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at enlarging it. The dominions bequeathed him by his predecessors comprised many countries, united under one government only by their subjection to the will and the arbitrary exactions of a common ruler; but Daríus first organized them into one empire, by dividing the whole into twenty satrapies or provinces, and assigning to each its proper share in the burdens of government.

37. Under Daríus the Persian empire had now attained its greatest extent, embracing, in Asia, all that, at a later period, was contained in Persia proper and Turkey; in Africa, taking in Egypt as far as Nubia, and the coast of the Mediterranean as far as Barca; and in Europe, part of Thrace and Macedonia-thus stretching from the Æ' gean Sea to the Indus, and from the plains of Tartary' to the cataracts of the Nile. Such was the empire against whose united power a few Grecian communities were to contend for the preservation of their very name and existence. The results of the contest may be learned from the following chapter. (See Map No. VII.)

1. Tartary is a name of modern origin, applied to that extensive portion of Central Asia which extends eastward from the Caspian Sea to the Pacific Ocean.

CHAP. IV.]

GRECIAN HISTORY.

CHAPTER IV.

THE AUTHENTIC PERIOD OF GRECIAN HISTORY.

SECTION I.

GRECIAN HISTORY FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE FIRST WAR WITH PERSIA TO THE
TABLISHMENT OF PHILIP ON THE THRONE OF MACEDON:

490 TO 360 B. C. 130 YEARS.

ANALYSIS. FIRST PERSIAN WAR. 1. Preparations of Darius for the conquest of Greece. Mardonius. Destruction of the Persian fleet. [Mount A'thos.] Return of Mardónius.-2. ReIslands submit. newed preparations of Darius. Heralds sent to Greece. Their treatment by the Athenians and Spartans. The Æginétans. [Ægina.]-3. Persian fleet sails for Greece. Eubœe'a. Persians at Mar' athon. The Plata' ans aid the Athenians. Spartans absent. [Marathon. Plata' a.]-4. The Athenian army. How commanded.--5. Battle of Mar' athon. Banish-6. Remarks on the battle. Legends of the battle.-7. The war terminated. Subsequent Their characters. history of Miltiades. [Paros.] Themis' tocles and Aristides. ment of the latter. [Ostracism.]-9. Death of Darius. SECOND PERSIAN WAR. Xerxes invades Greece. Opposed by Leon' idas. [Thermop' ylæ.] Anecdote of Dien' eces.-10. Treachery. Leon' idas dismisses his allies. Self-devotion of the Greeks.-11. Eurytus and Aristodémus. -12. The Athenians desert Athens, which is burned by the enemy. [Trezéne.] The Greeks fortify the Corinthian Isthmus.-13. The Persian fleet at Sal' amis. Eurybiades, Themis' tocles, and Aristides.-14. Battle of Sal' amis. Flight of Xerxes. [Hel' lespont.] Battle of Platæ'a -of Myc' ale. [Myc' ale.] Death of Xerxes.-15. Athens rebuilt. Banishment of Themistocles. Cimon and Pausanias. The Persian dependencies. Iónian revolt. [Cy' prus. Byzan' tium.]-16. Final peace with Persia.-17. Dissensions among the Grecian States. Pericles. Jealousy of Sparta, and growing power of Athens.-18. Power and character of Sparta. Earthquake at Sparta. Revolt of the Hélots. THIRD MESSE'NIAN WAR. Migration of the Messenians.-19. Athenians defeated at Tan' agra. [Tan' agra.] Subsequent victory gained by the Athenians.

20. Causes which opened the FIRST PELOPONNE' SIAN WAR. [Corcy ra. Potidæ' a.]-21. The Spartan army ravages At' tica. The Athenian navy desolates the coast of the Peloponnésus. [Meg' ara.]-22. Second invasion of At' tica. The plague at Athens, and death of Pericles. Potidæ' a surrenders to Athens, and Plate' a to Sparta.-23. The peace of Nicias. Pretexts for renewing the struggle.-24. Character of Alcibiades. His artifices. Reduction of Mélos. [Mélos.]-25. THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION. Its object. [Sicily. Syracuse.] Revolt and flight of Alcibiades.-26. Operations of Nicias, and disastrous result of the expedition.

27. SECOND PELOPONNE' SIAN WAR. Revolt of the Athenian allies. Intrigues of Alcibiades. Revolution at Athens. [Erėtria Cys' icus.] Return of Alcibiades.-28. He is again banished. The affairs of Sparta are retrieved by Lysan' der. Cyrus the Persian.-29. The Athenians are defeated at Æ' gos-Pot' amos. Treatment of the prisoners.-30. Disastrous state of Athenian affairs. Submission of Athens, and close of the war.-31. Change of government at Athens. The Thirty Tyrants overthrown. The rule of the democracy restored.-32. Character, accusation, and death of Soc' rates.-33. The designs of Cyrus the Persian. He is aided by the Greeks, -34. Result of his expedition.-35. Famous retreat of the Ten Thousand.-36. The Creek cities of Asia are involved in a war with Persia. The THIRD PELOPONNE' SIAN WAR. [Coronéa.] The peace of Antal' cidas. [Im' brus, Lem' nos, and Sey' rus.]-37. The designs of the Persian king promoted by the jealousy of the Greeks. Athens and Sparta-how affected by the peace. -38. Sparta is involved in new wars. War with Mantinéa. With Olyn' thus. [Mantinéa.

Olyn' thus.] Seizure of the Theban citadel.-39. The political morality of the Spartans.—40. The Theban citadel recovered. Pelop' idas and Epaminon' das. Events of the Theban war. [Teg' yra. Leuc' tra.]-41. The SECOND SACRED WAR. [First Sacred War.] Causes of the Second Sacred War. [Phócis.]-42. The parties to the war. [Locrians.] Cruelties practised. Philip of Macedon.

I. FIRST PER

1. After the subjugation of the Ionian cities of Asia Minor, Daríus made active preparations for the conquest of all Greece. A mighty armament was fitted out, and intrusted to the command SIAN WAR. of his son-in-law Mardónius, who, leading the land force in person through Thrace and Macedonia, succeeded, after being once routed by a night attack,a in subduing those countries; but the Persian fleet, which was designed to sweep the islands of the E' gean, was checked in its progress by a violent storm which it encountered off Mount A' thos', and which was thought to have destroyed three hundred vessels and twenty thousand lives. Weakened by these disasters, Mardónius abruptly terminated the campaign and returned to Asia.

2. Daríus soon renewed his preparations for the invasion of Greece, and, while his forces were assembling, sent heralds through the Grecian cities, demanding earth and water, as tokens of submission. The smaller States, intimidated by his power, submitted;b but Athens and Sparta haughtily rejected the demands of the eastern monarch, and put his heralds to death with cruel mockery, throwing one into a pit and another into a well, and bidding them take thence their earth and water. The Spartans threatened to make war upon the Æginétans for having basely submitted to the power of Persia, and compelled them to send hostages to Athens.c

1. Mount A' thos is a lofty summit, more than six thousand feet high, on the most eastern of three narrow peninsulas which extend from Macedonia into the ' gean sea. The peninsula which is about twenty-five miles in longth by about four in breadth, has long been occupied in modern times by a number of monks of the Greek Church, who live in a kind of fortified monasteries, about twenty in number. No females are admitted within this peninsula, whose modern name, derived from its supposed sanctity, is Monte Santo, "sacred mountain." (Map No. I.)

2. Egina, (now Egina or Engia,) was an island containing about fifty square miles, in the centre of the Saron' ic Gulf, (now Gulf of Athens,) between Attica and Argolis, and sixteen miles south-west from Athens. The remains of a temple of Jupiter in the northern part of the island are among the most interesting of the Grecian ruins. Of its thirty-six columns, twenty-five were recently standing. (Map No. I.)

a. By the Brygi, a Thracian tribe. Mardonius wounded

b. Among them, probably, the Thebans and Thessalians; also most of the islands, but not Euboea and Nax' os. The Persians desolated Naxos on their way across the E' gean.

c. At this time Thebes and Ægina had been at war with Athens fourteen years. Ar gos, which had contested with Sparta the supremacy of Greece, had recently been subdued; and Sparta was acknowledged to be the head of the political union of Greece against the Persians. Grote's Greece, iv. 311-328.

3. In the third year after the first disastrous campaign, a Persian fleet of six hundred ships, conveying an army of a hundred and twenty thousand men, commanded by the generals Dátis and Artapher' nes, and guided by the exiled tyrant and traitor Hip' pias, directed its course towards the Grecian shores. (B. C. 490.) Several islands of the 'gean submitted without a struggle; Euboea was punished for the aid it had given the Iónians in their rebellion; and without farther opposition the Persian host advanced to the plains of Mar' athon,' within twenty miles of Athens. The Athenians probably called on the Plata' ans as well as the Spartans for aid:the former sent their entire force of a thousand men; but the latter, influenced by jealousy or superstition, refused to send their proffered aid before the full of the moon.

4. In this extremity the Athenian army, numbering only ten thousand men, and commanded by ten generals, marched against the enemy. Five of the ten generals had been afraid to hazard a battle, but the arguments of Miltiades, one of their number, finally prevailed upon the polemarch Callim' achus to give his casting vote in favor of fighting. The ten generals were to command the whole army successively, each for a day. Those who had seconded the advice of Miltíades were willing to resign their turns to him, but he waited till his own day arrived, when he drew up the little army in order of battle.

1. Mar' athon, which still retains its ancient name, is a small town of Attica, twenty miles northeast from Athens, and about three miles from the sea-coast, or Bay of Marathon. The plain in which the battle was fought is about five miles in length and two in breadth, inclosed on the land side by steep slopes descending from the higher ridges of Pentel' icus and Páros, and divided into two unequal parts by a small stream which falls into the Bay. Towards the middle of the plain may still be seen a mound of earth, twenty-five feet in height, which was raised over the bodies of the Athenians who fell in the battle. In the marsh near the sea. coast, also, the remains of trophies and marble monuments are still visible. The names of the one hundred and ninety-two Athenians who were slain were inscribed on ten pillars erected on the battle-field. (Map No. I.)

2. Plata a, a city of Boeotia, now wholly in ruins, was situated on the northern side of the Citæ ron mountains, seven miles south from Thebes. This city has acquired an immortality of renown from its having given its name to the great battle fought in its vicinity in the year 479 B. C. between the Persians under Mardonius, and the Greeks under Pausanias the Spartan. (See p. 80.) From the tenth of the spoils taken from the Persians on that occasion, and presented to the shrine of Delphi, a golden tripod was made, supported by a brazen pillar resembling three serpents twined together. This identical brazen pillar may still be seen in the Hippodrome of Constantinople. (Map No. I.)

a. Thirwall says: "It is probable that they summoned the Plata' ans." Grote says: "We are not told that they had been invited."

b. Herod' otus describes this debate as having occurred at Marathon, after the Greeks had taken post in sight of the Persians; while Cornelius Nepos says it occurred before the army left Athens. Thirwall appears to follow the former: Grote declares his preference for the latter, as the most reasonable.

5. The Persians were extended in a line across the middle of the plain, having their best troops in the centre. The Athenians were drawn up in a line opposite, but having their main strength in the extreme wings of their army. The Greeks made the attack, and, as had been foreseen by Miltiades, their centre was soon broken, while the extremities of the enemy's line, made up of motley and undisciplined bands of all nations, were routed, and driven towards the shore, and into the adjoining morasses. Hastily concentrating his two wings, Miltiades next directed their united force against the flanks of the Persian centre, which, deeming itself victorious, was taken completely by surprise. In a few minutes victory decided in favor of the Greeks. The Persians fled in disorder to their ships; but many perished in the marshes; the shore was strewn with their dead,—and seven of their ships were destroyed. The loss of the Persians was 6,400 that of the Athenians, not including the Plata' ans, only 192.

6. Such was the famous battle of Mar' athon; but the glory of the victory is not to be measured wholly by the disparity of the numbers engaged, when compared with the result. The Persians were strong in the terror of their name, and in the renown of their conquests; and it required a most heroic resolution in the Athenians to face a danger which they had not yet learned to despise. The victory was viewed by the people as a deliverance vouchsafed to the Grecians by the gods themselves: the marvellous legends of the battle attributed to the heroes prodigies of valor; and represented Théseus and Her' cules as sharing in the fight, and dealing death to the flying barbarians; while to this day the peasant believes the field of Mar' athon to be haunted with spectral warriors, whose shouts are heard at midnight, borne on the wind, and rising above the din of battle.

7. The victory obtained by the Greeks at Mar' athon terminated the first war with Persia. Soon after the Persian defeat, Miltiades, who at first received all the honors which a grateful people could bestow, experienced a fate which casts a melancholy gloom over his history. Being unfortunate in an expedition which he led against Páros,' and which he induced the Athenians to intrust to him, without informing them of its destination, he was accused of having deceived

1. Paros is an island of the E' gean sea, of the group of the Cyc' lades, about seventy-five miles south-east from Attica. It is about twelve miles in length by eight in breadth, rugged and uneven, but generally very fertile. Páros was famous in antiquity for its marble, although that obtained from Mount Pentel' icus in Attica was of the purest white. In modern times Páros has become distinguished for the discovery there of the celebrated "Parian or Arundelian Chronicle," cut in a marble slab, and purporting to be a chronological account of Grecian

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