Darius the Great

The two wooden statues.

Ægina, as will be seen from the map, was situated in the middle of a bay, southwest from Athens. On the other side of the bay, opposite from Athens, there was a city, near the shore, called Epidaurus. It happened that the people of Epidaurus were at one time suffering from famine, and they sent a messenger to the oracle at Delphi to inquire what they should do to obtain relief. The Pythian answered that they must erect two statues to certain goddesses, named Damia and Auxesia, and that then the famine would abate. They asked whether they were to make the statues of brass or of marble. The priestess replied, "Of neither, but of wood." They were, she said, to use for the purpose the wood of the garden olive.

This species of olive was a sacred tree, and it happened that, at this time, there were no trees of the kind that were of sufficient size for the purpose intended except at Athens; and the Epidaurians, accordingly, sent to Athens to obtain leave to supply themselves with wood for the sculptor by cutting down one of the trees from the sacred grove. The Athenians consented to this, on condition that the Epidaurians would offer a certain yearly sacrifice at two temples in Athens, which they named. This sacrifice, they seemed to imagine, would make good to the city whatever of injury their religious interests might suffer from the loss of the sacred tree. The Epidaurians agreed to the condition; the tree was felled; blocks from it, of proper size, were taken to Epidaurus, and the statues were carved. They were set up in the city with the usual solemnities, and the famine soon after disappeared.

Incursion of the Æginetans.

They carry off the statues.

Attempt to recover the statues.

Not many years after this, a war, for some cause or other, broke out between Epidaurus and Ægina. The people of Ægina crossed the water in a fleet of galleys, landed at Epidaurus, and, after committing various ravages, they seized these images, and bore them away in triumph as trophies of their victory. They set them up in a public place in the middle of their own island, and instituted games and spectacles around them, which they celebrated with great festivity and parade. The Epidaurians, having thus lost their statues, ceased to make the annual offering at Athens which they had stipulated for, in return for receiving the wood from which the statues were carved. The Athenians complained. The Epidaurians replied that they had continued to make the offering as long as they had kept the statues; but that now, the statues being in other hands, they were absolved from the obligation. The Athenians next demanded the statues themselves of the people of Ægina. They refused to surrender them. The Athenians then invaded the island, and proceeded to the spot where the statues had been erected. They had been set up on massive and heavy pedestals. The Athenians attempted to get them down, but could not separate them from their fastenings. They then changed their plan, and undertook to move the pedestals too, by dragging them with ropes. They were arrested in this undertaking by an earthquake, accompanied by a solemn and terrible sound of thunder, which warned them that they were provoking the anger of Heaven.

They fall upon their knees.

The statues, too, miraculously fell on their knees, and remained fixed in that posture!

The Athenians, terrified at these portentous signs, abandoned their undertaking and fled toward the shore. They were, however, intercepted by the people of Ægina, and some allies whom they had hastily summoned to their aid, and the whole party was destroyed except one single man. He escaped.

The Athenian fugitive.

He is murdered by the women.

This single fugitive, however, met with a worse fate than that of his comrades. He went to Athens, and there the wives and sisters of the men who had been killed thronged around him to hear his story. They were incensed that he alone had escaped, as if his flight had been a sort of betrayal and desertion of his companions. They fell upon him, therefore, with one accord, and pierced and wounded him on all sides with a sort of pin, or clasp, which they used as a fastening for their dress. They finally killed him.

The Athenian magistrates were unable to bring any of the perpetrators of this crime to conviction and punishment; but a law was made, in consequence of the occurrence, forbidding the use of that sort of fastening for the dress to all the Athenian women forever after. The people of Ægina, on the other hand, rejoiced and gloried in the deed of the Athenian women, and they made the clasps which were worn upon their island of double size, in honor of it.

The war, thus commenced between Athens and Ægina, went on for a long time, increasing in bitterness and cruelty as the injuries increased in number and magnitude which the belligerent parties inflicted on each other.

The Persian army.

Its commander, Datis.

Such was the state of things in Greece when Darius organized his great expedition for the invasion of the country. He assembled an immense armament, though he did not go forth himself to command it. He placed the whole force under the charge of a Persian general named Datis. A considerable part of the army which Datis was to command was raised in Persia; but orders had been sent on that large accessions to the army, consisting of cavalry, foot soldiers, ships, and seamen, and every other species of military force, should be raised in all the provinces of Asia Minor, and be ready to join it at various places of rendezvous.

Sailing of the fleet.

Various conquests.

Darius commenced his march at Susa with the troops which had been collected there, and proceeded westward till he reached the Mediterranean at Cilicia, which is at the northeast corner of that sea. Here large re-enforcements joined him; and there was also assembled at this point an immense fleet of galleys, which had been provided to convey the troops to the Grecian seas. The troops embarked, and the fleet advanced along the southern shores of Asia Minor to the Ægean Sea, where they turned to the northward toward the island of Samos, which had been appointed as a rendezvous. At Samos they were joined by still greater numbers coming from Ionia, and the various provinces and islands on that coast that were already under the Persian dominion. When they were ready for their final departure, the immense fleet, probably one of the greatest and most powerful which had then ever been assembled, set sail, and steered their course to the northwest, among the islands of the Ægean Sea. As they moved slowly on, they stopped to take possession of such islands as came in their way. The islanders, in some cases, submitted to them without a struggle. In others, they made vigorous but perfectly futile attempts to resist. In others still, the terrified inhabitants abandoned their homes, and fled in dismay to the fastnesses of the mountains. The Persians destroyed the cities and towns whose inhabitants they could not conquer, and took the children from the most influential families of the islands which they did subdue, as hostages to hold their parents to their promises when their conquerors should have gone.

The mighty fleet advanced thus, by slow degrees, from conquest to conquest, toward the Athenian shores. The vast multitude of galleys covered the whole surface of the water, and as they advanced, propelled each by a triple row of oars, they exhibited to the fugitives who had gained the summits of the mountains the appearance of an immense swarm of insects, creeping, by an almost imperceptible advance, over the smooth expanse of the sea.

Landing of the Persians.

The fleet, guided all the time by Hippias, passed on, and finally entered the strait between the island of Eubœa and the main land to the northward of Athens. Here, after some operations on the island, the Persians finally brought their ships into a port on the Athenian side, and landed. Hippias made all the arrangements, and superintended the disembarkation.

State of Athens.

The Greek army.

In the mean time, all was confusion and dismay in the city of Athens. The government, as soon as they heard of the approach of this terrible danger, had sent an express to the city of Sparta, asking for aid. The aid had been promised, but it had not yet arrived. The Athenians gathered together all the forces at their command on the northern side of the city, and were debating the question, with great anxiety and earnestness, whether they should shut themselves up within the walls, and await the onset of their enemies there, or go forth to meet them on the way. The whole force which the Greeks could muster consisted of but about ten thousand men, while the Persian host contained over a hundred thousand. It seemed madness to engage in a contest on an open field against such an overwhelming disparity of numbers. A majority of voices were, accordingly, in favor of remaining within the fortifications of the city, and awaiting an attack.

Miltiades and his colleagues.

The command of the army had been intrusted, not to one man, but to a commission of three generals, a sort of triumvirate, on whose joint action the decision of such a question devolved. Two of the three were in favor of taking a defensive position; but the third, the celebrated Miltiades, was so earnest and so decided in favor of attacking the enemy themselves, instead of waiting to be attacked, that his opinion finally carried the day, and the other generals resigned their portion of authority into his hands, consenting that he should lead the Greek army into battle, if he dared to take the responsibility of doing so.

Position of the armies.

Miltiades's plan of attack.

The two armies were at this time encamped in sight of each other on the plain of Marathon, between the mountain and the sea. They were nearly a mile apart. The countless multitude of the Persians extended as far as the eye could reach, with long lines of tents in the distance, and thousands of horsemen on the plain, all ready for the charge. The Greeks, on the other hand, occupied a small and isolated spot, in a compact form, without cavalry, without archers, without, in fact, any weapons suitable either for attack or defense, except in a close encounter hand to hand. Their only hope of success depended on the desperate violence of the onset they were to make upon the vast masses of men spread out before them. On the one side were immense numbers, whose force, vast as it was, must necessarily be more or less impeded in its operations, and slow. It was to be overpowered, therefore, if overpowered at all, by the utmost fierceness and rapidity of action – by sudden onsets, unexpected and furious assaults, and heavy, vigorous, and rapid blows. Miltiades, therefore, made all his arrangements with reference to that mode of warfare. Such soldiers as the Greeks, too, were admirably adapted to execute such designs, and the immense and heterogeneous mass of Asiatic nations which covered the plain before them was exactly the body for such an experiment to be made upon. Glorying in their numbers and confident of victory, they were slowly advancing, without the least idea that the little band before them could possibly do them any serious harm. They had actually brought with them, in the train of the army, some blocks of marble, with which they were going to erect a monument of their victory, on the field of battle, as soon as the conflict was over!

Onset of the Greeks.

Rout of the Persians.

At length the Greeks began to put themselves in motion. As they advanced, they accelerated their march more and more, until just before reaching the Persian lines, when they began to run. The astonishment of the Persians at this unexpected and daring onset soon gave place, first to the excitement of personal conflict, and then to universal terror and dismay; for the headlong impetuosity of the Greeks bore down all opposition, and the desperate swordsmen cut their way through the vast masses of the enemy with a fierce and desperate fury that nothing could withstand. Something like a contest continued for some hours; but, at the end of that time, the Persians were flying in all directions, every one endeavoring, by the track which he found most practicable for himself, to make his way to the ships on the shore. Vast multitudes were killed in this headlong flight; others became entangled in the morasses and fens, and others still strayed away, and sought, in their terror, a hopeless refuge in the defiles of the mountains. Those who escaped crowded in confusion on board their ships, and pushed off from the shore, leaving the whole plain covered with their dead and dying companions.

Results of the battle.

Numbers slain.

The Greeks captured an immense amount of stores and baggage, which were of great cost and value. They took possession, too, of the marble blocks which the Persians had brought to immortalize their victory, and built with them a monument, instead, to commemorate their defeat. They counted the dead. Six thousand Persians, and only two hundred Greeks, were found. The bodies of the Greeks were collected together, and buried on the field, and an immense mound was raised over the grave. This mound has continued to stand at Marathon to the present day.

The field of Marathon.

The mound.

The battle of Marathon was one of those great events in the history of the human race which continue to attract, from age to age, the admiration of mankind. They who look upon war, in all its forms, as only the perpetration of an unnatural and atrocious crime, which rises to dignity and grandeur only by the very enormity of its guilt, can not but respect the courage, the energy, and the cool and determined resolution with which the little band of Greeks went forth to stop the torrent of foes which all the nations of a whole continent had combined to pour upon them. The field has been visited in every age by thousands of travelers, who have upon the spot offered their tribute of admiration to the ancient heroes that triumphed there. The plain is found now, as of old, overlooking the sea, and the mountains inland, towering above the plain. The mound, too, still remains, which was reared to consecrate the memory of the Greeks who fell. They who visit it stand and survey the now silent and solitary scene, and derive from the influence and spirit of the spot new strength and energy to meet the great difficulties and dangers of life which they themselves have to encounter. The Greeks themselves, of the present day, notwithstanding the many sources of discouragement and depression with which they have to contend, must feel at Marathon some rising spirit of emulation in contemplating the lofty mental powers and the undaunted spirit of their sires. Byron makes one of them sing,

Song of the Greek.

"The mountains look on Marathon,And Marathon looks on the sea;And musing there an hour alone,I dreamed that Greece might still be free;For, standing on the Persians' grave,I could not deem myself a slave."

Chapter XII.

The Death of Darius

B.C. 490-485

The Persian fleet sails southward.

The city of Athens and the plain of Marathon are situated upon a peninsula. The principal port by which the city was ordinarily approached was on the southern shore of the peninsula, though the Persians had landed on the northern side. Of course, in their retreat from the field of battle, they fled to the north. When they were beyond the reach of their enemies and fairly at sea, they were at first somewhat perplexed to determine what to do. Datis was extremely unwilling to return to Darius with the news of such a defeat. On the other hand, there seemed but little hope of any other result if he were to attempt a second landing.

Fate of Hippias.

Hippias, their Greek guide, was killed in the battle. He expected to be killed, for his mind, on the morning of the battle, was in a state of great despondency and dejection. Until that time he had felt a strong and confident expectation of success, but his feelings had then been very suddenly changed. His confidence had arisen from the influence of a dream, his dejection from a cause more frivolous still; so that he was equally irrational in his hope and in his despair.

Omens.

The dream and the sneeze.

Hippias falls in battle.

The omen which seemed to him to portend success to the enterprise in which he had undertaken to act as guide, was merely that he dreamed one night that he saw, and spent some time in company with, his mother. In attempting to interpret this dream in the morning, it seemed to him that Athens, his native city, was represented by his mother, and that the vision denoted that he was about to be restored to Athens again. He was extremely elated at this supernatural confirmation of his hopes, and would have gone into the battle certain of victory, had it not been that another circumstance occurred at the time of the landing to blast his hopes. He had, himself, the general charge of the disembarkation. He stationed the ships at their proper places near the shore, and formed the men upon the beach as they landed. While he was thus engaged, standing on the sand, he suddenly sneezed. He was an old man, and his teeth – those that remained – were loose. One of them was thrown out in the act of sneezing, and it fell into the sand. Hippias was alarmed at this occurrence, considering it a bad omen. He looked a long time for the tooth in vain, and then exclaimed that all was over. The joining of his tooth to his mother earth was the event to which his dream referred, and there was now no hope of any further fulfillment of it. He went on mechanically, after this, in marshaling his men and preparing for battle, but his mind was oppressed with gloomy forebodings. He acted, in consequence, feebly and with indecision; and when the Greeks explored the field on the morning after the battle, his body was found among the other mutilated and ghastly remains which covered the ground.

Movements of the Persian fleet.

The Persian fleet returns to Asia.

As the Persian fleet moved, therefore, along the coast of Attica, they had no longer their former guide. They were still, however, very reluctant to leave the country. They followed the shore of the peninsula until they came to the promontory of Sunium, which forms the southeastern extremity of it. They doubled this cape, and then followed the southern shore of the peninsula until they arrived at the point opposite to Athens on that side. In the mean time, however, the Spartan troops which had been sent for to aid the Athenians in the contest, but which had not arrived in time to take part in the battle, reached the ground; and the indications which the Persians observed, from the decks of their galleys, that the country was thoroughly aroused, and was every where ready to receive them, deterred them from making any further attempts to land. After lingering, therefore, a short time near the shore, the fleet directed its course again toward the coasts of Asia.

Anxiety of Datis.

The mind of Datis was necessarily very ill at ease. He dreaded the wrath of Darius; for despots are very prone to consider military failures as the worst of crimes. The expedition had not, however, been entirely a failure. Datis had conquered many of the Greek islands, and he had with him, on board his galleys, great numbers of prisoners, and a vast amount of plunder which he had obtained from them. Still, the greatest and most important of the objects which Darius had commissioned him to accomplish had been entirely defeated, and he felt, accordingly, no little anxiety in respect to the reception which he was to expect at Susa.

Datis finds a stolen statue.

One night he had a dream which greatly disturbed him. He awoke in the morning with an impression upon his mind, which he had derived from the dream, that some temple had been robbed by his soldiers in the course of his expedition, and that the sacrilegious booty which had been obtained was concealed somewhere in the fleet. He immediately ordered a careful search to be instituted, in which every ship was examined. At length they found, concealed in one of the galleys, a golden statue of Apollo. Datis inquired what city it had been taken from. They answered from Delium. Delium was on the coast of Attica, near the place where the Persians had landed, at the time of their advance on Marathon. Datis could not safely or conveniently go back there to restore it to its place. He determined, therefore, to deposit it at Delos for safe keeping, until it could be returned to its proper home.

Island of Delos.

Account of the sacred island.

Its present condition.

Delos was a small but very celebrated island near the center of the Ægean Sea, and but a short distance from the spot where the Persian fleet was lying when Datis made this discovery. It was a sacred island, devoted to religious rites, and all contention, and violence, and, so far as was possible, all suffering and death, were excluded from it. The sick were removed from it; the dead were not buried there; armed ships and armed men laid aside their hostility to each other when they approached it. Belligerent fleets rode at anchor, side by side, in peace, upon the smooth waters of its little port, and an enchanting picture of peace, tranquillity, and happiness was seen upon its shores. A large natural fountain, or spring, thirty feet in diameter, and inclosed partly by natural rocks and partly by an artificial wall, issued from the ground in the center of the island, and sent forth a beautiful and fertilizing rill into a rich and happy valley, through which it meandered, deviously, for several miles, seeking the sea. There was a large and populous city near the port, and the whole island was adorned with temples, palaces, colonnades, and other splendid architectural structures, which made it the admiration of all mankind. All this magnificence and beauty have, however, long since passed away. The island is now silent, deserted, and desolate, a dreary pasture, where cattle browse and feed, with stupid indifference, among the ancient ruins. Nothing living remains of the ancient scene of grandeur and beauty but the fountain. That still continues to pour up its clear and pellucid waters with a ceaseless and eternal flow.

It was to this Delos that Datis determined to restore the golden statue. He took it on board his own galley, and proceeded with it, himself, to the sacred island. He deposited it in the great temple of Apollo, charging the priests to convey it, as soon as a convenient opportunity should occur, to its proper destination at Delium.

The Persian fleet, after this business was disposed of, set sail again, and pursued its course toward the coasts of Asia, where at length the expedition landed in safety.

Disposition of the army.

Darius's reception of Datis.

The various divisions of the army were then distributed in the different provinces where they respectively belonged, and Datis commenced his march with the Persian portion of the troops, and with his prisoners and plunder, for Susa, feeling, however, very uncertain how he should be received on his arrival there. Despotic power is always capricious; and the character of Darius, which seems to have been naturally generous and kind, and was rendered cruel and tyrannical only through the influence of the position in which he had been placed, was continually presenting the most opposite and contradictory phases. The generous elements of it, fortunately for Datis, seemed to be in the ascendency when the remnant of the Persian army arrived at Susa. Darius received the returning general without anger, and even treated the prisoners with humanity.

Subsequent history of Miltiades.

His great popularity.

Before finally leaving the subject of this celebrated invasion, which was brought to an end in so remarkable a manner by the great battle of Marathon, it may be well to relate the extraordinary circumstances which attended the subsequent history of Miltiades, the great commander in that battle on the Greek side. Before the conflict, he seems to have had no official superiority over the other generals, but, by the resolute decision with which he urged the plan of giving the Persians battle, and the confidence and courage which he manifested in expressing his readiness to take the responsibility of the measure, he placed himself virtually at the head of the Greek command. The rest of the officers acquiesced in his pre-eminence, and, waiving their claims to an equal share of the authority, they allowed him to go forward and direct the operations of the day. If the day had been lost, Miltiades, even though he had escaped death upon the field, would have been totally and irretrievably ruined; but as it was won, the result of the transaction was that he was raised to the highest pinnacle of glory and renown.