BATTLES OF PLATiE AND MYKALE. Jgg nia, keeping strict silence about the recent battle, and pretendin* to be sent on a special enterprise by Mardonius, whom he re- ported to be himself approaching. If Herodotus is correct (though it may well be doubted whether the change of senti- ment in Thessaly and the other medizing Grecian states was so rapid as he implies), Artabazus succeeded in traversing these countries before the news of the battle became generally known, and then retreated by the straightest and shortest route through the interior of Thrace to Byzantium, from whence he passed into Asia : the interior tribes, unconquered and predatory, harassed his retreat considerably ; but we shall find long afterwards Per- sian garrisons in possession of many principal places on the Thracian coast.i It will be seen that Artabazus afterwards rose higher than ever in the estimation of Xerxes. Ten days did the Greeks employ after their victory, first in burying the slain, next in collecting aftd apportioning the booty. The Lacedtemouians, the Athenians, the Tegeans, the Megarians, and the Phliasians, each buried their dead apart, erecting a sepa- rate tomb in commemoration : the Lacedaemonians, indeed, dis- tributed their dead into three fractions, in three several burial- places : one for those champions who enjoyed individual renown at Sparta, and among whom were included the most distinguished men slain in the recent battle, such as Poseidonius, Amompha- retus, the refractory captain, Philokyon, and Kallikrates, — a second for the other Spartans and Lacedtemonians,^ — and a
- Herodot. ix, 89. The allusions of Demosthenes to Perdikkas king of
Macedonia, who is said to have attacked the Persians on their flight from Plataea, and to have rendered their ruin complete, are too loose to deserve attention ; more especially as Perdikkas was not then king of Macedonia (Demosthenes cont. Aristokrat. pp. 687, c. 51 ; and Trepl "Zwruieu^, p. 17.3, c. 9).
- Herodot. ix, 84. Herodotus indeed assigns this second burial-place
only to the other Spartans, apart from the Select. He takes no notice of the Lacedaemonians not Spartans, either in the battle or in reference to burial, though he had informed us that five thousand of them were included in the army. Some of them must have been slain, and we may fairly pre- sume that they were buried along with the Spartan citizens generally. As to the word ipeac, or etpevac, or i-mreaQ (the two last being both conjectural readings), it seems impossible to arrive at any certainty: we do not know bv what name these select warriors were called.
