The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [197]
3. The victors however pressed on, pursuing and slaying the remnant of the Persian army.
4. Meantime, while the Persian flight continued, news reached the Greeks who were drawn up round the Heraeum, and so were absent from the battle, that Pausanias was gaining the victory.
5. Hearing this, they rushed forward without any order, the Corinthians taking the upper road across the skirts of Cithaeron and the hills,
6. While the Megarians and Phliasians followed the level route through the plain.
7. These last had almost reached the enemy when the Theban cavalry saw them,
8. And, observing their disarray, dispatched against them the squadron led by Asopodorus, the son of Timander.
9. He charged them with such effect that he left six hundred of their number dead on the plain,
10. And, pursuing the rest, compelled them to seek shelter in Cithaeron. So these men perished without honour.
11. The Persians, and the multitude with them, who fled to the wooden fortress, were able to ascend into the towers before the Lacedaemonians came up.
12. Thus placed, they strengthened the defences as well as they could;
13. And when the Lacedaemonians arrived, a sharp fight took place at the rampart.
14. So long as the Athenians were away, the barbarians kept off their assailants, and had much the best of the combat, because the Lacedaemonians were unskilled in the attack of walled places:
15. But on the arrival of the Athenians, a more concerted assault was made.
16. In the end the valour of the Athenians prevailed; they gained the top of the wall, and, breaking a breach through it, enabled the Greeks to pour in.
17. The first to enter were the Tegeans, and they it was who plundered the tent of Mardonius;
18. Where, among other booty, they found the manger from which his horses ate, made of solid brass.
19. As soon as the wall was broken the barbarians no longer kept together in any array,
20. Nor was there one among them who thought of making further resistance;
21. In truth, they were all half dead with fright, huddled as so many thousands were into such a confined space.
22. With such tameness did they submit to be slaughtered by the Greeks, that of the three hundred thousand men who composed the army,
23. Omitting the forty thousand by whom Artabazus was accompanied in his flight, no more than three thousand survived the battle.
24. Yet of the Lacedaemonians from Sparta, only ninety-one died in this battle; of the Tegeans, sixteen; of the Athenians, fifty-two.
25. On the side of the barbarians, the greatest courage was manifested, among the foot soldiers, by the Persians;
26. Among the horse, by the Sacae; while Mardonius himself, as a man, bore off the palm from the rest.
27. Among the Greeks, the Athenians and the Tegeans fought well; but the prowess shown by the Lacedaemonians was beyond either.
28. The bravest man by far on that day was Aristodemus, the same who alone escaped from the slaughter of the three hundred at Thermopylae, and who on that account had endured disgrace and reproach:
29. Next to him were Posidonius, Philocyon, and Amompharetus the Spartan.
30. The Spartans, however, who took part in the fight, when the question of who had distinguished himself most came to be talked over,
31. Decided that Aristodemus, who, on account of the blame which attached to him, had manifestly courted death,
32. And had therefore left his place in the line and behaved like a madman, had done very notable deeds;
33. But that Posidonius, who, with no such desire to lose his life, had quitted himself no less gallantly, was by so much a braver man than he.
34. Perhaps, however, it was envy that made them speak in this way.
Chapter 105
1. These then were the most distinguished of those who fought at Plataea.
2. As for Callicrates, the most beautiful man, not among the Spartans only, but in the whole Greek camp;
3. He was not killed in the battle, but by an arrow fired by the harassing Persian cavalry beforehand.