efore any of us had information of it: but
we counsel you rather to give yourselves to the Athenians, who are both
neighbours and also not bad helpers." Thus the Lacedemonians counselled,
not so much on account of their goodwill to the Plataians as because
they desired that the Athenians should have trouble by being involved in
a conflict with the Boetians. The Lacedemonians, I say, thus counselled
the men of Plataia; and they did not fail to follow their counsel, but
when the Athenians were doing sacrifice to the twelve gods, they sat
down as suppliants at the altar and so gave themselves. Then the Thebans
having been informed of these things marched against the Plataians, and
the Athenians came to their assistance: and as they were about to join
battle, the Corinthians did not permit them to do so, but being by
chance there, they reconciled their strife; and both parties having put
the matter into their hands, they laid down boundaries for the land,
with the condition that the Thebans should leave those of the Boeotians
alone who did not desire to be reckoned with the other Boeotians. The
Corinthians having given this decision departed; but as the Athenians
were going back, the Boeotians attacked them, and having attacked them
they were worsted in the fight. Upon that the Athenians passed beyond
the boundaries which the Corinthians had set to be for the Plataians,
and they made the river Asopos itself to be the boundary of the Thebans
towards the land of Plataia and towards the district of Hysiai. The
Plataians then had given themselves to the Athenians in the manner which
has been said, and at this time they came to Marathon to bring them
help.

109. Now the opinions of the generals of the Athenians were divided,
and the one party urged that they should not fight a battle, seeing that
they were too few to fight with the army of the Medes, while the others,
and among them Miltiades, advised that they should do so: and when they
were divided and the worse opinion was like to prevail, then, since he
who had been chosen by lot 98 to be polemarch of the Athenians had a
vote in addition to the ten (for in old times the Athenians gave
the polemarch an equal vote with the generals) and at that time the
polemarch was Callimachos of the deme of Aphidnai, to him came Miltiades
and said as follows: "With thee now it rests, Callimachos, either to
bring Athens under slavery, or by making her free to leave behind
thee for all the t