[629] The battle of Chæronea, which took place in August, B.C. 338.
[630] The Greek is "to offer sacrifice," with the implied idea of feasting on the animal offered. In the first chapter of this Life we learn that it was only the less eatable parts of the victim which were burned. Thus the idea of offering sacrifice always suggested merry-making and feasting to the Greek mind. Grote says, "We cannot doubt that the public of Athens, as well as Demosthenes, felt great joy at an event which seemed to open to them fresh chances of freedom, and that the motion for a sacrifice of thanksgiving, in spite of Phokion's opposition, was readily adopted."
[631] This speech of Phokion is given at greater length by Diodorus, xvii. 15.
[632] A quarter of Athens, probably south of the Acropolis. See Lieut.-Col. Leake's 'Topography of Athens,' sect. iv.
[633] The original is ἀποβάτης, which corresponds to the Latin desultor, meaning one who rode several horses, leaping from one to the other.
[634] Plutarch's narrative here is misleading, as it seems to imply that Harpalus gave this money to Charikles after his arrival in Athens. We know from Theopompus (Fr. 277) that the monument had been finished some time before Harpalus quitted Asia. Plutarch treats it as a mean structure, unworthy of the sum expended on it; but both Dikæarchus and Pausanias describe it as stately and magnificent. Grote's 'History of Greece,' Part II. ch. xcv., note.
[635] See Life of Demosthenes, ch. xxv.; and Grote, Hist. of Greece, Part II., ch. xcv.
[636] The Lamian war, so called from the siege of Lamia, in which Leosthenes perished.
[637] Ἥβη, the word here used, means the time just before manhood, from about fourteen to twenty years of age; at Sparta it was fixed at eighteen, so that of οἱ δέκα ἀφ' ἥβης were men of twenty-eight, οἱ τετταράκοντα ἀφ' ἥβης men of fifty-eight, &c. Xen. Hell. 3. 4, 23. Liddell and Scott. Here, therefore, οἱ ἄχρι ἑκσήκοντα ἀφ' ἥβης must mean all citizens under about seventy-five years of age.
[638] Rhamnus was a demus of Attica, situated on a small rocky peninsula on the east coast of Attica, sixty stadia from Marathon.