unexpectedly, because of the inexperience of their adversaries, overtook
those who fled from them, and they left their pursuers far behind. So for
their spirit they were thought men, rather than women for their nature.
For they seemed to surpass men in spirit rather than to be inferior in
_physique_.

5. And after they had subdued many tribes and in fact enslaved the
surrounding nations, they heard great reports about this country, and for
the sake of glory took the most warlike of their tribes and marched
against this city. And after they met these brave men, they came to have
their souls like their nature, and with changed hearts seemed to be women
rather from their conduct in danger than from their forms.

6. And they alone were not allowed to learn from experience and to plan
better for the future, and they might not go homeward and tell of their
discomfiture and the valor of our ancestors; for they died here and paid
the penalty for their rashness, and made the memory of this city immortal
through valor, and rendered their own country nameless through their
defeat here. These women then, through their unjust desire for a country
not their own, justly lost their own.

7. After Adrastus and Polyneices had joined in the expedition against
Thebes and had been worsted in battle, the Thebans would not let them
bury their dead. So the Athenians, who believed that if these men did
wrong they had (already) the greatest punishment in death, and that the
gods of the lower world were not receiving their due, and that by the
pollution of holy places the gods above were being insulted, first sent
heralds and demanded them to grant the removal of the dead, (8) thinking
it the part of brave men to punish their enemies while alive, but of men
who distrusted themselves to show their courage on the bodies of the