Soft are their feet as they circle the altar of mighty Cronīon.”
Hesiod, Theogony.
Epaminondas told the Bœotians that their country was the stage of Ares, and several battles fought on their soil were of national significance. At Leuctra Epaminondas defeated Sparta. At Tanagra Athenians and Spartans first tried their strength against each other. At Delium the Athenians were defeated by the Bœotians in a struggle in which Alcibiades and Socrates took part. Alcibiades, who saved his master’s life, afterwards told their friends that in the retreat Socrates behaved exactly as he did in the streets of Athens, “turning his eyes observantly from side to side, though drenched with rain, and calmly looking about on friend and foe.” Above all, at Chæronea and Platæa occurred momentous events.
Late in September of the year 479 B. C., one hundred and forty-one years before Greek liberty was surrendered at Chæronea, there was fought near Platæa, in the plain between Cithæron and the Asopus, the last of the battles “wherein the Medes of the crooked bows were overthrown.” The work begun at Marathon was here completed. “The rest of the army died in Bœotia” was an Æschylean line calculated to arouse an Athenian audience. And an exquisite Herodotean story was fostered if not created by the desire of the Greeks to believe that the Persians had a foreboding of their disaster. Herodotus had the story from Thersander of Orchomenus. A Theban gave a dinner to Mardonius and fifty Persian nobles. The Persian who shared Thersander’s couch said to him:—
“‘Since here at table thou hast shared my food and my libation, I would leave with thee a memorial of my judgment that thou too, informed beforehand, mayest know how to plan for thy advantage. Dost see these Persians feasting here, and that host which we left encamping by the river? Of all these within brief space of time thou wilt behold a few survivors only.’ And as the Persian spoke these words he let fall many tears. Whereat Thersander, struck with wonder at his speech, replied: ‘Well, then, ’t were fitting to say this to Mardonius and to those next after him in honour.’ To that the other said: ‘My friend, what needs must happen by the will of God it is not possible for man to turn aside, and then, too, none is wont to yield to warnings, however credible, and many of us Persians, although our eyes are opened, follow on, constrained by necessity. This pang is bitterest of all, for men to know much and to have power over naught.’”
The battle of Platæa occurred because Mardonius, the general of Xerxes, undertook to oppose the Spartan Pausanias, commander of the Greek allies, as he was making his way from the south, over the passes of Cithæron, to attack disloyal Thebes. The Platæans, true to the patriotism they had displayed at Marathon and Artemisium, joined the Greeks. The battle lasted for some days and was, as usual, retarded and complicated by the inability of the Greeks to coöperate; but it ended in the defeat and death of Mardonius, the capture of the luxurious Persian camp, and the final discouragement of the Orient. Herodotus’s account of the battle not only contains strategic details but is full of episodes which, even if they are but traditional or the creations of his own audacious vivacity, illustrate the truth that the conflict was one of civilizations and of ideals. The Persian cavalry leader, Macistius, glows in scarlet and gold, and when he is killed his men fill all Bœotia with the clamour of their grief. The Greek officers show his naked body to their soldiers because it is “worth seeing for its stature and beauty.” Mardonius gallops in on his snow-white charger where the fight is hottest and leads to death the picked guard of one thousand men, the flower of the Persian army. A Spartan kills him, but Pausanias refuses to maltreat his dead body even though the Persians had crucified the body of the Spartan Leonidas at Thermopylæ. In the camp of Mardonius are found a silver throne, a brass manger for the horses, and countless utensils of Oriental luxury. Pausanias orders served on the same spot a Spartan supper.
Modern historians have complained that Herodotus perpetuated and “consecrated” the illusion of the Athenians that they played a worthy part in the battle, while in reality they were but half-hearted and the battle was won by the “discipline and prowess of the Spartan hoplites.” Herodotus did, however, admit that though the Athenians fought well the Lacedæmonians fought better, and when, with characteristic Greek emphasis on individuals, he discussed which single men were most courageous, he assigned the first four places to Spartans.
In any case the Spartans did not fail to receive full credit for the victory from their contemporaries. Pindar called Platæa the glory of the Lacedæmonians as Salamis was the glory of the Athenians. And Æschylus, even within the Dionysiac theatre, attributed the Persian defeat to the “Dorian spear.” Perhaps no one regretted that both the Athenian and Spartan dead who were buried on the battlefield were honoured in epitaphs by Simonides. For the Athenians he wrote with dignity:—
“If valour’s best apportionment
Be noble death,