but, after the deposition of Demaratus, he visited the island a second time, accompanied by his new colleague Leotychides, seized ten of the leading citizens and deposited them at Athens as hostages. After the death of Cleomenes and the refusal of the Athenians to restore the hostages to Leotychides, the Aeginetans retaliated by seizing a number of Athenians at a festival at Sunium. Thereupon the Athenians concerted a plot with Nicodromus, the leader of the democratic party in the island, for the betrayal of Aegina. He was to seize the old city, and they were to come to his aid on the same day with seventy vessels. The plot failed owing to the late arrival of the Athenian force, when Nicodromus had already fled the island. An engagement followed in which the Aeginetans were defeated. Subsequently, however, they succeeded in winning a victory over the Athenian fleet. All the incidents subsequent to the appeal of Athens to Sparta are expressly referred by Herodotus to the interval between the sending of the heralds in 491 B.C. and the invasion of Datis and Artaphernes in 490 B.C. (cf. Herod. vi. 49 with 94). There are difficulties in this story, of which the following are the principal:—(i.) Herodotus nowhere states or implies that peace was concluded between the two states before 481 B.C., nor does he distinguish between different wars during this period.
Hence it would follow that the war lasted from shortly after 507 B.C. down to the congress at the Isthmus of Corinth in 481 B.C. (ii.) It is only for two years (490 and 491) out of the twenty-five that any details are given. It is the more remarkable that no incidents are recorded in the period between Marathon and Salamis, seeing that at the time of the Isthmian Congress the war is described as the most important one then being waged in Greece (Herod. vii. 145). (iii.) It is improbable that Athens would have sent twenty vessels to the aid of the Ionians in 498 B.C. if at the time she was at war with Aegina. (iv.) There is an incidental indication of time, which points to the period after Marathon as the true date for the events which are referred by Herodotus to the year before Marathon, viz. the thirty years that were to elapse between the dedication of the precinct to Aeacus and the final victory of Athens (Herod. v. 89). As the final victory of Athens over Aegina was in 458 B.C., the thirty years of the oracle would carry us back to the year 488 B.C. as the date of the dedication of the precinct and the outbreak of hostilities. This inference is supported by the date of the building of the 200 triremes “for the war against Aegina” on the advice of Themistocles, which is given in the Constitution of Athens as 483–482 B.C. (Herod. vii. 144; Ath. Pol. 22. 7). It is
