ak a word.
The town of Plataea was taken by capitulation, and the Spartans had
promised that no one should be punished without a trial; but the
Spartan judges demanded of every prisoner if during the war he had
rendered any service to the Peloponnesians; when the prisoner replied
in the negative, he was condemned to death. The women were sold as
slaves. The city of Mitylene having revolted from Athens was retaken
by her. The Athenians in an assembly deliberated and decreed that all
the people of Mitylene should be put to death. It is true that the
next day the Athenians revised the decree and sent a second ship to
carry a more favorable commission, but still more than one thousand
Mityleneans were executed.

After the Syracusan disaster all the Athenian army was taken captive.
The conquerors began by slaughtering all the generals and many of the
soldiers. The remainder were consigned to the quarries which served as
prison. They were left there crowded together for seventy days,
exposed without protection to the burning sun of summer, and then to
the chilly nights of autumn. Many died from sickness, from cold and
hunger--for they were hardly fed at all; their corpses remained on the
ground and infected the air. At last the Syracusans drew out the
survivors sold them into slavery.

Ordinarily when an army invaded a hostile state it levelled the
houses, felled the trees, burned the crops and killed the laborers.
After battle it made short shrift of the wounded and killed prisoners
in cold blood. In a captured city everything belonged to the captor:
men, women, children were sold as slaves. Such was at this time the
right of war. Thucydides sums up the case as follows:[80] "Business is
regulated between men by the laws of justice when there is obligation
on both sides; but the stronger does whatever is in his power, and the
weaker yields. The gods rule by a necessity of their nature because
they are strongest; men do likewise."

=Results of These Wars.=--These wars did not result in uniting the
Greeks into one body. No city, Sparta more than Athens, was able to
force the others to obey her. They only exhausted themselves by
fighting one another. It was the king of Persia who profited by the
strife. Not only did the Greek cities not unite against him, but all
in succession allied themselves with him against the other Greeks. In
the notorious Peace of Antalcidas (387) the Great King declared that
all the Greek cities of A