against them, refused to abide by it, and, attacking the Athenians on their return, sustained a complete defeat: the latter avenged this breach of faith by joining to Platæa the portion of Theban territory south of the Asôpus, and making that river the limit between the two. By such success, however, the Athenians gained nothing, except the enmity of Bœotia,—as Kleomenês had foreseen. Their alliance with Platæa, long continued, and presenting in the course of this history several incidents touching to our sympathies, will be found, if we except one splendid occasion,[296] productive only of burden to the one party, yet insufficient as a protection to the other. [293] See vol. ii, p. 295, part ii, ch. 3. [294] Thucyd. iii, 61. [295] Herodot. vi, 108. ἐᾷν Θηβαίους Βοιωτῶν τοὺς μὴ βουλομένους ἐς Βοιωτοὺς τελέειν. This is an important circumstance in regard to Grecian political feeling: I shall advert to it hereafter. [296] Herodot. vi, 108. Thucydidês (iii, 58), when recounting the capture of Platæa by the Lacedæmonians in the third year of the Peloponnesian war, states that the alliance between Platæa and Athens was then in its 93rd year of date; according to which reckoning it would begin in the year 519 B. C., where Mr. Clinton and other chronologers place it. I venture to think that the immediate circumstances, as recounted in the text from Herodotus (whether Thucydidês conceived them in the same way, cannot be determined), which brought about the junction of Platæa with Athens, cannot have taken place in 519 B. C., but must have happened _after_ the expulsion of Hippias from Athens in 510 B. C.,—for the following reasons:— 1. No mention is made of Hippias, who yet, if the event had happened in 519 B. C., must have been the person to determine whether the Athenians should assist Platæa or not. The Platæan envoys present themselves at a public sacrifice in the attitude of suppliants, so as to touch the feelings of the Athenian citizens generally: had Hippias been then despot, _he_ would have been the person to be propitiated and to determine for or against assistance. 2. We know no cause which should have brought Kleomenês with a Lacedæmonian force near to Platæa in the year 519 B. C.: we know from the statement of Herodotus (v, 76) that no Lacedæmonian expedition against Attica took place at that time. But in the year to which I have referred the event, Kleomenês is on his march near the spot upon a known and assignable object. From the very tenor of the narrative, it is plain that Kleomenês and his army were not designedly in Bœotia, nor meddling with Bœotian affairs, at the time when the Platæans solicited his aid; he declines to interpose in the matter, pleading the great distance between Sparta and Platæa as a reason.