ably falls short of the truth, and certainly does not take the slaves into account, who served, most likely, as light-armed troops. When all these allowances are made, the numerical inequality will be reduced to a proportion of five

to one.

This, however, is not the standard by which the glory of this memorable victory must be measured. The Persians were strong, not only in numbers, but in the terror of their name, in the renown of their conquests, in the recollection of the flight from Sardis, in the recent destruction of Eretria. If Miltiades deserves praise for having perceived the hollowness of these advantages, and if he balanced them by the superiority of his military skill, the Athenians also earned their fame by the boldness with which they faced a danger which they could not despise. When they began their onset, the first, Herodotus says, in which a Grecian army advanced to a charge running, they had all their experience of the enemy's weakness still to gain. Notwithstanding the arguments of Aristagoras, the very sight of the Median garb, as we learn from the same authority, was still terrible to the European Greeks. That these fears were stong, though their ground was imaginary, and that they required a heroic resolution to master them, is clear from the marvellous light in which the victory was viewed by the people as a deliverance which could not have been effected by their own arm without the friendly interposition of a higher power. Hence the block of marble, which Datis was said to have brought for a trophy, was gratefully wrought into a statue of Nemesis.* Hence it appeared no less credible that the courier Phidippides should have heard the cheering voice of Pan in the mountains, than that, when he had told the glad tidings to the magistrates at Athens, he should have dropped down dead from joy. Hence the wonderful legends of the battle: the valiant Epizelus is blinded in the heat of the fight by the apparition of a warrior, whose shield is covered by his flowing beard; the local heroes are active in the combat, and in the picture that represented it on the walls of the Painted Porch, Theseus appeared rising out of the ground with Marathon and Hercules, and the hero Echetlus, armed with a ploughshare, was seen dealing death among the flying barbarians; hence, to this day, the field of Marathon is believed to be haunted, as in the time of Pausanias, with spectral warriors, and the shepherds are alarmed in the night by their shouts and by the neighing of their steeds.

des had been removed beyond the reach of hatred and envy, his singular deserts were acknowledged by a separate tomb on the same ground. He and the polemarch Callimachus were alone distinguished from the other combatants in the Painted Porch, and stood apart, with the tutelary gods and heroes.

The monuments, the trophies, the votive offerings, the processions, the pictures and sculptures, the songs, and the panegyric harangues that celebrated the victory, not only proved, but, in part, made its importance. They kept alive the remembrance of a deed which had first taught the Athenian people to know its own strength, by measuring it with the power which had subdued the greater part of the known world. The consciousness thus awakened fixed its character, its station, and its destiny; it was the spring of its later great actions and ambitious enterprises. With respect to these remote consequences, the absence of the Spartans was a momentous event. They came to Athens while the field was still strewed with the dead; they had marched with the speed of men who wished to repair a delay which neither law nor prejudice could wholly justify, even in their own eyes; yet their force amounted to no more than 2000 men: a number so small that it lends some colour to a tradition which rests only on the authority of Plato, the slightest of all on such points, that they had been occupied in suppressing some insurrection in Messenia. Though too late to share the glory of the day, they desired to see the field, and the renowned barbarians who, for the first time, had been vanquished there they went to Marathon, beheld, praised the Athenians for their courage, and returned home.

The new spirit which the victory infused into the conquerors appeared almost immediately in an occurrence which closed the career of Miltiades. The fear of the Persians was no sooner removed than he began to rouse his countrymen to plans of aggression and conquest. He easily obtained from them a fleet of seventy ships, which they placed at his command without even knowing towards what object he would direct the expedition, but satisfied with his assurances that it would enrich them. He secretly designed to attack the island of Paros, where he had a private enemy, who had once injured his credit with the Persians; it had afforded a pretext for his revenge, by sending a trireme with the armament under Datis : probably most of the other adjacent islands had been guilty of the same offence; but he contented And, therefore, the Athenians were only just himself with ravaging their fields, while he laid to their own merits in the extraordinary hon-regular siege to the town of Paros. It was at ours they paid to the true heroes of Marathon, and in the monuments by which they endeavoured to perpetuate their triumph. The slain enemies were committed to an obscure grave; but on the field which they had made holy ground, the Athenians who had fallen for their country were gathered together under a stately sepulchre, adorned with ten pillars, on which their names were inscribed according to their tribes. Another barrow was consecrated to the Platrans and the slaves; and when Miltia

It appears, from the observation of intelligent judges (Unedited Antiquities of Attica, p. 43), that this celebrated

-statue was not of Parian, but of Pentelic marble.

this time one of the most flourishing among the Cyclades : Miltiades demanded a heavy penalty: the Parians, instead of complying, kept strengthening their walls, and baffled all his attacks, till, despairing of success, he is said to have descended to superstitious arts, and to have received a dangerous hurt in his knee or hip, as he attempted to penetrate into a sacred enclosure. This compelled him to return without fulfilling the promises by which he had induced the people to fit out the fleet. His enemies took advantage of the irritation produced in the public mind by this disappointment, and Xanthippus, son of Ariphron, the chief of the

brought to Darius, he was satisfied with planting them in a part of his own domain, in the Cissian village of Ardericca. But his anger was doubly inflamed against Athens by the event of Marathon, which did not suggest to him any wholesome warning; the conclusion he drew from it was, that his power had been defied with impunity merely because it had not been fully exerted. Now, therefore, he resolved that the insolent people which had invaded his territories, violated the persons of his messengers, and driven his generals to a shameful

rival house of the Alemæonids, brought a capi- | its ruin; and when the captive Eretrians were tal charge against him for having deceived the people. A gangrene had begun in his injured limb; and, unable to defend his own cause, he was brought on a couch into the court, where his brother Tisagoras pleaded for him before the people, which sat at once as judge and as sovereign. As judge, it condemned him; as sovereign, on the ground of his services at Marathon and Lemnos, it commuted the capital penalty for a fine of fifty talents. As he could not immediately raise this sum, he was cast into prison, where he soon after died of his sore. Such a sentence, passed under such circum-flight, should feel the whole weight of his arm. stances, and so harshly exacted by an absolute A year had been spent in the preparations for monarch from a victorious general to whom he the last campaign; those he now set on foot had owed the safety or the honour of his crown, were on a vast scale, and demanded a longer would commonly be deemed sufficient to brand time. Every nation that owned his sway was him with the reproach of ingratitude; and those called on to contribute to the new armament who are disposed to view the proceedings of much more largely than before, and to send the popular governments in the worst light have flower of its warriors, such as were fit to meet not failed to apply this name to the conduct of the Greeks in the field, as well as an extraordithe Athenian people towards Miltiades. Oth-nary supply, according to its means, of ships or ers, who have judged of it more mildly, have horses, provisions and stores. For three years considered it only as an ordinary example of all Asia was kept in a continual stir;* in the popular levity, which changes its favourites as fourth Darius was distracted by other cares— hastily as it adopts them, and is easily persua- by a quarrel in his family, and by an insurrecded to consign the same man to a dungeon tion in Egypt. Two of his sons, Artabazanes, whom, but the day before, it had exalted to the the eldest, born to him in his private station, skies. And certainly, as in general it cannot and Xerxes, his first by Atossa, the daughter of be denied that men are not more exempt from Cyrus, whom he had married after he came to human passions and frailties when they act in the throne, disputed the succession: the eldest great bodies than when alone, so, when we re-grounded his claim on the common law of inflect on the rash cupidity and blind credulity heritance, the younger on his descent from the that mark the beginning of the transaction just founder of the monarchy. Demaratus, the exdescribed, it is impossible to look for calm wis-iled king of Sparta, aided Xerxes with his coundom or severe justice in its progress and its termination. So far as Miltiades fell a victim to the arts of an adverse faction which misled his judges, we may pity him without finding them guilty even of inconstancy or caprice; and we may think that they made amends for the involuntary wrong they had done him by the honours with which they afterward showed their sense of his merit. But how far they are liable to the charge of ingratitude must depend on their view of the obligation they had incurred. Darius might well think that the benefit he had received from Histiæus was so great that it could scarcely be effaced by any subsequent of fence. But Miltiades was not, in such a sense, the benefactor of the Athenians: if they conceived that nothing he had done for them ought to raise him above the laws-if they even thought that his services had been sufficiently rewarded by the station which enabled him to perform them and by the glory he reaped from them, they were not ungrateful or unjust; and if Miltiades thought otherwise, he had not learn-ence which Darius had gained in that period of ed to live in a free state.

CHAPTER XV.

sels, and suggested to him another argument, drawn from the Spartan rule of succession, by which a son born after the accession of a king was preferred to his elder brother. Darius decided in his favour, and declared him his heir; swayed, perhaps, much more by the influence of Atossa, which was always great with him, than by reason or usage. In the following year, before he had ended his preparations against Egypt and Attica, he died, and Xerxes mounted the throne (B.C. 485).

Thus the Persian sceptre passed from the hands of a prince who had acquired it by his boldness and prudence, to one born in the palace, the favourite son of the favourite queen, who had been accustomed from his infancy to regard the kingdom as his inheritance, perhaps to think that the blood of Cyrus which flowed in his veins raised him above his father. Bred up in the pompous luxury of the Persian court, among slaves and women, a mark for their flattery and intrigues, he had none of the experi

his life when Syloson's cloak was a welcome present. He was probably inferior to his father in ability; but the difference between them in fortune and education seems to have left more traces in their history than any disparity of naAmbition was not the prominent feature

ture.

FROM THE BATTLE OF MARATHON TO THE BATTLE in the character of Xerxes; and had he follow

OF SALAMIS.

THE failure of the expedition led by Datis and Artaphernes in the invasion of Attica was poorly compensated by their success against Eretria; the insult it had offered to the majesty of the Persian Empire was sufficiently avenged by

ed his unbiased inclination, he would perhaps have been content to turn the preparations of Darius against the revolted Egyptians, and have abandoned the expedition against Greece. to

and to scare away all opposition, but also, and perhaps principally, to set his whole enormous power in magnificent array, that he might enjoy the sight of it himself, and display it to the admiration of the world. For four years longer Asia was still kept in restless turmoil; no less time was needed to provide the means of subsistence for the countless host that was about to be poured out upon Europe. Besides the stores that were to be carried in the fleet which was to accompany the army, it was necessary that magazines should be formed along the whole line of march as far as the confines of Greece. But, in addition to these prudent precautions, two works were begun, which scarce

which he was not spurred by any personal motives. But he was surrounded by men who were led by various passions and interests to desire that he should prosecute his father's plans of conquest and revenge. Mardonius was eager to renew an enterprise in which he had been foiled through unavoidable mischance, not through his own incapacity. He had reputation to retrieve, and might look forward to the possession of a great European satrapy, at such a distance from the court as would make him almost an absolute sovereign. He was warmly seconded by the Greeks who had been drawn to Susa by the report of the approaching invasion of their country, and who wanted foreign aid to accomplish their designs. The Thessaly served any other purpose than that of showlian house of the Aleuads, either because they thought their power insecure, or expected to increase it by becoming vassals of the Persian king, sent their emissaries to invite him to the conquest of Greece. The exiled Pisistratids had no other chance for the recovery of Athens. They had brought a man named Onomacritus with them to court, who was one of the first among the Greeks to practise an art, afterward very common, that of forging prophecies and oracles. While their family ruled at Athens he had been detected in fabricating verses, which he had interpolated in a work ascribed to the ancient seer Musæus, and Hipparchus, before his patron, had banished him from the city. But the exiles saw the use they might make of his talents, and had taken him into their service. They now recommended him to Xerxes as a man who possessed a treasure of prophetical knowledge, and the young king listened with unsuspecting confidence to the encouraging predictions which Onomacritus drew from his inexhaustible stores. These various engines at length prevailed. The imagination of Xerxes was inflamed with the prospect of rivalling or surpassing the achievements of his glorious predecessors, and of extending his dominion to the ends of the earth. He resolved on the invasion of Greece. First, however, in the second year of his reign, he led an army against Egypt, and brought it again under the Persian yoke, which was purposely made more burdensome and galling than before. He intrusted it to the care of his brother Achæmenes, and then returned to Persia, and bent all his thoughts towards the West.

ing the power and majesty of Xerxes, and proving that he would suffer no obstacles to bar his progress. It would have been easy to transport his troops in ships over the Hellespont; but it was better suited to the dignity of the monarch, who was about to unite both continents under his dominion, to join them by a bridge laid upon the subject channel, and to march across as along a royal road. The storm that had destroyed the fleet which accompanied Mardonius in his unfortunate expedition, had made the coast of Athos terrible to the Persians. The simplest mode of avoiding this formidable cape would have been to draw their ships over the narrow, low neck that connects the mountain with the main land. But Xerxes preferred to leave a monument of his greatness and of his enterprise, in a canal cut through the Isthmus, a distance of about a mile and a half. This work employed a multitude of men for three years. The construction of the two bridges which were thrown across the Hellespont were intrusted to the skill of the Phoenicians and Egyptians. When these preparations were drawing to a close, Xerxes set forth for Sardis, where he designed to spend the following winter, and to receive the re-enforcements which he had appointed there to join the main army (B.C. 481).

During his stay at Sardis the Phoenician and Egyptian engineers completed their bridges on the Hellespont, but the work was not strong enough to resist a violent storm, which broke it to pieces soon after it was finished. How far this disaster was owing to defects in its construction, which might have been avoided by Only one of his counsellors, his uncle Arta-ordinary skill and foresight, does not appear; banus, is said to have been wise and honest enough to endeavour to divert him from the enterprise, and especially to dissuade him from risking his own person in it. If any reliance could be placed on the story told by Herodotus about the deliberations held on this question in the Persian cabinet, we might suspect that the influence and arts of the Magian priesthood, which we find in this reign rising in credit, had been set at work by the adversaries of Artabanus, to counteract his influence over the mind of his nephew, and to confirm Xerxes in his martial mood. The vast preparations were continued with redoubled activity to raise an armament worthy of the presence of the king. His aim was not merely to collect a force suthicient to ensure the success of his undertaking

but Xerxes is said to have been so much angered by the accident that he put the architects to death. Such a burst of passion would be credible enough in itself, and is only rendered doubtful by the extravagant fables that gained credit on the subject among the Greeks, who, in the bridging of the sacred Hellespont, saw the beginning of a long career of audacious impiety, and gradually transformed the fastenings with which the passage was finally secured into fetters and scourges, with which the barbarian in his madness had thought to chastise the aggression of the rebellious stream.* The construction of new bridges was committed to other engineers, perhaps to Greeks; but their

*The origin of the story is sufficiently explained, as the commentators on Eschylus and Herodotus have remarked, by the lines of the poet, Pers., 371: boris 'EXXhOROVTOY ἱερὸν δοῦλον ὡς δεσμώμασιν ἤλπισε σχήσειν ῥέοντα Βόσπορον βόον Θεοῦ.

names have not passed down like that of Mandrocles. By their art two firm and broad causeways were made to stretch from the neighbourhood of Abydos to a projecting point in the opposite shore of the Chersonesus, resting each on a row of ships, which were stayed against the strong current that bore upon them from the north by anchors, and by cables fastened to both sides of the channel: the length was not far short of a mile.

:

the ranks, while the royal scribes recorded the names, and, most likely, the equipments of the different races. It is an ingenious and probable conjecture of Heeren's,* that this authentic document was the source from which Herodotus drew his minute description of their dress and weapons.

When all was in readiness, the mighty armament was set in motion. Early in the spring (B.C. 480), Xerxes began his march from Sardis in all the pomp of a royal progress. The baggage led the way it was followed by the first division of the armed crowd that had been brought together from the tributary nations-a motley throng, including many strange varieties of complexion, dress, and language, commanded by Persian generals, but retaining each tribe its national armour and mode of fighting. An interval was then left, after which came 1000 picked Persian cavalry, followed by an equal number of spearmen, whose lances, which they carried with the points turned downward, ended in knobs of gold. Next, ten sacred horses of the Nisaan breed were led in gorgeous caparisons, preceding the chariot of the Persian Jove, drawn by eight white horses, the driver follow-clubs tipped with steel, which they added to the ing on foot. Then came the royal chariot, also drawn by Nisæan horses, in which Xerxes sat in state; but from time to time he exchanged it for an easier carriage, which sheltered him from the sun and the changes of the weather. He was followed by two bands of horse and foot, like those which went immediately before him, and by a body of 10,000 Persian infantry, the flower of the whole army, who were called the Immortals, because their number was kept constantly full. A thousand of them, who occupied the outer ranks, bore lances knobbed with gold; those of the rest were similarly ornamented with silver. They were followed by an equal number of Persian cavalry. The remainder of the host brought up the rear.

We may observe that the Persian fashion, which the Persians themselves had borrowed from their old masters the Medes, prevailed, with a few variations, among all the nations between the Tigris and the Indus. The bow was the principal weapon. To it was commonly added a spear and a short sword or dagger; the Sacians were singular in the use of the hatchet. In the defensive armour there was greater diversity among these tribes. Most of them were without shields. The tunic, scaly breastplate, and loose trousers of the Persians, who used a peculiar wicker buckler,† were contrasted with the cotton vest of the Indians, with the shaggy skins worn by some mountain hordes, with the Arabian plaid, and the bright dyes of the Sarangian garb. A cap or turban, low or pointed, seems generally to have supplied the place of a helmet. The Assyrians or Chaldeans were conspicuous for their brass helmets of strange shape, their linen corslets, and the wooden shield, spear, and dagger. With the exception of the club, their weapons were similar to those of most of the barbarians of Western Asia, among whom the Lydians came nearest to the Greek fashion, and the Lycians of the interior (the Milyans) alone used the bow. No Egyptian troops are mentioned: perhaps the late rebellion might seem to render it unsafe to arm them. But the Ethiopians above Egypt, the negroes of Nubia-with their bodies painted half white, half vermilion, and partly covered with skins of lions or leopards, their bows four cubits long, and small arrows, in which a sharp stone supplied the place of steel, their spears pointed with the horn of the antelope, and their knotty clubs were among the most prominent figures In this order the army reached Abydos, and in the motley host. They met in the camp of Xerxes from a lofty throne surveyed the crowd- Xerxes with another race, whom Herodotus ed sides and bosom of the Hellespont, and the calls Eastern Ethiopians, a dark but straightimage of a seafight-a spectacle which Herodo-haired people, neighbours of the Indians, and tus might well think sufficient to have moved resembling them in their armour, except that him with a touch of human sympathy. The for a helmet they wore the skin of a horse's passage did not begin before the king had pray-head, with the ears erect, and the mane flowing ed to the rising sun, and had tried to propitiate down their backs. All these nations, Herodothe Hellespont itself by libations, and by casting tus observes, were able to furnish cavalry, but, into it golden vessels and a sword. After the for manifest reasons, a part of them only was bridges had been strewed with myrtle, and puri-called upon to do so. Among these he describes fied with incense, the Ten Thousand Immortals, crowned with chaplets, led the way. The army crossed by one bridge, the baggage by the other; yet the living tide flowed without intermission for seven days and seven nights, before the last man, as Herodotus heard, the king himself, the tallest and most majestic person in the host, had arrived on the European shore. In the great plain of Doriscus, on the banks of the Hebrus, an attempt was made to number the land force. A space was enclosed large enough to contain 10,000 men; into this the myriads were successively poured and discharged, till the whole mass had been rudely counted. They were then drawn up according to their natural divisions, and Xerxes rode in his chariot along

a nomad people of the Persian race, the Sagartians, who were no less expert than the South Americans in the use of the instrument which is now familiar to our ears under the name of the lusso: this and a dagger were the only weapons they brought into the field. But the mass of the cavalry was swelled by the dromedaries of the Arabians, and by chariots from the interior of Africa and from the borders of India, in which the Indians yoked not only horses, but

Ideen, 1. 1, p. 137.

The yeppov: it was, perhaps, covered with leather, and we should suspect, from the descriptions given of its use, furnished with a spike for fixing it upright in the ground. gated. The Supa. Those of some Thracian tribes were varie

MARCH OF XERXES.

wild asses. All the great divisions both of horse | bers by taking in re-enforcements from the Thraand foot were commanded by Persian officers. cian hordes through which it passed. It expeAfter this review the king went on board a rienced no scarcity of provisions: the country, Sidonian vessel, where a golden tent had been the fleet, and the magazines formed in the prepared for him, to inspect the fleet, and towns on the coast, together furnished abuncaused its divisions and numbers to be regis- dant supplies. The principal cities in the line tered. According to the result of this inspec- of its march had long before been ordered to tion or calculation, the armed part of the multi-prepare for the reception of the king, and each tude that followed Xerxes over the Hellespont celebrated his arrival with a splendid banquet. amounted to one million and seven hundred The division of the army which came with him, thousand foot, and eighty thousand horse. The indeed, was only provided with its daily fare; fleet consisted of one thousand two hundred but for himself and his train, a tent was pitchand seven ships of war, and besides the native ed, a table spread with vessels of gold and silcrews, each was manned with thirty marines, ver, and loaded with luxuries for which earth, Persians, or Medes, or Sacians. But, as they air, and water had been ransacked. On the proceeded southward, both the army and the morning after the feast, when the royal guest fleet received an addition from the inland tribes, moved onward, his followers carefully cleared and from the seaports of Thrace, and Macedonia, away the relics of the entertainment, the tent, and the neighbouring islands, which Herodotus the vessels, and the furniture. A single meal computes at three hundred thousand infantry, of Xerxes cost the Thasians four hundred taland one hundred and twenty triremes. There ents: nearly as much as the sum yearly con seems to be no sufficient ground for supposing tributed by the allies of Athens to maintain the that these estimates are greatly exaggerated. navy which destroyed his maritime power. It Yet the imagination is fatigued in attempting was with good reason that a citizen of Abdera to conceive the train that must have followed advised his townsmen to offer a solemn thankssuch a host, to minister to its wants and its lux- giving to the gods, through whose mercy it hapuries; and Herodotus himself, after having ta- pened that Xerxes was used to make only one ken the pains to reckon the prodigious quantity meal in the day. The principal inconvenience of corn that would be required for each day's that the army felt, arose from an occasional consumption by the men, despairs of approach- scarcity of water. Herodotus mentions several Among the preparations that had been made ing the additional sum to be allowed for the rivers which did not yield a sufficient supply. women, the eunuchs, the cattle, and the dogs. The real military strength of the armament for the campaign was a bridge thrown over the was almost lost among the undisciplined herds, Strymon. When Xerxes arrived on the banks which could only impede its movements, as of this river, his magian priests made a sacriwell as consume its stores. The Persians fice of white horses, and exerted their charms were the core both of the land and sea force: to propitiate the stream. But on the site of none of the other troops are said to have equal- Amphipolis, then called the Nine Ways, they For some cause, which, perhaps, they led them in discipline or in courage; and the celebrated a more horrid rite, suggested by the four-and-twenty thousand men who guarded the name. royal person were the flower of the whole na-alone understood, they thought fit to bury alive tion. Yet these, as we see from their glitter- a boy and a maid, natives of the place, for each ing armour, as well as from their performances, of the Nine Ways. Herodotus remarks that a were much better fitted for show than for ac- queen of Xerxes afterward offered fourteen viction, and of the rest we hear that they were dis- tims, children of noble Persians, in the same tinguished from the mass of the army, not only manner, to an infernal deity. At Acanthus, by their superior order and valour, but also by Xerxes stopped to survey the wonderful canal the abundance of gold they displayed, by the by which the fleet was saved from the danger train of carriages, women, and servants that of doubling Mount Athos. He found the Acanfollowed them, and by the provisions set apart thians zealous in his cause, and honoured them for their use. Though Xerxes himself was with peculiar marks of his favour. They had elated with the spectacle he viewed on the probably reaped no little gain from the work plains and the shores of Doriscus, it must have which had so long employed a vast multitude in filled the clear-sighted Greeks who accompanied the neighbourhood of their city, and looked forhim with misgivings as to the issue of the en- ward to permanent advantages from the canal terprise. The language of Demaratus, in the itself. And hence, perhaps, it arose that a Perconversation which Herodotus supposes him sian of high birth, who had superintended the to have had with Xerxes after the review, undertaking, and who happened to' die while though it was probably never uttered, expressed Xerxes was staying with them, was ever after thoughts which could scarcely fail to occur to honoured by them with sacrifices as a hero. At the Spartan. Poverty, he is made to observe, Acanthus the army for the first time parted with was the endowment which Greece had received the fleet, and left the coast to strike across the from nature; but law and reason had armed Chalcidian peninsula to Therme, a small town her with instruments, with which she had cul- from which the gulf, afterward called from Thestivated her barren inheritance, and might still salonica, then took its name. Here, after the bays, and had strengthened itself with ships hope to repel the invasion even of Xerxes and naval armament had coasted the intervening his host. and men drawn from the Chalcidian ports, the two forces again met. During the stay of the armament at Therme, Xerxes indulged his cu riosity by sailing to the mouth of the Peneus, and viewing the remarkable defile through which