It is very difficult to assign a certain date to these events. One thing may, however, be confidently assumed, namely, that when Onesilos made his urgent representations to his brother, and, still more, when the revolt broke out, the Phœnician fleet was for the time being hors de combat. The absolutely indeterminate element in the matter is the length of time which intervened between the first urgent representation of Onesilos and the deposition of Gorgos. Certain facts stated in the subsequent story of the campaign render it probable that Onesilos’ representations were made after the battle off the Pamphylian coast, if not after the burning of Sardes, and that they must therefore be attributed to the autumn of 498; while the first step in revolt, the deposition of Gorgos, took place in the following winter, and the siege of Amathus began in the spring of 497.
The customs or necessities of campaigning in the fifth century rendered the winter the natural time for planning insurrection, and the summer the time for carrying it out.
This chronology of the prelude to the revolt in Cyprus is not merely in accord with calculations which may be made from Herodotus’ statements, but is also in agreement with his general assumption that the outbreak concurred with the similar outbreaks in the Hellespontine region and in Caria.
After mentioning the beginning of the siege of Amathus, Herodotus transfers the scene of his narrative to Susa, where he describes the reception by Darius of the news of the burning of Sardes by the Athenians and Ionians. The details of the story cannot be cited as serious history, but it contains the record of what are undeniably historical events. As is so often the case with famous stories, the historical matter has become involved in a mass of graphic detail which cannot be supposed to rest on anything but the slenderest foundation of fact.
There are two features of Herodotus’ version which, though not, it may be, historical, are of both interest and importance to the student of Herodotus’ history; they are (1) the prominence given to the Athenian participation in the opening campaign of the revolt; (2) an incidental reference to the Ionians.
DARIUS HEARS OF THE REVOLT.
H. v. 105.
“When the news was brought to King Darius that Sardes had been captured and burnt by the Athenians and Ionians, and that Aristagoras the Milesian had been leader of the coalition, so that he had devised those things, he is said in the first instance, on hearing this, to have recked nothing of the Ionians, knowing well that they would not come off unpunished for their revolt, but to have asked who the Athenians were; and afterwards, when he had been informed on this point, he is said to have asked for his bow, and to have taken an arrow, and, placing it in the bow, to have shot it towards heaven, exclaiming in so doing: ‘Zeus, grant that I be avenged on the Athenians.’ Having thus said, he ordered one of his attendants that whenever his dinner was laid before him, he should say three times, ‘Master, forget not the Athenians.’”
The tale then passes on to a reported conversation with Histiæus.
The historical fact underlying this story amounts in all probability to no more than that Darius was both exasperated and alarmed at this first instance of an active interference of the European Greeks in his West Asian dominions. It was, indeed, the realization of a trouble which he seems to have foreseen.