Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/377

 TARDY ASSISTANCE FROM THE SPARTANS #59 mion, the anniversary of the battle, was commemorated by an annual ceremony, even down to the time of Plutarch. 1 1 Herodot. vi, 120; Plutarch, Camill. c. 19: De Malignit. Herodoti, c. 26, p. 862 ; and De Gloria Athcniensium, c. 7. Boedromion was the third month of the Attic year, which year began near about the summer solstice. The first three Attic months, Hekatom- bason, Metageitnion, Boedromion, approach (speaking in a loose manner) nearly to our July, August, September; probably the month Hekatombaeon began usually at some day in the latter half of June. From the fact that the courier Pheidippides reached Sparta on the ninth day of the moon, and that the two thousand Spartans arrived in Attica on the third day after the full moon, during which interval the battle took place, we see that the sixth day of BoOdromion could not be the sixth day of the moon. The Attic months, though professedly lunar months, did not at this time therefore accurately correspond with the course of the moon. See Mr. Clinton, Fast. Hellen. ad an. 490 B.C. Plutarch (in the Treatise De Malign. Herodoti, above referred to) appears to have no con- ception of this discrepancy between the Attic month and the course of the moon. A portion of the censure which he casts on Herodotus is grounded on the assumption that the two must coincide. M. Boeckh, following Fre'ret and Larcher, contests the statement of Plu- tarch, that the battle was fought on the sixth of the month Boedromion, but upon reasons which appear to me insufficient. His chief argument rests upon another statement of Plutarch (derived from some lost verses of JEschylus), that the tribe ^Eantis had the right wing or post of honor at the battle ; and that the public vote, pursuant to which the army was led out of Athens, was passed during the prytany of the tribe JEantis. He assumes, that the reason why this tribe was posted on the right wing, must have been, that it had drawn by lot the first prytany in that par- ticular year : if this be granted, then the vote for drawing out the army must have been passed in the first prytany, or within the first thirty-five or thirty-six days of the Attic year, during the space between the first of Hekatombaeon and the fifth or sixth of Metageitnion. But it is certain that the interval, which took place between the army leaving the city and the battle, was much less than one month, we may even say less than one week. The battle, therefore, must have been fought between the sixth and tenth of Metageitnion. (Plutarch, Symposiac. i, 10, 3, and Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologic, vol. i, p. 291.) Herodotus (vi, 111) says that the tribes were arranged in line wf ypidpeovTO, "as they were num- bered," which is contended to mean necessarily the arrangement between them, determined by lot for the prytanies of that particular year. "In acio instruenda (says Boeckh, Comment, ad Corp. Inscript. p. 299) Atho nicnses non constantem, sed variabilem secundum prytanias, ordinem se- catos esse, ita ut tribus ex hoc ordine inde a dextro cornu disponerentur, docui in Commentatione de pngnd Marathonia." Prooemia Loct. Unhr, De>x>lin. aistiv. a. ' &1 ft.