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Verrall has most ingeniously shown how this apocryphal story may have arisen from a painted or sculptured group symbolic of the fact that Plataea was Sparta's revenge for Thermopylae, depicting Xerxes answering a herald by pointing to Mardonius, with an inscription in hexameters here put into prose (cf. ix. 76 n.; Cl. Rev. xvii. 101, 102) βασιλεῦ Μήδων, Λακεδαίμονιοί τε φόνοιο αἰτεῦσίν σε δίκας Σπάρτης ἀπό θ᾽ Ἡρακλεῖδαι, | Ἕλλαδα ῥυόμενόν σφιν ο<*>τι κτεῖνας βασιλῆα. H. was convinced of the truth of the story by the inscription, and regarded the scene as an historic fact.

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