The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [189]
16. Now, the Lacedaemonians had been celebrating a festival, and placing battlements on the wall across the Isthmus, which is why they had not yet mustered to aid Athens.
17. The messengers said, ‘Xerxes again offers to give us our country back, and to conclude an alliance with us on fair and equal terms, and to bestow on us any other land we like.
18. ‘But although we are fully aware that it is far more to our advantage to make peace with the Persian than to continue fighting him, we shall not, of our own free will, consent to any terms of peace.
19. ‘Thus do we, in all our dealings with the Greeks, avoid what is base and counterfeit:
20. ‘But you, who were so lately full of fear lest we made terms with the Persian, having learnt of what temper we are, and assured yourselves that we would not prove traitors,
21. ‘And moreover having brought your wall across the Isthmus to an advanced state, cease altogether to care about us.
22. ‘You agreed with us to go out and meet the Persian in Boeotia; but when the time came, you were false to your word, and looked on while the barbarian host advanced into Attica.
23. ‘We Athenians are angered with you therefore; and justly, for you have not done what is right.
24. ‘But we urge you to make haste to send your army, that we may even yet meet Mardonius in Attica.
25. ‘Now that Boeotia is lost to us, the best place for the fight within our country will be the plain of Thria.’
26. Although the ephors delayed for ten days to give an answer to the Athenian ambassadors,
27. Either out of shame or because the wall across the Isthmus was not yet quite finished, they at length sent the army.
28. This was after Chileus the Tegean urged them that if the Athenians were conquered by the Persians, no wall would save the Peloponnese, because the way would be open all round its coasts for an invasion.
29. So a body of five thousand Spartans, each accompanied by seven helots, was dispatched under the command of Pausanias, the son of Cleombrotus.
30. The chief power belonged of right at this time to Pleistarchus, the son of Leonidas; but as he was still a child, Pausanias, his cousin, was regent in his place.
Chapter 95
1. When Mardonius learnt that the Spartans were on their march, he no longer cared to remain in Attica.
2. Hitherto he had kept quiet, wishing to see what the Athenians would do, and had neither ravaged their territory, nor done it any harm;
3. For he continued to hope that the Athenians would come to terms.
4. As, however, he found that his persuasions were of no avail, he determined to withdraw from Attica before Pausanias reached the Isthmus.
5. First, however, he burned Athens, and cast down level with the ground whatever remained standing of the walls and other buildings.
6. His reason for retreating was that Attica is not a country where horse can act with advantage;
7. And further, that if he suffered defeat in a battle, no escape was open to him, except through defiles in the hills, where a handful of troops might stop all his army.
8. So he determined to withdraw to Thebes, and give the Greeks battle in the neighbourhood of a friendly city, and on ground well suited for cavalry.
9. After he had quitted Attica and was already on his march, Mardonius heard that a body of a thousand Lacedaemonians, distinct from the army of Pausanias, and sent on in advance, had arrived in the Megarid.
10. When he heard it, wishing, if possible, to destroy this detachment first, Mardonius considered with himself how he might do so.
11. With a sudden change of march he made for Megara, while his cavalry, pushing on in advance, entered and ravaged the Megarid.
12. This was the westernmost point in Europe to which this Persian army ever penetrated.
13. Then Mardonius received another message, by which he learnt that the forces of the Greeks were collected together at the Isthmus;
14. Which news caused him to draw back, and leave Attica for the territory of the Thebans.
15. And now, although the Thebans had espoused