While the Athenians were stationed near Marathon, the Platæans marched to their aid with the whole force of their state. The connexion of Platæa with Athens lasted so long, and was maintained with such consistency and good faith, no very common distinction in the politics of Greece, that it is worth while to trace its origin and progress. Platæa, a small state of Bœotia, was originally a member of a federal union formed by the independent cities of that province, over which Thebes, the largest and most powerful of them, presided. The Thebans, however, in every part of their history, seem to have been unsatisfied with influence, and to have endeavoured to exert direct authority over the weaker members of the confederacy. On some such occasion, Cleomenes, the king of Sparta, of whom we have already made mention, happened to be on the spot; and as Lacedæmon was then confessedly the first power of Greece, the Platæans naturally applied to him for assistance, and offered, as Herodotus expresses it, “to give themselves to the Lacedæmonians:” that is to say, to contract that close connexion with Sparta, and own that sort of allegiance to it, by which the weaker states of Greece generally connected themselves with some one of the principal powers. In later times this was generally determined by the interests of the predominant party in the smaller state. If the democratical party was uppermost, it probably connected itself with Athens; if the aristocratical, with Sparta. At the earlier period in question, however, the pre–eminence of Sparta was pretty generally acknowledged, and would, perhaps, have been sufficient to determine the Platæans to seek its protection rather than that of any other state, even independently of the accidental presence of Cleomenes. The Lacedæmonians, however, refused to admit them into the connexion which they wished for. “We live,” he said, “at a great distance from you, and ours would be but a cold sort of assistance, for you might be reduced to slavery over and over again before any of us even heard of it. We advise you, therefore, to give yourselves to the Athenians, who are your neighbours, and besides that are no bad helpmates.” The advice was not bad, and may appear not unfriendly. Herodotus, however, gives it a different construction, and one well warranted by the general course of Lacedæmonian policy. “This was the advice of the Lacedæmonians; not so much from any good will to the Platæans, as from the wish to bring the Athenians into trouble by placing them in collision with the Bœotians.” The Platæans, however, took the advice, whatever were the motives from which it proceeded. They sent an embassy to Athens at the time that the Athenians were celebrating one of their great public festivals, who took their seats as suppliants at the altar, and “gave” their state to the Athenians. The Thebans immediately marched against Platæa, and the Athenians to its relief. The Corinthians, however,