Herodotus[24] evidently attributed it to the results of the battle of Ephesus, and this may be taken to indicate, at any rate, that the Athenians thought badly of the prospects of the revolt. BYZANTION AND CARIA JOIN THE REVOLT. Aristagoras sent message after message during the winter of 498–97, imploring them to return; but they refused to come back.
It seems certain that the Athenians greatly miscalculated the possibilities of the moment; yet it may be doubted whether the actual facts were not such as to justify their decision. Save for the assistance given by their own small contingent and by the five ships from Eretria, the Ionians had gone through the first season of the war single-handed. The revolt had merely excited opposition in Lydia; and its remarkable extension in the next year could hardly have been foreseen. Even the Greek cities of the coast were not unanimous in supporting it. Herodotus, himself a Dorian of Asia, is so significantly silent as to any part which the Dorian cities played in it, that it must be concluded that they played no part at all.
The winter of 498–97 was passed by the Ionians in preparation for the continuance of the struggle. The withdrawal of the Athenians was not a great loss to the actual fighting power of the insurgents. It seems, moreover, to have had but little moral effect upon them, and none whatever upon their relations and friends in Asia.
The Ionian fleet opened the year’s campaign by sailing to Byzantion, and bringing about the revolt of the whole region of the Propontis.[25] From the Propontis the fleet returned to Caria, which also joined the insurgents. The Carian district of Kaunos had apparently been invited to join at the time of the burning of Sardes, but had deferred doing so until the arrival of the fleet.
The action of the fleet, and the sudden spread of the revolt at this time, tend to throw light on certain obscurities in the history of the campaign of the previous year.
Inasmuch as the Ionian fleet must, in spite of Aristagoras’ refusal to recognize the fact, have formed the real base of the insurgent operations, it is inconceivable that the Persians should have omitted to bring up the Phœnician fleet to cope with it. This would be the first measure which would suggest itself to them. Yet at the beginning of the second campaigning season, at least a year and a half after the first act of revolt had placed the Ionian fleet in the power of the insurgents, that fleet is free to leave the Ægean coast undefended, and to go to the Propontis to stir the Hellespontine region into activity! Where was the Phœnician fleet meanwhile? The artifice of Aristagoras in bringing about the mobilization of the Ionian fleet had indeed given the Asiatic Greeks a long start in naval operations; but at least eighteen months had elapsed since he had shown his hand.
Had the revolt of Cyprus already taken place, and had the Phœnician fleet been obliged to make the reduction of that island its first objective? There are at least three reasons which render this assumption unlikely:—
H. v 104, ad init.
(1) Herodotus is certainly under the impression that the Cypriote revolt took place about the same time as that of Caria.[26]
(2) Cyprus was so important to the revolt that, had the Phœnician fleet been in a position to threaten it at this time, the Ionians could hardly have ventured on an expedition to the Hellespontine region.