Darius the Great

Conspiracy to destroy Labda's child.

They accordingly appointed ten of their number to go to the place where Eetion lived and kill the child. The method which they were to adopt was this: They were to ask to see the infant on their arrival at the house, and then it was agreed that whichever of the ten it was to whom the babe was handed, he should dash it down upon the stone floor with all his force, by which means it would, as they supposed, certainly be killed.

Its failure.

This plan being arranged, the men went to the house, inquired, with hypocritical civility, after the health of the mother, and desired to see the child. It was accordingly brought to them. The mother put it into the hands of one of the conspirators, and the babe looked up into his face and smiled. This mute expression of defenseless and confiding innocence touched the murderer's heart. He could not be such a monster as to dash such an image of trusting and happy helplessness upon the stones. He looked upon the child, and then gave it into the hands of the one next to him, and he gave it to the next, and thus it passed through the hands of all the ten. No one was found stern and determined enough to murder it, and at last they gave the babe back to its mother and went away.

The child secreted.

Fulfillment of the oracle.

The sequel of this story was, that the conspirators, when they reached the gate, stopped to consult together, and after many mutual criminations and recriminations, each impugning the courage and resolution of the rest, and all joining in special condemnation of the man to whom the child had at first been given, they went back again, determined, in some way or other, to accomplish their purpose. But Labda had, in the mean time, been alarmed at their extraordinary behavior, and had listened, when they stopped at the gate, to hear their conversation. She hastily hid the babe in a corn measure; and the conspirators, after looking in every part of the house in vain, gave up the search, supposing that their intended victim had been hastily sent away. They went home, and not being willing to acknowledge that their resolution had failed at the time of trial, they agreed to say that their undertaking had succeeded, and that the child had been destroyed. The babe lived, however, and grew up to manhood, and then, in fulfillment of the prediction announced by the oracle, he headed a rebellion against the nobles, deposed them from their power, and reigned in their stead.

Hippias of Athens.

His barbarous cruelty.

Hippias among the Persians.

One of the worst and most reckless of the Greek tyrants of whom we have been speaking was Hippias of Athens. His father, Pisistratus, had been hated all his life for his cruelties and his crimes; and when he died, leaving two sons, Hippias and Hipparchus, a conspiracy was formed to kill the sons, and thus put an end to the dynasty. Hipparchus was killed, but Hippias escaped the danger, and seized the government himself alone. He began to exercise his power in the most cruel and wanton manner, partly under the influence of resentment and passion, and partly because he thought his proper policy was to strike terror into the hearts of the people as a means of retaining his dominion. One of the conspirators by whom his brother had been slain, accused Hippias's warmest and best friends as his accomplices in that deed, in order to revenge himself on Hippias by inducing him to destroy his own adherents and supporters. Hippias fell into the snare; he condemned to death all whom the conspirator accused, and his reckless soldiers executed his friends and foes together. When any protested their innocence, he put them to the torture to make them confess their guilt. Such indiscriminate cruelty only had the effect to league the whole population of Athens against the perpetrator of it. There was at length a general insurrection against him, and he was dethroned. He made his escape to Sardis, and there tendered his services to Artaphernes, offering to conduct the Persian armies to Greece, and aid them in getting possession of the country, on condition that, if they succeeded, the Persians would make him the governor of Athens. Artaphernes made known these offers to Darius, and they were eagerly accepted. It was, however, very impolitic to accept them. The aid which the invaders could derive from the services of such a guide, were far more than counterbalanced by the influence which his defection and the espousal of his cause by the Persians would produce in Greece. It banded the Athenians and their allies together in the most enthusiastic and determined spirit of resistance, against a man who had now added the baseness of treason to the wanton wickedness of tyranny.

Wars between the Grecian states.

Quarrel between Athens and Ægina.

Besides these internal dissensions between the people of the several Grecian states and their kings, there were contests between one state and another, which Darius proposed to take advantage of in his attempts to conquer the country. There was one such war in particular, between Athens and the island of Ægina, on the effects of which, in aiding him in his operations against the Athenians, Darius placed great reliance. Ægina was a large and populous island not far from Athens. In accounting for the origin of the quarrel between the two states, the Greek historians relate the following marvelous story:

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.