Clearly H. is anxious to justify the Athenian people for not sending succour from Attica, and the Athenian cleruchs for leaving Eretria to its fate, by emphasizing the divided counsels and positive treachery of the Eretrians. After Marathon it may well have been thought that a bold stand might have been made at Eretria. At the time so heroic a counsel could only be justified if the Eretrians, like the Athenians, were willing to meet the Persians in the open field. It is likely enough that in Eretria, which had favoured Pisistratus (i. 62), the Medizing party was strong, but H. implies that there was but one true man, Aeschines, in a rotten State. Curiously enough Xenophon (Hell. iii. 1. 6) says there was but one Eretrian who Medized, Gongylus; and his treachery seems to have been of later date, as he is lieutenant and agent of Pausanias in Byzantium B. C. 478-477 (Thuc. i. 128). For his reward cf. ch. 42 n. [p. 106] (How and Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus, 1928).