In the preceding chapter, I indicated the point of confluence between the European and Asiatic streams of Grecian history,—the commencement of a decided Persian intention to conquer Attica; manifested first in the form of a threat by Artaphernês 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, Artaphernês 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.[584]
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 as certain, that both the population and the territory of many among the Ionic cities, if not of all, were materially altered in consequence 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 Milêtus, 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 Karians of Pêdasa.[585] 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 Hekatæus, 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 Artaphernês, 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 for describing the condition of the Asiatic Greeks after the repulse of Xerxês 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 in the ensuing spring for the purpose. Having reached Kilikia 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 us, and seems to have appeared surprising as well to Herodotus himself as to his readers. Mardonius deposed the despots throughout the various Greek cities,[586] 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 Akanthus, 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 gulf of Therma, with a view of conquering as much of Greece as he could, and even of prosecuting the march as far as Athens and Eretria;[587] so that the expedition afterwards accomplished by Xerxês 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.[588] We shall hear of him again under Xerxês.
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 Skaptê Hylê, in Thrace, yielded to them an annual income of eighty talents; and altogether their surplus revenue—after defraying all the expenses of government, so that the inhabitants were entirely untaxed—was two hundred talents (forty-six thousand pounds, if Attic talents; more, if either Euboic or Æginæan). 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 Skaptê Hylê. 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 Abdêra.[589]
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.[590] 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, Eubœa, and some of the smaller islands, are not included; but Ægina, at that time the first maritime power of Greece, is expressly included.[591]
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 Æginetans, 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 Ægina 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 Lacedæmon 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 Ægina on one side, and Athens on the other,—begun several years before, and growing out of the connection between Athens and Platæa,—had never yet been terminated. The Æginetans 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,[592] 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 B. C.) 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 Ægina 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,[593] 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 Lacedæmonians, 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.[594]
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 Æginetans 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, Kleomenês king of Sparta went over to Ægina, to take measures against the authors of the late proceeding, “for the general benefit of Hellas.”[595]
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 (Crœsus), or by Greeks who seek help, such as the Platæans 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 Mæandrius, as well as the Platæans, in spite of their entreaties founded on common Hellenic lineage: the expedition which she undertook against Polykratês of Samos, was founded upon private motives of displeasure, even in the estimation of the Lacedæmonians 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 Ægina, 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 Æginetans 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,[596]—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,[597]—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 preëminence 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 Milêtus was besieged by the Persian generals, that a war broke out between Sparta and Argos,[598]—on what grounds Herodotus does not inform us. Kleomenês, encouraged by a promise of the oracle that he should take Argos, led the Lacedæmonian 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 Ægina and Sikyon,[599] 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 Sêpeia, near Tiryns: Kleomenês, by a piece of simplicity on the part of his enemies, which we find it difficult to credit in Herodotus, 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 Lacedæmonian herald, and performed with their own army the same order which they thus heard given. This came to the knowledge of Kleomenês, 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 Lacedæmonians 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,[600] 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. Kleomenês 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, Kleomenês 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.[601] 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 Kleomenês 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, Polyænus, 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.[602] This is probably a mythe, generated by a desire to embody in detail the dictum of the oracle a little before, about “the female conquering the male.”[603] Without meaning to deny that the Argeian women might have been capable of achieving so patriotic a deed, if Kleomenês 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 Hêræum, or great temple of Hêrê, between Argos and Mykênæ, to offer sacrifice. The priest in attendance forbade him to enter, saying that no stranger was allowed to offer sacrifice in the temple. But Kleomenês had once already forced his way into the sanctuary of Athênê, 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, Kleomenês returned with his remaining force to Sparta.[604]
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 he 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 Hêræum. But though his sacrifice was favorable, he observed that the flame kindled on the altar flashed back from the bosom of the statue of Hêrê, 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;[605] 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 be a fabrication. Not so the Spartan ephors: to them it appeared not less true as a story than triumphant as a defence, insuring to Kleomenês an honorable acquittal.[606]
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 Lacedæmon. 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 Lacedæmon; who gradually usurps from her, first the reality of superior power, next the recognition of preëminence,—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 this 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 Ægina in her submission to the Persians, and would thus have lamed incurably the defensive force of Greece. The ships which Kleomenês had obtained from the Æginetans as well as from the Sikyonians, against their own will, for landing his troops at Nauplia, brought upon both these cities the enmity of Argos, which the Sikyonians compromised by paying a sum of money, while the Æginetans refused to do so.[607] 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 Ægina to Darius, we find that king Kleomenês 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 Æginetans, 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 Æginetans ventured to adopt so dangerous a course. Demaratus, the colleague of Kleomenês in the junior or Prokleid line of kings, had suggested to them the step and promised to carry them through it safely.[608] Dissension between the two coördinate kings was no new phenomenon at Sparta; but in the case of Demaratus and Kleomenês, 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 Æginetans with the deliberate purpose of frustrating his intervention. He succeeded, and Kleomenês was compelled to return to Sparta; not without unequivocal menace against Krius and the other Æginetans who had repelled him,[609] 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 Agêtus,—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 Agêtus asked from Aristo was at once given: in return, the latter demanded to have the wife of Agêtus, 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.[610]
Of these suspicions, Kleomenês now resolved to avail himself, exciting Leotychidês, the next heir in the Prokleid line of kings, to impugn publicly the legitimacy of Demaratus; engaging to second him with all his influence as next in order for the crown, and exacting in return a promise that he would support the intervention against Ægina. Leotychidês 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 Kleomenês, espousing the pretensions of Leotychidês, recommended that the question as to the legitimacy of Demaratus should be decided by reference to the Delphian oracle. Through the influence of Kobôn, a powerful native of Delphi, he procured from the Pythian priestess an answer pronouncing that Demaratus was not the son of Aristo.[611] Leotychidês thus became king of the Prokleid line, while Demaratus descended into a private station, and was elected at the ensuing solemnity of the Gymnopædia 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 Leotychidês 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.[612]
Demaratus was well known to be a high-spirited and ambitious man,—noted, among other things, as the only Lacedæmonian king down to the time of Herodotus who had ever gained a chariot victory at Olympia; and Kleomenês and Leotychidês 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 Lacedæmonians, and Demaratus was not the less likely to give trouble because they had pronounced him illegitimate.[613] 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.[614] We shall hereafter find him the companion of Xerxês, giving to that monarch advice such as, if it had 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 Kleomenês, having obtained a consentient colleague in Leotychidês, went with him over to Ægina, eager to revenge himself for the affront which had been put upon him. To the requisition and presence of the two kings jointly, the Æginetans did not dare to oppose any resistance. Kleomenês 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.[615]
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 Ægina, and placing Æginetan hostages in the hands of Athens. The Æginetans 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 Aleïan plain of Kilikia, 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 Æolic 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,[616]—and Artaphernês, 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.[617] 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 Themistoklês and Aristeidês 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 Dêmokêdês.
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 Ægean[618] (the mode of attack which intelligent Greeks like Themistoklês most feared, even after the repulse of Xerxês), from Samos to Eubœa, 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 Megabatês 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.[619] 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 had 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 Ægean. 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,[620] 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 Tênos, 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 Eubœa,—the town of Karystus and its territory.[621] The Karystians, 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 Chalkis. 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.[622] 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 Æschinês 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 Orôpus; while the Persians disembarked their troops, and even their horses, in expectation that the Eretrians would come out and fight, at Tamynæ 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 Philagrus, with others, betrayed Eretria to the besiegers; its temples were burnt, and its inhabitants dragged into slavery.[623] 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.[624] 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,[625] 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 Xerxês.
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. Alter halting a few days at Eretria, and depositing in the neighboring islet of Ægilia the prisoners recently captured, he reëmbarked 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 march 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 Kleisthenês 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 Kleisthenês. 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 B. C., 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,—Miltiadês, Themistoklês, and Aristeidês.
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 517-516 B. C., to inherit the property as well as the supremacy of his uncle the œkist Miltiadês. 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 Histiæus 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.[626] 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 Milêtus, 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,[627]—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.[628] 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;[629] 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 Miltiadês is one of great bravery and decision,—qualities preëminently 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 Kleisthenês, like his younger contemporaries Themistoklês and Aristeidês. The two latter are specimens of a class of men new at Athens since the expulsion of Hippias, and contrasting forcibly with Peisistratus, Lykurgus, and Megaklês, the political leaders of the preceding generation. Themistoklês and Aristeidês, 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 addressed by Themistoklês, Aristeidês, or any other citizen who can engage their attention.
Neither Themistoklês nor Aristeidês could boast of a lineage of gods and heroes, like the Æakid Miltiadês:[630] both were of middling station and circumstances. Aristeidês, son of Lysimachus, was on both sides of pure Athenian blood. But the wife of Neoklês, father of Themistoklês, was a foreign woman of Thrace or of Karia: and such an alliance is the less surprising, since Themistoklês 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 Themistoklês, which we have the advantage of finding briefly sketched by Thucydidês, 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[631] 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 contingencies, 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 Thucydidês draws of a countryman whose death nearly coincided in time with his own birth: the untutored readiness and universality of Themistoklês 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 Periklês especially, the greatest of them—approached the consideration and discussion of public affairs. Themistoklês had received no teaching from philosophers, sophists, and rhetors, who were the instructors of well-born youth in the days of Thucydidês, and whom Aristophanês, 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.[632] There is no evidence in the mind of Thucydidês 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 Themistoklês as the more a matter of wonder, since it sprung up without that preliminary cultivation which had gone to the making of Periklês.
The general character given of Plutarch,[633] though many of his anecdotes are both trifling and apocryphal, is quite consistent with the brief sketch just cited from Thucydidês. Themistoklês had an unbounded passion,—not merely for glory, insomuch that the laurels of Miltiadês 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 Aristeidês we possess unfortunately no description from the hand of Thucydidês; 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,[634] however little the details of the latter can be trusted. Aristeidês was inferior to Themistoklês 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 Kleisthenês, the first founder of the democracy,[635]—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,[636] 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. Thucydidês ranks conspicuous probity among the first of the many ascendent qualities possessed by Periklês;[637] and Nikias, 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 Aristeidês, though apparently adequate to every occasion on which he was engaged, and only inferior when we compare him with so remarkable a man as Themistoklês, 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 Aristeidês,[638] 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 Aristeidês 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 countrymen; 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 Themistoklês was so violent that both could not remain at Athens without peril,—yet the dangers of Athens during the invasion of Xerxês 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 Themistoklês and Aristeidês, the two earliest leaders thrown up by the Athenian democracy. Half a century before, Themistoklês would have been an active partisan in the faction of the Parali or the Pedieis, while Aristeidês 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. Aristeidês and Miltiadês were both elected among the ten generals, each for his respective tribe, in the year of the expedition of Datis across the Ægean, and probably even after that expedition was known to be on its voyage. Moreover, we are led to suspect from a passage in Plutarch, that Themistoklês also was general of his tribe on the same occasion,[639] 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 Aphidnæ.[640] 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 Eubœa,—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. Pheidippidês 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.[641] He 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 we advance in their history.[642] 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 Pheidippidês 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 Miltiadês 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 Miltiadês 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 Phalêrum, 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 Miltiadês 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 (Miltiadês) was prepared to guarantee. Fortunately for Athens, the polemarch embraced the opinion of Miltiadês, and the seditious movements which were preparing did not show themselves until after the battle had been gained. Aristeidês and Themistoklês are both recorded to have seconded Miltiadês warmly in this proposal,—while all the other generals agreed in surrendering to Miltiadês 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.[643] 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 Heraklês 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 Platæa, consisting of about one thousand hoplites, who had marched directly from their own city to the spot, along the southern range of Kithærôn 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 Bœotian league.[644] Their coming 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 Platæa 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 of the whole Platæan 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,[645] and repaid by a grant to the Platæans 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 Platæa.[646] 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 out-settled citizens, had just come over from Eubœa. 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 Ægean 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.[647] 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 Gargêttus and Pallênê, 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[648]) 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.”