[102] This, among a thousand anecdotes, proves how salutary and inevitable was the popular distrust of the aristocracy. When we read of the process of bribing the principal men, and of the conspiracy entered into by others, we must treat with contempt those accusations of the jealousy of the Grecian people towards their superiors which form the staple declamations of commonplace historians.
[103] Gargaphia is one mile and a half from the town of Plataea. Gell's Itin. 112.
[104] Plut. in vit. Arist.
[105] A strange fall from the ancient splendour of Mycenae, to furnish only four hundred men, conjointly with Tiryns, to the cause of Greece!
[106] Her., lib. ix., c. 45.
[107] Plutarch in vit. Arist.
[108] This account, by Herodotus, of the contrast between the Spartan and the Athenian leaders, which is amply supported elsewhere, is, as I have before hinted, a proof of the little effect upon Spartan emulation produced by the martyrdom of Leonidas. Undoubtedly the Spartans were more terrified by the slaughter of Thermopylae than fired by the desire of revenge.
[109] "Here seem to be several islands, formed by a sluggish stream in a flat meadow. (Oeroe?) must have been of that description.— "Gell's Itin, 109.
[110] Herod., lib. ix., c. 54.
[111] Plut. in vit. Arist.