298?

[Jona Lendering]

I read that one of the Ophthalmia sufferers committed suicide, after his return to Sparta and the other, having been treated like a coward, demonstrated such desperate courage at Plataea that he was reprimanded for his recklessness!

The last is correct, but the man who committed suicide was not one of those suffering from bad eyesight. The man who killed himself was the messenger to Thessaly. Krypteia, as Stefanos suggests, sounds plausible.

Two of these three hundred, it is said, namely Eurystos and
Aristodemos, who, if they had made agreement with one another, might
either have come safe home to Sparta together (seeing that they had
been dismissed from the camp by Leonidas and were lying at Alpenoi
with disease of the eyes, suffering extremely), or again, if they had
not wished to return home, they might have been slain together with
the rest,--when they might, I say, have done either one of these two
things, would not agree together; but the two being divided in
opinion, Eurystos, it is said, when he was informed that the Persians
had gone round, asked for his arms and having put them on ordered his
Helot to lead him to those who were fighting; and after he had led him
thither, the man who had led him ran away and departed, but Eurystos
plunged into the thick of the fighting, and so lost his life: but
Aristodemos was left behind fainting. Now if either Aristodemos
had been ill alone, and so had returned home to Sparta, or the
men had both of them come back together, I do not suppose that the
Spartans would have displayed any anger against them; but in this
case, as the one of them had lost his life and the other, clinging to
an excuse which the first also might have used, had not been
willing to die, it necessarily happened that the Spartans had great
indignation against Aristodemos. Some say that Aristodemos came
safe to Sparta in this manner, and on a pretext such as I have said;
but others, that he had been sent as a messenger from the camp, and
when he might have come up in time to find the battle going on, was
not willing to do so, but stayed upon the road and so saved his life,
while his fellow-messenger reached the battle and was slain. When
Aristodemos, I say, had returned home to Lacedemon, he had reproach
and dishonour; and that which he suffered by way of dishonour was
this,--no one of the Spartans would either give him light for a fire
or speak with him, and he had reproach in that he was called
Aristodemos the coward. He however in the battle at Plataia
repaired all the guilt that was charged against him: but it is
reported that another man also survived of these three hundred, whose
name was Pantites, having been sent as a messenger to Thessaly, and
this man, when he returned back to Sparta and found himself
dishonoured, is said to have strangled himself.