1. Herodotus, Histories, 4.15.3 (5th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE)
| 4.15.3. After saying this, he vanished. The Metapontines, so they say, sent to Delphi and asked the god what the vision of the man could mean; and the Pythian priestess told them to obey the vision, saying that their fortune would be better. |
|
2. Plato, Republic, None (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
|
3. Thucydides, The History of The Peloponnesian War, 2.71, 3.68.3 (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
| 3.68.3. The city the Thebans gave for about a year to some political emigrants from Megara, and to the surviving Plataeans of their own party to inhabit, and afterwards razed it to the ground from the very foundations, and built on to the precinct of Hera an inn two hundred feet square, with rooms all round above and below, making use for this purpose of the roofs and doors of the Plataeans: of the rest of the materials in the wall, the brass and the iron, they made couches which they dedicated to Hera, for whom they also built a stone chapel of a hundred feet square. The land they confiscated and let out on a ten-years' lease to Theban occupiers. |
|
4. Demosthenes, Orations, 43.66 (4th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
|
5. Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library, 11.29, 15.53.4 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 11.29. 1. When Mardonius and his army had returned to Thebes, the Greeks gathered in congress decreed to make common cause with the Athenians and advancing to Plataea in a body, to fight to a finish for liberty, and also to make a vow to the gods that, if they were victorious, the Greeks would unite in celebrating the Festival of Liberty on that day and would hold the games of the Festival in Plataea.,2. And when the Greek forces were assembled at the Isthmus, all of them agreed that they should swear an oath about the war, one that would make staunch the concord among them and would compel entrenchment nobly to endure the perils of the battle.,3. The oath ran as follows: "I will not hold life dearer than liberty, nor will I desert the leaders, whether they be living or dead, but I will bury all the allies who have perished in the battle; and if I overcome the barbarians in the war, I will not destroy any one of the cities which have participated in the struggle; nor will I rebuild any one of the sanctuaries which have been burnt or demolished, but I will let them be and leave them as a reminder to coming generations of the impiety of the barbarians.",4. After they had sworn the oath, they marched to Boeotia through the pass of Cithaeron, and when they had descended as far as the foothills near Erythrae, they pitched camp there. The command over the Athenians was held by Aristeides, and the supreme command by Pausanias, who was the guardian of the son of Leonidas. 15.53.4. But Epameinondas, who saw that the soldiers were superstitious on account of the omens that had occurred, earnestly desired through his own ingenuity and strategy to reverse the scruples of the soldiery. Accordingly, a number of men having recently arrived from Thebes, he persuaded them to say that the arms on the temple of Heracles had surprisingly disappeared and that word had gone abroad in Thebes that the heroes of old had taken them up and set off to help the Boeotians. He placed before them another man as one who had recently ascended from the cave of Trophonius, who said that the god had directed them, when they won at Leuctra, to institute a contest with crowns for prizes in honour of Zeus the king. This indeed is the origin of this festival which the Boeotians now celebrate at Lebadeia. |
|
6. Plutarch, Aristides, 11.5-11.6, 19.6-19.7, 20.3-20.5, 21.1-21.2 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
|
7. Plutarch, Cimon, 8.6 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
|
8. Plutarch, Theseus, 36.1 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
|
9. Pausanias, Description of Greece, 1.32.5, 1.44.9, 2.29.8, 3.3.6, 3.17.1, 4.27.10, 9.1.8, 9.23.3 (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
| 1.32.5. They say too that there chanced to be present in the battle a man of rustic appearance and dress. Having slaughtered many of the foreigners with a plough he was seen no more after the engagement. When the Athenians made enquiries at the oracle the god merely ordered them to honor Echetlaeus (He of the Plough-tail) as a hero. A trophy too of white marble has been erected. Although the Athenians assert that they buried the Persians, because in every case the divine law applies that a corpse should be laid under the earth, yet I could find no grave. There was neither mound nor other trace to be seen, as the dead were carried to a trench and thrown in anyhow. 1.44.9. On the top of the mountain is a temple of Zeus surnamed Aphesius (Releaser). It is said that on the occasion of the drought that once afflicted the Greeks Aeacus in obedience to an oracular utterance sacrificed in Aegina to Zeus God of all the Greeks, and Zeus rained and ended the drought, gaining thus the name Aphesius. Here there are also images of Aphrodite, Apollo, and Pan. 2.29.8. And so envoys came with a request to Aeacus from each city. By sacrifice and prayer to Zeus, God of all the Greeks (Panellenios), he caused rain to fall upon the earth, and the Aeginetans made these likenesses of those who came to him. Within the enclosure are olive trees that have grown there from of old, and there is an altar which is raised but a little from the ground. That this altar is also the tomb of Aeacus is told as a holy secret. 3.3.6. When Lichas arrived the Spartans were seeking the bones of Orestes in accordance with an oracle. Now Lichas inferred that they were buried in a smithy, the reason for this inference being this. Everything that he saw in the smithy he compared with the oracle from Delphi, likening to the winds the bellows, for that they too sent forth a violent blast, the hammer to the “stroke,” the anvil to the “counterstroke” to it, while the iron is naturally a “woe to man,” because already men were using iron in warfare. In the time of those called heroes the god would have called bronze a woe to man. 3.17.1. Not far from the Orthia is a sanctuary of Eileithyia. They say that they built it, and came to worship Eileithyia as a goddess, because of an oracle from Delphi . The Lacedaemonians have no citadel rising to a conspicuous height like the Cadmea at Thebes and the Larisa at Argos . There are, however, hills in the city, and the highest of them they call the citadel. 4.27.10. The Minyae, driven by the Thebans from Orchomenos after the battle of Leuctra, were restored to Boeotia by Philip the son of Amyntas, as were also the Plataeans. When Alexander had destroyed the city of the Thebans themselves, Cassander the son of Antipater rebuilt it after a few years. The exile of the Plataeans seems to have lasted the longest of those mentioned, but even this was not for more than two generations. 9.1.8. The second capture of Plataea occurred two years before the battle of Leuctra, 373 B.C when Asteius was Archon at Athens . The Thebans destroyed all the city except the sanctuaries, but the method of its capture saved the lives of all the Plataeans alike, and on their expulsion they were again received by the Athenians. When Philip after his victory at Chaeroneia introduced a garrison into Thebes, one of the means he employed to bring the Thebans low was to restore the Plataeans to their homes. 9.23.3. Such was the beginning of Pindar's career as a lyric poet. When his reputation had already spread throughout Greece he was raised to a greater height of fame by an order of the Pythian priestess, who bade the Delphians give to Pindar one half of all the first-fruits they offered to Apollo. It is also said that on reaching old age a vision came to him in a dream. As he slept Persephone stood by him and declared that she alone of the deities had not been honored by Pindar with a hymn, but that Pindar would compose an ode to her also when he had come to her. |
|
10. Epigraphy, Ig I , 40.64-40.67
|
11. Epigraphy, Ig I , 40.64-40.67
|
