Mardonius has

116. The Spartans returned home. tened, by rapid marches, towards Athens. A second time, within ten months, the city was deserted by her people, who had retired again to Salamis. From Athens, Mardonius sent to Salamis, repeating the offers which had been rejected. One man in the council urged compliance. He was instantly stoned to death by the people out of doors. The women rushed to his house, and destroyed his wife and children.-The Spartans, instead of sending forces against the invader, only increased their efforts in fortifying the Isthmus. The Athenians sent to remonstrate with them on their tardiness. For ten days the envoys were kept at Sparta, waiting for their answer. At length, wearied with delay, they told them that Athens would not be trifled with, and would throw herself into the arms of Persia. The ephori then informed them that their army was already on the march. It was only on the previous night that they had sent Pausanias, the regent during the infancy of the son of Leonidas, with five thousand Spartans and thirty-five thousand Helots. They sent with the envoys five thousand heavy-armed Laconians from the provinces.

117. Mardonius did not wait for Pausanias, but fell back upon Boeotia, leaving his traces in the havoc and plunder with which he devastated the Athenian territory. Scouring the Megarian plain, he heard that Pausanias was at the Isthmus; he bent his course in an easterly direction, and came down the lower banks of the Asopus, and halted for the night at Tagara. The next day he pitched his camp near the pool of Mount Citharon, between the cities of Erythræ and Platea. The Greeks of the Peloponnesus had joined the Spartans, and marched along the coast to Eleusis, where they were met by the Athenians under Aristides. As they proceeded across the foot of Citharon down to Erythræ, they saw the Persians encamped on the other side of the river. Pausanias halted, and 'formed his line on the rugged sides of the mountain. Mardonius ordered Masistius to charge the Greeks with his cavalry. The Megarians, being sorely pressed by this onset, sent to Pausanias for relief. At a general call for succour in a post of danger, Olympidorus, an Athenian, with five hundred men, and a body of archers, rushed on the Persians. Masistius, mounted on a richly-caparisoned and fiery Nisean steed, and glittering

from head to foot in golden armour, spurred on to meet this new enemy. His horse was wounded, and, in rearing, overthrew his rider. A Grecian javelin pierced his brain, through an opening in the visor. After a bloody battle for the body of their fallen general, the Persians were beaten back to their camp; while the Greeks, struck with the gigantic stature and noble figure of their prize, placed the body on a bier, and carried it in triumph through their lines. The Persian army honoured their lost chief by cutting the hair off* their heads, and the manes off their horses and their beasts of burden, and by a funeral wail," which," says Herodotus, "resounded through all Boeotia."

118. Though the loss of the Greeks in this first encounter was serious, Pausanias was emboldened to advance further into the plain, chiefly for the sake of water. He pitched on the bank of one of the small streams from the side of Mount Citharon, that fall into the Asopus, before it flows to the Euboean channel through the plain of Platæa. The Spartans, who occupied the post of command, drew their water from a spring called Gargaphia. A dispute arose between the Tegeans and the Athenians for the second place of honour, or the left wing. The Tegeans urged their claim from ancient usage. The Athenians rested theirs

mainly on the exploits of Marathon. At the same time," said Aristides, we will try to act with honour in any post which the Spartans may assign to us." The Spartans, as with the voice of one man, declared that the Athenians were the most worthy.

119. Mardonius opposed the Persians to the Spartans, and his Greek auxiliaries to the Athenians. The Spartans had adopted Tisamenus, the most famed of Greek soothsayers. In the camp of the Persians were also Grecian soothsayers. Tisamenus declared that the auguries favoured the Greeks, if they acted on the defensive. The Persians were forbidden, by similar divinations, to begin the attack. For eight days, the two armies remained inactive, the Persians losing heart, and seeing their supplies decrease, while the Greeks were furnished with provisions and fresh reinforcements from Peloponnesus. Timagenidas, a Theban, suggested that the Peloponnesian supplies might be intercepted. They surprised five hundred beasts of

*Herodotus says, "shaving."

burden, on their way through a mountain defile to the Grecian camp.

120. "The watches of the night were set," says Herodotus, "and the army had sunk to rest, when, from the Persian camp, a man coming secretly to the Athenian outposts, asked for their leaders. I am come,' he said, 'to tell you a secret, which must be conveyed to Pausanias · alone. Mardonius will attack you on the morrow. prepared. Should you succeed, you will make some effort for the independence of one who exposes himself to danger by giving you this warning. I am Alexander of Macedon.'

Be

121.The Athenians hastened to Pausanias, and told him what they had heard." Pausanias proposed that the Athenians, who had fought against the Persians, should take the right wing. The Athenian leaders at first resisted the proposal, but Aristides soothed them, by reminding them, that the post of command was offered to them; that their contest would be not with Greeks, but with the barbarians; and that they would be "fighting for the trophies of Marathon and Salamis." The plan, however, was frustrated; for Mardonius, being informed of the change, altered the disposition of his own forces; and, imagining that the plan arose from Spartan cowardice, offered to decide the contest by a battle between an equal number of Persians and Spartans. The Spartans made no reply to this challenge. Mardonius, ascribing their silence to fear, ordered the cavalry to advance. They drove the Greeks from their position, by stopping the Gargaphian spring. The Greeks retired towards Platea. Mardonius crossed the river, and followed the Spartans. Athenians were separated from them by the lower ridges of the mountain. The Persians had come within bow-shot, and, placing their light bucklers before them as a breastwork, harassed the Spartans with their arrows. Spartans, in obedience to a soothsayer, were seated on the ground, behind their long shields, waiting for the signal for battle from the gods. The moment the signs were pronounced to be favourable, they sprang forward on the Persians, and a confused battle ensued, in which Mardonius, distinguished by his white charger and his dazzling armour, had his skull crushed by Aeimnestus, a Spartan. His fall was the signal for a universal rout of the barbarians, who

The

The

fled to their fortified camp. The Spartans could not scale the rampart. The Athenians, now coming up, mounted the wall, and opened a breach for their allies, who rushed in and slaughtered nearly the whole multitude. The treasures in gold, silver, and armour, astonished the Greeks. A portion of these riches was devoted to the gods—a golden tripod to Apollo, at Delphi; a colossal image of Jupiter to the temple at Olympia, with the names of the confederate cities on its pedestal; and a similar image of Poseidon (or Neptune) to his temple on the Isthmus. Eighty talents were employed by the Platæans in building a temple to Athene. To Pausanias were awarded ten specimens of whatever was valuable. Alexander was rewarded by the freedom of Athens. Over their dead thev raised three tumuli, or lofty mounds of earth-one for the officers, one for the rest of the Spartans, one for the Helots, and others for the slain of other cities. All the fires of the country were put out, and then lighted afresh from the sacred hearth at Delphi. It was decreed that every fifth year a Feast of Liberty should be celebrated at Platæa, on the anniversary of the battle. Before they finally left the scene of victory, they resolved to punish Thebes for aiding Persia in the attempt to enslave their country. After a siege of twenty days, the traitors were given up, and were carried away by Pausanias, and put to death at Corinth.

122. The day of the victory of Platæa witnessed another victory over the Persian forces in Ionia. The Grecian ships that pursued Xerxes in his flight from Salamis, were anchored at Delos, under Leotychides, the Spartan king, and Xanthippus, the Athenian. There they received the Samians into the Grecian confederacy, on the assurance that the Ionians were ready for revolt from Persia. At Mycale, a promontory of Ionia, opposite to Samos, on the south, they found the ships of the enemy drawn up near the foot of the mountain, inclosed with a wall, and defended by long files of infantry along the beach, under the command of the Persian, Tigranes. The Spartan king sent the watchword,

Hebe," to the Ionians, and exhorted them to remember the common liberty of Greece. The Athenians, who were the first that reached the Persian entrenchments, rushed fiercely on, and, after an obstinate contest, carried the barricade, and put the promiscuous multitude to flight.

479-435.]

MARITIME POWER OF ATHENS.

57

The troops of Persia stood their ground: Tigranes, however, was slain. Then the Spartans, whose march had been retarded by the difficult nature of the ground they had to pass, came up and slew all that escaped the sword of the Athenians. The Persian ships were set on fire. The Ionians were left to make their own terms with Persia; but the isles were taken into the Greek confederacy. Sailing to the Hellespont to destroy the bridge, which they found already demolished, the Spartans and other Peloponnesians returned to Greece, leaving the Athenians to recover, from the Persians, the colony of Miltiades in Chersonese. The Athenians, having accomplished this object, came home laden with spoils, among which were the fragments and cables of the famous bridge across the Hellespont.-In this manner, an end was brought to the Persian invasion of Greece. By the efforts it called forth, rallying the forces of the divided states, and centring them on one great object, it laid the foundations of the splendid power to which Greece was raised.

CHAPTER X.

MARITIME ASCENDENCY OF ATHENS.

Rebuilding of Athens-Improvements by Themistocles in the Piræus-Successes of the Spartans under Pausanias-Cimon-Banishment and death of Themistocles-Character and proceedings of Cimon-Earthquake at Sparta-War with Messenia-Banishment of Cimon.

123. WHILE the united Greeks were engaged in paralysing the power of Persia, and driving her from the shores of Greece, Themistocles remained in charge of Attica. Athens had been almost entirely destroyed by the barbarian. After his expulsion and defeat, the Athenians set about the restoration of their walls, and the rebuilding of their city. Having twice left their homes to preserve their freedom, they now resolved to show "what liberty could make of it." The private buildings, being left to their owners, exhibited, in their meanness, the poverty of the people. The temples were left for more prosperous times. The first care of the state was the rebuilding of their walls, and