and Aristagoras. One night, as it so happened, no watch was kept on board a Myndian vessel; and Megabates in his anger ordered the captain to be placed in one of the oar-holes with his head hanging out over the water. To the prayer of Aristagoras that he would release his friend, Megabates would not listen. Aristagoras therefore released the man himself; and when the Persian on learning this became even more vehement, Aristagoras told him that Artaphernes had sent him as a subordinate, not as a master. Megabates made no reply; but as soon as it was dark, he sent a vessel to warn the Naxians of their peril and to acquaint them with all that had happened. The result was that, when the fleet approached the island, the Naxians were well prepared. Four months passed away, and the Naxians were not subdued. Aristagoras further suspected that Megabates meant to deprive him of his power at Miletos; and the result of his deliberations was a determination to revolt. A message which at this time he chanced to receive from Histiaios brought him advice which jumped with his own conclusions, and made up his mind to begin the revolt which Histiaios hoped that he might be sent down to suppress.

But by himself Aristagoras knew that he was virtually powerless. Hastening, therefore, to Sparta, he pleaded his cause before king Kleomenes. He dwelt on the slavery of the Asiatic Greeks as a disgrace to the city which had risen to the headship of Hellas, and on the wealth as well as the glory which with little trouble and risk they could assuredly win. The picture was tempting; but when Aristagoras appeared again on the third day to receive the final answer, he was asked how far it might be from the coast to Sousa, whither he desired to march. 'A three months' journey,' said the unlucky Aristagoras, who was going on to show how easily it might be accomplished, when Kleomenes bade him leave Sparta before the sun went down. There seemed to be yet one last hope. With a suppliant's branch Aristagoras went to the house of Kleomenes. Finding him with his daughter Gorgo, the future wife of the far-famed Leonidas, he asked that the child, then eight or nine years old, should be sent away. The king bade him say what he wished in her presence; and the Milesian, beginning with a proffer of ten talents, had raised the bribe to a sum of fifty talents, when the child cried out, 'Father, the stranger will corrupt you, if you do not go away.' Kleomenes

rose up and went into another house; and Aristagoras, leaving Sparta with the story of the easy march from Sardeis to Sousa untold, hastened to Athens. Here to his glowing descriptions he added the plea that Miletos was a colony from Athens and that to help the Milesians was a clear duty. The historian remarks that Aristagoras found it easier to deceive thirty thousand Athenian citizens than a solitary Spartan, for the Athenians at once promised to send twenty ships under the command of Melanthios. But he forgot that the circumstances of the two cities were widely different. Athens was already virtually at war with Persia; and in pledging themselves to help Aristagoras, the Athenians were entering on a course which after a severe struggle secured to them abundant wealth and a brilliant empire.

At last Aristagoras reached Miletos with the twenty Athenian ships and five sent by the Eretrians. There he set in order an expedition to Sardeis, which was occupied without any resistance, Artaphernes being unable to do more than hold the Akropolis; but the accidental burning of a hut caused a conflagration which so terrified all the Lydians and Persians that they rushed with frantic eagerness to the Agora. The Athenians retreated to the heights of Tmolos, and as soon as it was dark hastened away to their ships. This fire at Sardeis by destroying the temple of Kybêbê furnished, it is said, an excuse for the deliberate destruction of the temples in Western Hellas by the army of Xerxes.

The revolt now assumed a more serious character in spite of the desertion of the Athenians, and spread not only to Byzantion and the neighbouring towns, but to Karia and Cyprus (Kypros), in which large and wealthy island the city of Amathous alone remained faithful to the Persians.

The tidings of these events, so the story runs, roused the indignation of Dareios, who, sending for Histiaios, frankly expressed his strong suspicion that his old friend had had a hand in the business. Nay,' said Histiaios, 'had I been in Ionia these things would never have happened, if they have happened at all; and even now I pledge myself, if thou wilt let me go thither, to bring this revolt to an end.' 'Be it so,' answered Dareios; but be sure, when thou hast done thy work, to come back to me here at Sousa.' So Histiaios departed on his errand.

Meanwhile the course of the revolt was marked chiefly by

disaster. The golden visions of Aristagoras had now given way to the simple desire of securing his own safety. Leaving Pythagoras in command of Miletos, he sailed to Myrkinos, of which he succeeded in taking possession. Soon after, he attacked and besieged a Thrakian town, but was surprised and slain with all his forces.

The career of Histiaios was brought to an end not long after the death of his nephew. On reaching Sardeis he appeared, it is said, before Artaphernes in seeming ignorance of all that had happened during his stay in Sousa. 'It is just this,' said Artaphernes bluntly; 'you stitched the slipper, and Aristagoras put it on.' Histiaios took the hint thus broadly given, and made his escape to Chios. At length, after a series of strange adventures, he fell into the hands of the Persian general Harpagos, who ordered him to be crucified, and sent his head to Sousa.

The hopes of the Ionians now rested on their fleet. It was decided therefore at Panionion that no attempt should be made to oppose the Persian land forces, while the ships should assemble at Ladê, then an island off the Milesian promontory, to which by an accumulation of sand it is now attached. But if the Ionians were afraid of the land forces opposed to them, the Persians seem to have been scarcely less afraid of the Hellenic fleet, although they had little reason to shrink from a comparison of their Phenician seamen with the Asiatic Greeks. Of the details

of the battle which decided the issue of the revolt Herodotos admits that he knows practically nothing. That in spite of its confusion and inconsistencies the narrative points to an astonishing lack of coherence among the confederates, we cannot doubt. The outlines suffice at least to show that the brief splendour of the Ionic revolt was closing in darkness and disaster. 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. 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 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.

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; and the subjugation of the European cities was apparently no hard task. The deserted towns, we are told, were burnt to the ground by the Phenicians, who also 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.

CHAPTER IV.

THE INVASION OF THRACE BY MARDONIOS AND THE BATTLE

OF MARATHON.

THE threats of terrible vengeance by which it is said that the Persians had before the suppression of the revolt 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 Sardian satrap Artaphernes comes before us as an administrator engaged in placing on a permanent footing the relations of these Greeks with their masters. 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 inforced 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. 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 Alexander the Great.

Still more remarkable, in the judgement of Herodotos, were the measures of Mardonios. This man, whose name is associated with the memorable battle at Plataia, 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 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 got rid of 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.

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But Mardonios was not destined to achieve the greater work for which he had been dispatched from Sousa. His fleet was coasting along the peninsula of Akte, when a fearful storm dashed a large number of his ships 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.

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. Heralds were accordingly sent throughout all Hellas, demanding in the king's name the tribute of a little earth and a little water. The summons was readily obeyed by the men of all the islands visited by the heralds. Among these 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. At Athens and Sparta they received a less genial welcome.

In the former city, these men, in spite of the inviolability of the character in which they appeared, were thrown, it is said, into the Barathron, in the latter into a well, and bidden to get