[315] Herodot. ix, 15. The situation of the Attic deme Sphendalê, or Sphendaleis, seems not certainly known (Ross, Über die Demen von Attika, p. 138); but Colonel Leake and Mr. Finlay think that it stood “near Aio Merkurio, which now gives name to the pass leading from Dekeleia through the ridges of Parnes into the extremity of the Tanagrian plain, at a place called Malakasa.” (Leake, Athens and the Demi of Attica, vol. ii, sect. iv, p. 123.)
Mr. Finlay (Oropus and the Diakria, p. 38) says that “Malakasa is the only place on this road where a considerable body of cavalry could conveniently halt.”
It appears that the Bœotians from the neighborhood of the Asôpus were necessary as guides for this road. Perhaps even the territory of Orôpus was at this time still a part of Bœotia: we do not certainly know at what period it was first conquered by the Athenians.
The combats between Athenians and Bœotians will be found to take place most frequently in this southeastern region of Bœotia,—Tanagra, Œnophyta, Delium, etc.
[316] Herodot. ix, 15.
[317] The strong town of Thebes was of much service to him (Thucyd. i, 90).
[318] Herodot. ix, 40, 45, 67; Plutarch, Aristeidês, c. 18.
[319] Herodot. ix, 16. Thersander, though an Orchomenian, passes as a Theban—Πέρσην τε καὶ Θηβαῖον ἐν κλίνῃ ἑκάστῃ—a proof of the intimate connection between Thebes and Orchomenus at this time, which is farther illustrated by Pindar, Isthm. i, 51 (compare the Scholia ad loc. and at the beginning of the Ode), respecting the Theban family of Herodotus and Asôpodôrus. The ancient mythical feud appears to have gone to sleep, but a deadly hatred will be found to grow up in later times between these two towns.
[320] Herodot. ix, 16, 17. The last observation here quoted is striking and emphatic—ἐχθίστη δὲ ὀδύνη ἐστὶ τῶν ἐν ἀνθρώποισι αὕτη, πολλὰ φρονέοντα μηδενὸς κρατέειν. It will have to be more carefully considered at a later period of this history, when we come to touch upon the scientific life of the Greeks, and upon the philosophy of happiness and duty as conceived by Aristotle. If carried fully out, this position is the direct negative of what Aristotle lays down in his Ethics, as to the superior happiness of the βίος θεωρητικὸς, or life of scientific observation and reflection.
[321] Herodot. ix, 66.