The Boeotians replied that if they were in Boeotia, they must evacuate that country before taking up their dead; if they were in their own territory, they could do as they pleased: for they knew that, although the Oropid where the bodies as it chanced were lying (the battle having been fought on the borders) was subject to Athens, yet the Athenians could not get them without their leave. Besides, why should they grant a truce for Athenian ground? And what could be fairer than to tell them to evacuate Boeotia if they wished to get what they asked? The Athenian herald accordingly returned with this answer, without having accomplished his object.
The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.
History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides — translated by Richard Crawley, 1874
Perseus Digital Library — Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (Richard Crawley translation) · Richard Crawley (1874); J. M. Dent / E. P. Dutton edition (1910); Perseus Project digital edition
license: public-domain (the Crawley translation — Crawley 1840-1893, per the shelf copy's own bibliographical note; the digitized Dent/Dutton edition is pre-1930); Perseus digital edition CC BY-SA 4.0, attribution recorded per ops/corpus-staging/SOURCES.md pattern