Note 532 — Chapter XLIV · FROM THE BATTLES OF PLATÆA AND MYKALE DOWN TO THE DEATHS OF THEMISTOKLES AND ARISTEIDES.

Herodot. vi, 72; Diodor. xi, 48; Pausanias, iii, 7, 8: compare Plutarch, De Herodoti Malign. c. 21, p. 859.

Leotychidês died, according to Diodorus, in 476 B. C.: he had commanded at Mykalê in 479 B. C. The expedition into Thessaly must therefore have been in one of the two intermediate years, if the chronology of Diodorus were, in this case, thoroughly trustworthy. But Mr. Clinton (Fasti Hellenici, Appendix, ch. iii, p. 210) has shown that Diodorus is contradicted by Plutarch, about the date of the accession of Archidamus,—and by others, about the date of the revolt at Sparta. Mr. Clinton places the accession of Archidamus and the banishment of Leotychidês (of course, therefore, the expedition into Thessaly) in 469 B. C. I incline to believe that the expedition of Leotychidês against the Thessalian Aleuadæ took place in the year or in the second year following the battle of Platæa, because they had been the ardent and hearty allies of Mardonius in Bœotia, and because the war would seem not to have been completed without putting them down and making the opposite party in Thessaly predominant.

Considering how imperfectly we know the Lacedæmonian chronology of this date, it is very possible that some confusion may have arisen in the case of Leotychidês, from the difference between the date of his banishment and that of his death. King Pleistoanax afterwards, having been banished for the same offence as that committed by Leotychidês, and having lived many years in banishment, was afterwards restored: and the years which he had passed in banishment were counted as a part of his reign (Fast. Hellen. l. c. p. 211). The date of Archidamus may, perhaps, have been reckoned in one account from the banishment of Leotychidês,—in another, from his death; the rather, as Archidamus must have been very young, since he reigned forty-two years even after 469 B. C. And the date which Diodorus has given as that of the death of Leotychidês, may really be only the date of his banishment, in which he lived until 469 B. C.