No disturbance was given to Platæa during the two first years of the war. At the commencement of the third, Archidamus, the Spartan king and general, finding that the annual devastation of Attica was of no service to the Peloponnesian confederacy, and unwilling perhaps to incur the hazard of entering an infected country, marched to Platæa, which, in consequence of its exertions in the Persian war, had been invested by the general consent of Greece with privileges of an almost sacred character. The nature of these privileges, and the singular proposal to which they gave rise, will be best understood from the narration of Thucydides. “The next summer the Peloponnesians and their confederates came not into Attica, but turned their arms against Platæa, led by Archidamus, the son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedæmonians, who, having pitched his camp, was about to waste the territory thereof. But the Platæans sent ambassadors presently unto him, with words to this effect:—’Archidamus, and you Lacedæmonians, you do neither justly, nor worthy yourselves and ancestors, in making war upon Platæa. For Pausanias of Lacedæmon, the son of Cleombrotus, having (together with such Grecians as were content to undergo the danger of the battle that was fought in this our territory) delivered all Greece from the slavery of the Persians, when he offered sacrifice in the market–place of Platæa to Jupiter the deliverer, called together all the confederates, and granted to the Platæans this privilege: that their city and territory should be free; that none should make unjust war against them, nor go about to enslave them; and if any did, the confederates then present should use their utmost ability to revenge their quarrel.[4] These privileges your fathers granted us for our valour and zeal in those dangers. But now do you the clean contrary, for you join with our greatest enemies, the Thebans, to bring us into subjection. Therefore calling to witness the gods then sworn by, and the gods peculiar to your ancestral descent, and our own local gods, we require you, that you do no damage to the territory of Platæa, nor violate those oaths; but that you suffer us to enjoy our liberty in such sort as was allowed us by Pausanias.’[5]