Ionians took and burned that city. But the Persians, gathering in
numbers, defeated and drove them back to the coast, where the Athenians,
weary of the enterprise, took to their ships and hastened home.
When word of this raid, and the burning of Sardis by the Athenians and
Ionians, came to the ears of Darius at his far-off capital city, he
asked in wonder, "The Athenians!--who are they?" The name of this
distant and insignificant Greek city had not yet reached his kingly
ears.
He was told who the Athenians were, and, calling for his bow, he shot an
arrow high into the air, at the same time calling to the Greek deity,
"Grant me, Zeus, to revenge myself on those Athenians."
And he bade one of his servants to repeat to him three times daily, when
he sat down to his mid-day meal, "Master, remember the Athenians!"
The invaders had been easily repulsed from Sardis, but the revolt
continued, and proved a serious and stubborn one, which it took the
Persians years to overcome. The smaller cities were conquered one by
one, but the Persians were four years in preparing for the siege of
Miletus. Resistance here was fierce and bitter, but in the end the city
fell. The Persians now took a savage revenge for the burning of Sardis,
killing most of the men of this important city, dragging into captivity
the women and children, and burning the temples to the ground. The other
cities which still held out were quickly taken, and visited like
Miletus, with the same fate of fire and bloodshed. It was now 495 B.C.,
more than twenty years after the invasion of Scythia.
As for Histiaeus, he was at first blamed by Darius for the revolt. But as
he earnestly declared his innocence, and asserted that he could soon
bring it to an end, Darius permitted him to depart. Reaching Miletus, he
applied at the gates for admission, saying that he had come to the
city's aid. But Aristagoras was no longer there, and the Milesians had
no use for their former tyrant. They refused him admission, and even
wounded him when he tried to force his way in at night. He then went to
Lesbos, obtained there some ships, occupied the city of Byzantium, and
began a life of piracy, which he kept up till his death, pillaging the
Ionian merchant ships as they passed into and out of the Euxine Sea.
Thus ended the career of this treacherous and worthless despot, to whom
Darius owed his escape from Scythia.
_THE ATHENIANS AT MARATHON._
The time came when Darius of Persia did not need the bidding of a slave
to make him "Remember the Athenians." He was taught a lesson on the
battle-field of Marathon that made it impossible for him ever to forget
the Athenian name. Having dismally failed in his expedition against the
Scythians, he invaded Greece and failed as dismally. It is the story of
this important event which we have next to tell.
And here it may be well to remark what terrible consequences to mankind
the ambition of a single man may cause. The invasion of Greece, and all
that came from it, can be traced in a direct line of events from the
deeds of Histiaeus, tyrant of Miletus, who first saved Darius from
annihilation by the Scythians, then roused the Ionians to rebellion,
and, finally, through the medium of Aristagoras, induced the Athenians
to come to their aid and take part in the burning of Sardis. This roused
Darius, who had dwelt at Susa for many years in peace, to a thirst for
revenge on Athens, and gave rise to that series of invasions which
ravaged Greece for many years, and whose fitting sequel was the invasion
and conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great, a century and a half
later.
And now, with this preliminary statement, we may proceed with our tale.
No sooner had the Ionian revolt been brought to an end, and the Ionians
punished for their daring, than the angry Oriental despot prepared to
visit upon Athens the vengeance he had vowed. His preparations for this
enterprise were great. His experience in Scythia had taught him that the
Western barbarians--as he doubtless considered them--were not to be
despised. For two years, in every part of his vast empire, the note of
war was sounded, and men and munitions of war were actively gathered. On
the coast of Asia Minor a great fleet, numbering six hundred armed
triremes and many transports for men and horses, was prepared. The
Ionian and AEolian Greeks largely manned this fleet, and were forced to
aid their late foe in the effort to destroy their kinsmen beyond the
archipelago of the AEgean Sea.
An Athenian traitor accompanied the Persians, and guided their leader in
the advance against his native city. We have elsewhere spoken of
Pisistratus, the tyrant of Athens, whose treason Solon had in vain
endeavored to prevent. After his death, his sons Hipparchus and Hippias
succeeded him in the tyranny. Hipparchus was killed in 514 B.C., and in
511 Hippias, who had shown himself a cruel despot, was banished from
Athens. He repaired to the court of King Darius, where he dwelt many
years. Now he came back, as guide and counsellor to the Persians,
hoping, perhaps, to become again a despot of Athens; but only, as the
fates decreed, to find a grave on the fatal field of Marathon.
The assault on Greece was a twofold one. The first was defeated by
nature, the second by man. A land expedition, led by the Persian general
Mardonius, crossed the Hellespont in the year 493 B.C., proposing to
march to Athens along the coast, and with orders to bring all that were
left alive of its inhabitants as captives to the great king. On marched
the great host, nothing doubting that Greece would fall an easy prey to
their arms. And as they marched along the land, the fleet followed them
along the adjoining sea, until the stormy and perilous promontory of
Mount Athos was reached.
No doubt the Greeks viewed with deep alarm this formidable progress.
They had never yet directly measured arms with the Persians, and dreaded
them more than, as was afterwards shown, they had reason to. But at
Mount Athos the deities of the winds came to their aid. As the fleet was
rounding that promontory, often fatal to mariners, a frightful hurricane
swooped upon it, and destroyed three hundred of its ships, while no less
than twenty thousand men became victims of the waves. Some of the crews
reached the shores, but of these many died of cold, and others were
slain and devoured by wild beasts, which roamed in numbers on that
uninhabited point of land. The land army, too, lost heavily from the
hurricane; and Mardonius, fearing to advance farther after this
disaster, ingloriously made his way back to the Hellespont. So ended the
first invasion of Greece.
Three years afterwards another was made. Darius, indeed, first sent
heralds to Greece, demanding _earth and water_ in token of submission to
his will. To this demand some of the cities cowardly yielded; but
Athens, Sparta, and others sent back the heralds with no more earth than
clung to the soles of their shoes. And so, as Greece was not to be
subdued through terror of his name, the great king prepared to make it
feel his power and wrath, incited thereto by his hatred of Athens, which
Hippias took care to keep alive. Another expedition was prepared, and
put under the command of another general, Datis by name.
The army was now sent by a new route. Darius himself had led his army
across the Bosphorus, where Constantinople now stands, and where
Byzantium then stood. Mardonius conveyed his across the southern strait,
the Hellespont. The third expedition was sent on shipboard directly
across the sea, landing and capturing the islands of the AEgean as it
advanced. Landing at length on the large island of Euboea, near the
coast of Attica, Datis stormed and captured the city of Eretria, burnt
its temples, and dragged its people into captivity. Then, putting his
army on shipboard again, he sailed across the narrow strait between
Euboea and Attica, and landed on Attic soil, in the ever-memorable Bay
of Marathon.
It seemed now, truly, as if Darius was about to gain his wish and
revenge himself on Athens. The plain of Marathon, where the great
Persian army had landed and lay encamped, is but twenty-two miles from
Athens by the nearest road,--scarcely a day's march. The plain is about
six miles long, and from a mile and a half to three miles in width,
extending back from the sea-shore to the rugged hills and mountains
which rise to bind it in. A brook flows across it to the sea, and
marshes occupy its ends. Such was the field on which one of the decisive
battles of the world was about to be fought.
[Illustration: RUINS OF THE PARTHENON.]
The coming of the Persians had naturally filled the Athenians and all
the neighboring nations of Greece with alarm. Yet if any Athenian had a
thought of submission without fighting, he was wise enough to keep it to
himself. The Athenians of that day were a very different people from
what they had been fifty years before, when they tamely submitted to the
tyranny of Pisistratus. They had gained new laws, and with them a new
spirit. They were the freest people upon the earth,--a democracy in
which every man was the equal of every other, and in which each had a
full voice in the government of the state. They had their political
leaders, it is true, but these were their fellow-citizens, who ruled
through intellect, not through despotism.
There were now three such men in Athens,--men who have won an enduring
fame. One of these was that Miltiades who had counselled the destruction
of Darius's bridge of boats. The others were named Themistocles and
Aristides, concerning whom we shall have more to say. These three were
among the ten generals who commanded the army of Athens, and each of
whom, according to the new laws, was to have command for a day. It was
fortunate for the Athenians that they had the wit to set aside this law
on this important occasion, since such a divided generalship must surely
have led to defeat and disaster.
But before telling what action was taken there is an important episode
to relate. Athens--as was common with the Greek cities when
threatened--did not fail to send to Sparta for aid. When the Persians
landed at Marathon, a swift courier, Phidippides by name, was sent to
that city for assistance, and so fleet of foot was he that he performed
the journey, of one hundred and fifty miles, in forty-eight hours' time.
The Spartans, who knew that the fall of Athens would soon be followed by
that of their own city, promised aid without hesitation. But
superstition stood in their way. It was, unfortunately, only the ninth
day of the moon. Ancient custom forbade them to march until the moon had
passed its full. This would be five days yet,--five days which might
cause the ruin of Greece. But old laws and observances held dominion at
Sparta, and, whatever came from it, the moon must pass its full before
the army could march.
When this decision was brought back by the courier to Athens it greatly
disturbed the public mind. Of the ten generals, five strongly counselled
that they should wait for Spartan help. The other five were in favor of
immediate action. Delay was dangerous with an enemy at their door and
many timid and doubtless some treacherous citizens within their walls.
Fortunately, there was an eleventh general, Callimachus, the war archon,
or polemarch, who had a casting vote in the council of generals, and
who, under persuasion of Miltiades, cast his vote for an immediate march
to Marathon. The other generals who favored this action gave up to
Miltiades their days of command, making him sole leader for that length
of time. Herodotus says that he refused to fight till his own day came
regularly round,--but we can scarcely believe that a general of his
ability would risk defeat on such a childish point of honor. If so, he
should have been a Spartan, and waited for the passing of the full moon.
To Marathon, then, the men of Athens marched, and from its surrounding
hills looked down on the great Persian army that lay encamped beneath,
and on the fleet which seemed to fill the sea. Of those brave men there
were no more than ten thousand. And from all Greece but one small band
came to join them, a thousand men from the little town of Plataea. The
numbers of the foe we do not know. They may have been two hundred
thousand in all, though how many of these landed and took part in the
battle no one can tell. Doubtless they outnumbered the Athenians more
than ten to one.
Far along the plain stretched the lines of the Persians, with their
fleet behind them, extended along the beach. On the high ground in the
rear were marshalled the Greeks, spread out so long that their line was
perilously thin. The space of a mile separated the two armies.
And now, at the command of Miltiades, the valiant Athenians crossed this
dividing space at a full run, sounding their paean or war-cry as they
advanced. Miltiades was bent on coming to close quarters at once, so as
to prevent the enemy from getting their bowmen and cavalry at work.
The Persians, on seeing this seeming handful of men, without archers or
horsemen, advancing at a run upon their great array, deemed at first
that the Greeks had gone mad and were rushing wildly to destruction. The
ringing war-cry astounded them,--a Greek paean was new music to their
ears. And when the hoplites of Athens and Plataea broke upon their ranks,
thrusting and hewing with spear and sword, and with the strength gained
from exercises in the gymnasium, dread of these courageous and furious
warriors filled their souls. On both wings the Persian lines broke and
fled for their ships. But in the centre, where Datis had placed his best
men, and where the Athenian line was thinnest, the Greeks, breathless
from their long run, were broken and driven back. Seeing this, Miltiades
brought up his victorious wings, attacked the centre with his entire
force, and soon had the whole Persian army in full flight for its ships.
The marshes swallowed up many of the fleeing host. Hundreds fell before
the arms of the victors. Into the ships poured in terror those who had
escaped, followed hotly by the victorious Greeks, who made strenuous
efforts to set the ships on fire and destroy the entire host. In this
they failed. The Persians, made desperate by their peril, drove them
back. The fleet hastily set sail, leaving few prisoners, but abandoning
a rich harvest of tents and equipments to the victorious Greeks. Of the
Persian host, some sixty-four hundred lay dead on the field, the ships
having saved them from further slaughter. The Greek loss in dead was
only one hundred and ninety-two.
Yet, despite this signal victory, Greece was still in imminent danger.
Athens was undefended. The fleeing fleet might reach and capture it
before the army could return. In truth, the ships had sailed in this
direction, and from the top of a lofty hill Miltiades saw the polished
surface of a shield flash in the sunlight, and quickly guessed what it
meant. It was a signal made by some traitor to the Persian fleet.
Putting his army at once under march, despite the weariness of the
victors, he hastened back over the long twenty-two miles at all possible
speed, and the worn-out troops reached Athens barely in time to save it
from the approaching fleet.
The triumph of Miltiades was complete. Only for his quickness in
guessing the meaning of the flashing shield, and the rapidity of his
march, all the results of his great victory would have been lost, and
Athens fallen helpless into Persian arms. But Datis, finding the city
amply garrisoned, and baffled at every point, turned his ships and
sailed in defeat away, leaving the Athenians masters of city and field.
And now the Spartans--to whom the full moon had come too late--appeared,
two thousand strong, only in time to congratulate the victors and view
the dead Persians on the field. They had marched the whole distance in
less than three days. As for the Athenian dead, they were buried with
great ceremony on the plain where they fell, and the great mound which
covers them is visible there to this day.
_XERXES AND HIS ARMY._
The defeat of the Persian army at Marathon redoubled the wrath of King
Darius against the Athenians. He resolved in his autocratic mind to
sweep that pestilent city and all whom it contained from the face of the
earth. And he perhaps would have done so had he not met a more terrible
foe even than Miltiades and his army,--the all-conqueror Death, to whose
might the greatest monarchs must succumb. Burning with fury, Darius
ordered the levy of a mighty army, and for three years busy preparations
for war went on throughout the vast empire of Persia. But, just as the
mustering was done and he was about to march, that grisly foe Death
struck him down in the midst of his schemes of conquest, and Greece was
saved,--the great Darius was no more.
Xerxes, son of Darius, succeeded him on the throne. This new monarch was
the handsomest and stateliest man in all his army. But his fair outside
covered a weak nature; timid, faint-hearted, vain, conceited, he was not
the man to conquer Greece, small as it was and great as was the empire
under his control; and the death of Darius was in all probability the
salvation of Greece.
Xerxes succeeded not only to the throne of Persia, but also to the vast
army which his father had brought together. He succeeded, moreover, to a
war, for Egypt was in revolt. But this did not last long; the army was
at once set in motion, Egypt was quickly subdued, and the Egyptians
found themselves under a worse tyranny than before.
Greece remained to conquer, and for that enterprise the timid Persian
king was not eager. Marathon could not be forgotten. Those fierce
Athenians who had defeated his father's great host were not to be dealt
with so easily as the unwarlike Egyptians. He held back irresolute, now
persuaded to war by one councillor, now to peace by another, and
finally--so we are told--driven to war by a dream, in which a tall,
stately man appeared to him and with angry countenance commanded him not
to abandon the enterprise which his father had designed. This dream came
to him again the succeeding night, and when Artabanus, his uncle, and
the advocate of peace, was made to sit on his throne and sleep in his
bed, the same figure appeared to him, and threatened to burn out his
eyes if he still opposed the war. Artabanus, stricken with terror, now
counselled war, and Xerxes determined on the invasion of Greece.
This story we are told by Herodotus, who told many things which it is
not very safe to believe. What we really know is that Xerxes began the
most stupendous preparations for war that had ever been known, and added
to the army left by his father until he had got together the greatest
host the world had yet beheld. For four years those preparations, to
which Darius had already given three years of time, were actively
continued. Horsemen and foot-soldiers, ships of war, transports,
provisions, and supplies of all kinds were collected far and near, the
vanity of Xerxes probably inciting him to astonish the world by the
greatness of his army.
In the autumn of the year 481 B.C. this vast army, marching from all
parts of the mighty empire, reached Lydia and gathered in and around the
city of Sardis, the old capital of Croesus. Besides the land army, a
fleet of twelve hundred and seven ships of war, and numerous other
vessels, were collected, and large magazines of provisions were formed
at points along the whole line of march. For years flour and other food,
from Asia and Egypt, had been stored in cities on the route, that the
fatal enemy starvation might not attack the mighty host.
Two important questions occupied the mind of Xerxes. How was he to get
his vast army on European soil, and how escape those dangers from storm
which had wrecked his father's fleet? He might cross the sea in ships,
as Datis had done,--and be like him defeated. Xerxes thought it safest
to keep on solid land, and decided to build a bridge of boats across the
Hellespont, that ocean river now known as the Dardanelles, the first of
the two straits which connect the Mediterranean with the Black Sea. As
for the other trouble, that of storms at sea, he remembered the great
gale which had wrecked the fleet of Mardonius off the stormy cape of
Mount Athos, and determined to avoid this danger. A narrow neck of land
connects Mount Athos with the mainland. Xerxes ordered that a ship-canal
should be cut through this isthmus, wide and deep enough to allow two
triremes--war-ships with three ranks of oars--to sail abreast.
This work was done by the Phoenicians, the ablest engineers at that
time in the world. A canal was made through which his whole fleet could
sail, and thus the stormy winds and waves which hovered about Mount
Athos be avoided.
This work was successfully done, but not so the bridge of boats. Hardly
had the latter been completed, when there came so violent a storm that
the cables were snapped like pack-thread and the bridge swept away. With
the weakness of a man of small mind, on hearing of this disaster Xerxes
burst into a fit of insane rage. He ordered that the heads of the chief
engineers should be cut off, but this was far from satisfying his anger.
The elements had risen against his might, and the elements themselves
must be punished. The Hellespont should be scourged for its temerity,
and three hundred lashes were actually given the water, while a set of
fetters were cast into its depths. It is further said that the water was
branded with hot irons, but it is hard to believe that even Xerxes was
such a fool as this would make him.
The rebellious water thus punished, Xerxes regained his wits, and
ordered that the bridge should be rebuilt more strongly than before.
Huge cables were made, some of flax, some of papyrus fibre, to anchor
the ships in the channel and to bind them to the shore. Two bridges were
constructed, composed of large ships laid side by side in the water,
while over each of them stretched six great cables, to moor them to the
land and to support the wooden causeway. In one of these bridges no less
than three hundred and sixty ships were employed.
And now, everything being ready, the mighty army began its march. It
presented a grand spectacle as it made its way from Sardis to the sea.
First of all came the baggage, borne on thousands of camels and other
beasts of burden. Then came one-half the infantry. The other half
marched in the rear, while between them were Xerxes and his great
body-guard, which is thus described by the Greek historian:
First came a thousand Persian cavalry and as many spearmen, each of the
latter having a golden pomegranate on the rear end of his spear, which
was carried in the air, the point being turned downward. Then came ten
sacred horses, splendidly caparisoned, and following them rolled the
sacred chariot of Zeus, drawn by eight white horses. This was succeeded
by the chariot of Xerxes himself, who was immediately attended by a
thousand horse-guards, the choicest troops of the kingdom, of whose
spears the ends glittered with golden apples. Then came detachments of
one thousand horse, ten thousand foot, and ten thousand horse. These
foot-soldiers, called the Immortals, because their number was always
maintained, had pomegranates of silver on their spears, with the
exception of one thousand, who marched in front and rear and on the
sides, and bore pomegranates of gold. After these household troops
followed the vast remaining host.
The army of Xerxes was, as we have said, superior in numbers to any the
world had ever seen. Forty-six nations had sent their quotas to the
host, each with its different costume, arms, mode of march, and system
of fighting. Only those from Asia Minor bore such arms as the Greeks
were used to fight with. Most of the others were armed with javelins or
other light weapons, and bore slight shields or none at all. Some came
armed only with daggers and a lasso like that used on the American
plains. The Ethiopians from the Upper Nile had their bodies painted half
red and half white, wore lion-and panther-skins, and carried javelins
and bows. Few of the whole army bore the heavy weapons or displayed the
solid fighting phalanx of those whom they had come to meet in war.