Erato   

sacrifices and a torch-race.
On the occasion of which we speak when Pheidippides was sent by
the Athenian generals, and, according to his own account, saw Pan on
his journey, he reached Sparta on the very next day after quitting the
city of Athens- Upon his arrival he went before the rulers, and said
to them:-
"Men of Lacedaemon, the Athenians beseech you to hasten to their
aid, and not allow that state, which is the most ancient in all
Greece, to be enslaved by the barbarians. Eretria, look you, is
already carried away captive; and Greece weakened by the loss of no
mean city."
Thus did Pheidippides deliver the message committed to him. And
the Spartans wished to help the Athenians, but were unable to give
them any present succour, as they did not like to break their
established law. It was then the ninth day of the first decade; and
they could not march out of Sparta on the ninth, when the moon had not
reached the full. So they waited for the full of the moon.
The barbarians were conducted to Marathon by Hippias. the son of
Pisistratus, who the night before had seen a strange vision in his
sleep. He dreamt of lying in his mother's arms, and conjectured the
dream to mean that he would be restored to Athens, recover the power
which he had lost, and afterwards live to a good old age in his native
country. Such was the sense in which he interpreted the vision. He now
proceeded to act as guide to the Persians; and, in the first place, he
landed the prisoners taken from Eretria upon the island that is called
Aegileia, a tract belonging to the Styreans, after which he brought
the fleet to anchor off Marathon, and marshalled the bands of the
barbarians as they disembarked. As he was thus employed it chanced
that he sneezed and at the same time coughed with more violence than
was his wont. Now, as he was a man advanced in years, and the
greater number of his teeth were loose, it so happened that one of
them was driven out with the force of the cough, and fell down into
the sand. Hippias took all the pains he could to find it; but the
tooth was nowhere to be seen: whereupon he fetched a deep sigh, and
said to the bystanders:-
"After all, the land is not ours; and we shall never be able to
bring it under. All my share in it is the portion of which my tooth
has possession."
So Hippias believed that in this way his dream was fulfilled.
The Athenians were drawn up in order of battle in a sacred close
belonging to Hercules, when they were joined by the Plataeans, who
came in full force to their aid. Some time before, the Plataeans had
put themselves under the rule of the Athenians; and these last had
already undertaken many labours on their behalf. The occasion of the
surrender was the following. The Plataeans suffered grievous things at
the hands of the men of Thebes; so, as it chanced that Cleomenes,
the son of Anaxandridas, and the Lacedaemonians were in their
neighbourhood, they first of all offered to surrender themselves to
them. But the Lacedaemonians refused to receive them, and said:-
"We dwell too far off from you, and ours would be but chill
succour. Ye might oftentimes be carried into slavery before one of
us heard of it. We counsel you rather to give yourselves up to the
Athenians, who are your next neighbours, and well able to shelter
you."
This they said, not so much out of good will towards the Plataeans
as because they wished to involve the Athenians in trouble by engaging
them in wars with the Boeotians. The Plataeans, however, when the
Lacedaemonians gave them this counsel, complied at once; and when
the sacrifice to the Twelve Gods was being offered at Athens, they
came and sat as suppliants about the altar, and gave themselves up
to the Athenians. The Thebans no sooner learnt what the Plataeans
had done than instantly they marched out against them, while the
Athenians sent troops to their aid. As the two armies were about to
join battle, the Corinthians, who chanced to be at hand, would not