And Ægosthenæ! the northwestern frontier town of the Megarid, what a magnificent ruin! The view that we took of its walls and towers by the full moon was something not to be forgotten. At Ægosthenæ we were on the route so often travelled by the Spartans when they went over into Bœotia to "regulate" its affairs, and it was under these walls that the remnant of their beaten and disheartened army first stopped to take breath on getting out of Bœotian territory after Leuctra. We had planned to follow this entire route, but, since even this involved some climbing, we agreed to take a little more climbing and go in a straight line for Platæa, over the top of Kithæron, in spite of the fact that the mountain wore a cap of cloud. So, having taken a very cold sea-bath and another good look at the ruins of Ægosthenæ, which were only a little less imposing by day than by moonlight, we scaled the height with a single peasant for a guide, and his mule to carry our packs. After many a look back on the increasingly beautiful scene behind us, whenever the dark fir-trees, which cover the slopes and give the name of "fir mountain" as a substitute for the old name Kithæron, allowed it, we at last entered into the cloud just before reaching the top. In the darkness of cloud and fir-trees we better felt that we were on the mountain chosen by the Erinnyes for their abode, a place of howlings, the scene of woe for Œdipus, Actæon, Pentheus, and Agave. Who would wish for sunlight on such a spot? It would have been as inappropriate as a cloud on Taygetos. While we were musing thus, suddenly there came a rift in the cloud, and we saw the whole plain of Bœotia once, twice, three times, and the spell of the Erinnyes was broken. We went five hundred feet further down on the north side, where we seemed to have left behind us the awful myths and to have come down into the realms of history; for we were looking down into Platæa, which lay at our feet. One of the brightest pages in Greek history is the unbroken record of the heroism of Platæa, and when it was finally crushed one might well have written over it, "dead on the field of honor." Its Athenian leanings were abhorrent to Thebes, which always desired a "big Bœotia." But no one could have done a better turn to Platæa than did Thebes, when it espoused the cause of Persia and led away nearly all the rest of Bœotia with it. At the close of "old Platæa's day" the Panhellenic spirit of Platæa was rewarded by the Greeks in their giving the fine old heroic city the prize of valor, and declaring its soil forever sacred and inviolate. But the gods gave it a greater prize, in that they made its name forever associated with the battle that made Greece free.