Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/378

 60 HISTORY OF GKEECE. Two thousand Spartans, starting from their city, immediately after the full moon, reached the frontier of Attica, on the third The Prooemia here referred to I have not been able to consult, and they may therefore contain additional reasons to pi'ove the point advanced, viz., that the order of the ten tribes in line of battle, beginning from the right wing, was conformable to their order in prytanizing, as drawn by lot for the year; but I think the passages of Herodotus and Plutarch now before us insufficient to establish this point. From the fact that the tribe JEantis had the right wing at the battle of Marathon, we are by no means war- ranted in inferring that that tribe had drawn by lot the earliest prytany in the year. Other reasons, in my judgment equally probable, may be as- signed in explanation of the circumstance : one reason. I think, decidedly more probable. This reason is, that the battle was fought during the pry- tany of the tribe Mantis, which may be concluded from the statement erf Plutarch, that the vote for marching out the army from Athens was pasised during the prytany of that tribe ; for the interval, between the march of the army out of the city and the battle, must have been only a very few days. Moreover, the deme Marathon belonged to the tribe yEantis (see Boeckh, ad Inscript. No. 172, p. 309) : the battle being fought in their dcme, the Marathonians may perhaps have claimed on this express ground the post of honor for their tribe ; just as we see that at the first battle of Man- tineia against the Lacedaemonians, the Mantineians were allowed to occupy the right wing or post of honor, " because the battle was fought in their territory," (Thucyd. v, 67.) Lastly, the deme Aphidnos also belonged to the tribe JEantis (see Boeckh, 1. c.) : now the polemarch Kallimachus was an Aphidnaean (Herodot. vi, 109), and Herodotus expressly tells us, "the law or custom then stood among the Athenians, that the polemarch should have the right wing," 6 yap vofiof TOTE ei^e OVTU Tolai ' A.&Tjvaioi(n, TOV xt>/./j.apxov t%Eiv nepae rd de.^tov (vi, 111). Where the polemarch stood, there his tribe would be likely to stand : and the language of Herodotus indeed seems directly to imply that he identifies the tribe of the polemarch with the polemarch himself, iiyeo/isvov 6e TOVTOV, f^et^sKovro u{ &pi&[t6ovro ul v7ial t exo^evai uMfauv, meaning that the order of tribes began by that of the polemarch being in the leading position, and was then " taken up " by the rest " in numerical sequence," i. e. in the order of their pry- tanizing sequence for the year. Here are a concurrence of reasons to explain why the tribe Mantis had (he right wing at the battle of Marathon, even though it may not have been first in the order of prytanizing tribes for the year. Boeckh, there- fore, is not warranted in inferring the second of these two facts from the first. Ti^ concurrence of these three reasons, all in favor of the same con- clusion, and all independent of the reason supposed by Boeckh, appears to me to have great weight ; but I regard the first of the three, even singly iaisn, as more probable than his reason If my view of the case be cor-