Histories

When no favorable omens for battle could be won either by the Persians themselves or by the Greeks who were with them (for they too had a diviner of their own, Hippomachus of +Levkas [20.65,38.716] (island), Levkas, Ionian Islands, Greece, Europe Leucas), and the Greeks kept flocking in and their army grew, Timagenides son of Herpys, a Theban, advised Mardonius to guard the outlet of the pass over Cithaeron, telling him that the Greeks were coming in daily and that he would thereby cut off many of them.

The armies had already lain hidden opposite each other for eight days when he gave this counsel. Mardonius perceived that the advice was good, and when night had fallen, he sent his horsemen to the outlet of the pass over Cithaeron which leads towards Plataea [23.2667,38.2] (Perseus) Plataea. This pass the Boeotians call the Three Heads, and the Athenians the Oak's Heads. The horsemen who were sent out did not go in vain,

for they caught both five hundred beasts of burden which were going into the low country, bringing provisions from the +Peloponnese [22,37.5] (region), Greece, Europe Peloponnese for the army, and men who came with the wagons. When they had taken this quarry, the Persians killed without mercy, sparing neither man nor beast. When they had their fill of slaughter, they encircled the rest and drove them to Mardonius and his camp.

After this deed they waited two days more, neither side desiring to begin the battle, for although the barbarians came to the Asopus to test the Greeks intent, neither army crossed it. Mardonius' cavalry, however, kept pressing upon and troubling the Greeks, for the Thebans, in their zeal for the Persian part, waged war heartily, and kept on guiding the horsemen to the encounter; thereafter it was the turn of the Persians and Medes, and they and none other would do deeds of valor.