Atarneus, and the plain of Caicus, which belonged to the Mysians. But Harpagus, a Persian, general of a considerable army, happened to be in those parts; he engaged with him after his landing, took Histiæus himself prisoner, and destroyed the greater part of his army.

29. Histiæus was thus taken prisoner. When the Greeks were fighting with the Persians at Malene, in the district of Atarneus, they maintained their ground for a long time, but the cavalry at length coming up, fell upon the Greeks; then it was the work of the cavalry; and when the Greeks had betaken themselves to flight, Histiæus, hoping that he should not be put to death by the king for his present offense, conceived such a desire of preserving his life, that when in his flight he was overtaken by a Persian, and being overtaken was on the point of being stabbed by him, he, speaking in the Persian language, discovered himself to be Histiæus the Milesian. 30. Now if, when he was taken prisoner, he had been conducted to king Darius, in my opinion he would have suffered no punishment, and the king would have forgiven him his fault; but now, for this very reason, and lest, by escaping, he should again regain his influence with the king, Artaphernes, governor of Sardis, and Harpagus, who received him as soon as he was conducted to Sardis, in paled his body on the spot, and having embalmed the head, sent it to Darius at Susa. Darius having heard of this, and having blamed those that had done it because they had not brought him alive into his presence, gave orders that, having washed and adorned the head of Histiæus, they should inter it honorably, as the remains of a man who had been a great benefactor to himself and the Persians. Such was the fate of Histiæus.

31. The naval force of the Persians having wintered near Miletus, when it set sail in the second year, easily subdued the islands lying near the continent, Chios, Lesbos, and Tenedos; and when they took any one of these islands, the barbarians, as they possessed themselves of each, netted the inhabitants. They netted them in this manner. Taking one another by the hand, they extend from the northern to the southern sea, and so march over the island, hunting out the inhabitants. They also took the Ionian cities on the continent with the same ease; but they did not net the inhabitants, for that was impossible. 32. Then the Persian generals did not belie the threats which

they had uttered against the Ionians when arrayed against them; for when they had made themselves masters of the cities, they selected the handsomest youths, and castrated them, and made them eunuchs instead of men, and the most beautiful virgins they carried away to the king; this they did, and burned the cities with the very temples. Thus the Ionians were for the third time reduced to slavery; first by the Lydians, then twice successively by the Persians. 33. The naval force, departing from Ionia, reduced all the places on the left of the Hellespont as one sails in; for the places on the right, being on the continent, had already been subdued by the Persians. The following places on the Hellespont are in Europe: the Chersonese, in which are many cities, Perinthus, and the fortified towns toward Thrace, and Selybrie, and Byzantium. The Byzantians, however, and the Chalcedonians on the opposite side, did not wait the coming of the Phoenician fleet, but, having abandoned their country, went inward to the Euxine, and there founded the city of Mesambria; but the Phoenicians, having burned down the cities above mentioned, bent their course to Proconnesus, and Artace, and having devoted these also to flames, sailed back again to the Chersonese for the purpose of destroying the rest of the cities, which, when they passed near them before, they had not laid waste. Against Cyzicus they did not sail at all, for the Cyzicenians had of their own accord submitted to the king before the arrival of the Phoenicians, having capitulated with Ebares, son of Megabazus, governor of Dascylium. All the other cities of the Chersonese, except Cardia, the Phoenicians subdued.

34. Till that time Miltiades, son of Cimon, son of Stesagoras, was tyrant of these cities, Miltiades, son of Cypselus, having formerly acquired this government in the following manner. The Thracian Dolonci possessed this Chersonese; these Dolonci, then, being pressed in war by the Apsynthians, sent their kings to Delphi to consult the oracle concerning the war; the Pythian answered them "that they should take that man with them to their country to found a colony who, after their departure from the temple, should first offer them hospitality." Accordingly, the Dolonci, going by the sacred way, went through the territories of the Phocians and Boeotians, and when no one invited them, turned out of the road toward Athens. 35. At that time Pisistratus had the supreme power at Athens; but

He

Miltiades, son of Cypselus, had considerable influence. was of a family that maintained horses for the chariot-races, and was originally descended from Eacus and Ægina, but in later times was an Athenian, Philæus, son of Ajax, having been the first Athenian of that family. This Miltiades, being seated in his own portico, and seeing the Dolonci passing by, wearing a dress not belonging to the country, and carrying javelins, called out to them; and upon their coming to him, he offered them shelter and hospitality. They having accepted his invitation, and having been entertained by him, made known to him the whole oracle, and entreated him to obey the deity. Their words persuaded Miltiades as soon as he heard them, for he was troubled with the government of Pisistratus, and desired to get out of his way. He therefore immediately set out to Delphi to consult the oracle, whether he should do that which the Dolonci requested of him. 36. The Pythian having bid him do so, thereupon Miltiades, son of Cypselus, who had formerly won the Olympic prize in the chariot-race, taking with him all such Athenians as were willing to join in the expedition, set sail with the Dolonci, and took possession of the country; and they who introduced him appointed him tyrant. He, first of all, built a wall on the isthmus of the Chersonese, from the city of Cardia to Pactya, in order that the Apsynthians might not be able to injure them by making incursions into their country. The width of this isthmus is thirty-six stades; and from this isthmus, the whole Chersonese inward is four hundred and twenty stades in length. 37. Miltiades, then, having built a wall across the neck of the Chersonese, and by that means repelled the Apsynthians, next made war upon the Lampsacenians; and the Lampsacenians, having laid an ambush, took him prisoner. But Miltiades was well known to Croesus; Croesus therefore, having heard of this event, sent and commanded the Lampsacenians to release Miltiades; if not, he threatened that he would destroy them like a pine-tree. The Lampsacenians, being in uncertainty in their interpretations as to what was the meaning of the saying with which Croesus threatened them, that he would destroy them like a pine-tree, at length, with some difficulty, one of the elders, having discovered it, told the real truth, that the pine alone of all trees, when cut down, does not send forth any more shoots, but perishes en

tirely; whereupon the Lampsacenians, dreading the power of Croesus, set Miltiades at liberty. 38. He accordingly escaped by means of Croesus, and afterward died childless, having bequeathed the government and his property to Stesagoras, son of Cimon, his brother by the same mother; and when he was dead, the Chersonesians sacrificed to him, as is usual to a founder, and instituted equestrian and gymnastic exercises, in which no Lampsacenian is permitted to contend. The war with the Lampsacenians still continuing, it also befell Stesagoras to die childless, being stricken on the head with an axe in the prytaneum by a man who in pretense was a deserter, but was in fact an enemy, and that a very vehement one.

39. Stesagoras having died in that manner, the Pisistratidæ thereupon sent Miltiades, son of Cimon, and brother of Stesagoras who had died, with one ship to the Chersonese, to assume the government; they had also treated him with kindness at Athens, as if they had not been parties to the death of his father Cimon, the particulars of which I will relate in another place. Miltiades, having arrived in the Chersonese, kept himself at home under color of honoring the memory of his brother Stesagoras; but the Chersonesians having heard of this, the principal persons of all the cities assembled together from every quarter, and having come in a body with the intention of condoling with him, were all thrown into chains by him. Thus Miltiades got possession of the Chersonese, maintaining five hundred auxiliaries, and married Hegesipyle, daughter of Olorus, king of the Thracians. 40. This Miltiades, son of Cimon, had lately arrived in the Chersonese; and, after his arrival, other difficulties, greater than the present,7 befell him; for in the third year before these things, he fled from the Scythians; for the Scythian nomades, having been provoked by king Darius, had assembled their forces, and marched as far as this Chersonese: Miltiades, not daring to wait their approach, fled from the Chersonese, until the Scythians departed, and the Dolonci brought him back again. These things happened in the third year before the present affairs. 41. Miltiades, having heard that the Phoenicians were at Tenedos, loaded five triremes with the See chap. 103.

7

By the present difficulties are meant those which Herodotus had begun to relate in chapter 33 of this Book.

property he had at hand, and sailed away for Athens; and when he had set out from the city of Cardia, he sailed through the Gulf of Melas, and as he was passing by the Chersonese, the Phoenicians fell in with his ships. Now Miltiades himself escaped with four of the ships to Imbrus, but the fifth the Phoenicians pursued and took: of this ship, Metiochus, the eldest of the sons of Miltiades, not by the daughter of Olorus the Thracian, but by another woman, happened to be commander, and him the Phoenicians took, together with the ship. When they heard that he was son of Miltiades, they took him up to the king, thinking that they should obtain great favor for themselves, because Miltiades had given an opinion to the Ionians advising them to comply with the Scythians when the Scythians requested them to loose the bridge and return to their own country; but Darius, when the Phoenicians had taken Metiochus, son of Miltiades, up to him, did him no inju ry, but many favors; for he gave him a house and estate, and a Persian wife, by whom he had children, who were reckoned among the Persians. But Miltiades arrived at Athens from Imbros.

42. During this year nothing more was done by the Persians relative to the war with the Ionians; on the contrary, the following things were done in this year which were advantageous to the Ionians. Artaphernes, governor of Sardis, having sent for deputies from the cities, compelled the Ionians to enter into engagements among themselves that they would submit to legal decisions, and not commit depredations one upon another. This he compelled them to do; and having measured their lands by parasangs, which name the Persians give to thirty stades-having measured them into these, he imposed tributes on each, which have continued the same from that time to the present, as they were imposed by Artaphernes; and they were imposed nearly at the same amount as they had been before. These things, then, tended to peace. 43. In the beginning of the spring, the other generals having been dismissed by the king, Mardonius, son of Gobryas, went down to the coast, taking with him a very large land army, and a numerous naval force: he was young in years, and had lately married king Darius's daughter Artazostra. Mardonius, leading this army, when he arrived in Cilicia, having gone in person on board ship, proceeded with the rest of the