300 H. B. IV rig lit, 



dragged him up, wolf-like, taking hold Ijeneath the arm-pits as two 

 wolves bear off a body " that we meet a difficulty. This had been 

 referred to the fight over the l^odies of either Mardonius ^ or 

 Masistius 2 until Wecklein ^ noted a fact which had been overlooked 

 by preceding scholars — that the scholiast states explicitly that this 

 action took place over the body of Glaucus himself, and therefore, 

 he argued, the fragment cannot refer to Plataea. Are we to reply 

 that the text is corrupt and that we should read tr Fkccvxco for 

 jre(n Flavxav} If not, how is the chariot race and destruction of 

 Glaucus of Potnia to be related to the battle of Plataea ? 



The town of Potnia in Boeotia lay between Thebes and Plataea, 

 and was probably within the Persian lines during the entire cam- 

 paign of 479 B. C. It is practically certain that Persian forces 

 passed through this town just before their opening cavalry skirmish 

 with the Greeks. Here was a local shrine of Glaucus who according 

 to Strabo'* had met his death at Potnia, torn in pieces and devoured 

 by his own mares. There were many stories current in Greek 

 literature to account for the madness of these mares. ^ Which one 

 Aeschylus followed we have no direct evidence. But according to 

 Frazer,^ it is in Pausanias that we should expect to find the Aeschylean 

 version, since Aeschylus is the only tragic or comic poet to whose 

 authority Pausanias appeals repeatedly. According to Pausanias '^ 

 there was a sacred well at Potnia, and the horses which drank 

 from this well went mad. According to Pausanias also ^ the ghost 

 of Glaucus haunted certain parts of Greece causing horses to shy. 



Now it is at least a remarkable coincidence that the only event 

 in the campaign of Plataea which Aeschylus could well have selected 

 for presentation before an Athenian audience — the defeat of Masistius 

 by the Athenian volunteers — was decided by the wholly unexpected 

 uprearing of a horse. It seems at least probable too from the 

 general evidence in both Aeschylus •' and Herodotus 10 that the local 

 shrine of Glaucus, god of horse-terrifiers, at Potnia, had been 



' E. A. J. Ahrens, Aeschyli Tragoediae (1842), p. 196. 



2 Oherdick, Zeitsclir. f. d. ost. G-yni. xix (1868), p. 269. 



3 Teztffel Wecklein— Km\\y\o?, Perser (4th Ed. 1901) Intr. p. 15. 



* ix, 2. 24. p. 409 C. 



* Roscher^ Lex. d. griecli. u. rom. Mytliol., p. 1689. 

 " Pausanias' Description of Greece, Vol i, ^. Ixxiii. 

 ' ix, 8. 1. 



s vi, 20. 9. 



Persians, VV. 809-15. 



>o viii, 109 ; vi, 103 ; ix, 13 ; ef. also Polybius v, 10. 



{ 



