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[3]

The Athenians made a clever use of their victory,1 and after defeating the Boeotians and Chalcidians, they at once after the battle made themselves masters of the city of Chalcis. And as a tenth part of the booty won from the Boeotians they dedicated a bronze chariot on the Acropolis, inscribing upon it the following elegiac lines:ā€œ Having conquered the tribes of Boeotia and those of Chalcis
Midst the labours of war, sons of Athenians quenched
Insolence high in dark bonds of iron; and taking the ransom's
Tithe set up here these mares, vowed unto Pallas their god.
ā€2

1 Over the Spartans; c. 506 B.C.

2 This is the form in which Hdt. 5.77 quoted the inscription as he read it upon the four-horse chariot. The original inscription was destroyed in 480 B.C. by the Persians when they sacked and burned the Acropolis and either melted down or carried off the bronze chariot. A sizable fragment of each of the two inscriptions has been recovered (I.G. Iļ¼ˆ2ļ¼‰. 394; M. N. Tod, Greek Historical Inscriptions, 12, 43). The original inscription stressed the chains, giving the lines of the inscription before us in the order 3, 2, 1, 4. The latest extended discussion of the dedication together with a reconstruction of the chariot, mares, and driver, which were life size, is given by G. P. Stevens, Hesperia, 5 (1936), pp. 504 f.

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