bonds were put to death; and the Athenians after this sent for
Cleisthenes to return, and also for the seven hundred families which
had been driven out by Cleomenes: and then they sent envoys to Sardis,
desiring to make an alliance with the Persians; for they were well
assured that the Lacedemonians and Cleomenes had been utterly made
their foes. So when these envoys had arrived at Sardis and were saying
that which they had been commanded to say, Artaphrenes the son of
Hystaspes, the governor of Sardis, asked what men these were who
requested to be allies of the Persians, and where upon the earth they
dwelt; and having heard this from the envoys, he summed up his answer
to them thus, saying that if the Athenians were willing to give earth
and water to Dareios, he was willing to make alliance with them, but
if not, he bade them begone: and the envoys taking the matter upon
themselves said that they were willing to do so, because they desired
to make the alliance. 74. These, when they returned to their own land,
were highly censured: and Cleomenes meanwhile, conceiving that he had
been outrageously dealt with by the Athenians both with words and with
deeds, was gathering together an army from the whole of the
Peloponnese, not declaring the purpose for which he was gathering it,
but desiring to take vengeance on the people of the Athenians, and
intending to make Isagoras despot; for he too had come out of the
Acropolis together with Cleomenes. Cleomenes then with a large army
entered Eleusis, while at the same time the Bœotians by agreement with
him captured Oinoe and Hysiai, the demes which lay upon the extreme
borders of Attica, and the Chalkidians on the other side invaded and
began to ravage various districts of Attica. The Athenians then,
though attacked on more sides than one, thought that they would
remember the Bœotians and Chalkidians afterwards, and arrayed
themselves against the Peloponnesians who were in Eleusis. 75. Then as
the armies were just about the join battle, the Corinthians first,