On a solemn hearing, the assembled Athenian people acquitted Miltiades of any crime deserving death, but, at the same time, they sentenced him to pay a fine of fifty talents, the counter-penalty proposed by his friends, and probably the amount of the late unfortunate Parian expedition. This was a payment too large for the fortune of Miltiadēs to sustain; and maimed and disabled as he was, the Athenians dragged him to prison, condemning him to suffer in person for that which he was unable to pay in money.' in a severe fine. If the Marathonian hero had not already received his death-wounds Condemned at Paros, the ingratitude and cruelty of the Athenians would, in all probability, have exacerbated those wounds, however slight, so as to have produced an event equally fatal. It is, indeed, by no means clear that this was not actually the case; a broken thigh or a dislocated knee-pan, could scarcely be supposed, however immature the art of surgery, to have produced death without accelerating or assisting causes; and where can we seek for those causes so successfully as in the wounded mind of the hero? Whatever were the immediate causes, however, this celebrated general died in prison from the mortification Dies in of his wounded limb, soon after his trial and subsequent condemnation. prison. The cruelty of the Athenians did not end with the death of their victim; they denied him the rites of burial until the fine imposed upon him was discharged; and Cimon, the son of Miltiades, offered his own person, to redeem the body of his parent from further indignity, This noble son of no ignoble father, was now, in his turn, sent to prison to enforce the payment of the fine; nor was he released till, the sum being discharged by one Callias, the hard law, and the harder hearts of the Athenian democracy were satisfied. This was at the expense of a further sacrifice made by Cimon for the redemption of his father's honour. According to the barbarous laws and customs of those days, he had married a sister by his father's side, whose name was Elpinicē, and who was admired by Callias, a person of low birth, the same who paid the fine for the liberation of Cimon, which, however, he only consented to do on Cimon's giving up Elpinice to him as his wife. Both Cimon and Elpinice were unwilling to separate; but a cause common to both, the family honour, at length prevailed, and it is recorded, as a peculiar instance of magnanimity in Elpinice, that she gave herself up to Callias, on his payment of the fine for Cimon, with the declaration that "whilst in her power to prevent it, she would not suffer any of the family of Miltiades to remain in prison or distress." Thus perished Miltiades the victor of Marathon, one of the first of those heroes who afterwards rendered Athens so famous on the pages of history. The love of power-a temptation scarcely resistible by human nature-was the principal failing of his character; but after he had attained that power, his native generosity of heart forbade him to use it with injustice or cruelty. During the time of his magistracy, he was moderate, 1 Nepos, Diodorus, and Plutarch are authorities which Grote (vol. iv. pp. 497-8) doubts, relying on the omission of the imprisonment by Herodotus. Aleuada. humble, and universally beloved; nor in the days of his adversity did the slightest spot of malignity cloud his reputation. MUSTERING OF THE PERSIANS FOR THE FINAL INVASION OF B. C. 483 TO B. C. 480. Mardonius, desirous of recovering the military reputation which he had lost by his early misadventures, had urged Xerxes, the son of Darius, immediately on his accession to the throne, to retaliate the wrongs which Persia had received from the Athenians. He also represented the beauty and fertility of Europe, which rendered it worthy to become the sole possession of the Great King, especially as it abounded in all kinds of trees, of which some parts of Persia are remarkably destitute. Messengers also arrived from the Aleuada, princes of Thessaly, who entreated the king to march against Greece, and employed every argument in their power to persuade him. The Peisistratida survivors of the fallen family of the Peisistratida, who had found a refuge at Susa, joined their solicitations. To aid the same design, Onomacritus, a famous priest, who had been formerly banished from Athens, of which he was a citizen, recited some oracular verses. Omitting everything unfavourable to the Persians, he selected whatever was encouraging. He particularly assured the king, speaking of his marching an army into Greece, how the Destinies had determined that a Persian should throw a bridge over the Hellespont. Xerxes prepares to invade Greece. Extent of the king's preparations. Mount Three years were employed in preparations for the invasion of Greece, which Xerxes regarded as an easy acquisition. "He refused," says Plutarch," to eat Attic figs that were brought for sale, waiting till they became his own, by the conquest of the country that produced them. While Xerxes was thus preparing for the conquest of the Greeks, he engaged the Carthaginians to attack their colonies in Italy and Sicily. He likewise drew his levies, like his father Darius, from all the nations of that vast continent which owned the Persian sway. Thus, according to the prophet Daniel, "By his strength and his great riches he stirred up all against the realm of Grecia." Our historian says, "What nation of Asia did not Xerxes lead against Greece? What waters, except great rivers, were not exhausted by his armies? Some of the people furnished ships, (and the whole have been computed at more than three thousand,) others raised infantry, and others cavalry. Some provided transports for the horses and the troops, or long vessels to form bridges, while others even brought stores of provisions and vessels to transport them." The place of rendezvous for this naval armament was Elæus, in the Chersonesus of Thrace. Thence, if we credit our historian, detachments were sent to execute the prodigious labour of cutting a canal through Mount Athos, now Monte Santo, or rather through the isthmus behind it. 1 xi. 2. Herodotus has minutely described the expedients employed to dig this canal, a work which he attributes to the king's vain desire of displaying his power and of leaving a monument to posterity; as with far less trouble he might have transported the vessels across the isthmus. This vanity imputed to Xerxes appears, indeed, to have been a favourite theme of antiquity. Thus Plutarch imputes to the haughty Persian king the following frantic epistle to the mountain: "Athos, whose top now reaches to the skies, I charge thee not to in terrupt my workmen with stones which cannot be cut asunder, lest I cut thee into pieces, and whelm thee in the sea." Xerxes, having completed his preparations, began his march from The march Susa, with the troops which accompanied him from Persia. At from Susa. Critalla, in Cappadocia, which is supposed to have been the Archelais of the Romans, and the modern Erekli, the rest of the troops which were to compose the land army were assembled to attend the king, who now proceeded on his march to Sardis. into Greece. On his arrival at Sardis, he immediately sent heralds into Greece, Heralds sent with the exception of Athens and Lacedæmon, to demand the homage of earth and water: thus Xerxes occupied the winter of the fifth year of his reign. He had previously ordered, according to our historian, vast preparations for passing the Hellespont; and upon a temporary disappointment of his scheme, discovered a childish petulance, which has made this king a theme for satire through all ages. over the He had ordered a bridge to be constructed across the Hellespont, Bridge for the passage of his army into Europe. The workmen commenced Hellespont. at the side next Abydos, the Phoenicians using (to connect the vessels) a cordage made of linen, and the Egyptians one made of the bark of the byblus. This bridge was no sooner completed at the narrowest part of the strait, which was nearly a mile over, when a violent tempest dispersed the whole. Enraged by the knowledge of the disaster, Xerxes sentenced the Hellespont to be whipped to the extent of three hundred lashes, and ordered that a pair of fetters should be March from B. C. 480. thrown into the sea, which made Juvenal (x. 183) extol the king's lenity Credidit: quod non et stigmate dignum (that he had not branded the sea with a hot iron.) Xerxes, however, who had written to Mount Athos, now sent the following vituperatory epistle to the Hellespont, to be delivered by the flagellators: "Thou salt and bitter water, thy master thus punishes thee, because thou hast offended him without provocation; Xerxes the king will insist on passing over thee: no one should offer thee a sacrifice, since thou art deceitful and of an unsavoury flavour." After thus punishing the sea, the despot concluded by beheading those who had constructed the bridge. Another was presently completed, or rather two bridges were contrived, one for the soldiers, and the other for the baggage and beasts of burden. The army, which had wintered at Sardis, left that city early in the spring, being terrified at the moment of their departure by a sudden GOULD darkness, probably an eclipse. Immediately after the baggage-train marched troops of all nations, an undistinguished multitude, comprising more than half the army; at some distance followed a thousand cavalry, selected from the whole Persian army; then a thousand chosen foot, armed with pikes trailing on the ground; after these came ten Nisæan horses superbly caparisoned; following these appeared the sacred car of Jupiter, drawn by eight white horses; behind these, on foot, was the charioteer holding the reins, for no mortal was permitted to mount the car; then appeared Xerxes, in a chariot drawn by Nisæan horses; by his side sat the charioteer, a Persian named Patiramphes, the son of Otanes. Thus Xerxes departed from Sardis at the head of his Persian forces. Having proceeded along the banks of the Caicus, they at length reached the Scamander, the first river, says our historian, which failed to supply a sufficiency of water for the troops and beasts of burden. Here Xerxes is said to have ascended the citadel of Priam to survey the plain of Ilium, and to have sacrificed a thousand oxen to the Trojan Athēnē, whose temple was in the citadel, while the Magi offered libations to the Hero-gods of the country. How this citadel should have survived the glory of Ilium for so many centuries, or how Xerxes, under the guidance of the Persian Magi, should have · honoured a temple by a costly sacrifice, we cannot understand. The army, however, arrived at Abydos, on the Asian shore of the Arrival at Hellespont. Here Xerxes gratified his desire of surveying his land Abydos. and naval armament, in its prodigious extent. There was placed on an eminence a throne of white marble, from which he is said to have beheld these myriads of troops, and this multitude of vessels, at one view, and to have been further gratified by the exhibition of a naval combat, in which the Phoenicians of Sidon were the victors. The first feeling of the Great King was that of self-gratulation, on viewing the vast assemblage of which he was the sovereign lord. But soon, to borrow the language of Glover,'— as down Th' immeasurable ranks his sight was lost, Yet as Seneca well remarks" "the very man who shed these tears was Hellespont. After calling an assembly of the principal Persians to receive the Passage king's last commands on passing over into Europe, the next morning, of the before sunrise, they burned on the bridge a profusion of perfumes, and strewed the road with branches of myrtle. At the rising of the sun, Xerxes poured a libation into the sea from a golden cup, and prayed the sun to avert every calamity which might interfere with his subjugation of Europe to the farthest limits. He then threw the cup into the Hellespont, as also a golden goblet and a Persian scymitar. "I cannot decide," says Herodotus, "whether, in throwing these things into the sea, Xerxes designed an oblation to the sun, or if, repenting of the chastisement he had inflicted on the Hellespont, he intended to appease that sea by his offerings." Xerxes and his army having all passed over, Xerxes determined to arrange and number his forces. This he effected by first collecting 10,000 men, and enclosing with walls the exact space they were found to occupy. Successive bodies of 10,000 men each were then admitted into the enclosure, till the whole army was numbered. The amount of the land forces, Herodotus reports to have been 1,700,000, or rather, upon the whole, 1,800,000, a statement which may excite no small doubts of the correct information, in this instance, at least, of the reputed Father of History. Mr. Richardson regards his 1 Leonidas, b. iii. 2 De Brev. Vit. c. xvii. 1 [H. G.] Q |