The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

But in every other respect the new empire with which the Greeks had been brought into contact was not a mere aggregation of barbarism, but a highly organized piece of machinery, controlled by a people who, in certain sides of their civilization, compared not unfavourably with the Greeks themselves.

This great scheme of organization was in all probability not carried out in one piece, though the greater part of it must be attributed to the years which followed the completion of the re-conquest.

After securing the empire from disturbance from within, the next step was to secure it against disturbance from without; and it was in carrying out this policy that Darius came into conflict with the Greek in Europe.

THE GREEKS OF ASIA.

An examination of the map will show that the weakest part of the whole frontier, with the exception, perhaps, of that portion immediately east of the Caspian, lay along the shores of the Ægean and the Propontis. But whereas on the eastern frontier the races on either side of the boundary were probably alien and hostile to one another, on the western border the peoples on either side of the narrow seas were akin, and in close sympathy. The Thracian races of North-west Asia Minor were within sight of the lands of their free brethren in Europe; the Greek of the Ionian coast was within an easy and safe voyage of twenty-four hours of his mother country. Blood was thicker than water even towards the close of the sixth century before Christ; and the sympathy of kindred races so near at hand must have seemed to Darius and the Persians a standing menace to this extremity of the empire. The possibility of its taking an active form in case of a revolt was also an obvious danger.

Had the Greeks of Asia been different from what they were, had, indeed, they not been Greeks, it is possible that Darius would not have considered it necessary to take action.

The character of this branch of the Hellenic race at this period of its history is difficult to realize. The extant evidence on the question, with the exception of a few fragments of the writings of historians most of whose works have perished, is demonstrably hostile to the Ionian Greek, and not merely that, but demonstrably unfair. Herodotus, as will be shown in dealing with his account of the Ionian revolt, is largely responsible for the mistaken impression of the nature of this people which has been handed down to after-time. His whole view of the Ionian Greek was coloured by the belief that he was originally responsible for all the trouble which fell upon European Hellas in the years succeeding the revolt; that he imperilled the very existence of that Hellenic liberty which was destined to produce the greatness of that after-time under whose influence he wrote. He looked upon the revolt as having been from beginning to end a colossal mistake. Begun in culpable ignorance, it was carried out with contemptible pusillanimity,—so he thought. Its authors were a people of whom the Hellenic race was ashamed. Even their nearest relations among the Greeks were loth to claim relationship with them.

Apart from the facts which Herodotus himself gives tending to an opposite conclusion, the previous history of this branch of the Greek race, and especially of the Ionian section of it, tends in every way to deductions which are irreconcilable with the views of the historian. These Ionians were the descendants of men who had been conspicuous for ages as the boldest navigators of their time; who had planted colonies in almost every part of the Mediterranean, making voyages to lands previously unknown to the Greek, undeterred by the partly fabulous, partly real, perils of such enterprises. The Ionian Greek had been accustomed for centuries to take his life in his hands, facing all the manifold dangers incident to early navigation, to intercourse with barbarous tribes and life among them. And though by the end of the sixth century custom and experience must have diminished the perils attached to such adventurous existence, yet even then the Ionian had only one rival, the Phœnician, in the boldness of his seamanship. The dangerous trade route with Egypt across the expanse of the Levant was in his hands; the corn trade with the stormy Euxine was still for the most part under his control.

Such a mode of life, in which a large portion of the population of the Asiatic Greek towns must have shared, was not calculated to produce a people lacking in courage or, indeed, in perseverance. It is true that by the time that Darius’ organization of the empire had been brought to something like completion, the race had been for more than half a century under a foreign yoke. Judged by the standard of those days, the yoke had been a light one; it could hardly have been accounted heavy at any period of history. It might easily have been much heavier. It would have been to the advantage of the conqueror to have made it so, had the subject cities displayed the temper of passive submission.

THE ASIATIC GREEKS.