READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

THE PERSIAN EMPIRE AND THE WEST

CHAPTER VIII

MARATHON

I

THE RECONQUEST OF PERSIAN EUROPE

AFTER the battle of Lade and the fall of Miletus, which shattered the Ionian revolt, the navy of King Darius wintered near Miletus, and in the following spring, 493 bc, sailed northwards to continue the work of re-establishing Persian rule. Having captured Chios, Lesbos and Tenedos, and the Ionian cities on the mainland, the fleet, or at least the Phoenician fleet, entered the Hellespont and took all the towns on the European side as far as Byzantium. The Byzantines and the Chalcedonians fled into the Euxine and left their homes to be burnt. The Phoenicians turned back, and finished the subjugation of the Asiatic side by giving the island cities, Proconnesus and Artace, to the flames. Cyzicus had already made terms with the satrap of Dascylium.

So far Herodotus is lucid, although he has not made it clear whether the Phoenicians are the whole or a part of the Persian fleet. Now he surprises us with the information that the Thracian Chersonese had not been completely conquered. The Phoenicians return to it and subdue the cities which they had not ravaged before. Again the conquest is incomplete. They did not take Cardia on the north coast.

It was from Cardia that Miltiades son of Cimon, the Athenian prince of the Chersonese, fled with five triremes on the news that the Phoenicians were at Tenedos. He encountered them at the western extremity of the peninsula, and narrowly escaped to Imbros, losing one ship captured with his son Metiochus. The Phoenicians were obviously neither advancing up the Hellespont nor returning to the south, but making for the outer shores of the Chersonese. Why then had they put back to Tenedos? and why was Cardia omitted? Is not the explanation this—that Herodotus has combined into one year operations which belong to two? The Phoenicians did not take Cardia on their first cam­paign because it was defended by Miltiades, who was fighting for his neck and held out to the last. They retired southwards from the Hellespont to winter quarters, but returned the next spring (492) to finish the job in preparation for the advance of Mardonius.

The recovery of the Hellespont had cleared the way for the reconquest of the Thracian and Macedonian province. Darius committed this task to Mardonius son of Gobryas, who had perhaps distinguished himself in the war at the siege of Lindus and had now been married to one of his daughters. He put him in supreme command not only of the forces already at the front, but also of fresh levies naval and military. From Cilicia Mardonius sailed in the spring of 492 to Ionia, where he occupied himself in disarming disaffection by setting up democracies instead of tyrants in the cities, while his troops journeyed by land to the Hellespont. When all were assembled, he put his army across the straits in his ships, and marched (past Cardia) through Thrace into Macedonia. Nowhere did he encounter any serious resistance. The Thasians surrendered to the fleet without a blow, the Macedonians tamely submitted. Two misadventures, however, marred the triumphal progress. A storm caught the fleet doubling the promontory of Mount Athos, and wrecked part of it. The Thracian Brygi (Phrygians) attacked the camp under cover of night, and succeeded in inflicting some loss and wounding Mardonius himself. But these incidents are evidently much exaggerated. The Greeks afterwards imputed to Mardonius the intention of reaching Athens and Eretria, or even wider designs. Xerxes a dozen years later followed the same route and his march suggested the same objective. But it is clear that Mardonius aimed at no more than he achieved, the reconquest of Thrace and Macedonia. Having first enlarged his scope, and probably his forces, the Greek version reproduced by Herodotus had then to magnify his disasters. He had crossed the Hellespont too late in the year for an invasion of Greece, for which there is no hint of any preparation. He had made the most of his time. It was the attainment of his goal at the close of the campaign, not defeat or failure, that turned him back to Asia. Herodotus elsewhere represents him as thoroughly complacent with his performance, and acknowledges his success.

Meanwhile Miltiades came to Athens, a fugitive from his Thracian principality before the king’s fleet; he cannot have awaited in Imbros the advance of Mardonius from the Hellespont. His arrival at Athens precipitated a political crisis.

A declared and inveterate enemy to Darius, twice hunted from his dominion in the Chersonese, the conqueror of Lemnos, a patrician of the highest lineage, and kinsman (one may infer) to Isagoras the rival of Cleisthenes, he was just the man whom the Opposition wanted. His rank, connections, and traditions approved him to the nobility. To the merchants and artisans, in close touch with the cities of Ionia (whence some perhaps were immigrants) and deeply interested in Athenian trade and enterprise in the Aegean, his imperial record was a strong recommendation. He was acclaimed the champion of the malcontents against the government and came forward as a candidate for the office of General. It was a test election to decide momentous issues. Was Athens to beg peace and pardon from the king and receive back Hippias, or was she to confront his anger with what forces she could muster? The question was complicated by considerations of domestic policy. A war against Persia would be madness without Spartan assistance. But the Alcmaeonidae had good reason to apprehend what might be the price eventually to be paid for an alliance with Sparta—their own expulsion and the repeal of their new Constitution. Better come to terms with Hippias, restore the monarchy, and by sacrifice of the form preserve the substance of the democracy. The Agrarians, the old followers of Peisistratus, who had gained most by the constitutional developments of the past century and were little concerned for trade or expansion abroad, were probably solid in support of the government. On the other side, the Eupatrids or Patricians would welcome the Spartan alliance as a check to the progress of the Demos or an instrument of reaction. The Parali, the commercial and industrial class, held the balance. Their normal temper was no doubt democratic, but they were now incensed at the betrayal of the Ionians and in revolt against their Alcmaeonid leaders. Miltiades carried his election in his own tribe, the Oeneis, and presumably secured a majority on the board of generals.

But the Alcmaeonid faction had one more card to play. ‘His enemies’, Herodotus tells, ‘brought Miltiades before a court of law and prosecuted him for his Tyranny in the Chersonese’. It is difficult to see how despotism in the Chersonese over the Thracian Dolonci could have been a criminal offence in Attic law. It was surely a compliment to Athens that a barbarous people should have accepted one of her citizens for its prince. Miltiades’ antagonism to Hippias refutes the suggestion that his reign could have been represented as a survival of the Peisistratid Tyranny. The elder Miltiades, it is true, had taken with him to the Chersonese Athenians who volunteered to accompany him. But it is incredible that their settlement in his dominion under his patronage and protection could have furnished a capital charge against his nephew half a century later. The proceedings will become intelligible if we may suppose that Herodotus has misunderstood the case, and, betrayed by his memory and by a literary temptation (the double escape), has imported the death penalty from the second trial of Miltiades. On this first occasion his enemies did not prosecute Miltiades, but essayed to disqualify him for office at his examination before admission and annul his election. Tyranny in the Chersonese would be a perfectly relevant objection. Miltiades (like Therainenes later), was a danger to the constitution. He had been a tyrant abroad, and would presumably become a tyrant at home. This interpretation of the proceedings is confirmed by the close connection implied by Herodotus between the acquittal and the appointment of Miltiades. At all events Miltiades won both his election and his case. The votes had decided on war with Persia, alliance with Sparta, and Miltiades as protagonist of Athens.

Herodotus implies that the election and acquittal of Miltiades came almost immediately after his arrival at Athens, and that the battle of Marathon followed during the year of office for which he was then elected. The implication is incompatible with his formal chronology. The advance of Mardonius from the Hellespont marks the latest date possible on any theory for the flight of Miltiades from Imbros, and Herodotus interposes a complete year between the year of Mardonius’ campaign and the year of the invasion of Attica. But as a general rule the historical contents of his narratives are a more trustworthy guide than the chronological scheme into which he tries to adjust them, and in particular this intrusive year is altogether suspect. He assigns to it three transactions—a ‘second’ surrender of Thasos to the Persians; a mission of heralds from Darius to Greece to demand earth and water; and a charge of ‘Medism’ brought against the Aeginetans, which had far-reaching consequences for Sparta and Athens. The attribution of each one of these items to that year excites the gravest doubts. Moreover Herodotus himself entirely obliterates that year in a later passage where he refers Mardonius’ expedition to the year before the invasion of Attica. The best argument for retaining the year, that it is required in order to build a new fleet after the wreck at Mount Athos, is heavily discounted by the admitted exaggeration of the disaster in Herodotus’ story, and the probably limited scale and com­paratively late start of the next year’s expedition. The ‘curiously explicit chronology’ which has been noted in ‘the Annals of the Triennium’ (493—2—1 bc) seems to betray an uneasy conscience in the annalist, and suggests that Herodotus, finding himself approaching the battle of Marathon with his narrative a year in arrear of his schematic chronology, and thinking that he has a year too many in hand, is driven to mete out his historical material to cover the gap. If Miltiades fled to Athens on the advance of Mardonius, and Mardonius reconquered Thrace in the year before the invasion of Attica, then Herodotus is entirely accurate in placing the election of Miltiades. But if the year between the two expeditions drops out, is the campaign of Mardonius to come down a year, or the campaign of Marathon to go up? The usually accepted date of the battle of Marathon is 490 bc. But Herodotus, Thucydides, and the Aristotelian Constitution of Athens, simply and naturally interpreted, all indicate a date one year earlier, and their consensus is the more cogent because they reach it by different methods. In the account of the Marathon campaign which follows, the battle is put in the year 491 b.c.

II

THE ADVANCE ACROSS THE AEGEAN

Mardonius had recovered the Persian province in Thrace and Macedonia. It remained to complete the suppression of the revolt by the punishment of the Athenians and the Eretrians for their aid to the Ionians. Athens was indeed herself a rebel; and Darius, with Hippias to importune him, needed no attendant to remind him of the Athenians. Naxos too, where the trouble had begun, was still to be subjugated; and, if peace was to be secured in Ionia, the Cyclades must be taught to recognize the Persian supremacy. Neither the authorities, nor the force employed, nor the plan pursued in the campaign now undertaken warrant us in supposing that the king had any aims beyond these or as yet contemplated a conquest of Greece. The route chosen was by sea across the Aegean. The troops required were not too many to be carried on ships, and the fleet could put them straight on to their objectives. No hostile or neutral territory had to be traversed, no unnecessary fighting incurred. Darius dominated the sea.

The winter and spring (492—1 bc) after Mardonius’ return were spent in preparations. The new fleet, or at all events transports, ordered for the expedition picked up the troops mustered in Cilicia, and conveyed them along the coast to Samos. The subsequent operations are so brief, and finish so late in the season, that we may infer that either the start was delayed until towards midsummer, or there was a long stay at Samos, where some of the contingents and most of the naval forces may well have assembled. Mardonius, perhaps disabled by his wound rather than discredited by his campaign, was not appointed general. The king entrusted the command to his nephew Artaphernes, son of the satrap of Sardes, and Datis, a Mede, who was no doubt an experienced officer, possibly his admiral at Lade. On the numbers of the forces there is scarcely any trustworthy evidence. Herodotus puts the fleet at 600 triremes (warships), and twice notices the horse-transports, and implies them in a third passage. The 600 are a stock figure, given too for Lade and the Scythian expedition. In view of the slight resistance to be expected, this figure is highly improbable. The Platonic Menexenus gives 300, a more modest computation, but of dubious authority, and still too large to be acceptable. The transports, horse or other, are not enumerated. The interest which Herodotus shows in the horse-transports seems to indicate that it was a novelty to ship cavalry overseas. For the army he records no number. Later writers assign various figures, from 200,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry (Nepos) to 600,000 men (Justin), all absurd. Perhaps we may estimate the infantry at 25,000, half a Persian Army Corps, which would well fit the history of the campaign. The proper quota of cavalry would be 5000, but so large a number is barely credible. Let us say 1000, and surmise that they really embarked in Ionia. There presumably Hippias also joined, although Thucydides vouches that he had been to the king, and Herodotus is aware of Peisistratidae at Susa. Hippias was himself a powerful reinforcement, not only by his political influence and his intimate knowledge of Attica and Eretria, but also by his skill and experience, bred up (as his name and his brother’s suggest) in the saddle, and familiar (as his story proclaims) with cavalry tactics. Was it he who first proposed to ship the horsemen across the Aegean?

Herodotus does not give any details as to the composition of the forces. His mention of Persians and Sacae at Marathon, forming the centre of the army, admits the inference that the wings were other troops, but the statement itself may be only inference. He observes that Datis, when he sailed from Rhenea, took with him Ionians and Aeolians. The Barbarians had impressed Islanders into their service, but the Aeolians seem to imply that these were contingents (no doubt naval) from Asia, who may have joined at Rheneia. A Phoenician vessel appears incidentally at Myconus on the retirement of the Persians. One may conjecture that the Phoenician fleet which fought at Lade had never quitted the Aegean, but awaited at Samos the arrival of Datis from Cilicia, and formed the sole escort and fighting naval force of the expedition. It may be put at 140 ships.

From Samos the whole fleet sailed out to sea to Naxos. The Naxians took to the hills and abandoned their city to sack. The other southern Cyclades were visited, and a contingent was exacted or enlisted from Paros. Datis then steered for Delos. The Delians fled to Tenos, but he treated their sacred isle with a politic consideration in which we may divine the inspiration of Hippias. He anchored his ships on the opposite shore of Rheneia, and made a munificent offering of incense on the altar of the Delian God. A golden torque preserved in the sanctuary two centuries later was registered as a dedication from Datis. Herodotus reports on the authority of the Delians that the departure of Datis was marked by an earthquake, the first and last in the history of the island. Thucydides throws some doubt on the statement by ascribing the same uniqueness to an earthquake at Delos just before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war.

After leaving Delos the expedition moved forward on its de­liberate course, and made a tour of the northern Cyclades, levying contingents of troops, and taking hostages—an almost excessive precaution, had these Islanders submitted the year before. The summer was far spent when Datis and Artaphernes reached Carystus on the south coast of Euboea. The Carystians refused to give hostages, or furnish forces against their friends and neighbours, Eretria and Athens. The Persians besieged their city and laid waste their territory, until they reduced them to obedience. How long the siege lasted is not recorded, but it was probably very brief.

III

ERETRIA AND MILTIADES’ DECREE

The resistance of Carystus was the first encountered by the invaders. It is here that the active campaign opens, and the serious historical difficulties begin. Let the simple read Herodotus and be content. The critical reader will soon discover in the narrative omissions which can be supplied only by conjecture, obscurities to be illuminated only by imagination, and questions to which no certain answer can be found. He must again and again go beyond and behind the positive evidence. History is always interpretation, and different interpreters will lay stress on different points. There are innumerable theories about the battle of Marathon. Some deal with each particular difficulty separately, and accumulate a dozen disconnected hypotheses to meet them in detail. But the real problem is: what is the simplest single hypothesis which will solve at once the most and most important questions, and best explain the best tradition? ‘One point,’ as a modern critic observes, ‘must be conceded before each and every fresh attempt at a final synthesis; there never has been, and there never can be, a theory which shall reconcile all the elements, even all the plausible elements, in the traditions, and hypotheses of antiquity upon this subject’. The present writer more than twenty years ago published a theory which was perhaps drastic, but had the merits of simplicity and comprehensiveness. That he now puts forward another is due to further experience of Herodotus, deeper insight into his methods, and more sympathetic appreciation of the perplexities of his task. The worst trouble to Herodotus was not the lack of materials, nor the errors or prejudices of his informants, bad as that may have been, but the difficulty of piecing the bits together, how to string or twine the loose strands and ends of yarn into a continuous narrative, in fact the sequences and synchronisms of his history; and it is here first and foremost that his mistakes are to be sought. The following reconstruction substitutes, for the suggestion that an essential factor in the story has been suppressed by a tacit conspiracy of Herodotus’ sources, the hypothesis of a maladjustment of the chronology of the several parts.

The attack on Carystus, an inoffensive Dryopian city, may seem to have been a waste of time. The motive is to be found in the geographical position of the little town and its fine bay, which offered easy communication with Asia and a convenient base at once against Attica and Eretria. The Athenians and Eretrians must have had ample notice of the enemy’s outset and his progress across the Aegean, and have taken their measures for defence. The support of the Spartans had no doubt been promised, and the allies had probably arranged plans not only for the mobilization but also for a concentration of their forces to oppose the invaders. But even when the hostile fleet lay at Carystus, it was still quite uncertain where the blow might fall, and this uncertainty must have paralyzed and disconcerted their schemes. The Persian generals knew their business.

Not until the enemy’s ships began to move up the Euboean channel and passed the bay of Marathon, was his first objective revealed. Eretria in her prime could parade 3000 hoplites and 600 horse, but of what avail were they to take the field against the Persian host ? So her citizens, rejecting pusillanimous counsels of flight to the hills or surrender, rested their salvation on their strong walls and the speedy help of their allies. An urgent message called the Athenians to the rescue. They responded to the call, but they never came; and Herodotus at this critical juncture deviates into an apology devised to excuse this apparent desertion, which at a later day, when the victory of Marathon, stark, solitary, and imposing, dwarfed all other features of the situation, appeared flagrant and inexplicable. The Athenians did vote to go to the aid of their allies—that fact was admitted, and credited to them —but they did also, it is pretended, give them substantial assistance, for they assigned (or at all events left) to them for their defence the Athenian settlers at the neighbouring Chalcis. Why these colonists did not join the Eretrians, but saved themselves by way of Oropus, is explained by the irresolute and treacherous attitude of the Eretrians themselves, which rendered their defence hopeless and was revealed to the Athenians by a leading citizen.

Herodotus’ whole elaborate and controversial exculpation conveys the impression of afterthought. Calumniators of Athens in a later generation can hardly have missed the point that she did eventually profit by the destruction of Miletus and Eretria. They may have charged her with a deliberate sacrifice of her allies for her own advantage. Moreover, the number 4000 for the Chalcidian settlers, whether a calculation from the Periclean cleruchy or from the 20 triremes at Artemisium, points to a date long after the Persian War. But incidentally one hint emerges which may enlighten us on the operations of 491 bc. The settlers escaped to Oropus. How? The Athenians had resolved to go to the help of the Eretrians. How were they to get across to Euboea? We hear nothing of the Athenian fleet, but is it not more than probable that it had been already sent in advance to Oropus (or Chalcis) in order to keep up communications between the allies and be ready to ferry the Athenians to Euboea, or the Eretrians to Attica, as the enemy’s attack might direct?

Pursuing the apology Herodotus loses sight of the Athenian response to the appeal. It is to be recovered in ‘the decree of Miltiades.’ This resolution was extant in the fourth century bc and Plutarch can still date it to the Prytany of the Tribe Aeantis. Demosthenes describes how Aeschines exploited it to stimulate the patriotic pride of the Athenian people. The Scholiasts on the passage can tell no more of the purport of the decree than might be inferred from such casual references as the above, and from current notions of the situation on the eve of the battle of Marathon. But fortunately Aristotle in his Rhetoric quotes, not indeed the decree itself, but an allusion to it which throws a flood of light upon it, and puts it in its true setting. ‘Cephisodotus once’, he tells us, ‘impelling the Athenians to Euboea, said that they must do Miltiades’ decree and find their commissariat there.’ Cephisodotus needs no introduction, and the occasion can be determined beyond all doubt. The emergency which evoked the apt reference of Cephisodotus must have been the expedition to Euboea im­provised in the year 357/6 bc. It is narrated by Diodorus, is often mentioned by Demosthenes and Aeschines, and has been further elucidated by two important inscriptions. Its main purpose was to save Eretria from the Thebans. In this context the obvious and almost irresistible conclusion, which gives Cephisodotus his real point, is that to save Eretria was to effect or execute Miltiades’ decree, that the object of the decree was to rescue Eretria. Cephisodotus in fact quoted the precedent of Miltiades’ decree because it was entirely appropriate and applicable to the occasion; he de­manded the same instant action to rescue the same Eretria. It is characteristic for the evolution of the story of Marathon that whereas Herodotus has to excuse the loss of Eretria, and omits the decree intended to save it, the orators of the fourth century can parade that resolution as a signal proof of promptitude and dash.

It was probably on the 5th of the lunar month (corresponding to the Julian 10th of September 491 bc) that the Persian general Artaphernes disembarked the troops of his division and the whole of the cavalry at Tamynae and other places east of Eretria. The Eretrian appeal would be received at Athens on the same day, and Miltiades’ decree in response to it be passed on the next, the 6th. The Athenian army was of course already mobilized. The generals dispatched a courier, Philippides (or, less probably, Pheidippides), to acquaint their Spartan allies of their plans, and to solicit their support. Another messenger must have been sent to summon the Plataeans. Philippides, starting from Athens on the evening of the 6th, or, as the Greeks (whose day began at sunset) would reckon, with the first hour of the 7th, achieved a memorable feat in reaching Sparta in 48 hours. The distance (if Argos be avoided) is, as closely as can be computed on modern maps, about 134 miles, or in practice say nearly 150; but there is no cogent reason to discredit the record, and we cannot be sure that Philippides did not get a lift on boat, horse, or cart, over part of the way. He delivered his message to the government on the 9th of the month, but not in the eloquent words put into his mouth by Herodotus—‘Lacedaemonians, the Athenians beg you to come to their aid and not let a city oldest in Greece be reduced to servitude by Barbarous men; for already Eretria has been enslaved and Hellas has lost no mean city’—that appeal is obviously literature not authentic history, Herodotus not the generals’ dispatch. Unfortunately the moon had now passed her first quarter, and the month was (in all probability) that of the Carneian festival, which culminated at the full moon. The Spartans did not venture to violate the sacred ordinance which forbade them to go forth to war before the moon was full. Possibly the objection was pressed by the party opposed to Cleomenes, and indicates a conflict of policy.

IV

THE ARMIES AT MARATHON

The Athenian army marched out from Athens no doubt on the morning after Miltiades’ decree had been passed. It consisted entirely of infantry, for Athens had as yet no regular cavalry corps. Herodotus tells us nothing of its number. Later writers— Pompeius Trogus in Justin, Cornelius Nepos, Plutarch—give 10,000 or 9,000; to which are to be added at Marathon the Plataeans, whom they reckon at 1000. One may assume that their authority (Ephorus) had no precise information, but estimated each of the ten Athenian tribal regiments at 1000, and the Plataeans at 1000; then more suo suppressed his calculation, and spoke of 10,000 at Marathon, without making it clear whether he referred to the Athenian or the whole allied army. The figures are of course to be interpreted to mean only the fully equipped men at arms (hoplites), but a tomb shown to Pausanias attests a supplement of light-armed attendants. They would be unusual in an Athenian force, at all events in Thucydides’ time, but may indicate the urgency of this occasion. The thousand Plataeans may be questioned, for at the battle a dozen years later at their gates, where they were of course present to the last man, they muster on Herodotus’ list only 600; but a fair case can be made out for allowing them 1000, or at least 900, at that battle. The myriad of Athenian hoplites, however conjectural, is plausible enough. Athens sent 8000 to the battle of Plataea, when her much larger fleet was on active service.

Herodotus incidentally recognizes the tribal regiments, but does not distribute the ten generals to them, and falls into vague­ness and anachronism over the office of the Polemarch and his relation to the generals. Here the corrections offered by Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens may be allowed, although it may be doubted whether they are based on any positive evidence. The Polemarch was still elected, not (as Herodotus has it) appointed by lot, and was still the constitutional commander-in-chief of the whole army. The ten generals commanded each his own tribe. Herodotus is no doubt right in representing them as forming collectively a staff or council of war, and as such they may have encroached upon, or practically superseded, the authority of the Polemarch. But that is not all. Herodotus may not have intended to invest Miltiades with an official superiority or primacy over his colleagues, such as later statesmen enjoyed, although his language in two passages may suggest it to scholars interested in that constitutional development. At all events, if he did, the position attributed to Miltiades would be incompatible with the Polemarch’s supremacy, just admitted, and would have to be rejected. But he certainly does postulate a daily rotating presidency in the college of generals. This diurnal precedence is flatly inconsistent with the annual primacy of one general, but is also difficult to reconcile with the supreme command of the Polemarch. No wonder that critics have disputed the representation of Herodotus, and supposed that this presidency, which appears to carry with it the control of the army, has been transported into the story of Marathon from the practice of a later time.

Their argument would be strengthened, if it could be shown that the practice was usual in the Athenian army of the Periclean age. The fact, or probability, that the battle fought on Miltiades’ day followed ten days after the decree carried by Miltiades, may be thought to reveal the source of error; but it may also be quoted in support of Herodotus. A probable solution may be found in the suggestion that Herodotus has preserved a trace of a tran­sitional stage in the evolution of the military command. The Polemarchy, since the institution of the generals, had sunk into a titular or honorary dignity. The college of generals had usurped the real direction of military affairs. But, inasmuch as the college was not in perpetual session, it was soon found advisable, we may suppose, to entrust the control of the army and the responsibility for its operations to one of the generals, each day by day in turn. The action of the presiding general would be nominally subject to the sanction of the Polemarch, more effectively to that of his colleagues, but in practice he would enjoy a wide discretion and a largely free hand. The system was not, to be sure, efficient for war; but it might serve for administration in peace-time, and it did not last long. If Miltiades’ colleagues tendered their days to him, their offer was a criticism on present usage and an anticipation of future reform.

It was, of course, the Polemarch himself, Callimachus of Aphidna, who led the march out from the city. The object was to save Eretria, and we must assume that the Athenians took the shortest and easiest route for Chaicis, by Decelea and Oropus. (Chalcis was probably to be the point of crossing, for the Athenian fleet could hold the Euripus against Artaphernes’ squadron, which would by the 7th be already in possession of the channel between Oropus and Eretria.) But the column had not yet quitted the plain of the Cephisus, when news reached the Polemarch which arrested its northward march and diverted it at full speed to the east, along the hill roads that skirt the foot of Mount Pentelicus, towards Marathon. The Persian generals, doubtless well informed from Eretria as well as from Athens, had anticipated the movement to rescue Eretria, and countered it by a thrust on the right flank, which was designed to intercept it and keep the Athenian army busy in Attica. Datis, having wound up the settlement of Carystus, and guided by Hippias, was landing his division at Marathon.

The Athenian commander instantly wheeled to the right, and gained the valley of Vrana, south of the hill Kotroni, which stands between the modern villages of Marathona and Vrana. The valley is an inlet of the seaboard plain of Marathon running up straight westwards between Kotroni and Agrieliki, a high bastion of Mount Pentelicus, to Vrana at its head. North of Vrana the tribu­tary valley of Avlona joins it, coming down at the back or land­ward side of Kotroni from the low ridge which divides the valleys of Vrana and of Marathona. Several roads or tracks converge on this neighbourhood from the west—two through Stamata, one to the north of these through Spata, and one through the ancient Icaria. They are not such as a general would select for his communications and supply, but the Athenians were not encumbered with baggage or commissariat, and in the emergency had no choice. On the other hand, fortune or skill had led them into an excellent strategical position. The precise site of their camp or headquarters would be fixed, if we could determine the precinct of Heracles, where Herodotus places it. The enclosure known as ‘the sheepfold of the old lady’ at the head of the valley of Avlona has been suggested, but is rather remote and waterless and is not certified by any epigraphical or archaeological evidence. The Athenian army may have mustered there on its first arrival, but its real camping ground must be sought lower down near Vrana and its little burn. No other possible site so well suits Pindar’s description of the sanctuary ‘in Marathon’s recess.’ The valley of Vrana, about a mile wide at its mouth, offered a position which was defended on both sides by impassable rocky slopes, sufficiently covered or guarded the outlets from the plain towards the west, and flanked the main road to Athens between Pentelicus and the sea.

The Persians, one gathers from Herodotus, fought in the subsequent battle with their backs to the sea, and pursued the Athenian centre ‘inland,’ an expression which would naturally indicate up the valley, towards its encampment and its exits of escape. Their position would appear to have faced the mouth of the valley, and to have extended from the little marsh of Vrexisa on the left to the Charadra, or brook of Marathona, on the right, which perhaps reached the sea about half-a-mile to the south­west of its present issue. At about the middle of this position, and about a mile from the mouth of the valley and half-a-mile from the shore of the bay, stands the mound, which both Pausanias and the archaeological results of excavation identify with the tomb of the Athenian dead. It has been conjectured that, for the sake of a convenient supply of water and for security, the Persians were encamped along the left bank of the Charadra, between that rivulet and the great marsh which occupies the north-east corner of the plain. However that may be, their station in the battle appears to be clearly established. Both the Persian position and the Athenian, let it be observed, equally commanded in flank the main road southwards towards Athens, and interdicted the use of that road to the enemy.

Herodotus gives no estimate of the Persian force at Marathon, and the figures furnished by later writers are worthless. If we may suppose that the total infantry shipped from Asia was 25,000, and that 10,000 of them, with the whole of the cavalry, were in Euboea—surely enough to deal with Eretria—Datis would have 15,000 infantry at Marathon. Herodotus puts the Persian dead at 6400. On the assumption that the army of Datis fought in three approximately equal divisions, and the centre was practically annihilated, whereas the two wings were let off lightly, these numbers agree sufficiently well.

If the Athenians reached Marathon on the 7th of the lunar month and the battle was fought on the 16th, as appears from the movements of Philippides and the Spartans, the armies must have confronted one another for eight days without an engagement. Datis had no motive to attack the enemy in their strong position. He had attained his object. The Athenians had been diverted to Marathon, and could not withdraw except by laying open the road to Athens, or defeating him on his own ground. Eretria, deprived of their succour, must fall in a few days, and its fall would free Artaphernes to transfer his forces to Phalerum. Athens, denuded of her defenders and divided between the partisans of Hippias and Miltiades, a Persian and a Spartan alliance, the democratic constitution and the ancien regime would offer little or no resistance. If the Athenian commander could extricate his army without fighting, and get back to the city before the Persians, yet the moral effect of the retreat would decide the issue in favour of Hippias, who of course knew that fact as well as Miltiades. It was, however, desirable to make sure that the Athenians should not slip away to molest the landing at Phalerum, and Datis had doubtless occupied the position opposite to the valley of Vrana, if it was not indeed his original position, before the critical day.

The Athenian generals on their part had to think twice before attacking the superior force opposed to them. The risk gave them pause, and the enemy’s archers inspired dread. The arrival of the Plataeans, probably a couple of days after the Athenians, brought little to redress the disparity. It vzas obviously prudent to await the help of the Spartans, and some, to whom the foreign foe seemed more formidable than the domestic, might advise a retirement to the shelter of the city walls, until they should appear. At all events the decision could be deferred so long as Eretria held out and detained Artaphernes.

The Eretrians meanwhile were making a stout defence. For six days they repulsed all assaults. On the seventh, or rather, probably, on what we should call the night of the sixth, two prominent citizens treacherously admitted the enemy. The city was given to fire and pillage, the Eretrians were embarked for transportation to Asia. Hippias, who had presumably come from Marathon to assist in the intrigues and triumphs, present and prospective, of Artaphernes, took charge of the prisoners. He sailed with them, apparently in advance of the armament, to Aeglea, a small island off the Euboean coast opposite Styra, and deposited them there to be called for at leisure.

The first assault on Eretria may be dated to the 6th of the lunar month, and the surrender accordingly to the night of the nth. The fall of the city would be known to the Athenian generals at Marathon within a few hours. Their decision could no longer be delayed. The momentous Council of War at which Miltiades pressed his proposal to fight at Marathon, and his appeal to the Polemarch, are to be placed on the morning of the 12th. The story, as told by Herodotus, may have been elaborated. The generals, it is said, were divided on the question whether to join battle or not. Five were against Miltiades, and four with him. He went to the Polemarch, made a powerful appeal to him, and secured his vote, which settled the matter. Thereupon his four colleagues who had supported him gave up their days to Miltiades. He accepted them, but nevertheless waited for his own day before delivering his attack. There are obvious difficulties in this account. The Polemarch is not present at the meeting. He seems to be called in as an external authority, independent or superior, to solve a deadlock; yet the language of Herodotus seems to describe him as an ordinary member of the Council. But let that pass— Herodotus has never faced that problem, and he has a confidential communication to put into the mouth of Miltiades for the Polemarch’s private ear. Further, the story seems to imply that the four generals who voted for Miltiades’ motion are the next four on the rota for the ‘Presidency’—a singular coincidence. Finally, Miltiades after all his urgency does not use the four days resigned to him, but waits for his own. The simplest explanation is as follows. Miltiades was ‘President’ on the 6th of the month, when he carried his decree in the Assembly at Athens. During the next five days the question of fighting at Marathon did not become acute, because Eretria was holding out. On the 12th the news of the fall of Eretria made it urgent. It was decided, possibly by the odd vote or intervention of the Polemarch, but possibly even unanimously with his concurrence or sanction, to engage battle and to give Miltiades a free hand. All the other generals surrendered their days to him, but the battle did not come at once on the 12th, nor on the next three days, but on the 16th. He was in authority for four days without fighting, and then fought on his own day. The decision was not to fight immediately, but to fight before returning to Athens. As long as Artaphernes stayed at Eretria, the Athenians could still wait for the Spartans. As soon as he moved southwards, they must drive the Persians at Marathon into the sea in order to get back to Athens to meet him. Herodotus tells us that the Persians remained at Eretria for several days after its surrender. It was the sailing of the Persian ships from Eretria that determined the day of the battle. That it happened to be also the day of Miltiades’ own ‘Presidency’ was accidental.

V

THE BATTLE AND AFTER

It was probably on the 21st of September, 491 bc, which may be equated with the 16th of Boedromion according to the later reformed or ‘Metonic’ calendar, and more speculatively with the 11th of Thargelion on the archaic Attic calendar, that the Athenian commander, be he the Polemarch Callimachus or the general of the day Miltiades, drew out his army to attack. News had arrived that Artaphernes was moving, and no doubt that his cavalry was embarked, for either Marathon or Phalerum. At Marathon the cavalry would heavily weight the scale against the Athenians, at Phalerum it could make a dash for Athens, or rout the Spartans, if it met them on the plain, as the Thessalian horsemen of Cineas had broken the hoplites of Anchimolius. The critical moment had come; the Athenians must strike instantly, now or never.

From Herodotus and Plutarch one may perhaps reconstruct the manoeuvre of their deployment. The valley of Vrana is about a mile long and about a mile wide at its mouth. About a mile in front of its mouth stands the Tumulus, which probably marks approximately the centre of the Persian front, where fell most of the Athenian dead. We may assume that the tribe Aeantis led the van out from the Athenian encampment. It was the tribe of the Polemarch himself, and was fighting on its own territory, and in its own ‘Prytany.’ After the Aeantis followed the other tribal regiments, presumably in their regular official order—the natural interpretation of Herodotus’ words, although they are ambiguous. The deployment into line was doubtless designed to be made at the mouth of the valley, where the rocky slopes on either side would protect the two flanks. But an army of, say, 10,000 men in column of eights would occupy about a mile in length. The rear of the column would be as far behind the point of deployment as the enemy’s front in advance of that point. That disposition would be a tactical blunder. It was obviously better to march down the middle of the valley in two parallel columns, and wheel them outwards, right and left, into line. Let us suppose that the Pole­march divided the column into two, and himself led the right column, consisting of the Aeantis and the first four tribes (Erechtheis, Aegeis, Pandionis, Leontis), while the Plataean commander, Aeimnestus (or Arimnestus), led the left column, con­sisting of his own contingent and the other five tribes (Acamantis, Oeneis, Cecropis, Hippothontis, Antiochis). Then on wheeling into line the Aeantis would form the extreme right, as Aeschylus’ elegy vouches; the Plataeans would form the extreme left, as Herodotus describes; and the two rearmost tribes, the Leontis and the Antiochis, would find themselves side by side in the centre, as Plutarch indicates. It is true that Herodotus, assigning to the Polemarch the post of honour on the right, places all the tribes in the line of battle from right to left in their customary order. But his unnatural divorce of the Polemarch from his tribe, and the testimony of Aeschylus, prove that he is speaking at random, and may be ascribing to the tribes in line an order which applied only to their stations at the camp before the march began. The sequel entirely confirms the above reconstruction. There happened exactly what might be expected from such a manoeuvre over unsurveyed ground. The line in close order of course occupied less space than the column. The leaders were anxious to secure the protection of the walls of the valley on their flank, and overshot their proper distances. A gap opened in the centre of the line. The two middle tribes were therefore com­pelled to extend into (say) four deep instead of eight deep.

The Persians on their part were of course prepared for the attack. The meanest intelligence could have anticipated it under the circumstances, and Datis was no fool. The Persian front, drawn between the Little Marsh on its left and the nearest bed of the Charadra on its right, would occupy about the same space as the Greek. If Datis had, as we have supposed, 15,000 men on the field, he would presumably form them ten deep, a formation quite appropriate to an army organized, like the Persian, on a decimal system.

The hostile armies now confronted one another in battle array. The Athenian commander had no time to waste, but must attack at once. He could trust his panoplied infantry to rout the enemy in equal combat at close quarters. But he had two difficulties to meet. In the first place the Persian archers would shower arrows upon his men as soon as they got within range, and might disintegrate their phalanx. His object, therefore, was to shorten the passage through the zone of danger, and traverse the last two hundred yards, when his troops came within bowshot, at the double. Herodotus, indeed, understood that the Athenians doubled over the whole mile’s interval between the two armies. But that famous charge, if barely possible, would at least be senseless, and is to be regarded as a misapprehension. The second danger was the weakness of the Athenian centre, which was also opposed to the best troops of the enemy. Herodotus accounts for the slender formation of the centre by the need of extending the smaller force to equal the larger’s front. Another reason was suggested above, but it comes to much the same thing, for the Athenian position was about as long as the Persian. No doubt it is tempting to conjecture a deeper design in the distribution, a strategical purpose to draw the enemy to his ruin. But this interpretation is over-subtle. We can hardly impute so hazardous a plan to a general in command of a half-trained Greek militia. The attenuated centre was the unwelcome result of a miscalculation rather than a deliberate stratagem. The genius of the commander really shows itself in turning the miscarriage into an opportunity of victory.

As soon as the front was formed and the sacrifices proved favourable the Athenians and Plataeans advanced. Rushing in through the arrows they closed with the enemy, and there ensued a long and obstinate struggle. At last the Persians and Sacae broke the thin line of the Athenian centre and pursued it inland, presumably up the valley towards its camp. But the Greek right and left routed the Persian wings. Letting the fugitives flee to their ships, the victorious Athenians and Plataeans turned upon the victorious Persians, who had to run the gauntlet between them, and defeated them. They chased them into the sea, and essayed to haul back and burn their ships. The bulk of Datis’ army made good its escape, and only seven ships were taken. But the victory was complete. The Persians were swept out of Attica, with the loss of about 6400 dead. Herodotus notices no prisoners, and Plutarch’s casual mention of them hardly guarantees any. Only 192 Athenian citizens fell, but they included the gallant Polemarch, Callimachus; Stesiiaus, one of the generals; and Cyne- girus, the brother of Aeschylus, whose hand, grasping the stern of a ship, was severed by an axe. The losses of the Plataeans, and among the ‘servants,’ who probably defended the camp against the Persian centre, are not recorded, but Pausanias was shown their common grave. One would like to know who were these ‘slaves,’ deemed worthy of burial with the freemen of Plataea.

The story of Marathon, as has been shrewdly observed, would hardly be authentic without some touches of the supernatural. But the exaggerations of the legend took a matter-of-fact and pedestrian turn—numbers and persons, times and distances. The supernatural is abnormally scanty and credible. The Athenian people so completely appropriated the victory that little was left to the gods. The sudden blindness and last vision of Epizelus, who beheld a monstrous bearded man-at-arms smite down his neighbour and saw no more, is not beyond the possible. The mysterious ploughman, who laid about him so effectively with his share, only afterwards received the name or dignity of the hero Echetlus. The presence of the eponymous hero Marathon, of Theseus, Athena, and Heracles, was a convention as much artistic as spiritual, which was canonized or originated by the famous picture of the battle by Micon or Panaenus in the Painted Portico at Athens. Whether the artist, when he represented the barbarians butting headlong into the marsh in their flight, preserved a genuine tradition or was merely making the best pictorial use of his topographical data; which marsh he may have intended; whether the marsh is not a mistake of the later critics for the sea—these are idle questions.

The battle from first to last was a brief affair, a morning’s work before luncheon. The ‘long time’ of conflict described by Herodotus applies only to the hand-to-hand fighting, and must be interpreted according to the context. It is to be measured in minutes, not in hours. The vanguard of Artaphernes’ fleet may have passed the headland of Cynosura by noon and already met the retreating vessels of Datis. At this juncture, ‘when the Persians were already aboard their ships,’ somebody signalled to them with a shield, presumably from some conspicuous height overlooking the bay. Whereupon they incontinently made off in the direction of Cape Sunium, intending to get to Athens before the Athenian army.

It is clear that the Athenian public connected the signal with the movement of the fleet. It is surely a gratuitous perversity to invent pretexts for dissociating the two. On the other hand, the popular version may have read into the signal more than a shield could convey. The expressions of Herodotus, when he first mentions the incident, waver between two inconsistent interpretations—first, that the signal originally suggested the plan, which would therefore be a happy thought to retrieve the defeat at Marathon; second, that the signal was part of a preconcerted plot. The second is of course the only possible meaning. Whoever may have proposed the very obvious scheme of sending a force round Sunium to seize Athens in the absence of her defenders, a contingency which must have preoccupied the mind of every responsible person concerned in the campaign for at least a week past, the shield was no doubt the index of organized cooperation between the Persians and the friends of Hippias in the city. But further, was it an invitation or a response? did it mean, ‘We are ready, Come,’ or rather ‘We note your coming, and shall be ready’? At all events, on the general interpretation here adopted of the campaign, the signal was addressed primarily, not to the retiring defeated Datis, but to the advancing victorious Artaphernes. It came too late because Artaphernes had come too late. Thanks to Miltiades and Callimachus, he was bound to be too late, whenever he came. But there was still a bare hope that the Athenians would rest too long at Marathon, and let their city go by default.

The Athenians subsequently imputed the signal, and the plot which it revealed, to the Alcmaeonidae. The charge was more than probably just, although the proofs of it are not likely to have emerged at the time, for the Alcmaeonidae remained strong enough to take their revenge on Miltiades, and their leaders were not ostracized for several years. Herodotus gives us what we may assume to be their own defence, which had perhaps figured in the courts or in public debates. The burden of the plea is that the Alcmaeonidae were ever anti-tyrannic, and that their position at Athens was so high that they had nothing to gain, but everything to lose, by compounding with Hippias and the Barbarian. Neither of these hardy assertions will bear the slightest scrutiny. The Athenians knew their Alcmaeonidae, and readily believed the accusation which Herodotus treats as incredible. Nobody else than the Alcmaeonidae seems ever to have been held responsible for the signal, and the fact that Herodotus so long afterwards has still to defend them tells against them. The action ascribed to them agrees very well with its context, the political situation and position of parties at the moment, the attitude of the Alcmaeonidae in the recent past and in the subsequent future, the warning to Callimachus put by Herodotus into the mouth of Miltiades and the reticent allusion’ by Pindar in his Pythian ode for Megacles to the odium under which he lay. Their conduct, however short­sighted and reprehensible in the light of later history and in the broader view of Hellenic or even Athenian interests, was not in­excusable on the narrow ground of domestic politics, and neither Pericles nor even Themistocles could have afforded to reprobate it without reserve.

Herodotus duly notes that the Barbarians on quitting Marathon picked up the Eretrian prisoners from the island Aeglea. They transported them to Susa; and Darius planted them not far away at a place Ardericca near a famous oil well, where they still remained, Herodotus adds, and still spoke Greek. He does not tell their number, but it is not likely that it was more than a few hundreds. Artaphernes might have detached a score of ships to embark them without delaying his course. But it is more pro­bable, and indicated by Herodotus (although the point cannot be pressed), that they were taken off by the squadron of Datis, which now became a mere rearguard.

 The Athenian generals had no time to lose. The Persian fleet would be arriving off Phalerum on the morning after the battle. Plutarch is doubtless right in putting the march back to Athens on the same day as the battle, and Herodotus implies as much. The army marched from the precinct of Heracles at Marathon to the precinct of Heracles in Cynosarges, a coincidence which appeals to Herodotus. The situation of Cynosarges is not determined. It is usually placed to the east of Athens under Lycabettus, but the references in Herodotus distinctly point to the south or south-west of the city. After a battle it was a long tramp, even by the easier road now open, but the battle had been a victory, the troops would be in good heart, and the need was urgent.

The Persians showed themselves off Phalerum, where, if any­where, they might look for a welcome from their Alcmaeonid partisans. But no signal invited them to land. Not only was the Athenian army in position to defend the city, but the victory of Marathon had destroyed all hope of a revolution in favour of Hippias. The game was up. They put about, and steered their course for Asia.

On the evening of the same day the Spartans, or their vanguard, two thousand strong, reached Attica. The rapidity of their march is remarkable, and the statement that they arrived in three days has been doubted. But just as historians have exaggerated by assuming that they reached not only Attica, but Athens, so Herodotus (or his informant) may have exaggerated by assuming that they started from Sparta. It would be characteristic of the Spartans, if the force was already mustered on the Laconian frontier before the full moon. The distance from frontier to frontier, by a route which avoids Argos, may be about 108 miles. Thirty-six miles a day is hard marching, but not unparalleled, and the arms and accoutrements might be carried by helots or on waggons. Plato states positively that the Spartans arrived on the day after the battle, but does not say where. Presumably he means at Athens, but in Attica might be enough for his purpose. That they arrived very soon after the battle is indicated by their visit to the field, where they viewed the Persian dead still unburied. Having paid to the Athenians a doubtless very gratify­ing tribute of praise for their achievement, they set out homewards.

Looking back on the little campaign we must acknowledge the skilful strategy of the generals of Darius. The attack on Eretria drew the Athenians out. The descent on Marathon arrested them, and pinned them there. The movement to occupy Athens in their absence was well conceived. The initiative remained throughout with the Persians. The one miscalculation was that the Asiatic troops could withstand the Greek charge; and even so, the battle might have had a different issue, if Datis had been able to restrain his successful centre. On the other side, the Athenian commander, Miltiades or Callimachus, was equal to every emergency, and improvised a counter to every stroke. He penetrated the enemy’s design, recognized his own strength and weakness, waited for and never missed the right opportunity for action. Surprised by the landing at Marathon, he seized the very best position that could have been chosen; put on the defensive, he knew the precise moment to take the offensive, and how to bring his hoplites to close quarters with the least risk; driven to attenuate his centre, he snatched victory out of its defeat. Marathon was a triumph of the intelligent use of tactics, discipline and armament.

The Athenians were proud of their own singlehanded victory, and in after times were prone to magnify it. A decisive battle in the military sense it obviously was not. So far from finishing the war, it only began it, or precipitated a greater. But it did make a definite breach between Athens and Persia, and so prepared the way for Themistocles. It was the brilliant prologue to a grander drama, for which it set the scene and disposed the parts. For that reason posterity will always see in Marathon, not Artemisium, the sacred spot ‘where sons of Athenians laid the resplendent foundation of freedom’

VI

THE PARIAN EXPEDITION AND THE DEATH OF MILTIADES

The story of the Parian Expedition as told by Herodotus is one which no sober critic could accept as it stands. Miltiades asked the Athenians for a fleet of 70 vessels, promising to lead them to a land from which they might obtain as much gold as they wished. The fleet is voted, and is employed by him for the reduction of the island of Paros in order to gratify a grudge against one of the Parian citizens. An indemnity of 100 talents is demanded for the help given to Datis and Artaphernes, and when this ultimatum was refused the town was besieged without success. At the end of 26 days the siege was abandoned and Miltiades returned home with a wounded thigh.

There are three questions here which call for an answer. What was the date of the expedition? What was its object, and what was the cause of its return? 489 bc is the date usually assigned for the expedition but the narrative in Herodotus suggests that the fleet set sail soon after the Battle of Marathon and there are strong reasons in favour of the autumn of 490 bc rather than the summer of the following year. The object of the expedition may be surmised to have been the organization of an outer line of defence against the Persians and if this were to be effected the work must be taken in hand before the opening of the next campaigning season. There was plenty of time before the winter began, even if Marathon was fought as late as September. Paros was to be taken by a coup de main, and the submission of the other islands would quickly follow. The stronghold of the anti­Persian cause in the Cyclades was Naxos, which some ten years earlier had successfully resisted the expedition sent under Aristagoras and Megabates and had been sacked by Datis and Artaphernes on their way to Marathon. Paros, on the other hand, had made its submission to Persia. The two islands were separated by a narrow channel, and the reduction of Paros was indispensable to the security of her neighbour. With these two islands on his side, Miltiades might hope to bring all the Cyclades into alliance with Athens before the Persian invasion. The unexpected resistance at Paros wrecked the scheme. The bad weather was approaching and there was nothing left but to return home.

Miltiades was at once brought to trial for his failure to fulfil his promise. The trial took place in the assembly, instead of in one of the courts of law, and the procedure may have been by Eisan- gelia, although this is not certain. The charge was that of having deceived the sovereign people; the prosecutor was Xanthippus, who probably had played the same part in the former trial; the penalty demanded was that of death. Miltiades was brought into court a dying man, for his wound had gangrened. His friends appealed to the memory of his great services to the state, and the appeal was so far successful that the penalty was reduced to a fine of 50 talents. Soon after the trial he died and the fine was ultimately paid by his son Cimon.

VII

ATHENS AND AEGINA

For the relations of Athens and Aegina down to the Great Persian War Herodotus is our main and almost our sole authority, and it is hardly too much to say that the history of these relations presents some of the most difficult problems which historical criticism can be called upon to solve.

Three stages are to be distinguished in the events narrated by Herodotus: firstly the ‘Ancient Feud’ between the two states; secondly the ‘Unheralded War’, which is alleged to have broken out about 506 bc in response to the appeal of Thebes to Aegina, the motive of which is found in the ‘Ancient Feud’; and finally the war which resulted from the refusal of Athens to restore to Aegina the hostages deposited by Cleomenes. If Herodotus’ statements are correct, there had been a war between Athens and Aegina at some remote period long before 506 bc, and in this year a second war broke out, the duration of which is left undetermined. That the two states were at war in the interval between the first and second Persian invasions, all critics are agreed. The two questions which have to be answered are these; in the first place, is the ‘Ancient Feud’ of which Herodotus speaks, historical or imaginary; and in the second is Herodotus correct in connecting the outbreak of the ‘Unheralded War’ with the appeal of Thebes to Aegina c. 506 bc or is the outbreak of this war to be connected with the refusal of Athens to restore the hostages after the death of Cleomenes? In other words, was Athens at war with Aegina continuously from 506 to 481 bc or did hostilities between the two states first begin after the death of Cleomenes? It is to these questions that we propose to address ourselves.

As to the ‘Ancient Feud,’ opinions differ. There are some who maintain that the alleged ‘feud’ between Athens and Aegina is historical and that its date is to be put in the earlier half of the sixth century bc or even in the seventh century, although they are compelled to admit that the details of the story as told by Herodotus  are in the main mythical. There are others who agree with Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in regarding the whole story as unhistorical. It is difficult, indeed, not to accept Wilamowitz’s conclusions that Herodotus’ narrative presents us with a series of aetiological myths, explanatory of ritual usages.

Secondly as to the ‘Unheralded War’. In a previous chapter it has been pointed out that Herodotus connects the outbreak of the ‘Unheralded War’ with the appeal addressed by Thebes to Aegina for an alliance between the two states against Athens. He further states that when the Aeginetans in response to this appeal sent the statues of the Aeacidae, the tutelary heroes of the island by way of assistance to the Thebans, the latter sent back the statues and asked for aid of a more material kind. Thereupon the Aeginetans began an ‘Unheralded War’ on the Athenians and ravaged several of the demes on the coast. The Athenians were about to retaliate when they were prevented from taking action by the news that Sparta had summoned a congress of her allies in order to secure their support for the restoration of Hippias. At this point the narrative breaks off, and we hear nothing more of the relations between the two states until we come, in the middle of the Sixth Book, to the embassy from Athens to Sparta to demand the punishment of the Aeginetans for their action in giving earth and water to the heralds of King Darius in the spring of the year 491 b.c. We are subsequently told that on the death of Cleomenes the Spartans sent Leotychidas to Athens to demand the restoration of the Aeginetan hostages who had been deposited with the Athenians by his fellow-king. The refusal of the Athenians to restore the hostages led to the seizure by the Aeginetans of an Athenian sacred vessel which lay off Cape Sunium with a number of leading citizens on board. The Athenians retaliated, and a war broke out which was brought to an end in 481 bc through the mediation of the Congress of the Greeks.

It is beyond dispute that Herodotus connects the outbreak of the ‘Unheralded War’ with the appeal of Thebes to Aegina, and that he puts the ravaging of the Athenian coast by the Aeginetans before the Peloponnesian Congress at Sparta, c. 504 bc. If the war in question did not break out until after the death of Cleomenes, Herodotus is convicted of error, and that of the gravest order. If the case against Herodotus is to be proved, it must be proved up to the hilt. The improbability of such an error is so great that we may fairly demand arguments that are conclusive. What then are these arguments?

To begin with, it may be pointed out that while Herodotus asserts the outbreak of a war c. 506 bc and mentions the termination of a war between the two states in 481 bc, he nowhere either states, or implies, that war between Athens and Aegina was waged continuously from the returning of the Aeacidae to the meeting of the Congress. That war went on continuously between these two states is not the assertion of the historian, but the hypothesis of his critics. If Herodotus had conceived the state of war to have been continuous, we should have looked for some reference to it at the time of the appeal of Aristagoras in the Ionic Revolt, and if the two states were really at war Aegina would hardly have failed to avail herself of the opportunity offered by the absence of the twenty Athenian vessels in Ionian waters. But neither on the occasions of the appeal, nor on that of the with­drawal of the Athenian squadron from Ionia, does Herodotus even hint that Athens was at the time engaged in hostilities with Aegina. Nor, if the language of Herodotus is examined when he is dealing with the embassy of Athens to Sparta in 491, does it suggest that Athens was already at war with Aegina at the time of her appeal to Sparta. It implies merely a hostile sentiment but not a state of war. Further, no details are given of the war alleged to have broken out c. 506; it is only when we come to the events that followed the seizure of the sacred vessel at Sunium that we find particulars given. Finally, a phrase employed in a passage in the Seventh Book, in which the building of 200 additional vessels at the instance of Themistocles is mentioned, seems definitely to exclude the hypothesis that Herodotus regarded the hostilities in which the two states were engaged c. 482, as part of a war which had begun as far back as 506. In the passage in question he states that it was the outbreak of the war between Athens and Aegina that saved Greece from the Persian peril by compelling Athens to become a naval power. Surely it would be little short of ludicrous to maintain that the outbreak of the war between the two states a quarter of a century before the Persian invasion saved Greece, because it compelled the Athenians to build a great fleet some twenty-two years later. When Herodotus wrote the passage, he certainly conceived the outbreak of the war as recent, not remote. These considerations, when taken together, are at least sufficient to prove that Herodotus did not regard the war waged during the period between the two Persian invasions as forming part and parcel of the ‘Unheralded War.’ The most that can be contended is that he believed that war broke out c. 506 bc. Of that war, however, he has nothing further to tell us. It began, but how or when it ended, he knows not.

Such considerations, it may be urged, are sufficient to disprove the hypothesis of a continuous war, but insufficient to refute the historian’s assertion that the outbreak of the ‘Unheralded War’ is to be connected with the appeal of Thebes to Aegina. To prove Herodotus in error on this point; to prove that there was but one war and that it belongs to the period between the two Persian Invasions; to prove, in other words, that ‘the outbreak of this war’ is none other than that of the ‘Unheralded War’ three arguments can be adduced, the cumulative effect of which may not improperly be called conclusive. The first of these arguments has been indicated in a previous chapter. The sending of the Aeacidae by the Aeginetans in answer to the Theban appeal was clearly equivalent to a diplomatic refusal to join in hostilities against Athens. There could be no question that Herodotus is right in connecting the appeal of Thebes to Aegina with the defeat of the Theban forces by Athens c. 506 bc, and it may be assumed that his narrative of the events down to the return of these images by the Thebans is correct. His error lay in connecting the outbreak of the ‘Unheralded War’ with the return of the Aeacidae. If the motive of the Aeginetans in sending these statues to Thebes has been correctly interpreted the Aeginetans did not attack Athens when the statues were sent back by the Thebans.

The second argument is based on the term, the ‘Unheralded War’—a term which in itself means no more than a war in which heralds are not employed—and thus might cover both a war without quarter given, a relentless war, and an irregular or guerilla war. In the context in Herodotus it can only denote a war without formal notice, and this has been generally recognized by commentators and critics. The charge made by the Athenians against the Aeginetans, that the latter had ravaged their territory without the customary declaration of war by means of a herald was analogous to Mr Asquith’s declaration in 1914 that Germany by her invasion of Belgium had violated the public law of Europe. We are impelled to ask where in the narrative of Herodotus can we find any event or incident that explains this charge, and to this question only one answer can be given. The seizure of the sacred vessel off Sunium must have constituted, according to the sentiment of the age, a violation of the public law of Greece; it was an act of hostility without due notice, and it was directed’ against a sacred vessel. Clearly then, the term ‘Un­heralded’ would find an adequate explanation in the seizure of this vessel. The capture of the sacred vessel, however, occurred not in the interval between the appeal of the Thebans to Aegina and the convening of the congress at Sparta to restore Hippias, but after the death of Cleomenes, and some considerable time after that event. It will be shown presently that the death of Cleomenes cannot be put earlier than 489 bc; the earliest date therefore for the seizure of the sacred vessel will be 488 bc.

The third and the most conclusive argument is based on an oracle which Herodotus connects with the outbreak of the ‘Unheralded War’. He tells us that when the Athenians were meditating reprisals on the Aeginetans for their unprovoked attack on Attic territory, they received an oracle from Delphi which commanded them to desist from hostilities against the Aeginetans for a period of thirty years and in the thirty-first year they were to dedicate a precinct to Aeacus and then they might attack their enemy with good hope of success.

Instead of obeying the oracle, the Athenians proceeded at once to dedicate a precinct to Aeacus and they were about to begin reprisals when they heard of the summoning of the congress at Sparta to discuss the restoration of Hippias. It is commonly assumed that the oracle is a vaticinium post eventum but it is over­looked that what Herodotus gives us is not the text or the substance of the oracle but the gloss put upon it by those who claimed that the prophecy had been fulfilled. No oracle, whether genuine or forged, would have indulged in a date so precise as the thirty-first year. It may be surmised that the term used in the oracle was a generation, of which thirty years was one of the conventional equivalents. The advice given by the oracle was merest common­sense. The Aeginetans were superior at sea to the Athenians; war, therefore, at that moment could only result in the discomfiture of Athens. The dedication of a precinct to Aeacus implied a claim to the possession of his island; it was an invitation to quit the barren rock of Aegina and make his abode among the pleasant things of Attica. “Leave”, said the oracle, “the prosecution of the feud to your children; let the next generation dedicate the precinct and enter on the guerre de revanche”. It was in the year 458 bc that the Athenians inflicted a decisive defeat at sea on the Aeginetans and all but annihilated their navy. It was then that the success promised by the oracle was attained. If we reckon back 30 years from 458 we arrive at the year 488, the true date of the seizure of the sacred vessel. When in the year 458 the devout claimed the fulfilment of the oracle they could point, in support of their contention, to the date of the dedication of the precinct of Aeacus, just 30 years before, the name of the archon on whose term of office the dedication was made being either inscribed on the walls of the precinct itself, or else to be read in the decree ordering its erection. “If only we had listened to the wisdom of the oracle, we should have been saved the sufferings and humiliations of the former war”. This reasoning was only possible if the true date of the dedication of the precinct was 488 bc. Thus the third argument leads us, although by a different route, to the same conclusion as the second.

VIII

CLEOMENES AND AEGINA

If we may trust the indications of date afforded by Herodotus, it was in the spring of 491 bc that Darius sent heralds to the mainland of Greece and the islands, to demand earth and water. Among those who gave these symbols of submission were the Aeginetans. Their action need not be judged too harshly, nor is it probable that it was prompted solely by hostility to Athens. Aegina depended for her existence on her commerce and her commerce was with the East rather than with the West, for most part with ports in the Persian empire or at least along the routes which lay at the mercy of the Persian fleet. One of the earliest facts known to us in the history of Aegina is her war with Samos in the reign of King Amphicrates, perhaps about the beginning of the seventh century bc. In the middle of the next century Aegina was the only state of European Greece that had a share in the Egyptian trade at Naucratis. It is clear from a passage in Herodotus that in the early years of the fifth century she was the entrepot of the Pontic corn trade. Hence it might well seem to Aeginetan statesmen that a good understanding with Persia was indispensable for their trade. At Athens, on the other hand, it must have been evident to every responsible statesman that the medism of Aegina must involve momentous consequences for their city. A Persian invasion of Attica was not likely to be long delayed, and with a hostile Aegina on her flank Athens was doomed. But one course lay open to Athens if this danger was to be averted; to appeal to Sparta to coerce her ally. Although Herodotus does not expressly state that the Athenian appeal was addressed to Cleomenes, the subsequent course of events renders it certain that it was on the support of the Spartan king, rather than on that of the ephors, that the Athenians relied.

 It is hard to say which is the more remarkable, the appeal or the response to the appeal. When the previous relations of Athens and Sparta since the fall of the Tyranny are borne in mind it may well appear astonishing that Athens should have conceded to Sparta all or more than all that Sparta had ever claimed for herself. Aegina was accused of treason to Greece. The charge is that a Panhellenic obligation has been contravened, and the implication is that Sparta is the appointed guardian of Panhellenic interests. Grote shows his accustomed insight in claiming that this appeal is one of the turning points of Greek history. We may be certain that but for the victory of Sepeia the appeal would never have been made. It was the crushing defeat inflicted on Argos by King Cleomenes that gave Sparta such a supremacy in the Greek world as can alone explain the action of Athens. The response of Sparta to the appeal is not less surprising. Sparta was bound to Aegina by almost every conceivable tie. Aegina was Dorian; she was a leading member of the Peloponnesian League; and she was more consistently oligarchic in her policy than almost any other Greek state. Only three or four years before she had lent her fleet for the transport of the Spartan forces from Thyrea to Nauplia in the Argive War. It was asking much of Sparta to demand that she should sacrifice the interests of Aegina to those of Athens. That, in spite of this, the appeal met with a favourable response was due entirely to the far-reaching vision of the Spartan king. He saw as clearly as the statesmen at Athens the imminence of the Persian peril; he realized that, at all costs, Aegina must be coerced. He crossed over to the island in order to arrest those who were chiefly responsible for the giving of earth and water but he met with a resistance on which he had not counted. His colleague, Demaratus, who years before this had thwarted his attempt to restore Isagoras, had again played him false. He was now acting in concert with Crius, one of the leading statesmen in Aegina, and had instructed him to dispute the authority of Cleomenes on the ground that he was acting without the approval or support of his colleague.

Cleomenes was compelled to return to Sparta without effecting his purpose, but he saw that the moment had come for a trial of strength between him and his fellow-king. There had long been gossip at Sparta about the birth of Demaratus, whose legitimacy had been called in question. Cleomenes set to work to secure his deposition on the ground of his birth, and with this end in view he entered into a compact with a kinsman of Demaratus, Leotychidas by name, to whom the succession would pass in the event of the deposition being decreed. It was resolved to refer the question of legitimacy to the arbitrament of the Delphic oracle, which gave its decision against Demaratus. Leotychidas was thereupon elevated to the throne. Cleomenes now saw the last obstacle to his policy removed and with his subservient colleague crossed over to Aegina and arrested ten of the leading members of the oligarchical government, and deposited them as hostages in the hands of the Athenians.

Meanwhile Demaratus, whose deposition had not involved his exile from Sparta, had fled to Persia in consequence of an affront put upon him by Leotychidas, and had met with a warm welcome from King Darius, who bestowed on him estates in the Troad which in the time of Xenophon, a century later, were still in the occupation of his descendants. Demaratus had disappeared from the scene but the party of which he had been the leader, or possibly the tool, was as active as ever in its opposition to Cleomenes and his policy. Cleomenes was charged with having procured the decision of the oracle by means of an in­trigue with Cobon, a leading Delphian who, it was alleged, had brought undue influence to bear upon the priestess Perialla. The charge may have been well founded for Cleomenes was none too scrupulous in his choice of means. However that may be, he thought it prudent to withdraw from Sparta, while his enemies secured the exile of Cobon and the deposition of Perialla. Cleomenes at first took refuge in Thessaly, but before long he returned to the Peloponnese and attempted to effect his restoration to Sparta by the aid of the Arcadians, among whom disaffection was rife. So great was the alarm at Sparta that he was recalled and reinstated. According to the story told to Herodotus on his visit to Sparta some fifty years later, Cleomenes went mad immediately after his recall and his relations put him under restraint. He succeeded, however, in procuring a knife from the helot who was his keeper and mutilated himself so horribly that he died.

Herodotus’ narrative of these events is lacking in precision and presents some obvious difficulties. He does not tell us whether Cleomenes was formally deposed when he quitted Sparta nor whether it was a successor or regent who acted in his place. It seems improbable that one who was sane enough to organize an Arcadian revolt should so soon afterwards have gone raving mad. It has often been suggested that he met his end by foul play and that the story told to Herodotus was invented to conceal the true facts. In a state so well disciplined as the Spartan it is not in­credible that the version which had the Imprimatur of the ephors should come to be accepted without question a generation or so later. On the other hand, there had always been a strain of violence in his nature, and it may be that this developed into insanity. It may be granted that the character of Cleomenes is not calculated to attract; certainly it had none of that charm which makes Brasidas as we see him in the pages of Thucydides the hero of the Archidamian war. Cleomenes was unscrupulous, violent and cruel; although it may be pleaded in extenuation that their training did not make Spartans humane and that few Greek statesmen of that or any other generation were scrupulous in their methods.

But, whatever the character of the man, the importance of his career cannot be mistaken. His victory over Argos had two results, a direct and an indirect one. Its direct result was to cripple Argos at the time of Xerxes’ invasion, and its indirect result was the hegemony of Sparta. It was his victory at Sepeia that rendered possible that unity of command without which the Greek army would have had no chance against Persia. His intervention in Aegina forced her into patriotism in spite of herself. Had Aegina been on the Persian side in 480 b.c., the Battle of Salamis could never have been fought. If Argos had been able to support the Persian cause with her military forces unimpaired, Pausanias would never have ventured beyond the lines of the Isthmus in 479 bc.

One point remains to be determined in connection with the career or Cleomenes—the date of his death. Herodotus appears to put between the spring of 491 bc and the summer of the next year the whole series of events which starts with the appeal of Athens to Sparta against the medism of Aegina and ends with the earlier stages of the Aeginetan War. Everyone is agreed that all these events cannot by any ingenuity be squeezed into a space of twelve or fifteen months. Two things are certain; firstly, that Cleomenes’ death cannot be put before 489 bc, and secondly that he cannot have been at Sparta at the time of Marathon. It is probable that he was in Thessaly or Arcadia when the battle was fought. The passage, however, in Herodotus (in which he appears to put the death of Cleomenes and the outbreak of the Aeginetan War before the summer of the year of Marathon is no real note of time. It is a mere literary device for ending a digression and returning to the main subject.

IX

THE AEGINETAN WAR

The opposition lost no time in setting to work to reverse the policy of the dead king. Leotychidas must be offered up as a victim to appease the wrath of the Aeginetans. Party passion ran so high that Leotychidas was sentenced to be delivered up as a hostage to the Aeginetans to be set against their own hostages in the hands of the Athenians. The Aeginetans were at first disposed to accept the offer, but wiser counsels in the end prevailed. They could hardly fail to recognize that the Spartan king would be more useful to them as an agent in negotiations with the Athenians than as a hostage. He was sent to Athens to demand the return of the hostages, but, as might have been expected, he met with a refusal. It was now clear to the Aeginetans that there was no prospect of recovering their hostages by diplomatic means, and that, so long as the Athenians held hostages and they held none, their hands were tied. It was not long before an opportunity offered of getting possession of the persons of Athenians of rank corresponding to that of their own hostages. A sacred vessel had been dispatched from Athens to Cape Sunium to convey a number of Athenians of the highest rank who had been commissioned to repre­sent the state at a festival held at the neighbouring temple. By a surprise attack theAeginetans succeeded in capturing the vessel and all on board. At length their hands were free. Either the Athenian hostages could be exchanged for their own countrymen, or at least, so long as they held hostages from Athens, their own were safe.

At Athens, the act of the Aeginetans aroused the utmost indignation. It was denounced as a violation of the public law of Greece. But it was recognized that their own navy was no match for that of the enemy. Hence, if there was to be war between the two states, it was a war that could only be won by political weapons. Consequently, we find Athens attempting to play in Aegina at this moment the game which she played with such conspicuous success in Boeotia thirty years later. She entered into negotiations with Nicodromus, the leader of the democratic opposition in the island. There was to be a rising of the democrats under his leadership against the ruling oligarchy, and the Athenians were to land a large force in support of the insurgents. The plot miscarried, partly because the conditions were less favourable than those of Boeotia in 457 BC and partly because the Athenians arrived on the scene a day too late. In Aegina there was at one end of the social scale an aristocracy of merchant princes and at the other an immense servile population, and these are the con­ditions which are least likely to afford a congenial soil for the growth of democracy. The Athenian excuse for their delay in arriving on the scene was that they were waiting for a reinforcement of twenty vessels which the Corinthians had agreed to transfer to them. The Aeginetan government suppressed the rising with ease, although they could not prevent the escape of Nicodromus and some of his followers, who were established by the Athenians at Cape Sunium whence they carried on a guerilla warfare against their native island. The day after the flight of Nicodromus, an Athenian fleet, raised with the aid of the 20 Corinthian vessels to the number of 70 sail, appeared off the island. The Aeginetans put out against them with the same number of vessels and in the action which followed the Athenians claimed the advantage. It was not, however, long before the Aeginetans inflicted a defeat on the Athenians and captured four of their vessels with their crews.

At this point the narrative of Herodotus breaks off. Evidently Athenian tradition had no further successes to recount. This silence as to the subsequent course of the operations is eloquent; but there are two facts which may help in the reconstruction of the story of the war. The first of these facts is the assignment of the thalassocracy of the Aeginetans to the period between the first and second Persian invasions. It is clear that the claim was advanced that during these years Aegina ruled the waves, and equally clear that the claim went unchallenged. The second fact is the magnitude of the effort made by Athens to wrest this naval supremacy from her rival. We hear nothing further about the war until we come to the year 482 bc, when Themistocles induced the assembly to devote the surplus funds in the treasury, arising out of the proceeds of the silver mines at Laurium, to the building of a fleet of 200 triremes of a new type, instead of distributing the money among the people. Herodotus is once again less precise in statement than might be wished. He leaves it uncertain how large the surplus was, or whether such distribution of surplus funds had been customary. The mines at Laurium had long been worked, and they continued to be worked till the middle of the fourth century bc, but it would appear that shortly before 482 a new deposit of peculiar richness had been disovered at a place called Maroneia somewhere in this district. The mines were the property of the state, and they were leased for a short term of years for an initial payment, usually of one talent, and for an annual payment of of the gross produce. We need not suppose either that the whole surplus in the treasury was marked for distribution or that the surplus had resulted from the proceeds of a single year. Later writers reduced the number of vessels to be built to 100, but Thucydides seems to imply that the vessels that formed the Athenian contingent at Salamis were those which were built in accordance with the measure carried by Themistocles. If this view is correct, his state­ment supports that of Herodotus, and we can hardly go wrong in accepting the testimony of these two witnesses. It may also be inferred from Thucydides that Themistocles appealed to the danger from Persia, as well as to the war with Aegina, but there can be little doubt that the constraining motive that induced the Athenians to forego the distribution of the money was the nearer danger rather than the more remote. A navy of 200 vessels was an effort out of all proportion to anything that Athens had yet attempted. In the greatness of the effort we may find some measure of the success of Aegina and the humiliation of Athens. By the spring of 481 vessels of the new model were ready for use, but it was not against Aegina that they were employed.

X

POLITICAL PARTIES AT ATHENS

In a former chapter it was argued that the evidence available points to the conclusion that at the time of the Battle of Marathon four parties can be distinguished in the political arena at Athens, and that on more than one critical occasion two of these parties, that of the Alcmaeonidae and the adherents of the exiled tyrants, were acting in concert, while the aristocratic party under the leadership of Miltiades made common cause with the radical party under Themistocles on all questions of foreign policy. If our explanation of the Parian Expedition is to be accepted, the scheme was one which, if not inspired by Themistocles, must have received his approval. Its failure was a blow to the cause which he had at heart, and he must have used his influence to secure the acquittal of Miltiades or at least the mitiga­tion of the sentence. The conviction and the death of Miltiades meant the triumph of the party which had brought him to trial. A few months afterwards, in the spring of 489 bc, Aristides was elected to the Archonship, which was still an office of high administrative importance. He had been an intimate associate of Cleisthenes, and that he remained a member of the Alcmaeonid party may be inferred, not only from his opposition to Themistocles but from the fact that the supreme command in 479 bc is shared between him and Xanthippus after the fall of Themistocles from power.

Themistocles was not the man tamely to accept defeat. During the next few years his energies are devoted to securing for himself the leading position in the state. In order to accomplish his purpose he had recourse to two weapons, ostracism and legislation. Early in 487 he secured the ostracism of Hipparchus the leader of the Peisistratid party, and in the following year that of Megacles, to whom the signal of the shield at the Battle of Marathon was popularly attributed. The ostracism of the head of the great Alcmaeonid clan must have been a serious blow to the influence of the party led by Xanthippus and Aristides, and it is not surprising to find that both of these statesmen followed Megacles into exile, Xanthippus in 484 and Aristides in 482 B.c. It may be surmised that the ill-success of this party in the conduct of the Aeginetan War may have contributed to the unpopularity of its leading members.

Themistocles had thus disposed of all his rivals. Meanwhile he had succeeded by means of legislation in transforming the character of the Athenian executive and in creating for himself an office which would render possible One Man Power. In the year 487-486 sortition was substituted for election in the appointment of the archons; a change which implied that the archonship was reduced to insignificance, and that the strategia took its place as the chief executive office in the state. Before long a further step was taken in the creation of the new office of strategos autocrator (commander­in-chief), a position which we find him holding in 480. In his final triumph, that over Aristides, a question of momentous importance for Athens and for Greece was involved. Was Athens to rely, as in the past, mainly on her army, or was she to aspire to be the greatest naval power in the Greek world? It was in the same year in which Aristides was ostracized that Themistocles carried his proposal to build 200 vessels of an improved type. When the decisive moment came, and Xerxes was on his march towards Greece, the office and the man to fill it and the weapon which he had forged were there.

CHAPTER IX

XERXES’ INVASION OF GREECE