It began on a moonless, storm-lashed night in 431 BC, when three hundred Theban soldiers slipped through the gates of Plataea. They had been let in by two citizens who hoped to hand the city to Thebes without a fight. But the Plataeans realized how few their attackers were, and in the dark and the rain they fought back, ordinary townspeople, including women and enslaved household members, joining the defense. More than half the Thebans were killed; the rest were captured. Thucydides marks this night as the true beginning of the Peloponnesian War, the conflict that would tear the Greek world apart for twenty-seven years. For the people of Plataea, it was the first night of an ordeal that would end with their city wiped from the earth.
Two years later, in 429 BC, the Spartan king Archidamus II led a Peloponnesian army into Plataean territory and began destroying the crops. The Plataeans sent a herald to remind him of their shared past, of the courage they had shown against Persia in 479 BC, and of the oath the Spartans themselves had sworn to keep the city free. They invoked the Spartan general Pausanias, who had once declared Plataea holy ground that should never be attacked. The Spartans answered with a demand: stay neutral, and you will be spared. After consulting Athens, Plataea refused. To abandon Athens now, after generations of loyalty, was something the city would not do. The Spartans tried ramps, fire, and siege engines, and when none broke the walls, they ringed Plataea with fortifications, left a guard, and settled in to starve it out.
By the second winter the situation inside the walls was desperate. Food was nearly gone, and no word came that Athens would ever march to their aid. A bold plan took shape: a breakout through the Spartan lines on a wild, stormy night. At first all the men intended to go, but as the danger became clear, only 220 committed to the attempt. They waited for foul weather, then went over the walls. In one of the war's most remarkable feats of nerve, 212 of them slipped past the guards and reached the safety of Athens. Thucydides credits the storm itself for their survival, the same violent weather that had once trapped the Thebans now covering the Plataeans' flight. Those who stayed behind held on through one more season, hoping the Spartans' promise of fair treatment would mean something.
In the summer of 427 BC, with their supplies gone and no rescue in sight, the remaining Plataeans surrendered. They did so trusting a Spartan pledge to judge them all fairly and to punish only the guilty. There was no trial. The Spartan judges asked each prisoner a single question: had they done any service for Sparta and its allies in the war? After bitter debate, the prisoners could only answer no, and that answer was their death sentence. More than two hundred Plataean defenders were executed, among them twenty-five Athenians who had stood with them to the end. The women who had remained in the city were sold into slavery. These were not numbers in a chronicle. They were people who had defended their homes through years of hunger, betrayed by a promise of mercy that was never meant to be kept.
The Thebans were not content to defeat Plataea; they set out to erase it. They demolished the houses and used the salvaged timber and brick to build an enormous inn, two hundred feet square, beside the precinct of the goddess Hera, and from the metal of the walls they fashioned couches dedicated to her. A new stone temple to Hera rose on the rubble of people's homes, the conquerors' piety built quite literally from what they had taken. For decades the site lay under Theban control. Only after Thebes lost the Corinthian War was Plataea rebuilt in 386 BC, and even that proved temporary, the city falling again in 373. Not until 338 BC did Philip II of Macedon restore it for good, calling it a symbol of Greek courage against Persia. The label was true. So was the cost of having earned it.
The siege unfolded at ancient Plataea, 38.221 N, 23.274 E, in Boeotia at the foot of Mount Cithaeron, beside the river Asopus and the modern village of Plataies. From 3,000-5,000 ft AGL the ground plan reads clearly: the walled city site, the surrounding plain where the Spartan circumvallation once ran, and the mountain that walled off the southern horizon. Nearest major airport: Athens International (LGAV), about 60 km southeast. Best visibility in spring and autumn.