CHAPTER VIII
THE BEGINNING OF THE PERSIAN WARS[1]
I. DARIUS AND THE IONIAN REVOLT
The rule of the Lydian Kings over the Ionian cities in Asia Minor had not been a hard one, but that of the Persians was different, for they established tyrants in all the Greek cities, and required the assistance of their soldiers and sailors in their wars, things which were very bitter to the freedom-loving Greeks.
When Darius had become King, he determined, like the Great Kings before him, to add yet more lands to his empire, and so made ready an army which was to invade Scythia, the region north of the Black Sea. As the Persians themselves were not naturally sailors, the Greeks in the Ionian cities were forced to send a large number of ships to the help of this expedition.
Darius and his army set out, and, arriving at the River Ister (now known as the Danube), were joined by the Ionian ships. Here Darius commanded that a bridge of boats should be built, and then taking a cord in which he tied sixty knots, he called the Ionian leaders together and said to them:
Men of Ionia, do ye now keep this rope and do as I shall say:—So soon as ye shall have seen me go forward against the Scythians, from that time begin, and untie a knot on each day: and if within this time I am not here, and ye find that the days marked by the knots have passed by, then sail away to your own lands. Till then, guard the floating bridge, showing all diligence to keep it safe and to guard it. And thus acting, ye will do for me a very acceptable service.
Having said this Darius hastened forward on his march.
Scythia was a land totally unknown to the Persians, and strange tales were told in after years of the adventures of the King and his army. The Scythians were a nomad people, and they believed themselves to be invincible. When they heard that Darius was in their land with the intention of conquering it, they "planned not to fight a pitched battle openly, but to retire before the Persians and to drive away their cattle from before them, choking up with earth the wells and the springs of water by which they passed and destroying the grass from off the ground." For some time Darius pursued this mysterious people, but he could never come up with them.
Now as this went on for a long time and did not cease, Darius sent a horseman to the King of the Scythians and said as follows: "Thou most wondrous man, why dost thou fly for ever, when thou mightest do of these two things one?—if thou thinkest thyself able to make opposition to my power, stand thou still and cease from wandering abroad, and fight; but if thou dost acknowledge thyself too weak, cease then in that case also from thy course, and come to speech with thy master, bringing to him gifts of earth and of water." To this the King of the Scythians made reply: "My case, O Persian, stands thus: Never yet did I fly because I was afraid, either before this time from any other man, or now from thee; nor have I done anything different now from that which I was wont to do also in time of peace: and as to the cause why I do not fight with thee at once, this also I will declare unto thee. We have neither cities nor land sown with crops, about which we should fear lest they be captured or laid waste, and so join battle more speedily with you; but know this that we have sepulchres in which our fathers are buried; therefore come now, find out these and attempt to destroy them, and ye shall know then whether we shall fight with you for the sepulchres or whether we shall not fight. Before that, however, we shall not join battle with thee. About fighting let so much as has been said suffice; but as to masters, I acknowledge none over me but Zeus my ancestor and Hestia the Queen of the Scythians. To thee then in place of gifts of earth and water I shall send such things as it is fitting that thou shouldest receive; and in return for thy saying that thou art my master, for that I say, woe betide thee."
The King of Scythia sent gifts to Darius as he had promised, strange and mysterious gifts. He sent him a bird, a mouse, a frog and five arrows. At first the Persian could not imagine what these gifts might mean, but one of his wise men interpreted them as meaning that "unless ye become birds and fly up to the heaven, or become mice and sink down under the earth, or become frogs and leap into the lakes, ye shall not return back home, but shall be smitten by these arrows."
The Scythians continued to lead the Persians from place to place in this strange campaign, until at last they brought them back again to the Ister where the Ionians were guarding the bridge of boats. The Scythians arrived first, and they tried to persuade the Ionians to break up the bridge, so that Darius would find no means of escape and would then fall into their hands. Some of the Greeks were in favour of doing this, but the Tyrant of Miletus, who wanted to keep on good terms with Darius, advised against such treachery and his word prevailed. In order to get the Scythians away, they pretended, by moving a few of the boats,, that they were going to destroy the bridge, but when Darius came, after a moment's fear that he had been deserted, he found the bridge still there, and he crossed safely and returned to his own land.
When Darius learned that it was owing to the advice of the Tyrant of Miletus that the bridge had been saved, he sent for him and praised him highly for what he had done, telling him he knew him to be a man of understanding and well-disposed towards him, and that in consequence he wished him to go with him to Susa, to eat at his table and to be his counsellor. Darius did this because in reality he distrusted him and preferred that he should be near him in Susa, where his movements could be watched.
In the meanwhile a kinsman of this Tyrant had been left in his place at Miletus, and when a rebellion broke out in Naxos, he undertook to put it down, hoping that this would bring him favour from the King. Unfortunately for him, he was unsuccessful, and as he very much feared the wrath of the King, he decided that as he could not put down the rebellion, he would himself join it. The Greeks in Miletus were more than willing to revolt from the Persian yoke and they were joined by other Ionian cities. But they did not feel strong enough to stand alone against Persia, so they sent ambassadors to Greece asking for help from their kinsmen there. Sparta was asked first. The ambassador appealed to the King and told him that the Ionians felt it was a disgrace not only to themselves but also to the Spartans, who were looked upon as the leaders of all men of Greek birth, that they should be slaves instead of freemen. "Now therefore," he said, "I entreat you by the gods of Hellas to rescue from slavery the Ionians who are your own kinsmen." He then went on to describe the Persians whom he might conquer, the wealth of their land and all the benefits that would come to him if he would help the Ionians to become free. The King told him he would think it over and give him an answer on a day following. When the day came, the King asked the ambassador from Miletus how many days' journey it was from the sea of the Ionians to the residence of the King. Now it must be remembered that no part of Greece was far from the coast, and that no Greek, not even a Spartan who was a soldier rather than a sailor, was happy if he felt out of reach of the sea. So the feelings of the Spartan King can be understood, when he was told that to reach the city of the King of Persia was a journey of three months from the sea. His mind was quickly made up. "Guest-friend from Miletus," he said, "get thee away from Sparta before the sun has set; for thou speakest a word which sounds not well in the ears of the Lacedaemonians, desiring to take them a journey of three months away from the sea."
The ambassador then went to Athens, where he was more successful. The Athenians sent twenty ships to help the Ionians, and the Eretrians, out of gratitude for help once received from Miletus when they were in need, added five. With this assistance, the Greeks marched to Sardis and seized it. But a house accidentally caught fire, and the fire began to spread over the whole town. This gave the Persians time to rally from the surprise of the attack and they drove out the Greeks, who scattered in dismay. Some were overtaken and slain, and the rest retreated to their ships.
Darius was in Susa at this time, and the news of the burning of Sardis was taken to him there. He did not take much account of the Ionians who had taken part,
because he knew that they at all events would not escape unpunished for their revolt, but he enquired who the Athenians were; and when he had been informed, he asked for his bow, and having received it and placed an arrow upon the string, he discharged it upwards towards heaven, and as he shot into the air he said: "Zeus, that it may be granted me to take vengeance upon the Athenians!" Having so said he charged one of his attendants, that when dinner was set before the King he should say always three times: "Master, remember the Athenians."
Darius remembered the Athenians, but he had first to punish the Ionian cities for their share in the revolt. One by one he attacked them, and they fell before him, until at last only Miletus was left. Her only hope of safety lay in her sea-defences, and all the ships the Ionians could collect were gathered at Lade, an island just outside the harbour of Miletus. Now the Ionians had copied many of the customs of their Lydian neighbours, and they were more luxurious and led softer lives than their kinsmen on the mainland. Efforts were made by one of the Greek leaders to make the Ionians drill and exercise themselves every day, that they might all be in good condition when the day of battle should come. For a time they submitted, but they were lazy and unaccustomed to such toil, and the hard work and exercise so exhausted them, that they declared they would prefer slavery to such hard work as was being forced upon them. So they refused to drill any more, and "they pitched their tents in the island like an army, and kept in the shade, and would not go on board their ships or practise any exercises."
There could only be one result to this. The Persians gave battle and the Ionians were defeated, some of them even disgraced themselves by sailing away without fighting at all. The men of Chios refused to play the coward and fought to the end, but there were too few of them to turn the tide of battle and the Persians overcame them completely. Miletus was taken by storm, the city was destroyed by fire, the men were all put to death, and the women and children sent as slaves to Susa.
The news of the fall of Miletus was a terrible blow to the Greek world. Up to that time she had been the greatest of the Greek cities. She was rich, not only in material wealth, but in all that concerned the intellectual life, and now she had fallen! It was, above all, a blow to the Athenians, for Athens and Miletus were closely bound by ties of kinship, and when an Athenian dramatist
composed a drama called the "Capture of Miletus," and put it on the stage, the body of spectators fell to weeping, and the Athenians moreover fined the poet heavily on the ground that he had reminded them of their own calamities; and they ordered also that no one in future should represent this drama.
Thus it came about that again the Ionians became the subjects of the Persian King. They had been punished to the utmost for daring to revolt from his power, and there was no fear that they would do it again. Darius was now free to remember the Athenians.
In 492 B.C. Darius sent Mardonius, a general who was high in his favour, across the Hellespont with orders to march through Thrace and Macedonia, and having firmly secured their allegiance, to march on to Greece, where Athens and Eretria were to be severely punished for their share in the burning of Sardis. Darius had several reasons for this expedition: the punishment of Athens and Eretria was the one about which most was said, but as it never entered his mind that he could be defeated, Darius probably intended so to destroy the cities on the mainland that the Greeks in Ionia would see that it would be useless to rely on the help of their kinsmen should they ever think of another revolt, and so to punish the European Greeks that they would never dare to interfere again in the affairs of the Persian Empire. But underneath all these reasons were dreams of conquest. The Great King had visions of subduing the whole of Greece and of extending his empire into Europe.
Preparations were made and Mardonius set out. A fleet was to sail close to the coast and to keep in constant touch with the army. All went well until Mount Athos was reached and here a great storm arose.
The north wind handled them very roughly, casting away very many of their ships. It is said that the number of ships destroyed was three hundred, and more than twenty thousand men; for as this sea which is about Athos is very full of sea monsters, some were seized by these and so perished, while others were dashed against the rocks; and some of them did not know how to swim and perished for that cause, others again by reason of cold.
The army fared little better, for it was attacked by some Thracian tribesmen, and though Mardonius forced them to submit to him, he suffered so much loss in the fighting, that as his fleet also had been almost entirely destroyed, he was obliged to depart back to Asia having gained no honour in this undertaking.
Two years went by, and then another expedition was planned. Before it started, Darius sent messengers to Athens and Sparta and other Greek states demanding of them earth and water, the symbols of submission to the Great King. Some states agreed to the demand, either because they were struck dumb with terror at the mere thought that the Great King might invade their land, or because they thought that he was certain to conquer and that by submitting at once they would secure themselves and their land from destruction. Athens and Sparta, however, refused uncompromisingly. The messengers were thrown by the Athenians into a pit, and by the Spartans into a well, and told that if they wanted earth and water they could get them for themselves. On hearing what had happened to his messengers, Darius gave orders to the generals to set out at once for Greece, and to punish every state which had refused submission by enslaving all the inhabitants and bringing them bound to Susa. In particular, Athens and Eretria, for their other misdeeds, were to receive the severest treatment. So the expedition started.
Remembering the disaster at Mount Athos, the fleet sailed this time across the Aegean, touching at Naxos, the first of the Ionian cities that had revolted, and which now received its punishment by being burnt and its people enslaved. Then the Persians went on to Delos, where they offered sacrifices to Apollo, and from there they sailed to Eretria which they immediately attacked. The city held out for six days and then traitors within the walls opened the gates to the Persians who entered and took the city. They burnt it to the ground and carried off all the inhabitants into slavery. And so Eretria was punished for her share in daring to burn a city of the Great King.
News of these movements of the Persians had, of course, reached Athens, but up to this time the Athenians had not considered them as having any dangerous consequences to themselves. But Eretria was not very far from Athens, and when the news of the utter destruction of this city arrived, the Athenians realized the full extent of their peril. Now Hippias, the exiled Tyrant, had taken refuge with the Persians, but he had never given up hope of one day returning to Athens. He was at this very time plotting with friends in the city, and the Persians, knowing this, hoped for their aid in taking Athens. So the Athenians were threatened with dangers both from within and without.
It is easy to imagine the dismay of the Athenians when they heard that Eretria had been destroyed, and that the Persians, the conquerors of the world, were even then on their way to Athens. How could they hope, with their small army, to stand against the great empire? Help must be had, and that quickly. To whom should they turn, if not to Sparta, the foremost military state in Greece, and which, should Athens fall, would be the next state attacked? Self-defence, if no other reason, would surely bring them with speed to Athens. So the Athenians sent Pheidippides, a swift runner, with a message imploring help. The distance from Athens to Sparta is a hundred and fifty miles, and the hours must have seemed very long to the Athenians as they waited for his return with the answer. But so swiftly did he run that he was back before they had dared expect him. How had he done it? For two days and nights he had raced "over the hills, under the dales, down pits and up peaks," and in less than forty-eight hours he had reached Sparta. He rushed into the midst of their Assembly with but scant ceremony, and passionately entreated them to come to the help of Athens.
But to this cry for help the Spartans gave but a cool answer. They would come, certainly, but must wait five days until the moon was full when it was their custom to sacrifice to Apollo, and to break this custom would be to slight the god. When the full moon had come, then they would send help to the Athenians. Pheidippides only waited long enough to receive the answer, and then with despair in his heart, he started back to Athens. Over the hills and the plains, through woods and across streams he raced, appealing in his heart to the gods to whom Athens had ever shown honour, yet who seemed to have deserted her in her utmost need. Was there no help? Suddenly he stopped; whom did he see, sitting in a cleft of a rock? It was Pan, the Goat-God.
"Stop, Pheidippides," he cried, and stop he did. Graciously and kindly did the god then speak to him, asking him why it was that Athens alone in Greece had built him no temple, yet he had always been and would forever be her friend. And now in her peril, he would come to her aid. He bade Pheidippides go home and tell Athens to take heart, for Pan was on her side.
If Pheidippides had run swiftly before, now he ran as if wings had been given to him. He hardly touched the earth but seemed to race through the air, and burst upon the waiting Athenians who had not dared expect him so soon, with the news that Sparta indeed had failed them, but that Pan, mighty to save, would fight for them!
But now grave news was brought: the Persians were landing in Attica. It was September of the year 490 B.C., and the hot summer days had not yet passed away. The Athenians could not wait for the Spartans, they must go out alone and meet the foe. They marched twenty-four miles in the heat over a rough and rugged road, until they reached the plain of Marathon. There they found the Persians.
Now the Persians had probably never intended to fight at Marathon. They hoped that the friends of Hippias in Athens would in the end betray the city to them, and their plan in landing where they did was to bring the Athenian army away from the city, and if possible to keep it away, until they should have received the expected signal from the traitors. The plain of Marathon is surrounded by hills except where it slopes down to the sea. The Athenians occupied the stronger and higher positions, the Persians were encamped near the sea, and their ships were anchored close to the coast. For several days the armies watched each other and waited. The Athenians counted the days until the moon should be full, when there was hope that the Spartans might come; the Persians knew that every added day gave the conspirators more time to do their treacherous work in the city. And so both sides waited.
Suddenly help came to the Athenians from an unexpected quarter, help which cheered and inspirited them. Through a cloud of dust on one of the roads leading down into the plain, they saw the gleam of spears and helmets. It could not be the Spartans, for they would not come from that direction. As the men drew nearer, they were found to be an army from Plataea, a little city in Boeotia, to which, when some years before Thebes had threatened her independence, Athens had sent succour. Now, though not thought of by the Athenians as an ally, because she was small and not powerful, she had remembered those who had befriended her in the hour of need, and had come down with all her fighting men to help Athens in her peril.
Miltiades was the Athenian general at Marathon. He knew why the Persians were waiting, and when messengers brought him word that they were embarking some of their men, knowing that this meant their intention to sail round to Athens, because the conspirators in the city were ready to act, he gave the signal to attack. There were probably two Persians to every Greek, so the Greek army had been arranged in the best way to face these odds. The centre line was thin, but the wings were very strong. On the first onslaught from the Persians this centre gave way, but the wings immediately wheeled round and attacked the Persians with such force that these gave way before them and fled down to the shore. The Greeks pursued, and there was terrific fighting and slaughter. Seven of the Persian ships were destroyed by fire, but the others escaped. The Persians fled to these remaining ships, leaving over six thousand dead on the plain and quantities of rich plunder. They set sail for Athens, and knowing that the Athenian army was still on the plain of Marathon, they hoped to find the city undefended and that the traitors would open the gates to them. But the Athenians who had won at Marathon were not going to let their city fall into the hands of the enemy, so when they saw the Persian ships setting sail, wearied as they were with the strain of battle, they marched over the twenty-four miles of rough road to the defence of their beloved city, leaving only a small force behind to guard the bodies of the slain and to prevent thieves from carrying off the plunder.
On his return from Sparta, Pheidippides had been asked what reward should be given him for the race he had run. All he asked was to be allowed to fight for Athens, and when the Persians had been driven away, then to wed the maid he loved and to dwell in his own home. It was given him as he asked. He fought in the fight at Marathon, but when the victory had been gained, one more race was asked of him. Over the rough road he ran to Athens to shout in the ears of the waiting Athenians: "Athens is saved!" But his heart could not contain such great joy, and having delivered his message, he died.
The Athenian army reached Athens before the enemy, and when in the moonlight the Persian ships sailed into the bay near Athens, there, ready to meet them, were the same men who had defeated them at Marathon earlier in the day. The Persians were not willing to meet them again so soon; they realized that they had indeed suffered grievous defeat, and commands were given for the broken army and crippled fleet to set sail for Asia.
The Spartans came as they had promised, but too late to take any part in the battle.
There came to Athens two thousand of them after the full moon, making great haste to be in time, so that they arrived in Athens on the third day after leaving Sparta: and though they had come too late for the battle, yet they desired to behold the Medes; and accordingly they went on to Marathon and looked at the bodies of the slain; and afterwards they departed home, commending the Athenians and the work which they had done.
But no part of the honour of Marathon belonged to Sparta.
The Athenians lost about two hundred men in the battle. They were buried where they had fallen, a great mound was erected over their graves, and their names were inscribed on tall pillars near by. Much rich plunder was left by the Persians on the plain, some of which was offered to Apollo as a thank-offering for the victory. The Athenians built a beautiful little temple, known as the Treasury of the Athenians, at Delphi, and Pan was not forgotten. A grotto on the side of the Acropolis was dedicated to him, where sacrifices were offered in memory of his help and encouragement when both had been sorely needed.
The Greeks who had fought at Marathon had many tales to tell of the battle, and many a wondrous deed was said to have been performed. It was thought that the gods themselves and the ancient heroes of Athens had taken part. Pan, they said, had struck such fear into the hearts of the Persians that they had fled in disorder and terror, a terror ever after known as a panic. Some even said that Theseus and other heroes had been seen, and for a long time the spirits of those who had been slain were thought to haunt the battlefield.
The battle of Marathon was one of the great events in history. For the first time the East and the West had met in conflict, and the West had prevailed. The Athenians were the "first of all the Hellenes who endured to face the Median garments and the men who wore them, whereas up to this time the very name of the Medes was to the Hellenes a terror to hear." Never before had a little state faced the world empire of the Persians and conquered. The Greek soldiers had shown themselves capable of facing the Persians, long looked upon as the conquerors of the world, and of prevailing against them. The civilization of the East had met with a check on the very threshold of Europe, and Athens had saved Greece. But the Great Kings of Persia were not accustomed to defeat; would they accept this, and was Greece and, through Greece, Europe, safe, or would the Persians come again?