.158 HISTORY Of* GREECE. to evacuate Attica, and to carry on the war in Bceotia, — a coun- try in every way more favorable to him. He had for some time refrained from committing devastations in or round Athens, hoping that the Athenians might be induced to listen to his prop- ositions ; but the last days of his stay were employed in burning and destroying whatever had been spared by the host of Xerxes during the preceding summer. After a fruitless attempt to sur- prise a body of one thousand Lacedaemonians which had been detached for the protection of Megara,' he withdrew all his army into Boeotia, not taking either the straight road to Platj^a through EleutheriB, or to Thebes through Phyle, both which roads were mountainous and inconvenient for cavalry, but march- ing in the northeasterly direction to Dekeleia, where he was met by some guides from the adjoining regions near the river Asopus. and conducted through the deme of Sphendaleis to Tanagra. He thus found himself, by a route longer but easier, in Boeotia, on the plain of the Asopus : along which river he next day marched westward to Skolus, a town in the territory of Thebes, seemingly near to that of Plataea.2 He then took up a position not far off, in the plain on the left bank of the Asopus : his left wing over against Erythroe, his centre over against Hysiae, and ' There were stories current at Megara, even in the time of Pausanias, respecting some of these Persians, who were said to have been brought to destruction by the intervention of Artemis (Pausan. i, 40, 2). - Herodot. ix, 15. The situation of the Attic deme Sphendale, or Sphen- daleis, seems not certainly known (Ross, Ueber die Demen von Attika, p. 138); but Colonel Leake and Mr. Pinlay think that it stood "near Aio Merkurio, which now gives name to the pass leading from Dekeleia through the ridges of Pames into the extremity of the Tanagrian plain, at a place called Malakasa." (Leake, Athens and the Demi of Attica, vol. ii, sect, iv, p. 12.3.) Mr. Finlay (Oropus and the Diakria, p. 38) says that "Malakasa is the only place on this road where a considerable body of cavalry could con- veniently halt." It appears that the Boeotians from the neighborhood of the Asopus were necessary as guides for this road. Perhaps even the territory of Oropus was at this time still a part of Bceotia : we do not certainly know at what period it was first conquered by the Athenians. The combats between Athenians and Boeotians wiU be found to take place most frequently in this southeastern region of Bceotia, — Tanagra, CEnophyta, Delium. etc.
