While the generals from the Peloponnese considered this argument, an Athenian came with the message that the barbarians had reached Attica and were destroying all of it by fire. The army with Xerxes had made its way through Boeotia and burnt the city of the Thespians, who had abandoned it and gone to the Peloponnese, and Plataea likewise. Now the army had come to Athens and was devastating everything there. The army burnt Thespia and Plataea upon learning from the Thebans that they had not medized.