|
The Athenians were drawn up in order of battle in a sacred close
belonging to Hercules, when they were joined by the Plataeans, who
came in full force to their aid. Some time before, the Plataeans had
put themselves under the rule of the Athenians; and these last had
already undertaken many labours on their behalf. The occasion of the
surrender was the following. The Plataeans suffered grievous things
at the hands of the men of Thebes; so, as it chanced that
Cleomenes, the son of Anaxandridas, and the Lacedaemonians were in
their neighbourhood, they first of all offered to surrender themselves
to them. But the Lacedaemonians refused to receive them, and said:
"We dwell too far off from you, and ours would be but chill succour.
Ye might oftentimes be carried into slavery before one of us heard of
it. We counsel you rather to give yourselves up to the Athenians,
who are your next neighbours, and well able to shelter you."
This they said, not so much out of good will towards the Plataeans as
because they wished to involve the Athenians in trouble by engaging
them in wars with the Boeotians. The Plataeans, however, when the
Lacedaemonians gave them this counsel, complied at once; and when the
sacrifice to the Twelve Gods was being offered at Athens, they came
and sat as suppliants about the altar, and gave themselves up to the
Athenians. The Thebans no sooner learnt what the Plataeans had done
than instantly they marched out against them, while the Athenians sent
troops to their aid. As the two armies were about to join battle, the
Corinthians, who chanced to be at hand, would not allow them to
engage; both sides consented to take them for arbitrators, whereupon
they made up the quarrel, and fixed the boundary-line between the two
states upon this condition: to wit, that if any of the Boeotians
wished no longer to belong to Boeotia, the Thebans should allow them
to follow their own inclinations. The Corinthians, when they had
thus decreed, forthwith departed to their homes: the Athenians
likewise set off on their return; but the Boeotians fell upon them
during the march, and a battle was fought wherein they were worsted by
the Athenians. Hereupon these last would not be bound by the line
which the Corinthians had fixed, but advanced beyond those limits,
and made the Asopus the boundary-line between the country of the
Thebans and that of the Plataeans and Hysians. Under such
circumstances did the Plataeans give themselves up to Athens; and now
they were come to Marathon to bear the Athenians aid.
|
|