6. Herodotus, Histories, 5.67-5.68, 6.11, 6.109, 9.21, 9.70 (5th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE)
| 5.67. In doing this, to my thinking, this Cleisthenes was imitating his own mother's father, Cleisthenes the tyrant of Sicyon, for Cleisthenes, after going to war with the Argives, made an end of minstrels' contests at Sicyon by reason of the Homeric poems, in which it is the Argives and Argos which are primarily the theme of the songs. Furthermore, he conceived the desire to cast out from the land Adrastus son of Talaus, the hero whose shrine stood then as now in the very marketplace of Sicyon because he was an Argive. ,He went then to Delphi, and asked the oracle if he should cast Adrastus out, but the priestess said in response: “Adrastus is king of Sicyon, and you but a stone thrower.” When the god would not permit him to do as he wished in this matter, he returned home and attempted to devise some plan which might rid him of Adrastus. When he thought he had found one, he sent to Boeotian Thebes saying that he would gladly bring Melanippus son of Astacus into his country, and the Thebans handed him over. ,When Cleisthenes had brought him in, he consecrated a sanctuary for him in the government house itself, where he was established in the greatest possible security. Now the reason why Cleisthenes brought in Melanippus, a thing which I must relate, was that Melanippus was Adrastus' deadliest enemy, for Adrastus had slain his brother Mecisteus and his son-in-law Tydeus. ,Having then designated the precinct for him, Cleisthenes took away all Adrastus' sacrifices and festivals and gave them to Melanippus. The Sicyonians had been accustomed to pay very great honor to Adrastus because the country had once belonged to Polybus, his maternal grandfather, who died without an heir and bequeathed the kingship to him. ,Besides other honors paid to Adrastus by the Sicyonians, they celebrated his lamentable fate with tragic choruses in honor not of Dionysus but of Adrastus. Cleisthenes, however, gave the choruses back to Dionysus and the rest of the worship to Melanippus. 5.68. This, then, is what he did regarding Adrastus, but as for the tribes of the Dorians, he changed their names so that these tribes should not be shared by Sicyonians and Argives. In this especially he made a laughing-stock of the Sicyonians, for he gave the tribes names derived from the words ‘donkey’ and ‘pig’ changing only the endings. The name of his own tribe, however, he did not change in this way, but rather gave it a name indicating his own rule, calling it Archelaoi, rulers of the people. The rest were Swinites, Assites and Porkites. ,These were the names of the tribes which the Sicyonians used under Cleisthenes' rule and for sixty years more after his death. Afterwards, however, they took counsel together and both changed the names of three to Hylleis, Pamphyli, and Dymanatae, and added a fourth which they called Aegialeis after Aegialeus son of Adrastus. 6.11. Then the Ionians who had gathered at Lade held assemblies; among those whom I suppose to have addressed them was Dionysius, the Phocaean general, who spoke thus: ,“Our affairs, men of Ionia, stand on the edge of a razor, whether to be free men or slaves, and runaway slaves at that. If you now consent to endure hardships, you will have toil for the present time, but it will be in your power to overcome your enemies and gain freedom; but if you will be weak and disorderly, I see nothing that can save you from paying the penalty to the king for your rebellion. ,Believe me and entrust yourselves to me; I promise you that (if the gods deal fairly with us) either our enemies shall not meet us in battle, or if they do they shall be utterly vanquished.” 6.109. The Athenian generals were of divided opinion, some advocating not fighting because they were too few to attack the army of the Medes; others, including Miltiades, advocating fighting. ,Thus they were at odds, and the inferior plan prevailed. An eleventh man had a vote, chosen by lot to be polemarch of Athens, and by ancient custom the Athenians had made his vote of equal weight with the generals. Callimachus of Aphidnae was polemarch at this time. Miltiades approached him and said, ,“Callimachus, it is now in your hands to enslave Athens or make her free, and thereby leave behind for all posterity a memorial such as not even Harmodius and Aristogeiton left. Now the Athenians have come to their greatest danger since they first came into being, and, if we surrender, it is clear what we will suffer when handed over to Hippias. But if the city prevails, it will take first place among Hellenic cities. ,I will tell you how this can happen, and how the deciding voice on these matters has devolved upon you. The ten generals are of divided opinion, some urging to attack, others urging not to. ,If we do not attack now, I expect that great strife will fall upon and shake the spirit of the Athenians, leading them to medize. But if we attack now, before anything unsound corrupts the Athenians, we can win the battle, if the gods are fair. ,All this concerns and depends on you in this way: if you vote with me, your country will be free and your city the first in Hellas. But if you side with those eager to avoid battle, you will have the opposite to all the good things I enumerated.” 9.21. Now it chanced that the Megarians were posted in that part of the field which was most open to attack, and here the horsemen found the readiest approach. Therefore, being hard-pressed by the charges, the Megarians sent a herald to the generals of the Greeks, who came to them and spoke as follows : ,“From the men of Megara to their allies: we cannot alone withstand the Persian cavalry (although we have till now held our ground with patience and valor, despite the fact that we were hard-pressed) in the position to which we were first appointed. Know that now we will abandon our post, unless you send others to take our place there.” ,This the herald reported, and Pausanias inquired among the Greeks if any would offer to go to that place and relieve the Megarians by holding the post. All the others did not want to, but the Athenians took it upon themselves, that is three hundred picked men of Athens, whose captain was Olympiodorus son of Lampon. 9.70. So these perished without anyone noticing. But when the Persians and the rest of the multitude had fled within the wooden wall, they managed to get up on the towers before the coming of the Lacedaemonians; then they strengthened the wall as best they could. When the Athenians arrived, an intense battle for the wall began. ,For as long as the Athenians were not there, the barbarians defended themselves and had a great advantage over the Lacedaemonians who had no skill in the assault of walls. When the Athenians came up, however, the fight for the wall became intense and lasted for a long time. In the end the Athenians, by valor and constant effort, scaled the wall and breached it. The Greeks poured in through the opening they had made; ,the first to enter were the Tegeans, and it was they who plundered the tent of Mardonius, taking from it besides everything else the feeding trough of his horses which was all of bronze and a thing well worth looking at. The Tegeans dedicated this feeding trough of Mardonius in the temple of Athena Alea. Everything else which they took they brought into the common pool, as did the rest of the Greeks. ,As for the barbarians, they did not form a unified body again once the wall was down, nor did anyone think of defense because the terrified men in the tiny space and the many myriads herded together were in great distress. ,Such a slaughter were the Greeks able to make, that of two hundred and sixty thousand who remained after Artabazus had fled with his forty thousand, scarcely three thousand were left alive. of the Lacedaemonians from Sparta ninety-one all together were killed in battle; of the Tegeans, seventeen and of the Athenians, fifty-two. |
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