TO oppose the formidable invasion of Darius, Every Miltiades was the son of Cimon and nephew of Miltiades, an illustrious Athenian, who, having been invited by the natives of the Thracian Chersonesus to found in it an Athenian colony, which might assist in their defence, had agreed to the proposal, and had been made a so-called tyrant or rulet of the Chersonesus. On his death, as he left no children, his authority passed to his nephew, Stesagoras. He also died, and in the hope of succeeding him, Miltiades, his younger brother, went from Athens to the Chersonesus. By a mixture of fraud and force, Miltiades secured the position of "tyrant," and strengthened himself in it by keeping five hundred guards, and by marrying the daughter of Olorus, a Thracian prince. He was appointed to this government the same year that Darius undertook his unsuccessful Thracian expedition; was obliged to attend that prince as far as the Ister or Danube, with what shipping he was able to supply; but, ever eager to throw off the Persian yoke, it was he who advised the Ionians to destroy the bridge over the Ister and leave the army of Darius to its fate in the wilderness beyond. The Ionians, however, insisted on its preservation, and Darius owed to them his safety. When the affairs of the Greeks began to decline in Asia, Miltiades, rather than live in dependence, resolved to return once more to Athens; and thither he returned with five ships, which were all that remained of his shattered fortunes. Darius now turned his arms against the petty States of Greece which had audaciously refused to acknowledge his supremacy. He carried the town of Eretria by storm, and, flushed with victory, led his army to the plain of Marathon, a fertile valley but ten miles distant from Athens. The Athenians placed their army under the leadership of ten generals, of whom Miltiades was chief. These generals disputed whether they should hazard a battle or, staying within the walls, await the approach of the enemy. Opinions were equal on either side of the argument when the suffrages came to be taken. It now, therefore, remained for Callimachus, the Polemarch, who had a right of voting as well as the ten commanders, to give his opinion, and decide this important question. Miltiades was for risking an advance; and he explained that the only means to exalt the courage of their own troops and to strike terror into the enemy, was to advance boldly towards them. "If," said he, "we decline a battle, I foresee some great dissension will shake the fidelity of the army, and induce them to a compliance with the Medes; but if we fight before corruption insinuates itself into the hearts of the Athenians, we may hope, from the equity of the gods, to obtain a victory." Callimachus gave his voice in favor of an open engagement. The Athenians had been joined by the whole strength of Platea, which little commonwealth had thrown itself on their protection against Thebes, and had ever since been their most faithful ally. Miltiades, now vested with the supreme command, drew up his combined forces of 10,000 men at the foot of a mountain, so that the enemy-an army of 120,000 strong-should not surround him or attack him in the rear. He had large trees cut down and placed on the flanks on either side. These trees served to guard him against the dreaded Persian cavalry. The engagement now pending was to decide the liberty of Greece, and even the future progress of civilization among mankind. The Athenians, without waiting the Persian onset, rushed in upon their ranks. The battle was long, fierce and obstinate. At last the scale of victory began to turn in favor of the Greeks. The Persians gave way and fled to their ships in great confusion. The Athenians followed them to the beach and set many of their ships on fire. Seven of the enemy's ships were taken; six thousand of their men were slain, and many more drowned in endeavoring to reach the vessels. The Greeks lost 200 men only. Thus ended the ever-memorable battle of Marathon, 490 B.C. The Persian army, on its embarkation, sailed immediately towards Athens, hoping to surprise it in the absence of its defenders; but Miltiades, guessing their design, made a hasty march, and arrived in the city before the enemy was in sight. The baffled invaders returned to Asia. The Greeks, in acknowledgment of the inestimable merits of Miltiades, had a picture painted, in which he was represented at the head of the ten commanders exhorting the army. There were also erected three sorts of monuments to all that had fallen; one for the Athenians, one for the Platæans, and a third for the slaves. But though the gratitude of the Athenians to Miltiades was very sincere, yet it was of no long continuance. The Parians had assisted the Persians with ships in the expedition to Marathon. Miltiades made this an excuse, in order to take a revenge on one Lysagoras, a Parian, who had done him. injury with Hydarnes, the Persian. Taking a fleet of seventy ships, he arrived at Paros and demanded from the Parians a fine of one hundred talents, threatening in case of refusal to besiege the city. The Parians refused. Miltiades at once invested the place. A Parian priestess came to him and pretended to inform him how he might take the city. In consequence of what she told him he repaired to the temple of Ceres, the lawgiver, and, being unable to open the gate, climbed to the top of the wall and leaped down. Being, however, seized with a sudden tremor, he endeavored again to scale the wall, and in so doing fell and broke his thighbone. Raising the siege, he returned to Athens, in which city an unfortunate man was never welcome. Accused by Xanthippus of having taken a bribe from Persia, Miltiades was at once brought to trial. His wound disabled him from defending himself; but he was carried into the assembly on a bed, while his friends defended him, principally by recalling his former services. The memory of these, with pity for his present condition, prevailed on the people to absolve him from the capital charge; but they fined him fifty talents (about $53,000), this being the cost of the late unsuccessful expedition. This money he was unable to pay, and he was thrown into prison, where he shortly died of gangrene of his wound. The dates of his birth and death are obscure. His son Cimon afterwards paid the fine, and a monument was raised in honor of Miltiades, on the plain of Marathon. Miltiades, with brilliant generalship, showed great power as a statesman, and was also an able speaker, an essential qualification for success in Athenian public life. Whether his attack on Paros was an abuse of public authority to the gratification of private revenge, or the first act in a scheme for the establishment of naval empire, is disputed by historians. Though called a tyrant, Miltiades has very justly been lauded for his condescension and moderation. To him Athens was indebted for its preservation and even for all its glory; since he was the man who first taught her to despise the empty menaces of the boastful Persian King. THE BATTLE OF MARATHON. When Miltiades arrayed his men for action, he staked on the arbitrament of one battle not only the fate of Athens, but that of all Greece; for if Athens had fallen, no other Greek State, except Lacedæmon, would have had the courage to resist; and the Lacedæmonians, though they would probably have died in their ranks to the last man, never could have successfully resisted the victorious Persians and the numerous Greek troops which would have soon marched under the Persian satraps, had they prevailed over Athens. Great as the preponderance of the Persian over the Athenian power at the crisis seems to have been, it would be unjust to impute wild rashness to the policy of Miltiades and those who voted with him in the Athenian council of war, or to look on the after-current of events as the mere fortunate result of successful folly. As before has been remarked, Miltiades, while Prince of the Chersonese, had seen service in the Persian armies; and he knew by personal observation how many elements of weakness lurked beneath their imposing aspect of strength. He knew that the bulk of their troops no longer consisted of the hardy shepherds and mountaineers from Persia proper and Kurdistan, who won Cyrus' battles; but that unwilling contingents from conquered nations now filled up the Persian muster-rolls, fighting more from compulsion than from any zeal in the cause of their masters. He had also the sagacity and the spirit to appreciate the superiority of the Greek armor and organization over the Asiatic, notwithstanding former reverses. Above all, he felt and worthily trusted the enthusiasm of those whom he led. The Athenians whom he led had proved by their newborn valor in recent wars against the neighboring States that "liberty and equality of civic rights are brave spirit-stirring things, and they who, while under the yoke of a despot, had been no better men of war than any of their neighbors, as soon as they were free, became the foremost men of all; for each felt that in fighting for a free commonwealth he fought for himself, and whatever he took in hand, he was zealous to do the work thoroughly." So the nearly contemporaneous historian describes the change of spirit that was seen in the Athenians after their tyrants were expelled; and Miltiades knew that in leading them against the invading army, where they had Hippias, the foe they most hated, before them, he was bringing into battle no ordinary men, and could calculate on no ordinary heroism. With these hopes and risks, Miltiades, on the afternoon of a September day, 490 B. C., gave the word for the Athenian army to prepare for battle. There were many local associations connected with those mountain heights which were calculated powerfully to excite the spirits of the men, and of which the commanders well knew how to avail themselves in their exhortations to their troops before the encounter. Marathon itself was a region sacred to Hercules. Close to |