The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

But the rest of the account of the battle bears the impress of truth. Anti-Ionian or not, Herodotus cannot withhold his admiration from those who fought to the bitter end.

One detail may be inferred from its general incidents. The ease with which both the Samians and the other allies got away, and with which the Chians retreated after the fight, suggests that the Greek fleet at the beginning of the battle was north of the Persian.

Dionysius of Phokæa is the only hero of it whose name has come down in story. That old sea-dog, the very prototype of the seamen of the days of Elizabeth, had no mind to return to Phokæa and share the slavery of whatever small remnant of its inhabitants had either remained in their old home, or had returned thither from Corsica. With his three ships he had, in the course of the fight, taken three of the enemy’s vessels; and now he sailed off, not in any cowardly flight, but with the determination to “singe the King of Persia’s beard” by an unexpected raid into his home waters. To Phœnicia he went, and there fell in with certain merchant ships, which he disabled and plundered; and then, laden with spoil, set sail for Sicily, where he set up as a pirate at the expense of the Carthaginian and Tyrrhenian traders of those seas. Doubtless the Greek cities of Italy appreciated to the full so valuable an ally in trade competition, and from them Herodotus learnt the history of the last days of the fierce old adventurer. The world is poorer in that further details of his life have not survived. Would that some Sicilian writer had taken down his story from his own lips! It might have been one of the greatest tales of adventure in literature.

There must have been many another who fought a good fight for liberty. They had the misfortune to have their deeds recorded by men less brave than they. But even amid the intense partiality of the history of the time the truth shines forth that, owing to the courage which they displayed, the story of the revolt is one of the glorious pages in the history of the Hellenic race. The fault of those men who persevered to the bitter end was not lack of courage, but lack of the perception that nature had so placed them in the world that their struggle against the great empire was from its very outset a desperate, a hopeless venture. It is not possible to suppose that, without the energetic help of the European Greek, the revolt could have ended otherwise than as it did; it may even be doubted whether, even with help from beyond the Ægean, the struggle could have been maintained against the enormous resources of Persia, as yet unimpaired by the disasters of the great war of 480 and 479. Even after that war, the energy and strength of Athens could not maintain more than an uncertain hold on the cities of the continent.

But the revolt had saved Greece.

The great blow levelled against her must have fallen in the first decade of the fifth century; and, had it done so, it would have fallen upon a Greece but ill-prepared to meet it. The struggle would doubtless have been a fierce one, but it would have been waged on the part of the Greeks without the aid of that factor which was decisive in the great struggle of ten years later—the great Athenian fleet.

The revolt had severely taxed the resources of the Empire. It took Persia six years to suppress it, and in this time she lost two fleets and one great army with its generals, besides the losses incurred in successful operations. It resulted that, though she did make two efforts in the years immediately following the revolt to gain a footing beyond the Ægean, those efforts were not of a nature which, judged in the light of knowledge after the event, could have attained any measure of success. She was unable at this time to set on foot an expedition adequate to the greatness of the undertaking.

It is impossible, on the evidence, to say that the struggle was carried on with a unanimity of courage on the part of all the Ionian towns; but it is plain that this aspect of the history of the time has had undue weight in the judgment formed by Herodotus.

H. vi. 18.

The end was near. Miletus, the heart and soul of the revolt, was besieged by sea and land. The walls were undermined, and all sorts of siege engines were employed. FALL OF MILETUS. Finally, some time in the late summer or autumn of 494, the city fell. The fate of the population was a piteous one. The great majority of the male inhabitants were massacred. The women and children were enslaved, and carried captives to Susa. They and the remnant of the male population were placed in a settlement on the Persian Gulf, near the mouth of the river Tigris.