was the fate of Plataea, in the ninetythird year after it became the ally of Athens” (3.68). All of this perhaps suggests that Plataea stands as something of a Spartan or Peloponnesian Mitylene. Taken side by side, these two episodes can be taken to show how the great Greek powers dealt with smaller cities as the war, which all parties initially thought would be short, dragged on through its Wfth year with no end in sight. For Cogan, for example, Mitylene and Plataea together illustrate the “ideological” phase of the war, with Melos marking the turn to a “belief in a total war,” at least among the Athenians .2 But we can easily enough point to other possible progressions in which Mitylene and Plataea appear as sequential rather than parallel elements . Consider, Wrst, the development of sentences imposed over the series Mitylene–Plataea–Melos. The Athenians spare the majority of the Mitylenians; the Spartans kill or enslave all the Plataeans; the Athenians kill or enslave all the Melians. Then, too, we can note the differing role of justice in the Athenian speeches on Mitylene and Melos. Cleon and Diodotus take the meaning and applicability of justice as central issues for consideration; the Athenian envoys at Melos, on the other hand, from the start rule out any appeal to justice, any such “Wne words.” Somewhere in between, the Plataeans do their best to raise the issue of justice; whereas the Spartans, as we have seen, succeed in framing the debate in terms of expediency. Finally, that the Spartans, though they do allow lengthier speeches, in the end pose to the Plataeans a short, blunt question seems to mark the transition from Diodotus’ defense of deliberation to the terse dialogue form at Melos. In these progressions in punishments imposed, in the place allowed for justice, and in the role of deliberation and debate, Plataea stands as something of a mediating term. Words and actions there foreshadow—and perhaps help account for—Athenian words and actions at Melos and point to continuing changes in the manner in which Greek cities interact with one another. At the close of the previous chapter we saw how difWcult it is even to compare Athenian words and deeds at Mitylene and Melos. To say, for example , that justice has less of a place in Athenian discourse at Melos than in 158 silence and democracy 1. I here draw on Connor, Thucydides, who discusses the similarities between Thucydides...

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