The Historians' History of the World 03

The Ionians continued the contest, drawing into their movement all the cities on the Hellespont and the Propontis, together with Chalcedonia and Byzantium, the Carians and the island of Cyprus. The Persians got together several armies; one, directed northward against the cities of the Hellespont, took several towns, then fell back towards the south against the Carians, who, after losing two battles, surrendered. Another attacked Cyprus with the Phœnician fleet that had been defeated by the Ionians, but the treachery of a Cypriote chief delivered the island over to the enemy. Acting jointly in the centre, Artaphernes and Otanes captured Clazomenæ and Cyme, and then advanced with a considerable force against Miletus, the last bulwark of Ionia. Here Aristagoras was no longer chief; he had basely deserted and escaped to Myrcinus, and was later killed in an attack on a Thracian city. As regards Histiæus, Darius, deceived by his promises, had recently restored him to liberty, but the Milesians, having no liking for tyrants, refused to receive him. Getting together a small force of Mytilenæans he became a pirate and was killed in a descent on the Asiatic coast. The Ionians assembled at the Panionium, deliberated as to the best means of saving Miletus. It was decided to risk a naval battle; Chios furnished a hundred ships, Lesbos seventy, Samos sixty, and Miletus itself eighty, the fleet numbering in all three hundred and fifty-three ships. The Persians had six hundred.

[494-492 B.C.]

In the Greek fleet was a very able man who would have saved Ionia had she been willing to be saved. This was Dionysius, a Phocæan, who demonstrated to the allies that strict discipline and constant practice in manœuvres would assure them success. For seven days he drilled the crews in all the movements of naval warfare, but at the end of this time the effeminate Ionians had had enough; they left the ships, pitched their tents on land, and forgot that the enemy existed. As was unavoidable after taking such a course, their moral fibre became relaxed and treachery began to show among them. When the day of battle arrived, the Samians, in the hottest of the action, deserted their post and made for their own island. The Ionians were defeated despite the splendid courage of the Chian sailors and of Dionysius, who himself took three of the enemy’s vessels. When he saw that the battle was lost he boldly pushed on to Tyre and sank several merchant ships, retiring to Sicily with the wealth obtained. The rest of his life was passed in pursuing on the open sea Phœnician, Carthaginian, and Tyrrhenian ships.

All hope was lost for Miletus; it was taken and its inhabitants transported to Ampe, at the mouth of the Tigris (494). Chios, Lesbos, Tenedos, shared Miletus’ fate, and several cities of the Hellespont were destroyed by fire. The inhabitants of Chalcedon and Byzantium abandoned these cities to seek a home on the northwest coast of the Pontus Euxinus, in Mesambria. Miltiades also deemed it prudent to leave the Chersonesus; he returned to Athens, where he was soon to find himself arrayed against those very Persians from whom he now sought flight. The news of Ionia’s downfall echoed sadly throughout Greece, Athens, in particular, being affected. Phrynichus presented a play entitled the Capture of Miletus

at which the entire audience burst into tears, and the poet was sentenced to pay a fine of a thousand drachmæ “for having revived the memory of a great domestic misfortune.” Tears like these expiate many faults.

Meanwhile Darius had not forgotten that after the burning of Sardis he had sworn to be revenged on the Athenians. He gave to his son-in-law, Mardonius, command over a newly raised army that was to enter Europe by way of Thrace while the fleet followed along the coast. Mardonius, to conciliate the Greeks in Asia, restored to them a democratic government, bearing in mind that the authors of the recent revolt had been two of the tyrants that Persia supported.

Megabazus had already subdued all the nations between the Hellespont and Macedonia. Mardonius crossed the Strymon and gave his fleet rendezvous in the Thermaic Gulf. He took Thasos and was passing along the coast of Chalcidice when on doubling the promontory of Mount Athos, which rises nineteen hundred and fifty metres out of the sea, his fleet encountered a terrific gale that wrecked three hundred ships and destroyed twenty thousand lives. About the same time Mardonius, attacked at night by the Thracians, lost many of his men and was himself wounded. He continued the expedition, but was so enfeebled after the subjugation of the Brygians that he felt himself obliged to return to Asia.