The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

PERSIAN REINFORCEMENTS.

The Persian Empire appears in history as a great military power because it only appears in extant records when engaged in warfare with the Greek. But it was not a military monarchy in any real sense of the word. It did not, relatively to the size of the empire, keep a large standing army on foot. It met military necessities by the calling forth of levies, the gathering of which must have demanded time. The Persian king, like the Roman emperor of later days, did not entrust the governors of distant provinces with the disposal of large bodies of troops, unless circumstances rendered such a step absolutely necessary.

The reverse suffered by the Greeks at Ephesus cannot have been serious; but it had clearly demonstrated the fact that, on land, Artaphernes was able to hold his own against the insurrection, so long as it was confined to Ionia. At sea the circumstances were not so promising. The defeat off Pamphylia had placed the Phœnician fleet hors de combat for the time being, and it is not difficult to imagine that at least a year would have to pass before the cities of the Syrian coast could turn out a fleet sufficiently powerful to cope with that of the Ionian Greeks. This second fleet would be that one which was defeated off Cyprus in 497. But in the course of that year the whole balance of military power on land had been completely changed by the spread of the revolt to Hellespont and Caria. This would necessitate the despatch of reinforcements from Susa to the Western satrapies, reinforcements which would, doubtless, have reached Sardes by the latter part of the summer of 497, had not the state of affairs in Cyprus rendered it necessary to divert them, as well as the new Phœnician fleet, to the suppression of the revolt in that island. That was an affair of some months; and these reinforcements cannot have reached Sardes until early in the year 496.

There is, and there must be, a certain arbitrariness in any scheme for the rearrangement of the confused chronology of those years. All that can be urged in favour of the one here set forth is that it is of a piece with Herodotus’ own chronology of the opening year of the revolt, and is in accord with the facts, other than chronological, stated by him.[30]

The arrival of these troops at Sardes in the late winter or early spring of 496 made it possible for the Persian generals to devise a scheme for the simultaneous suppression of the revolt in Hellespont and Cana. The events of 498 had shown that the Ionians were not formidable on land unless the Persians were taken by surprise.

H. v. 116.

The three chief commanders were Daurises, Hymeës, and Otanes, the last of whom had been the successor of Megabazos, nigh ten years before, in the command in Thrace.

H. v. 117.

Daurises began operations in the district of the Hellespont, and took Dardanos, Abydos, Perkote, Lampsakos and Paisos. These places he is reported to have taken with incredible rapidity.[31] From these successes he was called away, so Herodotus says, by the revolt of Caria. Why Caria should have revolted at a time when the structure of revolt in the Hellespont was falling like a house of cards, and why, above all, the Common Council of the Ionians, after bringing about the revolt of both the Hellespont and Caria by means of its fleet, should have unhesitatingly despatched the fleet to Cyprus at a time when a large part of the one district had been resubjugated, and the other was on the point of being attacked, Herodotus does not explain. The chronological combination of events in these chapters is intended to heighten the impression of the hopelessness of the revolt which has been conveyed by the story of the disaster at Ephesus, and with that intent these events are brought into close juxtaposition with it. CAMPAIGN IN CARIA. When it is remembered that the defection of Thrace and Macedonia must have been closely linked with that of the Hellespontine region, it is impossible to suppose that the revolt in these parts was of so feeble a nature that it could be suppressed within what, if Herodotus’ second chronological series is to be accepted, cannot have amounted to more than a few weeks from its outbreak—so feeble, too, that a large number of the most prominent cities were captured with the utmost ease.

The campaign of Daurises in the Hellespont seems to have taken place in the spring of 496. It seems, moreover, to have been successful. The European shore was, indeed, left alone for the time being, but the revolt on the Asiatic side of the Hellespont must have been practically stamped out.