206 HISTORICAL TALES.

or to leave their city and go where they would; all
of which alternatives they declined. Thereupon the
Spartan force invested the city, and prepared to take
it by dint of arms. And thus Sparta kept the pledge
of Platewan sacredness made by her king Pausanias
half a century before.

Platewa was a small place, probably not very
strongly fortified, and contained a garrison of only
four hundred and eighty men, of whom eighty were
Athenians. Fortunately, all the women and children
had been sent to Athens, the only women remaining
in the town being about a hundred slaves, who
served as cooks. Around this small place gathered
the entire army of Sparta and her allies, a force
against which it seemed as if the few defenders could
not hold out a week. But these faithful few were
brave and resolute, and for a year and more they
defied every effort of their foes.

The story of this siege is of interest as showing how
the ancients assailed a fortified town. Defences
which in our times would not stand a day, in those
times took months and years to overcome. The
army of Sparta, defied by the brave garrison, at first
took steps to enclose the town. If the defenders
would not let them in, they would not let the de-
fenders out. They laid waste the cultivated land,
cut down the fruit-trees, and used these to build a
strong palisade around the entire city, with the de-
termination that not a Platsan should escape. This
done, they began to erect a great mound of wood,
stones, and earth against the city wall, forming an
inclined plane up which they proposed to rush and