But though we cannot believe the statement of Plutarch, that the Platæans received by general vote the prize of valor, it is certain that they were largely honored and recompensed, as the proprietors of that ground on which the liberation of Greece had been achieved. The market-place and centre of their town was selected as the scene for the solemn sacrifice of thanksgiving, offered up by Pausanias, after the battle, to Zeus Eleutherius, in the name and presence of all the assembled allies. The local gods and heroes of the Platæan territory, who had been invoked in prayer before the battle, and who had granted their soil as a propitious field for the Greek arms, were made partakers of this ceremony, and witnesses as well as guarantees of the engagements with which it was accompanied.[388] The Platæans, now re-entering their city, which the Persian invasion had compelled them to desert, were invested with the honorable duty of celebrating the periodical sacrifice in commemoration of this great victory, as well as of rendering care and religious service at the tombs of the fallen warriors. As an aid to enable them to discharge this obligation, which probably might have pressed hard upon them at a time when their city was half-ruined and their fields unsown, they received out of the prize-money the large allotment of eighty talents, which was partly employed in building and adorning a handsome temple of Athênê,—the symbol probably of renewed connection with Athens. They undertook to render religious honors every year to the tombs of the warriors, and to celebrate in every fifth year the grand public solemnity of the Eleutheria with gymnastic matches analogous to the other great festival games of Greece.[389] In consideration of the discharge of these duties, together with the sanctity of the ground, Pausanias, and the whole body of allies, bound themselves by oath to guarantee the autonomy of Platæa, and the inviolability of her territory. This was an emancipation of the town from the bond of the Bœotian federation, and from the enforcing supremacy of Thebes as its chief. [388] Thucyd. ii, 71, 72. So the Roman emperor Vitellius, on visiting the field of Bebriacum, where his troops had recently been victorious, “instaurabat sacrum Diis loci.” (Tacitus, Histor. ii, 70.) [389] Thucyd. ii, 71; Plutarch, Aristeidês, c. 19-21; Strabo, ix, p. 412; Pausanias, ix, 2, 4. The Eleutheria were celebrated on the fourth of the Attic month Boedromion, which was the day on which the battle itself was fought; while the annual decoration of the tombs, and ceremonies in honor of the deceased, took place on the sixteenth of the Attic month Mæmaktêrion. K. F. Hermann (Gottesdienstliche Alterthümer der Griechen, ch. 63, note 9) has treated these two celebrations as if they were one.