ians, never touched except for
sacred uses? Accordingly for the god as well as for themselves, in the
name of the deities concerned, and of Apollo, the Boeotians invited them
first to evacuate the temple, if they wished to take up the dead that
belonged to them.

After these words from the herald, the Athenians sent their own herald
to the Boeotians to say that they had not done any wrong to the temple,
and for the future would do it no more harm than they could help;
not having occupied it originally in any such design, but to defend
themselves from it against those who were really wronging them. The law
of the Hellenes was that conquest of a country, whether more or less
extensive, carried with it possession of the temples in that country,
with the obligation to keep up the usual ceremonies, at least as far
as possible. The Boeotians and most other people who had turned out the
owners of a country, and put themselves in their places by force, now
held as of right the temples which they originally entered as usurpers.
If the Athenians could have conquered more of Boeotia this would have
been the case with them: as things stood, the piece of it which they
had got they should treat as their own, and not quit unless obliged. The
water they had disturbed under the impulsion of a necessity which they
had not wantonly incurred, having been forced to use it in defending
themselves against the Boeotians who first invaded Attica. Besides,
anything done under the pressure of war and danger might reasonably
claim indulgence even in the eye of the god; or why, pray, were the
altars the asylum for involuntary offences? Transgression also was a
term applied to presumptuous offenders, not to the victims of adverse
circumstances. In short, which were most impious--the Boeotians who
wished to barter dead bodies for holy places, or the Athenians who
refused to give up holy places to obtain what was theirs by right? The
condition of evacuating Boeotia must therefore be withdrawn. They were
no longer in Boeotia. They stood where they stood by the right of the
sword. All that the Boeotians had to do was to tell them to take up
their dead under a truce according to the national custom.

The Boeotians replied that if they were in Boeotia, they must evacuate
that country before taking up their dead; if they were in their own
territory, they could do as they pleased: for they knew that, although
the Oropid where the bodies as it chanced were