[671] Pausan. i, 15, 4; Dêmosthen. cont. Neær. c. 25.
[672] Herodot. vi, 120; Plutarch, Camill. c. 19; De Malignit. Herodoti, c. 26, p. 862; and De Gloriâ Atheniensium, c. 7.
Boëdromion was the third month of the Attic year, which year began near about the summer solstice. The first three Attic months, Hekatombæon, Metageitnion, Boëdromion, approach (speaking in a loose manner) nearly to our July, August, September; probably the month Hekatombæon began usually at some day in the latter half of June.
From the fact that the courier Pheidippidês reached Sparta on the ninth day of the moon, and that the two thousand Spartans arrived in Attica on the third day after the full moon, during which interval the battle took place, we see that the sixth day of Boëdromion could not be the sixth day of the moon. The Attic months, though professedly lunar months, did not at this time therefore accurately correspond with the course of the moon. See Mr. Clinton, Fast. Hellen. ad an. 490 B. C. Plutarch (in the Treatise De Malign. Herodoti, above referred to) appears to have no conception of this discrepancy between the Attic month and the course of the moon. A portion of the censure which he casts on Herodotus is grounded on the assumption that the two must coincide.
M. Boeckh, following Fréret and Larcher, contests the statement of Plutarch, that the battle was fought on the sixth of the month Boëdromion, but upon reasons which appear to me insufficient. His chief argument rests upon another statement of Plutarch (derived from some lost verses of Æschylus), that the tribe Æantis had the right wing or post of honor at the battle; and that the public vote, pursuant to which the army was led out of Athens, was passed during the prytany of the tribe Æantis. He assumes, that the reason why this tribe was posted on the right wing, must have been, that it had drawn by lot the first prytany in that particular year: if this be granted, then the vote for drawing out the army must have been passed in the first prytany, or within the first thirty-five or thirty-six days of the Attic year, during the space between the first of Hekatombæon and the fifth or sixth of Metageitnion. But it is certain that the interval, which took place between the army leaving the city and the battle, was much less than one month,—we may even say less than one week. The battle, therefore, must have been fought between the sixth and tenth of Metageitnion. (Plutarch, Symposiac. i, 10, 3, and Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i, p. 291.) Herodotus (vi, 111) says that the tribes were arranged in line ὡς ἠριθμέοντο,—“as they were numbered,”—which is contended to mean necessarily the arrangement between them, determined by lot for the prytanies of that particular year. “In acie instruendâ (says Boeckh, Comment. ad Corp. Inscript. p. 299) Athenienses non constantem, sed variabilem secundum prytanias, ordinem secatos esse, ita ut tribus ex hoc ordine inde a dextro cornu disponerentur, docui in Commentatione de pugnâ Marathoniâ.” Proœmia Lect. Univ. Berolin. æstiv. a. 1816.
The Proœmia here referred to I have not been able to consult, and they may therefore contain additional reasons to prove the point advanced, viz., that the order of the ten tribes in line of battle, beginning from the right wing, was conformable to their order in prytanizing, as drawn by lot for the year; but I think the passages of Herodotus and Plutarch now before us insufficient to establish this point. From the fact that the tribe Æantis had the right wing at the battle of Marathon, we are by no means warranted in inferring that that tribe had drawn by lot the earliest prytany in the year. Other reasons, in my judgment equally probable, may be assigned in explanation of the circumstance: one reason, I think, decidedly more probable. This reason is, that the battle was fought during the prytany of the tribe Æantis, which may be concluded from the statement of Plutarch, that the vote for marching out the army from Athens was passed during the prytany of that tribe; for the interval, between the march of the army out of the city and the battle, must have been only a very few days. Moreover, the deme Marathon belonged to the tribe Æantis (see Boeckh, ad Inscript. No. 172, p. 309): the battle being fought in their deme, the Marathonians may perhaps have claimed on this express ground the post of honor for their tribe; just as we see that at the first battle of Mantineia against the Lacedæmonians, the Mantineians were allowed to occupy the right wing or post of honor, “because the battle was fought in their territory,” (Thucyd. v, 67.) Lastly, the deme Aphidnæ also belonged to the tribe Æantis (see Boeckh, l. c.): now the polemarch Kallimachus was an Aphidnæan (Herodot. vi, 109), and Herodotus expressly tells us, “the law or custom then stood among the Athenians, that the polemarch should have the right wing,”—ὁ γὰρ νόμος τότε εἶχε οὕτω τοῖσι Ἀθηναίοισι, τὸν πολέμαρχον ἔχειν κέρας τὸ δέξιον (vi, 111). Where the polemarch stood, there his tribe would be likely to stand: and the language of Herodotus indeed seems directly to imply that he identifies the tribe of the polemarch with the polemarch himself,—ἡγεομένου δὲ τούτου, ἐξεδέκοντο ὡς ἀριθμέοντο αἱ φυλαὶ, ἐχόμεναι ἀλλήλων,—meaning that the order of tribes began by that of the polemarch being in the leading position, and was then “taken up” by the rest “in numerical sequence,”—i. e. in the order of their prytanizing sequence for the year.
Here are a concurrence of reasons to explain why the tribe Æantis had the right wing at the battle of Marathon, even though it may not have been first in the order of prytanizing tribes for the year. Boeckh, therefore, is not warranted in inferring the second of these two facts from the first.
The concurrence of these three reasons, all in favor of the same conclusion, and all independent of the reason supposed by Boeckh, appears to me to have great weight; but I regard the first of the three, even singly taken, as more probable than his reason. If my view of the case be correct, the sixth day of Boëdromion, the day of battle as given by Plutarch, is not to be called in question. That day comes in the second prytany of the year, which begins about the sixth of Metageitnion, and ends about the twelfth of Boëdromion, and which must in this year have fallen to the lot of the tribe Æantis. On the first or second day of Boëdromion, the vote for marching out the army may have passed; on the sixth the battle was fought; both during the prytany of this tribe.
I am not prepared to carry these reasons farther than the particular case of the battle of Marathon, and the vindication of the day of that battle as stated by Plutarch; nor would I apply them to later periods, such as the Peloponnesian war. It is certain that the army regulations of Athens were considerably modified between the battle of Marathon and the Peloponnesian war, as well in other matters as in what regards the polemarch; and we have not sufficient information to enable us to determine whether in that later period the Athenians followed any known or perpetual rule in the battle-order of the tribes. Military considerations, connected with the state of the particular army serving, must have prevented the constant observance of any rule: thus we can hardly imagine that Nikias, commanding the army before Syracuse, could have been tied down to any invariable order of battle among the tribes to which his hoplites belonged. Moreover, the expedition against Syracuse lasted more than one Attic year: can it be believed that Nikias, on receiving information from Athens of the sequence in which the prytanies of the tribes had been drawn by lot during the second year of his expedition, would be compelled to marshal his army in a new battle-order conformably to it? As the military operations of the Athenians became more extensive, they would find it necessary to leave such dispositions more and more to the general serving in every particular campaign. It may well be doubted whether during the Peloponnesian war any established rule was observed in marshalling the tribes for battle.
One great motive which induces critics to maintain that the battle was fought in the Athenian month Metageitnion, is, that that month coincides with the Spartan month Karneius, so that the refusal of the Spartans to march before the full moon, is construed to apply only to the peculiar sanctity of this last-mentioned month, instead of being a constant rule for the whole year. I perfectly agree with these critics, that the answer, given by the Spartans to the courier Pheidippidês, cannot be held to prove a regular, invariable Spartan maxim, applicable throughout the whole year, not to begin a march in the second quarter of the moon: very possibly, as Boeckh remarks, there may have been some festival impending during the particular month in question, upon which the Spartan refusal to march was founded. But no inference can be deduced from hence to disprove the sixth of Boëdromion as the day of the battle of Marathon: for though the months of every Grecian city were professedly lunar, yet they never coincided with each other exactly or long together, because the systems of intercalation adopted in different cities were different: there was great irregularity and confusion (Plutarch, Aristeidês, c. 19; Aristoxenus, Harmon. ii, p. 30: compare also K. F. Hermann, Ueber die Griechische Monatskunde, p. 26, 27. Göttingen, 1844; and Boeckh, ad Corp. Inscript. t. i, p. 734).