# Herodotus The Persian Wars (Godley)/Book V

Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA
1. Those Persians whom Darius had left in Europe under the command of Megabazus, finding the Perinthians unwilling to be Darius’ subjects, subdued them before any others of the people of the Hellespont. These Perinthians had already been roughly handled by the Paeonians. For the Paeonians from the Strymon had been bidden by an oracle of their god to march against Perinthus, and if the Perinthians being encamped over against them should call to them, crying out their name, then to attack them, but, if there were no such call, then not to attack. Thus the Paeonians did; and the Perinthians being encamped in front of their city, the armies challenged each other to a threefold duel, wherein man was matched against man, horse against horse, and dog against dog. The Perinthians won the victory in two of the combats and raised the cry of “Paean” in their joy. The Paeonians reasoned that this was that whereof the oracle spoke; they said to each other, as I suppose, “This is surely the fulfilment of the prophecy; now here is work for us”; and with that, the Perinthians having cried “Paean,” the Paeonians set upon them and won a great victory, leaving few of their enemies alive.
2. he Perinthians had already been thus treated by the Paeonians; and now they fought like brave men for their liberty, but Megabazus and the Persians overcame them by weight of numbers. Perinthus being taken, Megabazus marched his army through Thrace, subduing to the king’s will every city and every people of that region. For this was the charge given him by Darius, even the conquest of Thrace.
3. The Thracians are the biggest nation in the world, next to the Indians; were they under one ruler, or united, they would in my judgment be invincible and the strongest nation on earth; but since there is no way or contrivance to bring this about, they are for this reason weak. They have many names, each tribe according to its region. All these Thracians are alike in all their usages, save the Getae, and the Trausi, and those that dwell above the Crestonaeans.
4. As for the Getae who claim to be immortal, I have already told what they do; the Trausi, who in all else fulfil the customs of other Thracians, do as I will show at the seasons of birth and death. When a child is born, the kinsfolk sit round and lament for all the tale of ills that it must endure from its birth onward, recounting all the sorrows of men; but the dead they bury with jollity and gladness, for the reason that he is quit of so many ills and is in perfect blessedness.
5. Those who dwell above the Crestonaeans have a custom of their own: each man having many wives, at his death there is great rivalry among his wives, and eager contention on their friends’ part, to prove which wife was best loved by her husband; and she to whom the honour is adjudged is praised by men and women, and then slain over the tomb by her nearest of kin, and after the slaying she is buried with the husband. The rest of the wives take this sorely to heart, deeming themselves deeply dishonoured.
6. Among the rest of the Thracians, it is the custom to sell their children to be carried out of the country. They take no care of their maidens, allowing them to have intercourse with what men they will: but their wives they strictly guard, and buy them for a great price from the parents. To be tattooed is a sign of noble birth; to bear no such marks is for the baser sort. The idler is most honoured, the tiller of the soil most contemned; he is held in highest honour who lives by war and foray.
7. These are the most notable of their usages. They worship no gods but Ares, Dionysus, and Artemis. But their princes, unlike the rest of their countrymen, worship Hermes above all gods and swear only by him, claiming him for their ancestor.
8. Among those of them that are rich, the funeral rites are these:—They lay out the dead for three days, then after killing all kinds of victims and first making lamentation they feast; after that they make away with the body either by fire or else by burial in the earth, and when they have built a barrow they set on foot all kinds of contests, wherein the greatest prizes are offered for the hardest fashion of single combat. Such are the Thracian funeral rites.
9. For what lies north of this country none can tell with certainty what men dwell there; cross the Ister and you shall see but an infinite tract of deserts. I can learn of no men dwelling beyond the Ister save certain that are called Sigynnae, and wear Median dress. Their horses are said to be covered all over with shaggy hair five fingers’ breadth long, and to be small and blunt-nosed and unable to bear men on their backs, but very swift when yoked to chariots; wherefore to drive chariots is the usage of the country. These men’s borders, it is said, reach nigh as far as the Eneti on the Adriatic Sea. They call themselves colonists from Media, How this has come about I myself cannot understand; but all is possible in the long ages of time. However that be, we know that the Ligyes who dwell inland of Massalia use the word “sigynnae” for hucksters, and the Cyprians use it for spears.
10. But the Thracians say that all the land beyond the Ister is full of bees, and that by reason of these none can travel there. This is no credible tale, to my mind; for those creatures are ill able to bear cold; but it appears to me rather that it is by reason of the cold that the northern lands are not inhabited. Such, then, are the stories about this region. Whatever be the truth, Megabazus made its sea-coast subject to the Persians.
11. As soon as Darius had crossed the Hellespont and come to Sardis, he remembered the good service done him by Histiaeus of Miletus and the counsel of Coes the Mytilenaean; and he sent for them to come to Sardis and offered them the choice of what they would. Then Histiaeus, seeing that he was despot of Miletus, desired no further sovereignty than that, but asked for Myrcinus in the Edonian land, that he might there build a city. This was Histiaeus’ choice; but Coes, inasmuch as he was no despot but a plain citizen, asked that he might be made despot of Mytilene.
12. The desire of both being granted, they went their ways to the places of their choice; but Darius, as it fell out, saw a sight which put it in his mind to bid Megabazus take the Paeonians and carry them from their homes out of Europe into Asia. There were two Paeonians, Pigres and Mantyes; these would themselves be rulers of their countrymen, and when Darius had crossed into Asia came to Sardis, bringing with them their sister, a woman tall and fair. There, waiting till Darius should be sitting in the suburb of the Lydian city, they put on their sister the best adornment they had, and sent her to draw water, bearing a vessel on her head and leading a horse by the bridle on her arm and spinning flax the while. Darius took note of the woman as she passed by him; for what she did was not in the manner of the Persians or Lydians or any of the peoples of Asia. Having taken note of the thing, he sent certain of his guard, bidding them watch what the woman would do with the horse. So they followed behind her; and she, coming to the river, watered the horse; then, having so done, and filled her vessel with the water, she passed back again by the same way, bearing the water on her head and leading the horse on her arm and plying her distaff.
13. Marvelling at what he heard from his watchers and what he saw for himself, Darius bade the woman be brought before him. When she was brought, her brothers, who watched all this from a place near by, came too; and Darius asking of what nation she were, the young man told him that they were Paeonians, and she their sister. “But who” he answered, “are the Paeonians, and where dwell they, and with what intent are you come to Sardis?” They showed him, that they were come to be his men; that the towns of Paeonia were on the Strymon, a river not far from the Hellespont; and that they were colonists from the Teucrians of Troy. So they told him all this; and the king asked them if all the women of their country were as notable workers. To this too they very readily answered (for it was for this very purpose that they had come), that it was indeed so.
14. Then Darius wrote a letter to Megabazus, whom he had left as his general in Thrace, bidding him take the Paeonians from their houses, and bring them to him, men, women, and children. Immediately a horseman sped with this message to the Hellespont, and crossing it gave the letter to Megabazus; who, having read it, took guides from Thrace and led his army to Paeonia.
15. When the Paeonians learnt that the Persians were coming against them, they gathered themselves together and marched away to the sea, thinking that the Persians would essay to attack them by that way. So the Paeonians were ready to stay the onset of Megabazus’ army; but the Persians, learning that the Paeonians had gathered their forces and were guarding the sea-coast way into their country, got them guides and marched instead by the highland road, whereby they took the Paeonians unawares and won entrance into their cities, which were left without men; and finding these empty at their onfall they easily gained them. The Paeonians, learning that their towns were taken, straightway broke and went each his own way and yielded themselves up to the Persians. Thus of the Paeonians the Siriopaeones and Paeoplae and all that dwelt as far as the Prasiad lake were taken away from their homes and carried into Asia.
16. But those near the Pangaean mountains and the country of the Doberes and the Agrianes and the Odomanti and the Prasiad lake itself were never subdued at all by Megabazus; albeit he tried to take the lake-dwellers, whose dwellings were such as I shall show:—There is set in the midst of the lake a platform made fast on tall piles, whereto one bridge gives a narrow passage from the land. The piles which support the platform were set there in old times by all the people working together, but by a later custom this is the manner of their setting: the piles are brought from a mountain called Orbelus, and every man plants three for each woman that he weds; and each has many wives. For the manner of their dwelling, each man on the platform owns the hut wherein he lives and a trap-door in the platform leading down into the lake. They make a cord fast to the feet of their little children, lest the children fall into the water. They give fish for fodder to their horses and beasts of burden; and of fish there is such abundance, that a man opens his trap-door and lets an empty basket down by a line into the lake, and it is no long time before he draws it up full of fish. There are two kinds of these, some called “paprakes,” some “tilones.”
17. So those of the Paeonians who were taken were carried into Asia. Then Megabazus, having made the Paeonians captive, sent as messengers into Macedonia the seven Persians who (after himself) were the most honourable in his army; these were sent to Amyntas to demand earth and water for Darius the king. Now there is a very straight way from the Prasiad lake to Macedonia; for first and near to the lake is that mine wherefrom later Alexander drew a daily revenue of a talent of silver, and when he has passed the mine a man need but cross the mountain called Dysorum to be in Macedonia.
18. These Persians then who were sent, coming to Amyntas and being in his presence, demanded earth and water for Darius the king; which he gave, and invited them to be his guests; and he prepared a dinner of great splendour and received them hospitably. But after dinner, the Persians said to Amyntas as they sat drinking together, “Macedonian, our host, it is our Persian custom after the giving of any great banquet to bring in also the concubines and wedded wives to sit by the men. Do you then (since you have received us heartily and are nobly entertaining us, and are giving Darius our king earth and water) follow our custom.” To this Amyntas replied: “No such custom, Persians, have we ourselves; with us, men and women sit apart; but seeing that you are our masters and would have this too, it shall be as you desire.” With that, Amyntas sent for the women; they came at call, and sat down over against the Persians. Then the Persians, seeing comely women before them, spoke to Amyntas and said that there was no sense in what he had done; it were better (they said) that the women had never come at all than that they should come and not sit beside the men, but sit opposite them to torment their eyes. Amyntas then, as needs must, bade the women sit beside them; which when they did, at once the Persians, flushed as they were with excess of wine, laid hands on the women’s breasts, and one or another would essay to kiss them.
19. This Amyntas saw, but held his peace for all his anger, because he greatly feared the Persians. But Amyntas’ son Alexander, in his youth and ignorance of ill deeds, could by no means bear it longer, but said to Amyntas in great wrath: “My father, do you do as befits your age; leave us and take your rest, and continue not at the drinking; but I will stay here and give our guests all that is needful.” At this Amyntas saw that Alexander had some wild deed in mind, and, “My son,” he said, “you are angered, and if I guess your meaning aright you would send me away that you may do some violent deed; for my part, then, I entreat you—act not rashly by these men, lest you undo us, but bear patiently the sight of what they do. But if you would have me depart, to that I consent.”
20. Amyntas with this request having gone his ways, Alexander said to the Persians, “Sirs, you have full freedom to deal with these women, and may have intercourse with all or any of them. As to that, you will yourselves declare your pleasure; but now, as the hour of your rest draws nigh and I see that you are all well and truly drunk, suffer these women, so please you, to depart and wash; and when they have washed, look tor them to come to you again.” Having so said, the Persians consenting thereto, he sent the women, when they had gone out, away to their apartment; Alexander then took as many smooth-chinned men as there were women and attired them in the women’s dress and gave them daggers; these he brought in, and so doing he said to the Persians: “Methinks, men of Persia, you have feasted to your hearts’ content; all that we had and all besides that we could find to give you has been set before you; and now we make you a free gift of our best and choicest possession, our own mothers and sisters. Learn thereby that we accord you the full meed of honour that you deserve, and tell your king who sent you how his Greek viceroy of Macedonia has received you hospitably to board and bed.” With that, Alexander made his Macedonians to sit each next to a Persian, as though they were women; and when the Persians began to lay hands on them, they were despatched by the Macedonians.
21. This was the fate whereby they perished, they and all their retinue; for carnages too had come with them, and servants, and all the great train they had; the Macedonians made away with all that, as well as with all the envoys themselves. No long time afterwards the Persians made a great search for these men; but Alexander had cunning enough to put an end to it by the gift of a great sum and his own sister Gygaea to Bubares, a Persian, the general of those who sought for the slain men; by this gift he made an end of the search.
22. Thus was the death of these Persians suppressed and hidden in silence. Now that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know and will prove it in the later part of my history; and further, the Hellenodicae who have the ordering of the contest at Olympia determined that it is so. For when Alexander chose to contend and entered the lists for that purpose, the Greeks who were to run against him were for barring him from the race, saying that the contest should be for Greeks and not for foreigners; but Alexander proving himself to be an Argive, he was judged to be a Greek; so he contended in the furlong race and ran a dead heat for the first place.
23. In some such wise these things fell out. But Megabazus came to the Hellespont, bringing with him the Paeonians; thence he crossed it and came to Sardis. Now as Histiaeus the Milesian was by this time fortifying the place which he had asked of Darius as his reward for guarding the bridge (this was a place called Myrcinus by the river Strymon), Megabazus had learnt what Histiaeus was about, and no sooner had he come to Sardis with the Paeonians than he said to Darius: “Sire, what is this that you have done? You have given a clever and cunning Greek a city to build in Thrace, where are forests in plenty for ship-building, and much wood for oars, and mines of silver, and much people both Greek and foreign dwelling around, who when they have a champion to lead them will do all his behests by day or by night. Do you then stay this man from these his doings, lest you have a war on hand with your own subjects; but to this end bring him to you by gentle means; and when you have him safe, see to it that he never return to Hellas.”
24. Darius was readily persuaded by this, for he thought that Megabazus foresaw the future aright; and presently he sent this message to Myrcinus: “These to Histiaeus from Darius the king:—My thoughts can show me no man who is a truer friend to me and mine; not words but deeds have proved this to me. Now therefore let nothing hinder you from coming to me, that I may disclose to you certain great purposes which I have in mind.” Trusting these words, and proud, moreover, that he should be the king’s counsellor, Histiaeus came to Sardis; and when he had come Darius said to him, “Histiaeus, I will tell you wherefore I sent for you. As soon as I returned from Scythia and you were gone from my sight, there was nothing whereof I had so immediate a desire as the seeing and speaking with you; for I knew that the most precious of all possessions is a wise and loyal friend; and I can witness of my own knowledge that you have dealt both wisely and loyally with me. Now therefore, seeing that you have done well in coming hither, I make you this proposal:—leave Miletus and your newly founded Thracian city, and follow me to Susa, to have there all that is mine and to share my table and my counsels.”
25. So said Darius; and appointing Artaphrenes his father’s son to be viceroy of Sardis, he rode away to Susa, taking Histiaeus with him. But first he made Otanes governor of the people on the sea-coast. Otanes’ father Sisamnes had been one of the royal judges; Cambyses had cut his throat and flayed off all his skin because he had been bribed to give an unjust judgment; and he had then cut leather strips of the skin which had been torn away and covered therewith the seat whereon Sisamnes had sat to give judgment; which having done, Cambyses appointed the son of this slain and flayed Sisamnes to be judge in his place, admonishing him to remember what was the judgment-seat whereon he sat.
26. This Otanes then, who sat upon that seat, was now made successor to Megabazus in his governorship; he took Byzantium and Calchedon, and Antandrus in the Troad, and Lamponium; and he conquered with ships that he got from the Lesbians Lemnos and Imbros, both then still inhabited by Pelasgians.
27. The Lemnians fought well and defended themselves, till at last they were brought to evil plight, and the Persians set a governor over those that were left of them, Lycaretus the brother of Maeandrius who had been king of Samos. This Lycaretus came to his end while ruling in Lemnos; this was because he strove to enslave and subdue all the people, accusing some of shunning service against the Scythians, and others of plundering Darius’ army on its way back from Scythia.
28. All this Otanes achieved when he had been made governor. Thereafter, when there had been no long surcease of evils, trouble began to come on the Ionians from Naxos and Miletus once more. For Naxos surpassed all the other islands in prosperity, and at about the same time Miletus was then at the height of her fortunes, insomuch that she was the chief ornament of Ionia; but for two generations before this she had been very greatly troubled by faction, till the Parians made peace among them, being chosen out of all Greeks by the Milesians to be peace-makers.
29. The Parians reconciled them in this manner:—Their best men came to Miletus, and seeing the Milesian households sadly wasted, said that they desired to go about their country. Doing this, and visiting all the territory of Miletus, whenever they found any well-tilled farm in the desolation of the land, they wrote down the name of the owner of that farm. Then, having travelled over the whole country and found but few such men, no sooner had they returned to the city than they assembled the people and appointed as rulers of the state those whose lands they had found well tilled; for these (they said) were like to take as good care of public affairs as they had of their own; and they ordained that the rest of the Milesians who had been at feud should obey these men.
30. Thus the Parians made peace in Miletus. But now these cities began to bring trouble upon Ionia, and thus it befel:—Certain men of substance, being banished from Naxos by the commonalty, betook themselves to Miletus. Now it chanced that the deputy ruling Miletus was Aristagoras son of Molpagoras, son-in-law and cousin of that Histiaeus son of Lysagoras whom Darius kept with him at Susa; for Histiaeus was despot of Miletus, and was at Susa when the Naxians came; and they had been guests and friends of Histiaeus. The Naxians then on their coming to Miletus asked of Aristagoras if haply he could give them some power and so they might return to their own country. Considering that if by his means they were restored to their city he would be ruler of Naxos, and making a pretext of their friendship with Histiaeus, he made them this proposal: “For myself, it lies not in my rights to give you such a power as will restore you, against the will of the Naxians who hold your city; for I am assured that the Naxians have eight thousand men that bear shields, and many ships of war; but I will use all diligence to contrive the matter. And this is my plan. Artaphrenes is my friend; now know, that Artaphrenes is Hystaspes’ son and brother to Darius the king; he is governor of all the sea-coast peoples of Asia and has a great army and many ships; this man then will, I think, do whatever we desire.” Hearing this, the Naxians left the matter for Aristagoras to deal with as best he could, bidding him promise gifts and the costs of the army, for which they would themselves be chargeable; for they had great hope that when they should appear off Naxos the Naxians would obey all their commands, and that the rest of the islanders would do likewise. For as yet none of these Cyclades islands was subject to Darius.
31. Aristagoras came to Sardis and told Artaphrenes that Naxos was indeed an island of no great size, but for the rest a fair and a good land and near to Ionia, with much wealth withal and many slaves therein. “Do you therefore send an armament against that country, bringing back the men who have been banished thence. And if you so do, I have a great sum at your service, over and above the costs of the armament; for it is but just that we, who bring you, should be chargeable for that; and further, you will win new dominions for the king, Naxos itself and the islands which are its dependants, Paros, Andros, and the rest of those that are called Cyclades. Making these your starting-point, you will easily attack Euboea, which is a great and a wealthy island, no smaller than Cyprus and very easy to take. An hundred ships suffice for the conquest of all these.” “This plan which you set forth,” Artaphrenes answered, “is profitable for the king’s house, and all this your counsel is good, save as to the number of the ships; not one hundred but two hundred ships shall be ready for you when the spring comes. But the king too must himself consent to this.”
32. When Aristagoras heard that, he went away to Miletus in great joy. Artaphrenes sent a messenger to Susa with the news of what Aristagoras said; and Darius himself too consenting to the plan, he equipped two hundred triremes and a very great company of Persians and their allies besides, and appointed for their general Megabates, a Persian of the Achaemenid family, cousin to himself and to Darius; this was he whose daughter (if indeed the tale be true) Pausanias the Lacedaemonian, son of Cleombrotus, at a later day betrothed to himself, being ambitious of the sovereignty of Hellas. Having appointed Mega-bates general, Artaphrenes sent his army away to Aristagoras.
33. Then Megabates brought Aristagoras from Miletus, and the Ionian army, and the Naxians, and pretended to make sail to the Hellespont; but when he came to Chios he put in with his ships at Caucasa, that he might cross with a north wind to Naxos. But, since it was not written that the Naxians were to be destroyed by this armament, this befel which I here relate. For when Megabates went his rounds among the ships’ watches, it chanced that on a ship of Myndus there was no watch kept; whereat Megabates, being very angry, bade his guards find the captain of this ship (whose name was Scylax) and thrust him partly through an oar-hole of the ship and bind him there, in such fashion that his head was outside the ship and his body inside. So Scylax was bound; and one brought word to Aristagoras, that his Myndian friend was bound and despitefully entreated by Megabates. Aristagoras went then and pleaded with the Persian for Scylax, but obtained nothing that he requested; whereupon he came and released the man himself. When Megabates learnt this, he was very angry, and was violent against Aristagoras. But Aristagoras said, “But you—what have you to do with these matters? Did not Artaphrenes send you to obey me and to sail whithersoever I bid you? Why are you so meddlesome?” So said Aristagoras; Megabates, enraged by this, sent men at nightfall in a boat to Naxos, to tell the Naxians of the trouble in store for them.
34. For the Naxians had no suspicion at all that it was they who were to be attacked by that armament. Howbeit, when they learnt the truth, straightway they brought within their walls all that was in their fields, and stored both meat and drink against a siege, and strengthened their walls. So they made all preparations to face the onset of war; and when their enemies had brought their ships over from Chios to Naxos, it was a city fortified that they attacked, and for four months they besieged it. Then, when the Persians had expended all the money with which they had come, and Aristagoras himself had spent much beside, and ever more was needful for the siege, they built a stronghold for the banished Naxians, and betook themselves to the mainland in very evil case.
35. Aristagoras had no way of fulfilling his promise to Artaphrenes; he was hard pressed by demands for the costs of the armament, and he feared what might come of the ill-success of the army and Megabates’ displeasure against him; it was like, he thought, that his lordship of Miletus would be taken away from him. With all these fears in his mind, he began to plan revolt; for it chanced that at that very time there came from Susa Histiaeus’ messenger, the man with the marked head, signifying that Aristagoras should revolt from the king. For Histiaeus desired to signify to Aristagoras that he should revolt; and having no other safe way of so doing (for the roads were guarded) he shaved and pricked marks on the head of his trustiest slave, and waited till the hair grew again; as soon as it was grown, he sent the man to Miletus with no other message save that when he came to Miletus he must bid Aristagoras shave his hair and examine his head. The writing pricked thereon signified revolt, as I have already said. This Histiaeus did, because he sorely misliked his enforced sojourn at Susa; now he had a good hope that if there were a revolt he would be sent away to the sea-coast; but if Miletus remained at peace, he reckoned that he would return thither no more.
36. With this intent, then, Histiaeus sent his messenger, and it chanced that all these things came upon Aristagoras at one and the same time. He took counsel therefore with those of his faction, and declared his own opinion and what had come to him from Histiaeus. All the rest spoke their minds to the same effect, favouring revolt, save only Hecataeus the historian; he advised them that they would be best guided not to make war on the king of Persia, recounting to them the tale of the nations subject to Darius, and all his power. But when they would not be persuaded by him, he counselled them that their next best plan was to make themselves masters of the seas. This, said he in his speech, he could see no way of accomplishing save one: Miletus, he knew, was a city of no great wealth; but if they took away from the temple at Branchidae the treasure which Croesus the Lydian had dedicated there, he had good hope that they would gain the mastery of the sea, and so they would have the use of that treasure and their enemies could not plunder it. The treasure was very great, as I have shown in the first book of my history. This counsel was not approved; nevertheless, they resolved that they would revolt, and that one of themselves should sail to Myus, to the army which had left Naxos and was there, and essay to seize the generals who were aboard the ships.
37. Iatragoras, being sent for this very purpose, craftily seized Oliatus of Mylasa son of Ibanollis, and Histiaeus of Termera son of Tymnes, and Coes son of Erxandrus,—to whom Darius gave Mytilene,—and Aristagoras of Cyme, son of Heraclides, and many others besides; which done, Aristagoras revolted openly, devising all he could to Darius’ hurt. And first he made a pretence of giving up his despotism and gave Miletus equality of government, that so the Milesians might readily join in his revolt; then he did likewise in the rest of Ionia; some of the despots he banished; as for those despots whom he had taken out of the ships that sailed with him against Naxos, he gave them over and delivered them each and all to their own cities severally, for he wished to please the cities.
38. So Coes, when the Mytilenaeans received him, was taken out by them and stoned; but the Cymaeans let their own man go, and so did most of the others. Thus an end was made of despots in the cities. Aristagoras of Miletus, having made an end of the despots, bade all to set up governors in each city; and next he went on an embassy in a trireme to Lacedaemon; for it was needful that he should find some strong ally.
39. At Sparta, Anaxandrides the son of Leon, who had been king, was now no longer alive but was dead, and Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides held the royal power. This he had won not by manly merit but by right of birth. For Anaxandrides had to wife his own sister’s daughter, and he was well content with her; but no children were born to him. This being so, the Ephors called him to them, and said, “If you care not to provide for yourself, yet we cannot suffer it to come to pass that the house of Eurysthenes should perish. Do you therefore send away the wife that you have, seeing that she bears you no children, and wed another; this do, and you will please the Spartans.” But Anaxandrides answered and said that he would do neither the one nor the other: “And you,” said he, “are no good counsellors, when you bid me send away the wife that I have, who is void of offence against me, and take another to my house; I will not consent to it.”
40. Then the Ephors and Elders took counsel, and laid this proposal before Anaxandrides: “Seeing then that you cleave, as we see, to the wife that you have, do this our command, and stand not out against it, lest the Spartans find some new way of dealing with you. As for the wife that you have, we ask not that you should send her away; rather, give her all that you give her now, and marry another woman besides who can give you children.” So they spoke, and Anaxandrides consented; and presently he had two wives and kept two households, a thing in nowise customary at Sparta.
41. After no long time the second wife gave birth to the Cleomenes afore-mentioned. So she gave the Spartans an heir to the royal power; and (as luck would have it) the first wife, having hitherto been barren, did at that very time conceive. She being verily with child, the friends of the later wife learnt of it and began to trouble her; for, they said, she was making a vain boast, that she might substitute a child; and as they were angry, and her time drew nigh, the Ephors would not believe her and sat round to watch her in childbirth; and she gave birth first to Dorieus, then straightway bore Leonidas, and straightway after him Cleombrotus; though some say that Cleombrotus and Leonidas were twins. But the later wife, Cleomenes’ mother (she was the daughter of Prinetadas son of Demarmenus), bore no more children.
42. Now Cleomenes, as the story goes, was not in his right senses, but crazy; but Dorieus was first among all of like age with himself; and he fully believed that he would be made king for his manly worth. Being thus minded, when at Anaxandrides’ death the Lacedaemonians followed their custom and made Cleomenes king by right of age, Dorieus was very angry and would not brook to be subject to Cleomenes; and he asked the Spartans for a company of folk, whom he took away as colonists; he neither enquired of the oracle at Delphi in what land he should plant his settlement, nor did aught else that was customary; but he set sail in great wrath for Libya, with men of Thera to guide him. Thither he came, and settled by the Cinyps river, in the fairest part of Libya; but in the third year he was driven out by the Macae and Libyans and Carchedonians, and returned to Peloponnesus.
43. There Antichares, a man of Eleon, counselled him to plant a colony at Heraclea in Sicily, according to the word of one of Laius’ oracles; for Heracles himself (said Antichares) had won all the region of Eryx, and it belonged to his descendants. When Dorieus heard that, he went away to Delphi to enquire of the oracle if he should win the place whither he was preparing to go; and the priestess telling him that so it should be, he took with him the company that he had led to Libya, and went to Italy.
44. Now at this time, as the Sybarites say, they and their king Telys were making ready to march against Croton, and the men of Croton, being greatly affrighted, entreated Dorieus to come to their aid; their request was granted; Dorieus marched with them to Sybaris and helped them to take it. Such is the story which the Sybarites tell of Dorieus and his companions; but the Crotoniats say that they were aided by no stranger in their war with Sybaris save only by Callias, an Elean diviner of the Iamid clan; of whom the story was that he had fled to Croton from Telys, the despot of Sybaris, because when he was sacrificing for victory over Croton he could get no favourable omens.
45. This is their tale. Both cities bring proof of the truth of what they say: the Sybarites show a precinct and a temple beside the dry bed of the Crathis, which, they say, Dorieus founded in honour of Athene of Crathis, after he had helped to take their city; and moreover they find their strongest proof in his death, because he perished in the doing of more than the oracle bade him; for had he done that for which he set out and nought beyond it, he would have taken and held the Erycine region, and so neither he nor his army would have perished. But the Crotoniats on the other hand show many gifts of land in the country of Croton that were set apart for Callias of Elis (on which lands Callias’ posterity dwelt even to my time), but no gift to Dorieus and his descendants. Yet (they plead) had Dorieus aided them in their war with Sybaris, he would have received a reward many times greater than what was given to Callias. These, then, are the proofs brought by each party; we may take whichever side seems to deserve most credence.
46. Other Spartans too sailed with Dorieus to found his colony, namely, Thessalus, Paraebates, Celees, and Euryleon. These, having come with all their company to Sicily, were overcome and slain in battle by the Phoenicians and Egestans,—all save Euryleon, who was the only settler that survived this disaster. He mustered the remnant of his army and took Minoa, the colony from Selinus, and aided in freeing the people of Selinus from their monarch Pithagoras. Having deposed this man he himself essayed to be despot of Selinus, and was monarch there, but for a little while only; for the people of the place rose against him and slew him at the altar of Zeus of the Market-place, whither he had fled for refuge.
47. Another that followed Dorieus and was with him slain was Philippus of Croton, son of Butacides; he had betrothed himself to the daughter of Telys of Sybaris and was banished from Croton; but being disappointed of his marriage he sailed away to Cyrene, whence he set forth and followed Dorieus, bringing his own trireme and paying all charges for his men; this Philippus was a victor at Olympia and the goodliest Greek of his day. For the beauty of his person he received honours from the Egestans accorded to none else: they built a hero’s shrine by his grave, and offer him sacrifices of propitiation.
48. Such, then, was the manner of Dorieus’ death. Had he endured Cleomenes’ rule and stayed at Sparta, he would have been king of Lacedaemon; for Cleomenes reigned no long time, and died leaving no son but one only daughter, whose name was Gorgo.
49. I return to my story. It was in the reign of Cleomenes that Aristagoras the despot of Miletus came to Sparta; and when he had audience of the king (so the Lacedaemonians say) he brought with him a bronze tablet on which the map of all the earth was engraved, and all the sea and all the rivers. Having been admitted to converse with Cleomenes, Aristagoras spoke thus to him: “Wonder not, Cleomenes, that I have been so zealous to come hither; for such is our present state: that the sons of the Ionians should be slaves and not free men is a shame and grief to ourselves in especial, and of all others to you, inasmuch as you are the leaders of Hellas. Now, therefore, we beseech you by the gods of Hellas, save your Ionian kinsmen from slavery. This is a thing that you may easily achieve; for the strangers are no valiant men, and your valour in war is preëminent. And for their fashion of fighting, they carry bows and short spears; and they go to battle with breeches on their legs and turbans on their heads; so they are easy to overcome. Further, the dwellers in that continent have more good things than all other men together, gold first, and silver too and bronze and coloured raiment and beasts of burden and slaves; all this you can have at your heart’s desire. And the lands wherein they dwell lie next to each other, as I shall show you:—here are the Ionians, and here the Lydians, who inhabit a good land and have great store of silver” (showing as he spoke the map of the earth which he had brought engraved on the tablet), “and next to the Lydians” (said Aristagoras in his speech) “you see the Phrygians, to the east, men that of all known to me are the richest in flocks and in the earth’s produce. Close by them are the Cappadocians, whom we call Syrians; and their neighbours are the Cilicians, whose land reaches to the sea yonder, wherein you see the island of Cyprus lying; the yearly tribute which they pay to the king is five hundred talents. Next to the Cilicians, here are the Armenians, another people rich in flocks, and after the Armenians the Matieni, whose country I show you; and you see the Cissian land adjoining theirs; therein, on the Choaspes (yonder it is), lies that Susa where lives the great king, and there are the storehouses of his wealth; take that city, and then you need not fear to challenge Zeus for riches. What! you must needs then fight for straitened strips of land of no great worth—fight for that with Messenians, who are as strong as you, and Arcadians and Argives, men that have nought in the way of gold or silver, for which things many are spurred by zeal to fight and die: yet when you can readily be masters of all Asia, will you refuse to essay it?” Thus spoke Aristagoras. Cleomenes replied: “Milesian, my guest, wait till the third day for my answer.”
50. Thus far they advanced at that hearing. But when on the day appointed for the answer they came to the place whereon they had agreed, Cleomenes asked Aristagoras how many days’ journey it was from the Ionian sea to the king. Till now, Aristagoras had been cunning and fooled the Spartan right well; but here he made a false step; for if he desired to bring the Spartans away into Asia he should never have told the truth; but he did tell it, and said that it was a three months’ journey inland. At that, Cleomenes cut short all the rest that Aristagoras began to tell him about the journey, and bade his Milesian guest depart from Sparta before sunset; for never (he said) would the Lacedaemonians listen to the plan, if Aristagoras desired to lead them a three months’ journey from the sea.
51. Having thus spoken Cleomenes went to his house; but Aristagoras took a suppliant’s garb and followed him thither, and entering in he used a suppliant’s right to beseech Cleomenes to hear him, but first send the child away; for Cleomenes’ daughter, whose name was Gorgo, was standing by him; she was his only child, and was about eight or nine years of age. Cleomenes bade him say what he would and not let the child’s presence hinder him. Then Aristagoras began to promise Cleomenes from ten talents upwards, if he would grant his request. Cleomenes refusing, Aristagoras offered him ever more and yet more, till when he promised fifty talents the child cried out, “Father, the stranger will corrupt you, unless you leave him and go away.” Cleomenes was pleased with the child’s counsel and went into another room; and Aristagoras departed clean out of Sparta, and could find no occasion for telling further of the journey inland to the king’s place.
52. Now the nature of this road is as I shall show. All along it are the king’s stages and exceeding good hostelries, and the whole of it passes through country that is inhabited and safe. Its course through Lydia and Phrygia is of the length of twenty stages, and ninety-four and a half parasangs. Next after Phrygia it comes to the river Halys, where there is a defile, which must be passed ere the river can be crossed, and a great fortress to guard it. After the passage into Cappadocia the road in that land as far as the borders of Cilicia is of twenty-eight stages and an hundred and four parasangs. On this frontier you must ride through two defiles and pass two fortresses; ride past these, and you will have a journey through Cilicia of three stages and fifteen and a half parasangs. The boundary of Cilicia and Armenia is a navigable river whereof the name is Euphrates. In Armenia there are fifteen resting-stages, and fifty-six parasangs and a half, and there is a fortress there. From Armenia the road enters the Matienian land, wherein are thirty-four stages, and an hundred and thirty-seven parasangs. Through this land flow four navigable rivers, that must needs be passed by ferries, first the Tigris, then a second and a third of the same name, yet not the same stream nor flowing from the same source; for the first-mentioned of them flows from the Armenians and the second from the Matieni; and the fourth river is called Gyndes, that Gyndes which Cyrus parted once into three hundred and sixty channels. When this country is passed, the road is in the Cissian land, where are eleven stages and forty-two and a half parasangs, as far as yet another navigable river, the Choaspes, whereon stands the city of Susa.
53. Thus the whole tale of stages is an hundred and eleven. So many resting-stages then there are in the going up from Sardis to Susa. If I have rightly numbered the parasangs of the royal road, and the parasang is of thirty furlongs’ length (which assuredly it is), then between Sardis and the king’s abode called Memnonian there are thirteen thousand and five hundred furlongs, the number of parasangs being four hundred and fifty; and if each day’s journey be an hundred and fifty furlongs, then the sum of days spent is ninety, neither more nor less.
54. Thus Aristagoras of Miletus spoke the truth to Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian when he said that the journey inland was three months long. But if any desire a measurement yet exacter, I will give him that too; for the journey from Ephesus to Sardis must be added to the rest. So then I declare that from the Greek sea to Susa (for that is the city called Memnonian) it is a journey of fourteen thousand and forty stages; for there are five hundred and forty furlongs from Ephesus to Sardis, and thus the three months’ journey is made longer by three days.
55. Being compelled to leave Sparta, Aristagoras went to Athens; which had been freed from its ruling despots in the manner that I shall show. When Hipparchus, son of Pisistratus and brother of Hippias the despot, had been slain (after seeing in a dream a very clear picture of the evil that befel him) by Aristogiton and Harmodius, men of Gephyraean descent, after this the Athenians were subject for four years to a despotism not less but even more absolute than before.
56. Now this was the vision which Hipparchus saw in a dream: in the night before the Panathenaea he thought that a tall and goodly man stood over him uttering these riddling verses:
As soon as it was day, he imparted this (as was seen) to the interpreters of dreams; and presently putting the vision from his mind, he led the procession in which he met his death.
57. Now the Gephyraean clan, of which were the slayers of Hipparchus, is said by themselves to have come at first from Eretria; but my own enquiry shows that they were some of the Phoenicians who came with Cadmus to the country now called Boeotia, and in that country the lands of Tanagra were allotted to them, where they settled. The Cadmeans having been first expelled thence by the Argives, these Gephyraeans were in turn expelled by the Boeotians and betook themselves to Athens. The Athenians received them as citizens of their own on set terms, debarring them from many practices not here deserving mention.
58. These Phoenicians who came with Cadmus (of whom the Gephyraeans were a part) at their settlement in this country, among many other kinds of learning, brought into Hellas the alphabet, which had hitherto been unknown, as I think, to the Greeks; and presently as time went on the sound and the form of the letters were changed. At this time the Greeks that dwelt round them for the most part were Ionians; who, having been taught the letters by the Phoenicians, used them with some few changes of form, and in so doing gave to these characters (as indeed was but just, seeing that the Phoenicians had brought them into Hellas) the name of Phoenician. Thus also the Ionians have from ancient times called papyrus-sheets skins, because formerly for lack of papyrus they used the skins of sheep and goats; and even to this day there are many foreigners who write on such skins.
59. I have myself seen Cadmean characters in the temple of Ismenian Apollo at Thebes of Boeotia, graven on certain tripods and for the most part like Ionian letters. On one of the tripods there is this inscription:
This would be of the time of Laïus, the son of Labdacus, who was the son of Polydorus, who was the son of Cadmus.
60. A second tripod says, in hexameter verse:
Scaeus the son of Hippocoon, if indeed the dedicator be he and not another of the same name as Hippo-coon’s son, would be of the time of Oedipus son of Laïus.
61. The third tripod says, in hexameter verse again:
In the sovereignty of this Laodamas son of Eteocles, the Cadmeans were expelled by the Argives and betook themselves to the Encheleis. The Gephyraeans were left behind, but were later compelled by the Boeotians to withdraw to Athens; and they have certain set forms of worship at Athens, wherein the rest of the Athenians have no part; these, and in especial the rites and mysteries of Achaean Demeter, are different from the other worships.
62. I have shown what was the vision of Hipparchus’ dream, and what the first origin of the Gephyraeans, of whom were the slayers of Hipparchus; now I must go further and return to the story which I began to tell, namely, how the Athenians were freed from their despots. Hippias being their despot and growing ever bitterer in enmity against the Athenians by reason of Hipparchus’ death, the Alcmeonidae, a family of Athenian stock banished by the sons of Pisistratus, essayed with the rest of the banished Athenians to make their way back by force and free Athens, but could not prosper in their return and rather suffered great hurt. They had fortified Lipsydrium north of Paeonia; then, in their desire to use all devices against the sons of Pisistratus, they hired themselves to the Amphictyons for the building of the temple at Delphi which now is but then as yet was not there. Being wealthy and like their fathers men of reputation, they wrought the temple into a fairer form than the model shown; in particular, whereas they had agreed to build the temple of tufa, they made its front of Parian marble.
63. These men then, as the Athenians say, sat them down at Delphi and bribed the Pythian priestess, whenever any Spartans should come to enquire of her on a private or a public account, to bid them set Athens free. Then the Lacedaemonians, when the same command was ever revealed to them, sent Anchimolius the son of Aster, a citizen of repute, to drive out the sons of Pisistratus with an army, albeit the Pisistratids were their close friends; for the gods’ will weighed with them more than the will of man. They sent these men by sea on shipboard. So Anchimolius put in at Phalerum and there disembarked his army; but the sons of Pisistratus had got word of the plan already, and sent to ask help from Thessaly, wherewith they had an alliance. The Thessalians at their entreaty joined together and sent their own king, Cineas of Conium, with a thousand horsemen. When the Pisistratids got these allies, they devised a plan whereby they laid the plain of Phalerum waste, so that all that land could be ridden over, and then launched their cavalry against the enemy’s army; the horsemen charged and slew Anchimolius and many more of the Lacedaemonians, and drove those that survived to their ships. Thus faring, the first Lacedaemonian armament drew off; and Anchimolius’ tomb is at Alopecae in Attica, near to the Heracleum in Cynosarges.
64. After this the Lacedaemonians sent out a greater army to attack Athens, appointing as its general their king Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides; this army they sent no longer by sea but by land. When they broke into Attica the Thessalian horse was the first to meet them, and was presently routed and more than forty men were slain; those that were left alive made off for Thessaly by the nearest way they could. Then Cleomenes, when he and the Athenians that desired freedom came before the city, drove the despots’ family within the Pelasgic wall and there beleaguered them.
65. And assuredly the Lacedaemonians would never have taken the Pisistratid stronghold; for they had no mind to blockade it, and the Pisistratids were well furnished with food and drink; and the Lacedaemonians would but have besieged the place for a few days and then returned back to Sparta. But as it was, there befel a turn of fortune that harmed the one party and helped the other; for the sons of the Pisistratid family were taken as they were being privily carried out of the country. This made all their plans to be confounded; and they submitted to depart out of Attica within five days on the terms prescribed to them by the Athenians, in return for the recovery of their children. Presently they departed to Sigeum on the Scamander. They had ruled the Athenians for six-and-thirty years; they too were in lineage of the house of Pylos and Neleus, born of the same ancestors as the families of Codrus and Melanthus, who had formerly come from foreign parts to be kings of Athens. Hence it was that Hippocrates gave his son for a remembrance the name Pisistratus, calling him after Pisistratus the son of Nestor.
Thus the Athenians got quit of their despots; and all the noteworthy things that they did or endured, after they were freed and before Ionia revolted from Darius and Aristagoras of Miletus came to Athens to ask help of its people—these first I will now declare.
66. Athens, which had before been great, grew now yet greater when rid of her despots; and those that were of chief power there were two, Cleisthenes an Alcmaeonid (it is he who is reputed to have over-persuaded the Pythian priestess), and Isagoras son of Tisandrus, a man of a notable house, but of what lineage I cannot tell; his kinsfolk sacrifice to Zeus of Caria. These men with their factions fell to contending for power, wherein Cleisthenes being worsted took the commonalty into partnership. Presently he divided the Athenians into ten tribes, instead of four as formerly; he called none any more after the names of the sons of Ion, Geleon, Aegicores, Argades, and Hoples, but invented for them names taken from other heroes, all native to the country save only Aias; him he added, albeit a stranger, because he was a neighbour and an ally.
67. Now herein, to my thinking, this Cleisthenes was imitating his own mother’s father, Cleisthenes the despot of Sicyon. For Cleisthenes, after going to war with the Argives, made an end of minstrels’ contests at Sicyon by reason of the Homeric poems, because wellnigh everywhere in these it is Argives and Argos that are the theme of song; furthermore, he conceived the desire to cast out from the land (as being an Argive) Adrastus son of Talaus, the hero whose shrine stood then as now in the very market-place of Sicyon. He went then to Delphi, and enquired of the oracle if he should cast Adrastus out; but the priestess in answer said: “Adrastus is king of Sicyon, and thou but a common slayer.” When the god would not suffer him to work his will in that, he returned back and strove to devise some plan which might rid him of Adrastus; and when he thought he had found one, he sent to Thebes of Boeotia and said he would fain bring into his country Melanippus son of Astacus; whom when the Thebans gave him he brought to Sicyon, and gave him a precinct in the very town-hall of the city, setting him there in its strongest place. Now the reason why Cleisthenes thus brought Melanippus (for this too I must relate) was, that Melanippus was Adrastus deadliest foe; for Adrastus had slain his brother Mecisteus and his son-in-law Tydeus. Having then appointed the precinct for him, Cleisthenes took away all Adrastus’ sacrifices and festivals and gave them to Melanippus. The Sicyonians had been wont to pay very great honour to Adrastus; for Polybus had been lord of that land, and Adrastus was the son of Polybus’ daughter; and Polybus, dying without a son, gave the lordship to Adrastus. Now besides other honours paid to Adrastus by the Sicyonians, they celebrated his lamentable fate with tragic choruses, not in honour of Dionysus but of Adrastus. But Cleisthenes gave the choruses back to Dionysus and the rest of the worship to Melanippus.
68. Such had been his treatment of Adrastus; but as to the tribes of the Dorians, he changed their names, that so these tribes should not be common to Sicyonians and Argives. In this especially he made a laughing-stock of the Sicyonians; for he named the tribes instead after swine and asses, adding the former ending of the titles, save only for his own tribe; to this he gave a name signifying his own lordship, and calling its folk People-rulers; the rest were Swinites and Assites and Porkites. These were the names of the tribes which the Sicyonians used under Cleisthenes’ rule and for sixty years more after his death; but afterwards they took counsel together and changed the names of three to Hylleis, Pamphyli, and Dymanatae, adding thereto a fourth which they made to be called Aegialeis after Aegialeus son of Adrastus.
69. Thus had the Sicyonian Cleisthenes done; and the Athenian Cleisthenes, who was the son of that Sicyonian’s daughter and bore his name, did to my thinking imitate his namesake because he contemned the Ionians with his grandsire’s contempt and desired that the tribes should not be common to his own people and the Ionians. For having drawn to his own party the Athenian commonalty, which was then debarred from all rights, he gave the tribes new names and increased their number, making ten tribe-wardens in place of four, and assigning ten districts to each tribe; and having won over the commonalty he was stronger by far than the rival faction.
70. Then Isagoras, being on the losing side in his turn, devised a counter-plot, and invited the aid of Cleomenes, who had been his friend since the besieging of the Pisistratids; nay, it was laid to Cleomenes’ charge that he resorted to Isagoras’ wife. Then Cleomenes first sent a herald to Athens demanding the banishment of Cleisthenes and many other Athenians with him, the Accursed, as he called them; and this he said in his message by Isagoras’ instruction; for the Alcmeonidae and their faction were held guilty of that bloody deed, but Isagoras and his friends had no part therein.
71. Now the Accursed at Athens got their name on this wise. There was an Athenian named Cylon, that had been a winner at Olympia. This man put on the brave air of one that aimed at despotism; and gathering a company of men of like age he essayed to seize the citadel; but when he could not win it he took sanctuary by the goddess’ statue. Then he and his men were brought away by the presidents of the naval boards (who then ruled Athens), being held liable to any penalty save death; but they were slain, and the slaying of them was laid to the door of the Alcmeonidae. All this befel before the time of Pisistratus.
72. Cleomenes then having sent and demanded the banishment of Cleisthenes and the Accursed, Cleisthenes himself privily departed; but none the less did Cleomenes presently appear before Athens, with no great force; and having come he banished seven hundred Athenian households named for him by Isagoras, to take away the curse. Having so done he next essayed to dissolve the Council, entrusting the offices of governance to Isagoras’ faction. But the Council resisted him and would not consent; whereupon Cleomenes and Isagoras and his partisans seized the acropolis. The rest of the Athenians united and besieged them for two days; and on the third they departed out of the country under treaty, as many of them as were Lacedaemonians. Thus the prophetic voice that Cleomenes heard had its fulfilment; for when he went up to the acropolis with intent to take possession of it, he approached the shrine of the goddess to address himself to her; but the priestess rose up from her seat, and said, before he had passed through the doorway: “Go back, Lacedaemonian stranger, and enter not into the holy place; for it is not lawful that Dorians should pass in here.” “Nay, lady,” he answered, “no Dorian am I, but an Achaean.” So he took no heed to the word of omen, but essayed to work his will, and was, as I have said, then again cast out, with his Lacedaemonians. As for the rest, the Athenians put them in ward under sentence of death, Timesitheus the Delphian among them, whose achievements of strength and courage were most mighty, as I could relate.
73. So these were bound and put to death. After that, the Athenians sent to bring back Cleisthenes and the seven hundred households banished by Cleomenes; then they despatched envoys to Sardis, desiring to make an alliance with the Persians; for they knew that they had provoked the Lacedaemonians and Cleomenes to war. When the envoys came to Sardis and spoke as they had been bidden, Artaphrenes son of Hystaspes, viceroy of Sardis, asked them, “What men are you, and where dwell you, who desire alliance with the Persians?” Being informed by the envoys, he gave them an answer whereof the substance was, that if the Athenians gave king Darius earth and water, then he would make alliance with them; but if not, his command was that they should begone. The envoys consulted together and consented to give what was asked, in their desire to make the alliance. So they returned to their own country, and were there greatly blamed for what they had done.
74. But Cleomenes, for the despite which he deemed that the Athenians had done him by word and deed, mustered an army from the whole of Peloponnesus, not declaring the purpose for which he mustered it, which was, to avenge himself on the Athenian commonalty and set up Isagoras as despot;—for Isagoras too had come with him out of the acropolis. So Cleomenes broke in as far as Eleusis with a great host, and the Boeotians by a concerted plan took Oenoe and Hysiae, districts on the borders of Attica, while the Chalcidians attacked on another side and raided lands in Attica. The Athenians, thus caught in a ring of foes, kept the Boeotians and Chalcidians for future remembrance, but set up their array against the Peloponnesians where they were at Eleusis.
75. But when the armies were to join battle, the Corinthians first agreed among themselves that they were doing unjustly, and so changed about and departed; and presently Demaratus son of Ariston, the other king of Sparta, did likewise, albeit he had come with Cleomenes from Lacedaemon in joint command of the army and had not till now been at variance with him. From this disunion a law was made at Sparta that when an army was despatched both kings should not be suffered to go with it (for till then they had both gone together); thus one of the kings being released from service, one of the sons of Tyndarus too could be left at home; for before that time, both of these also were entreated to aid and went with the army.
76. So now at Eleusis, when the rest of the allies saw that the Lacedaemonian kings were not of one mind and that the Corinthians had left their post, they too went off and away. This was the fourth time that Dorians had come into Attica. Twice had they come as invaders in war, and twice to the help of the Athenian commonalty; the first time was when they planted a settlement at Megara (this expedition may rightly be said to have been in the reign of Codrus), the second and third when they set out from Sparta to drive out the sons of Pisistratus, and the fourth was now, when Cleomenes broke in as far as Eleusis with his following of Peloponnesians; thus this was the fourth Dorian invasion of Athens.
77. This armament then having been ingloriously scattered, the Athenians first marched against the Chalcidians, to punish them. The Boeotians came to the Euripus to help the Chalcidians. When the Athenians saw the helpers they resolved to attack the Boeotians before the Chalcidians; and meeting the Boeotians in battle they won a great victory; very many they slew, and seven hundred of them they took prisoners. And on that same day the Athenians crossed to Euboea, where they met the Chalcidians too in battle, and having overcome them likewise they left four thousand tenant farmers on the lands of the horse-breeders; for that was the name of the men of substance among the Chalcidians. As many as they took alive of these also, they fettered and kept in ward with the captive Boeotians; but in time they set them free, each for an assessed ransom of two minae. The fetters in which the prisoners had been bound they hung up in the acropolis, where they were still to be seen in my time, hanging from walls that the Medes’ fire had charred, over against the cell that faces westwards. Moreover, they dedicated a tenth part of the ransoms, making of it a four-horse chariot; this stands on the left hand of the entrance into the outer porch of the acropolis, bearing this inscription
78. Thus grew the power of Athens; and it is proved not by one but by many instances that equality is a good thing; seeing that while they were under despotic rulers the Athenians were no better in war than any of their neighbours, yet once they got quit of despots they were far and away the first of all. This, then, shows that while they were oppressed they willed to be cravens, as men working for a master, but when they were freed each one was zealous to achieve for himself.
79. Thus then the Athenians did. But presently the Thebans sent to the god, desiring vengeance on Athens. The Pythian priestess said that from the Thebans themselves there was no vengeance for them; they must lay the matter before the “many-voiced” and entreat their nearest. So when the enquirers returned an assembly was called and the oracle laid before it; and when the Thebans learnt the message “that they must entreat their nearest,” they said when they heard it: “If this be so, our nearest neighbours are the men of Tanagra and Coronea and Thespiae; yet these are ever our comrades in battle and zealously wage our wars; what need to entreat them? Nay, mayhap the oracle means not this.”
80. Thuswise they reasoned, till at last one understood, and said: “Methinks I perceive what it is that the oracle will have us know. Thebe and Aegina, it is said, were daughters of Asopus and sisters; the gods’ answer is, I think, that we should entreat the Aeginetans to be our avengers.” Seeing that there seemed to be no better opinion before them than this, they sent forthwith to entreat the Aeginetans and invite their aid, such being the oracle’s bidding, and the Aeginetans being their nearest. These replied to their demand that they were sending the Sons of Aeacus in aid.
81. The Thebans took the field on the strength of their alliance with that House, and were roughly handled by the Athenians; and they sent again, giving back Aeacus and his sons, and asking for the men instead. But the Aeginetans were uplifted by great prosperity, and had in mind an ancient feud with Athens; wherefore now at the entreaty of the Thebans, without sending of herald they made war on the Athenians; while these were busied with the Boeotians, they descended on Attica in ships of war, and ravaged Phaleron and many other seaboard townships. By so doing they dealt the Athenians a very shrewd blow.
82. Now this was the beginning of the Aeginetans’ long-standing arrears of enmity against the Athenians. The Epidaurians’ land bore no produce; wherefore they enquired at Delphi concerning this calamity; and the priestess bade them set up images of Damia and Auxesia, saying that if they so did their luck would be better. The Epidaurians then asking further, whether they should make the images of bronze or of stone, the priestess bade them do neither, but make them of the wood of the garden olive. So the men of Epidaurus entreated the Athenians to give them olives for the cutting, supposing the olives there to be the holiest; and indeed it is said that at that time there were no olives anywhere save at Athens. The Athenians consented to give the trees, if the Epidaurians would pay yearly sacred dues to Athene the city’s goddess and to Erechtheus. The Epidaurians agreed on this condition, and their request was granted. They set up images made of these olives; and their land brought forth fruit, and they fulfilled their agreement with the Athenians.
83. Now still at this time, as before it, the Aeginetans were in all matters subject to the Epidaurians, crossing over to Epidaurus and there getting, and giving one another, satisfaction at law. But from this time they began to build ships, and stubbornly revolted from the Epidaurians; in which state of enmity, being masters of the sea, they wrought them much hurt, and stole withal their images of Damia and Auxesia, and took these away and set them up in the middle of their own country at a place called Oea, about twenty furlongs distant from their city. Having set them up in this place they sought their favour with sacrifices and choruses of mocking women, ten men being appointed providers of a chorus for each of the deities; and the choruses aimed their raillery not at any men but at the women of the country. The Epidaurians too had the same rites; and they have certain secret rites as well.
84. But when these images were stolen, the Epidaurians ceased from fulfilling their agreement with the Athenians. Then the Athenians sent an angry message to the Epidaurians; but these pleaded that they were doing no wrong; “for as long,” they said, “as we had the images in our country, we fulfilled our agreement; but now that we are deprived of them, it is not just that we should still be paying; nay, ask your dues of the men of Aegina, who have the images.” The Athenians therefore sent to Aegina and demanded that the images be restored; but the Aeginetans answered that they had nothing to do with the Athenians.
85. After their demand the Athenians (this is their story) despatched one trireme with certain of their citizens; who, coming as they were sent in the name of the whole people to Aegina, essayed to tear the images, as being made of Attic wood, from their bases, that they might carry them away; but when they could not get possession of them in this manner, they fastened the images about with cords and made to drag them away, till while they dragged they were overtaken by a thunderstorm, and an earthquake withal; whereby the trireme’s crew that dragged the images were distraught, and in this affliction slew each other for enemies, till at last but one of all was left, who returned back by himself to Phalerum.
86. This is the Athenian story of the matter; but the Aeginetans say that the Athenians came not in one ship only; “for,” they say, “even if we had had no ships of our own, we could right easily have defended ourselves against one ship, or a few more; but the truth is that they descended upon our coasts with many ships, and we yielded to them and made no fight of it at sea.” But they can never show with exact plainness whether it was because they confessed themselves to be the weaker at sea-fighting that they yielded, or because they purposed to do somewhat such as in the event they did. The Athenians then (say the Aeginetans), when no man came out to fight with them, disembarked from their ships and set about dealing with the images; and not being able to drag them from the bases they did there and then fasten them about with cords and drag them, till as they were dragged both the images together (and this I myself do not believe, yet others may) fell with the selfsame motion on their knees, and have remained so from that day. Thus, then, did the Athenians; but as for themselves, the Aeginetans say that they learnt that the Athenians were about to make war upon them, and therefore they assured themselves of help from the Argives. So when the Athenians disembarked on the land of Aegina, the Argives came to aid the Aeginetans, crossing over from Epidaurus to the island privily, and then falling upon the Athenians unawares and cutting them off from their ships; and it was at this moment that the thunderstorm came upon them, and the earthquake withal.
87. This, then, is the story told by the Argives and Aeginetans, and the Athenians too acknowledge that it was only one man of them who came safe back to Attica; but the Argives say that it was they, and the Athenians that it was divine power, that destroyed the Attic army when this one man was saved alive; albeit even this one (say the Athenians) was not saved alive but perished as here related. It would seem that he made his way to Athens and told of the mishap; and when this was known (it is said) to the wives of the men who had gone to attack Aegina, they were very wroth that he alone should be safe out of all, and they gathered round him and stabbed him with the brooch-pins of their garments, each asking him “where her man was.”
88. Thus was this man done to death; and this deed of their women seemed to the Athenians to be yet more dreadful than their misfortune. They could find, it is said, no other way to punish the women; but they changed their dress to the Ionian fashion; for till then the Athenian women had worn Dorian dress, very like to the Corinthian; it was changed, therefore, to the linen tunic, that so they might have no brooch-pins to use. But if the truth be told, this dress is not in its origin Ionian, but Carian; for in Hellas itself all the women’s dress in ancient times was the same as that which we now call Dorian. As for the Argives and Aeginetans, this was the reason of their even making a law for each of their nations that their brooch-pins should be made half as long again as the measure then customary, and that brooch-pins in especial should be dedicated by their women in the temple of those goddesses; and that neither aught else Attic should be brought to the temple, nor earthenware, but that it be the law to drink there from vessels of the country.
89. So then the women of Argolis and Aegina ever since that day wore brooch-pins longer than before, by reason of the feud with the Athenians, and so they did even to my time; and the enmity of the Athenians against the Aeginetans began as I have told. And now at the Thebans’ call the Aeginetans came readily to the aid of the Boeotians, remembering the business of the images. The Aeginetans laying waste the seaboard of Attica, the Athenians were setting out to march against them; but there came to them an oracle from Delphi bidding them to hold their hands for thirty years after the wrong-doing of the Aeginetans, and in the thirty-first to mark out a precinct for Aeacus and begin the war with Aegina; thus should their purpose prosper; but if they sent an army against their enemies forthwith, they should indeed subdue them at the last, but in the meanwhile many should be their sufferings and many too their doings. When the Athenians heard this reported to them, they marked out for Aeacus that precinct which is now set in their market-place; but they could not stomach the message that they must hold their hand for thirty years, after the foul blow dealt them by the Aeginetans.
90. But as they were making ready for vengeance a matter hindered them which took its rise in Lace-daemon. For when the Lacedaemonians learnt of the plot of the Alcmaeonids with the Pythian priestess and of her plot against themselves and the Pisistratids, they were very wroth for a double reason, for that they had driven their own guests and friends from the country they dwelt in, and that the Athenians showed them no thankfulness for their so doing. Furthermore, they were moved by the oracles which foretold that many deeds of enmity would be done against them by the Athenians; of which oracles they had till now no knowledge; but now Cleomenes had brought them to Sparta, and the Lacedaemonians learnt their content. Cleomenes possessed himself of the oracles from the Athenian acropolis; the Pisistratids had possessed them till then, but when they were driven out they left them in the temple, and being left behind they were regained by Cleomenes.
91. And now the Lacedaemonians, when they regained the oracles and saw the Athenians increasing in power and in nowise ready to obey them, and bethought them that were the Attic race free it would be a match for their own, but were it held down under despotism it would be weak and ready to serve a master,—perceiving all this, they sent to bring Pisistratus’ son Hippias from Sigeum on the Hellespont, the Pisistratids’ place of refuge; and Hippias coming at their call, the Spartans sent for envoys from the rest of their allies, and thus bespoke them: “Sirs, our allies, we do acknowledge that we have done wrongly; for, befooled by lying divinations, we drove from their native land men that were our close friends and promised to make Athens subject to us, and presently having so done we delivered that city over to a thankless commonalty; which had no sooner lifted up its head in the freedom which we gave it, than it insolently cast out us and our king, and now has bred a spirit of pride and waxes in power; insomuch that their neighbours of Boeotia and Chalcis have especial cause to know it, and others too are like to know their error anon. But since we erred in doing that which we did, we will now essay with your aid to be avenged of them; for it is on this account and no other that we have sent for this Hippias whom you see and have brought you from your cities, that uniting our counsels and our power we may bring him to Athens and restore that which we took away.”
92. Thus spoke the Lacedaemonians, but their words were ill received by the greater part of their allies. The rest then keeping silence, Socles, a Corinthian, said: “Verily the heaven shall be beneath the earth and the earth aloft above the heaven, and men shall dwell in the sea and fishes where men did dwell before, now that you, Lacedaemonians! are destroying the rule of equals and making ready to bring back despotism into the cities—despotism, a thing as unrighteous and bloodthirsty as aught on this earth. For if indeed this seems to you to be a good thing, that the cities be ruled by despots, do you yourselves first set up a despot among yourselves and then seek to set up such for the rest; but now, having never made trial of despots, and taking most careful heed that none shall arise at Sparta, you deal wrongfully with your allies. But had you such experience of that thing as we have, you would be sager advisers concerning it than you are now.
“For the Corinthian State was ordered in such manner as I will show. The Few ruled; these few, called Bacchiadae, held sway in the city, marrying and giving in marriage among themselves. Now Amphion, one of these men, had a lame daughter, whose name was Labda. Seeing that none of the Bacchiadae would marry her, she was wedded to Eetion son of Echecrates, of the township of Petra, a Lapith by lineage, of the posterity of Caeneus. No sons being born to him by this wife or any other, he set out to Delphi to enquire concerning issue; and straightway as he entered the Pythian priestess spoke these verses to him:
This oracle given to Eetion was in some wise made known to the Bacchiadae, by whom the former oracle sent to Corinth was not understood, albeit its meaning was the same as the meaning of the oracle of Eetion; it was this:
This oracle, formerly given to the Bacchiadae, was past their interpretation; but now, when they learnt of that one which was given to Eetion, straightway they understood that the former accorded with the oracle of Eetion; and understanding this prophecy too they sat still, purposing to destroy whatever should be born to Eetion. Then, as soon as his wife was delivered, they sent ten men of their clan to the township where Eetion dwelt, to kill the child. These men came to Petra and passing into Eetion’s courtyard asked for the child; and Labda, knowing nothing of the purpose of their coming, and thinking that they asked out of friendliness to the child’s father, brought it and gave it into the hands of one of them. Now they had planned on their way (as the story goes) that the first of them who received the child should dash it to the ground. So then when Labda brought and gave the child, by heaven’s providence it smiled at the man who took it, and he saw that, and compassion forbade him to kill it, and in that compassion he delivered it to a second, and he again to a third; and thus it passed from hand to hand to each of the ten, for none would make an end of it. So they gave the child back to its mother and went out, and stood before the door reproaching and upbraiding one another, but chiefly him who had first received it, for that he had not done according to their agreement; till as time passed they had a mind to go in again and all have a hand in the killing. But it was written that Eetion’s offspring should be the source of ills for Corinth. For Labda heard all this where she stood close to the very door; and she feared lest they should change their minds and again take the child, and kill it; wherefore she bore it away and hid it where she thought it would be hardest to find, in a chest; for she knew that if they returned and set about searching they would seek in every place; which they did. They came and sought, but not finding they resolved to go their ways and say to those that sent them that they had done all their bidding. So they went away and said this. But Eetion’s son presently grew, and for his escape from that danger he was called Cypselus, after the chest. When he had come to man’s estate, and was seeking a divination, there was given him at Delphi an oracle of double meaning, trusting wherein he grasped at Corinth and won it. This was the oracle:
Such was the oracle. But Cypselus, having gained despotic power, bore himself in this wise: many Corinthians he banished, many he robbed of their goods, and by far the most of their lives. He reigned for thirty years and made a good ending of his life; and his son Periander succeeded to his despotic power. Now Periander at the first was of milder mood than his father; but after he had held converse by his messengers with Thrasybulus the despot of Miletus, he became much more bloodthirsty than Cypselus. For he sent a herald to Thrasybulus and enquired how he should most safely so order all matters as best to govern his city. Thrasybulus led the man who had come from Periander outside the town, and entered into a sown field; where, while he walked through the corn and plied the herald with still-repeated questions anent his coming from Corinth, he would ever cut off the tallest that he saw of the stalks, and cast away what he cut off, till by so doing he had destroyed the best and richest of the crop; then, having passed through the place and spoken no word of counsel, he sent the herald away. When the herald returned to Corinth, Periander was desirous to hear what counsel he brought; but the man said that Thrasybulus had given him none, ‘and that is a strange man,’ quoth he, ‘to whom you sent me; for he is a madman and a destroyer of his own possessions,’ telling Periander what he had seen Thrasybulus do. But Periander understood what had been done, and perceived that Thrasybulus had counselled him to slay those of his townsmen who stood highest; and with that he began to deal very evilly with his citizens. For whatever act of slaughter or banishment Cypselus had left undone, that did Periander bring to accomplishment; and in a single day he stripped all the women of Corinth naked, by reason of his own wife Melissa. For he had sent messengers to the Oracle of the Dead on the river Acheron in Thesprotia to enquire concerning a deposit that a friend had left; but the apparition of Melissa said that she would tell him nought, nor reveal where the deposit lay; for she was cold (she said) and naked; for the raiment Periander had buried with her had never been burnt, and availed her nothing; and let this (said she) be her witness that she spoke truth—that it was a cold oven wherein to Periander had cast his loaves. When this message was brought back to Periander (for he had had intercourse with the dead body of Melissa and knew her token for true), immediately after the message he made a proclamation that all the Corinthian women should come out into the temple of Here. So they came out as to a festival, wearing their fairest adornment; and Periander set his guards there and stripped them all alike, ladies and serving-women, and heaped all the garments in a pit, where he burnt them, making prayers to Melissa the while. When he had so done and sent a second message, the ghost of Melissa told him the place where the deposit of the friend had been laid.
“Know then, ye Lacedaemonians, that such a thing is despotism, and such are its deeds. We of Corinth did then greatly marvel when we saw that you were sending for Hippias; and now we marvel yet more at your speaking thus; and we entreat you earnestly in the name of the gods of Hellas not to establish despotism in the cities. But if you will not cease from so doing, and will unrighteously essay to bring Hippias back, then be it known to you that the Corinthians for their part consent not thereto.”
93. Thus spoke Socles, the envoy from Corinth; Hippias answered him, calling the same gods as Socles had invoked to witness that verily the Corinthians would be the first to wish Pisistratus’ house back, when the time appointed should come for them to be vexed by the Athenians. Hippias made this answer, inasmuch as he had more exact knowledge of the oracles than any man; but the rest of the allies, who had till now kept silence, when they heard the free speech of Socles, each and all of them spoke out and declared for the opinion of the Corinthians, entreating the Lacedaemonians to do no hurt to a Greek city.
94. Thus this design came to nought, and Hippias perforce departed. Amyntas king of the Macedonians would have given him Anthemus, and the Thessalians Iolcus; but he would have neither, and withdrew to Sigeum, which Pisistratus had taken at the spear’s point from the Mytilenaeans, and having won it set up as its despot Hegesistratus, his own bastard son by an Argive woman. But Hegesistratus kept not without fighting what Pisistratus had given him; for the Mytilenaeans and Athenians waged war for a long time from the city of Achilleum and Sigeum, the Mytilenaeans demanding the place back, and the Athenians not consenting, but bringing proof to show that the Aeolians had no more part or lot in the land of Ilium than they themselves and whatsoever other Greeks had aided Menelaus to avenge the rape of Helen.
95. Among the many chances that befel in the fights of this war, this is noteworthy, that in a battle when the Athenians were gaining the victory Alcaeus the poet took to flight and escaped, but his armour was taken by the Athenians and hung up in the temple of Athene at Sigeum. Alcaeus made of this and sent to Mytilene a poem, wherein he relates his own misfortune to his friend Melanippus. But as for the Mytilenaeans and Athenians, peace was made between them by Periander son of Cypselus, to whose arbitrament they committed the matter; and the terms of peace were that each party should keep what it had.
96. Thus then Sigeum came to be under Athenian rule. But Hippias, having come from Lacedaemon into Asia, left no stone unturned, maligning the Athenians to Artaphrenes, and doing all he could to bring Athens into subjection to himself and Darius; and while Hippias thus wrought, the Athenians heard of it and sent messengers to Sardis, warning the Persians not to believe banished Athenians. But Artaphrenes bade them receive Hippias back, if they would be safe. When this bidding was brought back to the Athenians, they would not consent to it; and as they would not consent, it was resolved that they should be openly at war with Persia.
97. They being thus minded, and the Persians hearing an evil report of them, at this moment Aristagoras the Milesian, driven from Sparta by Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian, came to Athens; for that city was more powerful than any of the rest. Coming before the people, Aristagoras spoke to the same effect as at Sparta, of the good things of Asia, and bow the Persians in war were wont to carry neither shield nor spear and could easily be overcome. This he said, and added thereto, that the Milesians were settlers from Athens, and it was but right to save them, being a very wealthy people; and there was nothing that he did not promise in the earnestness of his entreaty, till at last he over-persuaded them. Truly it would seem that it is easier to deceive many than one; for he could not deceive Cleomenes of Lacedaemon, one single man, but thirty thousand Athenians he could. The Athenians, then, were over-persuaded, and voted the sending of twenty ships in aid of the Ionians, appointing for their admiral Melanthius, a citizen of Athens in all ways of good repute. These ships were the beginning of troubles for Greeks and foreigners.
98. Aristagoras sailed before the rest; and coming to Miletus, he invented a design where from no advantage was to accrue to the Ionians (nor indeed was that the purpose of his plan, but rather to vex king Darius): he sent a man into Phrygia, to the Paeonians who had been led captive from the Strymon by Megabazus, and now dwelt in a Phrygian territory and village by themselves; and when the man came to the Paeonians, he thus spoke: “Men of Paeonia, I am sent by Aristagoras, despot of Miletus, to point you the way to deliverance, if you will be guided by him. All Ionia is now in revolt against the king, and you have the power to win back safely to your own country; this shall be your business as far as the sea, and thereafter we will see to it.” The Paeonians were right glad when they heard that; some of them abode where they were, fearing danger; but the rest took their children and women and made their flight to the sea. Having come thither, the Paeonians crossed over to Chios; and they were already there, when a great host of Persian horse came hard after them in pursuit. Not being able to overtake them, the Persians sent to Chios, commanding the Paeonians to return back; whereto the Paeonians would not consent, but were brought from Chios by the Chians to Lesbos, and carried by the Lesbians to Doriscus; whence they made their way by land to Paeonia.
99. As for Aristagoras, when the Athenians came with their twenty ships, bringing with them five triremes of the Eretrians (who came to the war to please not the Athenians but the Milesians themselves, thereby repaying their debt; for ere now the Milesians had been the allies of the Eretrians in the war against Chalcis, when the Samians came to aid the Chalcidians against the Eretrians and Milesians)—when these, then, and the rest of the allies had all come, Aristagoras planned a march against Sardis. He himself went not with the army but stayed still at Miletus, and appointed others to be generals of the Milesians, namely, his own brother Charopinus, and another citizen named Hermophantus.
100. The Ionians, having with this armament come to Ephesus, left their ships at Coresus in the Ephesian territory, and themselves marched inland with a great host, taking Ephesians to guide them on their way. Journeying beside the river Caicus, and crossing thence over Tmolus, they came to Sardis and took it, none withstanding them; all of it they took, save only the citadel, which was held by Artaphrenes himself with a great power.
101. Now this it was that hindered them from plundering the city. The greater part of the houses in Sardis were of reeds, and as many as were of brick, even they had roofs of reeds. So it was that when one of these was set afire by a soldier, the names spread from house to house all over the whole city. While the city was burning, the Lydians and all the Persians that were in the citadel, being hemmed in on every side (for the fire was consuming the outer parts), and having no exit from the city, came thronging into the marketplace and to the river Pactolus, which flows through the market-place carrying down gold dust from Tmolus, and issues into the river Hermus as does the Hermus into the sea; they assembled in the market-place by this Pactolus, and there of necessity defended themselves, Lydians and Persians. When the Ionians saw some of their enemies defending themselves and a great multitude of others approaching, they were afraid, and drew off out of the city to the mountain called Tmolus; whence at nightfall they departed to their ships.
102. So Sardis was burnt, and therein the temple of Cybebe, the goddess of that country; which burning the Persians afterwards made their pretext for burning the temples of Hellas. But, at this time, the Persians of the provinces this side the Halys, on hearing of these matters, gathered together and came to aid the Lydians. It chanced that they found the Ionians no longer at Sardis; but following on their tracks they caught them at Ephesus. There the Ionians stood arrayed to meet them, but were utterly routed in the battle; many men of renown among them the Persians put to the sword, of whom was Evalcides the general of the Eretrians, one that had won crowns as victor in the lists and been greatly belauded by Simonides of Ceos; those of the Ionians that escaped from the battle fled scattered, each to his city.
103. Thus for the nonce they fared in their fighting. But presently the Athenians wholly separated themselves from the Ionians and refused to aid them, though Aristagoras sent messages of earnest entreaty; yet the Ionians, though bereft of their Athenian allies, did none the less busily carry forward their war against the king, so heavily they stood committed by what they had done to Darius. They sailed to the Hellespont and made Byzantium subject to them, and all the other cities of that region; then sailing out from the Hellespont they gained to their cause the greater part of Caria; for even Caunus, which till then had not willed to be their ally, did now join itself to them after the burning of Sardis.
104. The Cyprians did likewise of their own free will, all save the people of Amathus; for these too revolted from the Medes in such manner as I will show. There was one Onesilus, a younger brother of Gorgus king of the Salaminians, and son of Chersis, who was the son of Siromus, who was the son of Evelthon. This man had often before counselled Gorgus to revolt from Darius, and now when he learnt that the Ionians too had revolted he was very instant in striving to move him; but when he could not persuade Gorgus, he and his faction waited till his brother had gone out of the city of Salamis, and shut him out of the gates. Gorgus then having lost his city took refuge with the Medes, and Onesilus was king of Salamis and over-persuaded all Cyprus to revolt with him, all save the Amathusians, who would not consent; and he sat down before their city and besieged it.
105. Onesilus, then, besieged Amathus. But when it was told to Darius that Sardis had been taken and burnt by the Athenians and Ionians, and that Aristagoras the Milesian had been leader of the conspiracy for the weaving of this plan, at his first hearing of it (it is said) he took no account of the Ionians,—being well assured that they of all men would not go scatheless for their rebellion,—but asked who were the Athenians; and being told, he called for his bow, which he took, and laid an arrow on it and shot it into the sky, praying as he sent it aloft, “O Zeus, grant me vengeance on the Athenians,” and therewithal he charged one of his servants to say to him thrice whenever dinner was set before him, “Master, remember the Athenians.”
106. Having given this charge, he called before him Histiaeus the Milesian, whom Darius had now kept for a long while with him, and said: “I learn, Histiaeus! that your vicegerent, to whom you gave Miletus in charge, has done me strange wrong: he has brought men from the mainland overseas, and persuaded to follow them certain Ionians,—who shall yet pay me the penalty of their deeds,—and has robbed me of Sardis. Now, therefore, I ask you, how think you that this is well done? And how came such things to be done without counsel from you? Look well to it, that you have not cause to blame yourself hereafter.” To this Histiaeus made answer: “Sire, what is this word that you utter—that I and none other should devise a plan whence aught great or small was like to arise for your hurt? And what then have I to desire, and what do I lack, that I should do that? All that you have is mine, and I am deemed worthy to hear all your counsels. Nay, if indeed my vicegerent has any such thing in hand as this whereof you speak, be well assured that he has acted of his own motion. For myself, I cannot even so much as believe the report that the Milesians and my vicegerent are doing you strange wrong. But if it appears that they are so dealing, and it is the truth, O king, that you have heard, then I bid you perceive what it was that you wrought when you brought me from the sea into exile. For it would seem that the Ionians have taken occasion by my being removed out of their sight to do that whereon their hearts had long been set; but had I been in Ionia no city would have stirred. Now therefore send me away on my journey to Ionia with all speed, that I may bring that country to its former peace, and deliver into your hands that vicegerent of Miletus who has devised all this. Then, when I have done this according to your desire, I swear by the gods of your kingship that I will not doff the tunic which I wear when I go down to Ionia, ere I make Sardo, the greatest of the isles of the sea, tributary to you.”
107. Thus spoke Histiaeus, with intent to deceive; and Darius consented and let him go, charging Histiaeus to appear before him at Susa when he should have achieved what he promised.
108. Now while the message concerning Sardis went up to the king, and Darius, having done as I said with his bow, held converse with Histiaeus, and Histiaeus being suffered to go by Darius made his way to the sea, in all this time matters fell out as I shall show. While Onesilus of Salamis was besieging the Amathusians, news was brought him that Artybius, a Persian, was thought to be coming to Cyprus with a great Persian host; learning which, Onesilus sent heralds about to Ionia to summon the people, and the Ionians after no long deliberation came with a great armament. So the Ionians were in Cyprus when the Persians, crossing from Cilicia, marched to Salamis by land, while the Phoenicians in their ships sailed round the headland which is called the Keys of Cyprus.
109. In this turn of affairs, the despots of Cyprus assembled the generals of the Ionians, and said to them: “Ionians, we Cyprians bid you choose which you will encounter, the Persians or the Phoenicians For if you will set your army in array on land and try conclusions with the Persians, then it is time for you to get you out of your ships and array yourselves on land, and for us to embark in your ships to contend with the Phoenicians; but if you desire rather to try conclusions with the Phoenicians, you must so act, whichever you choose, that as far as in you lies Ionia and Cyprus shall be free.” To this the Ionians answered, “Nay, we were sent by the common voice of Ionia to guard the seas, not to deliver our ships to men of Cyprus and encounter the Persians on land. We will essay then to bear ourselves bravely in the task whereto we were set; and it is for you to prove yourselves valiant men, remembering what you suffered when you were slaves to the Medians.”
110. Thus answered the Ionians; and presently, the Persians being now in the plain of Salamis, the Cyprian kings ordered their battle line, arraying the chosen flower of the Salaminians and Solians over against the Persians and the rest of the Cyprians against the rest of the enemy’s army; Onesilus chose for himself a place where he had before him Artybius, the Persian general.
111. Now the horse whereon Artybius rode was trained to fight with men-at-arms by rearing up. Hearing this, Onesilus said to his esquire (who was Carian born, of great renown in war, and a valiant man ever), “I learn that Artybius’ horse rears up and kicks and bites to death whomsoever he encounters. Bethink you then and tell me straightway which you will watch and smite, Artybius himself or his horse.” To this his henchman answered, “O King, ready am I to do either or both, and whatever your bidding be, that to do; yet I will tell you what I judge to accord best with your state. To my mind, it is right that king and general should by king and general be encountered. For if you lay low a man that is a general, you have achieved a great feat; and failing that, if he lay you low (as I pray he may not), it is but half the misfortune to be slain by a noble foe; and for us that are servants it is meet that we fight with servants like ourselves, yea, and with that horse; fear not his tricks; for I promise you that never again shall he do battle with any man.”
112. Thus he spoke; and immediately the mellay of the hosts began by land and sea. The Ionian shipmen showed surpassing excellence that day, and overcame the Phoenicians; among them, the Samians were most valorous; and on land, when the armies met, they charged and fought. With the two generals it fared as I shall show. Artybius rode at Onesilus; Onesilus, as he had agreed with his esquire, dealt Artybius a blow as he bore down upon him; and when the horse smote his hoofs on Onesilus’ shield, the Carian shore away the horse’s legs with a stroke of his falchion.
113. Thus and there fell Artybius the Persian general, with his horse. While the rest yet fought, Stesenor despot of Curium (which is said to be an Argive settlement) played the traitor, with his great company of men; and at the treachery of the Curians the war-chariots of the Salaminians did likewise. Thus it was brought about, that the Persians gained the upper hand over the Cyprians. So the army was routed, and many were there slain; among whom was Onesilus, son of Chersis, who had wrought the Cyprian revolt, and the king of the Solians, Aristocyprus son of Philocyprus—that Philocyprus whom Solon of Athens, when he came to Cyprus, extolled in a poem above all other despots.
114. As for Onesilus, then, the Amathusians cut off his head and brought it to Amathus, where they set it aloft above their gates, because he had besieged their city; and the head being there set aloft, when it was hollow a swarm of bees entered it and filled it with their cells. On this an oracle was given to the Amathusians (for they had enquired concerning the matter) that they should take the head down and bury it, and offer yearly sacrifice to Onesilus as to a hero; so doing (said the oracle) they should fare the better.
115. This the Amathusians did, and have done to this day. But when the Ionians of the sea-fight off Cyprus learnt that Onesilus’ cause was lost, and that all the cities of Cyprus were beleaguered save only Salamis, which the Salaminians had delivered up to their former king Gorgus, straightway at this news they made sail away to Ionia. Of the Cyprian cities that which longest stood a siege was Soli; the Persians took it in the fifth month by digging a mine under its walls.
116. So the Cyprians, having won freedom for a year, were enslaved once more. Daurises and Hymaees and Otanes, all of them Persian generals and married to daughters of Darius, pursued after those Ionians who had marched to Sardis and drove them to their ships; after which victory they divided the cities among themselves and sacked them.
117. Daurises made for the cities of the Hellespont and took Dardanus, Abydus, Percote, Lampsacus, and Paesus, each of these on its own day; and as he marched from Paesus against Parium, news came to him that the Carians had made common cause with the Ionians and revolted from the Persians; wherefore he turned aside from the Hellespont and marched his army to Caria.
118. It chanced that news of this was brought to the Carians before Daurises’ coming; and when the Carians heard, they mustered at the place called the White Pillars, by the river Marsyas which flows from the region of Idria and issues into the Maeander. There they mustered, and many plans were laid before them, the best of which, in my judgment, was that of Pixodarus of Cindya, son of Mausolus (he had to wife the daughter of Syennesis, king of Cilicia); the purport of Pixodarus’ opinion was, that the Carians should cross the Maeander and fight with the river at their back, that so being unable to flee and compelled to stand their ground they might prove themselves even braver than nature made them. Yet not this, but another opinion prevailed, to wit, that the Persians and not the Cilicians should have the Maeander at their back, the intent being that if the Persians were worsted in the battle and put to flight they should not escape but be hurled into the river.
119. Presently, when the Persians had come and had crossed the Maeander, they and the Carians joined battle by the river Marsyas; the Carians fought obstinately and long, but at the last they were overcome by odds. Of the Persians there fell as many as two thousand men, and of the Carians ten thousand. Those of them that escaped thence were driven into the precinct of Zeus of Armies at Labraunda, a great and a holy grove of plane-trees. (The Carians are the only people known to us who offer sacrifices to Zeus by this name.) Being driven thither, they took counsel how best to save themselves, whether it were better for them to surrender themselves to the Persians or depart wholly away from Asia.
120. But while they took counsel, the Milesians and their allies came up to their aid; whereupon the Carians put aside their former plans, and prepared to wage a new war over again. They met the Persian attack and suffered a heavier defeat in the battle than the first; many of their whole army fell, but the Milesians were hardest stricken.
121. Yet the Carians rallied and fought again after this disaster; for learning that the Persians had set forth to march against their cities, they beset the road with an ambush at Pedasus, whereinto the Persians fell by night and perished, they and their generals, Daurises and Amorges and Sisimaces; and with these fell also Myrsus, son of Gyges. The captain of this ambuscade was Heraclides of Mylasas, son of Ibanollis.
122. Thus did these Persians perish. Hymaees, who had also been one of those who pursued after the Ionians who marched on Sardis, turned now towards the Propontis, and there took Cius in Mysia; having subdued which, when he heard that Daurises had left the Hellespont and was marching towards Caria, he left the Propontis and led his army to the Hellespont, and made himself master of ail the Aeolians that dwell in the territory of Ilium, and of the Gergithae, who are all the remnant that is left of the ancient Teucri; but while he was conquering these nations, Hymaees himself died of a sickness in the Troad.
123. So he died there; and Artaphrenes, viceroy of Sardis, and Otanes, the third general, were appointed to lead the army against Ionia and the Aeolian territory on its borders. They took Clazomenae in Ionia, and in Aeolia Cyme.
124. Aristagoras the Milesian was a man of no high courage, as he plainly showed; for after he had troubled Ionia and thrown all into dire confusion, when he saw what he had done he began to bethink himself of flight; and moreover it seemed to him to be impossible to overcome Darius; wherefore, while the cities were being taken, he called his fellow-rebels together and took counsel with them, saying that it was best for them to have some place of refuge provided, if they should be thrust out of Miletus; and questioning whether he should lead them thence to a settlement in Sardo, or Myrcinus in Edonia, which Histiaeus had received as a gift from Darius and fortified. Thus questioned Aristagoras.
125. Hecataeus the historian, son of Hegesander, inclined to the opinion that they should set forth to neither of these places, but that Aristagoras should build him a fortress in the island of Leros and there abide, if he were driven from Miletus; and afterwards he might set out from thence and return to Miletus.
126. Such was the counsel of Hecataeus, but Aristagoras himself deemed it best to take his departure for Myrcinus. So he entrusted Miletus to Pythagoras, a citizen of repute, and himself sailed to Thrace with any that would follow him, and took possession of the place whither he had set out; and issuing from thence he was put to the sword by the Thracians, he and his army, while he beleaguered a town, even though the Thracians were ready to depart from it under treaty.