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Updated: May 21, 2025
The orator Agnonides, however, at once fell foul upon Phocion, and impeached him of treason; Callimedon and Charicles, fearing the worst, consulted their own security by flying from the city; Phocion, with a few of his friends that stayed with him, went over to Polysperchon, and out of respect for him, Solon of Plataea, and Dinarchus of Corinth, who were reputed friends and confidants of Polysperchon, accompanied him.
The town was speedily betrayed, the inhabitants being carried aboard the Persian fleet. Guided by Hippias the armament landed at the bay of Marathon, twenty-five miles from Athens. A vain appeal was sent to Sparta for succours; Athens, supported by the little Boeotian city of Plataea, was left to cope with the might of Persia.
"Die criminal an Heracleid king's blood the victor of Plataea my friend Pausanias!" "Rather he than Sparta. What sayest thou?" "Neither, neither," exclaimed Lysander, wringing his hands "impossible both." "Impossible both, be it so. I place before the Ephors the terrors of accrediting that charge, in order that they may repudiate it.
One was Themistocles, the future founder of the Athenian navy and the destined victor of Salamis: the other was Aristides, who afterwards led the Athenian troops at Plataea, and whose integrity and just popularity acquired for his country, when the Persians had finally been repulsed, the advantageous pre-eminence of being acknowledged by half of the Greeks as their impartial leader and protector.
An anecdote is recorded , which, though romantic, is not perhaps wholly fabulous, and which invests with an interest yet more dramatic the fate of the conqueror of Plataea. At Byzantium, runs the story, he became passionately enamoured of a young virgin named Cleonice. Awed by his power and his sternness, the parents yielded her to his will.
Now what rank the Corinthians had in the fight at Plataea against the barbarians, and how they performed their duty, you may hear from Simonides in these verses: I' th' midst were men, in warlike feats excelling, Who Ephyre full of springs, inhabited, And who in Corinth, Glaucus' city, dwelling, Great praise by their great valor merited; Of which they to perpetuate the fame, To th' gods of well-wrought gold did offerings frame.
To this discourse of Glaucias I added, that the edict which impowered Miltiades to lead forth the Athenians, was made when the tribe Aeantis was chief of the assembly, and that in the battle of Plataea the same tribe won the greatest glory; and upon that account, as the oracle directed, that tribe offered a sacrifice for this victory to the nymphs Sphragitides, the city providing a victim and all other necessaries belonging to it.
The Athenians religiously believed that Pan aided them at Marathon; and it would go far to account for the defeat of the vast Oriental host, in that action, by a handful of Greeks, if we could believe that that host became panic-stricken. At Plataea, the allies of the Persians fell into a panic as soon as the Persians were beaten, and fled without striking a blow.
Much envied were they by the unhappy Aristodemus, who found himself called by no name but the 'Coward', and was shunned by all his fellow-citizens. No one would give him fire or water, and after a year of misery, he redeemed his honor by perishing in the forefront of the battle of Plataea, which was the last blow that drove the Persians ingloriously from Greece.
Thus was effected without a blow, and with the concurrence of her most dreaded rival, that eventful revolution, which suddenly raised Athens, so secondary a state before the Persian war, to the supremacy over Greece. The victory of Plataea was won principally by Sparta, then at the head of Greece.
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