Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/220

B.C. 431. lest, if they put off the attack until dawn, the enemy might be more confident and more a match for them. While darkness lasted they would be timid, and at a disadvantage, not knowing the streets so well as themselves. So they fell upon them at once hand to hand. 4 When the Thebans found that they had been deceived The Thebans, after they closed their ranks and resisted some resistance, turn their assailants on every side. Two or three times they drove them back, rant of the way, many •' are slain in the streets; But when at last the Plataeans charged a few escape ; the re- them, and the women and slaves on the main ersurremei. housetops Screamed and yelled and pelted them with stones and tiles, the confusion, which was aggravated by the rain which had been falling heavily during the night, became too much for them, and they turned and fled in terror through the city. Hardly any of them knew the way out, and the streets were dark as well as muddy, for the affair happened at the end of the month when there was no moon ; whereas their pursuers knew well enough how to prevent their escape ; and thus many of them perished. The gates by which they entered were the only ones open, and these a Plataean fastened with the spike of a javelin, which he thrust into the bar instead of the pin. So this exit too was closed and they were chased up and down the city. Some of them mounted upon the wall and cast themselves down into the open. Most of these were killed. Others got out by a deserted gate, cutting through the bar unperceived with an axe which a woman gave them ; but only a few, for they were soon found out. Others lost themselves in different parts of the city, and were put to death. But the greater number kept together and took refuge in a large building abutting upon the wall, of which the doors on the near side chanced to be open, they thinking them to be the gates of the city, and expecting to find a way through them into the country. The Plataeans, seeing that they were in a trap, began to consider whether they should not set the building on fire,