Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/375

 EFFECT OF THE BATTLE OF MARATHON. 357 fainted, ever since the Kylonian sacrilege, and were therefore convenient persons to brand with the odium of an anonymous crime ; while party feud, if it did not originally invent, would at least be active in spreading and certifying such rumors. At the time when Herodotus knew Athens, the political enmity between Perikles son of Xanthippus, and Kimon son of Miltiades, was at its height : Perikles belonged by his mother's side to the Alk- maeonid race, and we know that such lineage was made subser- vient to political manoeuvres against him by his enemies. 1 More- over, the enmity between Kimon and Perikles had been inherited by both from their fathers ; for we shall find Xanthippus, not long after the battle of Marathon, the prominent accuser of Mil- tiadSs. Though Xanthippus was not an Alkmteonid, his mar riage with Agariste connected himself indirectly, and his son Perikles directly, with that race. And we may trace in this standing political feud a probable origin for the false reports as to the treason of the Alkmaeonids, on that great occasion which founded the glory of Miltiades ; for that the reports were false, the intrinsic probabilities of the case, supported by the judgment of Herodotus, afford ample ground for believing. When the Athenian army made its sudden return-march from Marathon to Athens, Aristeides with his tribe was left to guard the field and the spoil ; but the speedy retirement of Datis from Attica left the Athenians at full liberty to revisit the scene and discharge the last duties to the dead. A tumulus was erected on the spot- such distinction was never conferred by Athens ex- cept in this case only to the one hundred and ninety-two Athe- nian citizens who had been slain. Their names were inscribed on ten pillars erected at the spot, one for each tribe : there was also a second tumulus for the slain Plateeans, a third for the slaves, and a separate funeral monument to Miltiades himself. Six hundred years after the battle, Pausanias saw the tumulas, and could still read on the pillars the names of the immortalized warriors ; 3 and even now a conspicuous tumulus exists about Calf a mile from the sea-shore, which Colonel Leake believes to Thucyd. i, 126. 2 Thucyd. ii, 34
 * Pausan. i, 32, 3. Compare the elegy of Kritias ap. Athense. i p. 2t