The time came when Darius of Persia did not need the bidding of a slave to make him "Remember the Athenians." He was taught a lesson on the battle-field of Marathon that made it impossible for him ever to forget the Athenian name. Having dismally failed in his expedition against the Scythians, he invaded Greece and failed as dismally. It is the story of this important event which we have next to tell.
And here it may be well to remark what terrible consequences to mankind the ambition of a single man may cause. The invasion of Greece, and all that came from it, can be traced in a direct line of events from the deeds of Histiæus, tyrant of Miletus, who first saved Darius from annihilation by the Scythians, then roused the Ionians to rebellion, and, finally, through the medium of Aristagoras, induced the Athenians to come to their aid and take part in the burning of Sardis. This roused Darius, who had dwelt at Susa for many years in peace, to a thirst for revenge on Athens, and gave rise to that series of invasions which ravaged Greece for many years, and whose fitting sequel was the invasion and conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great, a century and a half later.
And now, with this preliminary statement, we may proceed with our tale. No sooner had the Ionian revolt been brought to an end, and the Ionians punished for their daring, than the angry Oriental despot prepared to visit upon Athens the vengeance he had vowed. His preparations for this enterprise were great. His experience in Scythia had taught him that the Western barbarians—as he doubtless considered them—were not to be despised. For two years, in every part of his vast empire, the note of war was sounded, and men and munitions of war were actively gathered. On the coast of Asia Minor a great fleet, numbering six hundred armed triremes and many transports for men and horses, was prepared. The Ionian and Æolian Greeks largely manned this fleet, and were forced to aid their late foe in the effort to destroy their kinsmen beyond the archipelago of the Ægean Sea.
An Athenian traitor accompanied the Persians, and guided their leader in the advance against his native city. We have elsewhere spoken of Pisistratus, the tyrant of Athens, whose treason Solon had in vain endeavored to prevent. After his death, his sons Hipparchus and Hippias succeeded him in the tyranny. Hipparchus was killed in 514 B.C., and in 511 Hippias, who had shown himself a cruel despot, was banished from Athens. He repaired to the court of King Darius, where he dwelt many years. Now he came back, as guide and counsellor to the Persians, hoping, perhaps, to become again a despot of Athens; but only, as the fates decreed, to find a grave on the fatal field of Marathon.
The assault on Greece was a twofold one. The first was defeated by nature, the second by man. A land expedition, led by the Persian general Mardonius, crossed the Hellespont in the year 493 B.C., proposing to march to Athens along the coast, and with orders to bring all that were left alive of its inhabitants as captives to the great king. On marched the great host, nothing doubting that Greece would fall an easy prey to their arms. And as they marched along the land, the fleet followed them along the adjoining sea, until the stormy and perilous promontory of Mount Athos was reached.
No doubt the Greeks viewed with deep alarm this formidable progress. They had never yet directly measured arms with the Persians, and dreaded them more than, as was afterwards shown, they had reason to. But at Mount Athos the deities of the winds came to their aid. As the fleet was rounding that promontory, often fatal to mariners, a frightful hurricane swooped upon it, and destroyed three hundred of its ships, while no less than twenty thousand men became victims of the waves. Some of the crews reached the shores, but of these many died of cold, and others were slain and devoured by wild beasts, which roamed in numbers on that uninhabited point of land. The land army, too, lost heavily from the hurricane; and Mardonius, fearing to advance farther after this disaster, ingloriously made his way back to the Hellespont. So ended the first invasion of Greece.
Three years afterwards another was made. Darius, indeed, first sent heralds to Greece, demanding earth and water in token of submission to his will. To this demand some of the cities cowardly yielded; but Athens, Sparta, and others sent back the heralds with no more earth than clung to the soles of their shoes. And so, as Greece was not to be subdued through terror of his name, the great king prepared to make it feel his power and wrath, incited thereto by his hatred of Athens, which Hippias took care to keep alive. Another expedition was prepared, and put under the command of another general, Datis by name.
The army was now sent by a new route. Darius himself had led his army across the Bosphorus, where Constantinople now stands, and where Byzantium then stood. Mardonius conveyed his across the southern strait, the Hellespont. The third expedition was sent on shipboard directly across the sea, landing and capturing the islands of the Ægean as it advanced. Landing at length on the large island of Eubœa, near the coast of Attica, Datis stormed and captured the city of Eretria, burnt its temples, and dragged its people into captivity. Then, putting his army on shipboard again, he sailed across the narrow strait between Eubœa and Attica, and landed on Attic soil, in the ever-memorable Bay of Marathon.
It seemed now, truly, as if Darius was about to gain his wish and revenge himself on Athens. The plain of Marathon, where the great Persian army had landed and lay encamped, is but twenty-two miles from Athens by the nearest road,—scarcely a day's march. The plain is about six miles long, and from a mile and a half to three miles in width, extending back from the sea-shore to the rugged hills and mountains which rise to bind it in. A brook flows across it to the sea, and marshes occupy its ends. Such was the field on which one of the decisive battles of the world was about to be fought.
