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monarch would spare the life of the traitor, immediately ordered his execution. After he had been impaled, Artaphernes ordered that his head should be embalmed and sent to Darius at Susa. The Persian monarch was much incensed at the conduct of his brother, because he did not send his prisoner alive to the court at Susa. He ordered that the head of the governor of Miletus be washed and adorned, and directed it to be buried with honors, notwithstanding his treasonable conduct towards his sovereign. Darius must have believed in the innocence of Histiæus and regarded the man who once saved his life on the Danube, as his friend and benefactor.

CHAPTER XIII

FIRST PERSIAN WAR-MARATHON

MARATHON - mar-a-thon [Mapałŵv] — A plain six miles long and a mile and a half wide, extending along the bay of Marathon on the northeast coast of Attica. It is distant about twenty-six miles from Athens by the most traveled road between the mountain ranges of Hymettus and Pentelicus. Back of the sea extends a chain of rocky hills and rugged mountains encircling the plain. Above one of the valleys or passes through these hills is the hamlet of Vrana from which point, it is believed, the Greeks charged the Persians who suffered defeat September 17, B. C. 490.

T

HE campaign of the First Persian War, B. C. 490, which was begun in Eubœa and ended with the battle of Marathon, was the most notable, and perhaps the most important in

the history of Greece. The prestige of that victory enabled the Hellenese to defeat the Persians ten years later at Salamis, and in the following year at Platea and Mycale. These campaigns ended for all time the ambition of the despots of Asia, to extend their dominions on the soil of Europe.

At Marathon occurred the first formidable clash between Persia and Hellas, on the shores of Europe. The contest was conducted by an army of slaves sent by Darius, and a handful of freemen determined to prevent the conquest of Greece. What Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill meant to the American colonies, Marathon meant to the free cities of Hellas. Marathon the Athenians fought for independence. That engagement was the first clash in the irrepressible conflict, which was to determine whether the west should

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remain free or become part of the dominions of the sovereign of Asia, whose object was universal empire. The duel was on in earnest. The declaration of independence for Greece was embraced in the answer given by Callimachus to Miltiades, when the Athenian generals were evenly divided as to whether they should retreat or attack the army of Datis and Tisaphernes, which outnumbered the Greeks ten to one. Callimachus, as Archon-Polemarch, had the casting vote. On that vote the destinies of Greece depended. He was to decide whether to enslave Athens by declining to give battle, or by fighting, preserve its liberties, and leave a memorial of himself to every age. Callimachus decided that his vote should be for liberty and independence. The decision made possible the battle of Marathon, and posterity knows the result.

Before giving an account of this memorable engagement, it will be profitable to seek the causes that culminated at Marathon. These had their genesis, not alone in the importunities of Hippias, and other exiled tyrants, who had been driven from Greece, and who sought to persuade Darius to invade Hellas, but in the military operations instituted by the Persians in their efforts to extend their empire to the eastern shores of the Egean Sea, and in the struggles of the Greek cities of Asia Minor to throw off the Persian yoke. For more than fifty years the Persians had threatened to visit condign punishment upon Hellas. These hostile declarations were encouraged from time to time by tyrants and leaders of the oligarchical party in Greece, who had been driven out of their native country by revolutions, having for their object the establishment of a democracy. These exiles frequently took refuge in the Persian court, where they were usually made welcome in consideration of the information they gave and the aid which they tendered in order to assist any expedition which the Persian monarch might see fit to

send across the Ægean to subjugate their native country.

The conquests of Cyrus the Great in Asia prevented temporarily any attempt on his part to extend his conquests in the West. In the middle of the sixth century B. C., about fifty-six years before the battle of Marathon, Cyrus defeated Croesus, King of Lydia, took Sardis, his ancient capital, and extended his empire to the Egean sea. Then turning to the east he defeated Belshazzar and took Babylon. Before setting out on his campaign against the Assyrian and Babylonian empire, he planned the subjugation of the Ionic and Eolian Greeks, who had been allies of Croesus, but was obliged to entrust to others the conduct of these operations. Tabalus, and afterwards Harpagus, undertook the execution of these designs, while Cyrus was engaged in his operations against Babylon. The Asiatic Greeks turned in this hour of peril to their Peloponnesian kinsmen, and appealed to Sparta for succor. The Lacedæmonians, however, did not send military aid, but dispatched envoys to investigate. On arriving at Miletus, these envoys sent a herald to Cyrus, who was still at Sardis, to admonish that proud monarch not to attempt to reduce any city of Hellas, for the Lacedæmonians forbade, and would not permit it. This impudence seemed refreshing to Cyrus. His interest was aroused. He asked, "Who are these Lacedæmonians?" When informed that they dwelt in the Peloponnesus, in a city called Sparta, a market town, he expressed contempt and declared according to Herodotus (i, 153), “ I have never yet been afraid of men like these, who have in the midst of their city, a place set apart, where they meet to cheat one another by false oaths. If I live, they will be obliged to discuss, not the calamities of the Ionians, but their own."

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Cyrus did not live to fulfil his threat against Hellas. Soon after his imprecations against the Lacedæmonians,

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he quitted Sardis, in order to prosecute his campaigns, and extend his dominions in upper Asia. He conquered Assyria, and took the cities of Nineveh and Babylon. Belshazzar was slain in his palace B. C. 538. Babylon became a satrapy of Persia. Cyrus then reduced the countries inhabited by the Bactrians and the Sacæ, and was killed in a campaign against the Massagetæ in the remote regions on the confines of his dominions, not far from the western boundary of Chinese Tartary B. C. 529. Cyrus was succeeded by his son Cambyses. He had no opportunity to punish the Hellenes as his time was largely occupied in the conquest of Egypt. On the death of Cambyses, B. C. 522, Darius Hystaspes, after the assassination of the usurper Smerdis, succeeded to the throne of Persia.

After Darius had restored order in his dominions, his queen, Atossa, daughter of Cyrus the Great, besought her husband, while yet in the flower of his age to perform some illustrious action, which should shed lustre on his reign. He then determined to lead an expedition into Europe to subdue the Scythians. Had Darius followed the importunities of his queen, and lead his army into Greece instead of into the country beyond the Danube, the battle of Marathon might have been anticipated nearly a quarter of a century. The campaign would have been conducted by Darius in person. The time was opportune. Hipparchus had been assassinated (B. C. 514), and his brother Hippias was fighting desperately to sustain his supremacy in Athens, and when Darius started on his Scythian expedition, he had not yet been driven into exile. The factions who were seeking to overthrow Hippias were aided by Cleomenes with a contingent of Spartan soldiers. Hippias, who was in constant fear of assassination, had a band of Thracians constantly in his pay to protect himself from the attacks which he contemplated would be made upon him.