Again, not knowing what to do with the Athenians,
he tosses to and fro that city, sometimes extolling it, and
sometimes debasing it. He says that, contending for the
second place with the Tegeatans they made mention of the
Heraclidae, alleged their acts against the Amazons, and
the sepulchres of the Peloponnesians that died under the
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walls of Cadmea, and at last ambitiously brought down
their discourse to the battle of Marathon, saying, however,
that they would be contented with the command of the left
wing.
1 A little after, he says, Pausanias and the Spartans
yielded them the first place, desiring them to fight in the
right wing against the Persians and give them the left, who
excused themselves as not skilled in fighting against the
barbarians.
2 Now it is a ridiculous thing, to be unwilling
to fight against an enemy unless one has been used to him.
But he says farther, that the other Greeks being led by
their captains to encamp in another place, as soon as they
were moved, the horse fled with joy towards Plataea, and
in their flight came as far as Juno's temple.
3 In which
place indeed he charges them all in general with disobedience, cowardice, and treason. At last he says, that only
the Lacedaemonians and the Tegeates fought with the
barbarians, and the Athenians with the Thebans; equally
defrauding all the other cities of their part in the honor of
the victory, whilst he affirms that none of them joined in
the fight, but that all of them, sitting still hard by in their
arms, betrayed and forsook those who fought for them;
that the Phliasians and Megarians indeed, when they heard
Pausanias had got the better, came in late, and falling on
the Theban horse, were all cut off; that the Corinthians
were not at the battle, and that after the victory, by pressing on over the hills, they escaped the Theban cavalry.
4
For the Thebans, after the barbarians were overthrown,
going before with their horse, affectionately assisted them
in their flight; to return them thanks (forsooth) for the
marks they had stigmatized them with at Thermopylae!
Now what rank the Corinthians had in the fight at Plataea
against the barbarians, and how they performed their duty,
you may hear from Simonides in these verses:
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I' th' midst were men, in warlike feats excelling
Who Ephyre, full of springs, inhabited,
And who in Corinth, Glaucus' city, dwelling,
Great praise by their great valor merited;
Of which they to perpetuate the fame,
To th' Gods of well-wrought gold did offerings frame.
For he wrote not these things, as one that taught at
Corinth or that made verses in honor of the city, but
only as recording these actions in elegiac verses. But
Herodotus, whilst he desires to prevent that objection by
which those might convince him of lying who should ask,
Whence then are so many mounts, tombs, and monuments
of the dead, at which the Plataeans, even to this day, celebrate funeral solemnities in the presence of the Greeks?—has charged, unless I am mistaken, a fouler crime than
that of treason on their posterity. For these are his
words: ‘As for the other sepulchres that are seen in
Plataea, I have heard that their successors, being ashamed
of their progenitors' absence from this battle, erected
every man a monument for posterity's sake.’
5 Of this
treacherous deserting the battle Herodotus was the only
man that ever heard. For if any Greeks withdrew them
selves from the battle, they must have deceived Pausanias,
Aristides, the Lacedaemonians, and the Athenians. Neither
yet did the Athenians exclude the Aeginetans who were
their adversaries from the inscription, nor convince the
Corinthians of having fled from Salamis before the victory,
Greece bearing witness to the contrary. Indeed Cleadas, a
Plataean, ten years after the Persian war, to gratify, as
Herodotus says, the Aeginetans, erected a mount bearing
their name. How came it then to pass that the Athenians
and Lacedaemonians, who were so jealous of each other
that they were presently after the war ready to go together by the ears about the setting up a trophy, did not
yet repel those Greeks who fled in a fear from the battle
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from having a share in the honor of those that behaved
themselves valiantly, but inscribed their names on the
trophies and colossuses, and granted them part of the
spoils? Lastly they set up an altar, on which was engraven this epigram:
The Greeks, by valor having put to flight
The Persians and preserved their country's right,
Erected here this altar which you see,
To Jove, preserver of their liberty.
Did Cleadas, 0 Herodotus, or some other, write this also,
to oblige the cities by flattery? What need had they then
to employ fruitless labor in digging up the earth, to make
tombs and erect monuments for posterity's sake, when they
saw their glory consecrated in the most illustrious and
greatest donaries? Pausanias indeed, when he was aspiring
to the tyranny, set up this inscription in Delphi:
Pausanias, of Greeks the general,
When he the Medes in fight had overthrown,
Offered to Phoebus a memorial
Of victory, this monumental stone.
In which he gave the glory to the Greeks, whose general
he professed himself to be. Yet the Greeks not enduring
but utterly misliking it, the Lacedaemonians, sending to
Delphi, caused this to be cut out, and the names of the
cities, as it was fit, to be engraven instead of it. Now how
is it possible that the Greeks should have been offended
that there was no mention made of them in the inscription,
if they had been conscious to themselves of deserting the
fight? or that the Lacedaemonians would have erased the
name of their leader and general, to insert deserters and
such as withdrew themselves from the common danger?
For it would have been a great indignity, that Sophanes,
Aeimnestus, and all the rest who showed their valor in that
fight, should calmly suffer even the Cythnians and Melians
to be inscribed on the trophies; and that Herodotus, attributing that fight only to three cities, should raze all
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the rest out of those and other sacred monuments and
donaries.
