10. Herodotus, Histories, 1.46-1.49, 1.86, 1.130, 1.181-1.183, 1.199, 2.64, 2.111, 3.16, 3.28-3.30, 3.37-3.38, 3.120, 3.127, 3.143.2, 4.1, 4.4, 4.203, 5.18-5.22, 5.32, 5.36, 5.46, 5.62-5.64, 5.66, 5.74, 5.102, 5.105, 6.19, 6.65, 6.75, 6.86, 6.101, 6.132-6.136, 7.8, 7.34-7.35, 7.135.3, 7.139-7.141, 8.33, 8.35-8.39, 8.51-8.55, 8.94, 8.109, 8.129, 8.133-8.138, 8.141-8.142, 8.144, 9.44, 9.65, 9.78-9.79, 9.116 (5th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE)
| 1.46. After the loss of his son, Croesus remained in deep sorrow for two years. After this time, the destruction by Cyrus son of Cambyses of the sovereignty of Astyages son of Cyaxares, and the growth of the power of the Persians, distracted Croesus from his mourning; and he determined, if he could, to forestall the increase of the Persian power before they became great. ,Having thus determined, he at once made inquiries of the Greek and Libyan oracles, sending messengers separately to Delphi, to Abae in Phocia, and to Dodona, while others were despatched to Amphiaraus and Trophonius, and others to Branchidae in the Milesian country. ,These are the Greek oracles to which Croesus sent for divination: and he told others to go inquire of Ammon in Libya . His intent in sending was to test the knowledge of the oracles, so that, if they were found to know the truth, he might send again and ask if he should undertake an expedition against the Persians. 1.47. And when he sent to test these shrines he gave the Lydians these instructions: they were to keep track of the time from the day they left Sardis, and on the hundredth day inquire of the oracles what Croesus, king of Lydia, son of Alyattes, was doing then; then they were to write down whatever the oracles answered and bring the reports back to him. ,Now none relate what answer was given by the rest of the oracles. But at Delphi, no sooner had the Lydians entered the hall to inquire of the god and asked the question with which they were entrusted, than the Pythian priestess uttered the following hexameter verses: , quote type="oracle" l met="dact"“I know the number of the grains of sand and the extent of the sea, /l lAnd understand the mute and hear the voiceless. /l lThe smell has come to my senses of a strong-shelled tortoise /l lBoiling in a cauldron together with a lamb's flesh, /l lUnder which is bronze and over which is bronze.” /l /quote 1.48. Having written down this inspired utterance of the Pythian priestess, the Lydians went back to Sardis . When the others as well who had been sent to various places came bringing their oracles, Croesus then unfolded and examined all the writings. Some of them in no way satisfied him. But when he read the Delphian message, he acknowledged it with worship and welcome, considering Delphi as the only true place of divination, because it had discovered what he himself had done. ,For after sending his envoys to the oracles, he had thought up something which no conjecture could discover, and carried it out on the appointed day: namely, he had cut up a tortoise and a lamb, and then boiled them in a cauldron of bronze covered with a lid of the same. 1.49. Such, then, was the answer from Delphi delivered to Croesus. As to the reply which the Lydians received from the oracle of Amphiaraus when they had followed the due custom of the temple, I cannot say what it was, for nothing is recorded of it, except that Croesus believed that from this oracle too he had obtained a true answer. 1.86. The Persians gained Sardis and took Croesus prisoner. Croesus had ruled fourteen years and been besieged fourteen days. Fulfilling the oracle, he had destroyed his own great empire. The Persians took him and brought him to Cyrus, ,who erected a pyre and mounted Croesus atop it, bound in chains, with twice seven sons of the Lydians beside him. Cyrus may have intended to sacrifice him as a victory-offering to some god, or he may have wished to fulfill a vow, or perhaps he had heard that Croesus was pious and put him atop the pyre to find out if some divinity would deliver him from being burned alive. ,So Cyrus did this. As Croesus stood on the pyre, even though he was in such a wretched position it occurred to him that Solon had spoken with god's help when he had said that no one among the living is fortunate. When this occurred to him, he heaved a deep sigh and groaned aloud after long silence, calling out three times the name “Solon.” ,Cyrus heard and ordered the interpreters to ask Croesus who he was invoking. They approached and asked, but Croesus kept quiet at their questioning, until finally they forced him and he said, “I would prefer to great wealth his coming into discourse with all despots.” Since what he said was unintelligible, they again asked what he had said, ,persistently harassing him. He explained that first Solon the Athenian had come and seen all his fortune and spoken as if he despised it. Now everything had turned out for him as Solon had said, speaking no more of him than of every human being, especially those who think themselves fortunate. While Croesus was relating all this, the pyre had been lit and the edges were on fire. ,When Cyrus heard from the interpreters what Croesus said, he relented and considered that he, a human being, was burning alive another human being, one his equal in good fortune. In addition, he feared retribution, reflecting how there is nothing stable in human affairs. He ordered that the blazing fire be extinguished as quickly as possible, and that Croesus and those with him be taken down, but despite their efforts they could not master the fire. 1.130. Thus Astyages was deposed from his sovereignty after a reign of thirty-five years: and the Medes had to bow down before the Persians because of Astyages' cruelty. They had ruled all Asia beyond the Halys for one hundred and twenty-eight years, from which must be subtracted the time when the Scythians held sway. ,At a later time they repented of what they now did, and rebelled against Darius ; but they were defeated in battle and brought back into subjection. But now, in Astyages' time, Cyrus and the Persians rose in revolt against the Medes, and from this time ruled Asia . ,As for Astyages, Cyrus did him no further harm, and kept him in his own house until Astyages died.This is the story of the birth and upbringing of Cyrus, and of how he became king; and afterwards, as I have already related, he subjugated Croesus in punishment for the unprovoked wrong done him; and after this victory he became sovereign of all Asia . 1.181. These walls are the city's outer armor; within them there is another encircling wall, nearly as strong as the other, but narrower. ,In the middle of one division of the city stands the royal palace, surrounded by a high and strong wall; and in the middle of the other is still to this day the sacred enclosure of Zeus Belus, a square of four hundred and forty yards each way, with gates of bronze. ,In the center of this sacred enclosure a solid tower has been built, two hundred and twenty yards long and broad; a second tower rises from this and from it yet another, until at last there are eight. ,The way up them mounts spirally outside the height of the towers; about halfway up is a resting place, with seats for repose, where those who ascend sit down and rest. ,In the last tower there is a great shrine; and in it stands a great and well-covered couch, and a golden table nearby. But no image has been set up in the shrine, nor does any human creature lie there for the night, except one native woman, chosen from all women by the god, as the Chaldaeans say, who are priests of this god. 1.182. These same Chaldaeans say (though I do not believe them) that the god himself is accustomed to visit the shrine and rest on the couch, as in Thebes of Egypt, as the Egyptians say ,(for there too a woman sleeps in the temple of Theban Zeus, and neither the Egyptian nor the Babylonian woman, it is said, has intercourse with men), and as does the prophetess of the god at Patara in Lycia, whenever she is appointed; for there is not always a place of divination there; but when she is appointed she is shut up in the temple during the night. 1.183. In the Babylonian temple there is another shrine below, where there is a great golden image of Zeus, sitting at a great golden table, and the footstool and the chair are also gold; the gold of the whole was said by the Chaldeans to be eight hundred talents' weight. ,Outside the temple is a golden altar. There is also another great altar, on which are sacrificed the full-grown of the flocks; only nurslings may be sacrificed on the golden altar, but on the greater altar the Chaldeans even offer a thousand talents' weight of frankincense yearly, when they keep the festival of this god; and in the days of Cyrus there was still in this sacred enclosure a statue of solid gold twenty feet high. ,I myself have not seen it, but I relate what is told by the Chaldeans. Darius son of Hystaspes proposed to take this statue but dared not; Xerxes his son took it, and killed the priest who warned him not to move the statue. Such is the furniture of this temple, and there are many private offerings besides. 1.199. The foulest Babylonian custom is that which compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger once in her life. Many women who are rich and proud and disdain to mingle with the rest, drive to the temple in covered carriages drawn by teams, and stand there with a great retinue of attendants. ,But most sit down in the sacred plot of Aphrodite, with crowns of cord on their heads; there is a great multitude of women coming and going; passages marked by line run every way through the crowd, by which the men pass and make their choice. ,Once a woman has taken her place there, she does not go away to her home before some stranger has cast money into her lap, and had intercourse with her outside the temple; but while he casts the money, he must say, “I invite you in the name of Mylitta” (that is the Assyrian name for Aphrodite). ,It does not matter what sum the money is; the woman will never refuse, for that would be a sin, the money being by this act made sacred. So she follows the first man who casts it and rejects no one. After their intercourse, having discharged her sacred duty to the goddess, she goes away to her home; and thereafter there is no bribe however great that will get her. ,So then the women that are fair and tall are soon free to depart, but the uncomely have long to wait because they cannot fulfill the law; for some of them remain for three years, or four. There is a custom like this in some parts of Cyprus . 2.64. Furthermore, it was the Egyptians who first made it a matter of religious observance not to have intercourse with women in temples or to enter a temple after such intercourse without washing. Nearly all other peoples are less careful in this matter than are the Egyptians and Greeks, and consider a man to be like any other animal; ,for beasts and birds (they say) are seen to mate both in the temples and in the sacred precincts; now were this displeasing to the god, the beasts would not do so. This is the reason given by others for practices which I, for my part, dislike; 2.111. When Sesostris died, he was succeeded in the kingship (the priests said) by his son Pheros . This king waged no wars, and chanced to become blind, for the following reason: the Nile came down in such a flood as there had never been, rising to a height of thirty feet, and the water that flowed over the fields was roughened by a strong wind; ,then, it is said, the king was so audacious as to seize a spear and hurl it into the midst of the river eddies. Right after this, he came down with a disease of the eyes, and became blind. When he had been blind for ten years, an oracle from the city of Buto declared to him that the term of his punishment was drawing to an end, and that he would regain his sight by washing his eyes with the urine of a woman who had never had intercourse with any man but her own husband. ,Pheros tried his own wife first; and, as he remained blind, all women, one after another. When he at last recovered his sight, he took all the women whom he had tried, except the one who had made him see again, and gathered them into one town, the one which is now called “Red Clay”; having concentrated them together there, he burnt them and the town; ,but the woman by whose means he had recovered his sight, he married. Most worthy of mention among the many offerings which he dedicated in all the noteworthy temples for his deliverance from blindness are the two marvellous stone obelisks which he set up in the temple of the Sun. Each of these is made of a single block, and is over one hundred and sixty-six feet high and thirteen feet thick. 3.16. From Memphis Cambyses went to the city Sais, anxious to do exactly what he did do. Entering the house of Amasis, he had the body of Amasis carried outside from its place of burial; and when this had been done, he gave orders to scourge it and pull out the hair and pierce it with goads, and to desecrate it in every way. ,When they were weary of doing this (for the body, being embalmed, remained whole and did not fall to pieces), Cambyses gave orders to burn it, a sacrilegious command; for the Persians hold fire to be a god; ,therefore neither nation thinks it right to burn the dead, the Persians for the reason given, as they say it is wrong to give the dead body of a man to a god; while the Egyptians believe fire to be a living beast that devours all that it catches, and when sated with its meal dies together with that on which it feeds. ,Now it is by no means their custom to give the dead to beasts; and this is why they embalm the corpse, that it may not lie and feed worms. Thus what Cambyses commanded was contrary to the custom of both peoples. ,The Egyptians say, however, that it was not Amasis to whom this was done, but another Egyptian of the same age as Amasis, whom the Persians abused thinking that they were abusing Amasis. ,For their story is that Amasis learned from an oracle what was to be done to him after his death, and so to escape this fate buried this dead man, the one that was scourged, near the door inside his own vault, and ordered his son that he himself should be laid in the farthest corner of the vault. ,I think that these commands of Amasis, regarding the burial-place and the man, were never given at all, and that the Egyptians believe in them in vain. 3.28. Having put them to death, he next summoned the priests before him. When they gave him the same account, he said that if a tame god had come to the Egyptians he would know it; and with no more words he bade the priests bring Apis. So they went to fetch and bring him. ,This Apis, or Epaphus, is a calf born of a cow that can never conceive again. By what the Egyptians say, the cow is made pregt by a light from heaven, and thereafter gives birth to Apis. ,The marks of this calf called Apis are these: he is black, and has on his forehead a three-cornered white spot, and the likeness of an eagle on his back; the hairs of the tail are double, and there is a knot under the tongue. 3.29. When the priests led Apis in, Cambyses—for he was all but mad—drew his dagger and, meaning to stab the calf in the belly, stuck the thigh; then laughing he said to the priests: ,“Simpletons, are these your gods, creatures of flesh and blood that can feel weapons of iron? That is a god worthy of the Egyptians. But for you, you shall suffer for making me your laughing-stock.” So saying he bade those, whose business it was, to scourge the priests well, and to kill any other Egyptian whom they found holiday-making. ,So the Egyptian festival ended, and the priests were punished, and Apis lay in the temple and died of the wound in the thigh. When he was dead of the wound, the priests buried him without Cambyses' knowledge. 3.30. But Cambyses, the Egyptians say, owing to this wrongful act immediately went mad, although even before he had not been sensible. His first evil act was to destroy his full brother Smerdis, whom he had sent away from Egypt to Persia out of jealousy, because Smerdis alone could draw the bow brought from the Ethiopian by the Fish-eaters as far as two fingerbreadths, but no other Persian could draw it. ,Smerdis having gone to Persia, Cambyses saw in a dream a vision, in which it seemed to him that a messenger came from Persia and told him that Smerdis sitting on the royal throne touched heaven with his head. ,Fearing therefore for himself, lest his brother might slay him and so be king, he sent Prexaspes, the most trusted of his Persians, to Persia to kill him. Prexaspes went up to Susa and killed Smerdis; some say that he took Smerdis out hunting, others that he brought him to the Red Sea and there drowned him. 3.37. Cambyses committed many such mad acts against the Persians and his allies; he stayed at Memphis, and there opened ancient coffins and examined the dead bodies. ,Thus too he entered the temple of Hephaestus and jeered at the image there. This image of Hephaestus is most like the Phoenician Pataici, which the Phoenicians carry on the prows of their triremes. I will describe it for anyone who has not seen these figures: it is the likeness of a dwarf. ,Also he entered the temple of the Cabeiri, into which no one may enter save the priest; the images here he even burnt, with bitter mockery. These also are like the images of Hephaestus, and are said to be his sons. 3.38. I hold it then in every way proved that Cambyses was quite insane; or he would never have set himself to deride religion and custom. For if it were proposed to all nations to choose which seemed best of all customs, each, after examination, would place its own first; so well is each convinced that its own are by far the best. ,It is not therefore to be supposed that anyone, except a madman, would turn such things to ridicule. I will give this one proof among many from which it may be inferred that all men hold this belief about their customs. ,When Darius was king, he summoned the Greeks who were with him and asked them for what price they would eat their fathers' dead bodies. They answered that there was no price for which they would do it. ,Then Darius summoned those Indians who are called Callatiae, who eat their parents, and asked them (the Greeks being present and understanding through interpreters what was said) what would make them willing to burn their fathers at death. The Indians cried aloud, that he should not speak of so horrid an act. So firmly rooted are these beliefs; and it is, I think, rightly said in Pindar's poem that custom is lord of all. 3.120. While Cambyses was still ill, the following events occurred. The governor of Sardis appointed by Cyrus was Oroetes, a Persian. This man had an impious desire; for although he had not been injured or spoken badly of by Polycrates of Samos, and had in fact never even seen him before, he desired to seize and kill him, for the following reason, most people say. ,As Oroetes and another Persian whose name was Mitrobates, governor of the province at Dascyleium, sat at the king's doors, they fell from talking to quarreling; and as they compared their achievements Mitrobates said to Oroetes, ,“You are not to be reckoned a man; the island of Samos lies close to your province, yet you have not added it to the king's dominion—an island so easy to conquer that some native of it revolted against his rulers with fifteen hoplites, and is now lord of it.” ,Some say that Oroetes, angered by this reproach, did not so much desire to punish the source of it as to destroy Polycrates utterly, the occasion of the reproach. 4.1. After taking Babylon, Darius himself marched against the Scythians. For since Asia was bursting with men and vast revenues were coming in, Darius desired to punish the Scythians for the wrong they had begun when they invaded Media first and defeated those who opposed them in battle. ,For the Scythians, as I have said before, ruled upper Asia for twenty-eight years; they invaded Asia in their pursuit of the Cimmerians, and ended the power of the Medes, who were the rulers of Asia before the Scythians came. ,But when the Scythians had been away from their homes for twenty-eight years and returned to their country after so long an absence, as much trouble as their Median war awaited them. They found themselves opposed by a great force; for the Scythian women, when their husbands were away for so long, turned to their slaves. 4.4. The Scythians heard this and acted on it; and their enemies, stunned by what they saw, did not think of fighting, but fled. Thus, the Scythians ruled Asia and were driven out again by the Medes, and returned to their own country in such a way. Desiring to punish them for what they had done, Darius assembled an army against them. 4.203. The Persians thus enslaved the rest of the Barcaeans, and went home. When they appeared before the city of Cyrene, the Cyrenaeans let them pass through their city, so that a certain oracle might be fulfilled. ,As the army was passing through, Badres the admiral of the fleet was for taking the city, but Amasis the general of the land army would not consent, saying that he had been sent against Barce and no other Greek city; at last they passed through Cyrene and camped on the hill of Lycaean Zeus; there they regretted not having taken the city, and tried to enter it again, but the Cyrenaeans would not let them. ,Then, although no one attacked them, panic seized the Persians, and they fled to a place seven miles distant and camped there; and while they were there, a messenger from Aryandes came to the camp asking them to return. The Persians asked and received from the Cyrenaeans provisions for their march, after which they left to go to Egypt; ,but then they fell into the hands of the Libyans, who killed the laggards and stragglers of the army for the sake of their garments and possessions; until at last they came to Egypt. 5.18. The Persians who had been sent as envoys came to Amyntas and demanded earth and water for Darius the king. He readily gave to them what they asked and invited them to be his guests, preparing a dinner of great splendor and receiving them hospitably. ,After dinner, the Persians said to Amyntas as they sat drinking together, “Macedonian, our host, it is our custom in Persia to bring in also the concubines and wedded wives to sit by the men after the giving of any great banquet. We ask you, then, (since you have received us heartily, are entertaining us nobly and are giving Darius our king earth and water) to follow our custom.” ,To this Amyntas replied, “ We have no such custom, Persians. Among us, men and women sit apart, but since you are our masters and are making this request, it shall be as you desire.” With that, Amyntas sent for the women. Upon being called, the women entered and sat down in a row opposite the Persians. ,Then the Persians, seeing beautiful women before them, spoke to Amyntas and said that there was no sense in what he had done. It would be better if the women had never come at all than that they should come and not sit beside the men, but sit opposite them to torment their eyes. ,Amyntas, now feeling compelled to do so, bade the women sit beside them. When the women had done as they were bidden, the Persians, flushed as they were with excess of wine, at once laid hands on the women's breasts, and one or another tried to kiss them. 5.19. This Amyntas saw, but held his peace despite his anger because he greatly feared the Persians. Amyntas' son Alexander, however, because of his youth and ignorance of ill deeds, could not bear it longer and said to Amyntas in great wrath, “My father, do as your age demands. Leave us and take your rest; do not continue drinking. I will stay here and give our guests all that is needful.” ,At this Amyntas saw that Alexander had some wild deed in mind and said, “My son, you are angered, and if I guess your meaning correctly, you are sending me away so that you may do some violent deed. I for my part, for fear that you will bring about our undoing, entreat you not to act rashly against these men, but to bear patiently the sight of what they do. If you want me to leave, to that I consent.” 5.20. When Amyntas made this request and had gone his way, Alexander said to the Persians, “Sirs, you have full freedom to deal with these women, and may have intercourse with all or any of them. ,As to that, you may make your own decision, but now, since the hour of your rest is drawing near and I see that you are all completely drunk, allow these women to depart and wash, if this is your desire. When they have washed, wait for them to come to you again.” ,When he had said this and the Persians had given their consent, he sent the women out and away to their apartments. Alexander then took as many beardless men as there were women, dressed them in the women's clothes, and gave them daggers. These he brought in, and said to the Persians,,“I believe, men of Persia, that you have feasted to your hearts' content. All that we had and all besides that we could find to give you has been set before you, and now we make you a free gift of our best and most valued possession, our own mothers and sisters. Be aware that in so doing we are giving you all the honor that you deserve, and tell your king who sent you how his Greek viceroy of Macedonia has received you hospitably, providing food and bedfellows.” ,With that, Alexander seated each of his Macedonians next to a Persian, as though they were women, and when the Persians began to lay hands on them, they were killed by the Macedonians. 5.21. This was the way in which they perished, they and all their retinue. Carriages too had come with them, and servants, and all the great train they had. The Macedonians made away with all that, as well as with all the envoys themselves. ,No long time afterwards the Persians made a great search for these men, but Alexander had cunning enough to put an end to it by the gift of a great sum and his own sister Gygaea to Bubares, a Persian and the general of those who were looking for the slain men. It was in this way, then, that the death of these Persians was kept silent. 5.22. Now that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know and will prove it in the later part of my history. Furthermore, the Hellenodicae who manage the contest at Olympia determined that it is so, ,for when Alexander chose to contend and entered the lists for that purpose, the Greeks who were to run against him wanted to bar him from the race, saying that the contest should be for Greeks and not for foreigners. Alexander, however, proving himself to be an Argive, was judged to be a Greek. He accordingly competed in the furlong race and tied step for first place. This, then, is approximately what happened. 5.32. When Aristagoras heard that, he went away to Miletus in great joy. Artaphrenes sent a messenger to Susa with the news of what Aristagoras said, and when Darius himself too had consented to the plan, he equipped two hundred triremes and a very great company of Persians and their allies in addition. For their general he appointed Megabates, a Persian of the Achaemenid family, cousin to himself and to Darius. This was he whose daughter (if indeed the tale is true) Pausanias the Lacedaemonian, son of Cleombrotus, at a later day betrothed to himself, since it was his wish to possess the sovereignty of Hellas. After appointing Megabates general, Artaphrenes sent his army away to Aristagoras. 5.36. With this intent, then, Histiaeus sent his messenger, and it chanced that all these things came upon Aristagoras at one and the same time. He accordingly took counsel with the members of his faction, stating his own opinion as well as the message which had come to him from Histiaeus. ,All the rest spoke their minds to the same effect, favoring revolt, with the exception of Hecataeus the historian who, listing all the nations subject to Darius and all his power, advised them that they should not make war on the king of Persia. When, however, he failed to persuade them, he counselled them that their next best plan was to make themselves masters of the sea. ,This, he said, could only be accomplished in one way (Miletus, he knew, was a city of no great wealth), namely if they took away from the temple at Branchidae the treasure which Croesus the Lydian had dedicated there. With this at their disposal, he fully expected them to gain the mastery of the sea. They would then have the use of that treasure and their enemies would not be able to plunder it. ,The treasure was very great, as I have shown in the beginning of my account. This plan was not approved, and they resolved that they would revolt. One out of their number was to sail to Myus, to the army which had left Naxos and was there, and attempt to seize the generals who were aboard the ships. 5.46. Other Spartans too sailed with Dorieus to found his colony, namely, Thessalus, Paraebates, Celees, and Euryleon. When these men had come to Sicily with all their company, they were all overcome and slain in battle by the Phoenicians and Egestans, all, that is, except Euryleon, who was the only settler that survived this disaster. ,He mustered the remt of his army and took Minoa, the colony from Selinus, and aided in freeing the people of Selinus from their monarch Pithagoras. After deposing this man, he himself attempted to become tyrant of Selinus but was monarch there for only a little while since the people of the place rose against him and slew him at the altar of Zeus of the marketplace, to which he had fled for refuge. 5.62. I have told both of the vision of Hipparchus' dream and of the first origin of the Gephyreans, to whom the slayers of Hipparchus belonged. Now I must go further and return to the story which I began to tell, namely how the Athenians were freed from their tyrants. ,Hippias, their tyrant, was growing ever more bitter in enmity against the Athenians because of Hipparchus' death, and the Alcmeonidae, a family of Athenian stock banished by the sons of Pisistratus, attempted with the rest of the exiled Athenians to make their way back by force and free Athens. They were not successful in their return and suffered instead a great reverse. After fortifying Lipsydrium north of Paeonia, they, in their desire to use all devices against the sons of Pisistratus, hired themselves to the Amphictyons for the building of the temple at Delphi which exists now but was not there yet then. ,Since they were wealthy and like their fathers men of reputation, they made the temple more beautiful than the model showed. In particular, whereas they had agreed to build the temple of tufa, they made its front of Parian marble. 5.63. These men, as the Athenians say, established themselves at Delphi and bribed the Pythian priestess to bid any Spartans who should come to inquire of her on a private or a public account to set Athens free. ,Then the Lacedaemonians, when the same command was ever revealed to them, sent Anchimolius the son of Aster, a citizen of repute, to drive out the sons of Pisistratus with an army despite the fact that the Pisistratidae were their close friends, for the god's will weighed with them more than the will of man. ,They sent these men by sea on shipboard. Anchimolius put in at Phalerum and disembarked his army there. The sons of Pisistratus, however, had received word of the plan already, and sent to ask help from the Thessalians with whom they had an alliance. The Thessalians, at their entreaty, joined together and sent their own king, Cineas of Conium, with a thousand horsemen. When the Pisistratidae got these allies, they devised the following plan. ,First they laid waste the plain of Phalerum so that all that land could be ridden over and then launched their cavalry against the enemy's army. Then the horsemen charged and slew Anchimolius and many more of the Lacedaemonians, and drove those that survived to their ships. Accordingly, the first Lacedaemonian army drew off, and Anchimolius' tomb is at Alopecae in Attica, near to the Heracleum in Cynosarges. 5.64. After this the Lacedaemonians sent out a greater army to attack Athens, appointing as its general their king Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides. This army they sent not by sea but by land. ,When they broke into Attica, the Thessalian horsemen were the first to meet them. They were routed after only a short time, and more than forty men were slain. Those who were left alive made off for Thessaly by the nearest way they could. Then Cleomenes, when he and the Athenians who desired freedom came into the city, drove the tyrants' family within the Pelasgic wall and besieged them there. 5.66. Athens, which had been great before, now grew even greater when her tyrants had been removed. The two principal holders of power were Cleisthenes an Alcmaeonid, who was reputed to have bribed the Pythian priestess, and Isagoras son of Tisandrus, a man of a notable house but his lineage I cannot say. His kinsfolk, at any rate, sacrifice to Zeus of Caria. ,These men with their factions fell to contending for power, Cleisthenes was getting the worst of it in this dispute and took the commons into his party. Presently he divided the Athenians into ten tribes instead of four as formerly. He called none after the names of the sons of Ion—Geleon, Aegicores, Argades, and Hoples—but invented for them names taken from other heroes, all native to the country except Aias. Him he added despite the fact that he was a stranger because he was a neighbor and an ally. 5.74. Cleomenes, however, fully aware that the Athenians had done him wrong in word and deed, mustered an army from the whole of the Peloponnesus. He did not declare the purpose for which he mustered it, namely to avenge himself on the Athenian people and set up Isagoras, who had come with him out of the acropolis, as tyrant. ,Cleomenes broke in as far as Eleusis with a great host, and the Boeotians, by a concerted plan, took Oenoe and Hysiae, districts on the borders of Attica, while the Chalcidians attacked on another side and raided lands in Attica. The Athenians, who were now caught in a ring of foes, decided to oppose the Spartans at Eleusis and to deal with the Boeotians and Chalcidians later. 5.102. In the fire at Sardis, a temple of Cybebe, the goddess of that country, was burnt, and the Persians afterwards made this their pretext for burning the temples of Hellas. At this time, the Persians of the provinces this side of the Halys, on hearing of these matters, gathered together and came to aid the Lydians. ,It chanced that they found the Ionians no longer at Sardis, but following on their tracks, they caught them at Ephesus. There the Ionians stood arrayed to meet them, but were utterly routed in the battle. ,The Persians put to the sword many men of renown including Eualcides the general of the Eretrians who had won crowns as victor in the games and been greatly praised by Simonides of Ceos. Those of the Ionians who escaped from the battle fled, each to his city. 5.105. Onesilus, then, besieged Amathus. When it was reported to Darius that Sardis had been taken and burnt by the Athenians and Ionians and that Aristagoras the Milesian had been leader of the conspiracy for the making of this plan, he at first, it is said, took no account of the Ionians since he was sure that they would not go unpunished for their rebellion. Darius did, however, ask who the Athenians were, and after receiving the answer, he called for his bow. This he took and, placing an arrow on it, and shot it into the sky, praying as he sent it aloft, ,“O Zeus, grant me vengeance on the Athenians.” Then he ordered one of his servants to say to him three times whenever dinner was set before him, “Master, remember the Athenians.” 6.19. When the Argives inquired at Delphi about the safety of their city, a common response was given, one part regarding the Argives themselves, but there was an additional response for the Milesians. ,I will mention the part concerning the Argives when I come to that part of my history; this was the prophecy given to the Milesians in their absence: quote type="oracle" l met="dact"Then, Miletus, contriver of evil deeds, /l lFor many will you become a banquet and glorious gifts; /l lYour wives will wash the feet of many long-haired men; /l lOther ministers will tend my Didyman shrine! /l /quote ,All this now came upon the Milesians, since most of their men were slain by the Persians, who wore long hair, and their women and children were accounted as slaves, and the temple at Didyma with its shrine and place of divination was plundered and burnt. of the wealth that was in this temple I have often spoken elsewhere in my history. 6.65. Cleomenes wanted revenge, so he made a deal with Leotychides son of Menares son of Agis, of the same family as Demaratus. The deal was that Leotychides would go with Cleomenes against the Aeginetans if he became king. ,Leotychides had already become strongly hostile to Demaratus for the following reason: Leotychides was betrothed to Percalus, daughter of Demarmenus, but Demaratus plotted and robbed him of his marriage, stealing Percalus and marrying her first. ,From this affair Leotychides was hostile toward Demaratus, so at Cleomenes' instigation he took an oath against him, saying that he was not king of the Spartans by right, since he was not Ariston's son. After making this oath, he prosecuted him, recalling that utterance which Ariston had made when the servant told him he had a son, and he counted up the months and swore that it was not his. ,Taking his stand on this remark, Leotychides declared that Demaratus was not Ariston's son and that he was not rightly king of Sparta, bringing as witnesses the ephors who had been sitting beside Ariston and heard him say this. 6.75. When the Lacedaemonians learned that Cleomenes was doing this, they took fright and brought him back to Sparta to rule on the same terms as before. Cleomenes had already been not entirely in his right mind, and on his return from exile a mad sickness fell upon him: any Spartan that he happened to meet he would hit in the face with his staff. ,For doing this, and because he was out of his mind, his relatives bound him in the stocks. When he was in the stocks and saw that his guard was left alone, he demanded a dagger; the guard at first refused to give it, but Cleomenes threatened what he would do to him when he was freed, until the guard, who was a helot, was frightened by the threats and gave him the dagger. ,Cleomenes took the weapon and set about slashing himself from his shins upwards; from the shin to the thigh he cut his flesh lengthways, then from the thigh to the hip and the sides, until he reached the belly, and cut it into strips; thus he died, as most of the Greeks say, because he persuaded the Pythian priestess to tell the tale of Demaratus. The Athenians alone say it was because he invaded Eleusis and laid waste the precinct of the gods. The Argives say it was because when Argives had taken refuge after the battle in their temple of Argus he brought them out and cut them down, then paid no heed to the sacred grove and set it on fire. 6.86. When Leutychides came to Athens and demanded back the hostages, the Athenians were unwilling to give them back and made excuses, saying that two kings had given them the trust and they deemed it wrong to restore it to one without the other. ,When the Athenians refused to give them back, Leutychides said to them: “Men of Athens, do whichever thing you desire. If you give them back, you do righteously; if you do not give them back, you do the opposite. But I want to tell you the story of what happened at Sparta in the matter of a trust. ,We Spartans say that three generations ago there was at Lacedaemon one Glaucus, the son of Epicydes. We say that this man added to his other excellences a reputation for justice above all men who at that time dwelt in Lacedaemon. ,But we say that at the fitting time this befell him: There came to Sparta a certain man of Miletus, who desired to have a talk with Glaucus and made him this offer: ‘I am a Milesian, and I have come to have the benefit of your justice, Glaucus. ,Since there is much talk about your justice throughout all the rest of Hellas, and even in Ionia, I considered the fact that Ionia is always in danger while the Peloponnese is securely established, and nowhere in Ionia are the same men seen continuing in possession of wealth. ,Considering and taking counsel concerning these matters, I resolved to turn half of my property into silver and deposit it with you, being well assured that it will lie safe for me in your keeping. Accept the money for me, and take and keep these tokens; restore the money to whoever comes with the same tokens and demands it back.’ ,Thus spoke the stranger who had come from Miletus, and Glaucus received the trust according to the agreement. After a long time had passed, the sons of the man who had deposited the money came to Sparta; they spoke with Glaucus, showing him the tokens and demanding the money back. ,But Glaucus put them off and answered in turn: ‘I do not remember the matter, and nothing of what you say carries my mind back. Let me think; I wish to do all that is just. If I took the money, I will duly restore it; if I never took it at all, I will deal with you according to the customs of the Greeks. I will put off making my decision for you until the fourth month from this day.’ ,So the Milesians went away in sorrow, as men robbed of their possessions; but Glaucus journeyed to Delphi to question the oracle. When he asked the oracle whether he should seize the money under oath, the Pythian priestess threatened him in these verses: , quote type="oracle" l met="dact" Glaucus son of Epicydes, it is more profitable now /l lTo prevail by your oath and seize the money. /l lSwear, for death awaits even the man who swears true. /l lBut Oath has a son, nameless; he is without hands /l lOr feet, but he pursues swiftly, until he catches /l lAnd destroys all the family and the entire house. /l lThe line of a man who swears true is better later on. /l /quote When Glaucus heard this, he entreated the god to pardon him for what he had said. The priestess answered that to tempt the god and to do the deed had the same effect. ,So Glaucus summoned the Milesian strangers and gave them back their money. But hear now, Athenians, why I began to tell you this story: there is today no descendant of Glaucus, nor any household that bears Glaucus' name; he has been utterly rooted out of Sparta. So good is it not even to think anything concerning a trust except giving it back on demand!” 6.101. So they saved themselves by crossing over to Oropus; the Persians sailed holding their course for Temenos and Choereae and Aegilea, all in Eretrian territory. Landing at these places, they immediately unloaded their horses and made preparation to attack their enemies. ,The Eretrians had no intention of coming out and fighting; all their care was to guard their walls if they could, since it was the prevailing counsel not to leave the city. The walls were strongly attacked, and for six days many fell on both sides; but on the seventh two Eretrians of repute, Euphorbus son of Alcimachus and Philagrus son of Cineas, betrayed the city to the Persians. ,They entered the city and plundered and burnt the temples, in revenge for the temples that were burnt at Sardis; moreover, they enslaved the townspeople, according to Darius' command. 6.132. After the Persian disaster at Marathon, the reputation of Miltiades, already great at Athens, very much increased. He asked the Athenians for seventy ships, an army, and money, not revealing against what country he would lead them, but saying that he would make them rich if they followed him; he would bring them to a country from which they could easily carry away an abundance of gold; so he said when he asked for the ships. The Athenians were induced by these promises and granted his request. 6.133. Miltiades took his army and sailed for Paros, on the pretext that the Parians had brought this on themselves by first sending triremes with the Persian fleet to Marathon. Such was the pretext of his argument, but he had a grudge against the Parians because Lysagoras son of Tisias, a man of Parian descent, had slandered him to Hydarnes the Persian. ,When he reached his voyage's destination, Miltiades with his army drove the Parians inside their walls and besieged them; he sent in a herald and demanded a hundred talents, saying that if they did not give it to him, his army would not return home before it had stormed their city. ,The Parians had no intention of giving Miltiades any money at all, and they contrived how to defend their city. They did this by building their wall at night to double its former height where it was most assailable, and also by other devices. 6.134. All the Greeks tell the same story up to this point; after this the Parians themselves say that the following happened: as Miltiades was in a quandary, a captive woman named Timo, Parian by birth and an under-priestess of the goddesses of the dead, came to talk with him. ,Coming before Miltiades, she advised him, if taking Paros was very important to him, to do whatever she suggested. Then, following her advice, he passed through to the hill in front of the city and jumped over the fence of the precinct of Demeter the Lawgiver, since he was unable to open the door. After leaping over, he went to the shrine, whether to move something that should not be moved, or with some other intention. When he was right at the doors, he was immediately seized with panic and hurried back by the same route; leaping down from the wall he twisted his thigh, but some say he hit his knee. 6.135. So Miltiades sailed back home in a sorry condition, neither bringing money for the Athenians nor having won Paros; he had besieged the town for twenty-six days and ravaged the island. ,The Parians learned that Timo the under-priestess of the goddesses had been Miltiades' guide and desired to punish her for this. Since they now had respite from the siege, they sent messengers to Delphi to ask if they should put the under-priestess to death for guiding their enemies to the capture of her native country, and for revealing to Miltiades the rites that no male should know. ,But the Pythian priestess forbade them, saying that Timo was not responsible: Miltiades was doomed to make a bad end, and an apparition had led him in these evils. 6.136. Such was the priestess' reply to the Parians. The Athenians had much to say about Miltiades on his return from Paros, especially Xanthippus son of Ariphron, who prosecuted Miltiades before the people for deceiving the Athenians and called for the death penalty. ,Miltiades was present but could not speak in his own defense, since his thigh was festering; he was laid before the court on a couch, and his friends spoke for him, often mentioning the fight at Marathon and the conquest of Lemnos: how Miltiades had punished the Pelasgians and taken Lemnos, delivering it to the Athenians. ,The people took his side as far as not condemning him to death, but they fined him fifty talents for his wrongdoing. Miltiades later died of gangrene and rot in his thigh, and the fifty talents were paid by his son Cimon. 7.8. After the conquest of Egypt, intending now to take in hand the expedition against Athens, Xerxes held a special assembly of the noblest among the Persians, so he could learn their opinions and declare his will before them all. When they were assembled, Xerxes spoke to them as follows: ,“Men of Persia, I am not bringing in and establishing a new custom, but following one that I have inherited. As I learn from our elders, we have never yet remained at peace ever since Cyrus deposed Astyages and we won this sovereignty from the Medes. It is the will of heaven; and we ourselves win advantage by our many enterprises. No one needs to tell you, who already know them well, which nations Cyrus and Cambyses and Darius my father subdued and added to our realm. ,Ever since I came to this throne, I have considered how I might not fall short of my predecessors in this honor, and not add less power to the Persians; and my considerations persuade me that we may win not only renown, but a land neither less nor worse, and more fertile, than that which we now possess; and we would also gain vengeance and requital. For this cause I have now summoned you together, that I may impart to you what I intend to do. ,It is my intent to bridge the Hellespont and lead my army through Europe to Hellas, so I may punish the Athenians for what they have done to the Persians and to my father. ,You saw that Darius my father was set on making an expedition against these men. But he is dead, and it was not granted him to punish them. On his behalf and that of all the Persians, I will never rest until I have taken Athens and burnt it, for the unprovoked wrong that its people did to my father and me. ,First they came to Sardis with our slave Aristagoras the Milesian and burnt the groves and the temples; next, how they dealt with us when we landed on their shores, when Datis and Artaphrenes were our generals, I suppose you all know. ,For these reasons I am resolved to send an army against them; and I reckon that we will find the following benefits among them: if we subdue those men, and their neighbors who dwell in the land of Pelops the Phrygian, we will make the borders of Persian territory and of the firmament of heaven be the same. ,No land that the sun beholds will border ours, but I will make all into one country, when I have passed over the whole of Europe. ,I learn that this is the situation: no city of men or any human nation which is able to meet us in battle will be left, if those of whom I speak are taken out of our way. Thus the guilty and the innocent will alike bear the yoke of slavery. ,This is how you would best please me: when I declare the time for your coming, every one of you must eagerly appear; and whoever comes with his army best equipped will receive from me such gifts as are reckoned most precious among us. ,Thus it must be done; but so that I not seem to you to have my own way, I lay the matter before you all, and bid whoever wishes to declare his opinion.” So spoke Xerxes and ceased. 7.34. The men who had been given this assignment made bridges starting from Abydos across to that headland; the Phoenicians one of flaxen cables, and the Egyptians a papyrus one. From Abydos to the opposite shore it is a distance of seven stadia. But no sooner had the strait been bridged than a great storm swept down, breaking and scattering everything. 7.35. When Xerxes heard of this, he was very angry and commanded that the Hellespont be whipped with three hundred lashes, and a pair of fetters be thrown into the sea. I have even heard that he sent branders with them to brand the Hellespont. ,He commanded them while they whipped to utter words outlandish and presumptuous, “Bitter water, our master thus punishes you, because you did him wrong though he had done you none. Xerxes the king will pass over you, whether you want it or not; in accordance with justice no one offers you sacrifice, for you are a turbid and briny river.” ,He commanded that the sea receive these punishments and that the overseers of the bridge over the Hellespont be beheaded. 7.135.3. To this the Spartans answered: “Your advice to us, Hydarnes, is not completely sound; one half of it rests on knowledge, but the other on ignorance. You know well how to be a slave, but you, who have never tasted freedom, do not know whether it is sweet or not. Were you to taste of it, not with spears you would counsel us to fight for it, no, but with axes.” 7.139. Here I am forced to declare an opinion which will be displeasing to most, but I will not refrain from saying what seems to me to be true. ,Had the Athenians been panic-struck by the threatened peril and left their own country, or had they not indeed left it but remained and surrendered themselves to Xerxes, none would have attempted to withstand the king by sea. What would have happened on land if no one had resisted the king by sea is easy enough to determine. ,Although the Peloponnesians had built not one but many walls across the Isthmus for their defense, they would nevertheless have been deserted by their allies (these having no choice or free will in the matter, but seeing their cities taken one by one by the foreign fleet), until at last they would have stood alone. They would then have put up quite a fight and perished nobly. ,Such would have been their fate. Perhaps, however, when they saw the rest of Hellas siding with the enemy, they would have made terms with Xerxes. In either case Hellas would have been subdued by the Persians, for I cannot see what advantage could accrue from the walls built across the isthmus, while the king was master of the seas. ,As it is, to say that the Athenians were the saviors of Hellas is to hit the truth. It was the Athenians who held the balance; whichever side they joined was sure to prevail. choosing that Greece should preserve her freedom, the Athenians roused to battle the other Greek states which had not yet gone over to the Persians and, after the gods, were responsible for driving the king off. ,Nor were they moved to desert Hellas by the threatening oracles which came from Delphi and sorely dismayed them, but they stood firm and had the courage to meet the invader of their country. 7.140. The Athenians had sent messages to Delphi asking that an oracle be given them, and when they had performed all due rites at the temple and sat down in the inner hall, the priestess, whose name was Aristonice, gave them this answer: , quote type="oracle" l met="dact"Wretches, why do you linger here? Rather flee from your houses and city, /l lFlee to the ends of the earth from the circle embattled of Athens! /l lThe head will not remain in its place, nor in the body, /l lNor the feet beneath, nor the hands, nor the parts between; /l lBut all is ruined, for fire and the headlong god of war speeding in a Syrian chariot will bring you low. /l /quote , quote type="oracle" l met="dact"Many a fortress too, not yours alone, will he shatter; /l lMany a shrine of the gods will he give to the flame for devouring; /l lSweating for fear they stand, and quaking for dread of the enemy, /l lRunning with gore are their roofs, foreseeing the stress of their sorrow; /l lTherefore I bid you depart from the sanctuary. /l lHave courage to lighten your evil. /l /quote 7.141. When the Athenian messengers heard that, they were very greatly dismayed, and gave themselves up for lost by reason of the evil foretold. Then Timon son of Androbulus, as notable a man as any Delphian, advised them to take boughs of supplication and in the guise of suppliants, approach the oracle a second time. ,The Athenians did exactly this; “Lord,” they said, “regard mercifully these suppliant boughs which we bring to you, and give us some better answer concerning our country. Otherwise we will not depart from your temple, but remain here until we die.” Thereupon the priestess gave them this second oracle: , quote type="oracle" l met="dact"Vainly does Pallas strive to appease great Zeus of Olympus; /l lWords of entreaty are vain, and so too cunning counsels of wisdom. /l lNevertheless I will speak to you again of strength adamantine. /l lAll will be taken and lost that the sacred border of Cecrops /l lHolds in keeping today, and the dales divine of Cithaeron; /l lYet a wood-built wall will by Zeus all-seeing be granted /l lTo the Trito-born, a stronghold for you and your children. /l /quote , quote type="oracle" l met="dact"Await not the host of horse and foot coming from Asia, /l lNor be still, but turn your back and withdraw from the foe. /l lTruly a day will come when you will meet him face to face. /l lDivine Salamis, you will bring death to women's sons /l lWhen the corn is scattered, or the harvest gathered in. /l /quote 8.33. Marching this way down the river Cephisus, they ravaged everything that lay in their way, burning the towns of Drymus, Charadra, Erochus, Tethronium, Amphicaea, Neon, Pediea, Tritea, Elatea, Hyampolis, Parapotamii, and Abae, where there was a richly endowed temple of Apollo, provided with wealth of treasure and offerings. There was also then as now a place of divination at this place. This temple, too, they plundered and burnt, and they pursued and caught some of the Phocians near the mountains. Certain women too perished because of the multitude of their violators. 8.35. So this part of the barbarian army marched as I have said, and others set forth with guides for the temple at Delphi, keeping Parnassus on their right. These, too, laid waste to every part of Phocis which they occupied, burning the towns of the Panopeans and Daulii and Aeolidae. ,The purpose of their parting from the rest of the army and marching this way was that they might plunder the temple at Delphi and lay its wealth before Xerxes, who (as I have been told) had better knowledge of the most notable possessions in the temple than of what he had left in his own palace, chiefly the offerings of Croesus son of Alyattes; so many had always spoken of them. 8.36. When the Delphians learned all this, they were very much afraid, and in their great fear they inquired of the oracle whether they should bury the sacred treasure in the ground or take it away to another country. The god told them to move nothing, saying that he was able to protect what belonged to him. ,Upon hearing that, the Delphians took thought for themselves. They sent their children and women overseas to Achaia. Most of the men went up to the peaks of Parnassus and carried their goods into the Corycian cave, but some escaped to Amphissa in Locris. In short, all the Delphians left the town save sixty men and the prophet. 8.37. Now when the barbarians drew near and could see the temple, the prophet, whose name was Aceratus, saw certain sacred arms, which no man might touch without sacrilege, brought out of the chamber within and laid before the shrine. ,So he went to tell the Delphians of this miracle, but when the barbarians came with all speed near to the temple of Athena Pronaea, they were visited by miracles yet greater than the aforesaid. Marvellous indeed it is, that weapons of war should of their own motion appear lying outside in front of the shrine, but the visitation which followed was more wondrous than anything else ever seen. ,When the barbarians were near to the temple of Athena Pronaea, they were struck by thunderbolts from the sky, and two peaks broken off from Parnassus came rushing among them with a mighty noise and overwhelmed many of them. In addition to this a shout and a cry of triumph were heard from the temple of Athena. 8.38. All of this together struck panic into the barbarians, and the Delphians, perceiving that they fled, descended upon them and killed a great number. The survivors fled straight to Boeotia. Those of the barbarians who returned said (as I have been told) that they had seen other divine signs besides what I have just described: two men-at-arms of stature greater than human,they said, had come after them, slaying and pursuing. 8.39. These two, say the Delphians, were the native heroes Phylacus and Autonous, whose precincts are near the temple, Phylacus' by the road itself above the shrine of Athena Pronaea, and Autonous' near the Castalian spring, under the Hyarapean Peak. ,The rocks that fell from Parnassus were yet to be seen in my day, lying in the precinct of Athena Pronaea, from where their descent through the foreigners' ranks had hurled them. Such, then, was the manner of those men's departure from the temple. 8.51. Since the crossing of the Hellespont, where the barbarians began their journey, they had spent one month there crossing into Europe and in three more months were in Attica, when Calliades was archon at Athens. ,When they took the town it was deserted, but in the sacred precinct they found a few Athenians, stewards of the sacred precinct and poor people, who defended themselves against the assault by fencing the acropolis with doors and logs. They had not withdrawn to Salamis not only because of poverty but also because they thought they had discovered the meaning of the oracle the Pythia had given, namely that the wooden wall would be impregnable. They believed that according to the oracle this, not the ships, was the refuge. 8.52. The Persians took up a position on the hill opposite the acropolis, which the Athenians call the Areopagus, and besieged them in this way: they wrapped arrows in tar and set them on fire, and then shot them at the barricade. Still the besieged Athenians defended themselves, although they had come to the utmost danger and their barricade had failed them. ,When the Pisistratids proposed terms of surrender, they would not listen but contrived defenses such as rolling down boulders onto the barbarians when they came near the gates. For a long time Xerxes was at a loss, unable to capture them. 8.53. In time a way out of their difficulties was revealed to the barbarians, since according to the oracle all the mainland of Attica had to become subject to the Persians. In front of the acropolis, and behind the gates and the ascent, was a place where no one was on guard, since no one thought any man could go up that way. Here some men climbed up, near the sacred precinct of Cecrops' daughter Aglaurus, although the place was a sheer cliff. ,When the Athenians saw that they had ascended to the acropolis, some threw themselves off the wall and were killed, and others fled into the chamber. The Persians who had come up first turned to the gates, opened them, and murdered the suppliants. When they had levelled everything, they plundered the sacred precinct and set fire to the entire acropolis. 8.54. So it was that Xerxes took complete possession of Athens, and he sent a horseman to Susa to announce his present success to Artabanus. On the day after the messenger was sent, he called together the Athenian exiles who accompanied him and asked them go up to the acropolis and perform sacrifices in their customary way, an order given because he had been inspired by a dream or because he felt remorse after burning the sacred precinct. The Athenian exiles did as they were commanded. 8.55. I will tell why I have mentioned this. In that acropolis is a shrine of Erechtheus, called the “Earthborn,” and in the shrine are an olive tree and a pool of salt water. The story among the Athenians is that they were set there by Poseidon and Athena as tokens when they contended for the land. It happened that the olive tree was burnt by the barbarians with the rest of the sacred precinct, but on the day after its burning, when the Athenians ordered by the king to sacrifice went up to the sacred precinct, they saw a shoot of about a cubit's length sprung from the stump, and they reported this. 8.94. The Athenians say that when the ships joined battle, the Corinthian general Adeimantus, struck with bewilderment and terror, hoisted his sails and fled away. When the Corinthians saw their flagship fleeing, they departed in the same way, ,but when in their flight they were opposite the sacred precinct of Athena Sciras on Salamis, by divine guidance a boat encountered them. No one appeared to have sent it, and the Corinthians knew nothing about the affairs of the fleet when it approached. They reckon the affair to involve the gods because when the boat came near the ships, the people on the boat said, ,“Adeimantus, you have turned your ships to flight and betrayed the Hellenes, but they are overcoming their enemies to the fulfillment of their prayers for victory.” Adeimantus did not believe them when they said this, so they spoke again, saying that they could be taken as hostages and killed if the Hellenes were not seen to be victorious. ,So he and the others turned their ships around and came to the fleet, but it was all over. The Athenians spread this rumor about them, but the Corinthians do not agree at all, and they consider themselves to have been among the foremost in the battle. The rest of Hellas bears them witness. 8.109. When Themistocles perceived that he could not persuade the greater part of them to sail to the Hellespont, he turned to the Athenians (for they were the angriest at the Persians' escape, and they were minded to sail to the Hellespont even by themselves, if the rest would not) and addressed them as follows: ,“This I have often seen with my eyes and heard yet more often, namely that beaten men, when they be driven to bay, will rally and retrieve their former mishap. Therefore I say to you,—as it is to a fortunate chance that we owe ourselves and Hellas, and have driven away so mighty a band of enemies—let us not pursue men who flee, ,for it is not we who have won this victory, but the gods and the heroes, who deemed Asia and Europe too great a realm for one man to rule, and that a wicked man and an impious one who dealt alike with temples and bones, burning and overthrowing the images of the gods,—yes, and one who scourged the sea and threw fetters into it. ,But as it is well with us for the moment, let us abide now in Hellas and take thought for ourselves and our households. Let us build our houses again and be diligent in sowing, when we have driven the foreigner completely away. Then when the next spring comes, let us set sail for the Hellespont and Ionia.” ,This he said with intent to have something to his credit with the Persian, so that he might have a place of refuge if ever (as might chance) he should suffer anything at the hands of the Athenians—and just that did in fact happen. 8.129. This is how Timoxenus' treachery was brought to light. But when Artabazus had besieged Potidaea for three months, there was a great ebb-tide in the sea which lasted for a long while, and when the foreigners saw that the sea was turned to a marsh, they prepared to pass over it into Pallene. ,When they had made their way over two-fifths of it, however, and three yet remained to cross before they could be in Pallene, there came a great flood-tide, higher, as the people of the place say, than any one of the many that had been before. Some of them who did not know how to swim were drowned, and those who knew were slain by the Potidaeans, who came among them in boats. ,The Potidaeans say that the cause of the high sea and flood and the Persian disaster lay in the fact that those same Persians who now perished in the sea had profaned the temple and the image of Poseidon which was in the suburb of the city. I think that in saying that this was the cause they are correct. Those who escaped alive were led away by Artabazus to Mardonius in Thessaly. This is how the men who had been the king's escort fared. 8.133. The Greeks, then, sailed to Delos, and Mardonius wintered in Thessaly. Having his headquarters there he sent a man of Europus called Mys to visit the places of divination, charging him to inquire of all the oracles which he could test. What it was that he desired to learn from the oracles when he gave this charge, I cannot say, for no one tells of it. I suppose that he sent to inquire concerning his present business, and that alone. 8.134. This man Mys is known to have gone to Lebadea and to have bribed a man of the country to go down into the cave of Trophonius and to have gone to the place of divination at Abae in Phocis. He went first to Thebes where he inquired of Ismenian Apollo (sacrifice is there the way of divination, as at Olympia), and moreover he bribed one who was no Theban but a stranger to lie down to sleep in the shrine of Amphiaraus. ,No Theban may seek a prophecy there, for Amphiaraus bade them by an oracle to choose which of the two they wanted and forgo the other, and take him either for their prophet or for their ally. They chose that he should be their ally. Therefore no Theban may lie down to sleep in that place. 8.135. But at this time there happened, as the Thebans say, a thing at which I marvel greatly. It would seem that this man Mys of Europus came in his wanderings among the places of divination to the precinct of Ptoan Apollo. This temple is called Ptoum, and belongs to the Thebans. It lies by a hill, above lake Copais, very near to the town Acraephia. ,When the man called Mys entered into this temple together with three men of the town who were chosen on the state's behalf to write down the oracles that should be given, straightway the diviner prophesied in a foreign tongue. ,The Thebans who followed him were astonished to hear a strange language instead of Greek and knew not what this present matter might be. Mys of Europus, however, snatched from them the tablet which they carried and wrote on it that which was spoken by the prophet, saying that the words of the oracle were Carian. After writing everything down, he went back to Thessaly. 8.136. Mardonius read whatever was said in the oracles, and presently he sent a messenger to Athens, Alexander, a Macedonian, son of Amyntas. Him he sent, partly because the Persians were akin to him; Bubares, a Persian, had taken to wife Gygaea Alexander's sister and Amyntas' daughter, who had borne to him that Amyntas of Asia who was called by the name of his mother's father, and to whom the king gave Alabanda a great city in Phrygia for his dwelling. Partly too he sent him because he learned that Alexander was a protector and benefactor to the Athenians. ,It was thus that he supposed he could best gain the Athenians for his allies, of whom he heard that they were a numerous and valiant people, and knew that they had been the chief authors of the calamities which had befallen the Persians at sea. ,If he gained their friendship he thought he would easily become master of the seas, as truly he would have been. On land he supposed himself to be by much the stronger, and he accordingly reckoned that thus he would have the upper hand of the Greeks. This chanced to be the prediction of the oracles which counseled him to make the Athenians his ally. It was in obedience to this that he sent his messenger. 8.137. This Alexander was seventh in descent from Perdiccas, who got for himself the tyranny of Macedonia in the way that I will show. Three brothers of the lineage of Temenus came as banished men from Argos to Illyria, Gauanes and Aeropus and Perdiccas; and from Illyria they crossed over into the highlands of Macedonia till they came to the town Lebaea. ,There they served for wages as thetes in the king's household, one tending horses and another oxen. Perdiccas, who was the youngest, tended the lesser flocks. Now the king's wife cooked their food for them, for in old times the ruling houses among men, and not the common people alone, were lacking in wealth. ,Whenever she baked bread, the loaf of the thete Perdiccas grew double in size. Seeing that this kept happening, she told her husband, and it seemed to him when be heard it that this was a portent signifying some great matter. So he sent for his thetes and bade them depart from his territory. ,They said it was only just that they should have their wages before they departed. When they spoke of wages, the king was moved to foolishness and said, “That is the wage you merit, and it is that I give you,” pointing to the sunlight that shone down the smoke vent into the house. ,Gauanes and Aeropus, who were the elder, stood astonished when they heard that, but the boy said, “We accept what you give, O king,” and with that he took a knife which he had with him and drew a line with it on the floor of the house round the sunlight. When he had done this, he three times gathered up the sunlight into the fold of his garment and went his way with his companions. 8.138. So they departed, but one of those who sat nearby declared to the king what this was that the boy had done and how it was of set purpose that the youngest of them had accepted the gift offered. When the king heard this, he was angered, and sent riders after them to slay them. There is, however, in that land a river, to which the descendants from Argos of these men offer sacrifice as their deliverer. ,This river, when the sons of Temenus had crossed it, rose in such flood that the riders could not cross. So the brothers came to another part of Macedonia and settled near the place called the garden of Midas son of Gordias, where roses grow of themselves, each bearing sixty blossoms and of surpassing fragrance. ,In this garden, according to the Macedonian story, Silenus was taken captive. Above it rises the mountain called Bermius, which none can ascend for the wintry cold. From there they issued forth when they had won that country and presently subdued also the rest of Macedonia. 8.141. These were the words of Alexander. The Lacedaemonians, however, had heard that Alexander had come to Athens to bring the Athenians to an agreement with the barbarian. Remembering the oracles, how that they themselves with the rest of the Dorians must be driven out of the Peloponnese by the Medes and the Athenians, they were greatly afraid that the Athenians should agree with the Persian, and they straightway resolved that they would send envoys. ,Moreover, it so fell out for both that they made their entry at one and the same time, for the Athenians delayed and waited for them, being certain that the Lacedaemonians were going to hear that the messenger had come from the Persians for an agreement. They had heard that the Lacedaemonians would send their envoys with all speed. Therefore it was of set purpose that they did this in order that they might make their will known to the Lacedaemonians. 8.142. So when Alexander had made an end of speaking, the envoys from Sparta said, “We on our part have been sent by the Lacedaemonians to entreat you to do nothing harmful to Hellas and accept no offer from the barbarian. ,That would be unjust and dishonorable for any Greek, but for you most of all, on many counts; it was you who stirred up this war, by no desire of ours, and your territory was first the stake of that battle in which all Hellas is now engaged. ,Apart from that, it is unbearable that not all this alone but slavery too should be brought upon the Greeks by you Athenians, who have always been known as givers of freedom to many. Nevertheless, we grieve with you in your afflictions, seeing that you have lost two harvests and your substance has been for a long time wasted. ,In requital for this the Lacedaemonians and their allies declare that they will nourish your women and all of your household members who are unserviceable for war, so long as this war will last. Let not Alexander the Macedonian win you with his smooth-tongued praise of Mardonius' counsel. It is his business to follow that counsel, ,for as he is a tyrant so must he be the tyrant's fellow-worker; it is not your business, if you are men rightly minded, for you know that in foreigners there is no faith nor truth.” These are the words of the envoys. 8.144. Such was their answer to Alexander, but to the Spartan envoys they said, “It was most human that the Lacedaemonians should fear our making an agreement with the barbarian. We think that it is an ignoble thing to be afraid, especially since we know the Athenian temper to be such that there is nowhere on earth such store of gold or such territory of surpassing fairness and excellence that the gift of it should win us to take the Persian part and enslave Hellas. ,For there are many great reasons why we should not do this, even if we so desired; first and foremost, the burning and destruction of the adornments and temples of our gods, whom we are constrained to avenge to the utmost rather than make pacts with the perpetrator of these things, and next the kinship of all Greeks in blood and speech, and the shrines of gods and the sacrifices that we have in common, and the likeness of our way of life, to all of which it would not befit the Athenians to be false. ,Know this now, if you knew it not before, that as long as one Athenian is left alive we will make no agreement with Xerxes. Nevertheless we thank you for your forethought concerning us, in that you have so provided for our wasted state that you offer to nourish our households. ,For your part, you have given us full measure of kindness, yet for ourselves, we will make shift to endure as best we may, and not be burdensome to you. But now, seeing that this is so, send your army with all speed, ,for as we guess, the barbarian will be upon us and invade our country in no long time as soon as the message comes to him that we will do nothing that he requires of us; therefore, before he comes into Attica, now is the time for us to march first into Boeotia.” At this reply of the Athenians the envoys returned back to Sparta. 9.44. After this inquiry about oracles and Mardonius' exhortation, night fell, and the armies posted their sentries. Now when the night was far advanced and it seemed that all was still in the camps and the men were sleeping deeply, at that hour Alexander son of Amyntas, the general and king of the Macedonians, rode up to the Athenian outposts and wanted to speak to their generals. ,The greater part of the sentries remained where they were, but the rest ran to their generals and told them that a horseman had ridden in from the Persian camp, imparting no other word save that he desired to speak to the generals and called them by their names. 9.65. At Plataea, however, the Persians, routed by the Lacedaemonians, fled in disorder to their own camp and inside the wooden walls which they had made in the territory of Thebes. ,It is indeed a marvel that although the battle was right by the grove of Demeter, there was no sign that any Persian had been killed in the precinct or entered into it; most of them fell near the temple in unconsecrated ground. I think—if it is necessary to judge the ways of the gods—that the goddess herself denied them entry, since they had burnt her temple, the shrine at Eleusis. 9.78. There was at Plataea in the army of the Aeginetans one Lampon, son of Pytheas, a leading man of Aegina. He hastened to Pausanias with really outrageous counsel and coming upon him, said to him: ,“son of Cleombrotus, you have done a deed of surpassing greatness and glory; the god has granted to you in saving Hellas to have won greater renown than any Greek whom we know. But now you must finish what remains for the rest, so that your fame may be greater still and so that no barbarian will hereafter begin doing reckless deeds against the Greeks. ,When Leonidas was killed at Thermopylae, Mardonius and Xerxes cut off his head and set it on a pole; make them a like return, and you will win praise from all Spartans and the rest of Hellas besides. For if you impale Mardonius, you will be avenged for your father's brother Leonidas.” 9.79. This is what Lampon, thinking to please, said. Pausanias, however, answered him as follows: “Aeginetan, I thank you for your goodwill and forethought, but you have missed the mark of right judgment. First you exalt me and my fatherland and my deeds, yet next you cast me down to mere nothingness when you advise me to insult the dead, and say that I shall win more praise if I do so. That would be an act more proper for barbarians than for Greeks and one that we consider worthy of censure even in barbarians. ,No, as for myself, I would prefer to find no favor either with the people of Aegina or anyone else who is pleased by such acts. It is enough for me if I please the Spartans by righteous deeds and speech. As for Leonidas, whom you would have me avenge, I think that he has received a full measure of vengeance; the uncounted souls of these that you see have done honor to him and the rest of those who died at Thermopylae. But to you this is my warning: do not come again to me with words like these nor give me such counsel. Be thankful now that you go unpunished.” 9.116. This province was ruled by Xerxes' viceroy Artayctes, a cunning man and a wicked one; witness the deceit that he practised on the king in his march to Athens, how he stole away from Elaeus the treasure of Protesilaus son of Iphiclus. ,This was the way of it; there is at Elaeus in the Chersonesus the tomb of Protesilaus, and a precinct around it, which contained much treasure: vessels of gold and silver, bronze, clothing, and other dedications; all of which Artayctes carried off by the king's gift. ,“Sire,” he said deceitfully to Xerxes, “there is here the house of a certain Greek, who met a just death for invading your territory with an army; give me this man's house, so that all may be taught not to invade your territory.” One would think that this plea would easily persuade Xerxes to give him a man's house, since the latter had no suspicion of Artayctes' meaning. His reason for saying that Protesilaus had invaded the king's territory was that the Persians believe all Asia to belong to themselves and whoever is their king. So when the treasure was given to him, he carried it away from Elaeus to Sestus, and planted and farmed the precinct. He would also come from Elaeus and have intercourse with women in the shrine. Now, when the Athenians laid siege to him, he had made no preparation for it; he did not think that the Greeks would come, and he had no way of escaping from their attack. |
|
