, hearing this, and seeing the
camp of the Megarians overwhelmed with darts and arrows, while the
defenders were huddled together in a narrow compass, knew not what to
do. He did not venture to attack cavalry with the heavy-armed
Lacedaemonian infantry, but offered it as an opportunity for winning
praise and honour, to the generals who were with him, that they should
volunteer to go to help the Megarians in their extremity. All
hesitated, but Aristeides claimed the honour for the Athenians, and
sent the bravest of his captains, Olympiodorus, with three hundred
picked men, besides some archers. As they quickly got into array and
charged at a run, Masistius, the leader of the enemy, a man of great
bodily strength and beauty, seeing them, wheeled round his horse, and
rode to attack them. They sustained his attack and closed with his
horsemen, and a sharp struggle took place, both parties fighting as
though the issue of the war depended on their exertions. The horse of
Masistius was at length wounded by an arrow and threw his rider.
Encumbered by his armour, Masistius was too heavy for his own men to
carry him away, but also was protected by it from the stabs of the
Athenians who fell upon him, for not only his head and breast, but his
limbs also were protected by brass and iron. Some one, however, drove
the spike at the lower end of his spear through the eye-hole of the
helmet, and then the rest of the Persians abandoned the body and fled.
The Greeks discovered the importance of their exploit, not from the
number of the dead, for but few had fallen, but from the lamentations
of the enemy. They cut off their own hair, and the manes of their
horses and mules, in sign of mourning for Masistius, and filled the
whole plain with weeping and wailing, having lost a man who for
courage and high position, was second only to Mardonius himself.

XV. After this cavalry action, both the parties remained quiet for a
long time, for the soothsayers foretold victory both to the Greeks and
to the Persians if they fought in self-defence, but foretold defeat if
they attacked. At length Mardonius, as he only had provisions for a
few days longer, and as the Greek army kept growing stronger by the
continual reinforcements which it received, determined, sorely
against his will, to delay no longer, but to cross the Asopus at
daybreak and fall upon the Greeks unexpectedly. In the evening he gave
orders to his captains to this effect. About midnight