their cities should be given to strangers. But their object was not, it seems, immediate submission. They were quite ready to fight, when the time for fighting should be come; but, rather than take any trouble to secure success, they would prefer death, mutilation, or everlasting banishment. In short, the two stories exclude each other, and come from two different sources. The one was apparently framed in the interests of the expelled tyrants by their partisans: the second certainly is a tale devised to account for the disastrous issue of the revolt. 1 That in The battle of Lade, and the fall of Miletos. Of the details of the battle which decided the issue of the revolt Herodotos admits that he knows practically nothing. spite of its confusion and inconsistencies the narrative points to an astonishing lack of coherence among the confederates, we cannot doubt. Almost everywhere we see a selfish isolation, of which distrust and treachery are the natural fruits: but, as in the intrigues of Hippias we have a real cause for Persian interference in Western Greece which makes the story of Demokedes utterly superfluous, so in this selfishness and obstinacy of the Asiatic Greeks we have an explanation of the catastrophe to which the episode of the Phokaian Dionysios fails to impart either force or clearness. The outlines suffice at least to show that the brief splendour of the Ionic revolt was closing in darkness and disaster. The fate of the revolt was sealed by the partisans of the banished despots; and Dionysios determined to quit his country for ever. With three war-ships which he took from the enemy, he sailed straight to Phenicia; and, if the tale be true, he must have swooped down on some unguarded or weak port, for, having sunk some merchant-vessels, he sailed with a large booty to Sicily. Here he turned pirate, imposing on himself the condition that his pillage should be got from the Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians and not from the Italiot or Sikeliot Greeks. The dispersion and ruin of the Ionic fleet left Miletos exposed to blockade by sea as well as by land. The Persians now set vigorously to work, undermining the walls and bringing all kinds of engines to bear upon them; and at last, in the sixth year after the outbreak of the revolt under Aristagoras, the great city fell. 495 B.C. (?) The historian adds that the grown men were for the most part slain; that the rest of the inhabitants were carried away to Sousa; and that Miletos with the plain surrounding it was occupied by Persians, while the neighbouring highlands were given 1 Herod. vi. 14. 2 This date, the only definite indication of time in the narrative of the Ionic revolt, may be regarded as representing accurately the interval between the rebellion of Aristagoras and the destruction of his city: but while the chronology of earlier and later events remains uncertain, we can scarcely say more than that the fall of Miletos may probably be assigned to the year 496-5 B.C. to Karians from the town of Pedasa. The picture is overcoloured, unless we suppose that new Greek inhabitants were afterwards admitted into the city, for, although its greatness was gone for ever, Miletos continued to be, as it had been, Hellenic. Third conquest of Ionia. The Persian operations of the following year were directed against the islands. Chios, Lesbos, and Tenedos were taken; and, if we choose to believe the story, the Persians, holding hand to hand and without even breaking their order, 495 B.C. (?) went from one end of each island to the other, caring for no hindrances of mountains, precipices, torrents and streams, and sweeping off every living thing that came in their way. This pleasant pastime of netting human beings Herodotos 1 for some not very obvious reason pronounces impracticable on the mainland; and hence the Hellenes of the Asiatic continent escaped the fate of their insular kinsfolk. Thus was brought about that which Herodotos speaks of as the third conquest of Ionia. Flight of 1 From the conquest of the Ionic cities the Persian fleet sailed on against the towns on the northern shores of the Hellespont. The towns on its Asiatic shore had already been reduced by Daurises and other Persian generals; 2 and the subjugation of the European cities was apparently no hard task. Perinthos, Selymbria, and the forts on the Thrakian march, were at once surrendered, while the inhabitants of Byzantion and of Chalkedon on the opposite Asiatic promontory fled hastily away and founded the city of Mesembria on the Euxine sea. The deserted towns, we are told, were burnt to the ground by the Phenicians, who also destroyed in like manner the cities of Prokonnesos and Artake and took all the towns of the Chersonesos except Kardia. Here the future victor of Marathon lingered, until he heard that the Phenicians were at Tenedos, when with five ships loaded with his goods he set sail for Athens. The punishment of Phrynichos. When, some years earlier, the Hellenic colony of Sybaris had been conquered by the men of Kroton, the men of Miletos had shaved their heads in token of their mourning. Miletos itself was a city built by colonists whom the Kodrid Neileus had, it is said, brought from Athens: but the great disaster which had now befallen it called forth no such signs of sorrow on the part of the Athenians. The drama in which Phrynichos exhibited the terrible scenes which accompanied its 495 B.C. (?) 1 vi. 31. 2 Herod. v. 117, 122. 5 Herod. vi. 33. It is not easy to receive without strong qualification such statements about cities which unquestionably remained Hellenic in spite of the disasters which at this time they may have undergone. 4 Κατακαύσαντες. Herod. vi. 33. This word also must be probably taken in a very modified sense. Kyzikos, we are told, had already submitted to Oibares, the satrap of Daskyleion. downfall brought involuntary tears to the eyes of the audience; but his only recompense, we are told, was a fine of a thousand drachmas for daring to remind them of calamities which touched them so closely, and a decree that the play should never be acted again. Had this drama been preserved, it might possibly have explained the reason for that abandonment of the Ionic cause by the Athenians which may have been forced on them by the feuds and factions of the allies. It might also have taught us the nature of those evils or misfortunes, the remembrance of which so stung the Athenian hearers of Phrynichos. Although the subjects of tragedy had hitherto been chosen mainly, if not altogether, from the old legends or theogonies, it may be doubted whether their resentment was caused by any effort on the part of the poet to interest his audience in Persian success and Grecian suffering as such or by any dread of similar disasters for themselves, so much as by the intimation that they were in reality chargeable with the ruin of the most illustrious of their own colonies. Apart from this consciousness of their guilt or weakness, the picture of Hellenic misfortunes could have roused in them only a more strenuous patriotism, and stirred them under disappointment or defeat with an enthusiasm not less deep, although more grave, than that with which, after the victory at Salamis, they drank in the words of Eschylos. CHAPTER IV. THE INVASION OF THRACE BY MARDONIOS AND THE BATTLE OF MARATHON. Administration of Artaphernes in THE threats of terrible vengeance by which it is said that the Persians sought to chill the courage of the Asiatic Greeks might have prepared us for a long tale of wanton cruelty and oppression. But after the complete subjugation of the country the scene is suddenly changed; and the Sar- Asia Minor. dian satrap Artaphernes comes before us as an administrator engaged in placing on a permanent footing the relations of these Greeks with their masters. If the materials with which he had to deal had been of a different kind, if the Ionians of Asia Minor had had any of that capacity for establishing an empire on the basis of self-government which marked their western kinsfolk, he might have deserved blame rather than praise for striking at the root of the evils which had nipped in the bud the political growth of the L Asiatic Greeks. By compelling them to lay aside their incessant feuds and bickerings, and to obey, if not a national, yet an interpolitical law which should put an end to acts of violence and pillage between the Hellenic cities, he was inforcing changes which would soon have made men of a temper really formidable to the king, and which in any case must be regarded as a vast improvement of their condition.1 These changes, the historian remarks significantly, he compelled them to adopt, whether they willed to do so or not, while, after having the whole country surveyed, he also imposed on each that assessment of tribute which, whether paid or not, (and we shall find that for nearly seventy years it was not paid,) remained on the king's books as the legal obligation of the Asiatic Greeks, until the Persian empire itself fell before the victorious arms of the Makedonian Alexander. As the amount of this assessment was much what it had been before the revolt, the Persians cannot be charged with adding to their burdens by way of retaliation. The reforms of Mardonios. 2 Still more remarkable, in the judgement of Herodotos, were the measures of Mardonios who in the spring of the second year after the fall of Miletos marched with a large army as far as the Kilikian coast, where he took ship, while the 493 B.C. ?) troops found their way across Asia Minor to the Hellespont. This man, whose name is associated with the memorable battle at Plataiai, was now in the prime of manhood. The errand on which he came was nothing less than the extension of the Persian empire over the whole of Western Greece; but before he went on to take that special vengeance on Athens and Eretria which was the alleged object of the expedition, he undertook and achieved, it is said, the task of putting down the tyrants and of establishing democracies in all the Ionic cities. Yet the work of Mardonios can mean no more than that he drove away, or possibly killed (as the more effectual mode of dealing with them) the Hellenic tyrants, on whose deposition the people would at once revert to the constitution subverted by these despots: nor is it easy to see wherein this task differed from that which Herodotos has just ascribed to Artaphernes. All therefore that can be said is that, if Artaphernes really carried out his measures before the arrival of Mardonios, nothing more remained for the latter than to sanction changes of which he approved. But Mardonios was not destined to achieve the greater work for which he had been dispatched from Sousa. Thasos submitted without opposition; and on the mainland the work of conquest Failure of Mardonios in Thrace. was carried beyond the bounds reached by Megabazos. But when, having left Akanthos, the fleet was coasting along the peninsula of Akte, a fearful storm dashed three hundred ships, it is said, on the iron coast of mount Athos, about twenty thousand men being killed either by the force of the waves beating against the rocks or by the sharks which abounded in this part of the sea. The disaster made it impossible to advance further south; and Mardonios returned home, where during the reign of Dareios he is heard of no more. 492 B.C. (?) Mission of the Persian heralds to demand earth and the Western Greeks. water from 491 B.C. (?) The failure of Mardonios seems to have made Dareios more than ever resolved to ascertain how far he might rely on the submission of the Greeks to the extension of the Persian empire. The first step came in the form of an order to the Thasians to take down the walls with which they were fortifying their city and to surrender their ships at Abdera. In the next step taken by Dareios we may fairly discern the influence of Hippias, who left nothing undone to fan the flame which he had kindled.' The way would be in great measure cleared for the complete subjugation of Hellas if the king could, without the trouble of fighting learn how many of the insular and continental Greeks would be willing to inroll themselves as his slaves. Heralds were accordingly sent, it is said, throughout all Hellas, demanding in the king's name the tribute of a little earth and a little water. The summons was readily obeyed, we are told, by the men of all the islands visited by the heralds, and probably also by those cities which we afterwards find among the zealous allies of Xerxes. Among the islanders who thus yielded up their freedom were the Aiginetans, who by this conduct drew down upon themselves the wrath of the Athenians with whom they were in a chronic state of war. Athenian ambassadors appeared at Sparta with a formal accusation against the Aiginetans. They had acted treacherously not towards the Athenians or towards any Greek city in particular but against Hellas: and the charge shows not merely the growth of a certain collective or almost national Hellenic life, but that Sparta was the recognised head of this informal confederacy. The embassy of the Athenians was followed by prompt action on the part of the Spartans, or rather on the part of their king Kleomenes. This joint action of the Athenians and Kleomenes, it has been thought, can be accounted for only by the alleged treatment of the Persian heralds when they came first to Athens and then to Sparta, asking earth and water. In the former city, these men, in spite 1 Herod. vi. 94. The treatment of the heralds at Sparta and at Athens. |