After the Ionians were subdued, Darius bent himself to revenge the destruction of Sardis upon the Athenians and Eretrians. In the year 492 Mardonius led an army against them through Macedonia, but it suffered such severe losses by land and sea, that he returned to winter in Asia, without having reached even the borders of Greece. The following year heralds were sent into Greece to demand of every city earth and water in token of submission. Many obeyed, but Lacedæmon and Athens refused, and cruelly threw the heralds at the one place into a pit, at the other into a well, bidding them take from thence earth and water. In 490 Darius sent a second armament under command of Datis and Artaphernes. They crossed the Ægean Sea, to avoid the tedious march through Macedonia, landed in Eubœa, reduced and enslaved the Eretrians, and thence under the guidance of Hippias sailed to Marathon, on the north-east coast of Attica.
Athens was fortunate in numbering among her citizens, at this critical period, men able, in the proud boast of Themistocles, to make a great city of a small one. In the time of Pisistratus, the Dolonci, a tribe of Thracians who lived in the Thracian Chersonese, being pressed in war by the Apsinthii, sent to the Delphic oracle to request advice. They were directed to invite him who should first admit them to his hospitality, to become the founder of a colony in their country. Departing, they passed through Phocis and Bœotia without being offered entertainment by any person; then entering Attica, they passed the house of Miltiades, son of Cypselus, an Athenian of the noblest extraction, being descended from the heroes Æacus and the Salaminian Ajax, whose son Philæus became an Athenian citizen, and founded the family of which we speak. Miltiades was sitting in his porch, and observing persons in a foreign dress pass by, bearing lances in their hands, a practice long disused by the Athenians, he called to them, and offered them refreshment and rest. Upon this they explained the object of their mission, and entreated him to comply with the god’s directions. Miltiades, discontented with the superiority assumed by Pisistratus, was well inclined to accede to their request. He went immediately to Delphi to obtain further directions from the oracle, and was determined by the answer he received to remove to the Chersonese, whither he conducted as many of his fellow-citizens as chose to follow him, and on his arrival was made tyrant of the Chersonese by the Thracians.[1]
Miltiades died childless, and was succeeded by his nephew Stesagoras, son of Cimon, who also died childless, being murdered after a short residence in the country; and on this Hippias and Hipparchus, who then bore rule in Athens, and whose policy was to encourage monarchical, or as the Greeks would have called it, tyrannical government in every country connected with Attica, sent out Miltiades, son of Cimon, and brother to the deceased, to assume his authority. Upon his arrival Miltiades confined himself to the house, as if to show respect for his brother’s memory; the chief men of the country collected from all the towns of the Chersonese to honour him by sharing in his mourning, and were thrown into prison. He married Hegesipyle, daughter of Olorus, king of Thrace, probably to strengthen himself by an alliance with that powerful neighbour, and took 500 mercenaries into pay. Thus, at Athens, in the Chersonese, and at Florence, that authority which originally was the free gift of the people, was changed in the second or third generation into an arbitrary government maintained by force; and hence all elective governments may draw a warning, not to suffer two members of the same family to be placed in succession at the head of the state, however great their merits.
Miltiades assumed the sovereignty b.c. 515. Darius invaded Scythia b.c. 507 or 508, and he, like many other Greeks, followed in that monarch’s train by compulsion. In revenge for that invasion, according to Herodotus, and perhaps in consequence of the anger expressed by them against the Ionians for not breaking the bridge over the Ister, the Scythians overran the Chersonese, and obliged Miltiades to fly; but he was recalled by his Thracian subjects, a circumstance creditable to his conduct as a ruler, however questionable the means by which he obtained his authority. Meanwhile, between the years 500 and 493, the Asiatic Greeks, supported by the islanders, had rebelled from Darius and had been subdued, and the Persian fleet, after reducing the islands Chios, Lesbos, and Tenedos, sailed for the Hellespont, and laid waste the Grecian cities on the European shore. Miltiades, whether he had been concerned in the revolt, or feared that the king might owe him no gratitude for having advised the destruction of the bridge over the Ister, waited no longer than till the Persian fleet reached Tenedos, and then filled five triremes with his effects, and returned to Athens. He was closely pursued, and one of the ships, on board of which his son had embarked, was taken: the youth was taken as a valuable prize to Darius, who treated him with great humanity and gave him an estate and wife. Miltiades and the others reached Athens, and found there a new danger. He was prosecuted for the very indefinite crime of “tyrannising in the Chersonese,” but obtained an acquittal, and rose into favour with the people, for he was elected one of the strategi, or board of generals. Aristides was among his colleagues.
When the Athenians heard that the Persians were come, they marched to Marathon; but before quitting the city they sent to Sparta a citizen named Phidippides, who was a running messenger by trade. And he on his return related that as he crossed the Parthenian mountain, which is above Tegea, the god Pan called to him by name, and bade him tell the Athenians, that in neglecting his worship they neglected a deity well disposed towards them, who had often done them service, and would again. After the victory the Athenians, believing this to be true, dedicated to Pan a temple in the Acropolis, and instituted yearly sacrifices in his honour.
The many marvellous stories related by Herodotus have thrown considerable discredit both upon his veracity and his judgment: of late his value has been very generally recognised. There can be no doubt but that in giving this relation he strictly discharged his duty as an historian. The fact of a temple being dedicated proves the tale to have been generally credited, and not of his making. It was his business not to pass it over in silence; and even if he had been sceptical, his object in writing was not to amend the national religion. We must suppose it therefore to have been devised either by Phidippides himself, or, which is more likely, by the Athenian leaders, to encourage the people to their unequal contest. Several similar stories of preternatural assistance promised and bestowed, are current in Spanish history. “Now it came to pass, that while King Don Ferrando lay before Coimbra there came a pilgrim from the land of Greece on pilgrimage to Santiago: his name was Estiano, and he was a bishop. And as he was praying in the church he heard certain of the townsmen and of the pilgrims saying that Santiago was wont to appear in battle like a knight, in aid of the Christians. And when he heard this it nothing pleased him, and he said unto them, ‘Friends, call him not a knight, but rather a fisherman.’ Upon this it pleased God that he should fall asleep, and in his sleep Santiago appeared to him with a good and cheerful countenance, holding in his hand a bunch of keys, and said unto him, ‘Thou thinkest it a fable that they should call me a knight, and sayest that I am not so: for this reason am I come unto thee, that thou mayest never more doubt my knighthood: for a knight of Jesus Christ I am, and a helper of the Christians against the Moors.’ While he was thus saying, a horse was brought him, the which was exceeding white, and the Apostle Santiago mounted upon it, being well clad in bright and fair armour, after the manner of a knight. And he said to Estiano, ‘I go to help King Don Ferrando, who has lain these seven months before Coimbra, and to-morrow, with these keys which thou seest, I will open the gates of the city unto him at the hour of tierce, and deliver it into his hand.’ Having said this, he departed. And the bishop, when he awoke in the morning, called together the clergy and people of Compostella, and told them what he had seen and heard. And as he said, even so did it come to pass; for tidings came on that day, and on the hour of tierce the gates of the city had been opened.”[2]
Patron saints soon succeeded to patron deities. It is said that the statue of Jupiter, which of old presided in the Capitol over the Roman world, is now doing duty as St. Peter in the metropolitan church of Rome. If this be true, it is a cutting satire on the facility with which the passions, the superstitions, and even the rites of Paganism were carried into Christianity by imperfect converts, and confirmed by a corrupted and avaricious priesthood.
While the Athenians were stationed near Marathon, the Platæans marched to their aid with the whole force of their state. The connexion of Platæa with Athens lasted so long, and was maintained with such consistency and good faith, no very common distinction in the politics of Greece, that it is worth while to trace its origin and progress. Platæa, a small state of Bœotia, was originally a member of a federal union formed by the independent cities of that province, over which Thebes, the largest and most powerful of them, presided. The Thebans, however, in every part of their history, seem to have been unsatisfied with influence, and to have endeavoured to exert direct authority over the weaker members of the confederacy. On some such occasion, Cleomenes, the king of Sparta, of whom we have already made mention, happened to be on the spot; and as Lacedæmon was then confessedly the first power of Greece, the Platæans naturally applied to him for assistance, and offered, as Herodotus expresses it, “to give themselves to the Lacedæmonians:” that is to say, to contract that close connexion with Sparta, and own that sort of allegiance to it, by which the weaker states of Greece generally connected themselves with some one of the principal powers. In later times this was generally determined by the interests of the predominant party in the smaller state. If the democratical party was uppermost, it probably connected itself with Athens; if the aristocratical, with Sparta. At the earlier period in question, however, the pre-eminence of Sparta was pretty generally acknowledged, and would, perhaps, have been sufficient to determine the Platæans to seek its protection rather than that of any other state, even independently of the accidental presence of Cleomenes. The Lacedæmonians, however, refused to admit them into the connexion which they wished for. “We live,” he said, “at a great distance from you, and ours would be but a cold sort of assistance, for you might be reduced to slavery over and over again before any of us even heard of it. We advise you, therefore, to give yourselves to the Athenians, who are your neighbours, and besides that are no bad helpmates.” The advice was not bad, and may appear not unfriendly. Herodotus, however, gives it a different construction, and one well warranted by the general course of Lacedæmonian policy. “This was the advice of the Lacedæmonians; not so much from any good will to the Platæans, as from the wish to bring the Athenians into trouble by placing them in collision with the Bœotians.” The Platæans, however, took the advice, whatever were the motives from which it proceeded. They sent an embassy to Athens at the time that the Athenians were celebrating one of their great public festivals, who took their seats as suppliants at the altar, and “gave” their state to the Athenians. The Thebans immediately marched against Platæa, and the Athenians to its relief. The Corinthians, however, interfered, and, by the consent of both parties, acted as arbitrators between them. In this capacity they traced a boundary between the conflicting states, and decreed that the Thebans were not to interfere with any people situated in Bœotia who did not choose to be members of the Bœotian confederacy. After delivering this just judgment the Corinthians went away, and the Athenians, whose work seemed to be done, marched homewards. On their march, however, the Bœotians set upon them, and were very rightly served in being defeated in the battle which ensued. The Athenians considered themselves entitled to profit by their victory, and established a boundary-line more favourable to Platæa than that decreed by the Corinthians. These transactions happened in the year 519 b.c., twenty-nine years before the period of which we are treating. The connexion which had thus begun by an important service rendered by Athens to Platæa, appears to have been strengthened by other acts of assistance; for Herodotus tells us that the Athenians had already undergone repeated toils for them. Whatever these had been, the Platæans nobly performed their part of the obligation. On the present occasion they marched to the aid of Athens with their whole force; we shall find them, in the next great war with Persia, serving, though an inland people, with their whole force on board the Athenian navy: and in all the contests which continually ravaged Greece, Platæa, as long as it continued a state, faithfully adhered to its ancient protector. At the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, the Athenians, unable effectually to protect so insulated a dependency, removed all its inhabitants, excepting a sufficient garrison, to Athens. The loyalty of the Platæans to their allegiance was their destruction. In the third year of the war the town was taken by the Lacedæmonians, those who remained in it put to death, the buildings, all except the temples, levelled with the ground, and its lands confiscated by the Theban state.
The Platæan force at Marathon is said to have been 1000 men; but there is no certain account of the armies. No writer rates the Persians at fewer than 100,000 men: the Greeks do not seem to have had more than 15,000[3] heavy-armed troops, and, according to the usual proportion, at least as many light-armed troops, principally slaves, in attendance on the heavy-armed citizens. Herodotus gives no calculation of the numbers on either side; some writers rate the Persian force very much above, the Athenian very much below those already mentioned; but according to every estimate the Persians had a very alarming superiority in number, and a no less formidable advantage in the general terror which the wide career of their conquests had produced, to such a degree, that, in the forcible expression of Plato, “the minds of all men were enslaved.” It is not, therefore, to be wondered that the ten generals were divided in opinion, and that while some, Miltiades was one of them, were for battle, others objected to it, on the ground that their force was too small. The decision finally rested with the polemarch, Callimachus,[4] and Miltiades succeeded in convincing him of the necessity of fighting, and of fighting at once.