raise the signal as soon as Miltiades and the other generals had left Athens. The time needed for completing their preparations may have prevented their doing this: but they could scarcely have formed a bolder or more sagacious plan for furthering the interests of Hippias and Dareios than that of bringing down on the city an overwhelming Persian force, so soon as the main body of the Athenians had set out on their way to the field of Marathon. If then we may conclude that the raising of the shield was unavoidably delayed for some few hours or perhaps for a day, that during this time Miltiades was able to complete his march, to engage the Persian army and to defeat them, and that then he hurried back so rapidly as to reach Athens before the Persians could get round Sounion, the series of events becomes clear and coherent.

For Miltiades the battle, in which he had won an imperishable name, laid open a path which led to a terrible disaster. Never before had any one man so fixed on himself the eyes of all Athenian citizens; and the confidence thus inspired in them he sought to turn to account by an expedition which, he said, would make them rich for ever. Nothing more would he say. It was not for them to ask whither he meant to lead them: all that they had to do was to furnish ships and men. These they therefore gave, and Miltiades sailed to Paros, an island lying a few miles to the west of Naxos, and, laying siege to the city, demanded a hundred talents under the threat that he would destroy the place in case of refusal. But the Parians put him off under various pretences, until by working diligently at night they had so strengthened their walls as to be able to set him at defiance. The siege therefore went on, and went on to no purpose. This is all that we can be said to know of the affair, beyond the fact that after a blockade of six-and-twenty days Miltiades was obliged to return to Athens with his fleet, having utterly failed of attaining his object, and with his thigh, or, as some said, his knee, severely strained. No sooner had he reached Athens than the indignation of the people who professed to have been deceived and cheated by him found utterance in a capital charge. Miltiades was carried on a bed into the presence of his judges, before whom, as the gangrene of his wound prevented him from speaking, his friends made for him the best defence, or rather perhaps offered the best excuses, that they could. It was urged that a fine of fifty talents, which would perhaps suffice also to meet the expenses of the expedition,

might be an adequate punishment for the great general but for whom Athens might now have been the seat of a Persian satrapy. This penalty was chosen in place of that of death. Miltiades died in disgrace, and the citizens whom he wished to enrich recovered from his family half the sum which he had demanded from the Parians.

CHAPTER V.

THE INVASION AND FLIGHT OF XERXES.

FROM the battle-field of Marathon we are carried back to the palace at Sousa and the closing days of king Dareios. The harder experience of his earlier years had taught Dareios some useful lessons of sobriety; but his place was now to be filled by his son Xerxes, the spoilt child of luxury and splendour (486 B.c.). During two years Xerxes made ready, we are told, not for the invasion of Europe, but for the re-conquest of Egypt; and at the end of that time he marched into that devoted land, and having riveted more tightly the fetters which had been forged for it by Kambyses, left it under the rule of his brother Achaimenes. But before Xerxes set out on his Egyptian journey, Mardonios, of whom during the reign of Dareios we lose sight altogether after his Makedonian failure, had urged upon him the paramount obligation of chastising Athens, and thus of getting a footing on a continent which, for its beauty, its fertility, and its vast resources, ought to be the possession of the great king alone. The Peisistratidai also brought forward an Athenian soothsayer, who was as ready to promise victory to Xerxes as the prophets of Baal were to cheat Ahab with dreams of success at Ramoth-gilead; and the combined effect of the predictions of the soothsayer and the advice of the Peisistratidai constrained Xerxes, if we believe the story, to summon a council of his nobles and to lay before them his whole mind. He reminded them, we are told, that the Persian power could stand only so long as it remained aggressive. He insisted that no other European tribes or nations could, for strength of will or keenness of mind or readiness in resource, be compared with the Hellenes: and he argued that if these could be conquered, there was nothing to stay his triumphant progress until he had made his empire commensurate with the bounds of the Ether itself. The deci

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siveness of this speech seems to leave little room for discussion: but Mardonios is said to have regarded it as a mere invitation to the assembled chiefs to express their independent opinions, and he takes it up accordingly as an admission of faint-heartedness on the part of Xerxes.

The dead silence which followed the speech of Mardonios remained unbroken until Artabanos, a brother of Dareios and uncle of Xerxes, ventured to urge the need of circumspection. Every forest was eloquent with its warnings. Everywhere the tree which would not bend to the blast was snapped or uprooted, while the pliant sapling escaped. No sooner had Artabanos sat down than Xerxes, bursting into rage, swore by the whole string of his ancestors that Artabanos should remain at Sousa with the women and children. His language, however, was more resolute than his mind. During the night which followed the council, the dream-god standing over his couch warned him that it would be at his peril if he gave up the enterprise. In the morning Xerxes tells his nobles that they may remain at home, since he had no

further intention of invading Greece. A second appearance of

the dream-god first to the king and then to Artabanos brings back things to their old position, and the work of preparation is vigorously resumed.

The demoniac impulse (so Herodotos phrases it) had now driven Xerxes to the point from which there was no retreating. The whole strength of the empire was to be lavished on one supreme effort. The expedition of Datis which had ended with the disaster of Marathon was strictly a maritime invasion. It was the design of Xerxes to overwhelm the Greeks by vast masses poured into their country by land, while a fleet hugely larger than that of Datis should support them by sea. For the passage of the army across the Bosporos and the Strymon wooden bridges were constructed: to save his fleet from the catastrophe which befell that of Mardonios orders were given, it is said, to convert Athos into an island by a canal which might enable the ships to avoid its terrible rocks. At length the host set out from Sousa in a stream which doubtless gathered volume as it went along. The several nations met at Kritalla in Kappadokia, and having crossed the Halys marched to Kelainai.

On reaching Sardeis Xerxes sent heralds to all the cities of Hellas except Athens and Sparta. But before his host should cross into Europe, a stream of blood was to flow on the shores

of the Hellespont. In making their bridges of boats the Phenicians had used hempen ropes, the Egyptians ropes made from the fibre of papyrus. A severe storm destroyed the work of both. Xerxes, it is said, ordered the engineers of the bridge to be beheaded, and, sitting in judgement on the Hellespont itself, passed sentence that it should receive three hundred lashes of the scourge, and that it should at the same time be branded by men who were bidden to inform it that, whatever it might choose to do, the king would cross over it, and that it deserved no sacrifice at any human hands, as being a treacherous and bitter water (480 B.C.).

The march of Xerxes from Sardeis is presented to us in a series of impressive pictures. First came the baggage train with the beasts of burden, followed by half the force supplied by the tributary nations,—all in confused masses; behind these, after a definite interval, thousand carefully picked Persian horsemen, then a thousand spear-bearers with their lance-heads turned towards the ground. These were followed by ten of the sacred horses, magnificently caparisoned, from the Median plains of Nisa, after which, drawn by eight white horses, came the sacred chariot of Ormuzd, on which no mortal might place his foot, the reins of the horses being held by the charioteer who walked by its side. Then on a car drawn by Nisaian steeds came the monarch himself, followed first by a thousand of the noblest Persians, then by a thousand Persian horsemen, and ten thousand picked Persian infantry with golden and silver apples or pomegranates attached to the reverse end of their spears. Lastly came a myriad of Persian cavalry. Behind these, after an interval equal to that which separated the vanguard from the household troops, followed the remaining half of the disorderly rabble which Eastern kings are pleased to regard as good military material. The line of march led them across the Kaïkos by Atarneus to Karinê, whence they journeyed on to the Ilian land. He was now in that kingdom in which, when Priam reigned, his enemies had done deadly harm. Here, therefore, on the lofty Pergamos he is said to have sacrificed a thousand cows to Athenaia Ilias, while the Magians poured libations to the heroes. At Abydos the great king had the delight of sitting on the lofty throne of white stones which had been built for him. Beneath him his vast fleet was engaged in a mimic battle in which the Phenicians of Sidon were the victors;

and Xerxes, surveying the hosts which he had brought together, first pronounced himself the happiest of men, and then presently wept. In the simple story of Herodotos, Xerxes answers the wondering question of Artabanos by confessing that the tears found their way into his eyes because at the end of a hundred years not one of all this grand host should remain alive. 'Nay,' said Artabanos, 'there are more woful things than this. The sorrows that come upon us make our short life seem long, and therefore from so much wretchedness death becomes the best refuge.' 'Let us speak no more of mortal life,' answered Xerxes; 'it is even as thou sayest. Yet let us not bring evil things to mind, when we have a good work in our hands. But tell me this. If thou hadst not seen the vision clearly, wouldst thou have kept thine own counsel, or wouldst thou have changed? Tell me the truth.' Artabanos could not but express his hope that all things might go as the king desired: but he added, "I am still full of care and anxious, because I see that two very mighty things are most hostile to thee.' 'What may these things be?' asked the king, 'will the army of the Greeks be more in number than mine, or will our ships be fewer than theirs? for, if it be so, we will quickly bring yet another host together.' 'Nay,' answered Artabanos, 'to make the host larger is to make these two things worse; and these are the land and the sea. The sea has no harbour which, if a storm come, can shelter so many ships; and we need not merely one haven but many along the whole coast. The land too is hostile; and if nothing resist thee, it becomes yet more hurtful, the further that we may go, for men are never satisfied with good fortune, and so the length of the journey must at last bring about a famine.' 'You say well,' answered Xerxes, 'yet of what use is it to count up all these things? for, if we were always to be weighing every chance, we should never do anything at all. It is better to be bold and to suffer half the evil than by fearing all things to avoid all suffering. See how great is the power of the Persians. the kings who have gone before me had followed counsellors like thee, it would never have been what it is now. They faced the danger and gained this dominion; and we, like them, go forth at the fairest season of the year; and when we have subdued all Europe, we shall return home, having been vexed neither by famine nor by any other evil.' But Artabanos was not convinced; and warning the king that weighty matters need many words, he

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