Aristagoras hurried to Greece for aid, seeking it first at Sparta. Finding no help there, he went to Athens, which city lent him twenty ships,—a gift for which it was to pay dearly in later years. Hurrying back with this small reinforcement, he quickly organized an expedition to assail the Persians at the centre of their power.
Marching hastily to Sardis, the capital of Asia Minor, the revolted Ionians took and burned that city. But the Persians, gathering in numbers, defeated and drove them back to the coast, where the Athenians, weary of the enterprise, took to their ships and hastened home.
When word of this raid, and the burning of Sardis by the Athenians and Ionians, came to the ears of Darius at his far-off capital city, he asked in wonder, "The Athenians!—who are they?" The name of this distant and insignificant Greek city had not yet reached his kingly ears.
He was told who the Athenians were, and, calling for his bow, he shot an arrow high into the air, at the same time calling to the Greek deity, "Grant me, Zeus, to revenge myself on those Athenians."
And he bade one of his servants to repeat to him three times daily, when he sat down to his mid-day meal, "Master, remember the Athenians!"
The invaders had been easily repulsed from Sardis, but the revolt continued, and proved a serious and stubborn one, which it took the Persians years to overcome. The smaller cities were conquered one by one, but the Persians were four years in preparing for the siege of Miletus. Resistance here was fierce and bitter, but in the end the city fell. The Persians now took a savage revenge for the burning of Sardis, killing most of the men of this important city, dragging into captivity the women and children, and burning the temples to the ground. The other cities which still held out were quickly taken, and visited like Miletus, with the same fate of fire and bloodshed. It was now 495 B.C., more than twenty years after the invasion of Scythia.
As for Histiæus, he was at first blamed by Darius for the revolt. But as he earnestly declared his innocence, and asserted that he could soon bring it to an end, Darius permitted him to depart. Reaching Miletus, he applied at the gates for admission, saying that he had come to the city's aid. But Aristagoras was no longer there, and the Milesians had no use for their former tyrant. They refused him admission, and even wounded him when he tried to force his way in at night. He then went to Lesbos, obtained there some ships, occupied the city of Byzantium, and began a life of piracy, which he kept up till his death, pillaging the Ionian merchant ships as they passed into and out of the Euxine Sea. Thus ended the career of this treacherous and worthless despot, to whom Darius owed his escape from Scythia.