CHAPTER LVII (57). FROM THE IONIC REVOLT TO THE BATTLE OF MARATHON.

 

In the preceding chapter, I indicated the point of confluence between the European and Asiatic streams of Greek history,—the commencement of a decided Persian intention to conquer Attica; manifested first in the form of a threat by Artaphernes the satrap, when he enjoined the Athenians to take back Hippias as the only condition of safety, and afterwards converted into a passion in the bosom of Darius in consequence of the burning of Sardis. From this time forward, therefore, the affairs of Greece and Persia came to be. in direct relation one with the other, and capable of being embodied, much more than before, into one continuous narrative.

The reconquest of Ionia being thoroughly completed, Artaphernes proceeded to organize the future government of it, with a degree of prudence and forethought not often visible in Persian proceedings. Convoking deputies from all the different cities, he compelled them to enter into a permanent convention, for the amicable settlement of disputes, so as to prevent all employment of force by any one against the others. Moreover, he caused the territory of each city to be measured by parasangs (each parasang was equal to thirty stadia, or about three miles and a half), and arranged the assessments of tribute according to this measurement, without any material departure, however, from the sums which had been paid before the revolt.

Unfortunately, Herodotus is unusually brief in his allusion to this proceeding, which it would have been highly interesting to be able to comprehend perfectly. We may, however, assume it ascertain, that both the population and the territory of many among the Ionic cities, if not of all, were materially altered in consequent of the preceding revolt, and still more in consequence of the cruelties with which the suppression of the revolt had been accompanied. In regard to Miletus, Herodotus tells us that the Persians retained for themselves the city with its circumjacent plain, but gave the mountain portion of the Milesian territory to the Carians of Pedasa. Such a proceeding would naturally call for a fresh measurement and assessment of tribute; and there may have been similar transfers of land elsewhere. I have already observed that the statements which we find in Herodotus, of utter depopulation and destruction falling upon the cities, cannot be credited in their full extent; for these cities are all peopled, and all Hellenic, afterwards. But there can be no doubt that they are partially true, and that the miseries of those days, as stated in the work of Hecataeus, as well as by contemporary informants with whom Herodotus had probably conversed, must have been extreme. New inhabitants would probably be admitted in many of them, to supply the loss sustained; and such infusion of fresh blood would strengthen the necessity for the organization introduced by Artaphernes, in order to determine clearly the obligations due from the cities both to the Persian government and towards each other. Herodotus considers that the arrangement was extremely beneficial to the Ionians, and so it must unquestionably have appeared, coming as it did immediately after so much previous suffering. He farther adds, that the tribute then fixed remained unaltered until his own day,—a statement requiring some comment, which I reserve until the time arrives lor describing the condition of the Asiatic Greeks alter the repulse of Xerxes from Greece proper.

Meanwhile, the intentions of Darius for the conquest of Greece were now effectively manifested: Mardonius, invested with the supreme command, and at the head of a large force, was sent down m the ensuing spring for the purpose. Having reached Cilicia in the course of the march, he himself got on ship-board and went by sea to Ionia, while his army marched across Asia Minor to the Hellespont. His proceeding in Ionia surprises ns, and seems to have appeared surprising as well to Herodotus himself as to his readers. Mardonius deposed the despots throughout the various Greek cities, and left the people of each to govern themselves, subject to the Persian dominion and tribute. This was a complete reversal of the former policy of Persia, and must be ascribed to a new conviction, doubtless wise and well founded, which had recently grown up among the Persian leaders, that on the whole their unpopularity was aggravated, more than their strength was increased, by employing these despots as instruments. The phenomena of the late Ionic revolt were well calculated to teach such a lesson; but we shall not often find the Persians profiting by experience, throughout the course of this history.

Mardonius did not remain long in Ionia, but passed on with his fleet to the Hellespont, where the land-force had already arrived. He transported it across into Europe, and began his march through Thrace; all of which had already been reduced by Megabazus, and does not seem to have participated in the Ionic revolt. The island of Thasus surrendered to the fleet without any resistance, and the land-force was conveyed across the Strymon to the Greek city of Acanthus, on the western coast of the Strymonic gulf. From hence his land-force marched into Macedonia, and subdued a considerable portion of its inhabitants, perhaps some of those not comprised in the dominion of Amyntas, since that prince had before submitted to Megabazus. Meanwhile, he sent his fleet, to double the promontory of Mount Athos, and to join the land-force again at the Thermaic gulf with a view of conquering as much of Greece as he could, and even of prosecuting the march as far as Athens and Eretria; so that the expedition afterwards accomplished by Xerxes would have been tried at least by Mardonius, twelve or thirteen years earlier, had not a terrible storm completely disabled the fleet. The sea near Athos was then, and is now, full of peril to navigators. One of the hurricanes, so frequent in its neighborhood, overtook the Persian fleet, destroyed three hundred ships, and drowned or cast ashore not less than twenty thousand men: of those who reached the shore, many died of cold, or were devoured by the wild beasts on that inhospitable tongue of land. This disaster checked altogether the farther progress of Mardonius, who also sustained considerable loss with his land-army, and was himself wounded, in a night attack made upon him by the tribe of Thracians called Brygi. Though strong enough to repel and avenge this attack, and to subdue the Brygi, he was yet in no condition to advance farther. Both the land-force and the fleet were conveyed back to the Hellespont, and from thence across to Asia, with all the shame of failure. Nor was Mardonius again employed by Darius, though we cannot make out that the fault was imputable to him. We shall hear of him again under Xerxes.

The ill-success of Mardonius seems to have inspired the Thasians, so recently subdued, with the idea of revolting. At least, they provoked the suspicion of Darius by making active preparations for defence, building war-ships, and strengthening their fortifications. The Thasians were at this time in great opulence, chiefly from their gold and silver mines, both in their island and in their mainland territory opposite. Their mines at Skapte Hyle, in Thrace, yielded to them an annual income of eighty talents; and altogether their surplus revenue—after defraying nil the expenses of government, so that the inhabitants were entirely untaxed—was two hundred talents. With these large means, they were enabled soon to make prepa­rations which excited notice among their neighbors, many of whom were doubtless jealous of their prosperity, and perhaps inclined to dispute with them possession of the profitable mines of Skapte Hyle. As in other cases, so in this: the jealousies among subject neighbors often procured revelations to the superior power: the proceedings of the Thasians were made known, and they were forced to raze their fortifications as well as to surrender all their ships to the Persians at Abdera.

 

Though dissatisfied with Mardonius, Darius was only the more eagerly bent on his project of conquering Greece, and Hippias was at his side to keep alive his wrath against the Athenians. Orders were despatched to the maritime cities of his empire to equip both ships of war and horse-transports for a renewed attempt. His intentions were probably known in Greece itself by this time, from the recent march of his army to Macedonia; but he thought it advisable to send heralds round to most of the Grecian cities, in order to require from each the formal token of submission,—earth and water; and thus to ascertain what extent of resistance his intended expedition was likely to experience. The answers received were to a high degree favorable. Many of the continental Greeks sent their submission, as well as all those islanders to whom application was made. Among the former, we are probably to reckon the Thebans and Thessalians, though Herodotus does not particularize them. Among the latter, Naxos, Euboea, and some of the smaller islands, are not included; but Aegina, at that time the first maritime power of Greece, is expressly included.

Nothing marks so clearly the imminent peril in which the liberties of Greece, were now placed, and the terror inspired by the Persians after their reconquest of Ionia, as this abasement on the part of the Aeginetans, whose commerce with the Asiatic islands and continent, doubtless impressed them strongly with the melancholy consequences of unsuccessful resistance to the Great King. But on the present occasion, their conduct was dictated as much by antipathy to Athens as by fear, so that Greece was thus threatened with the intrusion of the Persian arm as ally and arbiter in her internal contests: a contingency which, if it had occurred now in the dispute between Aegina and Athens, would have led to the certain enslavement of Greece,—though when it did occur nearly a century afterwards, towards the close of the Peloponnesian war. and in consequence of the prolonged struggle between Lacedaemon and Athens, Greece had become strong enough in her own force to endure it without the loss of substantial independence. The war between Thebes and Aegina on one side, and Athens on the other,—begun several years before, and growing out of the connection between Athens and Plataea,—had never yet been terminated. The Aeginetans had taken part in that war from gratuitous feeling, either of friendship for Thebes, or of enmity to Athens, without any direct ground of quarrel, and they had begun the war even without the formality of notice. Though a period apparently not less than fourteen years (from about 506-492 bc) had elapsed since it began, the state of hostility still continued; and we may well conceive that Hippias, the great instigator of Persian attack upon Greece, would not fail to enforce upon all the enemies of Athens the prudence of seconding, or at least of not opposing, the efforts of the Persian to reinstate him in that city. It was partly under this feeling, combined with genuine alarm, that both Thebes and Aegina manifested submissive dispositions towards the heralds of Darius.

Among these heralds, some had gone both to Athens and to Sparta, for the same purpose of demanding earth and water. The reception given to them at both places was angry in the extreme. The Athenians cast the herald into the pit called the barathrum, into which they sometimes precipitated public criminals: the Spartans threw the herald who came to them into a well, desiring the unfortunate messenger to take earth and water from thence to the king. The inviolability of heralds was so ancient and undisputed in Greece, from the Homeric times downward, that nothing short of the fiercest excitement could have instigated any Grecian community to such an outrage. But to the Lacedaemonians, now accustomed to regard themselves as the first of all Grecian states, and to be addressed always in the character of superiors, the demand appeared so gross an insult as to banish from their minds for the time all recollection of established obligations. They came subsequently, however, to repent of the act as highly criminal, and to look upon it as the cause of misfortunes which overtook them thirty or forty years afterwards: how they tried at that time to expiate it, I shall hereafter recount.

But if, on the one hand, the wounded dignity of the Spartans hurried them into the commission of this wrong, it was on the other hand of signal use to the general liberties of Greece, by rousing them out of their apathy as to the coming invader, and placing them with regard to him in the same state of inexpiable hostility as Athens and Eretria. We see at once the bonds drawn closer between Athens and Sparta. The Athenians, for the first time, prefer a complaint at Sparta against the Aeginetans for having given earth and water to Darius,—accusing them of having done this with views of enmity to Athens, and in order to invade Attica conjointly with the Persian. This they represented “as treason to Hellas,” calling upon Sparta as head of Greece to interfere. And in consequence of their appeal, Kleomenes king of Sparta went over to Aegina, to take measures against the authors of the late proceeding, “for the general benefit of Hellas”.

The proceeding now before us is of very great importance in the progress of Grecian history. It is the first direct and positive historical manifestation of Hellas as an aggregate body, with Sparta as its chief, and obligations of a certain sort on the part of its members, the neglect or violation of which constitutes a species of treason. I have already pointed out several earlier incidents, showing how the Greek political mind, beginning from entire severance of states, became gradually prepared for this idea of a permanent, league with mutual obligations and power of enforcement vested in a permanent chief,—an idea never fully carried into practice, but now distinctly manifest and partially operative. First, the great acquired power and territory of Sparta, her military training, her undisturbed political traditions, create an unconscious deference towards her, such as was not felt towards any other state: next, she is seen in the proceedings against Athens, after the expulsion of Hippias, as summoning and conducting to war a cluster of self-obliged Peloponnesian allies, with certain formalities which gave to the alliance an imposing permanence and solemnity: thirdly, her position becomes recognized as first power or president of Greece, both by foreigners who invite alliance (Croesus), or by Greeks who seek help, such as the Plataeans against Thebes, or the Ionians against Persia. But Sparta has not been hitherto found willing to take on herself the performance of this duty of protector-general. She refused the Ionians and the Samian Maeandrius, as well as the Plataeans, in spite of their entreaties founded on common Hellenic lineage: the expedition which she undertook against Polycrates of Samos, was founded upon private motives of displeasure, even in the estimation of the Lacedaemonians themselves: moreover, even if all these requests had been granted, she might have seemed to be rather obeying a generous sympathy than performing a duty incumbent upon her as superior. But in the case now before us, of Athens against Aegina, the latter consideration stands distinctly prominent. Athens is not a member of the cluster of Spartan allies, nor does she claim the compassion of Sparta, as defenceless against an overpowering Grecian neighbor. She complains of a Pan-Hellenic obligation as having been contravened by the Aeginetans to her detriment and danger, and calls upon Sparta to enforce upon the delinquents respect to these obligations. For the first time in Grecian history, such a call is made; for the first time in Grecian history, it is effectively answered. We may reasonably doubt, whether it would have been thus answered,—considering the tardy, unimpressible, and home-keeping character of the Spartans, with their general insensibility to distant dangers,—if the adventure of the Persian herald had not occurred to gall their pride beyond endurance; to drive them into unpardonable hostility with the Great King; and to cast them into the same boat with Athens for keeping off an enemy who threatened the common liberties of Hellas.

From this time, then, we may consider that there exists a recognized political union of Greece against the Persians,—or at least something as near to a political union as Grecian temper will permit,—with Sparta as its head for the present. To such a preeminence of Sparta, Grecian history had been gradually tending; but the final event which placed it beyond dispute, and which humbled for the time her ancient and only rival—Argos—is now to be noticed.

It was about three or four years before the arrival of these Persian heralds in Greece, and nearly at the time when Miletus was besieged by the Persian generals, that a war broke out between Sparta and Argos,—on what grounds Herodotus does not inform us. Kleomenes, encouraged by a promise of the oracle that he should take Argos, led the Lacedaemonian troops to the banks of the Erasinus, the border river of the Argeian territory. But the sacrifices, without which no river could be crossed, were so unfavorable, that he altered his course, extorted some vessels from Aegina and Sicyon, and carried his troops by sea to Nauplia, the seaport belonging to Argos, and to the territory of Tiryns. The Argeians having marched their forces down to resist him, the two armies joined battle at Sepeia, near Tiryns: Kleomenes, by a piece of simplicity on the part of his enemies, which we find it difficult to credit in Hero lotus, was enabled to attack them unprepared, and obtained a decisive victory. For the Argeians, it is stated, were so afraid of being overreached by stratagem, in the post which their army occupied over against the enemy, that they listened for the commands proclaimed aloud by the Lacedaemonian herald, and performed with their own army the same order which they thus heard given. This came to the knowledge of Kleomenes, who communicated private notice to his soldiers, that when the herald proclaimed orders to go to dinner, they should not obey, but immediately stand to their arms. We are to presume that the Argeian camp was sufficiently near to that of the Lacedemonians to enable them to hear the voice of the herald, yet not within sight, from the nature of the ground. Accordingly, so soon as the Argeians heard the herald in the enemy’s camp proclaim the word to go to dinner, they went to dinner themselves; and in this disorderly condition they were easily overthrown by the Spartans. Many of them perished in the field, while the fugitives took refuge in a thick grove consecrated to their eponymous hero Argus. Kleomenes pursued and inclosed them therein; but thinking it safer to employ deceit rather than force, he ascertained from deserters the names of the chief Argeians thus shut up, and then invited them out successively by means of a herald,—pretending that he had received their ransom, and that they were released. As fast as each man came out, he was put to death; the fate of these unhappy sufferers being concealed from their comrades within the grove by the thickness of the foliage, until some one climbing to the top of a tree detected and proclaimed the destruction going on,—after about fifty of the victims had perished. Unable to entice any more of the Argeians from their consecrated refuge, which they still vainly hoped would protect them, Kleomenes set fire to the grove, and burnt it to the ground, insomuch that the persons within it appear to have been destroyed, either by fire or by sword. After the conflagration had begun, he inquired for the first time to whom the grove belonged, and learnt that it belonged to the hero Argus.

Not less than six thousand citizens, the flower and strength of Argos, perished in this disastrous battle and retreat. And so completely was the city prostrated, that Kleomenes might easily have taken it, had he chosen to march thither forthwith and attack it with vigor. If we are to believe later historians whom Pausanias, Polyaenus, and Plutarch have copied, he did march thither and attack it, but was repulsed by the valor of the Argeian women; who, in the dearth of warriors occasioned by the recent defeat, took arms along with the slaves, headed by the poetess Telesilla, and gallantly defended the walls. This is probably a myth, generated by a desire to embody in detail the dictum of the oracle a little before, about “the female conquering the male.” Without meaning to deny that the Argeian women might have been capable of achieving so patriotic a deed, if Kleomenes had actually marched to the attack of their city, we are compelled, by the distinct statement of Herodotus, to affirm that he never did attack it. Immediately after the burning of the sacred grove of Argos, he dismissed the bulk of his army to Sparta, retaining only one thousand choice troops,—with whom he marched up to the Heraeum, or great temple of Here, between Argos and Mykenae, to offer sacrifice. The priest in attendance forbade him to enter, saying that no stranger was allowed to offer sacrifice in the temple. But Kleomenes had once already forced his way into the sanctuary of Athene, on the Athenian acropolis, in spite of the priestess and her interdict,—and he now acted still more brutally towards the Argeian priest, for he directed his helots to drag him from the altar and scourge him. Having offered sacrifice, Kleomenes returned with his remaining force to Sparta.

But the army whom he had sent home returned with a full persuasion that Argos might easily have been taken,—that the king alone was to blame for having missed the opportunity. As soon as he himself returned, his enemies—perhaps his colleague Demaratus—brought him to trial before the ephors, on a charge of having been bribed, against which he defended himself as follows: He had invaded the hostile territory on the faith of an assurance from the oracle that he should take Argos; but so soon as be had burnt down the sacred grove of the hero Argus,—without knowing to whom it belonged,—he became at once sensible that this was all that the god meant by taking Argos, and therefore that the divine promise had been fully realized. Accordingly, he did not think himself at liberty to commence any fresh attack, until he had ascertained whether the gods would approve it and would grant him success. It was with this view that he sacrificed in the Heraeum. But though his sacrifice was favorable, he observed that the flame kindled on the altar flashed back from the bosom of the statue of Here, and not from her head. If the flame had flashed from her head, he would have known at once that the gods intended him to take the city by storm; but the flash from her bosom plainly indicated that the topmost success was out of his reach, and that he had already reaped all the glories which they intended for him. We may see that Herodotus, though he refrains from criticizing this story, suspects it to tea fabrication. Not so the Spartan ephors: to them it appeared not less true as a story than triumphant as a defence, insuring to Kleomenes an honorable acquittal.

Though this Spartan king lost the opportunity of taking Argos, his victories already gained had inflicted upon her a blow such as she did not recover for a generation, and put her for a time out of all condition to dispute the primacy of Greece with Lacedaemon. I have already mentioned that both in legend and in earliest history, Argos stands forth as the first power in Greece, with legendary claims to headship, and decidedly above Lacedaemon; who gradually usurps from her, first the reality of superior power, next the recognition of preeminence,—and is now, at the period which we have reached, taking upon herself both the rights and the duties of a presiding state over a body of allies who are bound both to her and to each other. Her title to this honor, however, was never admitted at Argos, and it is very probable that the war just described grew in some way or other out of the increasing presidential power which circumstances were tending to throw into her hands. And the complete temporary prostration of Argos was an essential condition to the quiet acquisition of the power by Sparta. Occurring as it did two or three years before the above-recounted adventure of the heralds, it removed the only rival at that time both willing and able to compete with Sparta,—a rival who might well have prevented any effective union under another chief, though she could no longer have secured any Pan-Hellenic ascendency for herself,—a rival who would have seconded Aegina in her submission to the Persians, and would thus have lamed incurably the defensive force of Greece. The ships which Kleomenes had obtained from the Aeginetans as well as from the Sicyonians, against their own will, for landing his troops at Nauplia, brought upon both these cities the enmity of Argos, which the Sicyonians compromised by paying a sum of money, while the Aeginetans refused to do so. And thus the circumstances of the Kleomenic war had the effect not only of enfeebling Argos, but of alienating her from natural allies and supporters, and clearing the ground for undisputed Spartan primacy.

 

Returning now to the complaint preferred by Athens to the Spartans against the traitorous submission of Aegina to Darius, we find that king Kleomenes passed immediately over to that island for the purpose of inquiry and punishment. He was proceeding to seize and carry away as prisoners several of the leading Aeginetans, when Krius and some others among them opposed to him a menacing resistance, telling him that he came without any regular warrant from Sparta and under the influence of Athenian bribes,—that, in order to carry authority, both the Spartan kings ought to come together. It was not of their own accord that the Aeginetans ventured to adopt so dangerous a course. Demaratus, the colleague of Kleomenes in the junior or Prokleid line of kings, had suggested to them the step and promised to carry them through it safely. Dissension between the two coordinate kings was no new phenomenon at Sparta; but in the case of Demaratus and Kleomenes, it had broken out some years previously on the occasion of the march against Attica; and Demaratus, hating his colleague more than ever, entered into the present intrigue with the Aeginetans with the deliberate purpose of frustrating his intervention. He succeeded, and Kleomenes was compelled to return to Sparta; not without unequivocal menace against Krius and the other Aeginetans who had repelled him, and not without a thorough determination to depose Demaratus.

It appears that suspicions had always attached to the legitimacy of Demaratus’s birth. His reputed father Aristo had had no offspring by two successive wives: at last, he became enamored of the wife of his friend Agetus,—a woman of surpassing beauty,—and entrapped him into an agreement, whereby each solemnly bound himself to surrender anything belonging to him which the other might ask for. That which Agetus asked from Aristo was at once given: in return, the latter demanded to have the wife of Agetus, who was thunderstruck at the request, and indignantly complained of having been cheated into a sacrifice of all others the most painful: nevertheless, the oath was peremptory, and he was forced to comply. The birth of Demaratus took place so soon after this change of husbands, that when it was first made known to Aristo, as he sat upon a bench along with the ephors, he counted on his fingers the number of months since his marriage, and exclaimed with an oath, “The child cannot be mine.” He soon, however, retracted his opinion, and acknowledged the child, who grew up without any question being publicly raised as to his birth, and succeeded his father on the throne. But the original words of Aristo had never been forgotten, and private suspicions were still cherished that Demaratus was really the son of his mother’s first husband.

Of these suspicions, Kleomenes now resolved to avail himself, exciting Leotychides, the next heir in the Prokleid line of kings, to impugn publicly the legitimacy of Demaratus; engaging to second him with till his influence as next in order for the crown, and exacting in return a promise that he would support the intervention against Aegina. Leotychides was animated not merely by ambition, but also by private enmity against Demaratus, who had disappointed him of his intended bride: he warmly entered into the scheme, arraigned Demaratus as no true Herakleid, and produced evidence to prove the original doubts expressed by Aristo. A serious dispute was thus raised at Sparta, and Kleomenes, espousing the pretensions of Leotychides, recommended that the question as to the legitimacy of Demaratus should be decided by reference to the Delphian oracle. Through the influence of Kobon, a powerful native of Delphi, he procured from the Pythian priestess an answer pronouncing that Demaratus was not the son of Aristo. Leotychides thus became king of the Prokleid line, while Demaratus descended into a private station, and was elected at the ensuing solemnity of the Gymnopaedia to an official function. The new king, unable to repress a burst of triumphant spite, sent an attendant, to ask him, in the public theatre, how he felt as an officer after having once been a king. Stung with this insult, Demaratus replied that he himself had tried them both, and that Leotychides might in time come to try them both also: the question, he added, shall bear its fruit,—great evil, or great good, to Sparta. So saying, he covered his face and retired home from the theatre,—offered a solemn farewell sacrifice at the altar of Zeus Herkeios, and solemnly adjured his mother to declare to him who his real father was,—then at once quitted Sparta for Elis, under pretence of going to consult the Delphian oracle.

Demaratus was well known to be a high-spirited and ambitious man—noted, among other things, as the only Lacedaemonian king down to the time of Herodotus who had ever gained a chariot victory at Olympia; and Kleomenes and Leotychides became alarmed at the mischief which he might do them in exile. By the law of Sparta, no Herakleid was allowed to establish his residence out of the country, on pain of death: this marks the sentiment of the Lacedaemonians, and Demaratus was not the less likely to give trouble because they had pronounced him illegitimate. Accordingly they sent in pursuit of him, and seized him in the island of Zakynthus. But the. Zakynthians would not consent to surrender him, so that he passed unobstructed into Asia, where he presented himself to Darius, and was received with abundant favors and presents. We shall hereafter find him the companion of Xerxes, giving to that monarch advice such as, if it bad been acted upon, would have proved the ruin of Grecian independence; to which, however, he would have been even more dangerous, if he had remained at home as king of Sparta.

Meanwhile Kleomenes, having obtained a consentient colleague in Leotychides, went with him over to Aegina, eager to revenge himself for the affront which had been put upon him. To the requisition and presence of the two kings jointly, the Aeginetans did not dare to oppose any resistance. Kleomenes made choice of ten citizens, eminent for wealth, station, and influence, among whom were Krius and another person named Kasambus, the two most powerful men in the island. Conveying them away to Athens, he deposited them as hostages in the hands of the Athenians.

It was in this state that the affairs of Athens and of Greece generally were found by the Persian armament which landed at Marathon, the progress of which we are now about to follow. And the events just recounted were of material importance, con­sidered in their indirect bearing upon the success of that armament. Sparta had now, on the invitation of Athens, assumed to herself for the first time a formal Pan-Hellenic primacy, her ancient rival Argos being too much broken to contest it,—her two kings, at this juncture unanimous, employ their presiding interference in coercing Aegina, and placing Aeginetan hostages in the hands of Athens. The Aeginetans would not have been unwilling to purchase victory over a neighbor and rival at the cost of submission to Persia, and it was the Spartan interference only which restrained them from assailing Athens conjointly with the Persian invaders; thus leaving the hands of the latter free, and her courage undiminished, for the coming trial.

Meanwhile, a vast Persian force, brought together in consequence of the preparation made during the last two years in every part of the empire, had assembled in the Aleian plain of Cilicia, near the sea. A fleet of six hundred armed triremes, together with many transports, both of men and horses, was brought hither for their embarkation: the troops were put on board, and sailed along the coast to Samos in Ionia. The Ionic and Aeolic Greeks constituted an important part of this arma­ment, and the Athenian exile Hippias was on board as guide and auxiliary in the attack of Attica. The generals were Datis, a Median,—and Artaphernes, son of the satrap of Sardis, so named, and nephew of Darius. We may remark that Datis is the first person of Median lineage who is mentioned as appointed to high command after the accession of Darius, which had been preceded and marked, as I have noticed in a former chapter, by an outbreak of hostile nationality between the Medes and Persians. Their instructions were, generally, to reduce to subjection and tribute all such Greeks as had not already given earth and water. But Darius directed them most particularly to conquer Eretria and Athens, and to bring the inhabitants as slaves into his presence. These orders were literally meant, and probably neither the generals nor the soldiers of this vast armament doubted that they would be literally executed; and that before the end of the year, the wives, or rather the widows, of men like Themistokles and Aristeides would be seen among a mournful train of Athenian prisoners, on the road from Sardis to Susa, thus accomplishing the wish expressed by queen Atossa at the instance of Demokedes.

The recent terrific storm near Mount Athos deterred the Persians from following the example of Mardonius, and taking their course by the Hellespont and Thrace. It was resolved to strike straight across the Aegean (the mode of attack which intelligent Greeks like Themistokles most feared, even after the repulse of Xerxes), from Samos to Euboea, attacking the intermediate islands in the way. Among those islands was Naxos, which ten years before had stood a long siege, and gallantly repelled the Persian Megabates with the Milesian Aristagoras. It was one of the main objects of Datis to efface this stain on the Persian arms, and to take a signal revenge on the Naxians. Crossing from Samos to Naxos, he landed his army on the island, which was found an easier prize than he had expected. The terrified citizens, abandoning their town, fled with their families to the highest summits of their mountains; while the Persians, seizing as slaves a few who bad been dilatory in flight, burnt the undefended town with its edifices sacred and profane.

Immense, indeed, was the difference in Grecian sentiment towards the Persians, created by the terror-striking reconquest of Ionia, and by the exhibition of a large Phenician fleet in the Aegean. The strength of Naxos was the same now as it had been before the Ionic revolt, and the successful resistance then made might have been supposed likely to nerve the courage of its inhabitants. Yet such is the fear now inspired by a Persian armament, that the eight thousand Naxian hoplites abandon their town and their gods without striking a blow, and think of nothing but personal safety for themselves and their families. A sad augury for Athens and Eretria.

From Naxos, Datis despatched his fleet round the other Cyclades islands, requiring from each, hostages for fidelity and a contingent to increase his army. With the sacred island of Delos, however, he dealt tenderly and respectfully. The Delians had fled before his approach to Tenos, but Datis sent a herald to invite them back again, promised to preserve their persons and property inviolate, and proclaimed that he had received express orders from the Great King to reverence the island in which Apollo and Artemis were born. His acts corresponded with this language; for the fleet was not allowed to touch the island, and he himself, landing with only a few attendants, offered a magnificent sacrifice at the altar. A large portion of his armament consisted of Ionic Greeks, and this pronounced respect to the island of Delos may probably be ascribed to the desire of satisfying their religious feelings; for in their days of early freedom, this island had been the scene of their solemn periodical festivals, as I have already more than once remarked.

Pursuing his course without resistance along the islands, and demanding reinforcements as well as hostages from each, Datis at length touched the southernmost portion of Euboea,—the town of Carystus and its territory. The Carystians, though at first refusing either to give hostages or to furnish any reinforcements against their friends and neighbors, were speedily compelled to submission by the aggressive devastation of the invaders. This was the first taste of resistance which Datis had yet expe­rienced; and the facility with which it was overcome gave him a promising omen as to his success against Eretria, whither he soon arrived.

The destination of the armament was no secret to the inhabitants of this fated city, among whom consternation, aggravated by intestine differences, was the reigning sentiment. They made application to Athens for aid, which was readily and conveniently afforded to them by means of those four thousand kleruchs, or out-citizens, whom the Athenians had planted sixteen years before in the neighboring territory of Chalcis. Notwithstanding this reinforcement, however, many of them despaired of defending the city, and thought only of seeking shelter on the unassailable summits of the island, as the more numerous and powerful Naxians had already done before them; while another party, treacherously seeking their own profit out of the public calamity, lay in wait for an opportunity of betraying the city to the Persians. Though a public resolution was taken to defend the city, yet so manifest was the absence of that stoutness of heart which could alone avail to save it, that a leading Eretrian named Aeschines was not ashamed to forewarn the four thousand Athenian allies of the coming treason, and urge them to save themselves before it was too late. They followed his advice and passed over to Attica by way of Oropus; while the Persians disembarked their troops, and even their horses, in expectation that the Eretrians would come out and fight, at Tamynae and other places in the territory. As the Eretrians did not come out, they proceeded to lay siege to the city, and for some days met with a brave resistance, so that the loss on both sides was considerable. At length two of the leading citizens, Euphorbus and Philagrue, with others, betrayed Eretria to the besiegers; its temples were burnt, and its inhabitants dragged into slavery. It is impossible to credit the exaggerated statement of Plato, which is applied by him to the Persians at Eretria, as it had been before applied by Herodotus to the Persians at Chios and Samos,—that they swept the territory clean of inhabitants by joining hands and forming a line across its whole breadth. Evidently, this is an idea illustrating the possible effects of numbers and ruinous conquest, which has been woven into the tissue of historical statements, like so many other illustrative ideas in the writings of Greek authors. That a large proportion of the inhabitants were carried away as prisoners, there can be no doubt. But the traitors who betrayed the town were spared and rewarded by the Persians, and we see plainly that either some of the inhabitants must have been left or new settlers introduced, when we find the Eretrians reckoned ten years afterwards among the opponents of Xerxes.

Datis had thus accomplished with little or no resistance one of the two express objects commanded by Darius, and his army was elated with the confident hope of soon completing the other. After halting a few days at Eretria, and depositing in the neighboring islet of Aegilia the prisoners recently captured, he reembarked his army to cross over to Attica, and landed in the memorable bay of Marathon on the eastern coast,—the spot indicated by the despot Hippias, who now landed along with the Persians, twenty years after his expulsion from the government. Forty-seven years had elapsed since he had made as a young man this same passage, from Eretria to Marathon, in conjunction with his father Peisistratus, on the occasion of the second restoration of the latter. On that previous occasion, the force accompanying the father had been immeasurably inferior to that which now seconded the son; yet it had been found amply sufficient to carry him in triumph to Athens, with feeble opposition from citizens alike irresolute and disunited. And the inarch of Hippias from Marathon to Athens would now have been equally easy, as it was doubtless conceived to be by himself, both in his waking hopes and in the dream which Herodotus mentions,—had not the Athenians whom he found been men radically different from those whom he had left.

To that great renewal of the Athenian character, under the democratical institutions which had subsisted since the dispossession of Hippias, I have already pointed attention in a former chapter. The modifications introduced by Kleisthenes in the constitution had now existed eighteen or nineteen years, without any attempt to overthrow them by violence. The Ten Tribes, each with its constituent demes, had become a part of the established habits of the country, and the citizens had become accustomed to exercise a genuine and self-determined decision in their assemblies, political as well as judicial; while even the senate of Areopagus, renovated by the nine annual archons successively chosen who passed into it after their year of office, had also become identified in feeling with the constitution of Kleisthenes. Individual citizens, doubtless, remained partisans in secret, and perhaps correspondents of Hippias; but the mass of citizens, in every scale of life, could look upon his return with nothing but terror and aversion. With what degree of newly-acquired energy the democratical Athenians could act in defence of their country and institutions, has already been related in a former chapter; though unfortunately we possess few particulars of Athenian his­tory during the decade preceding 490 BC, nor can we follow in detail the working of the government. The new form, however, which Athenian politics had assumed becomes partially manifest, when we observe the three leaders who stand prominent at this important epoch,—Miltiades, Themistocles, and Aristeides.

The first of the three had returned to Athens, three or four years before the approach of Datis, after six or seven years’ absence in the Chersonesus of Thrace, whither he had been originally sent by Hippias about the year 517-510 BC, to inherit the property as well as the supremacy of his uncle the oekist Miltiades. As despot of the Chersonese, and as one of the subjects of Persia, he had been among the Ionians who accompanied Darius to the Danube in his Scythian expedition, and he had been the author of that memorable recommendation which Histiaeus and the other despots did not think it their interest to follow,—of destroying the bridge and leaving the Persian king to perish. Subsequently, he had been unable to remain permanently in the Chersonese, for reasons which have before been noticed; yet he seems to have occupied it during the period of the Ionic revolt. What part he took in that revolt we do not know. But he availed himself of the period while the Persian satraps were employed in suppressing it, and deprived of the mastery of the sea, to expel, in conjunction with forces from Athens, both the Persian garrison and Pelasgic inhabitants from the islands of Lemnos and Imbros. The extinction of the Ionic revolt threatened him with ruin; so that when the Phenician fleet, in the summer following the capture of Miletus, made its conquering appearance in the Hellespont, he was forced to escape rapidly to Athens with his immediate friends and property, and with a small squadron of five ships. One of these ships, commanded by his son Metiochus, was actually captured between the Chersonese and Imbros; and the Phenicians were most eager to cap­ture himself,—inasmuch as he was personally odious to Darius from his strenuous recommendation to destroy the bridge over the Danube. On arriving at Athens, after his escape from the Phenician fleet, he was brought to trial before the judicial popular assembly for alleged misgovernment in the Chersonese, or for what Herodotus calls “his despotism” there exercised. Nor is it improbable, that the Athenian citizens settled in that peninsula may have had good reason to complain of him,—the more so as he had carried out with him the maxims of government prevalent at Athens under the Peisistratids, and had in his pay a body of Thracian mercenaries. However, the people at Athens honorably acquitted him, probably in part from the reputation which he had obtained as conqueror of Lemnos; and he was one of the ten annually-elected generals of the republic, during the year of this Persian expedition,—chosen at the beginning of the Attic year, shortly after the summer solstice, at a time when Datis and Hippias had actually sailed, and were known to be approaching.

The character of Miltiades is one of great bravery and decision,—qualities preeminently useful to his country on the present crisis, and the more useful as he was under the strongest motive to put them forth, from the personal hostility of Darius towards him; but he does not peculiarly belong to the democracy of Kleisthenes, like his younger contemporaries Themistokles and Aristeides. The two latter are specimens of a class of men new at Athens since the expulsion of Hippias, and contrasting forcibly with Peisistratus, Lycurgus, and Megacles, the political leaders of the preceding generation. Themistokles and Aristeides, different as they were in disposition, agree in being politicians of the democratical stamp, exercising ascendency by and through the people,—devoting their time to the discharge of public duties, and to the frequent discussions in the political and judicial meetings of the people,—manifesting those combined powers of action, comprehension, and persuasive speech, which gradually accustomed the citizens to look to them as advisers as well as leaders,—but always subject to criticism and accusation from unfriendly rivals, and exercising such rivalry towards each other with an asperity constantly increasing. Instead of Attica, disunited and torn into armed factions, as it had been forty years before,—the Diakrii under one man, and the Parali and Pedieis under others,—we have now Attica one and indivisible; regimented into a body of orderly hearers in the Pnyx, appointing and holding to accountability the magistrates, and open to be ad’ dressed by Themistokles, Aristeides, or any other citizen who can engage their attention.

Neither Themistocles nor Aristeides could boast of a lineage of gods and heroes, like the Aeakid Miltiades: both were of middling station and circumstances. Aristeides, son of Lysimachus, was on both sides of pure Athenian blood. But the wife of Neocles, father of Themistocles, was a foreign woman of Thrace or of Caria: and such an alliance is the less surprising, since Themistokles must have been born during the dynasty of the Peisistratids, when the status of an Athenian citizen had not yet acquired its political value. There was a marked contrast between these two eminent men,—those points which stood most conspicuous in the one being comparatively deficient in the other, in the description of Themistocles, which we have the advantage of finding briefly sketched by Thucydides, the circumstance most emphatically brought out is, his immense force of spontaneous invention and apprehension, without any previous aid either from teaching or gradual practice. The might of unassisted nature was never so strikingly exhibited as in him: he conceived the complications of a present embarrassment, and divined the chances of a mysterious future, with equal sagacity and equal quickness : the right expedient seemed to flash upon his mind extempore, even in the most perplexing contingences, without the least necessity for premeditation. Nor was he less distinguished for daring and resource in action. When engaged on any joint affairs, his superior competence marked him out as the leader for others to follow, and no business, however foreign to his experience, ever took him by surprise, or came wholly amiss to him. Such is the remarkable picture which Thucydides draws of a countryman whose death nearly coincided in time with his own birth: the untutored readiness and universality of Themistokles probably formed in his mind a contrast to the more elaborate discipline, and careful preliminary study, with which the statesmen of his own day—and Pericles especially, the greatest of them—approached the consideration and discussion of public affairs. Themistokles had received no teaching from philosophers, sophists, and rhetors, who were the instructors of well-born youth in the days of Thucydides, and whom Aristophanes, the contemporary of the latter, so unmercifully derides,—treating such instruction as worse than nothing, and extolling, in comparison with it, the unlettered courage, with mere gymnastic accomplishments, of the victors at Marathon.

There is no evidence in the mind of Thucydides of any such undue contempt towards his own age. Though the same terms of contrast are tacitly present to his mind, he seems to treat the great capacity of Themistokles as the more a matter of wonder, since it sprung up without that preliminary cultivation which bad gone to the making of Perikles.

The general character given of Plutarch, though many of his anecdotes are both trifling and apocryphal, is quite consistent with the brief sketch just cited from Thucydides. Themistokles had an unbounded passion,—not merely for glory, insomuch that the laurels of Miltiades acquired at Marathon deprived him of rest,—but also for display of every kind. He was eager to vie with men richer than himself in showy exhibition,—one great source, though not the only source, of popularity at Athens,—nor was he at all scrupulous in procuring the means of doing so. Besides being assiduous in attendance at the ekklesia and the dikastery, he knew most of the citizens by name, and was always ready with advice to them in their private affairs. Moreover, he possessed all the tactics of an expert party-man in conciliating political friends and in defeating political enemies; and though he was in the early part of his life sincerely bent upon the upholding and aggrandizement of his country, and was on some most critical occasions of unspeakable value to it,—yet on the whole his morality was as reckless as his intelligence was eminent. He will be found grossly corrupt in the exercise of power, and employing tortuous means, sometimes indeed for ends in themselves honorable and patriotic, but sometimes also merely for enriching himself. He ended a glorious life by years of deep disgrace, with the forfeiture of all Hellenic esteem and brotherhood—a rich man, an exile, a traitor, and a pensioner of the Great King, pledged to undo his own previous work of liber­ation accomplished at the victory of Salamis.

Of Aristeides we possess unfortunately no description from the hand of Thucydides; yet his character is so simple and consistent, that we may safely accept the brief but unqualified encomium of Herodotus and Plato, expanded as it is in the biography of Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos, however little the details of the latter can be trusted. Aristeides was inferior to Themistocles in resource, quickness, flexibility, and power of coping with difficulties; but incomparably superior to him, as well as to other rivals and contemporaries, in integrity, public as well as private; inaccessible to pecuniary temptations, as well as to other seductive influences, and deserving as well as enjoying the highest measure of personal confidence. He is described as the pe­culiar friend of Cleisthenes, the first founder of the democracy,—as pursuing a straight and single-handed course in political life, with no solicitude for party ties, and with little care either to conciliate friends or to offend enemies,—as unflinching in the exposure of corrupt practices, by whomsoever committed or upheld,—as earning for himself the lofty surname of the Just, not less by his judicial decisions in the capacity of archon, than by his equity in private arbitrations, and even his candor in political dispute,—and as manifesting throughout a long public life, full of tempting opportunities, an uprightness without flaw and beyond all suspicion, recognized equally by his bitter contemporary the poet Timokreon, and by the allies of Athens, upon whom he first assessed the tribute. Few of the leading men in any part of Greece were without some taint on their reputation, deserved or undeserved, in regard to pecuniary probity; but whoever became notoriously recognized as possessing this vital quality, acquired by means of it a firmer hold on the public esteem than even eminent talents could confer. Thucydides ranks conspicuous probity among the first of the many ascendent qualities possessed by Perikles; and Nicias, equal to him in this respect, though immeasurably inferior in every other, owed to it a still larger proportion of that exaggerated confidence which the Athenian people continued so long to repose in him. The abilities of Aristeides, though apparently adequate to every occasion on which he was engaged, and only inferior when we compare him with so remarkable a man as Themistocles, were put in the shade by this incorruptible probity, which procured for him, however, along with the general esteem, no inconsiderable amount of private enmity from jobbers whom he exposed, and even some jealousy from persons who heard it proclaimed with offensive ostentation.

We are told that a rustic and unlettered citizen gave his ostracizing vote, and expressed his dislike against Aristeides, on the simple ground that he was tired of hearing him always called the Just. Now the purity of the most honorable man will not bear to be so boastfully talked of as if he were the only honorable man in the country: the less it is obtruded, the more deeply and cordially will it be felt: and the story just alluded to, whether true or false, illustrates that natural reaction of feeling, produced by absurd encomiasts, or perhaps by insidious enemies under the mask of encomiasts, who trumpeted forth Aristeides as The Just man at Attica, so as to wound the legitimate dignity of every one else. Neither indiscreet friends nor artful enemies, however, could rob him of the lasting esteem of his country men; which he enjoyed, with intervals of their displeasure, to the end of his life. Though he was ostracized during a part of the period between the battle of Marathon and Salamis,—at a time when the rivalry between him and Themistocles was so violent that both could not remain at Athens without peril,—yet the dangers of Athens during the invasion of Xerxes brought him back before the ten years of exile were expired. His fortune, originally very moderate, was still farther diminished during the course of his life, so that he died very poor, and the state was obliged to lend aid to his children.

Such were the characters of Themistocles and Aristeides, the two earliest leaders thrown up by the Athenian democracy. Half a century before, Themistocles would have been an active partisan in the faction of the Parali or the Pedieis, while Aristeides would probably have remained an unnoticed citizen. At the present period of Athenian history, the characters of the soldier, the magistrate, and the orator, were intimately blended together in a citizen who stood forward for eminence, though they tended more and more to divide themselves during the ensuing century and a half. Aristeides and Miltiades were both elected among the ten generals, each for his respective tribe, in the year of the expedition of Datis across the Aegean, and prob­ably even after that expedition was known to be on its voyage. Moreover, we arc led to suspect from a passage in Plutarch, that Themistocles also was general of his tribe on the same occasion, though this is doubtful; but it is certain that he fought at Marathon. The ten generals had jointly the command of the army, each of them taking his turn to exercise it for a day: in addition to the ten, moreover, the third archon, or polemarch, was considered as eleventh in the military council. The polemarch of this year was Kallimachus of Aphidnae. Such were the chiefs of the military force, and to a great degree the administrators of foreign affairs, at the time when the four thousand Athenian kleruchs, or settlers planted in Euboea,—escaping from Eretria, now invested by the Persians,—brought word to their countrymen at home that the fall of that city was impending. It was obvious that the Persian host would proceed from Eretria forthwith against Athens, and a few days afterwards Hippias disembarked them at Marathon, whither the Athenian army marched to meet them.

Of the feeling which now prevailed at Athens we have no details, but doubtless the alarm was hardly inferior to that which had been felt at Eretria: dissenting opinions were heard as to the proper steps to be taken, nor were suspicions of treason wanting. Pheidippides the courier was sent to Sparta immediately to solicit assistance; and such was his prodigious activity, that he performed this journey of one hundred and fifty miles, on foot, in forty-eight hours. Ho revealed to the ephors that Eretria was already enslaved, and entreated their assistance to avert the same fate from Athens, the most ancient city in Greece. The Spartan authorities readily promised their aid, but unfortunately it was now the ninth day of the moon: ancient law or custom forbade them to march, in this month at least, during the last quarter before the full moon; but after the full they engaged to march without delay. Five days’ delay at this critical mo­ment might prove the utter ruin of the endangered city; yet the reason assigned seems to have been no pretence on the part of the Spartans. It was mere blind tenacity of ancient habit, which we shall find to abate, though never to disappear, as wo advance in their history. Indeed, their delay in marching to rescue Attica from Mardonius, eleven years afterwards, at the imminent hazard of alienating Athens and ruining the Hellenic cause, marks the same selfish dulness. But the reason now given certainly looked very like a pretence, so that the Athenians could indulge no certain assurance that the Spartan troops would start even when the full moon arrived.

In this respect the answer brought by Pheidippides was mischievous, as it tended to increase that uncertainty and indecision which already prevailed among the ten generals, as to the proper steps for meeting the invaders. Partly, perhaps, in reliance on this expected Spartan help, five out of the ten generals were decidedly averse to an immediate engagement with the Persians; while Miltiades with the remaining four strenuously urged that not a moment should be lost in bringing the enemy to action, without leaving time to the timid and the treacherous to establish correspondence with Hippias, and to take some active step for paralyzing all united action on the part of the citizens. This most momentous debate, upon which the fate of Athens hung, is represented by Herodotus to have occurred at Marathon, after the army had marched out and taken post there within sight of the Persians; while Cornelius Nepos describes it as having been raised before the army quitted the city,—upon the question, whether it was prudent to meet the enemy at all in the field, or to confine the defence to the city and the sacred rock. Inaccurate as this latter author generally is, his statement seems more probable here than that of Herodotus. For the ten generals would scarcely march out of Athens to Marathon without having previously resolved to fight: moreover, the question between fighting in the field or resisting behind the walls, which had al­ready been raised at Eretria, seems the natural point on which the five mistrustful generals would take their stand. And probably indeed Miltiades himself, if debarred from immediate action, would have preferred to hold possession of Athens, and prevent any treacherous movement from breaking out there,—rather than to remain inactive on the hills, watching the Persians at Marathon, with the chance of a detachment from their numerous fleet sailing round to Phalerum, and thus distracting, by a double attack, both the city and the camp.

However this may be, the equal division of opinion among the ten generals, whether manifested at Marathon or at Athens, is certain,—so that Miltiades had to await the casting-vote of the polemarch Kallimachus. To him he represented emphatically the danger of delay, and the chance of some traitorous intrigue occurring to excite disunion and aggravate the alarms of the citizens. Nothing could prevent such treason from breaking out, with all its terrific consequences of enslavement to the Persians and to Hippias, except a bold, decisive, and immediate attack,—the success of which he (Miltiades) was prepared to guarantee. Fortunately for Athens, the polemarch embraced the opinion of Miltiades, and the seditious movements which were preparing did not show themselves until after the battle had been gained. Aristeides and Themistocles are both recorded to have seconded Miltiades warmly in this proposal,—while all the other generals agreed in surrendering to Miltiades their days of command, so as to make him, as much as they could, the sole leader of the army. It is said that the latter awaited the day of his own regular turn before he fought the battle. Yet considering the eagerness which he displayed to bring on an immediate and decisive action, we cannot suppose that he would have admitted any serious postponement upon such a punctilio.

While the army were mustered on the ground sacred to Heracles near Marathon, with the Persians and their fleet occupying the plain and shore beneath, and in preparation for immediate action, they were joined by the whole force of the little town of Plataea, consisting of about one thousand hoplites, who had marched directly from their own city to the spot, along the southern range of Kithaeron and passing through Dekeleia. We are not told that they had been invited, and very probably the Athenians had never thought of summoning aid from this unimportant neighbor, in whose behalf they had taken upon themselves a lasting feud with Thebes and the Boeotian league. Their coining on this important occasion seems to have been a spontaneous effort of gratitude, which ought not to be the less commended because their interests were really wrapped up in those of Athens,—since if the latter had been conquered, nothing could have saved Plataea from being subdued by the Thebans,—yet many a Grecian town would have disregarded both generous impulse and rational calculation, in the fear of provoking a new and terrific enemy. If we summon up to our imaginations all the circumstances of the case,—which it requires some effort to do, because our authorities come from the subsequent generations, after Greece had ceased to fear the Persians,—we shall be sensible that this volunteer march if the whole Plataean force to Marathon is one of the most affecting incidents of all Grecian history. Upon Athens generally it produced an indelible impression, commemorated ever afterwards in the public prayers of the Athenian herald, and repaid by a grant, to the Plataeans of the full civil rights—seemingly without the political rights—of Athenian citizens. Upon the Athenians then marshalled at Marathon its effect must have been unspeakably powerful and encouraging, as a proof that they were not altogether isolated from Greece, and as an unexpected countervailing stimulus under circumstances so full of hazard.

Of the two opposing armies at Marathon, we are told that the Athenians were ten thousand hoplites, either including or besides the one thousand who came from Plataea. Nor is this statement in itself improbable, though it does not come from Herodotus, who is our only really valuable authority on the case, and who mentions no numerical total. Indeed, the number named seems smaller than we should have expected, considering that no less than four thousand kleruchs, or outsettled citizens, had just come over from Euboea. A sufficient force of citizens must of course have been left behind to defend the city. The numbers of the Persians we cannot be said to know at all, nor is there anything certain except that they were greatly superior to the Greeks. We hear from Herodotus that their armament originally consisted of six hundred ships of war, but we are not told how many separate transports there were; and, moreover, reinforcements had been procured as they came across the Aegean from the islands successively conquered. The aggregate crews on board of all their ships must have been between one hundred and fifty thousand and two hundred thousand men; but what proportion of these were fighting men, or how many actually did fight at Marathon, we have no means of determining. There were a certain proportion of cavalry, and some transports expressly prepared for the conveyance of horses: moreover, Herodotus tells us that Hippias selected the plain of Marathon for a landing place, because it was the most convenient spot in Attica for cavalry movements,—though it is singular, that in the battle the cavalry are not mentioned.

Marathon, situated near to a bay on the eastern coast of Attica, and in a direction E.N.E. from Athens, is divided by the high ridge of Mount Pentelikus from the city, with which it communicated by two roads, one to the north, another to the south of that mountain. Of these two roads, the northern, at once the shortest and the most difficult, is twenty-two miles in length: the southern—longer but more easy, and the only one practicable for chariots—is twenty-six miles in length, or about six and a half hours of computed march. It passed between mounts Pentelikus and Hymettus, through the ancient demes of Gargettus and Pallene, and was the road by which Peisistratus and Hippias, when they landed at Marathon forty-seven years before, had marched to Athens. The bay of Marathon, sheltered by a projecting cape from the northward, affords both deep water and a shore convenient for landing; while its plain (says a careful modern observer) extends in a perfect level along this fine bay, and is in length about six miles, in breadth never less than about one mile and a half. Two marshes bound the extremities of the plain: the southern is not very large, and is almost dry at the conclusion of the great heats; but the northern, which generally covers considerably more than a square mile, offers several parts which are at all seasons impassable. Both, however, leave a broad, firm, sandy beach between them and the sea. The uninterrupted flatness of the plain is hardly relieved by a single tree; and an amphitheatre of rocky hills and rugged mountains separates it from the rest of Attica, over the lower ridges of which some steep and difficult paths communicate with the districts of the interior.

The position occupied by Miltiades before the battle, identified as it was to all subsequent Athenians by the sacred grove of Heracles near Marathon, was probably on some portion of the high ground above this plain, and Cornelius Nepos tells us that he protected it from the attacks of the Persian cavalry by felled trees obstructing the approach. The Persians occupied a position on the plain; while their fleet was ranged along the beach, and Hippias himself marshalled them for the battle. The native Persians and Sakae, the best troops in the whole army, were placed in the centre, which they considered as the post of honor, and which was occupied by the Persian king himself, when present at a battle. The right wing was so regarded by the Greeks, and the polemarch Callimachus had the command of it; the hoplites being arranged in the order of their respective tribes from right, to left, and at the extreme left stood the Plataeans. It was necessary for Miltiades to present a front equal, or nearly equal, to that of the more numerous Persian host, in order to guard himself from being taken in flank: and with this view he drew up the central tribes, including the Leontis and Antiochis, in shallow files, and occupying a large breadth of ground; while each of the wings was in stronger and deeper order, so as to make his attack efficient on both sides. His whole army consisted of hoplites, with some slaves as unarmed or light-armed attendants, but without either bowmen or cavalry. Nor could the Persians have been very strong in this latter force, seeing that their horses had to be transported across the Aegean. But the elevated position of Miltiades enabled them to take some measure of the numbers under his command, and the entire absence of cavalry among their enemies could not but confirm the confidence with which a long career of uninterrupted victory had impressed their generals.

At length the sacrifices in the Greek camp were favorable for battle, and Miltiades, who had everything to gain by coming immediately to close quarters, ordered his army to advance at a running step over the interval of one mile which separated the two armies. This rapid forward movement, accompanied by the war-cry, or paean, which always animated the charge of the Greek soldier, astounded the Persian army; who construed it as an act of desperate courage, little short of insanity, in a body not only small but destitute of cavalry or archers,—but who, at the same time, felt their conscious superiority sink within them. It seems to have been long remembered also among the Greeks as the peculiar characteristic of the battle of Marathon, and Herodotus tells us that the Athenians were the first Greeks who ever charged at a run. It doubtless operated beneficially in rendering the Persian cavalry and archers comparatively innocuous, but we may reasonably suppose that it also disordered the Athenian ranks, and that when they reached the Persian front, they were both out of breath and unsteady in that line of presented spears and shields which constituted their force. On the two wings, where the files were deep, this disorder produced no mischievous effect: the Persians, after a certain resistance, were overborne and driven back. But in the centre, where the files were shallow, and where, moreover, the native Persians and other choice troops of the army were posted, the breathless and disordered Athenian hoplites found themselves in far greater difficulties. The tribes Leontis and Antiochis, with Themistokles and Aristeides among them, were actually defeated, broken, driven back, and pursued by the Persians and Sakae. Miltiades seems to have foreseen the possibility of such a check, when he found himself compelled to diminish so materially the depth of his centre: for his wings, having routed the enemies opposed to them, were stayed from pursuit until the centre was extricated, and the Persians and Sakae put to flight along with the rest. The pursuit then became general, and the Persians were chased to their ships ranged in line along the shore: some of them became involved in the impassable marsh and there perished. The Athenians tried to set the ships on fire, but the defence here was both vigorous and successful,—several of the forward warriors of Athens were slain,—and only seven ships out of the numerous fleet destroyed. This part of the battle terminated to the advantage of the Persians. They repulsed the Athenians from the sea-shore, and secured a safe reembarkation; leaving few or no prisoners, but a rich spoil of tents and equipments which had been disembarked and could not be carried away.

Herodotus estimates the number of those who fell on the Persian side in this memorable action at six thousand four hundred men: the number of Athenian dead is accurately known, since all were collected for the last solemn obsequies,—they were one hundred and ninety-two. How many were wounded, we do not hear. The brave Callimachus the polemarch, and Stesilaus, one of the ten generals, were among the slain; together with Kynegeirus son of Euphorion, who, in laying hold on the poop-staff of one of the vessels, had his hand cut off by an axe, and died of the wound. He was brother of the poet Aeschylus, himself present at the fight; to whose imagination this battle at the ships must have emphatically recalled the fifteenth book of the Iliad. Both these Athenian generals are said to have perished in the assault of the ships, apparently the hottest part of the combat. The statement of the Persian loss as given by Herodotus appears moderate and reasonable, but he does not specify any distin­guished individuals as having fallen.

But the Persians, though thus defeated and compelled to abandon the position of Marathon, were not yet disposed to relinquish altogether their chances against Attica. Their fleet was observed to take the direction of Cape Sunium,—a portion being sent to take up the Eretrian prisoners and the stores which had been left in the island of Aegilia. At the same time a shield, discernible from its polished surface afar off, was seen held aloft upon some high point of Attica,—perhaps on the summit of Mount Pentelikus, as Colonel Leake supposes with much plausibility. The Athenians doubtless saw it as well as the Persians; and Miltiades did not fail to put the right interpretation upon it, taken in conjunction with the course of the departing fleet. The shield was a signal put up by partisans in the country, to invite the Persians round to Athens by sea, while the Marathonian army was absent. Miltiades saw through the plot, and lost not a moment in returning to Athens. On the very day of the battle, the Athenian army marched back with the utmost speed from the precinct of Heracles at Marathon to the precinct of the same god at Kynosarges, close to Athens, which they reached before the arrival of the Persian fleet. Datis soon came off the port of Phalerum, but the partisans of Hippias had been dismayed by the rapid return of the Marathonian army, and he did not therefore find those aids and facilities which he had anticipated for a fresh disembarkation in the immediate neighborhood of Athens. Though too late, however, it seems that he was not much too late: the Marathonian army had only just completed their forced return-march. A little less quickness on the part of Miltiades in deciphering the treasonable signal and giving the instant order of march,—a little less energy on the part of the Athenian citizens in superadding a fatiguing march to a no less fatiguing combat,—and the Persians, with the partisans of Hippias, might have been found in possession of Athens. As the facts turned out, Dalis, finding at Phalerum no friendly movement to encourage him, but, on the contrary, the unexpected presence of the soldiers who had already vanquished him at Marathon—made no attempt again to disembark in Attica, and sailed away, after a short delay, to the Cyclades.

Thus was Athens rescued, for this time at least, from a danger not less terrible than imminent. Nothing could have rescued her except that decisive and instantaneous attack which Miltiades so emphatically urged. The running step on the field of Marathon might cause some disorder in the ranks of the hoplites; but extreme haste in bringing on the combat was the only means of preventing disunion and distraction in the minds of the citizens. Imperfect as the account is which Herodotus gives of this most interesting crisis, we see plainly that the partisans of Hippias had actually organized a conspiracy, and that it only failed by coming a little too late. The bright shield uplifted on Mount Pentelikus, apprizing the Persians that matters were prepared for them at Athens, was intended to have come to their view before any action had taken place at Marathon, and while the Athenian army were yet detained there; so that Datis might have sent a portion of his fleet round to Phalerum, retaining the rest for combat with the enemy before him. If it had ones become known to the Marathonian army that a Persian detachment had landed at Phalerum,—where there was a good plain for cavalry to act in, prior to the building of the Phaleric wall, as had been seen in the defeat of the Spartan Anchimolius by the Thessalian cavalry, in 510 bc,—that it had been joined by timid or treacherous Athenians, and had perhaps even got possession of the city,—their minds would have been so distracted by the double danger, and by fears for their absent wives and children, that they would have been disqualified for any unanimous execution of military orders, and generals as well as soldiers would have become incurably divided in opinion,—perhaps even mistrustful of each other. The citizen-soldier of Greece generally, and especially of Athens, possessed in a high degree both personal bravery and attachment to order and discipline; but his bravery was not of that equal, imperturbable, uninquiring character, which belonged to the battalions of Wellington or Napoleon,—it was fitful, exalted or depressed by casual occurrences, and often more sensitive to dangers absent and unseen, than to enemies immediately in his front. Hence the advantage, so unspeakable in the case before us, and so well appreciated by Miltiades, of having one undivided Athenian army,—with one hostile army, and only one, to meet in the field. When we come to the battle of Salamis, ten years later, it will be seen that the Greeks of that day enjoyed the same advantage: though the wisest advisers of Xerxes impressed upon him the prudence of dividing his large force, and of sending detachments to assail separate Greek states—which would infallibly produce the effect of breaking up the combined Grecian host, and leaving no central or cooperating force for the defence of Greece generally. Fortunately for the Greeks, the childish insolence of Xerxes led him to despise all such advice, as implying conscious weakness. Not so Datis and Hippias. Sensible of the prudence of detracting the attention of the Athenians by a double attack, they laid a scheme, while tbs main army was at Marathon, for rallying the partisans of Hippias, with a force to assist them, in the neighborhood of Athens—and the signal was upheld by these partisans as soon as their measures were taken. But the rapidity of Miltiades so precipitated the battle, that this signal came too late, and was only given, “when the Persians were already in their ships”,  after the Marathonian defeat. Even then it might have proved dangerous, had not the movements of Miltiades been as rapid after the victory as before it: but if time had been allowed for the Persian movement on Athens before the battle of Marathon had been fought, the triumph of the Athenians might well have been exchanged for a calamitous servitude. To Miltiades belongs the credit of having comprehended the emergency from the beginning, and overruled the irresolution of his colleagues by his own single-hearted energy. The chances all turned out in his favor,—for the unexpected junction of the Plataeans in the very encampment of Marathon must have wrought up the courage of his army to the highest pitch: and not only did he thus escape all the depressing and distracting accidents, but he was fortunate enough to find this extraneous encouragement immediately preceding the battle, from a source on which he could not have calculated.

I have already observed that the phase of Grecian history best known to us, amidst which the great authors from whom we draw our information lived, was one of contempt for the Persians in the field. And it requires some effort of imagination to call back previous feelings after the circumstances have been altogether reversed: perhaps even Aeschylus the poet, at the time when he composed his tragedy of the Persae, to celebrate the disgraceful flight of the invader Xerxes, may have forgotten the emotions with which he and his brother Kynegeirus must have marched out from Athens fifteen years before, on the eve of the battle of Marathon. It must therefore be again mentioned that, down to the time when Datis landed in the bay of Marathon, the tide of Persian success had never yet been interrupted,—and that especially during the ten years immediately preceding, the high-handed and cruel extinction of the Ionic Revolt had aggravated to the highest pitch the alarm of the Greeks. To this must be added the successes of Datis himself and the calamities of Eretria, coming with all the freshness of novelty as an apparent sentence of death to Athens. The extreme effort of courage required in the Athenians, to encounter such invaders, is attested by the division of opinion among the ten generals. Putting all the circumstances together, it is without a parallel in Grecian history, surpassing even the combat of Thermopylae, as will appear when I come to describe that memorable event. And the admirable conduct of the five dissentient generals, when outvoted by the decision of the polemarch against them, in cooperating heartily for the success of a policy which they deprecated,—proves how much the feelings of a constitutional democracy, and that entire acceptance of the pronounced decision of the majority on which it rests, had worked themselves into the Athenian mind. The combat of Marathon was by no means a very decisive defeat, but it was a defeat,—and the first which the Persians had ever received from Greeks in the field. If the battle of Salamis, ten years afterwards, could be treated by Themistokles as a hair-breadth escape for Greece, much more is this true of the battle of Marathon; which first afforded reasonable proof, even to discerning and resolute Greeks, that the Persians might be effectually repelled, and the independence of European Greece maintained against them,—a conviction of incalculable value in reference to the formidable trials destined to follow. Upon the Athenians themselves, the first to face in the field successfully the terrific look of a Persian army, the effect of the victory was yet more stirring and profound. It supplied them with resolution for the far greater actual sacrifices which they cheerfully underwent ten years afterwards, at the invasion of Xerxes, without faltering in their Pan-Hellenic fidelity; and it strengthened them at home by swelling the tide of common sentiment and patriotic fraternity in the bosom of every individual citizen. It was the exploit of Athenians alone, but of all Athenians without dissent or exception,—the boast of orators, repeated until it almost degenerated into common-place, though the people seem never Io have become weary of allusions to their single-handed victory over a host of forty-six nations. It had been purchased with out a drop of intestine bloodshed,—for even the unknown traitors who raised the signal-shield on Mount Pentelikus, took care not to betray themselves by want of apparent sympathy with the triumph: lastly, it was the final guarantee of their democracy, barring all chance of restoration of Hippias for the future. Themistokles is said to have been robbed of his sleep by the trophies of Miltiades, and this is cited in proof of his ambitious temperament; but without supposing either jealousy or personal love of glory, the rapid transit from extreme danger to unparalleled triumph might well deprive of rest even the most sober-minded Athenian.

Who it was that raised the treacherous signal-shield to attract the Persians to Athens was never ascertained: very probably, in the full exultation of success, no investigation was made. Of course, however, the public belief would not be satisfied without singling out some persons as the authors of such a treason; and the information received by Herodotus (probably about 450-440 BC, forty or fifty years after the Marathonian victory) ascribed the deed to the Alkmaeonids; nor does he notice any other reported authors, though he rejects the allegation against them one a very sufficient grounds. They were a race religiously tainted, ever since the Kylonian sacrilege, and were therefore convenient persons to brand with the odium of an anonymous crime; while party feud, if it did not originally invent, would at least be active in spreading and certifying such rumors. At the time when Herodotus knew Athens, the political enmity between Pericles son of Xanthippus, and Kimon son of Miltiades, was at its height: Pericles belonged by his mother’s side to the Alkmaonid race, and we know that such lineage was made subservient to political manoeuvres against him by his enemies. Moreover, the enmity between Kimon and Pericles had been inherited by both from their fathers; for we shall find Xanthippus, not long after the battle of Marathon, the prominent accuser of Miltiades. Though Xanthippus was not an Alcmaeonid, his marriage with Agariste connected himself indirectly, and his son Pericles directly, with that race. And we may trace in this standing political feud a probable origin for the false reports as to the treason of the Alkmaeonids, on that great occasion which founded the glory of Miltiades; for that the reports were false, the intrinsic probabilities of the case, supported by the judgment of Herodotus, afford ample ground for believing.

When the Athenian army made its sudden return-march from Marathon to Athens, Aristeides with his tribe was left to guard the field and the spoil; but the speedy retirement of Datis from Attica left the Athenians at full liberty to revisit the scene and discharge the last duties to the dead. A tumulus was erected on the spot—such distinction was never conferred by Athens except in this case only—to the one hundred and ninety-two Athenian citizens who had been slain. Their names were inscribed on ten pillars erected at the spot, one for each tribe: there was also a second tumulus for the slain Plataeans, a third for the slaves, and a separate funeral monument to Miltiades himself. Six hundred years after the battle, Pausanias saw the tumulus, and could still read on the pillars the names of the immortalized warriors; and even now a conspicuous tumulus exists about Calf a mile from the sea-shore, which Colonel Leake believes to be the same. The inhabitants of the deme of Marathon worshipped these slain warriors as heroes, along with their own eponymus and with Herakles.

So splendid a victory had not been achieved, in the belief of the Athenians, without marked supernatural aid. The god Pan had met the courier Pheidippides on his hasty route from Athens to Sparta, and had told him that he was much hurt that the Athenians had as yet neglected to worship him; in spite of which neglect, however, he promised them effective aid at Marathon. The promise was faithfully executed, and the Athenians repaid it by a temple with annual worship and sacrifice. Moreover, the hero Theseus was seen strenuously assisting in the battle; and an unknown warrior, in rustic garb and armed only with a plough­share, dealt destruction among the Persian ranks: after the bat­tle he could not be found; and the Athenians, on asking at Delphi who he was, were directed to worship the hero Echetlus. Even in the time of Pausanias, this memorable battle-field was heard to resound every night with the noise of combatants and the snorting of horses. “It is dangerous (observes that pious author) to go to the spot with the express purpose of seeing what is passing; but if a man finds himself there by accident, without having heard anything about the matter, the gods will not be angry with him.” The gods, it seems, could not pardon the inquisitive mortal who deliberately pried into their secrets. Amidst the ornaments with which Athens was decorated during the free working of her democracy, the glories of Marathon of course occupied a conspicuous place. The battle was painted on one of the compartments of the portico called Poekile, wherein, amidst several figures of gods and heroes,—Athene, Heracles, Theseus, Echetlus, and the local patron of Marathon,—were seen honored and prominent the polemarch Callimachus and the general Miltiades, while the Plataeans were distinguished by their Boeotian leather casques. And the sixth of the month Boedromion, the anniversary of the battle, was commemorated by an annual ceremony, even down to the time of Plutarch.

Two thousand Spartans, starting from their city, immediately after the full moon, reached the frontier of Attica, on the third day of their march, a surprising effort, when we consider that the total distance from Sparta to Athens was about one hundred and fifty miles. They did not arrive, however, until the battle had been fought, and the Persians departed; but curiosity led them to the field of Marathon to behold the dead bodies of the Persians, after which they returned home, bestowing well-merited praise on the victors.

Datis and Artaphernes returned across the Aegean with their Eretriari prisoners to Asia; stopping for a short time at the island of Mykonos, where discovery was made of a gilt image of Apollo carried off as booty in a Phenician ship. Datis went himself to restore it to Delos, requesting the Delians to carry it back to the Delium, or temple of Apollo, on the eastern coast of Boeotia: the Delians, however, chose to keep the statue until it was reclaimed from them twenty years afterwards by the Thebans. On reaching Asia, the Persian generals conducted their prisoners up to the court of Susa, and into the presence of Darius. Though he had been vehemently incensed against them, yet when he saw them in his power, his wrath abated, and he manifested no desire to kill or harm them. They were planted at a spot called Arderikka, in the Kissian territory, one of the resting-places on the road from Sardis to Susa, and about twenty-six miles distant from the latter place: Herodotus seems himself to have seen their descendants there on his journey between the two capitals, and to have had the satisfaction of talking to them in Greek,—which we may well conceive to have made some impression upon him, at a spot distant by nearly three months’ journey from the coast of Ionia.

Happy would it have been for Miltiades if he had shared the honorable death of the polemarch Kallimachus, in seeking to fire the ships of the defeated Persians at Marathon. The short sequel of his history will be found in melancholy contrast with the Marathonian heroism.

His reputation had been great before the battle, and after it the admiration and confidence of his countrymen knew no bounds: it appears, indeed, to have reached such a pitch that his head was turned, and he lost both his patriotism and his prudence. He proposed to his countrymen to incur the cost of equipping an armament of seventy ships, with an adequate armed force, and to place it altogether at his discretion; giving them no intimation whither he intended to go, but merely assuring them that, if they would follow him, he would conduct them to a land where gold was abundant, and thus enrich them. Such a promise, from the lips of the recent victor of Marathon, was sufficient, and the armament was granted, no man except Miltiades knowing what was its destination. He sailed immediately to the island of Paros, laid siege to the town, and sent in a herald to require from the inhabitants a contribution of one hundred talents, on pain of entire destruction. His pretence for this attack was, that the Parians had furnished a trireme to Dalis for the Persian fleet at Marathon; but his real motive, so Herodotus assures us, was vindictive animosity against a Parian citizen named Lysagoras, who had exasperated the Persian general Hydarnes against him. The Parians amused him at first with evasions, until they had procured a little delay to repair the defective portions of their wall, after which they set him at defiance; and Miltiades in vain prosecuted hostilities against them for the space of twenty-six days: he ravaged the island, but his attacks made no impression upon the town. Beginning to despair of success in his military operations, he entered into some negotiation—such at least was the tale of the Parians themselves—with a Parian woman named Timo, priestess or attendant in the temple of Demeter, near the town-gates. This woman, promising to reveal to him a secret which would place Paros in his power, induced him to visit, by night a temple to which no male person was admissible. He leaped the exterior fence, and approached the sanctuary; but on coming near, was seized with a panic terror and ran away, almost out of his senses: on leaping the same fence to get back, he strained or bruised his thigh badly, and became utterly disabled. In this melancholy, state he was placed on ship-board; the siege being raised, and the whole armament returning to Athens.

Vehement was the indignation both of the armament and of the remaining Athenians against Miltiades on his return; and Xanthippus, father of the great Pericles, became the spokesman of this feeling. He impeached Miltiades before the popular judicature as having been guilty of deceiving the people, and as having deserved the penalty of death. The accused himself, disabled by his injured thigh, which even began to show symptoms of gangrene, was unable to stand, or to say a word in his own defence: he lay on his couch before the assembled judges, while his friends made the best case they could in his behalf. Defence, it appears, there was none; all they could do, was to appeal to his previous services: they reminded the people largely and emphatically of the inestimable exploit of Marathon, coming in addition to his previous conquest of Lemnos. The assembled dikasts, or jurors, showed their sense of these powerful appeals by rejecting the proposition of his accuser to condemn him to death; but they imposed on him the penalty of fifty talents “for his iniquity.”

Cornelius Nepos affirms that these fifty talents represented the expenses incurred by the state in fitting out the armament; but we may more probably believe, looking to the practice of the Athenian dikastery in criminal cases, that fifty talents was the minor penalty actually proposed by the defenders of Miltiades themselves, as a substitute for the punishment of death. In those penal cases at Athens, where the punishment was not fixed beforehand by the terms of the law, if the person accused was found guilty, it was customary to submit to the jurors, subsequently and separately, the question as to amount of punishment: first, the accuser named the penalty which he thought suitable; next, the accused person was called upon to name an amount of penalty for himself, and the jurors were constrained to take their choice between these two,—no third gradation of penalty being admissible for consideration. Of course, under such circumstances, it was the interest of the accused party to name, even in his own case, some real and serious penalty,—something which the jurors might be likely to deem not wholly inadequate to his crime just proved; for if he proposed some penalty only trifling, he drove them to prefer the heavier sentence recommended by his opponent. Accordingly, in the case of Miltiades, his friends, desirous of inducing the jurors to refuse their assent to the punishment of death, proposed a fine of fifty talents as the self-assessed penalty of the defendant; and perhaps they may have stated, as an argument in the case, that such a sum would suffice to defray the costs of the expedition. The fine was imposed, but Miltiades did not live to pay it, his injured limb mortified, and he died, leaving the fine to be paid by his son Kimon.

According to Cornelius Nepos, Diodorus, and Plutarch, he was put in prison, after having been fined, and there died. But Herodotus does not mention this imprisonment, and the tale appears to me improbable: he would hardly have omitted to notice it, had it come to his knowledge. Immediate imprisonment of a person fined by the dikastery, until his fine was paid, was not the natural and ordinary course of Athenian procedure, though there were particular cases in which such aggravation was added. Usually, a certain time was allowed for payment, before absolute execution was reported to, but the person under sentence became disfranchised and excluded from all political rights, from the very instant of his condemnation as a public debtor, until the fine was paid. Now in the instance of Miltiades, the lamentable condition of his wounded thigh rendered escape impossible,—so that there would be no special motive for departing from the usual practice, and imprisoning him forthwith: moreover, if he was not imprisoned forthwith, he would not be imprisoned at all, since he cannot have lived many days after his trial. To carry away the suffering general in his couch, incapable of raising himself even to plead for his own life, from the presence of the dikasts to a prison, would not only have been a needless severity, but could hardly have failed to imprint itself on the sympathies and the memory of all the beholders; so that Herodotus would have been likely to hear and mention it, if it had really occurred. I incline to believe therefore that Miltiades died at home: all accounts concur in stating that he died of the mortal bodily hurt which already disabled him even at the moment of his trial, and that his son Kimon paid the fifty talents after his death. If he could pay them, probably his father could have paid them also. And this is an additional reason for believing that there was no imprisonment,—for nothing but non-payment could have sent him to prison; and to rescue the suffering Miltiades from being sent thither, would have been the first and strongest desire of all sympathizing friends.

Thus closed the life of the conqueror of Marathon. The last act of it produces an impression so mournful, and even shocking,—his descent from the pinnacle of glory to defeat, mean tampering with a temple-servant, mortal bodily hurt, undefended ignominy, and death under a sentence of heavy fine, is so abrupt and unprepared,—that readers, ancient and modern, have not been satisfied without finding some one to blame for it: we must except Herodotus, our original authority, who recounts the trans­action without dropping a single hint of blame against any one. To speak ill of the people, as Machiavel has long ago observed, is a strain in which every one at all times, even under a democratical government, indulges with impunity and without provoking any opponent to reply; and in this instance, the hard fate of Miltiades has been imputed to the vices of the Athenians and their democracy,—it has been cited in proof, partly of their fickleness, partly of their ingratitude. But however such blame may serve to lighten the mental sadness arising from a series of painful facts, it will not be found justified if we apply to those facts a reasonable criticism.

What is called the fickleness of the Athenians on this occasion is nothing more than a rapid and decisive change in their estimation of Miltiades; unbounded admiration passing at once into extreme wrath. To censure them for fickleness is here an abuse of terms; such a change in their opinion was the unavoidable result of his conduct. His behavior in the expedition of Paros was as reprehensible as at Marathon it had been meritorious, and the one succeeded immediately after the other: what else could ensue except an entire revolution in the Athenian feelings? He had employed his prodigious ascendency over their minds to induce them to follow him without knowing whither, in the confidence of an unknown booty: he had exposed their lives and wasted their substance in wreaking a private grudge: in addition to the shame of an unprincipled project, comes the constructive shame of not having succeeded in it. Without doubt, such behavior, coming from a man whom they admired to excess, must have produced a violent and painful revulsion in the feelings of his countrymen. The idea of having lavished praise and confidence upon a person who forthwith turns it to an unworthy purpose, is one of the greatest torments of the human bosom; and we may well understand that the intensity of the subsequent displeasure would be aggravated by this reactionary sentiment, without accusing the Athenians of fickleness. If an officer, whose conduct has been such as to merit the highest encomiums, comes on a sudden to betray his trust, and manifests cowardice or treachery in a new and important undertaking confided to him, are we to treat the general in command as fickle, because his opinion as well as his conduct undergoes an instantaneous revolution,—which will be all the more vehement in proportion to his previous esteem? The question to be determined is, whether there be sufficient ground for such a change; and in the case of Miltiades, that question must be answered in the affirmative.

In regard to the charge of ingratitude against the Athenians, this last-mentioned point—sufficiency of reason—stands tacitly admitted. It is conceded that Miltiades deserved punishment for his conduct in reference to the Parian expedition, but it is nevertheless maintained that gratitude for his previous services at Marathon ought to have exempted him from punishment. But the sentiment upon which, after all, this exculpation rests, will not bear to be drawn out and stated in the form of a cogent or justifying reason. For will any one really contend, that a man who has rendered great services to the public, is to receive in return a license of unpunished misconduct for the future? Is the general, who has earned applause by eminent skill and important victories, to be recompensed by being allowed the liberty of betraying his trust afterwards, and exposing his country to peril, without censure or penalty? This is what no one intends to vindicate deliberately; yet a man must be prepared to vindicate it when he blames the Athenians for ingratitude towards Miltiades. For if all that be meant is, that gratitude for previous services ought to pass, not as a receipt in lull for subsequent crime, but as an extenuating circumstance in the measurement of the penalty, the answer is, that it was so reckoned in the Athenian treatment of Miltiades, his friends had nothing whatever to urge, against the extreme penalty proposed by bis accuser, except these previous services,—which influenced the dikasts sufficiently to induce them to inflict the lighter punishment instead of the heavier. Now the whole amount, of punishment inflicted consisted in a fine which certainly was not beyond his reasonable means of paying, or of prevailing upon friends to pay for him, since his son Kimon actually did pay it. And those who blame the Athenians for ingratitude,—unless they are prepared to maintain the doctrine that previous services are to pass as full acquittal for future crime,—have no other ground left except to say that the fine was too high; that instead of being fifty talents, it ought to have been no more than forty, thirty, twenty, or ten talents. Whether they are right in this, I will not take upon me to pronounce. If the amount was named on behalf of the accused party, the dikastery had no legal power of diminishing it; but it is within such narrow limits that the question actually lies, when transferred from the province of sentiment to that of reason. It. will be recollected that the death of Miltiades arose neither from his trial nor his fine, but from the hurt in his thigh.

The charge of ingratitude against the Athenian popular juries really amounts to this,—that, in trying a person accused of present crime or fault, they were apt to confine themselves too strictly and exclusively to the particular matter of charge, either forgetting, or making too little account of, past services which he might have rendered. Whoever imagines that such was the habit of Athenian dikasts, must have studied the orators to very little purpose. Their real defect was the very opposite: they were too much disposed to wander from the special issue before them, and to be affected by appeals to previous services and conduct. That which an accused person at Athens usually strives to produce is, an impression in the minds of the dikasts favorable to his general character and behavior. Of course, he meets the particular allegation of his accuser as well as he can, but he never fails also to remind them emphatically, how well he has performed his general duties of a citizen,—how many times he has served in military expeditions,—how many trierarchies and liturgies he has performed, and performed with splendid efficiency. In fact, the claim of an accused person to acquittal is made to rest too much on his prior services, and too little upon innocence or justifying matter as to the particular indictment. When we come down to the time of the orators. I shall be pre­pared to show that such indisposition to confine themselves to a special issue was one of the most serious defects of the assembled dikasts at Athens. It is one which we should naturally expect from a body of private, non-professional citizens assembled for the occasion, and which belongs more or less to the system of jury-trial everywhere; but it is the direct reverse of that ingratitude, or habitual insensibility to prior services, for which they have, been so often denounced.

The fate of Miltiades, then, so far from illustrating either the fickleness or the ingratitude of his countrymen, attests their just appreciation of deserts. It also illustrates another moral, of no small importance to the right comprehension of Grecian affairs; it teaches us the painful lesson, how perfectly maddening were the effects of a copious draught of glory on the temperament of an enterprising and ambitious Greek. There can be no doubt, that the rapid transition, in the course of about one week, from Athenian terror before the battle to Athenian exultation after it, must have produced demonstrations towards Miltiades such as were never paid towards any other man in the whole history of the commonwealth. Such unmeasured admiration unseated his rational judgment, so that his mind became abandoned to the reckless impulses of insolence, and antipathy, and rapacity;—that distempered state, for which (according to Grecian morality) the retributive Nemesis was ever on the watch, and which, in his case, she visited with a judgment startling in its rapidity, as well as terrible in its amount. Had Miltiades been the same man before the battle of Marathon as he became after it, the battle might probably have turned out a defeat instead of a victory. Demosthenes, indeed, in speaking of the wealth and luxury of political leaders in his own time, and the profuse rewards bestowed upon them by the people, pointed in contrast to the house of Miltiades as being noway more splendid than that of a private man. But though Miltiades might continue to live in a modest establishment, he received from his countrymen marks of admiration and deference such as were never paid to any citizen before or after him; and, after all, admiration and deference constitute the precious essence of popular reward. No man except Miltiades ever dared to raise his voice in the Athenian assembly, and say : “Give me a fleet of ships : do not ask what I am going to do with them, but only follow me. and I will enrich you.” Herein we may read the unmeasured confidence which the Athenians placed in their victorious general, and the utter incapacity of a leading Greek to bear it without mental depravation; while we learn from it to draw the melancholy inference, that one result of success was to make the successful leader one of the most dangerous men in the community. We shall presently be called upon to observe the same tendency in the case of the Spartan Pausanias, and even in that of the Athenian Themistocles. It is, indeed, fortunate that the reckless aspirations of Miltiades did not take a turn more noxious to Athens than the comparatively unimportant enterprise against Paros. For had he sought to acquire dominion and gratify antipathies against enemies at home, instead of directing his blow against a Parian enemy, the peace and security of his country might have been seriously endangered.

Of the despots who gained power in Greece, a considerable proportion began by popular conduct, and by rendering good service to their fellow-citizens: having first earned public gratitude, they abused it for purposes of their own ambition. There was far greater danger, in a Grecian community, of dangerous excess of gratitude towards a victorious soldier, than of deficiency in that sentiment: hence the person thus exalted acquired a position such that the community found it difficult afterwards to shake him off. Now there is a disposition almost universal among writers and readers to side with an individual, especially an eminent individual, against the multitude; and accordingly those who under such circumstances suspect the probable abuse of an exalted position, are denounced as if they harbored an unworthy jealousy of superior abilities. But the truth is, that the largest analogies of the Grecian character justified that suspicion, and required the community to take precautions against the corrupting effects of their own enthusiasm. There is no feature which more largely pervades the impressible Grecian character, than a liability to be intoxicated and demoralized by success: there was no fault from which so few eminent Greeks were free: there was hardly any danger, against which it was at once so necessary and so difficult for the Grecian governments to take security,—especially the democracies, where the manifestations of enthu­siasm were always the loudest. Such is the real explanation of those charges which have been urged against the Grecian democracies, that they came to hate and ill-treat previous benefactors; and the history of Miltiades illustrates it in a manner no less pointed than painful.

I have already remarked that the fickleness, which has been so largely imputed to the Athenian democracy in their dealings with him, is nothing more than a reasonable change of opinion on the best grounds. Nor can it be said that fickleness was in any case an attribute of the Athenian democracy. It is a well-known fact, that feelings, or opinions, or modes of judging, which have once obtained footing among a large number of people, are more lasting and unchangeable than those which belong only to one or a few; insomuch that the judgment and actions of the many admit of being more clearly understood as to the past, and more certainly predicted as to the future. If we are to predicate any attribute of the multitude, it will rather be that of undue tenacity than undue fickleness; and there will occur nothing in the course of this history to prove that the Athenian people changed their opinions on insufficient grounds more frequently than an unresponsible one or few would have changed.

But there were two circumstances in the working of the Athenian democracy which imparted to it an appearance of greater fickleness, without the reality: First, that the manifestations and changes of opinion were all open, undisguised, and noisy: the people gave utterance to their present impression, whatever it was, with perfect frankness; if their opinions were really changed, they had no shame or scruple in avowing it. Secondly,—and this is a point of capital importance in the working of democracy generally,—the present impression, whatever it might be, was not merely undisguised in its manifestations, but also had a tendency to be exaggerated in its intensity. This arose from their habit of treating public affairs in multitudinous assemblages, the well-known effect of which is, to inflame sentiment in every man’s bosom by mere contact with a sympathizing circle of neighbors. Whatever the sentiment might be,—fear, ambition, cupidity, wrath, compassion, piety, patriotic devotion, etc,—and whether well-founded or ill-founded, it was constantly influenced more or less by such intensifying cause. This is a defect which of course belongs in a certain degree to all exercise of power by numerous bodies, even though they be representative bodies,— especially when the character of the people, instead of being comparatively sedate and slow to move, like the English, is quick, impressible, and fiery, like Greeks or Italians; but it operated far more powerfully on the self-acting Demos assembled in the Pnyx. It was in fact the constitutional malady of the democracy, of which the people were themselves perfectly sensible,—as I shall show hereafter from the securities which they tried to provide against it,—but which no securities could ever wholly eradicate. Frequency of public assemblies, far from aggravating the evil, had a tendency to lighten it. The people thus became accustomed to hear and balance many different views as a preliminary to ultimate judgment; they contracted personal interest and esteem for a numerous class of dissentient speakers; and they even acquired a certain practical consciousness of their own liability to error. Moreover, the diffusion of habits of public speaking, by means of the sophists and the rhetors, whom it has been so much the custom to disparage, tended in the same direction,—to break the unity of sentiment among the listening crowd, to multiply separate judgments, and to neutralize the contagion of mere sympathizing impulse. These were important deductions, still farther assisted by the superior taste and intelligence of the Athenian people: but still, the inherent malady remained,—excessive and misleading intensity of present sentiment. It was this which gave such inestimable value to the ascendency of Pericles, as depicted by Thucydides: his hold on the people was so firm, that he could always speak with effect against excess of the reigning tone of feeling. “When Pericles (says the historian) saw the people in a state of unseasonable and insolent confidence, he spoke so as to cow them into alarm; when again they were in groundless terror, he combated it, and brought them back to confidence.” We shall find Demosthenes, with far inferior ascendency, employed in the same honorable task: the Athenian people often stood in need of such correction, but unfortunately did not always find statesmen, at once friendly and commanding, to administer it.

These two attributes, then, belonged to the Athenian democracy; first, their sentiments of every kind were manifested loudly and openly; next, their sentiments tended to a pitch of great present intensity. Of course, therefore, when they changed, the change of sentiment stood prominent, and forced itself upon every one’s notice,— being a transition from one strong sentiment past to another strong sentiment present. And it was because such alterations, when they did take place, stood out so palpably to remark, that the Athenian people have drawn upon themselves the imputation of fickleness: for it is not at all true, I repeat, that changes of sentiment were more frequently produced in them by frivolous or insufficient causes, than changes of senti­ment in other governments.