“When the ambassadors had made this report, the Platæans resolved in their councils not to betray the Athenians, but rather to endure, if it must be, the wasting of their territory before their eyes, and to suffer whatsoever misery could befal them; and no more to go forth, but from the walls to make them this answer: ‘That it was impossible for them to do as the Lacedæmonians had required.’ When they had answered so, Archidamus the king first made a protestation to the gods and heroes of the country, saying thus: ‘All ye gods and heroes, protectors of the land of Platæa, be witnesses that we neither invade this territory, wherein our fathers, after their vows unto you, overcame the Medes, and which you made propitious for the Grecians to fight in, unjustly now in the beginning, because they have first broken the league they had sworn; nor what we shall further do will be any injury, because though we have offered many and reasonable conditions, they have yet been all refused. Assent ye also to the punishment of the beginners of injury, and to the revenge of those that bear lawful arms.’ “Having made this protestation to the gods, he made ready his army for the war. And first having felled trees, he therewith made a palisado about the town that none might go out. That done, they raised a mound against the wall, hoping, with so great an army all at work at once, to have quickly taken it. And, having cut down timber in the mountain Cithæron, they built a frame of timber and wattled it about on either side, to serve instead of a wall, to keep the earth from falling too much away, and cast into it stones and earth, and whatsoever else would serve to fill it up. Seventy days and nights continually they cast up the mound, dividing the work between them for rest in such manner, as some might be carrying, whilst others took their sleep and food. And they were urged to labour by the Lacedæmonian officers, who commanded severally the contingents of the allied cities. The Platæans seeing the mound to rise, made the frame of a wall with wood, which, having placed on the wall of the city in the place where the mound touched, they built it within full of bricks, taken from the adjoining houses, for that purpose demolished; the timbers serving to bind them together, that the building might not be weakened by the height. The same was also covered with skins and leather, both to keep the timber from shot of wildfire and those that wrought from danger. So that the height of the wall was great on one side, and the mound went up as fast on the other. The Platæans used also this device; they broke a hole in their own wall, where the mound joined, and drew the earth from it into the city. But the Peloponnesians, when they found it out, rammed clay into cases made of reeds, which they cast into the cavity, with intention that the mound should not moulder, and be carried away like loose earth. The Platæans, excluded here, gave over that plot, and digging a