ABSTRACT
Plataea was democratic, and in friendly relations with the Athenians: it will be remembered that the Plataeans were the only Greeks who helped Athens at Marathon. At the beginning of spring about 300 Thebans, in arms, entered Plataea at about the first watch of the night under the command of two of the generals of the Boeotian Confederacy. When the Plataeans learned that the Thebans were in the city, they were terrified. Brasidas presents the Spartan case, that they are liberating Greece from the Athenian tyranny. He professes astonishment that at the end of a dangerous march through Greece he should find the gates of Acanthus shut against him. Thucydides, like most Greek artists, is constructional, not representational, expressing his deepest thoughts in the architectural disposition of his material. For concentrated power and profound comprehension of things only two other Greek writers can stand with Thucydides: one is Aeschylus, and the other is the poet who wrote the Iliad.
