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 152 fflSTORY OF GREECE. no reverence, and whose houses and statues he has bnmed Come thou not to us again with similar propositions, nor persuade us, even in the spirit of good-will, into unholy proceedings : thou art the guest and friend of Athens, and we would not that thou shouklst suffer injury at our hands."i To the Spartans, the reply of the Athenians was of a similar decisive tenor : protesting their unconquerable devotion to the common cause and liberties of Hellas, and promising that no conceivable temptations, either of money or territory, should induce them to desert the ties of brotherhoodj common language, and religion. So long as a single Athenian survived, no alli- ance should ever be made with Xerxes. They then thanked the Spartans for offering them aid during the present privations : but while declining such offers, they reminded them that Mar- donius, when apprized that his propositions were refused, would probably advance immediately, and they therefore earnestly desired the presence of a Peloponnesian army in Boeotia to assist in the defence of Attica.2 The Spartan envoys, promising fulfilment of this request,3 and satisfied to have ascertained the sentiments of Athens, departed. » Such unshaken fidelity on the part of the Athenians to the general cause of Greece, in spite of present suffering, combined with seductive offers for the future, was the just admiration of their descendants, and the frequent theme of applause by their orators.4 But among the contemporary Greeks it was hailed ' Lykurfrus the Athenian orator, in alluding to this incident a century and a half afterwards, represents the Athenians as having been " on the point of stoning Alexander," — fiiKpov delv KariXevaav (Lykurg. cont. Leokrat. c. 17. p. 186) — one among many specimens of the careless man- ner in -which these orators deal with past history. ^ Herodot. viii, 143, 144; Plutarch, Aristeides, c. 10. According to Plutarch, it was Ai-isteides who proposed and prepared the reply to be de- livered. But here as elsewhere, the loose, exaggerating style of Plutarch contrasts unfavorably with the simplicity and directness of Herodotus. '' Herodot. ix, 7. avvdi/ievoi 6e ijfilv rov TUpariv avTLuaeir&at kg ttjv BocuTiTjv, etc. Diodorus gives the account of this embassy to Athens substantially in the same manner, coupling it however with some erroneous motives (xi, 28). ■• Herodot. ix, 7. e~iaru/i£vol re on Kep6a?.£(JTEpuv kari dfio/.oyiEtv r0 TlepGTf pa/J.OV fj ■7T0?.f:fM£ECV, CtC.