them gave to his rebels free harbour; the islanders moreover did help to furnish out a navy of three hundred and sixty sail against him. These provocations did rather breed in him a desire to abate their pride, than any fear of harm that they were like to do him. For what they had done at Sardis was but by surprise. In every fight they were beaten by the Persians, who had not yet lost the fruits of their discipline wherein Cyrus had trained them, nor all their ancient captains. In one sea-fight by the isle of Cyprus, the Ionians indeed had the upper hand; but they were Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Cilicians, whom they vanquished; neither was that victory of any use to them, the Cyprians, in whose aid they came, being utterly beaten by the Persian army at land, and reduced into their old subjection. So had the Persians likewise by open war and fair force overthrown the Carians in two battles, and reclaimed that nation; as also they had recovered the towns upon Hellespont, with some Æolian and Ionian cities, when Aristagoras with his friends, quitting Miletus, fled into Thrace, desirous to seat himself in Amphipolis, a colony of the Athenians. But the Edonians, on whose territory belike he landed, overthrew him, and cut his troops in pieces.

About the same time Histiæus, the first mover of this insurrection, came down into those quarters; who having undertaken the performance of great matters to Darius, was glad to fly from his lieutenants, by whom his double-dealing was detected.

But this evasion preserved him not long. For after many vain attempts that he made, he was taken in fight by the Persians, and hastily beheaded, lest the king should pardon him upon remembrance of old good turns; as it seems that he would have done by the burial which he commanded to be given to his dead body that was crucified, and by his heavy taking of his death.

Histiæus had sought to put himself into Miletus; but the citizens, doubting his condition, chose rather to keep him out, and make shift for themselves without his help. The strength of their city by land, which had in old time

withstood the Lydian kings, and their good fleet, which promised unto them the liberty of an open sea, emboldened them to try the uttermost, when very few friends were left upon that continent to take their part. But their navy was broken as much by threatenings as by force; many of their companions and fellow-rebels forsaking them upon hope of pardon, and many being daunted with the causeless flight of those that should have assisted them. Neither was it long before the town itself, being assaulted both by land and sea, was taken by force, the citizens slain, their wives and children made slaves, and their goods a booty to the Persians, whom for six years space they had put to so much trouble.

SECT. VIII.

The war which Darius made upon Greece, with the battle of Marathon, and Darius's death.

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THIS war with good success finished by the Persians, and some attempts made on Europe side with variable success, Darius, obstinate in the enterprise and conquest of Greece, (though at first he pretended to make the war but against the Athenians and Eretrians, who jointly assisted the Ionians against him, and burnt Sardis in Lydia,) did now by his ambassadors demand an acknowledgment from them all; among whom some of them, not so well resolved as the rest, submitted themselves; as the Æginetes and others. Against these the Athenians being inflamed, (by the assistance of the Lacedæmonians,) after divers encounters forced them to give pledges, and to relinquish the party of the Persians. Cleomenes led the Lacedæmonians in this war, and caused his companion, king Demaratus, to be deposed; who thereupon fled to Darius, far the more confident of victory, by reason of these discords, alienations, and civil wars among the Greeks. He therefore gave order to Hippagoras to prepare a fleet of ships fit to transport his

Herod. 1. 6. Whether this city or people were of Peloponnesus in Sicyonia, or of Ægæa between Thessalia and Macedon, I do not know; but those borderers, and next the enemy,

were more likely to compound than the rest far off. There is also a city called Æginium, not far from Ægea. Liv. 32, 33, &c.

LIBRA

army over the Hellespont; the same consisting of an hundred thousand foot and ten thousand horse. The charge in chief of his army he committed to Datis, accompanied and. assisted by Hippias the son of Pisistratus, expelled out of Athens twenty years before, and by Artaphernes his brother, governor of Sardis, and the sea-coast of Asia the Less. These commanders, having their companies brought down to the sea-side, embarked themselves in six hundred galleys and other vessels; and first of all attempted the islands called Cyclades, which lay in the midway between Asia the Less and Greece. For (obtaining those places) the Persians had then nothing to hinder the transportation of their forces over the Egean sea; but on the contrary, they might always both relieve themselves in their passage, and shroud themselves from all sudden tempests and outrage.

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To this end they first possessed themselves of Samos; secondly, they attempted Naxos; which island the inhabitants, despairing of their own forces, abandoned. So did the people of Delos, of which Apollo was native; which island Darius did not only forbear to sack, but, recalling the inhabitants, he gave order to beautify the places and altars of sacrifice to Apollo erected. And having recovered these and other islands, the Persians directed their course for Eretria in Euboea, for that city (as already hath been shewed) had assisted the Ionians at the taking and firing of Sardis. In this island the Persians took ground, and besieged Eretria very straitly; and after six days assault, partly by force, and in part by the treason of Euphabus and Philagius, they took it, sacked it, and burnt it to the ground. Thus far the winds of prosperous fortune filled their sails. From Euboea the Persians passed their army into Attica, conducted and guided by Hippias, late prince of Athens, and marching towards it, they encamped at Marathon, in the way from the sea, where they landed towards Athens.

The Athenians, finding the time arrived wherein they were to dispute with their own virtue against fortune, and

' In Herod.

to cast lots for their liberty, for their wives, their children, and their lives, put themselves in the best order they could to make resistance, and withal sent away with speed to the Lacedæmonians for succour, employing in that negociation one Phidippides; who passing through Arcadia, encountered in the way a familiar devil, which he supposed to be Pan, who willed him to assure the Athenians of victory, promising that some one of the gods should be present at the battle, to assist them, and defend them against the multitude of their enemies. Phidippides, at his return, seeing he could not bring with him any present succours from Sparta, yet he thought it greatly availing to bring news from the gods, and promise of assistance from heaven; which no doubt, though the device was likely to be his own, yet it greatly encouraged the multitude and common people, who in all ages have been more stirred up with fond prophecies, and other like superstitious fooleries, than by any just cause or solid reason.

The Athenians being now left to themselves, with one thousand only of the Plateans, (who having been formerly defended by the Athenians against the Thebans, did in this extremity witness their thankfulness and grateful disposition,) began to dispute, whether it were most for their advantage to defend the walls of Athens, or to put themselves into the field with such forces as they had, the same consisting of ten thousand Athenians and one thousand of the Plateans. In the end, and after great diversity of opinions, Miltiades, who persuaded the trial by battle, prevailed.

The armies being now in view, and within a mile of each other, the Athenians disposed themselves into three troops; two wings, or horns, as they term them, and the body of a battle. The Persians, when they perceived so small a troop advancing towards them, thought the Athenians rather dispossessed of their understanding, than possessed with the resolution whereof they made show. So invincible and resistless the Persians esteemed their own numbers to be, and that small troop of their enemies then in view rather to be despised than to be fought withal. But in conclusion, the

victory being doubtfully balanced for a while, sometimes the virtue of the Grecians, and sometimes the number of the Persians prevailing, the Grecians fighting for all that they had, the Persians for that they needed not, these great forces of Darius were disordered and put in rout, the Athenians following their victory even to the sea-shore; where the Persians, so many of them as lost not their wits with their courage, saved themselves in their ships.

The Persian army consisted of an hundred thousand foot and ten thousand horse; of which there were slain in the place six thousand three hundred, and of the Grecians an hundred fourscore and twelve. For howsoever it came to pass, either by strange visions, which were afterward called Panici terrores, or by some other affright, it seemeth that the invading army, after the first encounter, fought with their backs towards their enemy, and lost that number, by Herodotus set down, in their disorderly retreat, or rather in their flat running away. As for Justin's report, that two hundred thousand of the Persian army were slain, the same hath no appearance nor possibility of truth. In this fight Hippias, the persuader of the enterprise, was slain, saith Justin and Cicero; but "Suidas tells us that he escaped, and died most miserably in Lemnos.

The greatest honour of this victory was cast upon Miltiades, who both persuaded the trial by battle, and behaved himself therein answerably to the counsel which he gave. Themistocles had his first reputation in this fight, being but young, and of the first beard. Those of the Grecians, of mark and commandment, that fell in the first encounter, were Callimachus and Stesileus. It is also said, that Cynegyrus, following the Persians to their embarking, laid hands on one of their galleys, to have held it from putting off the shore; and having his right hand cut off, he yet offered to arrest it with his left; of which being also deprived, he took hold of it with his teeth. This encounter happened in the first year of the threescore and twelfth Olympiad, about the time of the war made by Coriolanus