Editing Plataea (section)

== Persian Wars (Battles of Marathon and Plataea) ==
When the Persian king [[Darius the Great|Dareios]] sent an armada to invade [[Attica]] in 490 BC, Plataea sent 1,000 men to join Athens at the [[Battle of Marathon]], and shared in the glories of that victory.<ref>Herod. l.c.</ref>  A decade later, they also served in the Athenian fleet at the sea battle at [[Artemisium]], though they had no ships of their own.  They missed the later [[Battle of Salamis]], in order to remove their families and property from the city at the approach of the Persian army.<ref>Herod. viii. 44.</ref> Upon the arrival of the Persians shortly afterwards their city was burned to the ground.<ref>Herod, viii. 50.</ref> 

In the following year (479 BC), their territory was the scene of the [[Battle of Plataea]], which delivered Greece from the Persian invaders.  In this engagement, a combined Greek force met those of the Persian general [[Mardonius (nephew of Darius I)|Mardonius]] on the plain next to the Asopus River.  As this victory had been gained on the soil of Plataea, its citizens received special honour and rewards from the confederated Greeks. Not only was the large sum of 80 talents granted to them, which they employed in erecting a temple to Athena, but they were charged with the duty of tendering religious honours every year to the tombs of the warriors who had fallen in the battle, and of celebrating every four years the festival of the [[Eleutheria]] in commemoration of the deliverance of the Greeks from the Persian yoke. The festival was sacred to [[Zeus Eleutherius]], to whom a temple was erected at Plataea. In return for these services the assembled Greeks swore to guarantee the independence and inviolability of the city and its territory.<ref>Thuc. ii. 71; Plutarch, ''Life of Aristeides'', 19-21; Strabo, ix. p. 412; Pausanias, ''Description of Greece'', ix.2.4.</ref>