The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

It was, no doubt, owing to the resistance of Thasos that the plan miscarried. While he was besieging the place, news arrived that the Phœnician fleet was moving northward. This being so, it was quite certain that the Æolians in his force would insist on an attempt being made to rescue the Lesbians, if not Lesbos. So to Lesbos Histiæus went.

H. vi. 28.

He arrived there only to find that the food supplies of the island, exhausted probably by the influx of refugees, were insufficient to support his army. So he crossed over with it to the mainland, making Atarneus his base, and intending to operate from it and seize the harvest-produce of its neighbourhood, and of the valley of the Kaïkos river.

Here he was attacked by a large Persian army under Harpagos. A large part of his force was destroyed, and Histiæus himself was captured.

H. vi. 29.

“In the battle between the Greeks and Persians at Malene in the country at Atarneus, the Greeks resisted for a long time, but the cavalry being afterwards launched against them fell upon the Greeks. From that moment the attack became simply a cavalry affair. On the Greeks being put to flight, Histiæus, hoping that he would not perish at the hands of the king owing to his present transgression, conceived such a desire for life, that when in his flight he was overtaken by a Persian, and being overtaken was about to be stabbed to death by him, using the Persian language, he declared himself to be Histiæus the Milesian. If he had, when he was captured, been taken forthwith to King Darius, my belief is that he would have suffered no harm, but that the king would have freely forgiven him.”

But so it was not to be. The great Persian officials had no intention of giving their old enemy a chance of his life. When Harpagos brought him to Sardes, Artaphernes had him executed and sent his head up to Susa. HISTIÆUS. Greek tradition represented Darius to have treated the poor remains with honour, as being those of a man who had been a great benefactor to the Persians and their king.

Histiæus has come down in story as the arch-villain of his time. He was the most contemptible member of a hated class, as the men thought who created the story of his life, and as Herodotus, who implicitly copied the picture which they drew of him, thought also.

He cannot be accounted fortunate in his biographer. The shadows of the picture are so deep that the true lineaments of the man cannot now be clearly discerned. But he who tries to play a double part, and fails in the attempt, as Histiæus did, is not likely to occupy an honourable place in history. He seems to have been of great and selfish ambition, without the capacity to form a judgment as to the means requisite to carry it out, and without any scruple as to the means he did adopt. He figures consequently as a scheming but somewhat futile villain. He had made up his mind that his main endeavour must be to win the confidence of Darius, and that, if he won this, he could afford to ignore the great officials. He forgot how far a cry it was from Susa to Sardes. He wished at all costs to rule the Asiatic Greek—independent of Persia, if he could; under Persia, if he could not; but not under any satrap at Sardes or elsewhere. His plan, well conceived, but prematurely executed, of gaining a point d’appui in Thrace, gave away the whole design at its very inception. There followed years of exile at Susa. He returned to the coast to find the revolt undecided. He had, or thought he had, two alternative cards to play: either to help in the suppression of the revolt, and to make Darius believe that he had been mainly instrumental in its suppression, or to take the lead in the rising. But Artaphernes forced his hand, and he had no alternative but to play his second card. It might have been effective, had he been allowed to bide his time; but the premature display of it spoiled his whole game,—in fact, the Greeks would have none of him.

And in the last scene of all, at Chios, Thasos, and Lesbos, his curse is still upon him. He again miscalculated the means necessary to effect his design in the limited time within which it could possibly be successful. His cleverness was greater than his ability. He possessed the finesse of a schemer, but lacked the practical reason of the man of action.