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[31]

Plataeae, which Homer1 speaks of in the singular number, is at the foot of Cithaeron, between it and Thebes, along the road that leads to Athens and Megara, on the confines of Attica and Megaris; for Eleutherae is near by, which some say belongs to Attica, others to Boeotia. I have already said2 that the Asopus flows past Plataeae. Here it was that the forces of the Greeks completely wiped out Mardonius and his three hundred thousand Persians; and they built a temple of Zeus Eleutherius, and instituted the athletic games in which the victor received a crown, calling them the Eleutheria. And tombs of those who died in the battle, erected at public expense, are still to be seen. In Sicyonia, also, there is a deme called Plataeae, the home of Mnasalces the poet:3 “"The tomb of Mnasalces the Plataean."
4Homer speaks of Glissas, a settlement in the mountain Hypatus, which is in the Theban country near Teumessus and Cadmeia. The hillocks below which lies the Aonian Plain, as it is called, which extends from the Hypatus mountain to Thebes, are called "Dria."5

1 Hom. Il. 2.504

2 8. 6. 24.

3 Of his works only sixteen epigrams are now extant.

4 Mnasalces Fr.

5 i.e., "Thickets."

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load focus English (H.C. Hamilton, Esq., W. Falconer, M.A., 1903)
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