Such was the melancholy fate of Platæa, after sustaining a blockade of about two years.[443] Its identity and local traditions seemed thus extinguished, and the sacrifices, in honor of the deceased victors who had fought under Pausanias, suspended,—which the Platæan speakers had urged upon the Lacedæmonians as an impiety not to be tolerated,[444] and which perhaps the latter would hardly have consented to under any other circumstances except from an anxious desire of conciliating the Thebans in their prominent antipathy. It is in this way that Thucydidês explains the conduct of Sparta, which he pronounces to have been rigorous in the extreme.[445] And in truth it was more rigorous, considering only the principle of the case, and apart from the number of victims, than even the first unexecuted sentence of Athens against the Mitylenæans: for neither Sparta, nor even Thebes, had any fair pretence for considering Platæa as a revolted town, whereas Mitylênê was a city which had revolted under circumstances peculiarly offensive to Athens. Moreover, Sparta promised trial and justice to the Platæans on their surrender: Pachês promised nothing to the Mitylenæans, except that their fate should be reserved for the decision of the Athenian people. This little city—interesting from its Hellenic patriotism, its grateful and tenacious attachments, and its unmerited suffering—now existed only in the persons of its citizens harbored at Athens: we shall find it hereafter restored, destroyed again, and finally again restored: so checkered was the fate of a little Grecian state swept away by the contending politics of the greater neighbors. The slaughter of the twenty-five Athenian prisoners, like that of Salæthus by the Athenians, was not beyond the rigor admitted and tolerated, though not always practised, on both sides, towards prisoners of war. [443] Demosthenês—or the Pseudo-Demosthenês—in the oration against Neæra (p. 1380, c. 25), says that the blockade of Platæa was continued for ten years before it surrendered,—ἐπολιόρκουν αὐτοὺς διπλῷ τείχει περιτειχίσαντες δέκα ἔτη. That the real duration of the blockade was only _two_ years, is most certain: accordingly, several eminent critics—Palmerius, Wasse, Duker, Taylor, Auger, etc., all with one accord confidently enjoin us to correct the text of Demosthenês from δέκα to δύο. “Repone _fidenter_ δύο,” says Duker.