BOOK THE SECOND CHAPTER I. HISTORY OF GREECE, continued-Origin and cause of the WAR WITH 1ERSIA -Commencement of hostilities-Battle of Marathon-Miltiades -Ansudes -Themistocles-Invasion of Greece by Xerxes-Banishment of AristidesThermopyla-Salamis-Platea and Mycale-Disunion of the Greeks-Cimon -Pericles-Decline of the patriotic spirit. HAVING in the last chapter given a short retrospective view of the origin of the Persian monarchy, and the outlines of its history down to the period of the war with Greece-together with a brief account of the government, manners, laws, and religion of the ancient Persians; we now proceed to carry on the detail of the Grecian history, by shortly tracing the progress and issue of that important war, which may be said to have owed its origin to the ambition of Darius the son of Hystaspes, heightened by the passion of revenge. The Ionians, a people of the lesser Asia, originally a Greek colony, had, with the other colonies of Æolia and Caria, been subdued by Croesus, and annexed to his dominions of Lydia. On the conquest of Lydia by Cyrus, these provinces of course became a part of the great empire of Persia. They were impatient, however, of this state of subjection, and eagerly sought to regain their former freedom. For this purpose, they sought the aid of their ancient countrymen of Greece, applying first to Lacedæmon, then considered as the predominant power; but, being unsuccessful in that quarter, they made the same demand, with better success, on Athens and the islands of the Egean Sea. Athens and the islands equipped and furnished the Ionians with twenty-five ships of war, which immediately began hostilities on every city on the Asian coast that acknowledged the government of Persia. We remarked in a former chapter,* that after the expulsion of the Pisistratidæ from Athens, Hippias, the last of * Book i. chap. x. in fine. that family, betook himself to the Lacedæmonians, who, pleased with the opportunity of harassing their rival state, had ineffectually endeavored to form a league with the other nations of Greece for replacing Hippias on the throne of Athens. As this project soon became abortive, Hippias had betaken himself for aid to Artaphernes, the Persian governor of Lydia, then resident at Sardis, its capital city. This satrap eagerly embraced a scheme which coincided with the views of his master Darius, who, enraged at the revolt of the Ionians, and the aid they had found from Athens and the Greek islands, meditated nothing less than the conquest of all Greece. The Ionians, with their Athenian allies, ravaged and burnt the city of Sardis, destroying the magnificent temple of Cybele, the tutelary goddess of the country; but the Persians defeated them with great slaughter, and compelled the Athenians hastily to re-embark their troops at Ephesus, glad to make the best of their way to Greece. This insult, however, sunk deep into the mind of Darius, and from that moment he vowed the destruction of Greece. That his resolution might suffer no delay or abatement, he caused a crier to proclaim every day when he sat down to table, "Great sovereign, remember the Athenians." Previously to the commencement of his expedition, he sent, according to a national custom, two heralds into the country which he intended to invade, who, in their master's name, demanded earth and water, the usual symbols of subjection. The insolence of this requisition provoked the Athenians and Spartans into a violation of the law of civilized nations. They granted the request of the ambassadors by throwing one of them into a ditch, and the other into a well.* But Many others, however, of the cities of Greece, and all the islands, intimidated by the great armament of Darius, to which they had nothing effectual to oppose, sent the tokens of submission. the Persian fleet of three hundred ships, commanded by Mardonius, being wrecked in doubling the promontory of Mount Athos, (a peninsula which juts out into the gean from the southern coast of Macedonia,) this disaster gave spirits to the inhabitants of the islands, who now returned to their allegiance to the mother country, and cheerfully exerted all their powers in a vigorous opposition to the common enemy. A new fleet of 600 sail was now equipped by Darius, which began hostilities by an attack on the isle of Naxos. Its principal city, with its temples, was burnt to the ground, and the inhabitants were sent in chains to Susa. Many of the other islands underwent the same fate; and an immense army was landed in Euboea, which, after plundering and laying waste the country, poured * Herodot. 1. vii. c. 133. down with impetuosity upon Attica. It was conducted by Datis, a Mede, who, under the guidance of the traitor Hippias, led them on towards Marathon, a sinall village near the coast, and within ten miles of the city of Athens. The Athenians, in this critical juncture, armed to a man. Even the slaves of the republic were enrolled, and cheerfully gave their services for the common defence of the country. A hasty demand of aid was made upon the confederate states, but the suddenness of the emergency left no time for effectually answering it. The Platæans sent a thousand men, the whole strength of their small city. The Spartans delayed to march, from an absurd superstition of beginning no enterprise till after the full moon. The Athenians, therefore, may be said to have stood alone to repel this torrent. The amount of their whole army was only 10,000 men; the army of the Persians consisted of 100,000 foot, and 10,000 horse-a vast inequality. The Athenians, with a very injudicious policy, had given the command of the army to ten chiefs, with equal authority. The mischiefs of this divided power were soon perceived. Happily, among these commanders was one man of superior powers of mind, to whose abilities and conduct all the rest by common consent paid a becoming deference. This was Miltiades. The Athenians for some time deliberated whether it was their best policy to shut themselves up in the city, and there sustain the attack of the Persians, or to take the field. The former measure could only have been thought of in regard of their great inferiority in numbers to the assailing foe. But there is scarcely an inequality of force that may not be compensated by resolution and intrepidity. By the counsel of Miltiades and Aristides, it was resolved to face the enemy in the field. Aristides, when it was his turn to command, yielded his authority to Miltiades; and the other chiefs, without scruple, followed his example. Miltiades drew up his little army at the foot of a hill, which covered both the flanks, and frustrated all attempts to surround him. They knew the alternative was victory or death, and that all depended on a vigorous effort to be made in one moment; for a lengthened conflict was sure destruction. The Greeks, therefore, laying aside all missile weapons, trusted every thing to the sword. At the word of command, instead of the usual discharge of javelins, they rushed at once upon the enemy with the most desperate impetuosity. The disorder of the Persians, from this furious and unexpected assault, was instantly perceived by Miltiades, and improved to their destruction by a charge made by both the wings of the Athenian army, in which with great judgment he had placed the best of his troops. The army of the Persians was broken in a moment: their immense numbers increased their confusion, and the whole were put to flight. A great carnage ensued. Six thousand three hundred were left dead on the field of Marathon; and among these the ignoble Hippias, whose criminal ambition would have sacrificed and enslaved his country. The Athenians, in this day of glory, lost only a hundred and ninety men. The Spartans came the day after the battle, to witness the triumph of their rival state. The event of this remarkable engagement dissipated the terror of the Persian name; and this first successful experiment of their strength was a favorable omen to the Greeks of the final issue of the contest. With presumptuous confidence, the Persians had brought marble from Asia to erect a triumphal monument on the subjugation of their enemies. The Athenians caused a statue of Nemesis, the Goddess of Vengeance, to be formed out of this marble, by the celebrated Phidias; and tablets to be erected, on which were recorded the names of the heroes who had fallen in the fight. Among the Arundelian marbles at Oxford is a Psephis ma, or decree, of the people of Athens, published on occasion of the battle of Marathon. The Athenians likewise caused a large painting to be executed by Panæus, the brother of Phidias, in which Miltiades was represented at the head of his fellow chiefs haranguing the army. This was the first emotion of Athenian gratitude to the man who had saved his country. But merit, the more it was eminent and illustrious, became the more formidable, or, to use a juster phrase, the more the object of envy and detraction to this fickle people. Miltiades, charged with the command of reducing some of the revolted islands, executed his commission with honor, with respect to most of them; but he was unsuccessful in an attack against the isle of Paros. He was dangerously wounded; the enterprise miscarried; and he returned to Athens. With the most shocking ingratitude he was capitally tried for treason, on an accusation brought against him by his political antagonist Xanthippus, of his having taken Persian gold to betray his country. Unable, from his wound, to appear in person, his cause was ably pleaded in the Ecclesia by his brother Tisagoras ; but all he could obtain was a commutation of the punishment of death into a fine of fifty talents, (about 9,4007. sterling,) a sum which being utterly unable to pay, he was thrown into prison, where he died of his wounds. The Persian monarch, meantime, had been only the more exas perated by his bad success; and he now prepared to invade Greece with all the power of Asia. It was the fortune of Athens, notwithstanding her ingratitude, still to nourish virtuous and patriotic citi Such was Aristides, who, at this important period, had the greatest influence in conducting the affairs of the republic; a man of singular abilities, whose extreme moderation, and a mind superior to all the allurements of selfish ambition, had deservedly fixed on him the epithet of THE JUST. zens. Themistocles, who, in many respects, was of a very opposite character from Aristides, was the jealous rival of his honors and reputation. Both of these eminent men sought the glory of their country; the one from a disinterested spirit of virtuous patriotism, the other from the ambitious desire of unrivalled eminence in that state which he labored successfully to aggrandize. Themistocles bent his whole attention, in this critical situation of his country, to ward off the storm which he saw threatened from Persia. Sensible that a powerful fleet was the first object of importance for the defence of a country every where open to invasion from the sea, he procured the profits of the silver mines belonging to the republic to be employed in equipping an armament of a hundred long galleys.* In this interval happened the death of Darius: he was succeeded by his son Xerxes, whom he had by Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus. The heir of his father's ambition, but not of his abilities, Xerxes adopted with impetuosity the project of the destruction of Greece, and armed an innumerable multitude - --as Herodotus says, above five millions of men-for that expedition; a calculation utterly incredible — but which serves at least to mark a number, though uncertain, yet altogether prodigious. The error of this estimate becomes palpable, when we attend to the number of ships by which this force was to be transported. These were twelve hundred ships of war, and three thousand transports. The impatience of Xerxes could not brook the delay that would have attended the transportation of this immense body of land forces in his fleet across the gean, which is a very dangerous navigation, or even by the narrower sea of the Hellespont. He ordered a bridge of boats to be constructed between Sestos and Abydos, a distance of seven furlongs (seven eighths of a mile.) This structure was no sooner completed, than it was demolished by a tempest. In revenge of this insult to his power, the directors of the work were beheaded, and the outrageous element itself was punished, by throwing into it a pair of iron fetters, and bestowing three hundred lashes upon the water. After this childish ceremony, a new bridge was built, consisting of a double range of vessels fixed by strong anchors, and joined to each other by immense cables. On this structure the main body of the army passed, in the space of seven days and nights. It was necessary that the fleet should attend the motions of the army; and to avoid a disaster similar to that which had happened to the armament under Mardonius, Xerxes ordered the promontory of Athos to be cut through, by a canal of sufficient breadth to allow two ships to sail abreast. This fact, though confidently asserted by Herodotus, Thucydides, and Diodorus, the first actually contemporary with the event, has yet so much the air of *The sagacious Themistocles did not disdain to avail himself of the superstitious spirit of his countrymen in aid of his wise precautions. The Delphic Oracle, consulted on the fate of the country, answered that the Greeks would owe their safety to wooden walls |