The scene of action was a narrow plain, bounded by the sea eastward and the hills westward, and closed at the northern side by a marsh, on the southern by mountains sweeping down to the sea. The Athenians were ranged in the order of their tribes, beginning from the right wing, where Callimachus, the polemarch, was stationed, a post of honour which he held by virtue of his office.[6] At the opposite extremity, at the very end of the left wing, were placed the Platæans, and they did such faithful service that it became the usage of the Athenians at the great feast and assembly which they held every five years, that a herald should make a solemn prayer “for all good both to the Athenians and Platæans.” The great strength of the army was collected in the two wings. They were necessarily distant from each other, that the Persians might not outflank them; and the consequence was that the centre of the line, where Themistocles and Aristides, according to Plutarch, were stationed, was thinly manned, and weaker than any other part of it. Every great undertaking was preceded, among the Greeks, by sacrifice, less from a feeling of religious obligation than for the auguries to be deduced from the inspection of the victims. These were pronounced favourable, and the Athenians were immediately let loose, and charged the enemy running. The distance between the two armies was not less than eight stadii (about a mile). The Persians therefore prepared to receive the attack, and expected an easy victory; “for they thought it madness in them, and madness of the most deadly kind, thus to charge, few as they were, and those few without cavalry or archery;” two descriptions of force in which they were themselves strongest, and to which, after their long course of success, they naturally attributed peculiar importance. “But when the Athenians came to close quarters with the barbarians, they fought right worthily of notice. For they were the first of all the Greeks, as far as we know, who ran to charge the enemy, and they were the first who stood firm when they saw the Median dress, and the men who wore it; for until then it was a terror to the Greeks even to hear the name of the Medians.” The battle lasted long, and with various fortune. The best troops of the enemy, the Persians themselves, and the Sacæ,[7] were opposed to the weak centre of the Athenians, which they broke, and pursued the fliers into the inland country. On each wing, however, the Athenians and Platæans were victorious: and instead of pursuing the enemies to whom they had been opposed, they united, set upon the body who, having broken their centre, were now separated from the rest of the Persian army, and routed them. They then pursued the defeated forces with great slaughter to the sea, where they took to their ships. The conquerors rushed to seize them, and captured seven after a severe struggle, in which was slain Cynægeirus, brother of the poet Æschylus, and of Ameinias, whom