Histories — Book 6 (Erato)

Herodotus · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

Aristagoras, having stirred Ionia into revolt, thus came to the end of his life. Meanwhile Histiaeus, tyrant of Miletus, now released by Darius, reached Sardis. Once he arrived there from Susa, Artaphrenes, governor of Sardis, pressed him to explain why, in his judgment, the Ionians had risen in rebellion. Histiaeus claimed ignorance and voiced surprise at the whole affair, acting as if he knew nothing of what was currently happening. But Artaphrenes, perceiving

that he was being deceitful, said, since he knew the truth about the revolt, "This is how it stands with these matters, Histiaeus: you stitched this shoe, and Aristagoras put it on." Artaphrenes said this with reference to the revolt. Histiaeus, frightened because Artaphrenes understood, fled to the sea the following night, having deceived King Darius; for he had undertaken to subdue Sardinia, the largest

island, and win it for him, but instead he set about slipping into the leadership of the Ionians' war against Darius. He crossed over to Chios, and was put in chains by the Chians, who suspected him of plotting new mischief against them on Darius's behalf. But when the Chians learned the whole story, that he was in fact an enemy of the king, they released him. Then, when he was asked by the Ionians why he had so eagerly written

to Aristagoras urging him to revolt from the king, and had thereby brought about so great an evil upon the Ionians, he did not reveal to them the true reason, but told them instead that King Darius had planned to remove the Phoenicians and settle them in Ionia, and settle the Ionians in Phoenicia, and that it was for this reason he had sent the letter. King Darius had planned no such thing at all, but by saying this he terrified the Ionians. After this

Histiaeus, using as messenger Hermippus, a man of Atarneus, sent letters to those Persians at Sardis who had previously discussed with him the matter of revolt. But Hermippus did not deliver them to the men to whom he had been sent; instead he carried them and handed them over to Artaphrenes. Artaphrenes, learning the whole affair, ordered Hermippus to deliver the letters from Histiaeus to the very men he had been carrying them to, but

to give to him the replies which the Persians sent back to Histiaeus. When these things became known, Artaphrenes then put to death many Persians. There was thus great turmoil around Sardis. Histiaeus, disappointed of this hope, was brought back to Miletus by the Chians, at his own request. But the Milesians, glad to be free of Aristagoras too, had scant enthusiasm for taking on yet another tyrant, having

tasted freedom. And indeed, one night, as Histiaeus tried by force to make his way into Miletus, a Milesian struck him and wounded him in the thigh. So, being thus driven off from his own city, he went back to Chios; and from there, since the Chians could not be persuaded to supply him with ships, he made his way across to Mytilene, where he convinced the Lesbians to furnish him vessels.

They manned eight triremes and sailed with Histiaeus to Byzantium, and there, taking position, they seized the ships sailing out of the Pontus, except for those whose crews declared themselves ready to obey Histiaeus. This is what Histiaeus and the Mytilenaeans were doing. Meanwhile, against Miletus itself a large naval and land force was expected: for the Persian generals had gathered together and

formed one army, and were marching against Miletus, treating the other towns as of lesser importance. Of the fleet the Phoenicians were the most eager, and along with them served the Cyprians, newly subdued, and the Cilicians and Egyptians. These, then, were marching against Miletus and the rest of Ionia, while the Ionians, learning of this, sent representatives of their own to the Panionium. When these men arrived at

this place and took counsel, it was decided not to gather any land army to oppose the Persians, but to let the Milesians themselves defend their walls, while the rest should man their fleet, leaving no ship unmanned, and having manned them, assemble as quickly as possible at Lade to fight a naval battle in defense of Miletus. Lade is a small island lying off the city of the Milesians. After this, when the ships had been manned,

the Ionians arrived, and with them also as many of the Aeolians as inhabit Lesbos. They were arrayed as follows. The Milesians themselves held the eastern wing, furnishing eighty ships; next to them came the Prienians with twelve ships and the Myesians with three ships; next to the Myesians came the Teians with seventeen ships; next to the Teians came the Chians with a hundred ships; and besides these the Erythraeans were arrayed

and the Phocaeans, the Erythraeans furnishing eight ships, the Phocaeans three; next to the Phocaeans came the Lesbians with seventy ships; last of all, holding the western wing, were arrayed the Samians with sixty ships. The total number of all these together came to three hundred and fifty-three triremes. These were the Ionians' ships; the number of the barbarians' ships was six hundred. When

these too arrived off the Milesian territory, and their whole land army was present as well, then the Persian generals, learning the number of the Ionian ships, grew afraid that they would not be able to overcome them, and that thus they would be unable to capture Miletus, not having command of the sea, and would risk suffering some harm at Darius's hands. Considering this, they gathered together the tyrants of the Ionians,

who had been deposed from their offices by Aristagoras of Miletus and had fled to the Medes, and who happened at that time to be serving in the campaign against Miletus; calling together those of these men who were present, they said to them the following: "Men of Ionia, it is time for each of you to prove himself a friend to the king's house: let each of you try to detach his own countrymen from the rest of the alliance. Hold out these promises and proclaim them,

that they will suffer no harm on account of the revolt, that neither their sanctuaries nor their homes will be set ablaze, nor will they be treated any more harshly than before. But if they will not do this, and are determined to go through with battle regardless, then tell them this too, threatening them with what will in fact befall them: that if defeated in battle they will be enslaved, and that we will make

their sons eunuchs, and carry off their maidens to Bactra, and hand their land over to others." So they said. The tyrants of the Ionians each sent this message by night to their own people. But the Ionians to whom these messages came held stubbornly to their resolve and would not accept the betrayal; each group thought that these threats

were being announced by the Persians to themselves alone. This is what happened immediately upon the Persians' arrival at Miletus; afterward, when the Ionians had gathered at Lade, assemblies were held, and no doubt various men addressed them, among them Dionysius, the Phocaean general, who spoke as follows. "Our affairs stand on a razor's edge, men of Ionia, whether we are to be free or

slaves, and slaves who are runaways at that. Now then, if you are willing to endure hardship, you will have toil for the present, but you will be able to overcome your enemies and be free; but if you give yourselves over to softness and disorder, I have no hope that you will avoid paying for your revolt when the king reckons with you. Instead, obey me, and entrust yourselves

to me: and I promise you, if the gods deal fairly, that either the enemy will not engage us at all, or if they do engage, they will be badly defeated." Hearing this, the Ionians entrusted themselves to Dionysius. He then led out the ships each day in column, so as to use the rowers, making them pass through one another's lines, and armed the marines, and for the rest of the day he kept the ships

at anchor, giving the Ionians toil throughout the day. For seven days they obeyed and did as they were told; but the day after that, the Ionians, unused to labors of this kind and worn down by hardship and by the sun, said to one another the following: "Which of the gods have we offended that we are fulfilling this penalty? We must have lost our senses and taken leave of our wits when we entrusted ourselves to this

boastful Phocaean, who brings only three ships. Having taken us in hand, he abuses us with irreparable abuses; already many of us have fallen into sickness, and many more are likely to suffer the same thing; it would be better for us to suffer anything else whatsoever, even to endure whatever slavery is coming, rather

than be oppressed by our present state. Come, let us no longer obey him from now on." So they said, and after this no one was willing to obey any longer; instead, like an army, they pitched tents on the island and stayed in the shade, and would not go aboard the ships or practice maneuvers. Learning of what the Ionians were doing, the Samian generals then, from Aeaces son of Syloson,

received those same proposals which Aeaces had previously sent at the Persians' bidding, asking them to abandon the Ionian alliance. The Samians, then, seeing on the one hand the great disorder among the Ionians, and on the other perceiving that it was impossible to overcome the king's power, and knowing well that, supposing they did defeat the fleet now facing them, another

fivefold as great would come upon them; so, seizing on this pretext, as soon as they saw that the Ionians were unwilling to be of any use, they reckoned it to their advantage to preserve their own temples and property. This Aeaces, from whom the Samians received the proposals, was the son of Syloson son of Aeaces, and had been tyrant of Samos, but Aristagoras of Miletus had stripped him of his rule, just as

the other tyrants of Ionia had been. So now, when the Phoenicians sailed against them, the Ionians too led out their ships in column to meet them. When they drew near and engaged one another, I am not able to write with certainty from this point on which of the Ionians proved cowardly or brave in this sea battle, for they all accuse one another. But it is said that the Samians at this point, in accordance with

agreed with Aeaces, hoisted sail and fled the line for Samos, all but eleven ships. The trierarchs of these stayed and fought, disobeying their generals, and for this deed the Samian state granted that their names and their fathers' names be inscribed on a pillar as men who had proved brave, and this pillar stands in the marketplace to this day.

The Lesbians, seeing their neighbors fleeing, did the same as the Samians, and so did most of the Ionians. Of those who stayed in the sea-fight, the Chians suffered the roughest handling, since they performed brilliant deeds and were not willing to play the coward. For they supplied, as was said before, a hundred ships, and on each one forty of their own citizens serving as marines

serving as marines. Seeing that most of their allies were betraying them, they did not think it right to become like these cowards, but, left isolated with a few allies, they fought on, breaking through the enemy line, until they had captured many of the enemy's ships but lost most of their own. The Chians fled with their remaining ships to their own country; but those Chians whose ships were disabled by

wounds took refuge, as they were pursued, at Mycale. There they beached their ships and left them, and made their way on foot through the mainland. When the Chians, on their journey, entered the territory of Ephesus, arriving at night, and while the women there were celebrating the Thesmophoria, the Ephesians, who had not heard beforehand how things stood with the Chians

and now saw an army invading their land, took them for certain to be robbers coming after their women, and rushed out in full force and killed the Chians. Such was the fate that befell these men. Dionysius the Phocaean, when he learned that the cause of the Ionians was lost, sailed off, having captured three enemy ships, no longer to Phocaea, knowing well that it would be enslaved along

with the rest of Ionia; instead he sailed straight for Phoenicia, and there, after sinking some merchant vessels and taking much money, he sailed to Sicily, and from there he set himself up as a raider, not of Greeks but of Carthaginians and Etruscans. The Persians, once they had won the sea-battle over the Ionians, besieged Miletus by land and sea, undermining its walls and

bringing up engines of every kind, and took it completely, six years after Aristagoras's revolt began, and enslaved the city, so that its suffering matched the oracle that had been given concerning Miletus. For when the Argives consulted at Delphi about the safety of their own city, a joint oracle was given, one part addressed to the Argives themselves, and the added part concerned the Milesians. The

part concerning the Argives I will mention when I come to that point in my account; but the part that was given for the Milesians, who were not present, runs as follows: Then, Miletus, deviser of evil deeds, you will become a feast and splendid gifts for many, and your wives will wash the feet of many long-haired men, and our temple at Didyma will pass into the care of others. This then befell the Milesians

at that time, when most of the men were slain by the long-haired Persians, and the women and children were counted as slaves, and the sanctuary at Didyma, both the temple and the oracle, was plundered and burned. Of the treasures in that sanctuary I have often made mention elsewhere in my account. From there the Milesians taken alive were led away to Susa.

King Darius did them no further harm, but settled them by the sea called the Red Sea, in the city of Ampe, past which the river Tigris flows on its way to the sea. Of the Milesian territory the Persians themselves kept the area around the city and the plain, while they gave the highland parts to the Carian people of Pedasa to hold. Having suffered this at the hands of the Persians, the Milesians did not

receive equal treatment in return from the Sybarites, who, having been driven from their city, dwelt in Laus and Scidrus. For when Sybaris was captured by the Crotoniates, all the Milesians of military age cropped their hair short and gave themselves over to deep mourning; for of all the cities we know of, these two were bound to each other in the closest guest-friendship. The Athenians did nothing similar. The Athenians made plain

their deep grief at the capture of Miletus in many other ways, and above all when Phrynichus composed a play called The Capture of Miletus and staged it, the whole theater burst into tears, and they fined him a thousand drachmas for reminding them of a disaster that was their own, and decreed that no one should ever perform that play again. So Miletus was emptied of its Milesians. As for those Samians who had property, what had been done regarding the Medes by their own generals did not please them at all,

and it seemed best to them, deliberating right after the sea-battle, before the tyrant Aeaces should reach their land, to sail off and found a colony rather than stay and be slaves to the Medes and to Aeaces. For the men of Zancle in Sicily, at this very time, were sending messengers to Ionia inviting the Ionians to the Fair Coast, wishing to found an Ionian city there. This place called the Fair

Coast belongs to the Sicels, and lies on the part of Sicily that faces toward Tyrrhenia. Of those invited, the Samians alone among the Ionians set out, joined by the Milesians who had managed to escape; and along the way the following chanced to happen. The Samians, on their way to Sicily, came to the Epizephyrian Locrians, and the men of Zancle themselves, together with their king, whose name was Scythes,

were encamped around a city of the Sicels which they wished to capture. Learning of this, Anaxilaus, tyrant of Rhegium, who was at that time at odds with the men of Zancle, met with the Samians and persuaded them that it would be better to let the Fair Coast go, toward which they were sailing, and instead to seize Zancle itself, which was left undefended by men. The Samians were persuaded and seized Zancle, and then the men of Zancle, when they learned that their

city was taken, came to its aid and called upon Hippocrates, tyrant of Gela, for he was their ally. When Hippocrates arrived with his army to help them, he put Scythes, the sole ruler of the men of Zancle, in chains, on the grounds that he had lost the city, and sent him and his brother Pythogenes off to the city of Inyx, and then, negotiating with the rest of the men of Zancle together with the

Samians, and giving and receiving oaths, he betrayed them. The reward agreed upon for him by the Samians was this: that he should receive half of all the movable goods and slaves in the city, and that he should take for himself all that was in the countryside. So he kept most of the men of Zancle bound and treated as slaves, but he handed over their three hundred leading men to the

Samians to be slaughtered; the Samians, however, did not do this. Scythes, the sole ruler of the men of Zancle, escaped from Inyx to Himera, and from there made his way to Asia and went up to King Darius; and Darius considered him the most upright of all the Greeks who had ever come up to him. For, having asked leave of the king, he went to Sicily

and then again back from Sicily to the king, until in old age, greatly prosperous, he died among the Persians. The Samians, having got rid of the Medes with no effort, took possession of the very beautiful city of Zancle. After the sea-battle fought for Miletus, the Phoenicians, at the Persians' command, brought back to Samos Aeaces son of Syloson, since he had proved of great worth to them and had accomplished great things; and for the Samians alone

of those who had revolted from Darius, because of the desertion of their ships in the sea-battle, neither their city nor their temples were burned. Once Miletus was taken, the Persians at once took Caria, some of the cities submitting willingly, others being brought in by force. Such was the course of these events. Meanwhile Histiaeus of Miletus, who was near Byzantium seizing the merchant vessels of the Ionians sailing out

from the Pontus, learned the news of what had happened at Miletus. He entrusted his affairs around the Hellespont to Bisaltes son of Apollophanes, an Abydene, while he himself, taking his Lesbians, sailed to Chios, and when the Chian garrison would not admit him, he fought them at a place in Chian territory called the Hollows. He killed many of them there, and the rest of the Chians, since they had been

badly weakened by the sea-battle, Histiaeus, with his Lesbians, overpowered, operating from Polichne in Chian territory. It is somehow the way of things that a sign is given beforehand whenever great evils are about to befall a city or a people; and indeed great signs had come to the Chians before this. One was that of a chorus of a hundred young men they had sent to Delphi, only two returned home, and the other ninety-eight were seized by a plague

and carried off; the other was that in the city, at this same time, shortly before the sea-battle, the roof fell in on children being taught their letters, so that out of a hundred and twenty children, only a single one got out alive. These were the signs that the god showed them beforehand, and after this the sea-battle came upon them and brought the city to its knees, and after the sea-battle came Histiaeus, bringing his Lesbians

with him; and since the Chians were already worn down, he made short work of subduing them. From there Histiaeus made an expedition against Thasos, bringing with him a sizable body of Ionian and Aeolian troops. While he was besieging Thasos, news came to him that the Phoenicians were sailing up from Miletus against the rest of Ionia. Learning this, he left Thasos unravaged, and hurried himself to Lesbos with his whole army.

From Lesbos, since his army was starving, he crossed over to the mainland, from Atarneus, meaning to harvest the grain there and that from the plain of the Caicus belonging to the Mysians. In these parts there happened to be Harpagus, a Persian general with no small force, who, when Histiaeus had disembarked, engaged him, took Histiaeus himself alive, and wiped out most of the men under his command.

...more he destroyed. Histiaeus was captured in this way. As the Greeks and Persians were fighting at Malene in the territory of Atarneus, the two sides stood their ground against each other for a long time, but then the Persian cavalry, having set out later, fell upon the Greeks. This was the cavalry's achievement, and once the Greeks had been routed, Histiaeus, hoping the king would spare his life despite the offense he had just committed, resorted to the following expedient out of love of life:

as he was fleeing he was overtaken by a Persian man, and just as the man, having seized him, was on the verge of spearing him through, he broke into Persian speech and revealed himself, saying that he was Histiaeus the Milesian. Now if, when he had been taken alive, he had been carried off to King Darius, I do not think he would have suffered any harm, and Darius would have forgiven him the charge; but as it was,

for this very reason, and so that he might not escape and become powerful again with the king, both Artaphrenes, governor of Sardis, and Harpagus, who had captured him, when he arrived at Sardis under escort, impaled his body there on the spot, and having embalmed his head they carried it up to King Darius at Susa. When Darius learned of this, he blamed those who had done it,

because they had not brought him alive into his own presence, and gave orders that the head of Histiaeus be washed and properly dressed and then buried, as befitting a man who had been a great benefactor to himself and to the Persians. So it was with Histiaeus. As for the Persian naval force, it wintered near Miletus, and in the second year, when it put to sea again, it easily took the islands lying off the mainland,

Chios, Lesbos, and Tenedos. Each time the barbarians seized one of these islands, they netted the people living there. They net them in the following manner: the men join hands, forming a line from the northern shore to the southern, and after that they sweep across the entire island, driving the people out of hiding. They likewise took the Ionian cities on

the mainland in the same fashion, except that they did not net the people there, since that was not possible. There the Persian generals made good on the threats they had made against the Ionians when the two sides were encamped facing each other. For once they had gained mastery of the cities, they picked out the most handsome boys and castrated them, making them eunuchs instead of whole men, and they took the most beautiful girls and carried them off to

the king. They did this, and they also burned the cities down, temples and all. Thus the Ionians were enslaved for the third time, first by the Lydians, and now twice in succession by the Persians. Departing from Ionia, the naval force took everything on the left as one sails into the Hellespont, for everything on the right had already fallen into Persian hands by land.

These are the places on the European side of the Hellespont: the Chersonese, home to a good number of cities, and Perinthus, and the forts on the Thracian coast, and Selymbria, and Byzantium. Now the Byzantines and the Chalcedonians across the strait did not even wait for the Phoenicians to sail against them, but abandoned their own land and went off into the Euxine Sea, and there they settled the city of Mesambria.

The Phoenicians, having burned these places just named, turned against Proconnesus and Artace, and having consigned these too to fire, they sailed back to the Chersonese to root out the remaining cities, as many as they had not destroyed on their earlier approach. Cyzicus, though, they never sailed against at all, since the Cyzicenes themselves, even before the Phoenician fleet arrived, had already come to terms with the king, having submitted to Oebares son of

Megabazus, the governor at Dascylium. Of the Chersonese, apart from the city of Cardia, the Phoenicians subdued all the rest. The tyrant over these places up to that time was Miltiades son of Cimon son of Stesagoras, though this rule had earlier been acquired by Miltiades son of Cypselus in the following way. The Dolonci, a Thracian people, held this Chersonese. Worn down by the Apsinthians' war against them, these Dolonci sent envoys to Delphi

their kings to consult the oracle about the war. The Pythia answered them that they should bring in as founder for their land whoever should be the first to invite them to be his guests as they left the shrine. So the Dolonci went along the Sacred Way through Phocis and Boeotia, and since no one invited them, they turned aside to Athens. At Athens at that time

Pisistratus held the whole power, but Miltiades son of Cypselus also had influence, being of a house that kept four-horse chariot teams, tracing its descent originally from Aeacus and Aegina, but more recently Athenian, Philaeus son of Ajax having been the first member of this house to become an Athenian. This Miltiades, sitting in his own porch and seeing the Dolonci passing by wearing foreign dress

and carrying spears, called out to them, and when they came up to him he offered them lodging and hospitality. They accepted, and once entertained by him, they revealed the whole oracle, and having revealed it they begged him to obey the god. Miltiades, on hearing this, was persuaded at once, since he was chafing under the rule of Pisistratus and wanted to be out of the way. He set out immediately for Delphi to ask the oracle whether he should

do what the Dolonci asked of him. And since the Pythia bade him do so as well, Miltiades son of Cypselus, who had already won a victory at Olympia with a four-horse chariot, then took with him every Athenian who wished to share in the expedition and sailed off together with the Dolonci, and took possession of the land; and those who had brought him in established him as tyrant. He first walled off the isthmus of the Chersonese from

the city of Cardia to Pactye, so that the Apsinthians could not harm them by invading the land. This isthmus is thirty-six stades across; measured from that isthmus, the whole interior of the Chersonese runs four hundred and twenty stades in length. Having walled off the neck of the Chersonese, Miltiades, having thus pushed back the Apsinthians,

went on to make war first of all the rest on the people of Lampsacus, and the Lampsacenes, laying an ambush for him, took him alive. Now Miltiades stood high in the favor of Croesus the Lydian; so when Croesus learned of this, he sent word ordering the Lampsacenes to release Miltiades, or else, he threatened, he would wipe them out like a pine tree. When the Lampsacenes were at a loss over what Croesus meant by his threat,

that he would wipe them out like a pine tree, at last one of the elders, having understood it, told them the truth: that the pine is the only one of all trees which, once cut down, sends up no new shoot at all, but perishes utterly. So the Lampsacenes, in fear of Croesus, released Miltiades and let him go. This man, then, escaped by means of Croesus, but afterward died childless, handing over his rule and his property to Stesagoras son of Cimon,

his half-brother's son by the same mother. And to him, now dead, the Chersonesites offer sacrifice as is customary for a founder, and they hold a contest of horse-racing and athletics in his honor, in which no man of Lampsacus is permitted to compete. While war was going on against the Lampsacenes, it befell Stesagoras too to die childless, his head split open by an axe blow delivered in the town hall — the killer posing as a deserter but in truth an enemy agent, and rather too hot-tempered besides. After

Stesagoras too had died in this manner, the Pisistratids sent Miltiades son of Cimon, the brother of the dead Stesagoras, on a trireme to take charge of affairs in the Chersonese; they had also treated him well at Athens, as though they knew nothing of the death of his father Cimon at their hands, the story of which I shall relate elsewhere. Miltiades, on arriving at the Chersonese, kept

to his house, ostensibly honoring the memory of his brother Stesagoras. When the Chersonesites learned of this, the men of power from all the cities gathered together from every quarter, and having come together in a common expedition, as if to share in mourning with him, they were seized and put in chains by him. So Miltiades took possession of the Chersonese, maintaining five hundred bodyguards, and he married Hegesipyle, the daughter of Olorus king of the Thracians. This Miltiades son of Cimon had only recently arrived in

the Chersonese when there befell him, upon his arrival, troubles harder than those that had already beset him. For three years before this he had fled from the Scythians. The nomadic Scythians, provoked by King Darius, had banded together and driven as far as this Chersonese; and Miltiades, unable to withstand their attack, fled the Chersonese, until the Scythians withdrew and the Dolonci brought him back again. This

had happened three years before the troubles then besetting him. At that time, learning that the Phoenicians were at Tenedos, he loaded five triremes with the property he had at hand and sailed off for Athens. And just as he had set out from Cardia, the city he had left behind, he sailed through the Black Gulf; but as he was passing the Chersonese, the Phoenicians fell upon him with their ships. Miltiades himself, with

four of his ships, escaped to Imbros, but the fifth ship the Phoenicians caught up with and captured in the chase. It happened that in command of this ship was the eldest of Miltiades' sons, Metiochus, who was not the son of Olorus the Thracian's daughter but of another wife; and the Phoenicians captured him along with the ship, and on learning that he was Miltiades' son they carried him up

to the king, thinking they would earn great favor thereby, because Miltiades had declared his opinion among the Ionians that they should obey the Scythians, when the Scythians asked them to dismantle the boat-bridge and sail home to their own land. Darius, when the Phoenicians brought Metiochus son of Miltiades up to him, did Metiochus no harm at all, but treated him generously instead: he gave him a household, property, and a Persian wife,

from whom children were born to him who are counted among the Persians. Miltiades made his way from Imbros to Athens. And in that year nothing further happened on the part of the Persians tending to hostility against the Ionians; rather, the following things, very useful to the Ionians, occurred in that year: Artaphrenes the governor of Sardis, summoning envoys from the cities, compelled them to make agreements

he forced them to submit disputes to arbitration among themselves, so that they would not raid and plunder one another. Having compelled them to do this, he also measured their territories in parasangs—what the Persians call units of thirty stades—and on this basis he assessed tribute for each people, which they have continued to pay from that time down to my own day,

as it was assessed by Artaphrenes; and it was assessed at roughly the same rates as they had paid before. That much brought them peace. Then, at the beginning of spring, with the other generals relieved of their commands by the king, Mardonius son of Gobryas came down to the coast, leading with him an enormous force of infantry along with a sizable fleet. He was young in years, and had recently married Artozostre, the daughter of King Darius.

Leading this army, when Mardonius reached Cilicia he himself boarded a ship and traveled with the rest of the fleet, while other commanders led the infantry to the Hellespont. As he sailed along the coast of Asia and arrived in Ionia, there I have a very remarkable thing to report, for those Greeks who refuse to believe that Otanes, one of the seven Persians,

declared the opinion that Persia should be governed as a democracy: Mardonius deposed all the tyrants of the Ionians and set up democracies in their cities instead. Having done this, he hurried on to the Hellespont. When a great quantity of ships had been assembled, and a great land army as well, they crossed the Hellespont in the ships and advanced through Europe, marching against Eretria

and Athens. These were the ostensible aims of the expedition, but in fact they intended to subdue as many of the Greek cities as they possibly could. First, using their fleet, they subdued the Thasians, who never lifted a finger against them; then, with their infantry, they added the Macedonians to the slaves they already possessed, for all the peoples this side of Macedonia had already come under their power. From

Thasos they crossed over to the mainland opposite and sailed along the coast as far as Acanthus, and setting out from Acanthus they rounded Mount Athos. But as they were sailing around it a great and utterly unmanageable north wind fell upon them and battered them severely, casting great numbers of the ships onto Athos. It is said that three hundred ships were destroyed, and more than twenty thousand men. For since this sea around Athos

is full of savage creatures, some of the men were seized and killed by these beasts, others were dashed against the rocks; some of them, unable to swim, drowned as a result, and others died of cold. Such was the fate of the naval force. As for Mardonius and the land army encamped in Macedonia, the Brygian Thracians attacked them by night, and

the Brygians killed many of them and wounded Mardonius himself. Yet even they did not escape servitude to the Persians, for Mardonius did not withdraw from that country until he had subdued them. Having subjugated them, he led the army back, since he had suffered a setback on land against the Brygians and a great disaster at sea off Athos. So this

expedition returned to Asia in disgrace after its poor showing. In the second year after this, Darius, since the Thasians had been denounced by their neighbors for plotting revolt, sent a messenger and ordered them to tear down their wall and bring their ships to Abdera. For the Thasians, since they had been besieged by Histiaeus of Miletus and had large revenues, had been using their money

to build warships and to strengthen their fortifications further. Their revenue came from the mainland and from their mines: from the gold mines at Scapte Hyle came in general about eighty talents, and from the mines on Thasos itself somewhat less, but still so much that the Thasians, though exempt from tax on their crops, took in altogether

from the mainland and the mines two hundred talents a year, and when it was at its greatest, three hundred. I myself saw these mines, and by far the most remarkable of them were those discovered by the Phoenicians who settled the island together with Thasos, from whom this island now takes its name, Thasos the Phoenician. These Phoenician

mines are on Thasos between a place called Aenyra and Coenyra, opposite Samothrace: a great mountain that has been turned upside down in the search for ore. That, then, is how matters stand there. The Thasians, at the king's command, both tore down their own wall and brought all their ships to Abdera. After this Darius set about testing the Greeks to learn

what they intended, whether to make war against him or to surrender themselves. He therefore sent heralds in different directions throughout Greece, instructing them to demand earth and water on the king's behalf. Those he sent into Greece; he also sent other heralds around to the coastal cities that paid him tribute, ordering them to build warships and horse-transport vessels. These

were making these preparations, and when the heralds arrived in Greece, many of the mainland peoples gave the Persian what he demanded through his messengers, and all the islanders to whom they came with the request did likewise. So the other islanders gave earth and water to Darius, and so did the Aeginetans. When they had done this the Athenians immediately set upon them, believing that the Aeginetans

had given it in order to join with the Persian in campaigning against Athens, and they gladly seized on the pretext, going to Sparta to accuse the Aeginetans of having betrayed Greece by what they had done. In response to this accusation Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides, the Spartan king, made the crossing to Aegina, wishing to arrest the men most responsible among the Aeginetans. But when he tried to make the arrests, various Aeginetans

opposed him, and among them especially Crius son of Polycritus, who said that Cleomenes would not lead away a single Aeginetan and get away with it; for he was acting without the authority of the Spartan state as a whole, having been bribed by the Athenians—since if he had come with the other king, he would have been justified in making the arrests. He said this on the strength of a letter from Demaratus. Cleomenes, being driven off from Aegina, asked Crius what

his name was, and Crius told him truly. Cleomenes then said to him, "Now, ram, you had better plate your horns with bronze, since you are going to run into great trouble." Meanwhile at Sparta, Demaratus son of Ariston, who had remained behind, was slandering Cleomenes—he too being a king of the Spartans, though from the lesser house, inferior to the other

in no respect except this: they descend from the same stock, but by right of seniority the house of Eurysthenes has somehow been given the greater honor. For the Lacedaemonians, in agreement with no poet, say that it was Aristodemus himself, son of Aristomachus, son of Cleodaeus, son of Hyllus, who as king led them into the land they now possess, and not the sons of Aristodemus. Not long after this, they say, Aristodemus's wife bore him children—her name being

Argeia, and they say she was the daughter of Autesion, son of Tisamenus, son of Thersander, son of Polynices. She bore twins, and Aristodemus, having seen the children, died of illness. The Lacedaemonians of that time resolved, according to custom, to make the elder of the boys king. But they did not know which one to choose, since the two were alike and equal in every way; and being unable to decide,

or even before this, they asked the mother. But she said that she herself could not tell them apart. She knew perfectly well, in fact, and said this because she wanted both of them to become kings if possible. So the Lacedaemonians were at a loss, and being at a loss they sent to Delphi to ask what they should do about the matter. The Pythia told them to regard both children as kings, but to honor

the elder more. When the Pythia had given them this answer, the Lacedaemonians were nonetheless at a loss as to how they might discover which of the two was the elder, until a Messenian man named Panites suggested to them a way. This Panites advised the Lacedaemonians to keep an eye on the mother and note which child she bathed and fed first; and if she were seen always doing this in the same order, they

would then have everything they were seeking and wished to discover, but if she varied and did it now one way, now another, it would be clear to them that she herself knew no more than they did, and they should turn to some other method. So the Spartans, following the Messenian's advice, watched the mother of Aristodemus's children and found that she always honored the elder in the same way, both with food

and with washing, she herself not knowing why she was being watched. So they took the child that was honored by its mother as being the elder and reared it at public expense; and they named it Eurysthenes, and the other Procles. These two, when grown to manhood, though brothers, are said to have been at odds with each other for their entire lives, and their descendants continued in the same way ever after. This

is what the Lacedaemonians alone among the Greeks say. But what follows I write according to what is said by the Greeks generally: that these kings of the Dorians, counted back as far as Perseus, the son born to Danae by the god — leaving that parentage aside — are correctly listed by the Greeks and shown to be Greek, for by that time they already counted as Greeks. I have gone back only as far as Perseus and no further, because

no name of a mortal father is attached to Perseus, as Amphitryon is to Heracles. So if I reckon correctly, I have spoken rightly in going back as far as Perseus; but if one traces the line further back from Danae daughter of Acrisius, naming their forefathers in each generation, the leaders of the Dorians would appear to be, in fact, native-born Egyptians. This, then, is how the genealogy runs according to what the Greeks say; but according to the account told by the Persians, he himself

Perseus was an Assyrian who became a Greek, but his ancestors were not; and the forefathers of Acrisius, though they had no kinship with Perseus at all, were, as the Greeks say, Egyptians. Let this much be said about these matters. As for how, being Egyptians, and by doing what, they got hold of the kingships of the Dorians, I will leave that aside, since others have written about it.

I will make mention instead of what others have not recorded. These are the privileges the Spartans have given their kings: two priesthoods, of Zeus Lacedaemon and of Zeus of Heaven; the right to make war on whatever land they wish, with no Spartan permitted to obstruct them, on pain of being held guilty of impiety; and, when they campaign, to march out first and return last.

A hundred chosen men guard them on campaign. They may use as many sheep as they wish on their expeditions, and from all the animals sacrificed they receive the hides and the chines. These are their privileges in wartime; in peacetime the following have been granted them. Whenever a sacrifice is held at public expense, the kings sit first at the feast,

and from them the serving begins, each of the two receiving twice as much of everything as the other guests, and to them belongs the right to pour the first libation, and the hides of the victims are theirs. At every new moon and on the seventh of the month a full-grown victim is given to each of them from the public treasury for the temple of Apollo, along with a bushel of barley meal and a Laconian quart of wine, and at all the games they have reserved seats of honor.

It is theirs to appoint as public hosts any of the citizens they wish, and each is to choose two Pythians. The Pythians are the messengers sent to consult the oracle at Delphi, and they take their meals with the kings at public expense. Should the kings skip the dinner, two quarts of barley meal and a cup of wine are sent to each of their houses instead; but when they are present, they are given twice as much of everything. The same

honor is shown them when private citizens invite them to dinner. They alone are to guard the oracles that are delivered, and the Pythians are to share this knowledge with them. The kings alone are to judge the following cases and no others: concerning an heiress, as to who is entitled to her hand, if her father has not betrothed her; and concerning public roads; and if anyone wishes to adopt a son, this must be done

in the presence of the kings. They are to sit beside the elders in council, who number twenty-eight; and if the kings do not attend, those of the elders most closely related to them are to hold their privileges, casting two votes plus a third of their own. These privileges have been granted to the kings while living, by the community of the Spartans; when they die, the following are given. Horsemen carry the news of their death throughout all Laconia,

and through the city women go about beating cauldrons. When this happens, it is required that from every house two free persons, a man and a woman, go into mourning; and heavy penalties are imposed on those who fail to do so. The Lacedaemonians have the same custom regarding the deaths of their kings as the barbarians in Asia do; for most of the barbarians follow the

same custom concerning the deaths of their kings. For whenever a king of the Lacedaemonians dies, from the whole of Laconia, apart from the Spartans themselves, a fixed number of the perioikoi are compelled to attend the funeral. These, together with the helots and the Spartans themselves, gather in the same place, many thousands of them mixed with the women, and they beat their foreheads vigorously and give themselves over to boundless wailing, declaring that

whichever king died most recently was always the best. Whoever of the kings dies in war has an effigy made of him and is carried out on a well-spread bier. When they have buried him, no assembly convenes for ten days, nor is any election held, but they mourn during those days. In this the Lacedaemonians agree with the Persians in another respect: whenever, after a king's death, another

king takes his place, the incoming king releases any Spartan who owed a debt to the king or to the public treasury; and likewise among the Persians, the king who takes power remits to all the cities the tribute previously owed. The Lacedaemonians also agree with the Egyptians in this: their heralds, flute-players, and cooks inherit their fathers' trades, and a flute-player's son becomes a flute-player, a cook's son a cook, and

a herald's son a herald; others do not take over these offices by outshouting them with a louder voice, but they carry them out according to ancestral custom. So much for that. At that time, while Cleomenes was in Aegina working for the common good of Greece, Demaratus slandered him, not out of concern for the Aeginetans so much as out of envy and jealousy. Cleomenes, on returning from Aegina, plotted to remove Demaratus from

the kingship, making this affair his opening against him. Ariston, king in Sparta, who had married two wives, had no children. Since he did not admit that he himself was to blame for this, he married a third wife; and this is how he married her. He had a friend among the Spartans, a citizen to whom Ariston was especially devoted. This man happened to have a wife who was by far the most beautiful of the

women in Sparta, and moreover she had become the most beautiful after having been the ugliest. For being unsightly in appearance, her nurse — since she was the daughter of wealthy people and yet ill-favored, and seeing besides that her parents regarded her appearance as a misfortune — taking all this to heart, devised the following plan: she carried the child every day to the shrine of Helen. This shrine

is located in the place called Therapne, above the temple of Phoebus. Whenever the nurse brought her, she would set her before the image and beseech the goddess to free the child from her ugliness. And once, as the nurse was leaving the shrine, a woman is said to have appeared to her, and having appeared, to have asked what she was carrying in her arms, and the nurse said she was carrying a child,

and the woman told her to show it to her, but the nurse refused, saying she had been forbidden by the parents to show it to anyone; still the woman insisted she show it to her regardless. Seeing that the woman was very eager to see it, the nurse then showed her the child; and the woman, stroking the child's head, said that she would become the most beautiful of all the women in Sparta. From

that day on her appearance changed completely. When she reached marriageable age, Agetus son of Alcides, this same friend of Ariston, married her. But desire for this woman gnawed at Ariston; so he devised the following scheme: he himself promised his friend, the husband of this woman, that he would give him one gift, whichever he chose of all his possessions,

and he asked his friend to grant him the same in return. The man, having no fear at all concerning his wife, seeing that she was already Ariston's friend's wife too, agreed to this; and upon these terms they swore oaths. After this Ariston himself gave the gift, whatever it was, that Agetus chose from among Ariston's treasures, and he himself, seeking

to take the like from him, then tried to carry off his friend's wife. The man said he had agreed to everything except this alone; yet, compelled by his oath and by the trick that had led him on, he let her be taken. Thus Ariston brought in his third wife, having sent away the second. And in a shorter time than that, before the full ten

months had gone by, this same wife gave birth to Demaratus. One of the household servants went to him while he sat in council with the ephors and announced the arrival of a son. Knowing how long it had been since he married the woman, and counting the months on his fingers, he swore an oath and declared, "He could not be mine." The ephors heard this, but took no action at the time.

took no action about it at the time. The boy grew up, and Ariston came to regret what he had said, for he came to regard Demaratus as truly his own son in every way. He gave him the name Demaratus for this reason: before this time, the Spartans as a whole had offered a prayer that a son be born to Ariston, since he was a man held in the highest esteem of all the kings who had ever ruled in Sparta.

For this reason the name Demaratus was given him. As time went on, Ariston died, and Demaratus took possession of the kingship. But it was fated, it seems, that these facts, once made known, would bring about the removal of Demaratus from the kingship, on account of the great enmity he had incurred with Cleomenes — first when Demaratus withdrew the army from Eleusis, and again now when Cleomenes had crossed over against the Aeginetans who had medized. Setting out to take revenge, Cleomenes

he struck a bargain with Leotychides son of Menares, grandson of Agis, a member of the same house as Demaratus: if Leotychides made him king instead of Demaratus, Leotychides would side with him against the Aeginetans. Leotychides had come to hate Demaratus above all others because of the following matter: once Leotychides was betrothed to Percalus, daughter of Chilon son of Demarmenus, Demaratus schemed against him and robbed Leotychides of the marriage, getting to Percalus first and taking her

seizing Percalus and taking her as his wife. This was the source of Leotychides's enmity toward Demaratus; and now, spurred on by Cleomenes's eagerness, Leotychides swore an oath against Demaratus, declaring that he was not rightfully king of the Spartans, since he was not the son of Ariston; and after this sworn declaration he pursued the matter, recalling that very statement which Ariston had made at the time when the servant announced to him that a son had been

born to him, and he, reckoning the months, had sworn that the child was not his. Relying on this statement, Leotychides declared that Demaratus was neither born of Ariston nor rightfully king of Sparta, producing as witnesses those ephors who had at that time been sitting beside Ariston and had heard him say this. In the end, since disputes were arising over these matters, the Spartans decided to inquire of the

the oracle at Delphi as to whether Demaratus was really the son of Ariston. When the question was referred there through Cleomenes' scheming, Cleomenes won over Cobon son of Aristophantus, a man of the greatest influence at Delphi, and Cobon persuaded Perialla the priestess to say what Cleomenes wanted said. So when the sacred envoys put their question, the Pythia ruled that Demaratus was not Ariston's

son. Some time afterward this affair came out into the open, and Cobon fled Delphi while Perialla the priestess lost her office. Such was the manner in which Demaratus's kingship came to an end; Demaratus then fled from Sparta to the Medes owing to the following disgrace. Once his kingship had ended, Demaratus took up an office to which he had been chosen. During the celebration of the Gymnopaidiai, while

Demaratus looked on, Leutychides, now ruling as king in his place, sent his servant to mock him with the question of what it felt like to hold a lesser office after having been king. Stung by the taunt, Demaratus answered that he had now tasted both offices himself, while Leutychides had not, and that this very question would prove the start, for the Lacedaemonians, of either vast suffering or

boundless prosperity. Having said this, he covered his head and left the theater for his own house, and at once, having made preparations, he sacrificed an ox to Zeus; and after the sacrifice he summoned his mother. When his mother arrived, he placed some of the entrails in her hands and begged her, saying this. "Mother, I beg you by all the gods, and above all by Zeus of the household here,

to tell me the truth: who is truly my father? For Leutychides said, in the course of the quarrels, that you were already pregnant by your former husband when you came to Ariston; and others, telling an even more foolish story, say that you went to one of the servants, the donkey-herd, and that I am his son. I beg you now, by the gods, to tell me

the truth. For even if you did do something of what is said, you would not be alone in it—many women have done such things; and besides, there is much talk in Sparta that Ariston had no seed capable of producing children, since otherwise his earlier wives would have borne him children too." So he spoke, and she answered him thus. "My son, since you beg me with entreaties to tell you the truth, the whole

truth shall be told to you. On the third night after Ariston brought me to his house, a phantom resembling Ariston came to me, and after lying with me it placed on me the garlands it was wearing. Then it departed, and afterward Ariston came. When he saw me wearing the garlands, he asked who had given them to me; I said it was he, but he

denied it. And I swore an oath, saying he was not doing right to deny it, for he had come and lain with me only a little before and given me the garlands. Seeing me swear this, Ariston realized that the matter was of divine origin. And it turned out that the garlands had come from the shrine near the courtyard gate, the one they call the shrine of Astrabacus, and moreover

the seers declared that this same hero was the one responsible. So, my son, you now have everything you wish to know: either you were born from this hero, and your father is the hero Astrabacus, or else it is Ariston; for it was on that very night that I conceived you. As for the charge your enemies bring against you most of all, saying that Ariston himself, when

you were reported born to him, said before many who were listening that you were not his own (because the term, the ten months, had not yet run out), he threw out that remark out of ignorance of such matters. For women give birth also at nine months and at seven months, and not all of them complete the full ten months; and I, my son, bore you at seven months. Ariston himself came to realize, not long

afterward, that he had made that remark out of foolishness. Do not believe any other stories about your birth; you have heard the whole truth. As for the donkey-herds, may their wives bear children to Leutychides himself and to those who tell such tales." So she spoke, and he, having learned what he wanted, took provisions and set out for Elis, saying publicly

claiming he meant to consult the oracle at Delphi. The Lacedaemonians, however, suspected Demaratus of trying to flee and gave chase. Demaratus nonetheless managed to slip across from Elis to Zacynthus before they caught him; the Lacedaemonians followed him over the water, seized him, and took his attendants from him. Afterward, since the Zacynthians refused to hand him over, he crossed from there into Asia to King Darius. Darius then

received him with great honor and gave him land and cities. Thus Demaratus arrived in Asia, having met with such a fortune, after having distinguished himself among the Lacedaemonians many times by deeds and counsel, and in particular having won an Olympic victory with a four-horse chariot, being the only one of all the kings who had ever ruled at Sparta to have done this. Leutychides son of Menares, once Demaratus was deposed, succeeded

to the kingship, and a son, Zeuxidemus, was born to him, whom some of the Spartans called Cyniscus. This Zeuxidemus never reigned over Sparta, for he died before Leutychides, leaving a son, Archidemus. Leutychides, having lost Zeuxidemus, married a second wife, Eurydame, who was the sister of Menius and daughter of Diactorides; by her he had no male child, but a daughter, Lampito, whom Archidemus son of Zeuxidemus

she married, given to him by Leutychides. Yet Leutychides himself did not live out his old age in Sparta; instead he paid a certain penalty for what he had done to Demaratus. He led a Lacedaemonian force into Thessaly, and though he might have brought the whole region under his control, he accepted a great sum of silver as a bribe; caught red-handed in his own camp, seated upon a glove stuffed with silver, he was hauled before a court, fled Sparta, and had his house torn down; he went into exile

to Tegea, and died there. But this happened later. At the time, once the affair concerning Demaratus had been contrived by Cleomenes, he immediately took Leutychides with him and went against the Aeginetans, holding a terrible grudge against them for the insult they had done him. So now, with both kings come against them, the Aeginetans no longer thought it right to resist further, and the two kings picked out

ten Aeginetans of the greatest standing in wealth and lineage; among them were Crius son of Polycritus and Casambus son of Aristocrates, who wielded the most power. They brought these men to Attic soil and handed them over as hostages to the Athenians, the bitterest foes of Aegina. Afterward, once Cleomenes' schemes against Demaratus came to light, dread of the Spartiates took hold of him,

and slipped away to Thessaly. From there he went on to Arcadia and began plotting fresh mischief, rallying the Arcadians against Sparta; among other oaths, he made them swear to follow wherever he led, and he was especially keen to bring the Arcadian leaders to the city of Nonacris and have them swear by the water of the Styx. In that city, it is said,

the water of the Styx exists among the Arcadians, and indeed it is something like this: a little water, visible, drips from a rock into a hollow, and around that hollow runs a kind of circular wall of stones. Nonacris, where this spring happens to be, is a city of Arcadia near Pheneus. When the Lacedaemonians learned that Cleomenes was doing these things, they brought him back to Sparta out of fear, under the

same terms on which he had ruled before. But when he had returned, madness at once seized him — though he had already been somewhat unbalanced before: for whenever he happened to meet any Spartiate, he would strike him in the face with his staff. Since he was doing this and was out of his mind, his relatives bound him in the stocks. Bound, he saw that his guard had been left alone apart from the others and asked him for a knife. At first the guard was unwilling to give it,

but Cleomenes kept threatening what he would do to him later, until the guard — one of the helots — grew afraid of the threats and handed him the knife. Cleomenes took the blade and began cutting himself starting at the shins: slicing his flesh lengthwise, he worked upward from shin to thigh, and then from thigh to the

hips and the flanks, until he reached the belly, and there, slicing it into strips, he died in this manner — according to most of the Greeks, because he had persuaded the Pythia to say what she said about Demaratus; but according to the Athenians alone, because he invaded Eleusis and cut down the sacred precinct of the goddesses; and according to the Argives, because from their sanctuary of Argus he dragged out the Argives

those who had fled there from the battle for shelter, cutting them down, and, showing no regard even for the grove itself, set it ablaze. For when Cleomenes had earlier asked the oracle at Delphi, he was told he would capture Argos. When he led the Spartiates to the river Erasinus, said to flow out of the Stymphalian lake — for that lake, it is said, drains into a hidden chasm and surfaces again at Argos, so that from there the water

already being called by the Argives the Erasinus — Cleomenes, on arriving at this river, offered sacrifice to it; and since the omens in no way allowed him to cross it, he said he admired the Erasinus for not betraying its own citizens, but that the Argives would nonetheless not rejoice at this. After this he withdrew his army and led it down to Thyrea, and having sacrificed a bull to the sea, he carried his men by ship

to the land of Tiryns and to Nauplia. The Argives, learning of this, came to the aid of the coast; and when they drew near Tiryns, in the place called Hesipeia, leaving only a small space between, they took up position facing the Lacedaemonians. There the Argives were not afraid of open battle, but only that they might be taken by some trick; for indeed

there was an oracle bearing on this very matter, which the Pythia had given jointly to them and to the Milesians, saying this: But when the female defeats the male and drives him out, and wins glory among the Argives, she will make many Argive women tear their cheeks in mourning. So that someone among men yet to come will say: the terrible thrice-coiled serpent perished, tamed by the spear. All these things together

caused fear among the Argives. In view of this they resolved to exploit the enemy's own herald, and they carried out their plan in this way: whenever the Spartan herald gave some signal to the Lacedaemonians, the Argives did the very same thing. Cleomenes, learning that the Argives were doing whatever their own herald announced, gave orders that when the herald signaled the men to take their breakfast, then

they should take up their arms and advance against the Argives. This was in fact carried out by the Lacedaemonians: for as the Argives were taking their breakfast in accordance with the announcement, they fell upon them, and killed many of them, and penned in far more still who had fled for refuge into the grove of Argus, keeping watch around them. From there Cleomenes did the following. He had deserters with him, and by questioning them he called out, sending a herald,

naming by name those Argives shut up in the sanctuary, and calling them out claiming to hold their ransom. Among the Peloponnesians, the fixed ransom to be paid for each captive man is two minas. So then, calling them out fifty at a time, Cleomenes killed each group as they came. This, somehow, went unnoticed by the rest still in the precinct: for since the

grove was thick, those inside could not see what those outside were doing, until one of them climbed a tree and saw what was being done. After that they no longer came out when called. Then Cleomenes ordered every one of the helots to pile wood around the grove, and when they obeyed, he set the grove on fire. Once the flames had taken hold, he put a question to one of the deserters: to which god

the grove belonged: he said it belonged to Argus. On hearing this, Cleomenes groaned aloud and said, "O prophetic Apollo, you have greatly deceived me in saying I would take Argos: I gather that the oracle has already been fulfilled for me." After this Cleomenes sent most of his army back to Sparta, and taking a thousand of the best men himself, he went to the Heraeum to sacrifice; but

when he wished to sacrifice at the altar, the priest forbade him, saying it was not lawful for a foreigner to sacrifice there. Cleomenes ordered the helots to drag the priest away from the altar and whip him, and he himself performed the sacrifice; having done this, he departed for Sparta. On his return, his enemies brought him before the ephors, claiming that he had taken bribes and so failed to take Argos,

when he could easily have taken it. He told them — whether lying or speaking the truth, I cannot say clearly, but he said — that once he had taken the sanctuary of Argus, he thought the god's oracle had been fulfilled; and on that account he judged it wrong to press the assault on the city itself before he had consulted the sacrifices and learned whether the god

would grant it to him or stood in his way; and while he was sacrificing favorably in the Heraeum, a flame of fire had blazed out from the breast of the statue, and by this he himself learned the truth of the matter, that he would not take Argos: for if it had blazed out from the head of the statue, he would have taken the city entirely, from top to bottom, but since it blazed from the breast, everything had been accomplished that the god wished

to come about. In saying this he seemed to the Spartiates to be speaking credibly and plausibly, and he escaped his pursuers by a wide margin. Argos was so bereft of men that the slaves among them took over all affairs, ruling and administering them, until the children of the dead grew up to become men; then these, reclaiming Argos for themselves, drove the slaves out; and being thrust out, the slaves took

Tiryns by force. For a time there was peace between them, but then a seer came to the slaves, Cleandrus by name, an Arcadian by birth from Phigalea; he persuaded the slaves to attack their former masters. Out of this conflict arose, lasting a great while, and only with difficulty did the Argives eventually prevail. So the Argives say that Cleomenes died badly, gone mad on account of these things;

but the Spartiates themselves say that Cleomenes went mad not from any divine cause, but that from mingling with the Scythians he became a heavy drinker of unmixed wine, and that from this he went mad. For the nomadic Scythians, once Darius had invaded their land, afterward were eager to take revenge on him, and sent envoys to Sparta proposing an alliance, under which it was agreed that the Scythians themselves would attempt to invade Media by way of the Phasis

river, while they urged the Spartiates, setting out from Ephesus, to march inland and then meet them at the same point. And they say that when the Scythians came to Sparta for this purpose, Cleomenes associated with them more than was fitting, and by associating with them more than was proper, he learned from them the drinking of unmixed wine; and it is from this that the Spartiates believe he went mad. And from that time, as they themselves say, whenever

they wish to drink their wine stronger, they call it "Scythian style." Such is what the Spartiates relate concerning Cleomenes; in my own judgment, though, this was the penalty Cleomenes paid to Demaratus. This is the account the Spartiates give regarding Cleomenes; my own view, however, is that here Cleomenes was paying back Demaratus. When the Aeginetans learned of Cleomenes' death, they sent messengers to Sparta to denounce Leutychides over the hostages held at Athens. The Lacedaemonians, convening a court, judged that the Aeginetans had been grievously wronged by Leutychides, and condemned him to be handed over and taken to Aegina

in place of the men held at Athens. As the Aeginetans were about to lead Leutychides away, Theasides son of Leoprepes, a man of standing in Sparta, said to them, "What do you intend to do, men of Aegina? To lead away the king of the Spartiates, handed over by his own citizens? If the Spartiates have now decided this out of anger, see to it that afterward, if you do this, they do not bring utter ruin

"they will bring some disaster upon the land." On hearing this the Aeginetans held back from the deportation, and they came to this agreement: Leutychides would accompany the men back to Athens and there return them to the Aeginetans. But when Leutychides arrived at Athens and demanded the deposit back, the Athenians dragged out excuses, unwilling to give the men up, saying that two kings had left the men in their keeping and that it was not right to hand them over to one without the

other. When Leutychides said this and saw that the Athenians would not listen even so, he departed. The Aeginetans, before they had paid the penalty for the earlier wrongs they had done the Athenians to please the Thebans, did the following. Angry at the Athenians and believing themselves wronged, they made preparations to take vengeance on them; and since the Athenians happened to have a sacred ship that made the five-yearly voyage to Sunium, the Aeginetans lay in wait and seized this ship

and took it, full of the foremost men of Athens; and having taken the men, they put them in chains. The Athenians, having suffered this at the hands of the Aeginetans, no longer put off contriving every possible measure against them. Now there was a man of repute on Aegina named Nicodromus, son of Cnoethus, who bore a grudge against the Aeginetans for his own earlier banishment from the island; and learning at that time that the Athenians were resolved

to do the Aeginetans harm, he made an agreement with the Athenians to betray Aegina, letting them know the day he planned to act and the day on which they needed to arrive to help him. After this, Nicodromus, following the plan arranged with the Athenians, took possession of the place known as the old city; the Athenians, however, failed to show up in time, since they lacked ships capable of matching those of the Aeginetans. While they were asking the Corinthians

to lend them ships, in that interval the whole plan was ruined. The Corinthians, who were at that time on the friendliest terms with them, gave the Athenians, at their request, twenty ships, giving them at a price of five drachmas apiece, since by their law a gift outright was not permitted. Taking these ships, together with their own, and manning seventy ships in all, the Athenians sailed against

Aegina, arriving one day later than had been agreed. Nicodromus, when the Athenians did not arrive in time, boarded a boat and fled from Aegina; and with him went other Aeginetans as well, to whom the Athenians gave Sunium to settle. Setting out from there, these men raided and plundered the Aeginetans on the island. This, however, happened

later. As for the well-to-do among the Aeginetans, when the common people rose up together with Nicodromus, they got the upper hand, and having overpowered them they led them out to be put to death. From this a curse fell upon them, which for all their efforts they were unable to purify away, and they were driven out of the island before they could make the goddess propitious to them. For they had taken seven hundred of the common people alive and were leading them out to be killed, when one

of them escaped his bonds and fled to the porch of Demeter the Lawgiver, and taking hold of the door-handles clung to them; and when they could not drag him away by pulling, they cut off his hands and carried him off in that state, and those hands were left clinging fast to the handles. This is what the Aeginetans did among themselves; but when the Athenians came against them, they fought a sea battle with seventy ships, and having been defeated

in the battle they called upon the same allies as before, the Argives. These, however, no longer came to their aid, being angry that Aeginetan ships, seized by force by Cleomenes, had put in at the land of Argos and there landed troops together with the Lacedaemonians, and that men from Sicyonian ships had also landed in that same invasion; and the Argives had imposed on them a fine of a thousand talents to pay, five hundred on each.

The Sicyonians admitted their fault and settled matters by paying a hundred talents to clear themselves of the charge, but the Aeginetans would neither admit wrongdoing nor agree to anything, proving far more obstinate. For this reason, when they asked for help, no one from the Argive state any longer came to their aid, but about a thousand volunteers did; their commander was a man named Eurybates, a man trained in the pentathlon. Most of these did not return home again, but died

at the hands of the Athenians on Aegina; and Eurybates himself, the commander, who practiced single combat, killed three men in this way, but was killed by the fourth, Sophanes of Decelea. The Aeginetans, engaging the disordered Athenians with their ships, won the battle, and captured four of their ships along with their crews. So war had broken out between the Athenians and the Aeginetans. Meanwhile the Persian pursued his own

course, since his servant kept reminding him continually to remember the Athenians, and the Pisistratids stood beside him bringing accusations against Athens; Darius, for his part, meant to seize on this excuse in order to subdue those parts of Greece that had not given him earth and water. He removed Mardonius from his command, since he had fared badly on his expedition, and having appointed other generals he sent them out against Eretria

and Athens — Datis, a Mede by birth, and Artaphrenes, son of Artaphrenes, his own nephew. He sent them off with instructions to enslave Athens and Eretria and bring the captives before him for him to see. When these appointed generals, on their journey from the king, arrived at the Aleian plain in Cilicia, leading a sizable, well-outfitted infantry force, while they were encamped there

the whole fleet assigned to each contingent came up to join them, and the horse-transport ships also arrived, which Darius had ordered his tribute-paying subjects to prepare the previous year. Having loaded the horses onto these and embarked the land army onto the ships, they sailed with six hundred triremes to Ionia. From there they did not keep their ships along the mainland straight

toward the Hellespont and Thrace, but setting out from Samos they made their voyage past Icaria and through the islands, because, as it seems to me, they were most afraid of the voyage around Athos, since the previous year, making the passage that way, they had suffered a great disaster; and besides, Naxos, not having been captured before, compelled them to this course. When they were bearing in from the Icarian sea

and approached Naxos — for it was against this island first that the Persians intended to campaign, remembering what had happened before — the Naxians fled to the mountains and did not stand their ground, and the Persians, enslaving those of them they caught, burned both the temples and the city. Having done this, they put out to sea against the other islands. While they were doing this, the Delians

likewise abandoned Delos and fled to Tenos. As the fleet sailed on, Datis went ahead and would not let the ships anchor at Delos, but had them anchor across the strait at Rhenea instead; and having learned where the Delians were, he sent a herald to proclaim to them as follows: "Sacred men, why have you fled, judging me capable of things unbecoming? For I myself

have this much understanding, and it has been enjoined upon me by the king, not to harm in any way the land in which the two gods were born, neither the land itself nor its inhabitants. So now go back to your own homes and inhabit your island." This message he sent to the Delians, and then he heaped up three hundred talents' weight of frankincense on the altar and burned it as offering.

Having done this, Datis then sailed with his army against Eretria first, bringing with him also Ionians and Aeolians. After he had put out from there, Delos was shaken, as the Delians said, both for the first and last time up to my own day. And by this, I suppose, the god was showing men a portent of the evils that were to come. For in the time of Darius son of Hystaspes, and of

Xerxes son of Darius, and Artoxerxes son of Xerxes, in these three generations in succession, more evils befell Greece than in the twenty generations before Darius — some coming to her from the Persians themselves, and some from her own leading men fighting among themselves over supremacy. So it was nothing strange that Delos, previously unmoved, should be moved. And in an oracle

it was written concerning it thus: "I will move Delos too, unmoved though it be." These names, translated into the Greek tongue, mean this: Darius means "doer," Xerxes means "warrior," Artoxerxes means "great warrior." These are the names by which the Greeks might rightly call these kings in their own language. As for the barbarians, when they had put out from Delos, they touched at the islands one by one, and from there they levied troops

and took as hostages the children of the islanders. And as they sailed around the islands and put in also at Carystus, since the Carystians would not give hostages nor agree to campaign against neighboring cities, meaning Eretria and Athens, they laid siege to them there and ravaged their land, until the Carystians too came over to the

Persian side. The Eretrians, learning that the Persian force was sailing against them, asked the Athenians to come to their aid. The Athenians did not refuse the assistance, but gave them as helpers the four thousand men who held allotments of the land of the horse-breeding Chalcidians. But the counsel of the Eretrians was in fact unsound in every way; even as they summoned the Athenians for help, they themselves were split between two courses. Some

of them planned to abandon the city for the heights of Euboea, while others, expecting private gain from the Persian, were preparing to betray the city. Learning how matters stood on both sides, Aeschines son of Nothon, a leading man among the Eretrians, told the Athenians who had come everything about the situation they were in, and asked them to withdraw to their own country, so that they might not

perish along with the rest. The Athenians followed this advice given by Aeschines, and crossing over to Oropus they saved themselves. The Persians, sailing on, brought their ships to land in Eretrian territory near Temenos, Choereae, and Aegilea, and having taken these places they at once disembarked their horses and made ready to attack their enemies. The Eretrians, for their part, did not intend to come out and give battle

They took no counsel about it, except that they were concerned to keep the walls intact, once the decision had been made not to abandon the city. When a strong assault came against the wall, many fell on both sides over six days; but on the seventh, Euphorbus son of Alcimachus and Philagrus son of Cyneas, men of standing among the citizens, betrayed the city to the Persians. They entered

the city, and first plundered and burned the temples, in requital for the temples burned at Sardis, and second they enslaved the people, in accordance with Darius' orders. Having subdued Eretria and waited a few days, they sailed for the land of Attica, pressing hard and expecting to do to the Athenians the same as they had done to the Eretrians. And since Marathon

was the place in Attica most suited for cavalry to maneuver and nearest to Eretria, Hippias son of Pisistratus led them there. When the Athenians learned of this, they too marched out to Marathon to meet them. Ten generals led them, the tenth of whom was Miltiades. His father Cimon, son of Stesagoras, had been driven out of Athens by Pisistratus, the son of Hippocrates, and it was during that exile that an Olympic victory fell to him

with a four-horse chariot, and by winning this victory he achieved the same feat as his half-brother by the same mother, Miltiades. Then, at the next Olympiad, winning with the same horses, he allowed Pisistratus to be proclaimed victor, and by yielding the victory to him he returned home under a truce. And after winning yet another Olympiad with the same horses, it befell him to be killed by the sons of Pisistratus, Pisistratus himself no longer being alive.

They killed him near the town hall by posting men at night. Cimon is buried outside the city, across the road called Through the Hollow; and opposite him are buried those very horses that won three Olympiads. Other horses have achieved this same feat before, those of Evagoras the Laconian, but none more than these. Of Cimon's sons, the elder,

Stesagoras, was at that time being raised by his uncle Miltiades in the Chersonese, while the younger was with Cimon himself in Athens, named Miltiades after the founder of the Chersonese, Miltiades. This Miltiades, then, having come from the Chersonese, and having escaped a double death, was now general of the Athenians. For on the one hand the Phoenicians, pursuing him as far as Imbros, were

most eager to catch him and bring him up before the King; and on the other hand, having escaped them and reached his own country and thinking himself now safe, from that point his enemies welcomed him only to haul him into court, where they charged him with tyranny in the Chersonese. Having escaped these as well, he was thus appointed general of the Athenians, chosen by the people. And first, while

still in the city, the generals sent to Sparta as herald Phidippides, an Athenian man, and moreover one who made this his profession, a day-runner. To him, as Phidippides himself said and reported to the Athenians, near Mount Parthenium above Tegea, Pan appeared; and calling out Phidippides' name, Pan bade him tell the Athenians why

it was that they took no thought of him, though he was well disposed toward the Athenians and had been useful to them many times already, and would be again in the future. And the Athenians, once their affairs had settled well, believing this to be true, established a shrine of Pan below the Acropolis, and from this message they propitiate him with yearly sacrifices and a torch race. At that time, sent by the generals,

this Phidippides, on the very day he said Pan had appeared to him, arrived in Sparta the day after leaving the city of Athens. Coming before the magistrates he said, "Lacedaemonians, the Athenians beg you to come to their aid, and not to stand by while the most ancient city among the Greeks falls into slavery at the hands of barbarians; for indeed Eretria has already been enslaved, and Greece

has become weaker by the loss of a city of note." He reported what he had been charged to say, and they decided in favor of aiding the Athenians, yet could not act immediately, unwilling as they were to violate their own law; the month had just begun its ninth day, and they insisted that on the ninth they were forbidden to march out until the moon's disk was full. So they waited for the full moon. Meanwhile the barbarians were being led

by Hippias son of Pisistratus to Marathon, having on the previous night seen a vision of this kind: Hippias dreamed that he lay with his own mother. From this dream he concluded that he would return to Athens, recover his rule, and die in old age in his own country. This is what he concluded from the vision. Now as he led them, he first landed the captives from Eretria

on the island of the Styreans, called Aegilia, and second he brought the ships in to anchor at Marathon and marshaled the barbarians as they disembarked onto the land. While he was engaged in this, it happened that he sneezed and coughed more violently than usual; and since he was rather old, most of his teeth were loose, and one of these teeth he knocked out

by the force of his coughing. It fell into the sand, and he took great pains to find it; but when the tooth did not appear, he groaned and said to those standing by, "This land is not ours, and we will never bring it under our control; whatever portion belonged to me, the tooth now possesses." So Hippias concluded that this was the meaning of the vision. Meanwhile the Athenians,

drawn up in the precinct of Heracles, were joined by the Plataeans coming to help with their whole force. For the Plataeans had given themselves over to the Athenians, and the Athenians had already undertaken many labors on their behalf; and they had given themselves in this way. Being hard pressed by the Thebans, the Plataeans first offered themselves to Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides and the Lacedaemonians, who happened to be present. But they refused to accept them and said this to them: "We

live too far away, and such help as we could give you would be a cold comfort; for you might often be enslaved before any of us learned of it. We advise you instead to give yourselves to the Athenians, men who are your neighbors and quite capable of defending you." This the Lacedaemonians advised not so much out of goodwill toward the Plataeans as because they wished the Athenians to have troubles entangled with the Boeotians. The Lacedaemonians,

then, gave this advice to the Plataeans, and they did not disregard it, but when the Athenians were performing sacrifice to the twelve gods, they sat as suppliants at the altar and gave themselves over. When the Thebans learned this, they marched against the Plataeans, and the Athenians came to their aid. Just as battle was about to begin, the Corinthians stepped in and prevented it; being present at the time, they reconciled the two sides and, with the consent of both, fixed the boundary of the territory on these terms: that

the Thebans should let alone those of the Boeotians who did not wish to belong to the Boeotian league. Having decided this, the Corinthians departed; but as the Athenians were withdrawing, the Boeotians attacked them, and in attacking were defeated in the battle. And the Athenians, going beyond the boundaries the Corinthians had set for the Plataeans, made the Asopus river itself the boundary between the Thebans and both Plataea and Hysiae. Thus the Plataeans gave themselves

to the Athenians in the manner told, and now they came to Marathon to help. The Athenian generals were divided in opinion, some not wishing to join battle, since they were too few to engage the army of the Medes, others, including Miltiades, urging it. With the generals split and the inferior view about to win out, then—because an eleventh vote existed, belonging to the man selected by lot

to be polemarch of the Athenians (for in former days the Athenians granted the polemarch a vote equal to that of the generals), and the polemarch then in office was Callimachus of Aphidnae—Miltiades approached him and spoke as follows: "It is now in your hands, Callimachus, either to enslave Athens, or instead to set her free and thereby leave behind a memorial lasting through all human time to come, such as not even Harmodius and Aristogeiton leave. For now, since the Athenians came into being,

they have come to the greatest danger they have ever faced, and if they submit to the Medes, it has been decided what they will suffer once handed over to Hippias; but if this city survives, it can become the first of the Greek cities. How this can come about, and how the deciding of these matters falls upon you, I will now explain. Of us

the ten generals, opinion is divided, some urging that we join battle, others not. Now if we do not join battle, I expect some great dissension will fall upon the spirits of the Athenians and shake them so as to make them side with the Medes; but if we join battle before anything unsound arises among some of the Athenians, then, provided the gods deal fairly, we are able to prevail in the engagement. All this now

depends on you and hangs upon your decision. For if you add your vote to my opinion, your country will be free, and your city the first in Greece; but if you choose the side of those who are eager to avoid battle, you will have the opposite of the good things I have listed." By saying this, Miltiades won Callimachus over; and with the polemarch's vote added to his opinion,

it was resolved to join battle. After this, the generals whose opinion favored fighting, as each one's turn to hold the presidency for the day came around, yielded it to Miltiades; and he, though he accepted it, did not yet give battle, until his own day of presidency came. Once his turn arrived, the Athenians then arranged themselves as follows, ready to engage: the polemarch Callimachus led the right wing, for

the custom among the Athenians at that time was that the polemarch should hold the right wing; and with him leading, the tribes followed according to their numbered sequence, each behind the next, with the Plataeans arrayed last, holding the left wing. And ever since this battle, when the Athenians conduct sacrifices at the festivals held every four years, the Athenian herald prays together

good things were coming to the Athenians and Plataeans. At that time, as the Athenian forces took their positions at Marathon, this happened: the army, being made equal in length to the Median army, had its center formed up only a few ranks deep, and there the line was weakest, while each wing was strong in numbers. When they had been arrayed in this way and the sacrificial omens proved favorable, then, as soon as

the signal was given, the Athenians charged at a run against the barbarians. The space between the two armies was no less than eight stadia. The Persians, seeing them coming on at a run, made ready to receive them, thinking the Athenians utterly mad and bent on their own destruction, since they saw how few they were and that these few were rushing on at a run with neither cavalry nor archers to support them. That is what the barbarians supposed; but the Athenians,

once they had closed with the barbarians in a body, fought in a way worth recounting. They were the first of all Greeks we know of to charge the enemy at a run, and the first to endure the sight of Median dress and the men wearing it, whereas until then the very name of the Medes had struck fear into the Greeks who heard it. The fighting at Marathon lasted a long time, and in the

center of the line the barbarians were winning, where the Persians themselves and the Sacae were stationed; there the barbarians were victorious, and breaking through they pursued the Greeks into the interior of the country. But on each wing the Athenians and the Plataeans were victorious; and having won, they let the routed part of the barbarians flee, while they brought the two wings together and fought against those of the barbarians who had broken through the center,

and the Athenians were victorious. They pursued the fleeing Persians, cutting them down, until they came to the sea, where they called for fire and laid hold of the ships. In this struggle the polemarch was killed, having proved himself a brave man, and of the generals Stesilaus son of Thrasylaus died; and there too Cynegeirus son of Euphorion, seizing hold of the stern-ornament of a ship, had his

hand cut off by an axe and fell, and along with him many other Athenians, men of note, fell as well. In this way the Athenians took possession of seven of the ships; the barbarians shoved the remaining ships off from the shore, and after retrieving from the island the Eretrian captives they had left there, sailed around Sunium, hoping to reach the city ahead of the Athenians. The blame for this fell among the Athenians on the

Alcmaeonids, who were said to have contrived it: they, it was said, had made an agreement with the Persians and had raised a shield as a signal while the Persians were already aboard their ships. These, then, sailed around Sunium; but the Athenians rushed to the city as fast as they could manage, getting there ahead of the barbarians' arrival; then, marching from the Heracleum at Marathon, they set up camp at the other Heracleum, the one at Cynosarges.

The barbarians lay off shore with their ships at Phalerum — for that was then the port of Athens — and having lain to there for a time, they sailed back to Asia. In this battle at Marathon about six thousand four hundred of the barbarians were killed, and of the Athenians one hundred and ninety-two. So many fell on both sides. And it happened that a remarkable thing occurred there,

an Athenian man named Epizelus son of Cuphagoras, who, fighting hand to hand and showing himself courageous, lost his eyesight without being struck anywhere on his body or hit by anything, and for all the years that followed remained blind from that moment on. I have heard that he told the following story about what happened to him: he said that a tall hoplite seemed to stand opposite him, whose beard

cast a shadow over his whole shield; this apparition passed him by but killed the man standing beside him. This is what I learned Epizelus used to say. Datis, meanwhile, on his way back to Asia with the army, had a dream while sleeping once he reached Myconos. What the vision was is not told; but he, as soon as day broke, made a

search of the ships, and finding in a Phoenician ship a gilded statue of Apollo, he inquired from where it had been plundered, and once he learned which temple it belonged to, he took his own ship and sailed to Delos; finding that the Delians had by then come back to their island, he placed the statue in the temple there and directed the Delians to return it to Delium in Theban territory,

which lies on the coast opposite Chalcis. Having given these instructions, Datis sailed away; but the Delians did not carry the statue back — instead, twenty years later, the Thebans themselves brought it to Delium in accordance with an oracle. The enslaved Eretrians Datis and Artaphrenes, when they had put in on the coast of Asia in the course of their voyage, brought up to Susa. King Darius, before

the Eretrians were taken captive, had held a fierce anger against them, since the Eretrians had been the first to commit the wrong; but when he saw them brought before him and in his power, he did them no further harm, but settled them in a district of Cissia at one of his own stations called Ardericca, two hundred and ten stadia distant from Susa, and forty from the well

that yields three different substances: for bitumen, salt, and oil are all drawn up from it in the following way. It is drawn up by means of a swape, and instead of a bucket half a wineskin is fastened to it; the man dips this in, draws it up, and then pours it into a reservoir; from there, poured into another vessel, it separates into three streams. The bitumen and the salt at once solidify into a solid mass, while the

oil the Persians call rhadinace; it is black and gives off a heavy smell. There King Darius settled the Eretrians, and they held that land even down to my own time, keeping their ancient language. This, then, is what became of the Eretrians. As for the Lacedaemonians, two thousand of them came to Athens after the full moon, making such great haste to arrive that they reached Attica

from Sparta on the third day. Though they arrived too late for the battle, they nonetheless wished to view the Medes; so they went to Marathon and viewed them. Afterward, praising the Athenians and their achievement, they departed back home. I find it astonishing, and I do not accept the story, that the Alcmaeonids would ever have agreed with the Persians to raise a shield as a signal, wishing the Athenians to be under the barbarians and

under Hippias; for they show themselves to have been haters of tyrants no less, indeed more, than Callias son of Phaenippus, father of Hipponicus. Callias alone of all the Athenians dared, whenever Pisistratus was driven out of Athens, to buy up his property when it was put up for public auction, and in every other way devised the most hostile schemes against him. Of this Callias it is fitting that everyone should remember many things. This

is one: what has already been told, how he was a man foremost in freeing his country; and this too: what he did at Olympia — winning with a horse, and coming in second with a four-horse chariot, and having earlier taken a Pythian victory, he made himself famous to all the Greeks through the greatest expenditures. And this too: what sort of man he showed himself to be regarding his own three daughters; for when they came of marriageable age, he gave them a most magnificent gift, granting each of them the

privilege he gave them: out of all the Athenians, each daughter was allowed to choose for herself the husband she wished, and to him he gave her. And the Alcmaeonids were likewise, or no less than he, haters of tyrants. So I find it astonishing, and I do not accept the slander, that these men would have raised a shield, men who were exiled for the whole of that time by the tyrants, and through whose contrivance the sons of Pisistratus lost

their tyranny, and so it was these men who were the liberators of Athens, far more than Harmodius and Aristogeiton, as I judge. For the latter, by killing Hipparchus, only enraged the rest of the sons of Pisistratus still more, and did not at all put a stop to the others' tyranny; whereas the Alcmaeonids openly freed Athens, if indeed it was truly they who persuaded the Pythia to instruct the Lacedaemonians to free Athens,

as I have shown earlier. But perhaps, one might say, they had some grievance against the Athenian people and so betrayed their country. Yet there were no others among the Athenians held in higher esteem than they, nor any more honored. Thus reason does not allow that a shield would have been raised by these men on any such account. That a shield was raised is beyond dispute — that much did happen —

but who it was that raised it, I am unable to say further than this. The Alcmaeonids had been illustrious at Athens even from ancient times, and from the time of Alcmaeon, and again of Megacles, they became exceedingly illustrious. For one thing, Alcmaeon son of Megacles served as a helper and eagerly assisted the Lydians who came from Sardis on behalf of Croesus to the oracle at Delphi, and

he assisted them eagerly, and Croesus, learning from the Lydians who frequented the oracles that Alcmaeon had done him good service, summoned him to Sardis, and upon his arrival offered to let him take away, in one visit, as much gold as his own body could bear. Alcmaeon, in view of a gift of such a kind, devised and employed the following scheme: putting on a large tunic and leaving a deep fold in it, and fitting on the widest boots he could find,

he went into the treasury to which he was led. Falling upon a heap of gold dust, first he packed as much gold as his boots would hold in against his shins, then filled the whole fold of his tunic with gold, and sprinkled gold dust over the hair of his head as well, and took still more in his mouth, and came out of the treasury

dragging his boots with difficulty, looking like anything rather than a human being, his mouth stuffed full and his whole body swollen out. At the sight of him Croesus burst out laughing, and gave him all of that and made him further gifts no less than that. In this way this house became greatly wealthy, and this Alcmaeon, having in this way come to keep a four-horse chariot team, won an Olympic victory. After this

In the second generation after that, Cleisthenes the tyrant of Sicyon raised it up again, so that it became far more celebrated among the Greeks than it had been before. For to Cleisthenes son of Aristonymus, son of Myron, son of Andreas, was born a daughter whose name was Agariste. This daughter he wished to marry to the best man he could find out of all the Greeks. So at the Olympic games, where he had won victory in the four-horse chariot race, Cleisthenes had a proclamation made,

that whichever Greek man thought himself worthy to become Cleisthenes' son-in-law should come to Sicyon within sixty days, or even sooner, since Cleisthenes intended to settle the marriage within a year, counting from the sixtieth day. Thereupon all the Greeks who were proud of themselves and their homeland came forward as suitors; and for them Cleisthenes had a running track and a wrestling ground built, and kept them there for just this purpose. From

Italy came Smindyrides son of Hippocrates, a Sybarite, who had reached the greatest luxury of any single man (Sybaris was then at the very height of its prosperity), and Damasus of Siris, son of Amyris, who was known as the Wise. Both of these men set out from Italy; and from the Ionian Gulf came Amphimnestus son of Epistrophus, of Epidamnus; he came from the Ionian Gulf. From Aetolia came Males, the brother of that Titormus

who surpassed all the Greeks in strength and fled from men to the farthest parts of the Aetolian land. From the Peloponnese came Leocedes, son of Pheidon the tyrant of the Argives — that Pheidon who established weights and measures for the Peloponnesians and committed the greatest outrage of all the Greeks, when he drove out the Elean stewards of the games and himself presided over the contest at Olympia. This man's son, then,

and Amiantus son of Lycurgus, an Arcadian from Trapezus, and from the city of Paeus in Azania, Laphanes son of Euphorion — the same Euphorion who, as the story is told in Arcadia, received the Dioscuri into his house and ever after entertained all comers — and Onomastus son of Agaeus, an Elean. These, then, came from the Peloponnese itself; and from Athens came Megacles son of that Alcmeon who had visited Croesus, and

another, Hippocleides son of Tisander, who surpassed the Athenians in wealth and looks. From Eretria, which was flourishing at that time, came Lysanias; he alone came from Euboea. From Thessaly came Diactorides of Crannon, one of the Scopadae, and from the Molossians came Alcon. So many were the suitors. When they arrived on the appointed day, Cleisthenes first inquired into each man's homeland and

lineage, and then, keeping them with him for a year, tested their manly worth, their temper, their upbringing, and their character, meeting with each one alone and with all together, taking the younger ones out to the gymnasium, and — most important of all — testing them at his own table; for as long as he kept them he did all this, and at the same time entertained them

lavishly. Now of the suitors those who had come from Athens pleased him most, and of these Hippocleides son of Tisander was judged the best both for his manly qualities and because his family was, from ancient times, related to the Cypselids of Corinth. When the day arrived that had been set for the wedding banquet, the day on which Cleisthenes was to announce which of them he had chosen, Cleisthenes sacrificed a hundred oxen

and feasted the suitors themselves and all the people of Sicyon. When the dinner was over, the suitors fell to competing with one another in music and in speaking before the company. As the drinking went on, Hippocleides, who was by far outdoing the others, ordered the flute-player to play him a dance tune, and when the flute-player complied, he danced. He danced, it seems, to his own satisfaction,

but Cleisthenes, watching the whole performance, began to have his doubts. After a while Hippocleides, pausing, ordered someone to fetch a table; once it had been carried in, he first danced on it some Laconian figures, then some Attic ones, and third he rested his head on the table and gestured with his legs in the air. Cleisthenes, though during the first and second dances he had already begun to loathe

the idea of Hippocleides becoming his son-in-law, on account of his dancing and his shamelessness, restrained himself, not wishing to burst out against him; but when he saw him gesturing with his legs in the air, he could no longer hold back and said, "Son of Tisander, you have danced away your marriage." Hippocleides took him up and replied, "Hippocleides doesn't care." From this the saying arose. Cleisthenes then called for silence

and spoke to the assembled company as follows: "Suitors of my daughter, I have praise for every one of you, and if it could be done I would gladly please each of you, neither singling out one for preference nor rejecting the rest. But since it is not possible, deliberating as I am about a single girl, to satisfy all of you at once, to those of you who are set aside from this marriage I give a talent of silver

to each, as a gift in recognition of the honor you have done me in wishing to marry into my family, and for the trouble of leaving your homes; but to Megacles son of Alcmeon I betroth my daughter Agariste, according to the customs of the Athenians." And when Megacles agreed to the betrothal, the marriage was confirmed by Cleisthenes. So much, then, happened concerning the judging of the suitors, and this is how the Alcmeonidae came to be renowned throughout Greece. From this marriage was born the Cleisthenes

who set up the tribes and brought democracy to Athens, named after his mother's father, the man of Sicyon. This man was born to Megacles, along with Hippocrates; and from Hippocrates came another Megacles and another Agariste, who took her name from Cleisthenes' daughter Agariste. She, having married Xanthippus son of Ariphron and being pregnant, saw a vision in her sleep in which she dreamed

she had given birth to a lion, and a few days later she bore Pericles to Xanthippus. After the defeat that the Persians suffered at Marathon, Miltiades, who had already been held in high regard among the Athenians, now rose to even greater prominence. He asked the Athenians for seventy ships, along with troops and money, without telling them against what country he meant to campaign, but saying only that he would make them rich if they followed him; for he would lead them

against a land from which gold in abundance could easily be carried home. So saying, he asked for the ships. The Athenians, excited by these words, granted them. Miltiades, taking command of the force, sailed against Paros, on the pretext that the Parians had been the first to campaign against the Athenians, sending triremes to Marathon in support of the Persian. This was the professed reason given, but he also nursed a private grudge against the Parians because of Lysagoras son of

Tisias, a man of Parian descent, who had slandered him to Hydarnes the Persian. Having arrived where he was sailing with his force, Miltiades besieged the Parians, who had shut themselves within their walls, and sending in a herald he demanded a hundred talents, saying that if they did not give it, his army would not return home until it had destroyed them. The Parians had no intention whatsoever of giving Miltiades any money,

but instead devised ways to defend their city, contriving various measures and, in particular, wherever the wall happened at any time to be most vulnerable to attack, building it up in the night to twice its former height. Up to this point in the story all the Greeks agree; from here on the Parians themselves say the following happened. As Miltiades was at a loss, a captive woman came to speak with him, a Parian by birth, named

Timo, who was an under-priestess of the chthonic goddesses. She, coming into Miltiades' presence, advised him that if he set great store by taking Paros, he should do whatever she suggested. Following this, she gave him her advice, and he, making his way to the mound in front of the city, leaped over the fence of the sanctuary of Demeter the Lawgiver, since he was unable to open the gates, and having leaped over,

went to the inner shrine to do something there, whether to move some object that should not be moved or to carry out some other act. When he reached the doors, a sudden shudder came over him and he rushed back by the same way he had come; and as he leaped down from the wall he wrenched his thigh — though some say he struck his knee. Miltiades, then, in a wretched state, sailed

back home, bringing neither money for the Athenians nor Paros as a new possession, but having besieged the island for twenty-six days and ravaged it. When the Parians learned it was Timo, under-priestess of the goddesses, who had shown Miltiades the way, they wished to punish her for it, and as soon as the siege was over they sent messengers to Delphi, to ask whether they ought to execute the goddesses' under-priestess who

had shown their enemies the way to capture her homeland and had revealed to Miltiades the rites forbidden to male eyes. But the Pythia would not allow it, saying that Timo was not to blame for these things; but since Miltiades was fated to come to a bad end, she had appeared to him as the guide to his misfortunes. This is the oracle the Pythia gave the Parians. As for the Athenians, when Miltiades returned from Paros, they had him on their lips —

the rest of them, and above all Xanthippus son of Ariphron, who brought Miltiades before the people on a capital charge and prosecuted him for having deceived the Athenians. Miltiades himself did not speak in his own defense, being unable to do so since his thigh had become gangrenous; instead, as he lay before them on a couch, his friends spoke at length in his defense, recalling repeatedly the battle at Marathon

and the capture of Lemnos, telling how he had taken Lemnos and, having punished the Pelasgians, had handed it over to the Athenians. The people, siding with him on the matter of the death penalty, but fining him for his wrongdoing fifty talents — after this Miltiades died, his thigh having festered and rotted, and the fifty talents were paid off by his son Cimon. Miltiades son of Cimon had taken Lemnos in the following way. The Pelasgians,

after they had been driven out of Attica by the Athenians — whether this was done fairly or not, I cannot say, except for what is reported, namely that Hecataeus son of Hegesander said in his account that it was unjustly done, on the grounds that the Athenians had once looked upon the land lying beneath Hymettus, land they themselves had given to the Pelasgians to live in as payment for the wall around

the acropolis had once been driven by a wall, so that when the Athenians saw it well built, whereas before it had been poor and worth nothing, they were seized by envy and desire for the land, and so drove the Pelasgians out, offering no other pretext. But as the Athenians themselves tell it, their expulsion of them was just. For the Pelasgians, settled below Hymettus, used to set out from there and do the following wrong: their own daughters and sons

used always to go for water to the Nine Springs (for at that time neither the Athenians nor the other Greeks yet had household servants); and whenever these girls came there, the Pelasgians, out of arrogance and contempt, would force themselves upon them. And this was not enough for them, but in the end they were caught red-handed plotting an actual attack.

The Athenians, they say, proved themselves so much better men than the Pelasgians that, though it was in their power to kill them once they had caught them plotting, they were unwilling to do so, but instead ordered them to leave the land. And so the Pelasgians, having withdrawn in this way, occupied other places and, in particular, Lemnos. This is what Hecataeus said; this is what the Athenians say. As for these Pelasgians, who were then occupying Lemnos

and wished to take revenge on the Athenians, since they knew well the Athenians' festivals, they got fifty-oared ships and lay in wait for the Athenian women who were celebrating a festival to Artemis at Brauron; and seizing many of them from there, they sailed off, and bringing them to Lemnos kept them as concubines. When these women became pregnant with children, the boys were taught Attic speech and Athenian customs.

These boys were unwilling to mix with the sons born of the Pelasgian women, and if one of them was struck by another, they would all come to his aid and avenge one another; and indeed the boys claimed the right to rule over the other boys, and had by far the upper hand. Learning of this, the Pelasgians took counsel among themselves; and as they deliberated, a terrible thought crept in on them: if

the boys were already ready to help each other against the sons of the lawfully wedded wives and were already trying to rule over them, what indeed would they do once they had grown to manhood? At this point they resolved to kill the sons of the Attic women. They did this, and along with them destroyed their mothers as well. From this deed, and from an earlier one before it, which the women had done to the men of Thoas

killing their own husbands, it has become customary throughout Greece to call every cruel deed a Lemnian deed. But when the Pelasgians had killed their own children and wives, their land ceased producing fruit, and neither their women nor their flocks bore young as before. Pressed by hunger and by the lack of children, they sent envoys to Delphi seeking release from the troubles weighing on them. The Pythia

bade them give the Athenians whatever penalty the Athenians themselves should decide. So the Pelasgians came to Athens and announced that they were prepared to make full amends for their wrongdoing. The Athenians, having spread a couch in the prytaneum as finely as they could and set beside it a table laden with every good thing, told the Pelasgians to hand over their land to them in that same condition. The Pelasgians, taking this up,

said, "Whenever a ship completes the journey from your land to ours in a single day with the north wind, then we will hand it over," knowing that this was impossible, since Attica lies far to the south of Lemnos. That was the matter then; but very many years after this, when the Chersonese on the Hellespont had come under Athenian control, Miltiades son of Cimon, when the etesian winds were blowing steadily, made the crossing by ship

from Elaeus in the Chersonese to Lemnos, and told the Pelasgians they must quit the island, calling to their minds the oracle that they themselves had never expected to be fulfilled. The people of Hephaestia obeyed, but the Myrinaeans, not admitting that the Chersonese was Attic, were besieged, until they too submitted. Thus did the Athenians and Miltiades gain possession of Lemnos.

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