155
Then why should we cherish the friendship of men who punish their benefactors and so openly flatter those who do them injury? Who is there among us whom they have not wronged? When have they given the Hellenes a moment’s respite from their treacherous plots? What in our world is not hateful to them who did not shrink in the earlier war from rifling even the images and temples of the gods, and burning them to the ground?When they captured Athens. See Isoc. 4.96; Hdt. 8.53; Aesch. Pers. 809.
156
Therefore, the Ionians deserve to be commended because, when their sanctuaries had been burned, they invoked the wrath of Heaven upon any who should disturb the ruins or should desire to restore their shrines as they were of old;There is no other authority for this oath of the Ionians. A similar oath is, however, attributed by Lyc. 1.81, to the collective Greeks before the battle of Plataea. and they did this, not because they lacked the means to rebuild them, but in order that there might be left a memorial to future generations of the impiety of the barbarians, and that none might put their trust in men who do not scruple to commit such sins against our holy temples, but that all might be on their guard against them and fear them, seeing that they waged that war not against our persons only, but even against our votive offerings to the gods.