[Footnote A: Plutarch himself was a Boeotian.]
Again, the Persians were beaten by the Greeks on the sixth of Boedromion
at Marathon, and on the third they were beaten both at Plataea and at
Mykale, and at Arbela on the twenty-fifth of the same month. The
Athenians too won their naval victory under Chabrias at Naxos on the
full moon of Boedromion, and that of Salamis on the twentieth of that
month, as I have explained in my treatise 'On Days.'
The month of Thargelion evidently brings misfortune to the barbarians,
for Alexander defeated the Persian king's generals on the Granicus in
Thargelion, and the Carthaginians were defeated by Timoleon in Sicily
on the twenty-seventh of Thargelion, at which same time Troy is believed
to have been taken, according to Ephorus, Kallisthenes, Damastes and
Phylarchus.
On the other hand, the month Metageitnion, which the Boeotians call
Panemos, is unfavourable to the Greeks, for on the seventh of that month
they were defeated by Antipater at Kranon and utterly ruined; and before
that, were defeated during that month by Philip at Chaeronea. And on
that same day and month and year Archidamus and his troops, who had
crossed over into Italy, were cut to pieces by the natives. The
twenty-first day of that month is also observed by the Carthaginians as
that which has always brought the heaviest misfortunes upon them. And I
am well aware that at the time of the celebration of the mysteries
Thebes was destroyed for the second time by Alexander, and that after
this Athens was garrisoned by Macedonian soldiers on the twentieth of
Boedromion, on which day they bring out the mystic Iacchus in
procession.
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