The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal Numismatic Society

PERIOD V. CIRC. B.C. 446 426.
During the years of democratical government which
followed the success of the Athenians at Oenophyta,
the exiled oligarchs, no inconsiderable body, mustered
their forces and had obtained possession of Orcho-
menus and some neighbouring towns of smaller import-
ance. The Athenians then dispatched a force to expel
them, a force, however, too hastily got together, and eager
more to show their mettle than to follow the wise counsels of
Pericles, who advised delay.
The result was a disastrous
defeat in the neighbourhood of Coroneia. A counter-
revolution throughout Boeotia was the immediate effect
of this repulse of the Athenians, the democracies sustained
by Athens were overthrown, the exiled oligarchs were
reinstated, and Thebes was once more the leading state in
Bceotia (B.C. 446).
From the battle of Coroneia to the commencement of
the Peloponnesian war (B.C. 431), Thebes was occupied in
consolidating her authority throughout Bceotia. Plataea
alone of all the Boeotian townships remained faithful to
Athens, and though only about nine English miles distant
from Thebes, steadily refused to join the League. The
treacherous attack of a body of Thebans upon Plataea in
431, the subsequent two years' siege of the brave little
town by the united forces of the Peloponnesian s (B.C.
429 427), the heroic defence, the hair-breadth escape of
half the garrison, the surrender when at the point of
starvation, the cold-blooded execution, man by man, of