Thucydidês, and the skill of it consists in the frequency with which the hearers are brought back, time after time, and by well-managed transitions, to these same topics.[435] And such was the impression which it seemed to make on the five Lacedæmonian judges, that the Thebans near at hand found themselves under the necessity of making a reply to it: although we see plainly that the whole scheme of proceeding—the formal and insulting question, as well as the sentence destined to follow upon answer given—had been settled beforehand between them and the Lacedæmonians. [434] See this point emphatically set forth in Orat. xiv, called Λόγος Πλαταϊκὸς, of Isokratês, p. 308, sect. 62. The whole of that oration is interesting to be read in illustration of the renewed sufferings of the Platæans near fifty years after this capture. [435] Thucyd. iii, 54-59. Dionysius of Halikarnassus bestows especial commendation on the speech of the Platæan orator (De Thucyd. Hist. Judic. p. 921). Concurring with him as to its merits, I do not concur in the opinion which he expresses that it is less artistically put together than those other harangues which he considers inferior. Mr. Mitford doubts whether these two orations are to be taken as approximating to anything really delivered on the occasion. But it seems to me that the means possessed by Thucydidês for informing himself of what was actually said at this scene before the captured Platæa must have been considerable and satisfactory: I therefore place full confidence in them, as I do in most of the other harangues in his work, so far as _the substance_ goes.