Book 5: Terpsichore

Chapter 1

1The Persians left behind in Europe by Darius, over whom Megabazus held command, first subdued the Perinthians of the Hellespont, who had no wish to become Darius' subjects; harshly had they been handled by the Paeonians not long before.

2For the god had given the Paeonians from the Strymon an oracle bidding them march against the Perinthians: if the Perinthians, planting themselves opposite, called out to them by name with a shout, the Paeonians were to attack; if they were not called out to, they were to stand back. This the Paeonians observed to the letter. When the Perinthians had taken up their ground in the suburb, there followed a threefold single combat by mutual challenge — man against man, horse against horse, and dog against dog.

3Two of the three fell to the Perinthians, who sang the paean in their delight; and the Paeonians took this for the very thing the oracle meant, saying among themselves: "Now the prophecy is being fulfilled for us; now the deed is ours." And so, at the paean raised by the Perinthians, the Paeonians fell upon them, beat them soundly, and left but a few of them alive.

Chapter 2

1This, then, is what the Paeonians had done long before. But at this time, though the Perinthians proved themselves brave men in defense of their freedom, the Persians and Megabazus prevailed over them by sheer numbers.

2Perinthus once subdued, Megabazus drove his army through Thrace, bringing every city and every people settled there into submission to the king; for that was the charge laid on him by Darius: to conquer Thrace.

Chapter 3

1The Thracian people are the greatest in the world, after the Indians. If they were ruled by one man, or minded one thing together, they would, in my judgment, be irresistible and by far the mightiest of all peoples. But this is a thing impossible for them, and never to be; and for that very reason they are weak.

2They have many names, region by region, one for each people; but in their customs they are all alike in everything, except the Getae, the Trausi, and the Crestonaeans who dwell above the rest.

Chapter 4

1Of these, what the Getae do — the people who hold that they never die — has been told already in my account. The Trausi in all else keep to the same customs as the other Thracians, but in what befalls them at birth and at death they do as follows.

2When a child is born, the kinfolk sit round it and mourn, telling over all the ills it must now fill out, now that it has come into the world, and going through all the sufferings of human life; but when a man dies, they hide him in the earth with laughter and delight, recounting the many ills he has escaped and how he now abides in perfect blessedness.

Chapter 5

1The Crestonaeans above them do as follows. Every man keeps many wives. When one of these dies, a great trial is held among the wives and a keen rivalry among their friends, to determine which of them the husband loved best. She who is judged and so honored — praised by men and women alike — is slain over the tomb by her own nearest kin and buried with her husband; the rest make loud lamentation, for this is counted their deepest disgrace.

Chapter 6

1Among the other Thracians the custom is this: they sell their children to be carried off abroad; they do not guard their maidens, but let them mingle with whatever men they please; yet their wives they guard jealously, buying them from their parents at great prices.

2To live by one's spear is held noble among them, to keep to one's own hearth base; idleness is the most honored thing of all, and tilling the earth the most dishonored. The noblest life is the life of war and plunder.

Chapter 7

1These are the most notable of their customs. The gods they worship are only these: Ares, Dionysus, and Artemis. But their kings, alone of their people, worship Hermes above all the gods; they swear by him only, and say that they themselves are sprung from Hermes.

Chapter 8

1The burials of their prosperous men are as follows. The dead man lies in state for three days; they first make lamentation, then slaughter victims of every kind and hold a feast. Afterward they bury him, burning the body or covering it in the earth some other way; and heaping up a mound, they hold contests of every kind, in which the greatest prizes are set for single combat. Such are the burials of the Thracians.

Chapter 9

1Of the country beyond this again, toward the north wind, no one can say with certainty what manner of men dwell there; the land across the Ister appears a desert, trackless and boundless. Yet this much I can learn: that men live beyond the Ister called the Sigynnae, who wear the Median dress.

2Their horses, it is said, are shaggy over the whole body, the hair five fingers thick; small, snub-nosed creatures, too weak to carry a man, yet when yoked beneath a chariot the swiftest of the swift — and so the people of that land drive chariots. The bounds of their country reach down to near the Eneti who dwell on the Adriatic.

3They say they are a colony of the Medes. How they came to be a Median colony I cannot determine; but in the long course of time anything may be. At all events, the Ligurians who live above Massalia call their peddlers "Sigynnae," and the Cyprians give the same name to their spears.

Chapter 10

1As the Thracians tell it, bees possess the land beyond the Ister, and by these passage further on is barred. To my mind they do not speak to the purpose: those creatures, it is plain, cannot endure the cold. Rather it seems to me that the lands beneath the Bear lie uninhabited because of the cold. So much, then, is said of this country; its parts along the sea Megabazus the Persian was bringing into subjection.

Chapter 11

1Darius crossed the Hellespont with all speed and came to Sardis, and there called to mind the service Histiaeus of Miletus had done him and the counsel Coes of Mytilene had given him. Summoning the two to Sardis, he put the choice in their hands.

2Histiaeus, already tyrant of Miletus, had no need of a tyranny; he asked instead for Myrcinus, the land of the Edonians, wishing to found a city there. That was his choice. Coes, no tyrant but a commoner, asked to be made tyrant of Mytilene.

Chapter 12

1Both got what they chose and went their ways. But a sight now seen put it into Darius' mind to command Megabazus to seize the Paeonians and uproot them, carrying them off by force from Europe into Asia. There were two Paeonians, Pigres and Mantyes, who, when Darius crossed into Asia, came to Sardis of their own accord, hoping to be made tyrants of the Paeonians, bringing with them their sister, a woman tall and beautiful.

2They marked the day Darius took his seat of state in the suburb where the Lydians dwell, and did this: they dressed their sister as handsomely as they were able and sent her to the water, a jar carried on her head, a horse led along from her arm, and flax spinning between her fingers as she went.

3As the woman passed by, Darius took notice: Persian was none of it, nor Lydian, nor anything from Asia at all — the way she went about her work. And because it caught his attention, he sent some of his spearbearers, bidding them watch what the woman would do with the horse.

4So they followed behind her. When she came to the river she watered the horse, then filled her jar too, and went back along the same road, carrying the water on her head, leading the horse from her arm, and turning her spindle as she walked.

Chapter 13

1Darius, marveling at what the watchers told him and at what he had seen with his own eyes, ordered the woman brought before him. When she came, her brothers too were plainly in view, not far off, watching all this. And when Darius asked what country she was from, the young men answered that they were Paeonians, and that she was their sister.

2He asked next who the Paeonians were, and in what land they dwelt, and why they had come of their own will to Sardis. They told him: they had come to put themselves into his hands; Paeonia lay on the river Strymon, and the Strymon was not far from the Hellespont; they themselves were colonists of the Teucrians out of Troy.

3When they had said each of these things, he asked whether all the women there were as industrious as this. They answered eagerly that it was so — for it was precisely for this that the whole scene had been staged.

Chapter 14

1Thereupon Darius wrote a letter to Megabazus, whom he had left in Thrace as his general, commanding him to uproot the Paeonians from their settlements and bring them into his presence, they and their children and their wives.

2At once a horseman sped off with the message toward the Hellespont; ferried across, he handed the letter to Megabazus, who, having read it and taken guides from Thrace, marched his army into Paeonia.

Chapter 15

1The Paeonians, learning that the Persians were coming against them, gathered their strength and marched out to the coast, supposing the Persians would make their descent there.

2So the Paeonians stood ready to bar Megabazus' army on its coming. But the Persians, learning that the Paeonians had massed and were guarding the approach from the sea, turned inland, guides showing them the way; and slipping past the Paeonians unmarked, they fell upon their cities, empty now of men — and falling on such cities, they took them with ease.

3When the Paeonians learned their cities were in Persian hands, they scattered at once, every man to his own home, and gave themselves up to the Persians. And so the Paeonians — the Siropaiones, the Paeoplae, and all those as far as the Prasiad lake — were uprooted from their settlements and led away into Asia.

Chapter 16

1The peoples about Mount Pangaeum, the Doberes, the Agrianes, and the Odomanti, and the Prasiad lake itself, were never subdued at all by Megabazus. He did make the attempt to remove even those who dwell on the lake, and this is how they live. Platforms of timbers stand high on tall piles in the middle of the lake, with a narrow entrance from the mainland by a single bridge.

2The piles beneath the platforms were set up at the first by the townsfolk in common; but the rule since has been this: the wood is brought from the mountain called Orbelus, and for every wife a man marries he sets up three piles — and each of them takes to himself a great many wives.

3They live in this fashion: each man keeps his own hut on the platform, and there he dwells, with a trapdoor leading down through the platform into the lake. Fearing their infant children might tumble into the water, they tie the little ones' feet fast with a cord.

4For fodder for their horses and their beasts of burden they give them fish; and the fish are so many that when a man throws open his trapdoor and lets a basket down by a rope into the lake, he need wait only a little while before hauling it up full of fish. There are two kinds of these fish, called the paprax and the tilon.

Chapter 17

1So the Paeonians who were conquered were led away into Asia. Megabazus, once he had subdued them, sent messengers into Macedonia, seven Persian men, the most honored in the camp after himself; these were sent to Amyntas to demand earth and water for Darius the king.

2Now the way from the Prasiad lake into Macedonia is very short. First, hard by the lake, lies the mine from which, later than all this, a talent of silver came to Alexander every single day; and past the mine, over the mountain called Dysoron, one is in Macedonia.

Chapter 18

1When these Persians had come before Amyntas, they demanded earth and water for King Darius. He gave both, and called them to his table; and having prepared a dinner of great magnificence, he received the Persians with every warmth of hospitality.

2When the meal was done and they sat on drinking, the Persians spoke as follows: "Macedonian guest, it is the custom among us Persians that when a great dinner is set before us, we bring in our concubines and our wedded wives to sit beside us. You, then, since you have received us eagerly and entertain us royally, and give to King Darius earth and water — follow our custom."

3Amyntas answered: "Persians, with us the custom is not so; men are kept apart from women. But since you are our masters and make this demand, that too shall be yours." With this Amyntas sent for the women, and when they came at his summons they sat down facing the Persians.

4Then the Persians, seeing how beautiful the women were, told Amyntas that what he had done was nothing wise at all: it had been better never to bring the women in than to bring them and set them there facing across the way instead of beside them — an ache to their eyes.

5Amyntas, compelled, bade them take their places beside the guests; and as the women obeyed, the Persians, flushed deep with wine, laid hold of their breasts, and more than one attempted a kiss.

Chapter 19

1Amyntas watched all this and held himself in check, grieving though he was — such was the depth of his fear of the Persians. But Alexander the son of Amyntas, who was present and saw it too, being young and untried by hardship, could no longer contain himself; and bearing it heavily, he said to Amyntas: "Father, yours is the age to yield; go and take your rest, and do not sit up drinking with them. I will stay on here and see that the guests want for nothing."

2Amyntas, understanding that Alexander meant to attempt some rash new thing, said: "My son, I read your heat plainly in your words — you would send me off and do some daring deed. What I ask of you is to attempt nothing new with these men, lest you undo us all; bear to look on what is being done. As for me, I will endure my own going, since you wish it."

Chapter 20

1When Amyntas had said this and gone, Alexander said to the Persians: "Guests, with these women you have every freedom — to mingle with all of them if you wish, or with any one of them you please.

2Whether all or one, that you may settle among yourselves. But now — the hour of bed is drawing near for you, and I see you are well along in your wine — if it is your pleasure, let these women go and bathe, and take them to yourselves when they have washed."

3When he had said this — for the Persians joined in applause — he sent the women out to the women's quarters. Then Alexander himself, dressing up men smooth-cheeked, equal in number to the women, in the women's own clothes, and giving each of them a dagger, led them in; and as he brought them along he said to the Persians:

4"Persians, you are entertained at a banquet complete in every delight: all that we had, and all that could be contrived for you besides, is set before you — and here is the greatest thing of all. We lavish upon you our own mothers and our own sisters, so that you may learn beyond all doubt that you are honored by us as you deserve, and so that you may carry word back to the king who sent you that a Greek, the governor of the Macedonians, received you well both at table and in bed."

5So speaking, Alexander seated a Macedonian man beside each Persian man, a woman in show; and when the Persians tried to lay hands on them, the Macedonians cut them down.

Chapter 21

1So these men, and their retinue with them, perished by that doom; for their wagons and their servants and the whole great apparatus of the camp had followed after them, and all of this was destroyed together with its masters.

2Not long after, the Persians set on foot a great search for these men; and Alexander brought the matter to an end by cunning, giving great sums of money and his own sister, whose name was Gygaea. With these gifts he won over Bubares, a Persian, one of those searching for the lost men on the commander's behalf.

Chapter 22

1So the death of these Persians, caught up and swallowed in this way, passed in silence. That these men descended from Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves claim, I myself happen to know; and in the later chapters of my history I will prove that they are Greeks. The Hellenodikai too, who administer the contest at Olympia, judged them so.

2For when Alexander chose to compete and came down for that very contest, the Greeks who were to run against him shut him out, saying the contest was for Greeks to run and not for barbarians; but once Alexander had proved that he was an Argive, he was judged to be a Greek, and running the stadion he came in level with the first man.

Chapter 23

1These things, then, came to pass in this way. Megabazus, leading the Paeonians, came to the Hellespont, and ferried across from there arrived at Sardis. Now Histiaeus of Miletus was already fortifying the place he had gotten from Darius as his reward — the wages of his watch upon the skiff — a place on the river Strymon called Myrcinus; and Megabazus, learning what Histiaeus was about, no sooner came to Sardis with his Paeonians than he spoke to Darius as follows:

2"King, what a thing you have done! You have let a Greek, a man of formidable cleverness, found a city in Thrace, where there is timber for shipbuilding in abundance and oars without number and mines of silver, and where Greeks dwell round about in great throngs, and barbarians no few; and these, if he takes them for a leader, will do by day and by night whatever he commands."

3"Stop this man's work at once, then, before he entangles you in a war of your own house. Summon him to you with gentle words and put a stop to him; and once you have him in your hands, see to it that he never comes among the Greeks again."

Chapter 24

1With these words Megabazus readily persuaded Darius, as one who foresaw well what was to come. Then Darius sent a messenger to Myrcinus, and said this: "Histiaeus, king Darius says this: on reflection I find that there is no man better disposed to me and to my interests than you; and this I know not from words but from deeds, having learned it well."

2"So now—for I intend to accomplish great matters—come to me by all means, that I may lay them before you." Trusting in these words, and thinking it a great thing to become the king's counselor, Histiaeus came to Sardis.

3When he arrived, Darius said to him: "Histiaeus, I have sent for you for this reason. As soon as I returned from Scythia and you were out of my sight, in this short time there is nothing else I have so wanted as to see you and to come to speech with me, knowing that of all possessions the most precious is a friend who is both sensible and well-disposed—and both of these I can testify that you have shown toward my affairs."

4"So now—since you did well to come—this is what I offer you: leave Miletus and the new city in Thrace, and follow me to Susa and have whatever I have, being my messmate and my counselor."

Chapter 25

1When Darius had said this, he appointed Artaphrenes, his brother by the same father, to be viceroy of Sardis, and marched away to Susa, taking Histiaeus with him; and he appointed Otanes to be commander of the men of the coast. Otanes' father Sisamnes, who had been one of the king's judges, Cambyses killed and flayed entire for giving an unjust verdict for money; he tore the skin into strips and cut thongs from it and stretched them over the throne on which he sat to give judgment.

2When Cambyses had stretched it, he appointed as judge in place of Sisamnes—whom he had killed and flayed—Sisamnes' own son, charging him to remember the throne on which he sat to give judgment.

Chapter 26

1This then is the Otanes who sat down upon that throne; now, becoming Megabazus' successor in the command, he took Byzantium and Calchedon, and took Antandrus in the Troad, and took Lamponium; and getting ships from the Lesbians he took Lemnos and Imbros as well, both of which were still inhabited by Pelasgians at that time.

Chapter 27

1The Lemnians fought well and defended themselves, but in time they were worn down; and the Persians set a viceroy over the survivors, Lycaretus, brother of Maeandrius, who had been king of Samos.

2This Lycaretus died while governing Lemnos. The reason was this: he enslaved and crushed everyone, charging some with deserting the army on the march against the Scythians, and others with having harried the army of Darius as it was being brought back from Scythia.

Chapter 28

1This is all that he accomplished as commander. Not long afterward there was a respite from troubles, and for the second time troubles began for the Ionians out of Naxos and Miletus. Naxos surpassed the islands in prosperity, and at the same time Miletus was at the very height of her own power and was the pride of Ionia; and before all this, for two generations of men, she had been sick with faction as badly as might be, until the Parians restored her—for the Milesians chose the Parians as their peacemakers out of all the Greeks.

Chapter 29

1The Parians reconciled them in this way. When the best of their men came to Miletus—for they saw that the people were terribly ruined—they said that they wished to travel through the country; and doing this, as they passed through the whole of Milesia, whenever they saw a well-farmed estate in the laid-waste land, they wrote down the name of the master of the estate.

2When they had driven through all the country and found these men to be few, they came down to the city as quickly as they could, and holding an assembly they appointed these men—those whose estates they had found well farmed—to govern the city; for they said they expected that these men would take care of the public business just as they did their own; and the rest of the Milesians, who had been in faction before, they ordered to obey them.

Chapter 30

1In this way the Parians settled the affairs of the Milesians. Then out of these cities troubles began to come upon Ionia in this way: from Naxos men of the wealthy class were driven into exile by the people, and on their exile they came to Miletus.

2Now Miletus happened to be under the guardianship of Aristagoras son of Molpagoras, who was both married to the daughter and a cousin of Histiaeus son of Lysagoras, the man whom Darius was holding at Susa; for Histiaeus was tyrant of Miletus and happened to be at Susa at this time, when the Naxians came—they had been guest-friends of Histiaeus before.

3Coming to Miletus, the Naxians begged Aristagoras to provide them with some force and restore them to their own land. He, reckoning that if they were restored to their city through his agency he would be master of Naxos, and making the guest-friendship of Histiaeus his pretext, put this proposal before them:

4"For my part I am not good security for providing so large a force as to restore you against the will of the Naxians who hold the city; for I learn that the Naxians have eight thousand shields and many warships. Yet I will contrive every means, making every effort.

5My plan is this. Artaphrenes happens to be a friend of mine; and this Artaphrenes is the son of Hystaspes and the brother of Darius the king, and he rules all the coast of Asia, having a great army and many ships. This man, I think, will do whatever we need."

6When they heard this, the Naxians left it to Aristagoras to manage the business as best he could, and they bade him promise gifts and the cost of the army, saying that they would pay it off themselves; and they had great hopes that when they appeared at Naxos the Naxians would do everything that they commanded, and so would the other islanders too. For not one of these islands of the Cyclades was yet under Darius.

Chapter 31

1Arriving at Sardis, Aristagoras said to Artaphrenes that Naxos was an island not large in size, but otherwise beautiful and rich and close to Ionia, and that much wealth and many slaves were to be found there. "So lead an army against this land, bringing back to it the exiles from it.

2And if you do this, then for your part great sums are ready at my disposal over and above the costs of the army—for it is right that we who lead the expedition provide these; and further, you will win islands for the king, Naxos itself and the islands that depend on it, Paros and Andros and the others called the Cyclades.

3Setting out from there, you will easily fall upon Euboea, an island great and prosperous, no smaller than Cyprus and very easy to take. And a hundred ships are enough to subdue all of these." He replied to him as follows:

4"You are the bringer of good plans to the king's house, and your advice is good in every part except the number of ships; instead of a hundred ships, two hundred will be ready for you with the coming of spring. But the king himself must also give his approval to this."

Chapter 32

1When Aristagoras heard this, he went away to Miletus overjoyed. Artaphrenes, when he had sent to Susa and laid before him what Aristagoras said and Darius himself had also given his approval, prepared two hundred triremes and a very great host of Persians and the other allies, and appointed as their commander Megabates, a Persian of the Achaemenid house, cousin of both himself and Darius, whose daughter Pausanias son of Cleombrotus the Lacedaemonian married in later times—if the story is true—in his desire to become tyrant of Greece. Having appointed Megabates commander, Artaphrenes sent the army off to Aristagoras.

Chapter 33

1Megabates took on board Aristagoras from Miletus and the Ionian army and the Naxians, and sailed on the pretext of making for the Hellespont; but when he reached Chios, he brought the ships in to Caulcas, in order to cross from there to Naxos with the north wind.

2And since it was not fated that the Naxians should be destroyed by this expedition, the following thing came to pass. As Megabates was going the rounds of the guards aboard the ships, on a ship from Myndus he happened to find no one keeping watch; he took this as an outrage and ordered his bodyguards to find the captain of this ship—his name was Scylax—and bind him, passing his head through an oar-hole in the ship's side, so that his head was outside and his body within.

3When Scylax had been bound, someone reported to Aristagoras that Megabates had bound his guest-friend from Myndus and was maltreating him. He went and pleaded with the Persian, but getting none of what he asked, he went himself and released the man. Learning of this, Megabates was very angry indeed and raged against Aristagoras.

4But Aristagoras said: "What have you to do with these matters? Did not Artaphrenes send you to obey me and to sail wherever I command? Why do you meddle?" These things Aristagoras said. Megabates, angered at them, when night fell sent men in a boat to Naxos to tell the Naxians everything about the situation that confronted them.

Chapter 34

1For the Naxians had not expected at all that this expedition would be launched against them. When they learned of it, they at once brought in from the fields everything into the wall, and made their preparations as though they would be besieged, laying in food and drink, and they stocked the wall.

2These men then were preparing as though war was coming upon them; but the others, when they had crossed with the ships from Chios to Naxos, attacked men who had made their defenses ready, and besieged them for four months.

3But when the money the Persians had brought with them was spent, and Aristagoras too had spent a great deal besides, and the siege demanded still more, then they built forts for the exiles of the Naxians and withdrew to the mainland, having fared badly.

Chapter 35

1Aristagoras was not able to fulfill his promise to Artaphrenes; and at the same time the cost of the army was demanded of him and pressed him hard; and he was afraid, since the army had fared badly and he had been slandered to Megabates, that he would be stripped of his tyranny over Miletus.

2Fearing each of these things, he was planning a revolt; for it happened at the same time that the man with the tattooed head had arrived from Susa from Histiaeus, with a message that Aristagoras should revolt from the king.

3For Histiaeus, wishing to signal Aristagoras to revolt, had no other sure way of signaling him, since the roads were guarded; so he shaved the head of his most trusted slave and tattooed it, and waited for the hair to grow; and when it had grown as quickly as possible, he sent the man to Miletus, charging him with nothing else except that, when he reached Miletus, he should tell Aristagoras to shave his hair and look at his head. The tattoos signified, as I have said before, a revolt.

4This Histiaeus did because he counted his detention at Susa a great misfortune; for if a revolt came he had great hopes of being sent down to the sea, whereas if Miletus attempted nothing new he reckoned that he would never come there again.

Chapter 36

1Histiaeus then, with this plan, sent the messenger off; and at the same time all these things came together for Aristagoras. He therefore took counsel with his partisans, declaring his own opinion and what had arrived from Histiaeus.

2All the others expressed the same opinion, bidding him revolt; but Hecataeus the writer of stories first of all forbade him to take up war against the king of the Persians, recounting all the nations that Darius ruled and his power. When he could not persuade him, his second advice was that they should contrive to become masters of the sea.

3In no other way, he said, could he see that this would come about; for he knew the power of the Milesians to be weak; but if the wealth in the temple at Branchidae were seized—the wealth that Croesus the Lydian dedicated—he had great hopes of mastering the sea, and thus they would both have the wealth to use and the enemy would not plunder it.

4This wealth was great, as I have shown in the first of my accounts. This opinion then did not prevail; still, they resolved to revolt, and that one of them should sail to Myus, to the army that had withdrawn there from Naxos, and, being there, try to seize the generals who had sailed in command of the ships.

Chapter 37

1Iatragoras was sent off for this very purpose, and by guile seized Oliatus son of Ibanollis of Mylasa, and Histiaeus son of Tymnes of Termera, and Coes son of Erxander, to whom Darius had given Mytilene as a gift, and Aristagoras son of Heracleides of Cyme, and many others; and so Aristagoras openly revolted, contriving everything against Darius.

2First he renounced the tyranny in word and gave Miletus equal government, so that the Milesians would willingly join him in the revolt; and then he did the same thing in the rest of Ionia, driving out some of the tyrants, while the tyrants he had taken from the ships that had sailed against Naxos—these he handed over to their cities, wishing to make them well disposed, giving each man to the city from which he came.

Chapter 38

1The Mytilenaeans, as soon as they received Coes, led him out and stoned him to death; but the Cymaeans let their own man go; and most of the others too let theirs go.

2So the tyrants were put down in the cities; and Aristagoras of Miletus, when he had put down the tyrants, ordered each city to appoint its own generals, and next he himself set out for Lacedaemon in a trireme; for he plainly needed to find some great alliance.

Chapter 39

1At Sparta, Anaxandridas son of Leon was no longer king and alive, for he had died; and Cleomenes son of Anaxandridas held the kingship, having gained it not by valor but by birth. For Anaxandridas had to wife the daughter of his own brother, and although she was dear to him, no children were born to them.

2When matters stood so, the ephors sent for him and said: "If you do not look to your own interests, we will not stand by and see the line of Eurysthenes come to nothing. You have the wife you now have; since she bears you no children, divorce her and marry another; and by doing this you will please the Spartans." He replied that he would do neither of these things, and that they were giving him bad counsel in bidding him put away the wife who had done him no wrong and bring in another; nor would he obey them.

Chapter 40

1The ephors and the elders, taking counsel on this, made this proposal to Anaxandridas: "Since we see that you cling to the wife you have, do this and do not resist us, so that the Spartans may not take some other decision about you:

2we do not require you to divorce the wife you have; keep giving her everything you now give her, and take another woman to wife besides her, to bear you children." When they said this, Anaxandridas gave way; and thereafter he kept two wives and two hearths, acting in no way as Spartans do.

Chapter 41

1Not long afterward the second wife, the one who came later, bore this Cleomenes. And she thus showed the Spartans a king in reserve; and the first wife, who had been childless before, then somehow conceived, having this piece of luck.

2The kin of the later wife learned that she was in truth with child and troubled her, saying that she was boasting and meant to pass off a supposititious child. As they made a great to-do and her time drew near, the ephors, disbelieving, sat around the woman in her labor and kept watch.

3When she had borne Dorieus, she conceived Leonidas straightway, and after him she conceived Cleombrotus straightway; though some say that Cleombrotus and Leonidas were twins. The second wife, who had borne Cleomenes—she was the daughter of Prinetades son of Demarmenus—did not bear again.

Chapter 42

1Cleomenes, as the story goes, was not sound of mind and was somewhat mad; but Dorieus was the first among all men of his age, and knew well that by his own valor he would hold the kingship.

2So, thinking in this way, when Anaxandridas had died and the Lacedaemonians by their law had made the elder, Cleomenes, king, Dorieus took it as an outrage and thought it not right to be ruled by Cleomenes; and asking for a body of Spartans he led them out to found a colony, neither consulting the oracle at Delphi as to what land he should go to settle, nor doing any of the customary things; but chafing at what had happened, he sailed for Libya—and Theraean men were his guides.

3Arriving in Libya he settled in the fairest place in Libya, beside the river Cinyps. Driven out from there in his third year by the Libyan Macae and the Carthaginians, he came to the Peloponnese.

Chapter 43

1There Antichares, a man of Eleon, advised him from the oracles of Laius to found Heraclea in Sicily, saying that all the land of Eryx belonged to the Heracleidae, since Heracles himself had won it. Hearing this, he went off to Delphi to consult the oracle, whether he would take the land he was setting out for; and the Pythia told him that he would take it. Taking on the fleet that he had also led to Libya, Dorieus sailed past Italy.

Chapter 44

1At this time, as the Sybarites say, they and their own king Telys were about to march against Croton; and the Crotonians, seized with great fear, begged Dorieus to come to their aid, and their request was granted; and Dorieus marched with them against Sybaris and helped take Sybaris.

2This then is what the Sybarites say Dorieus and his men did; but the Crotonians say that no foreign ally joined them in the war against the Sybarites except Callias, an Elean seer of the Iamids, and he in this way: he had fled from Telys the tyrant of the Sybarites and come to them, after the sacrifices did not go well for him when he was divining for the campaign against Croton.

Chapter 45

1This is what these men say; and each side produces the following proofs. The Sybarites point to a precinct and a temple beside the dry bed of the Crathis, which they say Dorieus founded for Athena surnamed Crathias when he had taken the city; and they make the greatest proof of the fate of Dorieus that he died because he acted contrary to the oracles; for if he had done nothing amiss, but had done what he was sent out to do, he would have taken the Erycine territory and held it once taken, and neither he nor his army would have been destroyed.

2The Crotonians in turn show that many special gifts were given to Callias the Elean in Crotonian territory—which were still held by the descendants of Callias in my own time—while to Dorieus and to the descendants of Dorieus nothing was given. And yet, if Dorieus had taken any part in the war against Sybaris, far more would have been given to him than to Callias. These then are the proofs that each of them brings forward, and one may side with whichever of them one believes.

Chapter 46

1There sailed with Dorieus other Spartan joint-founders: Thessalus, Paraebates, Celees, and Euryleon; these, when they reached Sicily with the whole expedition, died, being defeated in battle by the Phoenicians and the Egestaeans; and Euryleon alone of the joint-founders survived this disaster.

2He gathered the survivors of the army and seized Minoa, a colony of the Selinusians, and helped free the Selinusians from their monarch Peithagoras; and after he had destroyed this man, he himself attempted the tyranny of Selinus and was monarch for a short time; for the Selinusians rose against him and killed him when he had fled to the altar of Zeus of the Marketplace.

Chapter 47

1There also followed Dorieus and died with him Philip son of Butacides, a man of Croton, who had been betrothed to the daughter of Telys the Sybarite and so fled from Croton; but being cheated of the marriage he sailed away to Cyrene, and setting out from there he followed Dorieus with his own trireme and at his own expense, being an Olympic victor and the handsomest of the Greeks in his own day.

2And because of his own beauty he won from the Egestaeans what no other man has won: they have set up a hero's shrine over his tomb and propitiate him with sacrifices.

Chapter 48

1Dorieus then died in such a manner; but if he had submitted to being ruled by Cleomenes and stayed in Sparta, he would have been king of Lacedaemon; for Cleomenes did not rule for any long time, but died childless, leaving only a daughter, whose name was Gorgo.

Chapter 49

1Aristagoras, the tyrant of Miletus, arrived at Sparta while Cleomenes held the power; and he came to speak with him, as the Lacedaemonians say, carrying a bronze tablet on which a map of the whole earth was engraved, and the whole sea and all the rivers.

2Coming to speak with him, Aristagoras said this: "Cleomenes, do not wonder at my eagerness to come here; for the state of our affairs is this: that the sons of the Ionians should be slaves instead of free men is a disgrace and the deepest grief—first to us ourselves, and next to you who are left, inasmuch as you stand at the head of Greece.

3So now, by the gods of the Greeks, rescue the Ionians from slavery, men of your own blood. And this can easily come about for you; for the foreigners are not valiant, while in the arts of war you have reached the highest excellence; and their manner of fighting is this: bows and short spears; and they go into battle wearing trousers and turbans on their heads.

4So easy are they to subdue. And the good things enjoyed by those who hold that mainland are as great as all the rest together possess—beginning with gold, and silver and bronze and embroidered clothing and beasts of burden and slaves; and these you would win as your hearts desire.

5And they dwell next to one another as I shall show: next to these Ionians here live the Lydians, who inhabit a goodly land and are the richest in silver." As he said this he pointed to the map of the earth that he carried with him, engraved on the tablet. Aristagoras said further: "Next to the Lydians are the Phrygians toward the east, who have the most flocks of all the peoples I know and the most abundant crops.

6Next to the Phrygians are the Cappadocians, whom we call Syrians; bordering on them are the Cilicans, who come down to this sea, in which the island of Cyprus lies; and these pay the king five hundred talents as yearly tribute. Next to these Cilicians are the Armenians here, they too rich in flocks; and next to the Armenians, the Matieni, holding this land.

7And next to these is this land of Cissia, in which, beside this river Choaspes, lies this city of Susa, where the great king has his residence and where the treasuries of his wealth are kept; and if you take this city, you may then contend with Zeus himself for riches.

8But it is for a small and not so good a land, and for narrow borders, that you are now waging wars against Messenians, who are your match, and against Arcadians and Argives, among whom there is nothing of gold or silver—for which one can be stirred to some eagerness to die fighting; and when it is offered to you to rule all Asia with ease, will you choose anything else?"

9Aristagoras spoke thus, and Cleomenes answered him as follows: "Milesian stranger, I will put off my answer to you until the third day."

Chapter 50

1To this point then they came at that time; but when the appointed day for the answer came and they met, Cleomenes asked Aristagoras how many days' journey it was from the Ionian sea up to the king.

2Aristagoras, though in all else a clever man and one who deceived Cleomenes well, in this he blundered; for he should not have told the truth, if he wished to lead the Spartans out to Asia—but he said that the journey up was three months. Cleomenes, cutting short the rest of the account that Aristagoras was on the point of giving about the road, said:

3"Milesian stranger, leave Sparta before the sun sets; for you have no pleasant tale to tell the Lacedaemonians, if you want to lead them three months' journey from the sea."

Chapter 51

1Cleomenes having said this went home; and Aristagoras took a suppliant's branch and went to the house of Cleomenes, and going within he asked Cleomenes, as a suppliant, to listen to him, and told him to send the little girl away; for Cleomenes' daughter was standing beside him, whose name was Gorgo—and she was his only child, of about eight or nine years of age. Cleomenes told him to say whatever he wanted and not to hold back on the child's account.

2Then Aristagoras began by offering ten talents, if Cleomenes would accomplish what he asked. When Cleomenes refused, Aristagoras kept advancing and increasing the sum, until he had offered fifty talents—and then the child cried out: "Father, the stranger will corrupt you, if you do not get up and go away."

3Cleomenes, pleased by the child's warning, went off to another room; and Aristagoras left Sparta altogether, and no longer had the chance to explain further about the journey up to the king.

Chapter 52

1For the account of this road is as follows: there are royal posting-stations all along it, and very fine halting-places, and the whole road runs through inhabited and safe country. Through Lydia and Phrygia there are twenty staging-posts in all, and ninety-four and a half parasangs.

2From Phrygia the river Halys is reached, where gates stand, which it is necessary to drive through in order to cross the river, and there is a great guard-post there. Once across into Cappadocia and traveling on through it as far as the borders of Cilicia there are twenty-eight staging-posts, and one hundred and four parasangs. At the borders of these lands you will drive through two sets of gates and pass by two guard-posts.

3When you have passed these and made your way through Cilicia there are three staging-posts, and fifteen and a half parasangs. The border between Cilicia and Armenia is a river that can be crossed by ships, whose name is the Euphrates. In Armenia there are fifteen staging-posts with lodging-places, and fifty-six and a half parasangs, and there is a guard-post among them.

4From this Armenia, on into the land of Matiene, there are thirty-four staging-posts, and one hundred and thirty-seven parasangs. Four rivers that can be crossed by ships flow through this land, and all of them it is necessary to ferry across: first the Tigris, and then a second and a third with the same name, though not the same river nor flowing from the same source; the first of them flows out of the Armenians, and the last out of the Matieni.

5The fourth of these rivers is called the Gyndes, which Cyrus once divided into three hundred and sixty channels.

6From this land, on into the Cissian country, there are eleven staging-posts, and forty-two and a half parasangs, to the river Choaspes, which is also crossed by ships; and on it stands the city of Susa.

Chapter 53

1All these staging-posts together are one hundred and eleven. So many are the halting-places of the stations on the way up from Sardis to Susa. And if the royal road has been measured rightly by parasangs, and the parasang is worth thirty stades—as this one in fact is worth—then from Sardis to the palace called Memnonian is thirteen thousand five hundred stades, the number of parasangs being four hundred and fifty. If one travels one hundred and fifty stades each day, exactly ninety days are consumed.

Chapter 54

1In this way the Milesian Aristagoras spoke rightly to Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian when he said that the journey up to the king was three months. And if anyone seeks something more exact than this, I will show that too: for the road from Ephesus to Sardis must be added to this account.

2And so I say that the total number of stades from the Greek sea to Susa (for this is the city called Memnonian) is fourteen thousand and forty; for from Ephesus to Sardis it is five hundred and forty stades, and so the three months' journey is lengthened by three days.

Chapter 55

1Aristagoras, driven out of Sparta, went to Athens, which had by this time been freed from its tyrants in the following way. When Hipparchus son of Pisistratus, the brother of the tyrant Hippias, had seen a vision in a dream that very clearly foretold what would befall him, Aristogiton and Harmodius killed him—they were of Gephyraean stock in the beginning—and after this the Athenians were ruled by tyrants for four years, no less, but even more, than before.

Chapter 56

1The vision that Hipparchus saw in his dream was this: on the night before the Panathenaea it seemed to Hipparchus that a tall, handsome man stood over him and spoke these verses in riddling words: "Bear, lion, what cannot be borne, with a patient heart; / no man who does wrong shall fail to pay the penalty."

2These things, as soon as day came, he was plainly putting before the interpreters of dreams; and then, dismissing the vision, he sent the procession, in which he met his death.

Chapter 57

1The Gephyraeans, of whom were the murderers of Hipparchus, had come originally from Eretria, as they themselves say; but as I find by inquiry, they were Phoenicians of those who came with Cadmus to the land now called Boeotia, and they dwelt in that country, having received by lot the Tanagrean portion.

2From there, after the Cadmeans had previously been driven out by the Argives, these Gephyraeans were in their turn driven out by the Boeotians and turned to the Athenians. The Athenians received them as citizens on stated terms, but ordered them to keep away from many sacred rites, none of them worth recounting.

Chapter 58

1These Phoenicians who came with Cadmus, of whom were the Gephyraeans, when they settled in this country brought many kinds of teaching to the Greeks, and in particular the alphabet, which the Greeks did not have before, as I think; at first those very letters that all the Phoenicians use; and as time went on they changed along with their speech the form of the letters too.

2For most of the country around them was inhabited at that time by Ionian Greeks, who received the letters by teaching from the Phoenicians, altered a few of them, and made use of them; and in using them they called them Phoenician letters—as was only fair, since the Phoenicians had brought them into Greece.

3And the Ionians call books "diphtherai," that is, skins, from of old, because once, when papyrus was scarce, they used goatskins and sheepskins; and even in my own day many of the foreign peoples write on such skins.

Chapter 59

1I have myself seen Cadmean letters in the temple of Apollo Ismenius in Thebes of Boeotia, inscribed on certain tripods, for the most part like the Ionic letters. One of the tripods has the inscription: "Amphitryon set me up from the spoils of the Teleboans." These would date to the time of Laius son of Labdacus, son of Polydorus, son of Cadmus.

Chapter 60

1Another tripod, in hexameter verse, says: "Scaeus, winning the boxing match, set me up to the far-shooting Apollo, a very beautiful offering." Scaeus would be the son of Hippocoön—if this really is the man who dedicated it, and not another who had the same name as the son of Hippocoön—of the time of Oedipus son of Laius.

Chapter 61

1A third tripod, also in hexameter verse, says: "Laodamas, while he was sole ruler, set me up, this tripod, to Apollo the sure-shot, a very beautiful offering."

2In the time of this Laodamas son of Eteocles, while he was sole ruler, the Cadmeans were driven out by the Argives and turned to the Encheleans. The Gephyraeans, being left behind, were driven out in their turn by the Boeotians and withdrew to Athens; and they have sanctuaries established at Athens in which none of the other Athenians has a share, set apart from the other sacred rites, and in particular the sanctuary and mysteries of Demeter Achaea.

Chapter 62

1I have now told of the vision that Hipparchus saw in his dream and of where the Gephyraeans came from, of whom were the murderers of Hipparchus; and I must besides take up again the account I was going to give at the beginning—how the Athenians were freed from their tyrants.

2While Hippias was tyrant and was growing bitter against the Athenians because of the death of Hipparchus, the Alcmaeonidae, an Athenian family in exile from the Pisistratidae, when they fared no better than the other Athenian exiles in their attempts to return by force, but suffered great reverses in trying both to come back and to free Athens—after they had fortified Leipsydrion above Paeonia—now the Alcmaeonidae, contriving everything against the Pisistratidae, undertook by contract with the Amphictyons to build the temple at Delphi, the one that now stands but did not then.

3Since they were well off for money and still men of established standing from of old, they finished the temple more beautifully than the model—in particular, whereas they had agreed to build the temple of poros stone, they made the front of it of Parian marble.

Chapter 63

1As the Athenians say, these men sat at Delphi and persuaded the Pythia with money, so that whenever men of Sparta came, whether in a private or a public capacity, to consult the oracle, she should tell them to free Athens.

2The Lacedaemonians, since the same answer was always given to them, sent Anchimolius son of Aster, a man of good standing among the citizens, with an army to drive the Pisistratidae out of Athens, even though these were their guest-friends of the closest kind; for they held the god's commands to be of more account than those of men. And they sent these men by sea, in ships.

3He put in at Phalerum and disembarked the army; and the Pisistratidae, learning of this beforehand, sent for help from Thessaly—for an alliance had been made with them. The Thessalians sent them, by a common resolve, a thousand horsemen and their own king, Cineas, a man of Conium; and once the Pisistratidae had secured these as allies, they contrived the following plan:

4they cut down the crops on the plain of Phalerum and, having made this ground rideable, sent the cavalry against the army; and falling upon it they destroyed many others of the Lacedaemonians and also Anchimolius himself; and those of them who survived they drove back into the ships. So the first expedition from Lacedaemon came to its end; and there is a tomb of Anchimolius in Attica at Alopece, near the Heracleum in Cynosarges.

Chapter 64

1After this the Lacedaemonians sent a larger expedition against Athens, appointing as commander of the army their king Cleomenes son of Anaxandridas, sending them not by sea but by land.

2When they invaded the Attic country, the Thessalian cavalry first engaged them and were soon put to flight, and more than forty of their men fell; the survivors withdrew as they were, straight for Thessaly. Cleomenes, when he reached the city together with those of the Athenians who wished to be free, besieged the tyrants, who were shut up in the Pelasgic wall.

Chapter 65

1And the Lacedaemonians would certainly not have taken the Pisistratidae at all; for they had no thought of laying siege, and the Pisistratidae were well provided with food and drink, so that after besieging them a few days they would have withdrawn to Sparta. But now chance came as ruin to one side and as an ally to the other; for the children of the Pisistratidae were captured as they were being smuggled out of the country.

2When this happened, all their affairs were thrown into confusion, and they came to an agreement for their children's sake, on whatever terms the Athenians chose, so that they should withdraw from Attica within five days.

3After this they withdrew to Sigeum on the Scamander, having ruled the Athenians for thirty-six years; and these too were of Pylian and Neleid stock from the beginning, of the same line as Codrus and Melanthus, who before them had come as settlers and become kings of the Athenians.

4In their time Hippocrates bethought himself to give his son the name of Pisistratus, taking the name from Pisistratus son of Nestor.

5In this way the Athenians were freed from tyrants; and all that they did or suffered worthy of recounting after they were freed, before Ionia revolted from Darius and Aristagoras of Miletus came to Athens to ask their help—all this I will now tell first.

Chapter 66

1Athens, great even before, became greater still when she was freed from tyrants; and in her two men were the leading powers: Cleisthenes, an Alcmaeonid—the man who is said to have persuaded the Pythia—and Isagoras son of Tisander, of a distinguished house, though his ancestry I cannot tell; his kinsmen sacrifice to Zeus Carius.

2These men became rivals for power; and Cleisthenes, getting the worse of it, attached the people to his side. Then he made the Athenians, who had been four tribes, into ten, abolishing the tribal names of the sons of Ion—Geleon, Aegicores, Argades, and Hoples—and finding names of other local heroes instead, all except Ajax; him, since he was a neighbor and an ally though a foreigner, he added to the list.

Chapter 67

1This, as I think, Cleisthenes modeled on his mother's father, Cleisthenes the tyrant of Sicyon. For Cleisthenes, having made war on the Argives, first of all stopped the rhapsodes from competing at Sicyon on account of the poems of Homer, because in them Argos and the Argives are sung of through nearly all of it; and next—there was a hero-shrine of Adrastus son of Talaus in the very marketplace of the Sicyonians—he desired to drive out Adrastus, who was an Argive, from the country.

2Going to Delphi he consulted the oracle whether he should expel Adrastus; and the Pythia answered him, saying that Adrastus was a king of the Sicyonians, while he himself was a man deserving of stoning. Since the god would not grant him this, he went away and considered by what device Adrastus himself would depart. When he thought he had found one, he sent to Thebes in Boeotia saying that he wished to bring Melanippus son of Astacus to his land; and the Thebans granted his request.

3When Cleisthenes had brought in Melanippus, he set apart a precinct for him in the very town-hall and established him there in the strongest part of it. And Cleisthenes brought in Melanippus—and this too must be told—as the man who was the bitterest enemy of Adrastus, since he had slain Adrastus' brother Mecisteus and his son-in-law Tydeus.

4When he had set apart the precinct for him, he took away the sacrifices and festivals of Adrastus and gave them to Melanippus. The Sicyonians were accustomed to honor Adrastus with very great rites; for this country was the land of Polybus, and Adrastus was Polybus' daughter's son; and Polybus, dying childless, gave the kingdom to Adrastus.

5Among the other honors the Sicyonians paid to Adrastus, they celebrated his sufferings with tragic choruses, honoring not Dionysus but Adrastus. Cleisthenes gave the choruses back to Dionysus, and the rest of the sacrifice to Melanippus.

Chapter 68

1This then is what he did concerning Adrastus; and the tribes of the Dorians, so that the Sicyonians might not have the same as the Argives, he changed to other names. Herein he made the Sicyonians the laughingstock above all; for altering the tribal names to those of a pig and an ass he attached the very endings to them, except in the case of his own tribe; that one he named after his own office. These then were called Archelai, others Hyatai, others Oneatai, and others Choireatai.

2With these names of the tribes the Sicyonians went on living both while Cleisthenes ruled and for sixty years after his death; but afterward they took counsel together and changed to the Hylleis and Pamphyloi and Dymanatae, and added a fourth, naming themselves Aegialeis after Aegialeus the son of Adrastus.

Chapter 69

1This then is what Cleisthenes of Sicyon did; and the Athenian Cleisthenes, being the daughter's son of this Sicyonian and bearing his name, he too, as I think, holding the Ionians in contempt so that the Athenians might not have the same tribes as the Ionians, modeled himself on his namesake Cleisthenes.

2For when he had attached to his own side the Athenian people, who before had been despised, he renamed the tribes and made them more numerous instead of fewer; he made ten phylarchs instead of four, and divided the demes among the ten tribes; and once he had gained the people he stood far above his opponents.

Chapter 70

1Isagoras, defeated in his turn, contrived the following countermove: he called upon Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian, who had become his guest-friend at the time of the siege of the Pisistratidae; and Cleomenes was charged with having an intrigue with Isagoras' wife.

2At first Cleomenes sent a herald to Athens and banished Cleisthenes, and with him many other Athenians, singling out those who were accursed; and in sending this he spoke from the instruction of Isagoras. For the Alcmaeonidae and their partisans bore the guilt of this murder, while Isagoras himself had no share in it, nor his friends.

Chapter 71

1The accursed among the Athenians came by their name as follows. There was an Athenian named Cylon, an Olympic victor; this man aspired to the tyranny, and gathering a band of his companions of the same age he tried to seize the acropolis, but being unable to master it he sat as a suppliant at the image.

2These men were made to stand up by the prytanies of the naukrari, who then governed Athens, under a pledge of safety except from death; but the Alcmaeonidae are charged with murdering them. This happened before the time of Pisistratus.

Chapter 72

1When Cleomenes sent and banished Cleisthenes and the accursed, Cleisthenes himself withdrew from the country; and yet Cleomenes came to Athens, though not with a great force; and on arriving he drove into exile seven hundred households of Athenians, those whom Isagoras pointed out to him. After doing this, next he tried to dissolve the Council, and to put the offices in the hands of three hundred partisans of Isagoras.

2When the Council resisted and would not obey, Cleomenes and Isagoras and his partisans seized the acropolis. The rest of the Athenians, being of one mind, besieged them for two days; and on the third day, under a truce, all those of them who were Lacedaemonians came out and left the country. And the prophecy was fulfilled for Cleomenes.

3For when he went up into the acropolis, intending now to master it, he went to the inner shrine of the goddess to address her; and the priestess rose from her seat and, before he could pass the doors, said: "Lacedaemonian stranger, go back and do not enter the temple; for it is not lawful for Dorians to come in here." He said: "Lady, I am no Dorian, but an Achaean."

4Paying no heed to the omen, he made the attempt, and once again was driven out along with the Lacedaemonians; the rest the Athenians put in chains with sentence of death, and among them Timesitheus the Delphian, of whose feats of hand and courage I could recount the greatest.

Chapter 73

1These men then were kept in bonds and died. After this the Athenians, sending for Cleisthenes and the seven hundred households that had been driven out by Cleomenes, dispatched envoys to Sardis, wishing to make an alliance with the Persians; for they knew that the Lacedaemonians and Cleomenes had become their open enemies.

2When the envoys came to Sardis and delivered their instructions, Artaphrenes son of Hystaspes, viceroy of Sardis, asked who they were and where in the world they dwelt, that they sought to become allies of the Persians; and when he learned it from the envoys, he gave them this answer: if the Athenians give earth and water to king Darius, he would make an alliance with them; but if they did not give it, he bade them be gone.

3The envoys, taking it upon their own authority, said that they would give it, since they wished to make the alliance. These men then, on their return home, were greatly blamed.

Chapter 74

1Cleomenes, knowing that he had been grievously insulted by the Athenians in word and deed, gathered an army from all the Peloponnese, not declaring what he was gathering it for, wishing both to punish the people of the Athenians and to set up Isagoras as tyrant; for Isagoras had come out of the acropolis with him.

2Cleomenes then invaded Eleusis with a great host; and the Boeotians, by prior arrangement, took Oenoe and Hysiae, the outermost demes of Attica; and the Chalcidians on the other side fell upon and ravaged other parts of Attica. The Athenians, although beset on all sides, resolved to leave the Boeotians and Chalcidians for afterward, and took up their arms against the Peloponnesians who were at Eleusis.

Chapter 75

1As the armies were about to join battle, the Corinthians first, taking counsel among themselves that what they were doing was not right, changed sides and withdrew; and after them Demaratus son of Ariston, who was also a king of the Spartans and had led the army out from Lacedaemon with him, and who had never been at odds with Cleomenes before.

2From this dissension a law was made in Sparta that it should not be lawful for both kings to accompany an army going out—for until then both had gone along; and that one of them be left behind, and that of the sons of Tyndareus one likewise be left behind; for before this time these two also, being summoned, went along as well.

3Then at Eleusis the rest of the allies, seeing that the kings of the Lacedaemonians were not of one mind and that the Corinthians had left the ranks, themselves departed as well,

Chapter 76

1This then was the fourth time that the Dorians came to Attica—for twice they had invaded for war and twice for the good of the Athenian people: first when they also founded Megara—this expedition would rightly be called the one in the time of Codrus king of Athens; second and third when they came from Sparta to drive out the Pisistratidae; and the fourth time then, when Cleomenes led the Peloponnesians and invaded at Eleusis. In this way the Dorians invaded Attica for the fourth time.

Chapter 77

1When this expedition had broken up ingloriously, the Athenians, wishing to take vengeance, first made a campaign against the Chalcidians. The Boeotians came to the aid of the Chalcidians at the Euripus; and when the Athenians saw the Boeotians, they resolved to attack the Boeotians first rather than the Chalcidians.

2The Athenians engaged the Boeotians and defeated them soundly; and having killed a great many of them they took seven hundred alive. On this same day the Athenians crossed over to Euboea and engaged the Chalcidians as well; and having defeated these too they left four thousand allotment-holders on the land of the horse-breeders—for the rich men among the Chalcidians were called horse-breeders.

3As many of these as they took alive, together with the Boeotian prisoners, they kept under guard, bound in fetters; and in time they released them, having fixed the ransom at two minae each. The fetters in which they had been bound they hung up in the acropolis; and these were still there in my day, hanging on the walls scorched by the fire of the Mede, opposite the hall that faces west.

4And of the ransom money they dedicated a tenth, making a bronze four-horse chariot; it stands on the left hand as you go in through the gateway into the acropolis. On it is inscribed this: "Subduing the hosts of the Boeotians and Chalcidians, / the sons of the Athenians in the works of war, / in a murky bond of iron they quenched their insolence; / of their horses they set these up as a tenth to Pallas."

Chapter 78

1The Athenians then grew in power. And this shows, not in one way only but in every way, that equal right of speech is a thing of great worth; for the Athenians, while they were under tyrants, were no better in war than any of their neighbors, but when they were freed from tyrants they became by far the first. This shows, then, that while they were held down they played the coward, working as if for a master, but that when they were freed each man among them was eager to work for himself.

Chapter 79

1This then is what the Athenians were doing. The Thebans, after this, sent to the god, wishing to take vengeance on the Athenians. The Pythia said that vengeance was not in their own power, but bade them carry the answer to the people at large and ask their nearest kin.

2When the envoys returned, they reported the oracle to an assembly; and when they learned from the words that they were to ask their nearest kin, the Thebans said: "Are not the Tanagraeans and the Coronaeans and the Thespians our nearest kin? And these at least, fighting always at our side, share the war with us eagerly; what need is there to ask them? But rather let this not be what the oracle means."

Chapter 80

1As they reasoned thus, one of them said at last: "I think I understand what the oracle means to say to us. The daughters of Asopus are said to have been Thebe and Aegina; and since these were sisters, I think the god has answered that we should ask the Aeginetans to become our helpers."

2And since no better opinion seemed to present itself, they at once sent and asked the Aeginetans, calling on them by the oracle to help them, as being their nearest kin; and the Aeginetans said they would send them the Aeacidae as allies.

Chapter 81

1When the Thebans made trial of the alliance of the Aeacidae and were roughly handled by the Athenians, the Thebans sent again, gave back the Aeacidae, and asked for men.

2The Aeginetans, elated by their great prosperity and remembering an old enmity they had with the Athenians, then, when the Thebans asked them, made war on the Athenians without herald's proclamation;

3for while the Athenians were pressing upon the Boeotians, they sailed with long ships to Attica and ravaged Phalerum and many demes along the rest of the coast; and in doing this they did the Athenians great harm.

Chapter 82

1The grudge owed by the Aeginetans to the Athenians arose in the beginning from the following cause. The land of the Epidaurians bore no crop. In this calamity the Epidaurians consulted the oracle at Delphi; and the Pythia bade them set up images of Damia and Auxesia, and told them that if they set them up they would fare better.

2The Epidaurians then asked whether they should make the images of bronze or of stone; and the Pythia allowed neither, but of the wood of the cultivated olive. The Epidaurians then asked the Athenians to give them olive wood to cut, thinking those trees to be the holiest of all. And it is said that at that time there were olive trees nowhere else in the world but at Athens.

3The Athenians said they would give it on these terms: that they should bring offerings every year to Athena Polias and to Erechtheus. Agreeing to these terms, the Epidaurians obtained what they asked and made images from these olives and set them up; and their land bore crops, and they paid the Athenians what they had agreed.

Chapter 83

1Up to this time, and before it, the Aeginetans obeyed the Epidaurians—in other matters, and in lawsuits too, since they crossed over to Epidaurus and gave and received judgments with one another; but from this time on they built ships and, acting in defiance, revolted from the Epidaurians.

2Being at odds with them they did them harm, since they were masters of the sea; and indeed they also carried off these images of Damia and Auxesia from them, and conveyed them and set them up in the interior of their own country, in a place called Oea, which lies about twenty stades from the city.

3Having set them up in this place, they propitiated them with sacrifices and with choruses of songs that mocked women, ten men being appointed to lead the chorus for each of the goddesses; and the choruses spoke ill of no man, but of the women of the country. And the Epidaurians had these same rites; and they have rites that may not be spoken of.

Chapter 84

1When these images were stolen, the Epidaurians did not pay the Athenians what they had agreed. The Athenians sent and made angry complaint to the Epidaurians; but these showed in words that they were doing no wrong: for as long as they had the images in their country they had fulfilled what they agreed, but since they had been robbed of them it was not right to go on paying, and they bade the Athenians demand it of the Aeginetans, who had the images.

2The Athenians therefore sent to Aegina and demanded the images; but the Aeginetans said that they had no business with the Athenians.

Chapter 85

1The Athenians say that after the demand certain of their citizens were sent in a single trireme, who, dispatched by the state and coming to Aegina, tried to tear the images from their bases as being made of their own wood, in order to carry them back.

2When they could not master them in this way, they cast ropes about them and dragged at the images; and as they dragged, thunder and with the thunder an earthquake came upon them, and the trierites who were dragging were struck mad by these things, and being so struck they killed one another as though enemies, until only one was left of all of them and he was brought back alive to Phalerum.

Chapter 86

1The Athenians say that the matter fell out thus; but the Aeginetans say that the Athenians did not come with a single ship. One ship, or only a few more than one, they could easily have beaten off, even if they had happened to have no ships at all; but the Athenians sailed against their country with a great fleet, and they themselves gave way and did not offer them a sea battle.

2Which of the two it was they cannot make clear with any certainty, whether they gave way on that occasion because they knew themselves to be the weaker in the sea fight, or whether they wished to bring about the very thing that they did bring about.

3The Athenians, then, since no one came out to face them in battle, disembarked from their ships and turned to the images; and when they could not drag them up from their pedestals, they put ropes about them and hauled, until both images did one and the same thing as they were hauled. This the Athenians tell, but for my part I do not believe it, though another may: the images, they say, fell on their knees, and have remained so from that day to this.

4The Athenians, then, did this; but the Aeginetans say that they themselves, learning that the Athenians were about to march against them, made the Argives ready. The Athenians had landed in Aegina, and the Argives came to their aid, crossing over from Epidaurus to the island without being noticed and falling upon the Athenians before these knew of it, cutting them off from their ships; and at the same moment thunder and an earthquake came upon them.

Chapter 87

1This is the story told by the Argives and the Aeginetans; and the Athenians themselves agree that one man alone of them all got back safe to Attica.

2But the Argives say that this one man survived when their army had been destroyed by them, while the Athenians say that it was the god's doing that he survived. Yet not even this one man survived; he perished in the following way. When he reached Athens he brought word of the disaster; and the wives of the men who had marched against Aegina, hearing of it and taking it hard that this man alone of all had been saved, surrounded him and, pricking him with the pins of their garments, each asked him where her own husband was.

3So the man was destroyed; but to the Athenians the deed of the women seemed a thing even more dreadful than the disaster. They had no other means by which to punish the women, so they changed their dress to the Ionian style; for before this the women of Athens wore the Dorian dress, which is very nearly the same as the Corinthian. They changed it, then, to the linen tunic, so that they might no longer need pins.

Chapter 88

1Speaking the truth, this dress was in old times not Ionian but Carian; for the whole ancient dress of Greek women was the same as what we now call Dorian.

2The Argives and the Aeginetans, besides this, made it a law among both their peoples to make their pins half again as long as the measure then established, and for the women to dedicate pins above all else in the temple of those gods; and nothing Attic, and no pottery, was to be brought to the temple, but it was to be the custom from then on to drink there out of local earthen pots.

Chapter 89

1Ever since then the women of Argos and Aegina, in rivalry with the Athenians, have worn pins larger than before even down to my own time; and this was the beginning of the enmity of the Athenians against the Aeginetans. At that time, when the Thebans called on them for help, the Aeginetans gladly remembered what had been done about the images and came to the aid of the Boeotians.

2The Aeginetans were now ravaging the coast of Attica, and as the Athenians were setting forth to march against the Aeginetans, an oracle came to them from Delphi: that they should hold back for thirty years from the wrong done by the Aeginetans, and in the thirty-first year, having marked out a precinct for Aeacus, begin the war against the Aeginetans, and then things would go as they wished; but if they marched against them at once, they would suffer much in the meantime and do much as well, though in the end they would subdue them.

3When the Athenians heard this answer brought back to them, they marked out for Aeacus the precinct that now stands in the marketplace; but thirty years they could not bring themselves to wait, for all that they heard they must hold back, after suffering such outrages at the hands of the Aeginetans.

Chapter 90

1But as they were preparing to take their revenge, a business arising from Lacedaemon stood in their way. For the Lacedaemonians, learning of the machinations of the Alcmaeonids against the Pythia and of the answers of the Pythia directed against them and the Pisistratids, counted it a double misfortune: both that they had driven out of their own land men who were their own guest-friends, and that when they had done so no gratitude was shown them by the Athenians.

2Besides this, the oracles urged them on, saying that many and terrible things would come upon them from the Athenians, of which before they knew nothing, but which they now learned, after Cleomenes brought them to Sparta. Cleomenes got the oracles from the Athenian acropolis; the Pisistratids had possessed them before, and when they were driven out they left them behind in the temple, and Cleomenes took them up where they had been left.

Chapter 91

1So the Lacedaemonians took up the oracles; and seeing the Athenians growing in power and in no way ready to obey them, they understood in their minds that while the Athenian people was free it would be a match for their own, but if it were held down by a tyranny it would be weak and ready to obey. Understanding all of this, they sent for Hippias son of Pisistratus from Sigeum on the Hellespont, the place where the Pisistratids had their refuge.

2When Hippias had come at their summons, they sent for envoys also from their other allies, and the Spartans spoke to them as follows: "Allies, we admit that we ourselves have not acted rightly. Carried away by counterfeit oracles, we drove from their homeland men who were above all our own guest-friends and who undertook to put Athens into our hands; and then, having done this, we handed the city over to a thankless people. That people, once it had risen up and been set free through us, heaped insult upon us and upon our king and cast us out; and now it swells with growing fame, so that those who live nearest them, the Boeotians and the Chalcidians, have learned this to their full cost already, and soon another too will learn it, when he in turn goes wrong."

3"Since in doing those things we went astray, we will now try to punish them, coming together with you; for this very purpose we have sent for Hippias here and for you from your cities, so that with a common plan and a common expedition we may bring him into Athens and give back what we promised."

Chapter 92

1So they spoke, but the mass of the allies would not accept their words. The rest held their peace; but the Corinthian Socles spoke as follows.

Chapter 92A

1"Surely the sky will be beneath the earth and the earth hung aloft above the sky, and men will have their pasture in the sea and fishes will have what men had before, when you, Lacedaemonians, set about abolishing equality of rights and bringing tyrannies into the cities—nothing among mankind is more unjust or more murderous than that."

2"For if this seems to you so fine a thing, that cities be ruled by tyrants, first set up a tyrant over yourselves and then seek to set them up for others as well. But as it is, you yourselves have no experience of tyrants, and though you guard with the greatest vigilance against one arising in Sparta, you treat your allies with contempt. If you had experience of it, as we have, you would have better judgments to contribute about it than you now have."

Chapter 92B

1"For the state of affairs in Corinth was this: it was an oligarchy, and these men, called Bacchiads, held the city, and gave and took in marriage among themselves. One of these men, Amphion, had a daughter born lame, and her name was Labda. Since none of the Bacchiads would marry her, Eetion son of Echecrates took her to wife, a man of the deme of Petra, but by ancient descent of Lapith and Caenean stock."

2"From this wife no children were born to him, nor from any other. So he sent to Delphi to ask about offspring. As he entered the sanctuary, the Pythia greeted him at once with these verses: 'Eetion, no one honors you, for all your great worth. / Labda is with child, and she will bear a crushing stone; / it shall fall among men who rule alone, and it shall set Corinth to rights.'"

3"When this oracle had been given to Eetion, it came in some way to the ears of the Bacchiads. The earlier oracle given about Corinth had been dark to them, but it pointed to the same thing as the one given to Eetion, and it ran as follows: 'An eagle is with child among the rocks / and she will bear a lion, mighty and flesh-eating; / it shall loose the knees of many. / Give good heed to this now, Corinthians, / who dwell about fair Peirene and beetling Corinth.'"

Chapter 92C

1"This earlier oracle, then, had been dark to the Bacchiads; but when they learned of the one given to Eetion, they at once understood that the earlier one too agreed with Eetion's. Understanding it, they kept it quiet, wishing to destroy the offspring that was about to be born to Eetion. As soon as the woman had given birth, they sent ten of their own number to the deme where Eetion lived, to kill the child."

2"These men came to Petra and, going into the courtyard of Eetion, asked for the child. Labda, knowing nothing of the reason for which they had come, and thinking that they were asking out of friendliness toward the father, brought the child and placed it in the hands of one of them. They had resolved on the way that the first of them to take the child should dash it to the ground."

3"When Labda carried the child out and gave it, by a heaven-sent chance the child smiled at the man who had taken it, and he, noticing this, felt a certain pity and could not kill it; in his pity he handed it to the second, and the second to the third. So the child passed through the hands of all ten as it was handed on, none of them being willing to do it to death."

4"They gave the child back to its mother and went outside; standing at the doors they laid hands on one another, each accusing the other, and above all the first man who had taken the child, because he had not done as they had resolved; until, as time went on, they decided to go in again and all have a part in the murder."

Chapter 92D

1"Evil was fated to spring for Corinth from the seed of Eetion. For Labda heard all this, standing close by the very doors; and she feared that they might change their minds and, taking the child a second time, kill it. So she carried it and hid it in what seemed to her the hardest place to guess—a chest—knowing that if they came back to search, they would search everything. And this is just what happened."

2"They came and searched; and when the child did not appear, they resolved to go away and tell those who had sent them that they had done everything that had been commanded. So they went off and reported this."

Chapter 92E

1"After this the son of Eetion grew up, and since he had escaped this danger, the name Cypselus was given him after the chest. When Cypselus was a grown man and inquired of the oracle, an oracle of ambiguous meaning came to him at Delphi; trusting in it, he made his attempt and won possession of Corinth. The oracle was this:"

2"'Blessed is this man who goes down into my house, / Cypselus son of Eetion, king of famed Corinth, / he and his sons; but his sons' sons no longer.' Such was this oracle; and Cypselus, when he became tyrant, proved to be a man of this sort: many of the Corinthians he drove into exile, many he stripped of their goods, and by far the most he deprived of their lives."

Chapter 92F

1"After he had ruled for thirty years and ended his life in good fortune, his son Periander succeeded to the tyranny. Now Periander to begin with was gentler than his father, but after he had dealings by messengers with Thrasybulus, the tyrant of Miletus, he became far more murderous even than Cypselus."

2"He sent a herald to Thrasybulus to ask in what way he might most securely order his affairs and govern the city in the best way. Thrasybulus led the man who had come from Periander outside the town, and going into a field of standing corn he walked through the crop, questioning the herald about his coming from Corinth and going over it again and again; and he kept cutting off every time he saw an ear standing above the rest, and as he cut it he threw it away, until he had thus destroyed the finest and tallest part of the crop."

3"Then he went through the field and sent the herald away without a word of advice. When the herald came back to Corinth, Periander was eager to hear the advice; but the man said that Thrasybulus had given him none, and that he wondered at the sort of man to whom he had been sent—a man out of his mind and bent on destroying his own—as he recounted what he had seen done at the hands of Thrasybulus."

Chapter 92G

1"Periander, understanding what had been done and grasping in his mind that Thrasybulus was advising him to put to death the outstanding men among the citizens, then let every kind of wickedness loose upon his fellow citizens. Whatever killing and banishing Cypselus had left undone, Periander carried through; and in a single day he stripped all the women of Corinth of their clothes, because of his own wife Melissa."

2"For he had sent messengers to the oracle of the dead on the river Acheron in Thesprotia, to ask about a deposit left by a guest-friend; and Melissa, when she appeared, said that she would neither declare it nor tell in what place the deposit lay. For she was cold and naked: of the garments buried with her there was no use, since they had not been burned. And her proof that she spoke the truth was that Periander had put the loaves on a cold oven."

3"When this was reported back to Periander—for the token was a sure one, that he had lain with Melissa while she was dead—immediately after the message he made a proclamation that all the women of Corinth should come out to the Heraeum. They went as to a festival, wearing their finest adornments; and he posted his guards and stripped them all alike, free women and servants; and gathering the clothes into a pit he burned them, with a prayer to Melissa."

4"When he had done this and had sent a second time, the phantom of Melissa told him in what place the guest's deposit lay. Such then is tyranny, Lacedaemonians, and such are its deeds."

5"We Corinthians were seized with great wonder when we saw you sending for Hippias; and now we wonder even more, hearing you say these things. We call the gods of the Greeks to witness against you, and charge you not to set up tyrannies in the cities. If you will not cease, but try to restore Hippias contrary to all justice, be sure of this: the Corinthians at least do not agree with you."

Chapter 93

1Socles, the envoy of Corinth, spoke thus; and Hippias answered him, calling on the same gods as he had: "Truly the Corinthians, of all men, will long for the Pisistratids, when the appointed days come in which they will be vexed by the Athenians."

2Hippias made this answer, as one who knew the oracles more exactly than any other man. The rest of the allies held their peace until that moment; but when they heard Socles speak out so freely, every one of them broke silence, chose the judgment of the Corinthian, and called the Lacedaemonians to witness that they must do nothing to change the government of any city of Greece.

Chapter 94

1So this came to nothing. As Hippias was being driven away from there, Amyntas king of the Macedonians offered him Anthemus, and the Thessalians offered him Iolcus. But he chose neither of these; he withdrew back to Sigeum, which Pisistratus had taken by force of arms from the Mytilenaeans; and having made himself master of it, he set up as tyrant his own bastard son Hegesistratus, born of an Argive woman, who did not hold in peace what he received from Pisistratus.

2For the Mytilenaeans and the Athenians fought a long war against each other, operating from the city of Achilleum and from Sigeum: the Mytilenaeans demanding the territory back, and the Athenians refusing to yield, and arguing that the Aeolians had no greater share in the land of Ilium than they themselves and all the others of the Greeks who joined with Menelaus in avenging the carrying off of Helen.

Chapter 95

1While they were at war many another thing happened in their battles; among the rest, when a battle was joined and the Athenians were winning, the poet Alcaeus himself took to flight and escaped, but the Athenians took his arms and hung them up in the temple of Athena at Sigeum.

2These things Alcaeus put into a song and sent to Mytilene, telling of his own mishap to Melanippus, a man of his companions. The Mytilenaeans and the Athenians were reconciled by Periander son of Cypselus; for to him they referred their dispute as arbitrator; and he reconciled them on these terms, that each should hold the land they had.

Chapter 96

1Sigeum, then, thus came under the Athenians. Hippias, when he arrived from Lacedaemon in Asia, stirred heaven and earth: he slandered the Athenians to Artaphrenes, and did everything he could to bring Athens under his own power and that of Darius.

2So Hippias was at this work; and the Athenians, learning of it, sent envoys to Sardis, forbidding the Persians to listen to the Athenian exiles. Artaphrenes commanded them, if they wished to be safe, to take Hippias back. The Athenians would not accept this message when it was brought to them; and on their refusing, it was resolved by them to be open enemies of the Persians.

Chapter 97

1While things stood thus, and the Athenians were already on ill terms with the Persians, at this very juncture Aristagoras of Miletus, having been driven out of Sparta by Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian, came to Athens; for of the cities still left this one was the greatest in power. Coming before the people, Aristagoras said the same things he had said at Sparta about the good things in Asia and the Persian war, how they carried neither shield nor spear and were easy to overcome.

2This he said, and besides it the following: that the Milesians are colonists of the Athenians, and that it was only right that they should save them, having such great power; and there was nothing that he did not promise, in his great eagerness, until he persuaded them. For it seems that many are easier to mislead than one: the single man, Cleomenes of Lacedaemon, he was not able to mislead, but thirty thousand Athenians he did mislead.

3The Athenians, then, persuaded by him, voted to send twenty ships to help the Ionians, appointing as their general Melanthius, a citizen held in the highest esteem in every way; and these ships were the beginning of evils for Greeks and foreigners alike.

Chapter 98

1Aristagoras sailed on ahead and came to Miletus; and having devised a plan from which no benefit was to come to the Ionians—nor was he doing it for that reason at all, but to vex King Darius—he sent a man to Phrygia, to the Paeonians who had been taken captive from the river Strymon by Megabazus and were living in Phrygia, holding a district and a village of their own. When this man came to the Paeonians, he spoke as follows.

2"Paeonians, Aristagoras the tyrant of Miletus has sent me to propose a means of safety for you, if you are willing to obey. For now all Ionia has revolted from the king, and it lies with you to save yourselves and win back your own land; as far as the sea you must see to it yourselves, and from that point on it will be our concern."

3When the Paeonians heard this, they took it very gladly, and gathering up their children and women they set out for the sea, though some few of them stayed where they were in fear. When the Paeonians came to the sea, they crossed from there to Chios.

4While they were already in Chios, a great body of Persian horse came close on their heels, pursuing the Paeonians. When they did not overtake them, they sent word to the Paeonians in Chios that they should come back. But the Paeonians would not accept the message; the Chians took them from Chios to Lesbos, and the Lesbians carried them on to Doriscus, and from there, traveling overland, they came to Paeonia.

Chapter 99

1When the Athenians had arrived with twenty ships, bringing also five triremes of Eretrians—who took the field not to please the Athenians but to please the Milesians themselves, repaying what they owed them; for the Milesians had before helped the Eretrians in their war against the Chalcidians, when the Samians too gave aid to the Chalcidians against the Eretrians and the Milesians—when these had arrived and the rest of the allies were with him, Aristagoras set on foot an expedition against Sardis.

2He himself did not take part in the expedition but stayed in Miletus, and appointed other generals of the Milesians: his own brother Charopinus and another citizen, Hermophantus.

Chapter 100

1The Ionians came with this force to Ephesus, and left their ships at Coresus in the Ephesian territory; then they marched inland with a great force, making the Ephesians their guides on the way. Marching along the river Cayster, and crossing over Mount Tmolus, they took Sardis, no one standing against them; and they took everything except the acropolis. The acropolis was held and defended by Artaphrenes himself, with a force that was not small.

Chapter 101

1What prevented them from sacking the city after they had taken it was this. The houses in Sardis were mostly of reeds, and even those of them that were built of brick had roofs of reed; when one of these was set on fire by a soldier, the fire ran from house to house and spread over the whole town.

2As the town burned, the Lydians and all the Persians who were in the city, cut off on every side by the fire spreading to the outermost parts and having no way out of the town, crowded together both into the marketplace and to the river Pactolus, which carries down gold dust from Tmolus and flows through the middle of the marketplace and so discharges into the river Hermus, and that into the sea. To this Pactolus and into the marketplace the Lydians and the Persians gathered and were forced to defend themselves.

3The Ionians, seeing some of the enemy defending themselves and others coming at them in great numbers, withdrew in fear to the mountain called Tmolus, and from there they made their way back to the ships under cover of night.

Chapter 102

1So Sardis was burned, and in it the temple of the native goddess Cybele; which the Persians made their pretext afterwards for burning the temples in Greece. At that time the Persians who held districts within the river Halys, learning of this in advance, gathered and came to the aid of the Lydians.

2They found that the Ionians were no longer in Sardis; and following on their track, they came upon them at Ephesus. The Ionians drew up against them, but when they joined battle they were soundly beaten.

3The Persians killed many of them, men of name, among them Eualcides, the general of the Eretrians, who had won victories in the crowned games and was much celebrated by Simonides of Ceos; and those of them who escaped the battle were scattered abroad to their several cities.

Chapter 103

1So they fought at that time. After this the Athenians abandoned the Ionians altogether; and though Aristagoras called on them again and again by messengers, they said they would give them no help. The Ionians, deprived of the Athenian alliance—for their business with Darius had already come to this pass—none the less made ready for the war against the king.

2Sailing into the Hellespont they brought under their power Byzantium and all the other cities of those parts; and sailing out beyond the Hellespont they won most of Caria to be their ally. For Caunus too, which before had been unwilling to join them, after they burned Sardis then came over to them as well.

Chapter 104

1All the Cypriots joined them of their own free will, except the Amathusians. These too revolted from the Medes in the following way. Onesilus was the younger brother of Gorgus, king of the Salaminians, and the son of Chersis son of Siromus son of Euelthon.

2This man had urged Gorgus many times before to revolt from the king; and now, when he learned that the Ionians too had revolted, he pressed him all the harder. But as he could not persuade Gorgus, Onesilus watched for the moment when he had come out of the city of the Salaminians, and with his own partisans shut him out of the gates.

3Gorgus, deprived of his city, fled to the Medes; and Onesilus ruled Salamis and tried to persuade all the Cypriots to revolt together with him. The rest he persuaded, but the Amathusians would not obey him, and he sat down against their city and besieged them.

Chapter 105

1Onesilus, then, was besieging Amathus. When word came to King Darius that Sardis had been taken and burned by the Athenians and the Ionians, and that the man who had brought this about, the one who had set the whole business going, was Aristagoras of Miletus, it is said that at first, on hearing of it, he took no account of the Ionians, well knowing that they would not go unpunished for their revolt, but asked who the Athenians were; and when he had learned, he asked for his bow, and took it and set an arrow on it and shot it upward toward heaven, and as he shot it into the air he said

2"Zeus, grant that I may have my revenge on the Athenians." Having said this, he charged one of his attendants that, whenever dinner was set before him, three times at every meal he should say, 'Master, remember the Athenians.'

Chapter 106

1After giving this order he called into his presence Histiaeus of Miletus, whom Darius had now been keeping with him for a long time, and said: 'Histiaeus, I learn that the deputy to whom you entrusted Miletus has been plotting against me. For he brought men from the other continent, and with them Ionians, the men who were to pay me the penalty for what they had done; and by persuading these to join with them he has robbed me of Sardis. Now how can this look well to you?'

2'How could any of these things have been done without your counsel? Take care that you do not lay the blame on yourself when it is too late.'

3Histiaeus answered: 'My king, what a word is this you have spoken—that I should plan a thing from which some great or small trouble was to come upon you! What could I want that I should do this, and of what am I in need? I, who have everything that you have, and am held worthy to hear all your counsels.'

4'But if my deputy is doing anything of the sort you speak of, know that he has done it on his own account. For my part, I do not accept the very suggestion that the Milesians and my deputy are plotting any change in your affairs. But if they are doing anything of the sort, and you have heard the truth of it, my king, learn what a thing you have done in dragging me away from the sea.'

5'For the Ionians, it seems, have done this because I was out of their sight; the desire was in them long ago. And if I had been in Ionia, no city would have stirred. Now then, let me go to Ionia as quickly as possible, that I may set all those matters to rights again and deliver into your hands in bonds the deputy of Miletus who contrived this.'

6'And when I have done this to your mind, I swear by the royal gods that I will not take off the tunic I am wearing before I go down to Ionia—no, not until I have made Sardinia, the greatest of islands, tributary to you.'

Chapter 107

1Histiaeus by these words carried his point, and Darius believed him and let him go, charging him, when he had accomplished all that he had promised, to come back to Susa.

Chapter 108

1While the message about Sardis was on its way up to the king, and Darius, after the business with the bow, had come to talk with Histiaeus, and Histiaeus, released by Darius, was making his way down to the sea—in all this time the following things happened. To Onesilus of Salamis, while he was besieging the Amathusians, word came that Artybius, a Persian, was expected in Cyprus, bringing a great Persian army by sea.

2When Onesilus learned this he sent heralds throughout Ionia calling on them for aid; and the Ionians, taking no long time to deliberate, came with a great fleet. The Ionians had arrived in Cyprus, and the Persians, crossing by sea from Cilicia, were marching against Salamis by land; while with the ships the Phoenicians were sailing around the promontory called the Clides of Cyprus.

Chapter 109

1When matters stood thus, the tyrants of Cyprus, calling together the generals of the Ionians, spoke: 'Men of Ionia, we Cypriots give you the choice which of the two you will engage, the Persians or the Phoenicians.'

2'For if you choose to try your strength with the Persians on land, it is time for you to disembark from your ships and draw up on land, while we board your ships to contend with the Phoenicians; but if you would rather try it with the Phoenicians, then whichever of these you choose you must do it so that, so far as lies in you, Ionia and Cyprus will be free.'

3The Ionians answered: 'The common body of the Ionians sent us out to guard the sea, not to hand our ships over to the Cypriots while we ourselves go on foot against the Persians. We then will strive to play the part where we have been posted; but it is for you, remembering what you suffered when you were slaves to the Medes, to prove yourselves brave men.'

Chapter 110

1The Ionians answered thus. Soon after, when the Persians had come into the plain of the Salaminians, the kings of the Cypriots drew up their order of battle: the rest of the Cypriots they matched against the other soldiers, but picking out the best of the Salaminians and the Solians they set them against the Persians; and against Artybius, the general of the Persians, Onesilus took his place of his own free will.

Chapter 111

1Artybius rode a horse that had been trained to rear upright against a hoplite. Learning of this, Onesilus—he had a shield-bearer, a Carian by race, a man very skilled in war and of more than common courage—said to him:

2'I hear that the horse of Artybius rears upright and does its work with both hooves and teeth against whatever it is brought to face. Do you then consider, and tell me at once which you will watch your chance to strike, the horse or Artybius himself.'

3His squire answered: 'My king, I am ready to do both, or either of them, and in any case whatever you command; but as it seems to me better for your cause, I will tell you my mind.'

4'A king and a general, I hold, should be matched with a king and a general. For if you bring down a man who is a general, that is a great thing for you; and second, if he brings you down—which heaven forbid—to die at the hands of so worthy a man is but half a misfortune. But for us servants, it is with other servants and with the horse that we should be matched; and of the horse's devices have no fear. For I promise you that it will never stand up against any man again.'

Chapter 112

1He said this, and immediately the armies joined battle, on land and by sea. At sea the Ionians proved themselves the best that day and outdid the Phoenicians, and among them the Samians bore off the prize; on land, when the armies met, they closed and fought.

2What happened at the two generals was this: as Artybius rode up against Onesilus, seated on his horse, Onesilus, according to the plan he had made with his shield-bearer, struck at Artybius as he came at him; and when the horse set its forefeet upon Onesilus' shield, the Carian struck with his sickle and cut off the horse's feet.

Chapter 113

1Artybius, the general of the Persians, fell there, horse and all. While the rest were still fighting, Stesenor, tyrant of Curium, betrayed his side, with a force of men about him that was not small. These Curians are said to be colonists from Argos. When the Curians turned traitors, at once the war chariots of the Salaminians did the same as the Curians. When this happened, the Persians got the better of the Cypriots.

2When the army was routed, many fell, and among them Onesilus son of Chersis, who had brought about the revolt of the Cypriots, and Aristocyprus king of the Solians, son of Philocyprus—this Philocyprus being the one whom Solon the Athenian, coming to Cyprus, celebrated in his verses above all other tyrants.

Chapter 114

1The Amathusians cut off the head of Onesilus, because he had besieged them, and carried it to Amathus and hung it up over the gates. As the head hung there and had grown hollow, a swarm of bees entered it and filled it with honeycomb.

2When this had come about, the Amathusians consulted the oracle about it, and the answer came to them that they should take down the head and bury it, and sacrifice to Onesilus as to a hero every year; and that if they did this, things would go better with them.

Chapter 115

1The Amathusians did this, and continue to do so even down to my own time. The Ionians in Cyprus, after fighting the sea battle, learned that the cause of Onesilus was lost and that the cities of the Cypriots were being besieged, all except Salamis—which the Salaminians had handed over to Gorgus, their former king; and learning all this the Ionians at once sailed away back to Ionia.

2Of the cities in Cyprus, Soloi held out longest under siege; the Persians took it in the fifth month by mining under the wall all round.

Chapter 116

1So the Cypriots, after one year of freedom, were enslaved again anew. Daurises, who was married to a daughter of Darius, and Hymaes and Otanes, other Persian generals—these too being married to daughters of Darius—pursued the Ionians who had marched against Sardis and drove them back to their ships; and having got the better of them in the battle, they then divided the cities among themselves and sacked them.

Chapter 117

1Daurises turned toward the cities on the Hellespont and took Dardanus, and took Abydos and Percote and Lampsacus and Paesus. These he took one on each day; but as he marched from Paesus against the city of Parius, word came to him that the Carians had resolved on the same course as the Ionians and revolted from the Persians. Turning about, then, from the Hellespont he led his army against Caria.

Chapter 118

1Somehow the Carians learned of this before Daurises arrived. When they heard of it, they gathered at the place called the White Pillars and the river Marsyas, which flows from the region of Idrias and discharges into the Maeander.

2When the Carians were gathered there, many plans were proposed, and the best, as it seems to me, was that of Pixodarus son of Mausolus, a man of Cindya, who was married to the daughter of Syennesis king of the Cilicians. His proposal was that the Carians should cross the Maeander and, with the river at their backs, give battle in that position, so that, having no room to flee backward, the Carians might be forced to stand their ground and so prove even better than their nature.

3This plan did not prevail; rather they resolved that the Maeander should lie at the backs of the Persians instead of their own—plainly so that, if the Persians took to flight and were worsted in the battle, they would not make their way home, falling into the river instead.

Chapter 119

1When the Persians had arrived and crossed the Maeander, the Carians gave them battle at the river Marsyas and fought a hard battle for a long time; in the end they were beaten by sheer numbers. Of the Persians about two thousand fell, of the Carians about ten thousand.

2Those of them who escaped were driven into Labraunda, into the sanctuary of Zeus of the Armies, a great and holy grove of plane trees. Of all the peoples we know, the Carians alone offer sacrifice to Zeus of the Armies. Driven in there, they took counsel about their safety, whether it would go better with them to surrender themselves to the Persians or to leave Asia altogether.

Chapter 120

1While they were taking counsel on this, the Milesians and their allies came to their aid. Then the Carians gave up their former plans and prepared to begin the war afresh. They engaged the Persians as they advanced, and after fighting longer than before they were beaten; and of the many that fell on all sides, the Milesians suffered the most.

Chapter 121

1After this defeat the Carians recovered and fought again; for learning that the Persians were setting out to march against their cities, they laid an ambush on the road at Pedasus. Falling into it by night, the Persians were destroyed, they and their generals Daurises and Amorges and Sisimaces; and with them fell also Myrsus son of Gyges. The leader of this ambush was Heraclides son of Ibanollis, a man of Mylasa.

Chapter 122

1So these Persians perished. Hymaes, who was himself one of those who had pursued the Ionians that had marched against Sardis, turned toward the Propontis and took Cius in Mysia;

2Taking this city, when he learned that Daurises had left the Hellespont and was marching against Caria, he left the Propontis and led his army to the Hellespont; and he took all the Aeolians who hold the Troad, and took the Gergithes, the remnant of the ancient Teucrians. Hymaes himself, while he was taking these peoples, died of a disease in the Troad.

Chapter 123

1So he met his end. Artaphrenes, the governor of Sardis, and Otanes, the third general, were appointed to march against Ionia and the adjoining Aeolis. Of Ionia they took Clazomenae, and of the Aeolians Cyme.

Chapter 124

1While the cities were being taken, Aristagoras of Miletus—as he proved, a man of no high courage—seeing these things, planned flight, for all that he had stirred up Ionia and mixed himself up in great troubles; and it seemed to him besides impossible to get the better of King Darius.

2In view of this he called together his partisans and took counsel, saying that it would be better for them to have some refuge ready, if they should be driven out of Miletus: whether he should lead a colony from this place to Sardinia, or to Myrcinus in the land of the Edonians, which Histiaeus was fortifying, having received it as a gift from Darius. This was the question Aristagoras put before them.

Chapter 125

1Hecataeus son of Hegesander, a writer of histories, advised going out to neither of these; his judgment was that he should build a wall on the island of Leros and keep quiet there, if he were driven out of Miletus; then, using that as his base, he would come back to Miletus.

Chapter 126

1This was the counsel of Hecataeus; but Aristagoras' own mind was set above all on leading a colony to Myrcinus. Miletus he entrusted to Pythagoras, one of the leading citizens, and taking with him everyone who wished to go, he sailed for Thrace and took possession of the land for which he had set out.

2From there he set out and perished, he and his army, at the hands of the Thracians, while he was besieging a city and the Thracians wished to come out under a truce.

Chapter 1

1The Persians whom Darius had left behind in Europe, with Megabazus in command of them, first subdued the Perinthians of the Hellespont, who were not willing to become subjects of Darius; the Perinthians had already been handled roughly once before, and that by the Paeonians.

2For the god told the Paeonians from the Strymon river to march against the Perinthians: if the Perinthians, sitting opposite them, called out to them by name with a shout, then the Paeonians were to attack them; but if the Perinthians did not shout out, they were not to attack. The Paeonians did this. And when the Perinthians had taken their places opposite them in the suburb, there arose from the challenge a single combat in three parts: man against man, horse against horse, and dog against dog.

3The Perinthians won two of the three contests, and as they raised their song of triumph in delight, the Paeonians decided that this very thing was what the oracle meant, and said something like this among themselves: "Now at last the oracle is being fulfilled for us; now is our task." So the Paeonians attacked the Perinthians in the middle of their victory song, won a great victory, and left only a few of them alive.

Chapter 2

1So the earlier events involving the Paeonians had happened in this way. At that time, while the Perinthians were showing themselves brave men in the fight for their freedom, the Persians and Megabazus overpowered them by sheer numbers.

2Once Perinthus had been subdued, Megabazus led his army through Thrace, and brought every city and every people living there under the king's rule. For this was the order he had from Darius: to conquer Thrace.

Chapter 3

1The Thracians are the largest nation on earth after the Indians. If they were ruled by one man, or if they all thought alike, they would, in my judgment, be impossible to fight and by far the strongest of all peoples. But that is impossible for them, and it will never come about; and so in this way they are weak.

2They have many names, a different one for each region they live in; but in their customs they all follow the same ways in everything, except for the Getae, the Trausi, and those who live above the Crestonaeans.

Chapter 4

1Of these, I have already told the practices of the Getae, who believe they never die. The Trausi do everything else like the other Thracians; but in what happens to them at birth and at death they do as follows:

2When a baby is born, the family sits around it and mourns, going over all the sorrows of human life that it must now fill up, since it has come into the world. But when a person dies, they hide him in the ground with play and joy, counting up how many evils he has escaped and how he now lives in complete happiness.

Chapter 5

1Those who live above the Crestonaeans do this. Each man has many wives. When one of them dies, there is a great contest among the wives, and strong rivalry among their friends, over this question: which of them the husband had loved most. The one who is judged and marked out as that woman, after being praised by both men and women, is slaughtered at the tomb by her closest relative, and once slaughtered she is buried with her husband. The other wives make a great show of grief, for this is their greatest disgrace.

Chapter 6

1The rest of the Thracians have this law. They sell their children to be carried off to a foreign land. They do not guard their unmarried girls, but let them mix with any men they please. But they guard their wives strictly, and they buy their wives from the parents for large sums of money.

2They count tattooing a sign of noble birth, and being without tattoos a sign of low birth. The best thing is to live without work; the man who works the land is the most without honor. The best life is the life of war and plunder.

Chapter 7

1These are the most famous of their laws. They worship only these gods: Ares, Dionysus, and Artemis. But their kings, unlike the rest of the citizens, worship Hermes above all the gods, swear by him alone, and claim to be descended from Hermes.

Chapter 8

1The funerals of their rich men are as follows. For three days they lay out the dead body; then they kill all kinds of animals as offerings and hold a feast, after first mourning loudly for him. After that they bury him, either burning the body or hiding it in the ground in some other way. They pile up a mound and hold contests of every kind, and in these the greatest prizes are set for single combat, in fair proportion. Such are Thracian funerals.

Chapter 9

1No one can say for certain what people live in the part of this land that faces north. Past the Ister river the country already looks like desert, unknown ground. The only people I can learn of as living beyond the Ister are called the Sigynnae, and they dress in the Median style.

2Their horses, they say, are shaggy all over the body, with hair five fingers deep. The horses are small and flat-nosed and too weak to carry a man; but when they are yoked to pull chariots they are the fastest there is. That is why the people of the country drive chariots. The border of their land runs down near the Veneti who live on the Adriatic.

3They say these people are a colony of the Medes. How they came to be a colony of the Medes I cannot say, but anything can happen over a long stretch of time. The Ligyes who live up above Massalia use the word sigynna for their peddlers, and the Cypriots use it for their spears.

Chapter 10

1But as the Thracians say, bees hold the land beyond the Ister, and because of them no one can pass farther inland. In my view the people who say this are telling what is not likely; those animals are plainly hard to control. To me it seems that the land under the north wind is uninhabitable because of the cold. So much for what is said about this land. As for its coast, Megabazus, commander of the Persians, was bringing it under control.

Chapter 11

1As soon as Darius crossed the Hellespont and came to Sardis, he remembered the service Histiaeus the Milesian had done him, and the advice of Coes the Mytilenaean. He summoned them both to Sardis and gave them a choice.

2Histiaeus, who was already tyrant of Miletus, had no need of a tyranny; he asked for Myrcinus, a place of the Edonians, because he wanted to found a city there. That was his choice. But Coes, who was not a tyrant but an ordinary citizen, asked to be made tyrant of Mytilene.

Chapter 12

1When both requests had been granted, the two men went off each to what he had chosen. But Darius, from seeing a certain sight, took it into his head to order Megabazus to seize the Paeonians and carry them off by force from Europe into Asia. Now there were two Paeonians, Pigris and Mantyes. When Darius crossed into Asia, they came to Sardis of their own will, wanting to be tyrants over the Paeonians, and they brought their sister with them, a woman tall and beautiful.

2They waited for Darius while he sat in the suburb of the Lydians, and then did this. They dressed their sister as well as they could and sent her out to get water, with a jar on her head, leading a horse from her arm, and spinning flax as she went.

3As the woman passed by, Darius took notice of her; for what she was doing was not Persian and not Lydian, and not at all like anything done by the peoples of Asia. When it caught his attention, he sent some of his guards, with orders to watch what the woman would do with the horse.

4They followed behind her. When she came to the river, she watered the horse; and she filled her jar with water too, and then came back the same way, carrying the water on her head, leading the horse from her arm, and turning the spindle.

Chapter 13

1Darius was amazed both at what the watchers told him and at what he saw with his own eyes, and he ordered the woman brought before him. When she was brought, her brothers came in too, for they were not far away and had been watching all this. Darius asked where she came from, and the young men said they were Paeonians and that she was their sister.

2He answered with more questions: who the Paeonians were, where they lived, and why they had come to Sardis of their own will. They told him they had come to give themselves into his hands; that Paeonia was a settled land on the river Strymon, and the Strymon was not far from the Hellespont; and that they were colonists of the Teucrians who came from Troy.

3They gave him each of these answers, and he asked whether all the women there were such hard workers. They said eagerly that it was so; and the truth was that this was the very reason they were doing it.

Chapter 14

1Then Darius wrote letters to Megabazus, the commander he had left in Thrace, with orders to pull the Paeonians out of their settlements and bring them to him, the men themselves together with their children and their wives.

2At once a rider ran with the message to the Hellespont, crossed over, and handed the letter to Megabazus. Megabazus read it, took guides from Thrace, and marched against Paeonia.

Chapter 15

1When the Paeonians learned that the Persians were coming against them, they joined forces and marched out toward the sea, thinking the Persians would attack there as they came in.

2So the Paeonians stood ready to block the army of Megabazus as it approached. But the Persians learned that the Paeonians had gathered and were guarding the way in from the sea; so they took their guides and turned onto the inland road, slipped past the Paeonians unnoticed, and fell on their cities, which were empty of men. Coming on the cities like that, they took them easily.

3When the Paeonians learned that their cities had been taken, they scattered at once, every man for himself, and gave themselves up to the Persians. So the Siripaeonians, the Paeoplae, and all the Paeonians as far as the Prasiad Lake were pulled up out of their settlements and led away to Asia.

Chapter 16

1But the people around Mount Pangaeum and the Doberes and the Agrianians and the Odomanti, and the Prasiad Lake itself, were never subdued by Megabazus at all. He did, however, try to take the people who lived on the lake, and this is how. A platform of planks stands fastened on tall piles in the middle of the lake, with one narrow way in from the land, across a single bridge.

2The piles that hold up the platform were first set in place by the whole community together. But they keep a law, and by it they now set piles in this way: each man who marries brings wood from the mountain called Orbelus and sets up three piles for each wife he has; and each man marries several wives.

3They live in this way. Each man has a hut on the platform, and there he lives; and each has a trapdoor that leads down through the platform into the lake. They tie their small children by the foot with a rope, for fear the children will roll in.

4They feed their horses and their pack animals on fish. There are so many fish that when a man opens the trapdoor and lets an empty basket down on a rope into the lake, he waits only a short time and hauls it up full of fish. There are two kinds of fish, which they call the paprax and the tilon.

Chapter 17

1So the Paeonians who had been conquered were led away to Asia. Once Megabazus had subdued the Paeonians, he sent messengers to Macedonia, seven Persian men, the most honored men in the camp after himself. These were sent to Amyntas to ask for earth and water for King Darius.

2From the Prasiad Lake the road into Macedonia is very short. First, beside the lake is the mine from which, later than this, a talent of silver came in to Alexander every single day. And past the mine, once a man crosses the mountain called Dysoron, he is in Macedonia.

Chapter 18

1So when these Persians who had been sent came to Amyntas, they came before him and asked him for earth and water for King Darius. He gave them both, and he invited them to his house as guests. He prepared a grand dinner and welcomed the Persians warmly.

2When the meal was over and they were drinking, the Persians said this: "Macedonian guest, among us Persians there is a custom: when we set out a great dinner, we bring in our concubines and our wedded wives to sit beside us. Now you have welcomed us gladly and host us richly, and you are giving King Darius earth and water; so follow our custom."

3To this Amyntas said: "Persians, that is not our custom; our men are kept apart from our women. But since you are our masters and ask for this, it will be yours as well." With that Amyntas sent for the women. When they came at the call, they sat down across from the Persians, face to face.

4Then the Persians, seeing that the women were beautiful, said to Amyntas that what he had done was no good at all. It would have been better for the women never to come than to come and then sit across from them instead of beside them, hurting their eyes.

5So Amyntas, pressed by them, ordered the women to move over beside them. The women would not, and at once the Persians, who had drunk a great deal, began to lay hold of their breasts, and some even tried to kiss them.

Chapter 19

1Amyntas saw all this and kept quiet, though it pained him; he feared the Persians too much. But Alexander the son of Amyntas was there and saw it too. He was young and had never known trouble, and he could no longer hold himself back; so, angry, he said to Amyntas: "Father, you are old; go away and rest, and do not go on pleading the wine. I will stay here and give the guests everything they need."

2Amyntas understood that Alexander meant to do something reckless, and said: "My son, I hear your words, and the heat in you tells me you want to send me away and do something bold. But I ask you: do nothing rash against these men, or you will bring us all to ruin. Bear it instead, and watch what they do. As for leaving, I will give way to you."

Chapter 20

1When Amyntas had said this and gone, Alexander said to the Persians about these women: "Guests, you have full freedom with these women. Lie with all of them if you want, or with any one of them."

2"About that you can decide for yourselves. But now the hour for bed is close upon you, and I see you are in fine spirits from the wine; so send these women out to bathe, if it pleases you, and when they have bathed, receive them back again."

3The Persians approved this with one voice. Having said it, Alexander sent the women, as they went out, to the women's quarters; and he himself chose as many men as there were women, smooth-cheeked men, dressed them in the women's clothes, and gave them daggers. He led them in, and as he brought them past, he said this to the Persians:

4"Persians, you believe you are being feasted at a revel complete in every part. For everything else we had, and everything we were able to find a way to give you, is before you. And now, the greatest thing of all, we offer you our own mothers and our own sisters, so that you may learn beyond any doubt that you are honored by us as much as you deserve; and so that you may report to the king who sent you that a Hellene, governor of the Macedonians, received you well both at table and in bed."

5With that, Alexander set a Macedonian man beside each Persian, calling the man a woman; and when the Persians tried to touch them, the men killed them.

Chapter 21

1So these men perished in this manner, they and their servants together; for their wagons and their attendants and the whole great outfit had followed them. All of it vanished along with them.

2Not much later the Persians began a great search for these missing men. Alexander won his way past it with a clever plan: he gave out a great deal of money, and he gave his own sister, whose name was Gygaea. With these gifts Alexander won over Bubares, a Persian, one of the men searching for the dead men on the general's behalf.

Chapter 22

1So the death of these Persians, once it came to light, was hushed up. These men descended from Perdiccas claim to be Greeks, and I myself happen to know that they are; I will prove it in the later parts of this account. And the judges who run the contest at Olympia and rule on who is Greek decided the same thing.

2For when Alexander chose to compete and came down to do just that, the Greeks who were set to run against him shut him out, saying that the contest was not for foreigners but for Greeks. Alexander then proved that he was an Argive; he was judged to be a Greek, and when he ran the sprint race he finished level with the winner.

Chapter 23

1So these things came about in this way. Megabazus, leading the Paeonians, came to the Hellespont, crossed over, and came to Sardis. By then Histiaeus the Milesian was already walling off the place he had gotten from Darius as the reward for guarding the bridge, a gift for keeping watch over it. The place was on the river Strymon and was named Myrcinus. Megabazus learned what Histiaeus was doing; and as soon as he reached Sardis with his Paeonians, he said this to Darius:

2"King, what a thing you have done! You gave a Greek man, a dangerous and clever man, leave to found a city in Thrace, where he can see that timber for shipbuilding is in plentiful supply and oars are many and there are mines of silver, and that a great crowd of people lives all around, many of them Greeks and many foreigners, who will take him for their leader and do whatever he tells them, by day and by night."

3"So stop this man from doing these things, before he involves you in a war of your own. Summon him to you by mild means and put a stop to it. And when you once have him in your hands, take care that he never comes back to the Greeks."

Chapter 24

1By saying these things Megabazus easily persuaded Darius, for he foresaw clearly what was going to happen. Afterward Darius sent a messenger to Myrcinus and said this to him: "Histiaeus, King Darius says this to you: When I think it over, I find no man more well disposed toward me and my affairs than you. I learned that not from words but from deeds."

2Now then, since I plan to carry out great undertakings, come to me without fail, so that I may go over them with you. Histiaeus trusted these words, and he also thought it a great thing to become the king's counselor, so he came to Sardis.

3When he arrived, Darius said this to him: "Histiaeus, I sent for you for this reason. As soon as I came back from Scythia and you were out of my sight, nothing else did I long for so much in so short a time as to see you and have you come and talk with me. I had learned that of all possessions the most precious is a friend who is both intelligent and well disposed, and I know that you have both qualities, and I can bear witness to that from my own affairs."

4Now then, you did well to come. I make you this offer: leave Miletus alone, and the newly founded city in Thrace, and come with me to Susa and have whatever I have, being my table companion and my counselor.

Chapter 25

1After saying this, and after making Artaphrenes, his own brother by the same father, governor over the Sardians, Darius drove on to Susa, taking Histiaeus with him, and he appointed Otanes to be commander of the men along the coast. This Otanes' father was Sisamnes. King Cambyses had made him one of the royal judges, and because he took money and gave an unjust judgment, Cambyses killed him and flayed off the skin of his whole body. From the skin he cut thongs and strung them over the throne on which Sisamnes had sat to give judgment.

2When Cambyses had stretched these thongs, he appointed as judge in place of Sisamnes, whom he had killed and flayed, Sisamnes' own son. He ordered him, whenever he sat on that throne to give judgment, to remember it.

Chapter 26

1This Otanes, the one who now sits on that throne, at that time took Megabazus' place in the command. He took the Byzantines and the Chalcedonians; he took Antandrus, in the Trojan country; he took Lamponium; and, having gotten ships from the Lesbians, he took Lemnos and Imbros, both of which were still inhabited by Pelasgians at that time.

Chapter 27

1The Lemnians indeed fought well and defended themselves for a time, but in the end they were brought to ruin. Over those of them who survived the Persians set up as governor Lycaretus, the brother of Maeandrius, who had ruled Samos.

2This Lycaretus died while ruling in Lemnos. The cause of his death was this: he enslaved them all and kept destroying them, charging some with deserting to the Scythians and others with attacking Darius' army as it was carried back from Scythia.

Chapter 28

1This man accomplished so many things as commander. After a short time there was a relief from evils, and then for a second time evils began to come upon the Ionians, from Naxos and Miletus. For Naxos stood out above the other islands in good fortune, and Miletus at the same time, then at the very height of its own prosperity and of Ionia's too, was the showpiece of Ionia. But before this, for two generations of men, Miletus had been sick with the worst factional strife, until the Parians set it right; for the Milesians chose these Parians, from among all the Greeks, as their healers.

Chapter 29

1The Parians reconciled them in this way. When their best men came to Miletus—for they saw that the Milesians were terribly ruined in their households—they said they wished to travel through the country. Doing this, and going through the whole Milesian territory, whenever they saw a farm well worked in the ruined countryside, they wrote down the name of the owner of the farm.

2When they had gone through the whole country and found such men were few, they came down into the city as fast as they could. They called an assembly and appointed those whose farms they had found well worked to govern the city, for they said they thought these men would take care of the public things just as they took care of their own. And they ordered the other Milesians, the ones who had been fighting in factions before, to obey them.

Chapter 30

1So the Parians set the Milesians right. Now from these cities evils began to come upon Ionia, and it began in this way. From Naxos the men of property fled, driven out by the common people, and they came to Miletus.

2Aristagoras son of Molpagoras happened to be in charge of Miletus, being the son-in-law and cousin of Histiaeus son of Lysagoras, whom Darius kept at Susa. Histiaeus had been tyrant of Miletus, and at this time—when the Naxians came—he happened to be in Susa. The Naxians were old guest-friends of Histiaeus.

3When the Naxians came to Miletus, they asked Aristagoras to give them some force, if he could, so that they could get back down to their own city. He reckoned that if they got back into their city through him, he would rule Naxos. But he made Histiaeus' guest-friendship his pretext, and he put this speech before them:

4"I myself cannot promise you a force strong enough to bring you back against the will of the Naxians who hold the city, for I hear that the Naxians have eight thousand shields and many warships. But I will find a way, and I will use every effort."

5"Here is my plan. Artaphrenes happens to be a friend of mine. This Artaphrenes, as you know, is the son of Hystaspes and the brother of King Darius, and he rules all the peoples on the coast of Asia, and he has a great army and many ships. I think this man will do for us whatever we need."

6When the Naxians heard this, they gave Aristagoras full power to do whatever he thought best, and they told him to promise gifts and the army's expenses, saying that they themselves would pay. They had many hopes that, when they showed up at Naxos, they would make the Naxians do everything they ordered, and the other islanders too. For none of these islands, the Cyclades, was yet under Darius.

Chapter 31

1Aristagoras came to Sardis and said to Artaphrenes that Naxos was an island not large in size, but otherwise fine and good, and close to Ionia, and that it held much wealth and many slaves. "So march an army against this country, and bring the exiles back into it."

2"If you do this, I have great sums of money ready from me, besides the plunder for the army, for it is right that we who lead the expedition provide that. And you will win islands for the king: Naxos itself, and the islands that depend on it—Paros, Andros, and the others called the Cyclades."

3"Starting from there you will easily fall upon Euboea, an island large and prosperous, no smaller than Cyprus and very easy to capture. A hundred ships are enough to subdue all of these." He answered him as follows:

4"You become a bringer of good things to the king's house, and in all these matters you give good advice, except about the number of ships. Instead of a hundred ships, two hundred will be ready for you when spring comes. But the king himself must also give his consent to these plans."

Chapter 32

1When Aristagoras heard this, he went away to Miletus full of joy. Artaphrenes sent word to Susa of what Aristagoras had said, and when Darius himself also approved of the plan, Artaphrenes made ready two hundred triremes and a very great host of Persians and the other allies, and he appointed Megabates to be their commander, a Persian man of the Achaemenids, a cousin of his own and of Darius—the man whose daughter Pausanias son of Cleombrotus the Lacedaemonian later married, if the story is true, because he had conceived a desire to become tyrant of Greece. Having appointed Megabates commander, Artaphrenes sent the army off to Aristagoras.

Chapter 33

1Megabates took Aristagoras from Miletus, along with the Ionian army and the Naxians, and he sailed, making as if he were bound for the Hellespont. But when he reached Chios, he steered his ships to Caucus, intending from there to cross to Naxos on the north wind.

2Now it was not fated that the Naxians be destroyed by this fleet, and instead a thing like this came to pass. When Megabates was going his rounds of the watches on the ships, he came upon a Myndian ship on which no one was keeping watch. He was very angry, and he ordered his guards to find the captain of this ship, whose name was Scylax, and to bind him, pushing him through a hole cut in the ship's cabin, with his head outside and his body inside.

3When Scylax was bound, someone brought word to Aristagoras that Megabates had bound his guest-friend the Myndian and was mistreating him. Aristagoras came and pleaded with the Persian, but he got none of what he asked for; then he went himself and set Scylax free. When Megabates learned this, he was terribly angry and rushed at Aristagoras.

4The other said to him: "What business of yours are these matters? Did not Artaphrenes send you to obey me and to sail wherever I order? Why do you busy yourself so much?" This was what Aristagoras said. Megabates was very angry at these words, and when night came he sent men in a boat to Naxos to tell the Naxians everything that was in store for them.

Chapter 34

1For the Naxians had not expected at all that this fleet would set out against them. When they heard of it, they at once brought their goods in from the fields behind the wall, and they made ready food and drink as if they were going to be besieged, and they strengthened the wall.

2So they made these preparations as if war were coming upon them. The fleet, when it crossed from Chios to Naxos, came against men shut in behind their walls, and it besieged them for four months.

3When the Persians had spent all the money they had brought, and when much of Aristagoras' own money had been spent too, and the siege still needed more, they built walls for the exiled Naxians and departed for the mainland, having fared badly.

Chapter 35

1Aristagoras could not carry out what he had promised Artaphrenes, and at the same time the expense of the army was being demanded of him, and that pressed on him hard. He was afraid both because the army had failed and because Megabates had denounced him, and he expected his rule over Miletus to be taken away.

2While he feared each of these things, he was taking counsel about revolt. Just then the man with the branded head arrived from Susa, sent by Histiaeus, with the message that Aristagoras should break away from the king.

3Histiaeus wanted to give Aristagoras the signal to revolt, but since the roads were being watched, he had no other safe way to send a signal. So he shaved the head of his most trusted slave and branded it, and he waited for the hair to grow back. As soon as it had grown, he sent the slave off to Miletus with no other order than this: when he reached Miletus, he was to tell Aristagoras to shave his hair and look at his head. The brands stood for revolt, as I said earlier in my history.

4Histiaeus did this because he counted it a great misfortune that he was being held at Susa. If a revolt happened, he had many hopes of being sent down to the coast; but if Miletus stirred up no trouble, he reckoned he would never get there again.

Chapter 36

1So Histiaeus, with this in mind, sent off his messenger, and for Aristagoras it happened that all these things came together at the same time. He took counsel with his fellow plotters, laying out both his own opinion and the message that had come from Histiaeus.

2All the others gave the same opinion and urged revolt. Hecataeus the prose writer at first tried to stop them from taking up war against the king of the Persians, listing all the peoples Darius ruled and the size of his power. When he could not persuade them, he next advised them to make themselves masters of the sea.

3He said that, as he saw it, there was no other way for this to come about, for he knew that the power of the Milesians was weak. But if they took down the treasures from the temple at Branchidae, which Croesus the Lydian had dedicated, he had many hopes that they would win command of the sea; then they would have the money to use, and their enemies would not plunder it.

4This treasure was great, as I made clear in the first book of my history. This opinion did not win, but they still resolved to revolt: one of them was to sail to Myus, to the camp that had left Naxos and was then there, and try to seize the generals as they sailed in with the ships.

Chapter 37

1Aristagoras was sent off for this very purpose, and he seized by trickery Oliatus son of Ibanollis of Mylasa, Histiaeus son of Tymnes of Termera, and Coes son of Erxander, to whom Darius had given Mytilene, as well as Aristagoras son of Heraclides of Cyme and many others. In this way Aristagoras was now in open revolt, scheming everything against Darius.

2First he gave up his tyranny in words and made Miletus have equality of rights, so that the Milesians would revolt along with him willingly. Then he did the same thing in the rest of Ionia. Some of the tyrants he drove out; others he had taken from the ships that had sailed with them against Naxos. Wanting to do the cities a favor, he let these go, handing each one over to the city he came from.

Chapter 38

1The Mytilenaeans, as soon as they received Coes, led him out and stoned him to death. The Cymaeans let their own man go, and in the same way most of the others also went free.

2So there came an end to tyrants throughout the cities. Aristagoras the Milesian, after he had put down the tyrants, told each city to set up its own generals. Then he himself became an envoy to Lacedaemon in a trireme, for he needed to find some great alliance.

Chapter 39

1At Sparta, Anaxandrides son of Leon was no longer alive and ruling; he had died, and Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides held the kingship, not because of his own merit but because of his family line. For Anaxandrides had as wife his own sister's daughter, and he loved her dearly, but she bore him no children.

2This being so, the ephors called him before them and said: "Even if you do not look out for yourself, we cannot overlook this: that the family of Eurysthenes be wiped out. So now, since the wife you have does not bear children, let her go and marry another. If you do this, you will please the Spartans." He answered that he would do neither of these things: they were advising him badly, he said, when they urged him to send away his wife, who had done him no wrong, and bring in another, and he would not obey them.

Chapter 40

1In answer to this, the ephors and the elders took counsel and made this offer to Anaxandrides: "Since then we see that you are so taken with the wife you have, do this, and do not go against it, so that the Spartans do not decide something different about you."

2"We are not asking you to send away the wife you have. Keep giving her everything you give her now, and besides her bring in another wife, one who will bear children." When they said this, Anaxandrides gave in. After that he kept two wives and ran two separate households, which was not at all the Spartan way.

Chapter 41

1Not much time had passed when the later wife, the one who had come in afterward, bore this Cleomenes. She thus provided the Spartans a king in succession. And the first wife, who before had been childless, then somehow became pregnant, taking advantage of this chance.

2But when it came out for certain that she was pregnant, the household of the later wife made trouble for her, saying she was boasting and wanted to palm off a child that was not hers. While they were making a great outcry, and her time drew near, the ephors, because they did not believe her, sat in a circle keeping watch while the woman gave birth.

3As soon as she bore Dorieus, she brought forth Leonidas right away, and after him she brought forth Cleombrotus. Some say Leonidas and Cleombrotus were twins. The later wife, who had come in second—she was the daughter of Prinetades son of Demarmenus—bore Cleomenes, and after that she bore no second child.

Chapter 42

1Cleomenes, so it is said, was not sound in mind and was a little mad. Dorieus was the first of all his age group, and he was well aware that he would win the kingship by his own merit.

2Since he thought this way, when Anaxandrides died and the Lacedaemonians, following their law, set up the elder, Cleomenes, as king, Dorieus took it hard. He did not think he should be ruled by Cleomenes. He asked the Spartans for a band of men and led them out to found a colony. He did not consult the oracle at Delphi about what land he should go and settle, and he did none of the things that custom required. Bearing it with anger, he put his ships out for Libya; the Theraeans guided the men.

3Coming to Libya, he settled the finest spot in the whole Libyan country, by the river Cinyps. Driven out of it in the third year by the Macae, a Libyan people, and the Carthaginians, he came back to the Peloponnese.

Chapter 43

1There a man of Elea, Antichares, gave him advice out of the oracles given to Laius: to found Heracleia in Sicily, saying that the whole country of Eryx belonged to the Heracleidae, because Heracles himself had won it. When Dorieus heard this, he went to Delphi to consult the oracle, whether he should take the land he was setting out for. The Pythia answered that he would take it. Dorieus took with him the fleet that had also gone to Libya and was carried along past Italy.

Chapter 44

1At this time, as the Sybarites tell it, they themselves and Telys their king were about to march against Croton, and the Crotoniates, in fear, asked Dorieus to come to their aid, and he granted their request. So Dorieus marched together with them against Sybaris and helped take Sybaris.

2So the Sybarites say that Dorieus and his men did. But the Crotoniates say that no guest-friend joined them in the war against Sybaris except one man, Callias, a seer of the Iamid family, from Elis, and he in this way: he ran away from Telys, the tyrant of the Sybarites, and came to them, after the sacrifices failed to turn out favorable for Telys when he sacrificed for his march against Croton.

Chapter 45

1These things these men tell. Each side shows this evidence: the Sybarites point to a sacred grove and a temple by the dry river Crathis, and they say Dorieus founded them when he took the city, in honor of Athena surnamed Crathia. They make this the greatest proof of his death, that he perished because he acted against what the oracles had told him. For if he had done what he was sent to do, and burned nothing besides, he would have taken the country of Eryx and held it once taken, and neither he nor his army would have been destroyed.

2The Crotoniates on their side show that Callias of Elis was given many special grants of land in the Crotoniate country, grants that the descendants of Callias still held down to my time, and that nothing was given to Dorieus or to Dorieus' descendants. Yet if Dorieus had really taken part in the war against Sybaris, he would have been given many times more than Callias. So each side shows its evidence, and it is open to anyone to side with whichever of the two he believes.

Chapter 46

1Other cofounders from among the Spartans sailed with Dorieus: Thessalus, Paraebates, Celeas, and Euryleon. When they came with the whole fleet to Sicily, they were beaten in battle and killed by the Phoenicians and the Egestaeans. Euryleon alone of the cofounders survived this disaster.

2This man, gathering the survivors of the army, took Minoa, the colony of the Selinuntines, and he freed the Selinuntines from their sole ruler Pythagoras. After he had brought Pythagoras down, he himself tried to set up a tyranny at Selinus and ruled as sole ruler for a short time; for the Selinuntines rose against him and killed him as he took refuge at the altar of Zeus of the marketplace.

Chapter 47

1Philip son of Butacides, a man of Croton, sailed with Dorieus and died with him. He had been betrothed to the daughter of Telys the Sybarite and had fled from Croton; cheated of the marriage, he went off sailing to Cyrene, and setting out from there he joined the expedition with a trireme of his own and the pay for a crew of his own. He was an Olympic victor, and the handsomest Greek of his day.

2Because of his beauty, he received from the Egestaeans what no one else has received: they set up a hero's shrine over his grave and appease him with sacrifices.

Chapter 48

1This, then, is how Dorieus met his end. If he had been willing to be ruled by Cleomenes and had stayed in Sparta, he would have been king of Lacedaemon. Cleomenes did not rule for many years; he died without sons, leaving an only daughter, whose name was Gorgo.

Chapter 49

1Aristagoras, the tyrant of Miletus, then came to Sparta while Cleomenes held power. With him, as the Lacedaemonians say, he went into a talk carrying a bronze tablet on which the whole circuit of the earth was engraved, with all the sea and all the rivers.

2When Aristagoras came to talk with him, he said this: "Cleomenes, do not be surprised at my eagerness to come here. The matter I bring is this: that the children of the Ionians are slaves instead of free men. That is a disgrace and a very great pain to us, and beyond that to you of all the rest, since you are the leaders of Greece."

3"Now then, by the Greek gods, rescue the Ionians from slavery, men of the same blood as you. And it is easy for you to carry this out. For the foreigners are not brave, while you are supreme in the things of war, in excellence. Their fighting is of this kind: bows and short spears. They go into battle wearing trousers and with caps on their heads."

4"They are that easy to conquer. And the people who hold that mainland have goods such as no one else in the world has—beginning with gold, then silver and bronze and embroidered clothing and beasts of burden and slaves. All these you could have yourselves, if you wished."

5"The peoples live bordering on one another in the order I will show you. Next to these Ionians are these Lydians, who live in a fine country and have the most silver of anyone." Pointing these out as he went around the map of the earth, the one he carried engraved on the tablet, Aristagoras said: "Next to the Lydians, you see, are these Phrygians toward the sunrise, who have more flocks than any people I know and the richest crops."

6"Next to the Phrygians are the Cappadocians, whom we call Syrians. Their neighbors toward this sea are the Cilicians, in whose land this island of Cyprus lies out. These pay the king a yearly tribute of five hundred talents. Next to these Cilicians are these Armenians, and they too are rich in flocks; and next to the Armenians, the Matieni, who hold this country."

7"Next to these is this land of Cissia, in which, by this river Choaspes, lies this city of Susa, where the great king keeps his residence, and where the storehouses of his wealth are. Take this city, and you may go boldly to competing with Zeus himself for wealth."

8"And so, is it right that you must fight battles for a country that is not large, not so good, and poor in crops, against the Messenians, who are your equals, and the Arcadians and the Argives, who have neither gold nor silver, though possession of such things can stir a man to fight to the death—when you are offered the rule of all Asia easily? Will you choose something else?"

9This Aristagoras said, and Cleomenes answered as follows: "Milesian guest-friend, I put off my answer to you until the third day."

Chapter 50

1So far they drove the matter. When the day fixed for the answer came and they met as arranged, Cleomenes asked Aristagoras how many days the journey was from the sea of Ionia to the king.

2Aristagoras, though wise in other things and good at misleading Cleomenes, tripped up here. He had to keep back the truth, since he wanted to bring the Spartans out to Asia, but he said the journey up country was three months. The other, cutting short the rest of the speech Aristagoras was about to make about the road, said:

3"Milesian guest-friend, leave Sparta before the sun goes down. You speak no welcome words to the Lacedaemonians when you want to lead them on a journey of three months from the sea."

Chapter 51

1After Cleomenes said this he went to his house. Aristagoras took up a suppliant's branch and went to the house of Cleomenes, and coming inside he, as a suppliant, told Cleomenes to send the child away before listening to him; for Cleomenes' daughter was standing beside him, and her name was Gorgo. She was his only child, and she was eight or nine years old. Cleomenes told him to say whatever he wanted and not to hold back because of the child.

2Then Aristagoras began by promising ten talents if Cleomenes would do what he asked. When Cleomenes refused, Aristagoras kept raising the sums, until he had offered fifty talents. At that point the child cried out: "Father, come away, or the stranger will ruin you!"

3Cleomenes was pleased with the child's warning and went into another room, and Aristagoras left Sparta for good. He never got a further chance to explain the journey up country to the king.

Chapter 52

1The facts about this road are these: royal stations are set up everywhere, with the finest places to lodge, and the whole road runs through inhabited country and is safe. Through Lydia and Phrygia there are twenty stations stretching along it, which come to ninety-four and a half parasangs.

2Out of Phrygia the next thing that receives the traveler is the river Halys. Gates stand on it, through which everyone must pass to cross the river, and there is a great guard post there. Having crossed into Cappadocia and traveled through it as far as the borders of Cilicia, you find twenty-eight stations, which come to one hundred four parasangs. At these borders you will go through two sets of gates and pass two guard posts.

3After passing these and making your way through Cilicia, there are three stations, which come to fifteen and a half parasangs. The border between Cilicia and Armenia is a river that ships can sail on, named the Euphrates. In Armenia there are fifteen stations for lodging, which come to fifty-six and a half parasangs, and there is a guard post among them.

4Leaving this Armenia and entering the land of the Matieni, there are thirty-four stations, which come to one hundred thirty-seven parasangs. Four rivers that ships can sail on flow through this country, and every one of them must be ferried across. The first is the Tigris; the second and the third are called by the same name, though they are not the same river and do not flow from the same source: the former of the two, the one named before, flows out of Armenia, the latter out of the land of the Matieni.

5The fourth of these rivers has the name Gyndes. This is the river Cyrus once divided into three hundred sixty channels.

6For one passing on from this country into the land of Cissia there are eleven stations, which come to forty-two and a half parasangs, as far as the river Choaspes, which ships can also sail on. The city of Susa was founded on this river.

Chapter 53

1All these stations together come to one hundred eleven. So many are the lodging stations for one going up from Sardis to Susa. If the royal road has been measured correctly in parasangs, and the parasang is thirty stades (and it is), then from Sardis to the king's residence, the one called the Memnonian, there are thirteen thousand five hundred stades—that is, one hundred fifty parasangs. A traveler covering one hundred fifty stades each day will take exactly ninety days on the way.

Chapter 54

1So Aristagoras the Milesian spoke the truth to Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian when he said the journey up country to the king was three months. If anyone wants a still more exact figure than this, I will give that too: the road from Ephesus to Sardis must be added to the count.

2And I say that the total distance from the sea of the Greeks to Susa (for that is what the Memnonian city is called) is fourteen thousand forty stades, for the distance from Ephesus to Sardis is five hundred forty stades, and so the three months' journey is stretched by three days.

Chapter 55

1Driven from Sparta, Aristagoras went to Athens, which had been made free of its tyrants in this way. When Hipparchus son of Pisistratus, brother of the tyrant Hippias, had seen a dream vision that made his own fate very clear, Aristogeiton and Harmodius, who were Gephyraeans by descent from of old, killed him. After that the Athenians lived under tyranny for four years no less, and in fact more, than before.

Chapter 56

1This was the dream vision of Hipparchus: on the first night of the Panathenaea, he thought a tall, handsome man stood over him and spoke these lines in riddle: "Endure, lion, endure with a patient heart what you cannot endure. No one who does wrong escapes paying the penalty."

2As soon as day came, he sent the vision out to the interpreters of dreams, and then, after making the dream known, he sent out the procession—and in it he met his end.

Chapter 57

1The Gephyraeans, the family the killers of Hipparchus belonged to, say that in the beginning they came from Eretria; but as I find by inquiry, they were Phoenicians, of the Phoenicians who came with Cadmus into the land now called Boeotia, and they lived in that country, having received the Tanagrian share of it.

2After the Cadmeians had first been driven out of their land by the Argives, these Gephyraeans were next driven out by the Boeotians and turned toward Athens. The Athenians received them as citizens of their own on stated terms, assigning them to perform a few tasks, none of them worth mentioning.

Chapter 58

1These Phoenicians who came with Cadmus, from whom the Gephyraeans were descended, settled in this country and brought many kinds of learning to the Greeks, and among them the letters—which, in my opinion, the Greeks did not have before—first the very letters all the Phoenicians use. As time went on, the sound of the language changed with it, and they changed also the shape of the letters.

2At that time most of the country around them was inhabited by Ionians of the Greeks, who, taking over the letters by teaching from the Phoenicians, changed a few of the shapes and used them; and as they used them they said, as was only right, that the letters should be called Phoenician, since the Phoenicians had brought them into Greece.

3From of old the Ionians also call papyrus rolls "hides," because in former times, when papyrus was scarce, they used goatskins and sheepskins. Even in my time many foreigners still write on hides of this kind.

Chapter 59

1I myself have also seen Cadmean letters in the temple of Apollo Ismenias in Thebes in Boeotia, engraved on certain tripods, and for the most part like the Ionian letters. One of the tripods carries this inscription: "Amphitryon dedicated me from the spoils of the Teleboae." These letters would be of the age of Laius son of Labdacus son of Polydorus son of Cadmus.

Chapter 60

1Another tripod says in hexameter verse: "Scaeus the boxer, having won, dedicated me to the far-shooting Apollo, a lovely offering to his temple." This Scaeus would be the son of Hippocoon, if it was really that man who dedicated it and not another of the same name as the son of Hippocoon; and the date would be that of Oedipus son of Laius.

Chapter 61

1A third tripod says, and this one also in hexameter: "Laodamas, ruling alone, dedicated this tripod himself to the far-seeing Apollo, a lovely offering to his temple."

2It was while this Laodamas son of Eteocles was ruling alone that the Cadmeians were driven out by the Argives and turned to the Encheleans. The Gephyraeans, left behind, were later driven out by the Boeotians and withdrew to Athens. And in Athens they have shrines set up that the other Athenians share in nothing: apart from other shrines, there is also a temple and rites of Demeter Achaea.

Chapter 62

1So much for the dream vision of Hipparchus and for the Gephyraeans and where they came from, the family the killers of Hipparchus belonged to. To these things I must still go back and take up again the story from the beginning, to tell how the Athenians were freed from their tyrants.

2While Hippias was tyrant and growing bitter toward the Athenians because of the death of Hipparchus, the Alcmaeonids, an Athenian family who were exiles from the Pisistratids, kept trying to come back, together with the other Athenian exiles, but they did not get far with their attempt by force; they stumbled badly as they tried to come down and free Athens, after fortifying Leipsydrion above Paeonia. There the Alcmaeonids, scheming everything against the Pisistratids, hired from the Amphictyons to build the temple at Delphi—the one that stands now, which did not stand then.

3Since they were well supplied with money and were men of standing from of old, they made the temple finer than the model in every way—and especially this, that although the contract said the temple was to be built of porous stone, they made the front parts of it of Parian stone.

Chapter 63

1As the Athenians tell it, these men, staying at Delphi, persuaded the Pythia with money: whenever Spartans came to consult the oracle, whether on private or on public business, she was to tell them first to free Athens.

2Since the same message kept appearing to the Lacedaemonians, they sent Anchimolius son of Aster, a man of standing among the citizens, with an army, to drive the Pisistratids out of Athens—even though the Pisistratids were their guest-friends in the highest degree. For the word of the god counted more with them than the claims of men. They sent this force by sea in ships.

3This force put in at Phalerum and landed its army. But the Pisistratids, hearing of it beforehand, called for help from Thessaly, for they had made an alliance with the Thessalians. Asked, the Thessalians, after common deliberation, sent them a thousand horse and their own king Cineas, a man of Conium. When the Pisistratids had gotten these allies, they planned the following:

4They cut down the plain of Phalerum and made the ground fit for horses, then fell upon the camp with their cavalry. The charge destroyed many of the Lacedaemonians, including Anchimolius himself, and they shut the survivors up in their ships. So the first force from Lacedaemon was driven off. Anchimolius is buried in Attica, at Alopecae, near the temple of Heracles at Cynosarges.

Chapter 64

1After this the Lacedaemonians sent out a larger force against Athens, and they made Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides, their king, commander of the army. This time they sent it not by sea but by land.

2When they invaded the land of Attica, the Thessalian cavalry was the first to engage them, and it was soon turned back; more than forty of the horsemen fell. The rest fled straight home to Thessaly as best they could. Cleomenes came to the city, and together with the Athenians who wanted to be free, he besieged the tyrants, who were shut up in the Pelasgian wall.

Chapter 65

1And in no way would the Lacedaemonians have driven out the Pisistratids. For they had no thought of making a long siege, and the Pisistratids were well supplied with food and drink; and after only a few days of siege they would have gone home to Sparta. But now, as it happened, a bad chance fell upon the Pisistratids, and the same chance became an ally of the Athenians: the children of the Pisistratids were caught as they were being smuggled out of the country.

2When this happened, all their affairs fell into confusion. To win back their children, they gave in to the Athenians on whatever terms the Athenians wanted, so that within five days they left Attica.

3After that they went out to Sigeum on the Scamander. They had ruled the Athenians for thirty-six years. They too were Pylians and Neleids by descent from of old, born of the same stock as Codrus and Melanthus, who had come in from outside and had become kings of the Athenians.

4Because of this man, Hippocrates also remembered to give his child the same name, Pisistratus, taking the naming from Pisistratus the son of Nestor.

5So the Athenians were rid of their tyrants. Whatever worth telling they did or suffered after they were freed, before Ionia revolted from Darius and Aristagoras the Milesian came to Athens to ask them for help—these things I will first tell.

Chapter 66

1Athens, great even before, then, once it was freed of its tyrants, grew greater. Two men held power in it: Cleisthenes, a man of the Alcmaeonid family, the one who is said to have won over the Pythia; and Isagoras son of Tisander, of a family of standing, but of his original stock I cannot say. His kinsmen sacrifice to Zeus of Caria.

2These men took sides against each other about power, and Cleisthenes, losing, took the common people into his party. The Athenians had four tribes; he changed them into ten, dropping the names they bore from Gelon, Aegicoreus, Argades, and Hoples, the sons of Ion, and he invented names for them from other local heroes—all except Ajax. Him he added, though he was a stranger, because he was a neighbor and an ally of Athens.

Chapter 67

1In doing this, it seems to me, this Cleisthenes imitated his maternal grandfather Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon. That Cleisthenes, at war with the Argives, first stopped the rhapsodes from competing at Sicyon in the Homeric poems, because the Argives and Argos are praised in almost all of them; and next, since there was a hero-shrine of Adrastus son of Talaus in the marketplace of the Sicyonians itself, he wanted to drive this Argive out of the country.

2He went to Delphi and asked the oracle whether he might drive out Adrastus. The Pythia answered that Adrastus was king of the Sicyonians, but that he himself was a brigand. When the god did not hand over what he asked, he went home and planned how Adrastus himself could be made to go away. When he thought he had found a way, he sent to Thebes in Boeotia and said he wanted to bring in Melanippus son of Astacus. The Thebans let him have him.

3Cleisthenes brought in Melanippus and assigned him a sacred enclosure in the very town hall itself, and he set him up there, in the strongest spot. He brought in Melanippus—I must also tell why—because he was the bitterest enemy of Adrastus, who had killed his brother Mecisteus and his son-in-law Tydeus.

4When he had assigned him the sacred enclosure, he took away the sacrifices and festivals of Adrastus and gave them to Melanippus. But the Sicyonians had always greatly honored Adrastus. For this country had belonged to Polybus, and Adrastus was Polybus' sister's son; and Polybus, dying without sons, handed his power to Adrastus.

5The Sicyonians honored Adrastus in other ways too, and especially they raised up tragic choruses in honor of his sufferings, honoring Adrastus rather than Dionysus. Cleisthenes gave the choruses back to Dionysus, and the rest of the sacrifice to Melanippus.

Chapter 68

1This he did about Adrastus. And he changed the tribes of the Dorians to other names, so that they should not be the same tribes as the Sicyonians had and the Argives had. Here he made the Sicyonians the biggest laughingstock of all: he changed the tribal names to those of the pig and the ass, and put that same ending on them at the end, except his own tribe; for that one he set a name from his own rule. So the men of his tribe were called Archelai, and others Hyatai, and others Oneatai, and others Choireatai.

2The Sicyonians used these tribal names both while Cleisthenes ruled and for sixty years after his death. Afterward, however, after deliberating, they changed them to the Hylleis, the Pamphyli, and the Dymanatae, and they added a fourth, naming it the Aigialeis, from Aigialeus the son of Adrastus.

Chapter 69

1So the Sicyonian Cleisthenes had done these things. The Athenian Cleisthenes, who was this Sicyonian's sister's son and bore his name, seems to me also to have looked down on the Ionians, so that his tribes should not be the same as the Ionians' tribes, and to have imitated his namesake Cleisthenes.

2For he had before kept the Athenian people off, but then he took them all into his own party. He renamed the tribes and made more out of fewer: he made ten tribal commanders instead of four, and ten he also divided the demes into the tribes. And by adding the people, he was much stronger than his political enemies.

Chapter 70

1Isagoras, now losing ground, countered with this move: he called in Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian, who had become his guest-friend from the siege of the Pisistratids. And the story was that Cleomenes used to come and visit Isagoras' wife.

2At first Cleomenes sent a herald to Athens to drive out Cleisthenes and with him many other Athenians, whom he called "the accursed"; and he sent this message on Isagoras' instruction. For the Alcmaeonids and their partisans were held guilty of that murder, while he himself and his friends had no part in it.

Chapter 71

1The Athenians called "the accursed" were named this way. There was among the Athenians a man named Cylon, an Olympic victor. This man wanted to make himself tyrant, and, getting a brotherhood of his age-mates, he tried to seize the acropolis. He could not prevail, and he sat as suppliant at the statue.

2The prytaneis of the naucrari, who governed Athens at that time, raised them from there under a promise of safety, everything short of death. But the killing of them is blamed on the Alcmaeonids. This happened before the time of Pisistratus.

Chapter 72

1Cleomenes, having sent and driven out Cleisthenes and the accursed, then came to Athens all the same with no great force. When he arrived, he drove out seven hundred Athenian households, naming those Isagoras pointed out to him. After doing this, he next tried to dissolve the council, and he handed over the offices to three hundred partisans of Isagoras.

2But the council resisted and was not willing to obey, and Cleomenes and Isagoras and their partisans seized the acropolis. The rest of the Athenians, being of one mind, besieged them for two days; on the third day they let them out under truce—all of them who were Lacedaemonians. And the word spoken to Cleomenes was coming true.

3For when he went up to the acropolis, meaning to occupy it, he went to the sanctuary of the goddess to worship. The priestess rose from her throne, and before he even reached the doors she said: "Lacedaemonian stranger, go back; do not enter the temple. It is not lawful for Dorians to come in here." He said: "Woman, I am not a Dorian but an Achaean."

4He paid no attention to the words, but tried to go on, and this time again he was driven out with the Lacedaemonians. The rest the Athenians bound and put to death. Among them was Timesitheus of Delphi, whose deeds of hands and of daring I could list as very great.

Chapter 73

1So these men died in bonds. After this the Athenians sent for Cleisthenes and for the seven hundred households that had been driven out by Cleomenes, and they sent messengers to Sardis, wanting to make an alliance with the Persians, for they knew that the Lacedaemonians and Cleomenes meant to make war on them to the end.

2When the messengers reached Sardis and said what they had been charged to say, Artaphrenes son of Hystaspes, governor of Sardis, asked them who these men were and where they lived on the earth, that they wanted to become allies of the Persians. When he had learned this from the messengers, he summed it up for them: if the Athenians gave King Darius earth and water, he would make the alliance with them; if not, he told them to go away.

3The messengers, taking counsel with themselves, said they would give it, because they wanted to make the alliance. These men, when they went home, fell into great blame.

Chapter 74

1Cleomenes, knowing that the Athenians had shamefully insulted him in word and deed, gathered an army from the whole Peloponnese, not saying why he was gathering it. He wanted to punish the Athenian people, and he wanted to set up Isagoras as tyrant; for Isagoras had gone out of the acropolis together with him.

2Cleomenes then invaded Eleusis with a great army, and the Boeotians, by agreement, took Oenoe and Hysiae, the demes farthest out in Attica, while the Chalcidians, coming on, began to plunder other parts of Attica. The Athenians, though caught between two fires, decided to deal with the Boeotians and the Chalcidians later, and they set their arms against the Peloponnesians who were at Eleusis.

Chapter 75

1Just as the armies were about to join battle, the Corinthians first, deciding among themselves that they were not doing what was right, changed their minds and withdrew. After them Demaratus son of Ariston went off—he too was a king of the Spartans, and he had brought the army out of Lacedaemon together with Cleomenes, though he had had no quarrel with Cleomenes before this time.

2Because of this quarrel, a law was laid down in Sparta that both kings must not march out with an army together; before this, both used to follow. But the law said that when one of the kings was being held back, the other of the Tyndaridae was to be left behind too; for before this, both of those sons of Tyndareus also used to follow when both were called by name.

3So then at Eleusis, when the rest of the allies saw that the kings of the Lacedaemonians were not of one mind and that the Corinthians had left their place, they too went off and withdrew.

Chapter 76

1This was the fourth time Dorians had come against Attica: twice they had invaded in war, and twice for the good of the Athenian people. The first time was when they settled Megara—that expedition came when Codrus was king of the Athenians, and it should rightly be counted. The second and third were when they set out from Sparta to drive out the Pisistratids. The fourth was this time, when Cleomenes led the Peloponnesians and invaded Eleusis. So then it was the fourth time the Dorians had invaded Athens.

Chapter 77

1When this army had broken up without glory, the Athenians, wanting to take their revenge, first made an expedition against the Chalcidians. The Boeotians came to the help of the Chalcidians at the Euripus. When the Athenians saw the Boeotians, they resolved to attack the Boeotians before the Chalcidians.

2The Athenians joined battle with the Boeotians and won a great victory; they killed very many of them and took seven hundred alive. On that same day the Athenians crossed over to Euboea and joined battle with the Chalcidians too, and after beating them as well they left four thousand settlers on the land of the horse-breeders. The rich men of the Chalcidians were called horse-breeders.

3The prisoners they took from them, together with the Boeotian prisoners, they kept bound in chains in prison for a time, and later they let them go after assessing a ransom of two minas a man. The chains in which they had been bound they hung up on the acropolis; these were still there in my time, hanging from walls scorched by the Median fire, facing the building that is turned toward the west.

4A tenth part of the ransom money they dedicated, making of it a bronze four-horse chariot. It stands first on the left as one enters the Propylaea on the acropolis. The inscription on it says: "The tribes of Boeotia and Chalcis the sons of Athens, having beaten them in deeds of war, quenched their insolence in bonds of dark iron / A tenth of the ransoms they set up for Pallas in these horses"

Chapter 78

1So the Athenians grew. The equal right of speech shows, not in one thing only but everywhere, that it is a good worth much: even the Athenians, while they were under tyrants, were no better in war than any of their neighbors, but once they were rid of the tyrants they became by far the first. This shows that while they were held down they were slack on purpose, as men working for a master, but when they were freed, each man was eager to work for his own gain.

Chapter 79

1So much for them. The Thebans after this sent to the god, wanting to take revenge on the Athenians. The Pythia said that on their own account revenge did not belong to them, but she told them, bringing the matter out into great fame, to ask the help of those nearest.

2When the messengers had gone back, they brought out the oracle and made an assembly. When the Thebans heard the speakers say "ask the help of those nearest," they said: "If this is what it means, do not Tanagra and Coronaea and Thespiae live nearest to us? These have always fought with us and eagerly shared the war with us. Why should we ask them? Rather, perhaps, this is not what the oracle means."

Chapter 80

1While such talk was going on, one of them spoke up, a man who, I think, understood what the oracle wanted to tell us: "Asopus is said to have had two daughters, Thebe and Aegina. These being sisters, I think the god bids us ask the Aeginetans to become our avengers."

2And since no better plan than this appeared, at once they sent and asked the Aeginetans, appealing to the oracle, to come to their help, as being nearest. But they said they would send the Aeacidae to help them.

Chapter 81

1The Thebans tried the alliance of the Aeacidae and had a hard time of it at the hands of the Athenians. So the Thebans sent again: they gave back the Aeacidae and asked for men instead.

2The Aeginetans, puffed up by great prosperity and remembering an old grudge they had against the Athenians, then, at the Thebans' request, brought an undeclared war on the Athenians.

3For while the Thebans were pressing their attack, the Aeginetans sailed long ships to Attica and ravaged Phalerum, and many demes along the rest of the coast as well; and by doing this they sorely hurt the Athenians.

Chapter 82

1The old grudge against the Athenians held by the Aeginetans had its origin in this. The land of the Epidaurians bore no crop. About this trouble the Epidaurians consulted Delphi. The Pythia told them to set up statues of Damia and Auxesia, and told them that if they set them up things would go better with them.

2The Epidaurians next asked whether they should make the statues of bronze or of stone. The Pythia allowed neither, but said they must be of wood of the cultivated olive. So the Epidaurians asked the Athenians to let them cut some olive trees, thinking those trees the most sacred. It is said that at that time there were no olive trees anywhere else on earth except in Athens.

3The Athenians said they would give them on this condition: that every year the Epidaurians carry sacred offerings to Athena Polias and to Erechtheus. The Epidaurians agreed to this, got what they asked, made statues from those olive trees, and set them up; and their land bore crops, and they kept faith with the Athenians in what they had promised.

Chapter 83

1Until this time, and before it too, the Aeginetans had listened to the Epidaurians in other matters, and they had crossed over to Epidaurus to settle their lawsuits, giving and taking judgments from one another. From this point on they built ships and, using recklessness, broke away from the Epidaurians.

2Being enemies, they hurt them, and since they were masters of the sea, they carried off from them those very statues of Damia and Auxesia, and they brought them and set them up in the middle of their own country, in a place called Oenoe, which is, as I judge, about twenty stades from the city.

3Having set them up in that place, they appeased them with sacrifices and with choruses of local women in mockery, ten men being named as chorus leaders for each of the goddesses. The choruses jeered no man, but the women of the country. The Epidaurians have the same rites; and they have secret rites as well.

Chapter 84

1When these statues were stolen, the Epidaurians stopped keeping the promises they had made to the Athenians. The Athenians sent a messenger to the Epidaurians. They replied in words that they were doing no wrong: as long as they had the statues in their country, they kept the promises; but now that they had been robbed of them, it was not right to keep paying, and they told the Athenians to deal with the Aeginetans who had the statues.

2To this the Athenians sent to Aegina and demanded the statues back. The Aeginetans answered that the statues were no business of theirs or of the Athenians.

Chapter 85

1The Athenians say that after this demand they sent one trireme carrying certain men of the city, men who had been sent out by the commons; and coming to Aegina they tried to pull the statues up from their bases, as being their own wood, so as to bring them home.

2When they could not get the statues that way, they tied ropes around them and dragged them. As they dragged, lightning and, together with the lightning, an earthquake came upon them. The men of the trireme who were dragging were driven mad by this, and in their state they killed one another as if they were enemies, until of all of them only one man was left, and he was brought back to Phalerum.

Chapter 86

1The Athenians say that this is how it happened. The Aeginetans say that the Athenians did not come with just one ship. Against one ship, or only a few more than one, they could easily have defended themselves, even if they had happened to have no ships of their own, but the Athenians sailed against their land with many ships, and they gave way and did not fight a sea battle.

2But they cannot make this clear for sure: whether they gave way in the sea battle because they knew they were weaker, or because they meant to do exactly what they did.

3When no one came out to meet them in battle, the Athenians landed from their ships and turned to the statues. They could not pull the statues up from their bases, so they put ropes around them and dragged them, until both statues did the same thing. I do not believe this story, though someone else may. They say that the statues fell on their knees, and from that time on they have stayed that way.

4This is what the Athenians did. The Aeginetans say that they themselves, when they learned that the Athenians were going to march against them, got the Argives ready. Then the Athenians landed in Aegina, and the Argives came to help them. The Argives crossed over from Epidaurus to the island without being seen and fell on the Athenians, who had heard nothing about it, cutting them off from their ships. At the same time there was thunder and an earthquake there.

Chapter 87

1This is what the Argives and the Aeginetans say. The Athenians agree on one point: that only one of them got back safe to Attica.

2But the Argives say that this one man survived after they destroyed the Athenian army, while the Athenians say that he survived through the power of a god. Yet not even this one man survived in the end. He died in the following way. When he reached Athens he reported what had happened. The wives of the men who had campaigned against Aegina heard about it, and they were angry that he alone of all of them had been saved. They surrounded the man and pricked him with the pins of their clothes, each one asking him where her own husband was.

3That was how he died. To the Athenians the women's deed seemed even worse than the disaster itself. They had no other way to punish the women, so they changed their clothing to the Ionian style. Before that, the women of Athens wore Dorian dress, almost the same as the Corinthian. They changed to the linen tunic, so that they would not have to use pins.

Chapter 88

1If you follow the true account, this dress was not Ionian in old times but Carian. All the ancient clothing of Greek women was the same as what we now call Dorian.

2On top of this, the Argives and the Aeginetans each made it a law among themselves to make their pins one and a half times the size of the measure that was set at that time, and for the women to dedicate pins above all else in the temple of these goddesses. Nothing from Athens is to be brought to the temple, not even pottery, and from then on the custom there is to drink from local clay cups.

Chapter 89

1Ever since then, out of rivalry with the Athenians, the women of Argos and Aegina have worn larger pins than before, down to my own time. This was the start of the hostility between Athens and Aegina, as I have described it. Then, when the Thebans called on them for help, the Aeginetans remembered what had been done over the statues and eagerly came to the aid of the Boeotians.

2The Aeginetans ravaged the coastal parts of Attica. As the Athenians were getting ready to march against the Aeginetans, an oracle came from Delphi. They were to hold back for thirty years after the wrong done by the Aeginetans, and in the thirty-first year they were to mark off a precinct for Aeacus and then begin the war against the Aeginetans, and things would go as they wished. But if they marched against them right away, they would suffer much and do much in the meantime, though in the end they would come out on top.

3When the Athenians heard this answer brought back to them, they marked off for Aeacus the precinct that now stands in the marketplace, but they would not hold back for thirty years. They had been treated so cruelly by the Aeginetans, and they could not bear to hear that they had to wait.

Chapter 90

1While they were preparing to get their revenge, trouble arising from Lacedaemon got in their way. The Lacedaemonians had learned of the schemes of the Alcmaeonids against the Pythia, and of what came from the Pythia against them and the Pisistratids, and they counted it a double misfortune. They had driven into exile men who were their own guests and friends, and after doing this they got no thanks from the Athenians.

2On top of this, the oracles kept pushing them on, saying that many troubles, and cruel ones, would come to them from the Athenians. They had not understood these oracles before, but now Cleomenes brought them to Sparta and they learned them. Cleomenes got the oracles from the Athenian acropolis. The Pisistratids had owned them before. When they were driven out they left them in the temple, and Cleomenes picked them up after they had been left behind.

Chapter 91

1Once the Lacedaemonians had taken over the oracles and saw the Athenians growing stronger and in no way ready to obey them, they reasoned it out. If the people of Attica were free, it would become a match for their own people, but while it was held down by a tyranny it would be weak and ready to obey. Having learned each of these things, they sent for Hippias the son of Pisistratus from Sigeum on the Hellespont, where the Pisistratids had taken refuge.

2When Hippias came at their call, they also sent for envoys from their other allies, and the Spartans spoke to them as follows: "Allies, we admit that we did not act rightly. We were carried away by false oracles, and we drove out of their homeland men who were the best of friends to us and who promised to put Athens in our hands. Then, after doing this, we handed the city over to an ungrateful people. Once it had risen up and become free through us, it insulted us and our king and drove us out. Now it is growing in fame and power, so much so that its neighbors the Boeotians and the Chalcidians have learned the lesson well, and soon someone else will learn it too when he makes the same mistake.

3"Since we made that mistake, now we will try, together with you, to punish them. That is exactly why we have sent for Hippias here and for you from your cities: so that with a common plan and a common force we may bring him back into Athens and carry out what we promised."

Chapter 92

1That is what they said, but the mass of the allies would not accept their words. The others kept quiet, and Socles the Corinthian spoke as follows.

Chapter 92A

1"Surely the sky will end up below the earth and the earth high above the sky, and men will have their grazing in the sea and fish will have what men had before, when you Lacedaemonians plan to do away with equal government and bring tyrannies back into the cities. Nothing among mankind is more unjust than that, or more murderous.

2"If it really seems to you a fine thing for cities to be ruled by tyrants, then first set up a tyrant for yourselves at home, and only after that try to set them up for other people too. As it is, you have no experience of tyrants yourselves, and you guard most strictly against one arising in Sparta, yet you treat your allies shamefully. If you had experience of it, as we have, you would be able to give better opinions about it than you do now.

Chapter 92B

1"The government of Corinth was like this. There was an oligarchy, and men called the Bacchiads ran the city and married only among themselves. One of these men, Amphion, had a daughter who was lame; her name was Labda. Since none of the Bacchiads wanted to marry her, Eëtion son of Echecrates took her as his wife. He was from the district of Petra, but in his older family line he was a Lapith and a descendant of Caeneus.

2"No children were born to him from this wife or from any other. So he went to Delphi to ask about offspring. As soon as he came in, the Pythia greeted him with these verses: 'Eëtion, no one honors you, though you deserve great honor. / Labda is pregnant; she will give birth to a rolling stone. / It will fall among men who rule alone, and it will set Corinth to rights.'

3"When this answer had been given to Eëtion, it somehow got reported to the Bacchiads. They had earlier received an oracle about Corinth that was unclear, one that pointed to the same thing as the oracle of Eëtion and went like this: 'An eagle is pregnant among the rocks; she will give birth to a lion, strong and one that eats raw flesh. / Many men's knees it will loosen. / Now think this over carefully, you Corinthians who live around lovely Peirene and craggy Corinth.'

Chapter 92C

1"This earlier oracle had been impossible for the Bacchiads to interpret. When they learned of the one given to Eëtion, they at once understood that it agreed with the oracle of Eëtion. Once they understood this too, they kept quiet, wanting to destroy the offspring that was going to be born to Eëtion. As soon as the woman had given birth, they sent ten of their own men to the district where Eëtion lived, to kill the baby.

2"These men came to Petra, went into the courtyard of Eëtion, and asked for the baby. Labda knew nothing of why they had come, and she thought they were asking out of kindness to the father. She brought the baby and put it in the arms of one of them. They had agreed on the way that the first of them to take the baby should dash it to the ground.

3"When Labda brought the baby and handed it over, by heaven's luck the baby smiled at the man who took it. He noticed this and felt some pity about killing it. Moved to pity, he handed it to the second man, and he handed it to the third. So it passed along through all ten of them, and none of them was willing to do the deed.

4"They handed the baby back to its mother and went outside. Standing at the doors they began to blame one another, and especially the first man who had taken the baby, because he had not done what they had agreed. Finally, when some time had passed, they decided to go back in and all have a share in the killing.

Chapter 92D

1"Trouble was bound to grow for Corinth from the line of Eëtion. Labda heard all of this as she stood right by the doors. She was afraid that they might change their minds and, taking the baby a second time, kill it. So she carried the baby and hid it in what seemed to her the most hidden place of all, a chest. She knew that if they came back to search, they would search everything. And that is just what happened.

2"When they came and looked, and the baby did not show up, they decided to go away and tell the men who had sent them that they had done everything they had been ordered to do. They went off and said exactly that.

Chapter 92E

1"After this, the son of Eëtion grew up. Since he had escaped this danger from the chest, he was given the name Cypselus after it. When Cypselus was a grown man he consulted the oracle, and he got an ambiguous answer at Delphi. Trusting in it, he attacked Corinth and took it. The oracle went like this:

2'Happy is this man who goes down into my house: / Cypselus son of Eëtion, king of famous Corinth, he and his sons, but no longer his sons' sons.' That was the oracle. Cypselus became tyrant, and he turned out to be this kind of man: he drove many Corinthians into exile, stripped many of their money, and far more of them of their lives.

Chapter 92F

1"He ruled for thirty years and ended his life well, and his son Periander became tyrant after him. At first Periander was gentler than his father, but after he had dealings by messengers with Thrasybulus, the tyrant of Miletus, he became far more murderous than Cypselus.

2"He sent a herald to Thrasybulus and asked how he could arrange his affairs most safely and govern the city in the best way. Thrasybulus led the man who had come from Periander out of the town. He went into a field of standing grain, and as he walked through the crop he kept questioning the herald and going back over the journey from Corinth. Whenever he saw a head of grain standing above the others, he cut it off and threw it down, until in this way he had destroyed the finest and tallest part of the crop.

3"When he had gone through the field, he sent the herald away without offering a single word of advice. When the herald got back to Corinth, Periander was eager to hear the advice. The herald said that Thrasybulus had given him no advice at all, and that he was amazed at the kind of man Periander had sent him to, someone out of his mind and damaging his own property, as he described what he had seen Thrasybulus do.

Chapter 92G

1"Periander understood what had been done, and he realized that Thrasybulus was advising him to kill the outstanding men among the citizens. From then on he showed every kind of wickedness toward the citizens. Whatever Cypselus had left undone in killing and driving people out, Periander finished off. In a single day he stripped all the women of Corinth of their clothes, and he did it because of his own wife Melissa.

2"He had sent messengers to the Thesprotians on the river Acheron, to the oracle of the dead, about a guest's deposit. When Melissa appeared, she said she would give him no sign and would not tell him where the deposit lay. She was cold and naked: the clothes that he had buried with her were of no use to her, since they had not been burned. Her proof that she was telling the truth was that Periander had put the loaves on a cold oven.

3"When this was reported back to Periander, he knew the sign was genuine, since he had lain with Melissa when she was dead. Right after the message he made a proclamation that all the women of Corinth were to come out to the Heraeum. They went as if to a festival, wearing their finest clothes. He posted his guards and stripped them all alike, both the free women and the servants. Then he gathered the clothes into a pit and burned them, praying to Melissa as he did so.

4"After he had done this and had sent a second time, the ghost of Melissa told him in what place of the guest he had put down the deposit. That, Lacedaemonians, is what tyranny is like, and such are its works.

5"We Corinthians were filled with great amazement when we saw you sending for Hippias, and now we are amazed even more at what you say. We protest and call on you, invoking the gods of the Greeks: do not set up tyrannies in the cities. You will not stop, but you will try to bring Hippias back against all justice. Know that at least the Corinthians will not agree to it."

Chapter 93

1Socles, the envoy from Corinth, spoke like this. Hippias answered him, calling on the same gods as he had called on: "The Corinthians, above all men, will long for the Pisistratids, when the fated days come in which they will be hurt by the Athenians."

2This was Hippias' answer, since he knew the oracles more exactly than any other man. The rest of the allies had kept quiet up to that point, but after they heard Socles speak so freely, each one of them broke silence and chose the opinion of the Corinthian. They called the Lacedaemonians to witness that they should do nothing new against any city in Greece.

Chapter 94

1That is how this plan came to an end. When Hippias was driven off from there, Amyntas the king of the Macedonians offered him Anthemus, and the Thessalians offered him Iolcus. He chose neither of these, but withdrew back to Sigeum, which Pisistratus had taken by force of arms from the Mytilenaeans. After taking it, he set up as tyrant his own bastard son Hegesistratus, who was born of an Argive woman, and this man did not hold what he received from Pisistratus without fighting for it.

2For the Mytilenaeans and the Athenians fought for a long time, operating from the city of Achilleum and from Sigeum. The Mytilenaeans demanded the land back, but the Athenians refused to agree and argued that the Aeolians had no more right to the land of Ilium than they themselves and the rest of the Greeks who had joined Menelaus in getting Helen back after she was carried off.

Chapter 95

1While they were at war, many other things too happened in the battles. Once, when a battle had been joined and the Athenians were winning, the poet Alcaeus himself got away by running, but the Athenians took his weapons and hung them up in the temple of Athena at Sigeum.

2Alcaeus made a song about this and sent it to Mytilene, telling his friend Melanippus what had happened to him. Periander son of Cypselus reconciled the Mytilenaeans and the Athenians, because they had referred the dispute to him to settle. He reconciled them on these terms: each side was to keep the land it held.

Chapter 96

1That is how Sigeum came to be under the control of the Athenians. When Hippias had come from Lacedaemon to Asia, he stirred up every possible thing. He spoke against the Athenians to Artaphrenes and did everything he could to make Athens subject to himself and to Darius.

2While Hippias was doing this, the Athenians learned of it and sent messengers to Sardis, telling the Persians not to listen to the Athenian exiles. Artaphrenes ordered them, if they wanted to keep safe, to take Hippias back. The Athenians would not accept this message when it was brought back to them. When they refused it, they resolved to be open enemies of the Persians.

Chapter 97

1Things were in this state, and the Athenians were already at odds with the Persians. At this very time Aristagoras of Miletus came to Athens. He had been driven out of Sparta by Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian. This city was the most powerful of the ones that were left. Aristagoras came before the people and said the same things he had said at Sparta about the good things in Asia and about the war with Persia: that the Persians use neither shield nor spear and are easy to conquer.

2He said this, and he also said that the Milesians are colonists of the Athenians, so it was right for them to rescue them, since they had such great power. He promised everything under the sun, since he was begging so hard, until he persuaded them. It seems that it is easier to mislead many people than one. He was not able to mislead Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian alone, but he made thirty thousand Athenians do it.

3The Athenians were persuaded, and they voted to send twenty ships to help the Ionians, appointing as their general Melanthius, a citizen who was held in high regard in every way. These ships were the beginning of troubles for Greeks and foreigners alike.

Chapter 98

1Aristagoras sailed on ahead and came to Miletus. There he thought up a plan that would bring no benefit at all to the Ionians. He was not doing it for that reason anyway, but to cause trouble for King Darius. He sent a man to Phrygia, to the Paeonians who had been taken prisoner from the river Strymon by Megabazus and who lived in Phrygia, in a district and a village of their own. When this man came to the Paeonians, he said:

2"Men of Paeonia, Aristagoras the tyrant of Miletus has sent me to suggest a way for you to save yourselves, if you are willing to listen. All Ionia has now revolted from the king, and you have the chance to save yourselves and get back to your own land. As far as the sea you have to manage on your own. From there on we will take care of it."

3The Paeonians were very glad to hear this. They took their children and their wives and set out for the sea, though some of them stayed where they were out of fear. When the Paeonians reached the sea, they crossed over from there to Chios.

4While they were already in Chios, a large force of Persian cavalry came right behind them, pursuing the Paeonians. When they did not catch them, they sent word to the Paeonians in Chios telling them to come back. The Paeonians would not accept the message. Instead, the Chians took them from Chios to Lesbos, and the Lesbians carried them on to Doriscus. From there they traveled overland and came to Paeonia.

Chapter 99

1The Athenians now arrived with twenty ships, bringing along five Eretrian triremes. The Eretrians were not campaigning to do the Athenians a favor. They were paying the Milesians back what they owed them. The Milesians had earlier helped the Eretrians fight their war against the Chalcidians, at the time when the Samians were helping the Chalcidians against the Eretrians and the Milesians. When these ships arrived and the rest of the allies were there too, Aristagoras organized an expedition against Sardis.

2He did not go on the expedition himself, but stayed in Miletus. He appointed other generals from the Milesians: his own brother Charopinus, and another citizen, Hermophantus.

Chapter 100

1The Ionians arrived at Ephesus with this force and left their ships at Coresus in the territory of Ephesus. They went inland in great force, taking the Ephesians as their guides. They marched along the river Cayster, and from there they crossed over Mount Tmolus and arrived. They took Sardis with no one standing against them. They took everything except the acropolis. Artaphrenes himself held the acropolis, with quite a large force of men.

Chapter 101

1The reason they did not sack the city after taking it was this. Most of the houses in Sardis were made of reeds, and even the ones that were made of brick had reed roofs. When one of the soldiers set one of these houses on fire, the fire quickly ran from house to house and spread over the whole town.

2As the town burned, the Lydians and all the Persians who were in the city were cut off on every side, since the fire was eating its way around the outer edges, and they had no way out of the town. They streamed into the marketplace and to the river Pactolus, which carries gold dust down from Tmolus, flows through the middle of the marketplace, and then runs into the river Hermus, which runs on to the sea. The Lydians and the Persians gathered at the Pactolus and in the marketplace, and they were forced to defend themselves.

3The Ionians saw that some of the enemy were defending themselves while others were coming at them in great numbers. Fearing this, they pulled back to the mountain called Tmolus, and from there they made their way to the ships under cover of night.

Chapter 102

1That is how Sardis came to be burned, and with it the temple of the local goddess Cybebe. Later the Persians used this as a pretext for burning the temples in Greece. At the time, the Persians who held districts inside the river Halys heard what had happened before the others did. They gathered together and came to help the Lydians.

2Somehow they found that the Ionians were no longer in Sardis. Following their trail, they caught up with them at Ephesus. The Ionians drew up in line against them. They joined battle, and the Ionians were badly beaten.

3The Persians killed many of them, among other men of note Eualcides, the general of the Eretrians, who had won victories in crown games and had been much praised by Simonides of Ceos. Those of the Ionians who got away from the battle were scattered to their own cities.

Chapter 103

1That is how they fought that day. After it, the Athenians abandoned the Ionians completely. Even though Aristagoras kept calling on them for help through many messengers, they said they would not give them any help. The Ionians, deprived of the Athenian alliance, since this was how things stood for them with Darius, went on making their preparations for the war against the king all the same.

2They sailed to the Hellespont and brought Byzantium and all the other cities in that region under their control. Then they sailed out beyond the Hellespont and won over most of Caria to be their allies. Caunus too, which had not been willing to be an ally before, joined them after they burned Sardis.

Chapter 104

1All the Cypriots joined them of their own free will, except the Amathusians. These too revolted from the Medes, in the following way. Onesilus was the younger brother of Gorgus, king of the Salaminians, and the son of Chersis son of Siromus son of Euelthon.

2This man had often urged Gorgus before this to revolt from the king. Now, when he learned that the Ionians had revolted, he pressed him hard and pushed him to do it. When he could not persuade Gorgus, Onesilus waited until Gorgus had left the city of Salamis, and then, with his own supporters, shut him out of the gates.

3Gorgus, cut off from his city, fled to the Medes. Onesilus took charge of Salamis and tried to persuade all the Cypriots to revolt along with him. He persuaded all the rest, but the Amathusians would not obey him, so he sat down before their city and besieged them.

Chapter 105

1So Onesilus was besieging Amathus. When word came to King Darius that Sardis had been taken and burned by the Athenians and the Ionians, and that the man who had organized the whole thing and brought it about was Aristagoras of Miletus, first, they say, he paid no attention at all to the Ionians, since he knew well enough that they would not get away unpunished for revolting. He asked who the Athenians were. When he found out, he asked for his bow. He took it, set an arrow on it, and shot it up toward the sky. As he shot into the air he said:

2"Zeus, let me punish the Athenians!" When he had said this, he ordered one of his attendants that, whenever dinner was set before him, each time he was to say three times: "Master, remember the Athenians."

Chapter 106

1After giving these orders he called Histiaeus of Miletus into his presence, since Darius had been keeping him with him for a long time already, and said: "Histiaeus, I learn that your deputy, the man you left in charge of Miletus, has been doing me wrong. He brought men over from the other continent, and with them Ionians who are going to pay me the penalty for what they have done. He persuaded these men to go along with him, and so he robbed me of Sardis. So how does this look fine to you?

2How could any of this have been done without your plans? Take care that you do not end up putting the blame on yourself."

3Histiaeus answered: "My king, what kind of word have you spoken? That I would plan something that would bring you some trouble, great or small? What would I be after if I did this, and what am I short of? I have everything that you have, and I am thought worthy to hear all of your plans.

4But if my deputy is doing something like what you say, know that he did it on his own. For my part, I do not accept the story at all, that the Milesians and my deputy are doing anything new against your interests. But if they are doing something of the sort, and you have heard the truth of it, my king, learn what a thing you have done in dragging me away from the sea.

5The Ionians seem to have done what they had long wanted to do only because I was out of their sight. If I had been in Ionia, not one city would have moved. Now send me to Ionia as fast as you can, so that I can put everything there back in order and hand this deputy of Miletus, the man who planned these things, over to you with his hands bound.

6When I have done this to your mind, I swear by the royal gods that I will not take off the tunic I am wearing and go down to Ionia before I make Sardinia, the greatest island there is, pay you tribute."

Chapter 107

1Histiaeus said this and won Darius over. Darius believed him and let him go, with orders that when he had carried out everything he had promised, he was to come back to Susa.

Chapter 108

1While the news about Sardis was on its way up to the king, and Darius, after the business with the bow, had talked with Histiaeus, and Histiaeus had been let go by Darius and was making his way down to the sea, all through this time the following was happening. Onesilus of Salamis was besieging the Amathusians when he learned that Artybius, a Persian, was expected in Cyprus, bringing a large Persian army by ship.

2When Onesilus learned this, he sent heralds around Ionia calling on them for help. The Ionians did not take long to decide; they came with a large force. So the Ionians were in Cyprus, and the Persians crossed over from Cilicia by ship and marched against Salamis overland. The Phoenician ships sailed around the headland called the Clides of Cyprus.

Chapter 109

1While this was going on, the kings of Cyprus called together the generals of the Ionians and said: "Men of Ionia, we Cypriots give you the choice of which of the two you want to take on: the Persians or the Phoenicians.

2If you want to line up on land and test yourselves against the Persians, then it is time for you to get out of your ships and form up on land, while we board your ships and take on the Phoenicians. But if you would rather test yourselves against the Phoenicians, then whichever of these you choose, you must see to it that, so far as it is up to you, Ionia and Cyprus come out free."

3The Ionians answered: "The common assembly of the Ionians sent us to guard the sea, not to hand our ships over to the Cypriots and then fight the Persians on land ourselves. We will stay at the post we were given and do our best there. But you must remember what you suffered when you were slaves to the Medes, and be brave men."

Chapter 110

1That was the Ionians' answer. When the Persians came out into the plain of the Salaminians, the kings of the Cypriots drew up their forces. They lined up the rest of the Cypriots against the rest of the soldiers, and they picked the best of the Salaminians and the Solians and put them against the Persians. Against Artybius, the general of the Persians, Onesilus took his stand as a volunteer.

Chapter 111

1Artybius rode a horse that had been trained to rear up against a man in armor. When Onesilus learned this, he spoke to the man who carried his shield, who was a Car by birth, a fighter held in high regard and full of courage besides. He said to him:

2"I am told that the horse of Artybius rears up and works with both feet and mouth against whatever it is set on. So make your plan and tell me right away which one you want to watch for and strike: the horse, or Artybius himself."

3The man answered: "My king, I am ready to do both or either of them, and in any case whatever you order. But I will tell you what I think is the better course for your cause.

4I say that a king and a general should be matched against a king and a general. If you kill an enemy general, that is a great thing for you. Second, if he kills you, and heaven forbid that happens, being killed by a man who is your equal is only half a disaster. But we who are servants should fight other servants, and the horse as well. Do not be afraid of its tricks at all. I promise you that it will never stand up against any man again."

Chapter 112

1He said this, and right away the armies clashed, both on land and at sea. At sea the Ionians were at their best that day and beat the Phoenicians, with the Samians fighting best of all. On land, when the two armies met, they came together and fought.

2This is what happened to the two generals. As Artybius came at Onesilus on his horse, Onesilus struck at Artybius as he came, just as he had agreed with the man who carried his shield. When the horse brought its forefeet down on the shield of Onesilus, the Car struck with his sickle and cut off the horse's feet.

Chapter 113

1Artybius, the general of the Persians, fell there together with his horse. While the rest were still fighting, Stesenor, the tyrant of Curium, betrayed his side, taking with him a force of men that was not small. These Curians are said to be colonists of the Argives. When the Curians turned traitors, the war chariots of the Salaminians at once did the same as the Curians. When this happened, the Persians got the upper hand over the Cypriots.

2Once the army was routed, many fell, among them Onesilus son of Chersis, who had brought about the revolt of the Cypriots, and Aristocyprus, king of the Solians, son of Philocyprus. This Philocyprus is the one whom Solon of Athens praised in verse above all other tyrants when he came to Cyprus.

Chapter 114

1The Amathusians cut off the head of Onesilus, because he had besieged them, and carried it to Amathus and hung it up over the gates. While the head was hanging there and had become hollow, a swarm of bees went into it and filled it with honeycomb.

2When this had happened, the Amathusians consulted an oracle about it. The answer was that they should take the head down and bury it, and sacrifice to Onesilus every year as to a hero, and that if they did these things, things would go better for them.

Chapter 115

1The Amathusians did these things, and they still do them down to my time. The Ionians in Cyprus had fought the sea battle, but when they learned that the cause of Onesilus was lost and that the cities of the Cypriots were all under siege except Salamis, and that one the Salaminians had handed over to Gorgus, their former king, they sailed away to Ionia at once.

2Of the cities in Cyprus, Soloi held out the longest under siege. The Persians dug under the wall all around it and took the city in the fifth month.

Chapter 116

1So the Cypriots, who had been free for one year, were enslaved again from the start. Daurises, who was married to a daughter of Darius, and Hymaees and Otanes, other Persian generals who were also married to daughters of Darius, pursued the Ionians who had marched against Sardis and drove them back to their ships. Once they had won the battle, they divided the cities among themselves and sacked them.

Chapter 117

1Daurises turned toward the cities on the Hellespont and took Dardanus, then Abydos, Percote, Lampsacus, and Paesus. These he took one on each day. But as he drove from Paesus against the city of Parion, word came that the Carians had made common cause with the Ionians and revolted from the Persians. He turned back from the Hellespont and led his army against Caria.

Chapter 118

1Somehow the Carians learned of this before Daurises arrived. When they heard the news, they gathered at the place called the White Pillars and the river Marsyas, which flows out of the country of Idrias and runs into the Maeander.

2When the Carians were gathered there, many plans were put forward. The one that seems to me the best was that of Pixodarus son of Mausolus, a man of Cindya, who was married to the daughter of Syennesis, the king of Cilicia. His proposal was that the Carians should cross the Maeander and fight with the river at their backs. Then, since they would have no way to run, they would be forced to stay where they were and become braver than their nature.

3This proposal did not win. They decided instead to let the Maeander lie at the backs of the Persians rather than at their own. Clearly this was so that, if the Persians ran and lost the battle, they would not get home again but would fall into the river.

Chapter 119

1After the Persians arrived and crossed the Maeander, the Carians met them in battle at the river Marsyas. They fought hard and for a long time, but in the end they were beaten because the Persians were so many. About two thousand of the Persians fell, and about ten thousand of the Carians.

2The survivors were driven from there to Labraunda, to the sanctuary of Zeus Stratius, a great and holy grove of plane trees. As far as we know, the Carians are the only people who sacrifice to Zeus Stratius. Once they were shut in there, they debated how to save themselves: would it be better to surrender to the Persians, or to leave Asia altogether?

Chapter 120

1While they were debating this, the Milesians and their allies came to help them. The Carians then dropped the plans they had been making and prepared to fight the war again from the start. They joined battle with the Persians as the Persians advanced, and after fighting longer than before they were beaten. Many fell on both sides, but the Milesians suffered the worst losses.

Chapter 121

1After this defeat the Carians recovered and fought again. They learned that the Persians were on the march against their cities, so they set an ambush on the road at Pedasus. The Persians marched into it in the night and were destroyed, along with their generals Daurises, Amorges, and Sisimaces. Myrsus son of Gyges died with them. The leader of this ambush was Heraclides, son of Ibanollis, a man of Mylasa.

Chapter 122

1That is how those Persians were destroyed. Hymaees had been one of those who pursued the Ionians after their march on Sardis. He turned toward the Propontis and took Cius in Mysia.

2After taking that city, he learned that Daurises had left the Hellespont and was marching against Caria. He left the Propontis and led his army to the Hellespont. He took all the Aeolians who hold the Troad, and he took the Gergithes, who were left from the ancient Teucrians. While he was conquering these peoples, Hymaees himself died of disease in the Troad.

Chapter 123

1That is how he died. Artaphrenes, the governor of Sardis, and Otanes, the third general, were ordered to march against Ionia and the part of Aeolis that lies next to it. In Ionia they took Clazomenae, and among the Aeolians they took Cyme.

Chapter 124

1While the cities were being taken, Aristagoras of Miletus showed that he was not a brave man. He had stirred up Ionia and gotten into serious trouble, and now, as he watched these things happen, he planned to run away. It also seemed to him that there was no way to get the better of King Darius.

2So he called together the men of his own party and asked their advice. He said it would be better for them to have some refuge ready in case they were driven out of Miletus: whether he should lead a colony from this place to Sardinia, or to Myrcinus in the land of the Edonians, the city that Histiaeus was fortifying as a gift from Darius. This is what Aristagoras asked them.

Chapter 125

1Hecataeus son of Hegesander, a writer of prose, advised going to neither place. He said he should build a wall on the island of Leros and stay quiet there if he was driven out of Miletus. Then he could use that island as a base and come back to Miletus.

Chapter 126

1That was the advice of Hecataeus, but Aristagoras himself was most inclined to lead people to Myrcinus. He left Miletus in the hands of Pythagoras, a respected citizen, then took on board everyone who wanted to go and sailed for Thrace. He took possession of the land he had set out to get.

2Using that land as his base, Aristagoras and his army were destroyed by the Thracians. He was besieging a city, and the Thracians wanted to come out under a truce.

Chapter 1

1Those Persians whom Darius had left in Europe under the command of Megabazus, finding the Perinthians unwilling to be Darius' subjects, subdued them before any others of the people of the Hellespont. These Perinthians had already been roughly handled by the Paeonians.

2For the oracle of the god ordered the Paeonians from the Strymon to march against Perinthus, and if the Perinthians, who were encamped opposite them, should call to them, crying out their name, then to attack them. If, however, there were no such call, they were not to attack. The Paeonians acted accordingly. When the Perinthians set up camp in front of their city, the armies then challenged each other to a threefold duel, in which man was matched against man, horse against horse, and dog against dog.

3The Perinthians were victorious in two of the combats and raised the cry of “Paean” in their joy. The Paeonians reasoned that this was what the oracle had spoken of and must have said to each other, “This is surely the fulfillment of the prophecy; now it is time for us to act.” Accordingly, the Paeonians set upon the Perinthians and won a great victory, leaving few of their enemies alive.

Chapter 2

1This, then, is what the Perinthians had previously suffered at the hands of the Paeonians. Now they fought like brave men for their liberty, but Megabazus and the Persians overcame them by weight of numbers.

2When Perinthus had been taken, Megabazus marched his army through Thrace, subduing to the king's will every city and every people of that region. For this, the conquest of Thrace, was the charge given him by Darius.

Chapter 3

1The Thracians are the biggest nation in the world, next to the Indians. If they were under one ruler, or united, they would, in my judgment, be invincible and the strongest nation on earth. Since, however, there is no way or means to bring this about, they are weak.

2The Thracians have many names, each tribe according to its region, but they are very similar in all their customs, save the Getae, the Trausi, and those who dwell above the Crestonaeans.

Chapter 4

1As for the Getae, who claim to be immortal, I have already given an account of their practices. The Trausi, who in all else conform to the customs of other Thracians, do as I will show at the times of birth and death.

2When a child is born, the kinsmen sit around it and lament all the ills that it must endure from its birth onward, recounting all the sorrows of men. The dead, however, they bury with celebration and gladness, asserting that he is rid of so many ills and has achieved a state of complete blessedness.

Chapter 5

1Those who dwell above the Crestonaeans have yet other practices. Each man has many wives, and at his death there is both great rivalry among his wives and eager contention on their friends' part to prove which wife was best loved by her husband. She to whom the honor is adjudged is praised by men and women alike and then slain over the tomb by her nearest of kin. After the slaying she is buried with the husband. The rest of the wives are greatly displeased by this, believing themselves to be deeply dishonored.

Chapter 6

1Among the rest of the Thracians, it is the custom to sell their children for export and to take no care of their maidens, allowing them to have intercourse with any man they wish. Their wives, however, they strictly guard, and buy them for a price from the parents.

2To be tattooed is a sign of noble birth, while to bear no such marks is for the baser sort. The idler is most honored, the tiller of the soil most scorned; he is held in highest honor who lives by war and robbery.

Chapter 7

1These are most notable of their usages. They worship no gods but Ares, Dionysus, and Artemis. Their princes, however, unlike the rest of their countrymen, worship Hermes above all gods and swear only by him, claiming him for their ancestor.

Chapter 8

1The wealthy have the following funeral practices. First they lay out the dead for three days, and after killing all kinds of victims and making lamentation, they feast. After that they do away with the body either by fire or else by burial in the earth, and when they have built a barrow, they initiate all kinds of contests, in which the greatest prizes are offered for the hardest type of single combat. Such are the Thracian funeral rites.

Chapter 9

1As for the region which lies north of this country, none can tell with certainty what men dwell there, but what lies beyond the Ister is a desolate and infinitely large tract of land. I can learn of no men dwelling beyond the Ister save certain that are called Sigynnae and wear Median dress.

2Their horses are said to be covered all over with shaggy hair five fingers' breadth long, and to be small, blunt-nosed, and unable to bear men on their backs, but very swift when yoked to chariots. It is for this reason that driving chariots is the usage of the country. These men's borders, it is said, reach almost as far as the Eneti on the Adriatic Sea.

3They call themselves colonists from Media. How this has come about I myself cannot understand, but all is possible in the long passage of time. However that may be, we know that the Ligyes who dwell inland of Massalia use the word “sigynnae” for hucksters, and the Cyprians use it for spears.

Chapter 10

1According to the Thracians, all the land beyond the Ister is full of bees, and that by reason of these none can travel there. This, to my mind, is not a credible tale, for those creatures are ill able to bear cold. It appears to me rather that it is by reason of the cold that the northern lands are not inhabited. Such, then, are the stories about this region. Whatever the truth may be, Megabazus made its coastal area subject to the Persians.

Chapter 11

1As soon as Darius had crossed the Hellespont and come to Sardis, he remembered the good service done him by Histiaeus of Miletus and the counsel of Coes the Mytilenaean, and after sending for them to come to Sardis, he offered them a choice of whatever they wanted.

2Histiaeus, seeing that he was tyrant of Miletus, desired no further sovereignty than that, but asked for Myrcinus in the Edonian land so that he might build a city there. This, then, was Histiaeus' choice, but Coes, inasmuch as he was no tyrant but a plain citizen, asked that he might be made tyrant of Mytilene.

Chapter 12

1When the wishes of each had been granted, they made their way to the places of their choice, but Darius, as it fell out, saw a sight which put it in his mind to bid Megabazus take the Paeonians and take them from their homes out of Europe into Asia. There were two Paeonians, Pigres and Mantyes, who themselves desired to be rulers of their countrymen. When Darius had crossed into Asia, they came to Sardis, bringing with them their sister, a tall and beautiful woman.

2There, waiting till Darius should be sitting in state in the suburb of the Lydian city, they put on their sister the best adornment they had, and sent her to draw water, bearing a vessel on her head, leading a horse by the bridle and spinning flax at the same time.

3Darius took note of the woman as she passed by him, for what she did was not in the manner of the Persians or Lydians or any of the peoples of Asia. Having taken note of this, he sent some of his guards, bidding them watch what the woman would do with the horse.

4They, accordingly, followed behind her, and she, coming to the river, watered the horse. When she had done this and had filled her vessel with water, she passed back again by the same way, bearing the water on her head, leading the horse on her arm, and plying her distaff.

Chapter 13

1Marvelling at what he heard from his watchers and what he saw for himself, Darius bade the woman be brought before him. When she had been brought, her brothers, who watched all this from a place nearby, came too. Darius asked of what nation she was, and the young man told him that they were Paeonians and that she was their sister.

2“But who,” he answered, “are the Paeonians, and where do they dwell, and with what intent have you come to Sardis?” They told him, that they had come to be his men, that the towns of Paeonia lay on the Strymon, a river not far from the Hellespont, and that they were colonists from the Teucrians of Troy.

3So they told him all this, and the king asked them if all the women of their country were so industrious. To this too they very readily answered (for it was for this very purpose that they had come), that it was indeed so.

Chapter 14

1Then Darius wrote a letter to Megabazus, whom he had left as his general in Thrace, bidding him take the Paeonians from their houses, and bring them to him, men, women, and children.

2Immediately a horseman sped with this message to the Hellespont, and upon crossing it, gave the letter to Megabazus, who, after reading it, took guides from Thrace and led his army to Paeonia.

Chapter 15

1When the Paeonians learned that the Persians were coming against them, they gathered together and marched away to the sea, thinking that the Persians would attempt to attack them by that way.

2So the Paeonians were ready to withstand the onset of Megabazus' army, but the Persians, learning that the Paeonians had gathered their forces and were guarding the coast route into their country, got guides and marched instead by the highland road. They accordingly took the Paeonians unaware and won entrance into their cities, which were left without men, and finding these empty at their attack, they easily gained them.

3The Paeonians, learning that their towns had been taken, straightway disbanded, each going his own way, and surrendered themselves to the Persians. Thus of the Paeonians the Siriopaeones and Paeoplae and all who lived as far as the Prasiad lake were taken away from their homes and led into Asia.

Chapter 16

1But those near the Pangaean mountains and the country of the Doberes and the Agrianes and the Odomanti and the Prasiad lake itself were never subdued at all by Megabazus. He did in fact try to take the lake-dwellers and did so in the following manner. There is set in the midst of the lake a platform made fast on tall piles, to which one bridge gives a narrow passage from the land.

2In olden times all the people working together set the piles which support the platform there, but they later developed another method of setting them. The men bring the piles from a mountain called Orbelus, and every man plants three for each of the three women that he weds.

3Each man has both a hut on the platform and a trap-door in the platform leading down into the lake. They make a cord fast to the feet of their little children out of fear that they will fall into the water.

4They give fish as fodder to their horses and beasts of burden, and there is such an abundance of fish that a man can open his trap-door, let down an empty basket by a line into the lake, and draw it up after a short time full of fish. There are two kinds of these, some called “paprakes,” some “tilones.”

Chapter 17

1So those of the Paeonians who had been captured were taken into Asia. Then Megabazus, having made the Paeonians captive, sent as messengers into Macedonia the seven Persians who (after himself) were the most honorable in his army. These were sent to Amyntas to demand earth and water for Darius the king.

2Now there is a very straight way from the Prasiad lake to Macedonia. First there is near the lake that mine from which Alexander later drew a daily revenue of a talent of silver, and when a person has passed the mine, he need only cross the mountain called Dysorum to be in Macedonia.

Chapter 18

1The 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.

2After 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.”

3To 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.

4Then 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.

5Amyntas, 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.

Chapter 19

1This 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.”

2At 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.”

Chapter 20

1When 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.

2As 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.”

3When 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,

4“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.”

5With 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.

Chapter 21

1This 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.

2No 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.

Chapter 22

1Now 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,

2for 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.

Chapter 23

1Megabazus, bringing with him the Paeonians, came to the Hellespont, and after crossing it from there, he came to Sardis. Histiaeus the Milesian was by this time fortifying the place which he hadasked of Darius as his reward for guarding the bridge, a place called Myrcinus by the river Strymon. Megabazus discovered what he was doing, and upon his arrival at Sardis with the Paeonians, he said to Darius,

2” Sire, what is this that you have done? You have permitted a clever and cunning Greek to build a city in Thrace, where there are abundant forests for ship-building, much wood for oars, mines of silver, and many people both Greek and foreign dwelling around, who, when they have a champion to lead them, will carry out all his orders by day or by night.

3Stop this man, then, from doing these things so that you will not be entangled in a war with your own subjects, but use gentle means to do so. When you have him in your grasp, see to it that he never returns to Hellas.”

Chapter 24

1Megabazus easily persuaded Darius, who believed that his vision of the future was correct. Presently the king sent a message to Myrcinus which read as follows: “ Histiaeus, these are the words of Darius the king: my thoughts can show me no man who is more devoted to me and my affairs. Not words but deeds have proven this to me.

2Now, therefore, let nothing prevent you from coming to me so that I may inform you of certain great purposes which I have in mind.” Trusting these words, and proud, moreover, that he would be the king's counsellor, Histiaeus came to Sardis.

3When he had come, Darius said to him, “Histiaeus, I will tell you the reason why I sent for you. As soon as I returned from Scythia and you were gone from my sight, there was nothing which I longed for so much as seeing you and speaking with you, for I knew that the most precious of all possessions is a wise and loyal friend. That you are such I can bear witness to as regards my affairs.

4Now, since you have done well in coming here, I make you this proposal. Leave Miletus and your newly founded Thracian city and follow me to Susa, where you will have all that is mine, sharing my table and my counsels.”

Chapter 25

1This, then, is what Darius said, and after appointing Artaphrenes, his father's son, to be viceroy of Sardis, he rode away to Susa, taking Histiaeus with him. First, however, he made Otanes governor of the people on the coast. Otanes' father Sisamnes had been one of the royal judges, and Cambyses had cut his throat and flayed off all his skin because he had been bribed to give an unjust judgment. Then he cut leather strips of the skin which had been torn away and with these he covered the seat upon which Sisamenes had sat to give judgment.

2After doing this, Cambyses appointed the son of this slain and flayed Sisamnes to be judge in his place, admonishing him to keep in mind the nature of the throne on which he was sitting.

Chapter 26

1This Otanes, then, who sat upon that seat, was now made successor to Megabazus in his governorship. He captured Byzantium, Calchedon, Antandrus in the Troad, and Lamponium, and with ships he had taken from the Lesbians, he took Lemnos and Imbros, both of which were still inhabited by Pelasgians.

Chapter 27

1The Lemnians fought well and defended themselves, till at last they were brought to evil plight, and the Persians set as governor over those that were left of them Lycaretus the brother of Maeandrius who had been king of Samos.

2This Lycaretus met his end while ruling in Lemnos because he tried to enslave and subdue all the people, accusing some of shunning service against the Scythians and others of plundering Darius' army on its way back from Scythia.

Chapter 28

1All this Otanes achieved when he had been made governor. After only a short period of time without evils, trouble began once more to come on the Ionians, and this from Naxos and Miletus. Naxos surpassed all the other islands in prosperity, and at about the same time Miletus, at the height of her fortunes, was the glory of Ionia. Two generations before this, however, she had been very greatly troubled by factional strife, till the Parians, chosen out of all the Greeks by the Milesians for this purpose, made peace among them,

Chapter 29

1The Parians reconciled them in the following manner. Their best men came to Miletus, and seeing the Milesian households sadly wasted, they said that they desired to go about the country. They then made their way through all the territory of Miletus, and whenever they found any well-tilled farm in the desolation of the land, they wrote down the name of the owner of that farm.

2After travelling over the whole country and finding only a few such men, they assembled the people immediately upon their return to the city and appointed as rulers of the state those whose lands they had found well tilled. This they did in the belief that these men were likely to take as good care of public affairs as they had of their own, and they ordained that the rest of the Milesians who had been at feud should obey these men.

Chapter 30

1It was in this way that the Parians made peace in Miletus, but now these cities began to bring trouble upon Ionia. Certain men of substance who had been banished by the common people, went in exile to Miletus.

2Now it chanced that the deputy ruling Miletus was Aristagoras son of Molpagoras, son-in-law and cousin of that Histiaeus son of Lysagoras whom Darius kept with him at Susa. Histiaeus was tyrant of Miletus but was at Susa when the Naxians, who had been his guests and friends, arrived.

3When the Naxians came to Miletus, they asked Aristagoras if he could give them enough power to return to their own country. Believing that he would become ruler of Naxos if they were restored to their city with his help and using as a pretext their friendship with Histiaeus, he made them this proposal:

4“I myself do not have the authority to give you such power as will restore you against the will of the Naxians who hold your city, for I know that the Naxians have eight thousand men that bear shields, and many ships of war. Nevertheless, I will do everything I can to realize your request.

5This is my plan. Artaphrenes is my friend, and he is not only Hystaspes' son and brother to Darius the king but also governor of all the coastal peoples of Asia. He accordingly has a great army and many ships at his disposal. This man, then, will, I think, do whatever we desire.”

6Hearing this, the Naxians left the matter for Aristagoras to deal with as best he could, asking him to promise gifts and the costs of the army, for which they themselves would pay since they had great hope that when they should appear off Naxos, the Naxians would obey all their commands. The rest of the islanders, they expected, would do likewise since none of these Cycladic islands was as yet subject to Darius.

Chapter 31

1Aristagoras came to Sardis and told Artaphrenes that Naxos was indeed an island of no great size, but that it was otherwise a beautiful and noble island lying near Ionia. Furthermore it had a store of wealth and slaves. “Therefore send an army against that country,” he said, “ and bring back the men who have been banished from there.

2If you so do, I have a great sum of money at your disposal, over and above the costs of the force, for it is only fair that we, who bring you, should furnish that. Furthermore, you will win new dominions for the king, Naxos itself and the islands which are its dependents, Paros, Andros, and the rest of those that are called Cyclades.

3Making these your starting point, you will easily attack Euboea, which is a great and a wealthy island, no smaller than Cyprus and very easy to take. A hundred ships suffice for the conquest of all these.”

4“This plan which you set forth,” Artaphrenes answered, “is profitable for the king's house, and all your advice is good except as regards the number of the ships. Not one hundred but two hundred ships will be ready for you when the spring comes. The king too, however, must himself consent to this.”

Chapter 32

1When 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.

Chapter 33

1Then Megabates, bringing Aristagoras from Miletus, the Ionian army, and the Naxians, pretended to be sailing to the Hellespont, but when he came to Chios, he put in with his ships at Caucasa so that he might cross with a north wind to Naxos.

2Since it was not fated that the Naxians were to be destroyed by this force, the following things took place. As Megabates was making his rounds among the ships' watches, it chanced that there was no watch on the ship of Myndus. Megabates, very angry at this, ordered his guards to find the captain of this ship, whose name was Scylax, and thrust him partly through an oar-hole of the ship and bound him there so that his head was outside the ship and his body inside.

3When Scylax had been bound, someone brought word to Aristagoras, that his Myndian friend was bound and being disgracefully treated by Megabates. Aristagoras then went and pleaded with the Persian for Scylax, but since he obtained nothing that he requested, he went and released the man himself. When Megabates learned this, he took it very badly and was angry at Aristagoras.

4Aristagoras, however, said, “But you, what have you to do with these matters? Did not Artaphrenes send you to obey me and to sail wherever I bid you? Why are you so meddlesome?” This response on the part of Aristagoras enraged Megabates, who, went night fell, sent men in a boat to Naxos to tell the Naxians of the trouble in store for them.

Chapter 34

1Now the Naxians had no suspicion at all that it was they who were to be attacked by that force. However, when they learned the truth, they immediately brought inside their walls all that was in their fields, stored both meat and drink in case of a siege, and strengthened their walls.

2The Naxians, then, made all preparations to face the onset of war. When their enemies had brought their ships over from Chios to Naxos, it was a fortified city that they attacked, and for four months they besieged it.

3When the Persians had exhausted all the money with which they had come, and Aristagoras himself had spent much beside, they built a stronghold for the banished Naxians, and went off to the mainland in poor spirits since still more money was needed for the siege.

Chapter 35

1Aristagoras had no way of fulfilling his promise to Artaphrenes, and he was hard-pressed by demands for the costs of the force. Furthermore he feared what might come of the failure of the army and Megabates' displeasure against him. It was likely, he thought, that his lordship of Miletus would be taken away from him.

2With all these fears in his mind, he began to plan revolt, for it chanced that at that very time there came from Susa Histiaeus' messenger, the man with the marked head, signifying that Aristagoras should revolt from the king.

3Since Histiaeus desired to give word to Aristagoras that he should revolt and had no other safe way of doing so because the roads were guarded, he shaved and branded the head of his most trustworthy slave. He waited till the hair had grown again, and as soon as it was grown, he sent the man to Miletus with no other message except that when he came to Miletus he must bid Aristagoras shave his hair and examine his head. The writing branded on it signified revolt, as I have already said.

4This Histiaeus did because he greatly disliked his detention at Susa and fully expected to be sent away to the coast in the case that there should be a revolt. If, however, Miletus remained at peace, he calculated that he would never return there.

Chapter 36

1With 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.

2All 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.

3This, 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.

4The 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.

Chapter 37

1Iatragoras, who had been sent for this very purpose, craftily seized Oliatus of Mylasa son of Ibanollis; Histiaeus of Termera son of Tymnes; Coes son of Erxandrus, to whom Darius gave Mytilene; Aristagoras of Cyme, son of Heraclides; and many others besides. Then Aristagoras revolted openly, devising all he could to harm Darius.

2First he made pretence of giving up his tyranny and gave Miletus equality of government so that the Milesians might readily join in his revolt. Then he proceeded to do the same things in the rest of Ionia. Some of the tyrants he banished, and as for those tyrants whom he had taken out of the ships that sailed with him against Naxos, he handed them each over to their respective cities, which he wished to please.

Chapter 38

1Coes, when the Mytilenaeans received him, was taken out and stoned, but the Cymaeans, as well as most of the others, let their own man go.

2In this way, then, an end was made of tyrants in the cities. After doing away with the tyrants, Aristagoras of Miletus ordered all the peoples to set up governors in each city. Then he went on an embassy in a trireme to Lacedaemon, for it was necessary for him to find some strong ally.

Chapter 39

1At Sparta, Anaxandrides the son of Leon, who had been king, was now no longer alive but was dead, and Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides held the royal power. This he had won not by manly merit but by right of birth. Anaxandrides had as his wife his own sister's daughter, and although he was content with her, no children were born to him.

2Since this was the case, the Ephors called him to them and said, “Even if you have no interest in caring for yourself, we cannot allow the house of Eurysthenes to perish. Therefore send away the wife that you have, seeing that she bears you no children, and wed another. If you do this, you will please the Spartans.” Anaxandrides, however, said in response that he would do neither of these things and that they were not giving him good advice in bidding him to get rid of his present wife, who was blameless, and to marry another.

Chapter 40

1Then the Ephors and Elders took counsel, and placed this proposal before Anaxandrides: “Since, as we see, you cling to the wife that you have, carry out our command, and do not hold out against it, bearing in mind that the Spartans will certainly find some other way of dealing with you.

2As for the wife that you have, we do not ask that you send her away. Keep providing her with all that you give her now and marry another woman in addition who can give you children.” So they spoke, and Anaxandrides consented. Presently he had two wives and kept two households, a thing which is not at all customary at Sparta.

Chapter 41

1After no long time the second wife gave birth to Cleomenes. She, then, gave the Spartans an heir to the royal power, and as luck would have it, the first wife, who had been barren before, conceived at that very time.

2When the friends of the new wife learned that the other woman was pregnant, they began to make trouble for her. They said that she was making an empty boast, so that she might substitute a child. The Ephors were angry, and when her time drew near, they sat around to watch her in childbirth because of their skepticism.

3She gave birth first to Dorieus, then straightway to Leonidas, and right after him to Cleombrotus. Some, however, say that Cleombrotus and Leonidas were twins. As for the later wife, the mother of Cleomenes and the daughter of Prinetadas son of Demarmenus, she bore no more children.

Chapter 42

1Now Cleomenes, as the story goes, was not in his right mind and really quite mad, while Dorieus was first among all of his peers and fully believed that he would be made king for his manly worth.

2Since he was of this opinion, Dorieus was very angry when at Anaxandrides' death the Lacedaemonians followed their custom and made Cleomenes king by right of age. Since he would not tolerate being made subject to Cleomenes, he asked the Spartans for a group of people whom he took away as colonists. He neither inquired of the oracle at Delphi in what land he should establish his settlement, nor did anything else that was customary but set sail in great anger for Libya, with men of Thera to guide him.

3When he arrived there, he settled by the Cinyps river in the fairest part of Libya, but in the third year he was driven out by the Macae, the Libyans and the Carchedonians and returned to the Peloponnesus.

Chapter 43

1There Antichares, a man of Eleon, advised him, on the basis of the oracles of Laius, to plant a colony at Heraclea in Sicily, for Heracles himself, said Antichares, had won all the region of Eryx, which accordingly belonged to his descendants. When Dorieus heard that, he went away to Delphi to enquire of the oracle if he should seize the place to which he was preparing to go. The priestess responded that it should be so, and he took with him the company that he had led to Libya and went to Italy.

Chapter 44

1Now at this time, as the Sybarites say, they and their king Telys were making ready to march against Croton, and the men of Croton, who were very much afraid, entreated Dorieus to come to their aid. Their request was granted, and Dorieus marched with them to Sybaris helping them to take it.

2This is the story which the Sybarites tell of Dorieus and his companions, but the Crotoniats say that they were aided by no stranger in their war with Sybaris with the exception of Callias, an Elean diviner of the Iamid clan. About him there was a story that he had fled to Croton from Telys, the tyrant of Sybaris, because as he was sacrificing for victory over Croton, he could obtain no favorable omens.

Chapter 45

1This is their tale, and both cities have proof of the truth of what they say. The Sybarites point to a precinct and a temple beside the dry bed of the Crathis, which, they say, Dorieus founded in honor of Athena of Crathis after he had helped to take their city. and find their strongest proof in his death. He perished through doing more than the oracle bade him, for if he had accomplished no more than that which he set out to do, he would have taken and held the Erycine region without bringing about the death of himself and his army.

2The Crotoniats, on the other hand, show many plots of land which had been set apart for and given to Callias of Elis and on which Callias' posterity dwelt even to my time but show no gift to Dorieus and his descendants. They claim, however,that if Dorieus had aided them in their war with Sybaris, he would have received a reward many times greater than what was given to Callias. This, then is the evidence brought forward by each party, and each may side with that which seems to him to deserve more credence.

Chapter 46

1Other 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.

2He mustered the remnant 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.

Chapter 47

1Philippus of Croton, son of Butacides, was among those who followed Dorieus and were slain with him. He had been betrothed to the daughter of Telys of Sybaris but was banished from Croton. Cheated out of his marriage, he sailed away to Cyrene, from where he set forth and followed Dorieus, bringing his own trireme and covering all expenses for his men. This Philippus was a victor at Olympia and the fairest Greek of his day.

2For his physical beauty he received from the Egestans honors accorded to no one else. They built a hero's shrine by his grave and offer him sacrifices of propitiation.

Chapter 48

1Such, then, was the manner of Dorieus' death. Had he endured Cleomenes' rule and stayed at Sparta he would have been king of Lacedaemon, for Cleomenes reigned no long time, and died leaving no son but one only daughter, whose name was Gorgo.

Chapter 49

1It was in the reign of Cleomenes that Aristagoras the tyrant of Miletus came to Sparta. When he had an audience with the king, as the Lacedaemonians report, he brought with him a bronze tablet on which the map of all the earth was engraved, and all the sea and all the rivers.

2Having been admitted to converse with Cleomenes, Aristagoras spoke thus to him: “Do not wonder, Cleomenes, that I have been so eager to come here, for our present situation is such that the sons of the Ionians are slaves and not free men, which is shameful and grievous particularly to ourselves but also, of all others, to you, inasmuch as you are the leaders of Hellas.

3Now, therefore, we entreat you by the gods of Hellas to save your Ionian kinsmen from slavery. This is a thing which you can easily achieve, for the strangers are not valiant men while your valor in war is preeminent. As for their manner of fighting, they carry bows and short spears, and they go to battle with trousers on their legs and turbans on their heads.

4Accordingly, they are easy to overcome. Furthermore, the inhabitants of that continent have more good things than all other men together, gold first but also silver, bronze, colored cloth, beasts of burden, and slaves. All this you can have to your heart's desire.

5The lands in which they dwell lie next to each other, as I shall show: next to the Ionians are the Lydians, who inhabit a good land and have great store of silver.” (This he said pointing to the map of the earth which he had brought engraved on the tablet.) “Next to the Lydians,” said Aristagoras, “you see the Phrygians to the east, men that of all known to me are the richest in flocks and in the fruits of the earth.

6Close by them are the Cappadocians, whom we call Syrians, and their neighbors are the Cilicians, whose land reaches to the sea over there, in which you see the island of Cyprus lying. The yearly tribute which they pay to the king is five hundred talents. Next to the Cilicians, are the Armenians, another people rich in flocks, and after the Armenians, the Matieni, whose country I show you.

7Adjoining these you see the Cissian land, in which, on the Choaspes, lies that Susa where the great king lives and where the storehouses of his wealth are located. Take that city, and you need not fear to challenge Zeus for riches.

8You should suspend your war, then, for strips of land of no great worth—for that fight with with Messenians, who are matched in strength with you, and Arcadians and Argives, men who have nothing in the way of gold or silver (for which things many are spurred by zeal to fight and die). Yet when you can readily be masters of all Asia, will you refuse to attempt it?”

9Thus spoke Aristagoras, and Cleomenes replied: “Milesian, my guest, wait till the third day for my answer.”

Chapter 50

1At that time, then, they got so far. When, on the day appointed for the answer, they came to the place upon which they had agreed, Cleomenes asked Aristagoras how many days' journey it was from the Ionian sea to the king.

2Till now, Aristagoras had been cunning and fooled the Spartan well, but here he made a false step. If he desired to take the Spartans away into Asia he should never have told the truth, but he did tell it, and said that it was a three months' journey inland.

3At that, Cleomenes cut short Aristagoras' account of the prospective journey. He then bade his Milesian guest depart from Sparta before sunset, for never, he said, would the Lacedaemonians listen to the plan, if Aristagoras desired to lead them a three months' journey from the sea.

Chapter 51

1Cleomenes went to his house after this exchange, but Aristagoras took a suppliant's garb and followed him there. Upon entering, he used a suppliant's right to beg Cleomenes to listen to him. He first asked Cleomenes to send away the child, his daughter Gorgo, who was standing by him. She was his only child, and was about eight or nine years of age. Cleomenes bade him say whatever he wanted and not let the child's presence hinder him.

2Then Aristagoras began to promise Cleomenes from ten talents upwards, if he would grant his request. When Cleomenes refused, Aristagoras offered him ever more and more. When he finally promised fifty talents the child cried out, “Father, the stranger will corrupt you, unless you leave him and go away.”

3Cleomenes was pleased with the child's counsel and went into another room while Aristagoras departed from Sparta, finding no further occasion for telling of the journey inland to the king's palace.

Chapter 52

1Now the nature of this road is as I will show. All along it are the king's road stations and very good resting places, and the whole of it passes through country that is inhabited and safe. Its course through Lydia and Phrygia is of the length of twenty stages, and ninety-four and a half parasangs.

2Next after Phrygia it comes to the river Halys, where there is both a defile which must be passed before the river can be crossed and a great fortress to guard it. After the passage into Cappadocia, the road in that land as far as the borders of Cilicia is of twenty-eight stages and one hundred and four parasangs. On this frontier you must ride through two defiles and pass two fortresses.

3Ride past these, and you will have a journey through Cilica of three stages and fifteen and a half parasangs. The boundary of Cilicia and Armenia is a navigable river, the name of which is the Euphrates. In Armenia there are fifteen resting-stages and fifty-six and a half parasangs. Here too there is a fortress. From Armenia the road enters the Matienian land, in which there are thirty-four stages and one hundred and thirty-seven parasangs.

4Through this land flow four navigable rivers which must be passed by ferries, first the Tigris, then a second and a third of the same name, yet not the same stream nor flowing from the same source. The first-mentioned of them flows from the Armenians and the second from the Matieni.

5The fourth river is called Gyndes, that Gyndes which Cyrus parted once into three hundred and sixty channels.

6When this country is passed, the road is in the Cissian land, where there are eleven stages and forty-two and a half parasangs, as far as yet another navigable river, the Choaspes, on the banks of which stands the city of Susa.

Chapter 53

1Thus the sum total of stages is one hundred and eleven. So many resting-stages, then, are there in the journey up from Sardis to Susa. If I have accurately counted the parasangs of the royal road, and the parasang is of thirty furlongs' length, which assuredly it is, then between Sardis and the king's abode called Memnonian there are thirteen thousand and five hundred furlongs, the number of parasangs being four hundred and fifty. If each day's journey is one hundred and fifty furlongs, then the sum of days spent is ninety, neither more nor less.

Chapter 54

1Aristagoras of Miletus accordingly spoke the truth to Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian when he said that the journey inland was three months long. If anyone should desire a more exact measurement, I will give him that too, for the journey from Ephesus to Sardis must be added to the rest.

2So, then, from the Greek sea to Susa, which is the city called Memnonian, it is a journey of fourteen thousand and forty stages, for there are five hundred and forty furlongs from Ephesus to Sardis. The three months' journey is accordingly made longer by three days.

Chapter 55

1When he was forced to leave Sparta, Aristagoras went to Athens, which had been freed from its ruling tyrants in the manner that I will show. First Hipparchus, son of Pisistratus and brother of the tyrant Hippias, had been slain by Aristogiton and Harmodius, men of Gephyraean descent. This was in fact an evil of which he had received a premonition in a dream. After this the Athenians were subject for four years to a tyranny not less but even more absolute than before.

Chapter 56

1Now this was the vision which Hipparchus saw in a dream: in the night before the Panathenaea he thought that a tall and handsome man stood over him uttering these riddling verses: O lion, endure the unendurable with a lion's heart. No man on earth does wrong without paying the penalty.

2As soon as it was day, he imparted this to the interpreters of dreams, and presently putting the vision from his mind, he led the procession in which he met his death.

Chapter 57

1Now the Gephyraean clan, of which the slayers of Hipparchus were members, claim to have come at first from Eretria, but my own enquiry shows that they were among the Phoenicians who came with Cadmus to the country now called Boeotia. In that country the lands of Tanagra were allotted to them, and this is where they settled.

2The Cadmeans had first been expelled from there by the Argives, and these Gephyraeans were forced to go to Athens after being expelled in turn by the Boeotians. The Athenians received them as citizens of their own on set terms, debarring them from many practices not deserving of mention here.

Chapter 58

1These Phoenicians who came with Cadmus and of whom the Gephyraeans were a part brought with them to Hellas, among many other kinds of learning, the alphabet, which had been unknown before this, I think, to the Greeks. As time went on the sound and the form of the letters were changed.

2At this time the Greeks who were settled around them were for the most part Ionians, and after being taught the letters by the Phoenicians, they used them with a few changes of form. In so doing, they gave to these characters the name of Phoenician, as was quite fair seeing that the Phoenicians had brought them into Greece.

3The Ionians have also from ancient times called sheets of papyrus skins, since they formerly used the skins of sheep and goats due to the lack of papyrus. Even to this day there are many foreigners who write on such skins.

Chapter 59

1I have myself seen Cadmean writing in the temple of Ismenian Apollo at Thebes of Boeotia engraved on certain tripods and for the most part looking like Ionian letters. On one of the tripods there is this inscription: Amphitryon dedicated me from the spoils of Teleboae. This would date from about the time of Laius the son of Labdacus, grandson of Polydorus and great-grandson of Cadmus.

Chapter 60

1A second tripod says, in hexameter verse: Scaeus the boxer, victorious in the contest, Gave me to Apollo, the archer god, a lovely offering. Scaeus the son of Hippocoon, if he is indeed the dedicator and not another of the same name, would have lived at the time of Oedipus son of Laius.

Chapter 61

1The third tripod says, in hexameter verse again: Laodamas, while he reigned, dedicated this cauldron To Apollo, the sure of aim, as a lovely offering.

2During the rule of this Laodamas son of Eteocles, the Cadmeans were expelled by the Argives and went away to the Encheleis. The Gephyraeans were left behind but were later compelled by the Boeotians to withdraw to Athens. They have certain set forms of worship at Athens in which the rest of the Athenians take no part, particularly the rites and mysteries of Achaean Demeter.

Chapter 62

1I 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.

2Hippias, 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.

3Since 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.

Chapter 63

1These 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.

2Then 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.

3They 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.

4First 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.

Chapter 64

1After 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.

2When 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.

Chapter 65

1The Lacedaemonians would never have taken the Pisistratid stronghold. First of all they had no intention to blockade it, and secondly the Pisistratidae were well furnished with food and drink. The Lacedaemonians would only have besieged the place for a few days and then returned to Sparta. As it was, however, there was a turn of fortune which harmed the one party and helped the other, for the sons of the Pisistratid family were taken as they were being secretly carried out of the country.

2When this happened, all their plans were confounded, and they agreed to depart from Attica within five days on the terms prescribed to them by the Athenians in return for the recovery of their children.

3Afterwards they departed to Sigeum on the Scamander. They had ruled the Athenians for thirty-six years and were in lineage of the house of Pylos and Neleus, born of the same ancestors as the families of Codrus and Melanthus, who had formerly come from foreign parts to be kings of Athens.

4It was for this reason that Hippocrates gave his son the name Pisistratus as a remembrance, calling him after Pisistratus the son of Nestor.

5This is the way, then, that the Athenians got rid of their tyrants. As regards all the noteworthy things which they did or endured after they were freed and before Ionia revolted from Darius and Aristagoras of Miletus came to Athens to ask help of its people, of these I will first give an account.

Chapter 66

1Athens, 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.

2These 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.

Chapter 67

1In doing this, to my thinking, this Cleisthenes was imitating his own mother's father, Cleisthenes the tyrant of Sicyon, for Cleisthenes, after going to war with the Argives, made an end of minstrels' contests at Sicyon by reason of the Homeric poems, in which it is the Argives and Argos which are primarily the theme of the songs. Furthermore, he conceived the desire to cast out from the land Adrastus son of Talaus, the hero whose shrine stood then as now in the very marketplace of Sicyon because he was an Argive.

2He went then to Delphi, and asked the oracle if he should cast Adrastus out, but the priestess said in response: “Adrastus is king of Sicyon, and you but a stone thrower.” When the god would not permit him to do as he wished in this matter, he returned home and attempted to devise some plan which might rid him of Adrastus. When he thought he had found one, he sent to Boeotian Thebes saying that he would gladly bring Melanippus son of Astacus into his country, and the Thebans handed him over.

3When Cleisthenes had brought him in, he consecrated a sanctuary for him in the government house itself, where he was established in the greatest possible security. Now the reason why Cleisthenes brought in Melanippus, a thing which I must relate, was that Melanippus was Adrastus' deadliest enemy, for Adrastus had slain his brother Mecisteus and his son-in-law Tydeus.

4Having then designated the precinct for him, Cleisthenes took away all Adrastus' sacrifices and festivals and gave them to Melanippus. The Sicyonians had been accustomed to pay very great honor to Adrastus because the country had once belonged to Polybus, his maternal grandfather, who died without an heir and bequeathed the kingship to him.

5Besides other honors paid to Adrastus by the Sicyonians, they celebrated his lamentable fate with tragic choruses in honor not of Dionysus but of Adrastus. Cleisthenes, however, gave the choruses back to Dionysus and the rest of the worship to Melanippus.

Chapter 68

1This, then, is what he did regarding Adrastus, but as for the tribes of the Dorians, he changed their names so that these tribes should not be shared by Sicyonians and Argives. In this especially he made a laughing-stock of the Sicyonians, for he gave the tribes names derived from the words ‘donkey’ and ‘pig’ changing only the endings. The name of his own tribe, however, he did not change in this way, but rather gave it a name indicating his own rule, calling it Archelaoi, rulers of the people. The rest were Swinites, Assites and Porkites.

2These were the names of the tribes which the Sicyonians used under Cleisthenes' rule and for sixty years more after his death. Afterwards, however, they took counsel together and both changed the names of three to Hylleis, Pamphyli, and Dymanatae, and added a fourth which they called Aegialeis after Aegialeus son of Adrastus.

Chapter 69

1This is what the Sicyonian Cleisthenes had done, and the Athenian Cleisthenes, following the lead of his grandfather and namesake, decided out of contempt, I imagine, for the Ionians, that his tribes should not be the same as theirs.

2When he had drawn into his own party the Athenian people, which was then debarred from all rights, he gave the tribes new names and increased their number, making ten tribe-wardens in place of four, and assigning ten districts to each tribe. When he had won over the people, he was stronger by far than the rival faction.

Chapter 70

1Isagoras, who was on the losing side, devised a counter-plot, and invited the aid of Cleomenes, who had been his friend since the besieging of the Pisistratidae. It was even said of Cleomenes that he regularly went to see Isagoras' wife.

2Then Cleomenes first sent a herald to Athens demanding the banishment of Cleisthenes and many other Athenians with him, the Accursed, as he called them. This he said in his message by Isagoras' instruction, for the Alcmeonidae and their faction were held to be guilty of that bloody deed while Isagoras and his friends had no part in it.

Chapter 71

1How the Accursed at Athens had received their name, I will now relate. There was an Athenian named Cylon, who had been a winner at Olympia. This man put on the air of one who aimed at tyranny, and gathering a company of men of like age, he attempted to seize the citadel. When he could not win it, he took sanctuary by the goddess' statue.

2He and his men were then removed from their position by the presidents of the naval boards, the rulers of Athens at that time. Although they were subject to any penalty save death, they were slain, and their death was attributed to the Alcmaeonidae. All this took place before the time of Pisistratus.

Chapter 72

1When Cleomenes had sent for and demanded the banishment of Cleisthenes and the Accursed, Cleisthenes himself secretly departed. Afterwards, however, Cleomenes appeared in Athens with no great force. Upon his arrival, he, in order to take away the curse, banished seven hundred Athenian families named for him by Isagoras. Having so done he next attempted to dissolve the Council, entrusting the offices of government to Isagoras' faction.

2The Council, however, resisted him, whereupon Cleomenes and Isagoras and his partisans seized the acropolis. The rest of the Athenians united and besieged them for two days. On the third day as many of them as were Lacedaemonians left the country under truce.

3The prophetic voice that Cleomenes heard accordingly had its fulfillment, for when he went up to the acropolis with the intention of taking possession of it, he approached the shrine of the goddess to address himself to her. The priestess rose up from her seat, and before he had passed through the door-way, she said, “Go back, Lacedaemonian stranger, and do not enter the holy place since it is not lawful that Dorians should pass in here. “My lady,” he answered, “I am not a Dorian, but an Achaean.”

4So without taking heed of the omen, he tried to do as he pleased and was, as I have said, then again cast out together with his Lacedaemonians. As for the rest, the Athenians imprisoned them under sentence of death. Among the prisoners was Timesitheus the Delphian, whose achievements of strength and courage were quite formidable.

Chapter 73

1These men, then, were bound and put to death. After that, the Athenians sent to bring back Cleisthenes and the seven hundred households banished by Cleomenes. Then, desiring to make an alliance with the Persians, they despatched envoys to Sardis, for they knew that they had provoked the Lacedaemonians and Cleomenes to war.

2When the envoys came to Sardis and spoke as they had been bidden, Artaphrenes son of Hystaspes, viceroy of Sardis, asked them, “What men are you and where do you live, who desire alliance with the Persians?” When he had received the information he wanted from the envoys, he gave them an answer the substance of which was that if the Athenians gave king Darius earth and water, then he would make an alliance with them, but if not, his command was that they should depart.

3The envoys consulted together, and in their desire to make the alliance, they consented to give what was asked. They then returned to their own country and were there greatly blamed for what they had done.

Chapter 74

1Cleomenes, 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.

2Cleomenes 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.

Chapter 75

1When the armies were about to join battle, the Corinthians, coming to the conclusion that they were acting wrongly, changed their minds and departed. Later Demaratus son of Ariston, the other king of Sparta, did likewise, despite the fact that he had come with Cleomenes from Lacedaemon in joint command of the army and had not till now been at variance with him.

2As a result of this dissension, a law was made at Sparta that when an army was despatched, both kings would not be permitted to go with it. Until that time they had both gone together, but now one of the kings was released from service and one of the sons of Tyndarus too could be left at home. Before that time, both of these also were asked to give aid and went with the army.

3So now at Eleusis, when the rest of the allies saw that the Lacedaemonian kings were not of one mind and that the Corinthians had left their host, they too went off.

Chapter 76

1This was the fourth time that Dorians had come into Attica. They had come twice as invaders in war and twice as helpers of the Athenian people. The first time was when they planted a settlement at Megara (this expedition may rightly be said to have been in the reign of Codrus), the second and third when they set out from Sparta to drive out the sons of Pisistratus, and the fourth was now, when Cleomenes broke in as far as Eleusis with his following of Peloponnesians. This was accordingly the fourth Dorian invasion of Athens.

Chapter 77

1When this force then had been ingloriously scattered, the Athenians first marched against the Chalcidians to punish them. The Boeotians came to the Euripus to help the Chalcidians and as soon as the Athenians saw these allies, they resolved to attack the Boeotians before the Chalcidians.

2When they met the Boeotians in battle, they won a great victory, slaying very many and taking seven hundred of them prisoner. On that same day the Athenians crossed to Euboea where they met the Chalcidians too in battle, and after overcoming them as well, they left four thousand tenant farmers on the lands of the horse-breeders.

3Horse-breeders was the name given to the men of substance among the Chalcidians. They fettered as many of these as they took alive and kept them imprisoned with the captive Boeotians. In time, however, they set them free, each for an assessed ransom of two minae. The fetters in which the prisoners had been bound they hung up in the acropolis, where they could still be seen in my time hanging from walls which the Persians' fire had charred, opposite the temple which faces west.

4Moreover, they made a dedication of a tenth part of the ransom, and this money was used for the making of a four-horse chariot which stands on the left hand of the entrance into the outer porch of the acropolis and bears this inscription: Athens with Chalcis and Boeotia fought, Bound them in chains and brought their pride to naught. Prison was grief, and ransom cost them dear- One tenth to Pallas raised this chariot here.

Chapter 78

1So the Athenians grew in power and proved, not in one respect only but in all, that equality is a good thing. Evidence for this is the fact that while they were under tyrannical rulers, the Athenians were no better in war than any of their neighbors, yet once they got rid of their tyrants, they were by far the best of all. This, then, shows that while they were oppressed, they were, as men working for a master, cowardly, but when they were freed, each one was eager to achieve for himself.

Chapter 79

1This, then, is the course of action which the Athenians took, and the Thebans, desiring vengeance on Athens, afterwards appealed to Delphi for advice. The Pythian priestess said that the Thebans themselves would not be able to obtain the vengeance they wanted and that they should lay the matter before the “many-voiced” and entreat their “nearest.”

2Upon the return of the envoys, an assembly was called and the oracle put before it. When the Thebans heard that they must entreat their “nearest,” they said, “If this is so, our nearest neighbors are the men of Tanagra and Coronea and Thespiae. These are always our comrades in battle and zealously wage our wars. What need, then, is there to entreat them? Perhaps this is the meaning of the oracle.”

Chapter 80

1They reasoned in this way, till at last one understood, and said: “I think that I perceive what the oracle is trying to tell us. Thebe and Aegina, it is said, were daughters of Asopus and sisters. The god's answer is, I think, that we should ask the Aeginetans to be our avengers.”

2Seeing that there seemed to be no better opinion before them than this, they sent straightaway to entreat the Aeginetans and invite their aid, since this was the oracle's bidding, and the Aeginetans were their nearest. These replied to their demand that they were sending the Sons of Aeacus in aid.

Chapter 81

1The Thebans took the field on the strength of their alliance with that family but were soundly beaten by the Athenians. Thereupon they sent a second message to Aegina, giving back the sons of Aeacus and asking for some men instead.

2The Aeginetans, who were enjoying great prosperity and remembered their old feud with Athens, accordingly made war on the Athenians at the entreaty of the Thebans without sending a herald.

3While the Athenians were busy with the Boeotians, they descended on Attica in ships of war, and ravaged Phaleron and many other seaboard townships. By so doing they dealt the Athenians a very shrewd blow.

Chapter 82

1This was the beginning of the Aeginetans' long-standing debt of enmity against the Athenians. The Epidaurians' land bore no produce. For this reason they inquired at Delphi concerning this calamity, and the priestess bade them set up images of Damia and Auxesia, saying that if they so did their luck would be better. The Epidaurians then asked in addition whether they should make the images of bronze or of stone, and the priestess bade them do neither, but make them of the wood of the cultivated olive.

2So the men of Epidaurus asked the Athenians to permit them to cut down some olive trees, supposing the olives there to be the holiest. Indeed it is said that at that time there were no olives anywhere save at Athens.

3The Athenians consented to give the trees, if the Epidaurians would pay yearly sacred dues to Athena, the city's goddess, and to Erechtheus. The Epidaurians agreed to this condition, and their request was granted. When they set up images made of these olive trees, their land brought forth fruit, and they fulfilled their agreement with the Athenians.

Chapter 83

1Now at this time, as before it, the Aeginetans were in all matters still subject to the Epidaurians and even crossed to Epidaurus for the hearing of their own private lawsuits. From this time, however, they began to build ships, and stubbornly revolted from the Epidaurians.

2In the course of this struggle, they did the Epidaurians much damage and stole their images of Damia and Auxesia. These they took away and set them up in the middle of their own country at a place called Oea, about twenty furlongs distant from their city.

3Having set them up in this place they sought their favor with sacrifices and female choruses in the satirical and abusive mode. Ten men were appointed providers of a chorus for each of the deities, and the choruses aimed their raillery not at any men but at the women of the country. The Epidaurians too had the same rites, and they have certain secret rites as well.

Chapter 84

1When these images were stolen, the Epidaurians ceased from fulfilling their agreement with the Athenians. Then the Athenians sent an angry message to the Epidaurians who pleaded in turn that they were doing no wrong. “For as long,” they said, “as we had the images in our country, we fulfilled our agreement. Now that we are deprived of them, it is not just that we should still be paying. Ask your dues of the men of Aegina, who have the images.”

2The Athenians therefore sent to Aegina and demanded that the images be restored, but the Aeginetans answered that they had nothing to do with the Athenians.

Chapter 85

1The Athenians report that after making this demand, they despatched one trireme with certain of their citizens who, coming in the name of the whole people to Aegina, attempted to tear the images, as being made of Attic wood, from their bases so that they might carry them away.

2When they could not obtain possession of them in this manner, they tied cords around the images with which they could be dragged. While they were attempting to drag them off, they were overtaken both by a thunderstorm and an earthquake. This drove the trireme's crew to such utter madness that they began to slay each other as if they were enemies. At last only one of all was left, who returned by himself to Phalerum.

Chapter 86

1This is the Athenian version of the matter, but the Aeginetans say that the Athenians came not in one ship only, for they could easily have kept off a single ship, or several, for that matter, even if they had no navy themselves. The truth was, they said, that the Athenians descended upon their coasts with many ships and that they yielded to them without making a fight of it at sea.

2They are not able to determine clearly whether it was because they admitted to being weaker at sea-fighting that they yielded, or because they were planning what they then actually did.

3When, as the Aeginetans say, no man came out to fight with them, the Athenians disembarked from their ships and turned their attention to the images. Unable to drag them from the bases, they fastened cords on them and dragged them until they both—this I cannot believe, but another might—fell on their knees. Both have remained in this position ever since.

4This is what the Athenians did, but the Aeginetans say that they discovered that the Athenians were about to make war upon them and therefore assured themselves of help from the Argives. So when the Athenians disembarked on the land of Aegina, the Argives came to aid the Aeginetans, crossing over from Epidaurus to the island secretly. They then fell upon the Athenians unaware and cut them off from their ships. It was at this moment that the thunderstorm and earthquake came upon them

Chapter 87

1This, then, is the story told by the Argives and Aeginetans, and the Athenians too acknowledge that only one man of their number returned safely to Attica.

2The Argives, however, say that he escaped after they had destroyed the rest of the Athenian force, while the Athenians claim that the whole thing was to be attributed to divine power. This one man did not survive but perished in the following manner. It would seem that he made his way to Athens and told of the mishap. When the wives of the men who had gone to attack Aegina heard this, they were very angry that he alone should be safe. They gathered round him and stabbed him with the brooch-pins of their garments, each asking him where her husband was.

3This is how this man met his end, and the Athenians found the action of their women to be more dreadful than their own misfortune. They could find, it is said, no other way to punish the women than changing their dress to the Ionian fashion. Until then the Athenian women had worn Dorian dress, which is very like the Corinthian. It was changed, therefore, to the linen tunic, so that they might have no brooch-pins to use.

Chapter 88

1The truth of the matter, however, is that this form of dress is not in its origin Ionian, but Carian, for in ancient times all women in Greece wore the costume now known as Dorian.

2As for the Argives and Aeginetans, this was the reason of their passing a law in both their countries that brooch-pins should be made half as long as they used to be and that brooches should be the principal things offered by women in the shrines of these two goddesses. Furthermore, nothing else Attic should be brought to the temple, not even pottery, and from that time on only drinking vessels made in the country should be used.

Chapter 89

1Ever since that day even to my time the women of Argos and Aegina wore brooch-pins longer than before, by reason of the feud with the Athenians. The enmity of the Athenians against the Aeginetans began as I have told, and now at the Thebans' call the Aeginetans came readily to the aid of the Boeotians, remembering the matter of the images.

2While the Aeginetans were laying waste to the seaboard of Attica, the Athenians were setting out to march against them, but an oracle from Delphi came to them bidding them to restrain themselves for thirty years after the wrongdoing of the Aeginetans, and in the thirty-first to mark out a precinct for Aeacus and begin the war with Aegina. In this way their purpose would prosper. If, however, they sent an army against their enemies straightaway, they would indeed subdue them in the end but would in the meantime both suffer and do many things.

3When the Athenians heard this reported to them, they marked out for Aeacus that precinct which is now set in their marketplace, but they could not stomach the order that they must hold their hand for thirty years, seeing that the Aeginetans had dealt them a foul blow.

Chapter 90

1As they were making ready for vengeance, a matter which took its rise in Lacedaemon hindered them, for when the Lacedaemonians learned of the plot of the Alcmaeonids with the Pythian priestess and of her plot against themselves and the Pisistratidae, they were very angry for two reasons, namely that they had driven their own guests and friends from the country they dwelt in, and that the Athenians showed them no gratitude for their doing so.

2Furthermore, they were spurred on by the oracles which foretold that many deeds of enmity would be perpetrated against them by the Athenians. Previously they had had no knowledge of these oracles but now Cleomenes brought them to Sparta, and the Lacedaemonians learned their contents. It was from the Athenian acropolis that Cleomenes took the oracles, which had been in the possession of the Pisistratidae earlier. When they were exiled, they left them in the temple from where they were retrieved by Cleomenes.

Chapter 91

1Now the Lacedaemonians, when they regained the oracles and saw the Athenians increasing in power and in no way inclined to obey them, realized that if the Athenians remained free, they would be equal in power with themselves, but that if they were held down under tyranny, they would be weak and ready to serve a master. Perceiving all this, they sent to bring Pisistratus' son Hippias from Sigeum on the Hellespont, the Pisistratidae's place of refuge.

2When Hippias arrived, the Spartans sent for envoys from the rest of their allies and spoke to them as follows: “Sirs, our allies, we do acknowledge that we have acted wrongly, for, led astray by lying divinations, we drove from their native land men who were our close friends and promised to make Athens subject to us. Then we handed that city over to a thankless people which had no sooner lifted up its head in the freedom which we gave it, than it insolently cast out us and our king. Now it has bred such a spirit of pride and is growing so much in power, that its neighbors in Boeotia and Chalcis have really noticed it, and others too will soon recognize their error.

3Since we erred in doing what we did, we will now attempt with your aid to avenge ourselves on them. It is on this account and no other that we have sent for Hippias, whom you see, and have brought you from your cities, namely that uniting our counsels and our power, we may bring him to Athens and restore that which we took away.”

Chapter 92

1These were the words of the Lacedaemonians, but their words were ill-received by the greater part of their allies. The rest then keeping silence, Socles, a Corinthian, said,

Chapter 92A

1“In truth heaven will be beneath the earth and the earth aloft above the heaven, and men will dwell in the sea and fishes where men dwelt before, now that you, Lacedaemonians, are destroying the rule of equals and making ready to bring back tyranny into the cities, tyranny, a thing more unrighteous and bloodthirsty than anything else on this earth.

2If indeed it seems to you to be a good thing that the cities be ruled by tyrants, set up a tyrant among yourselves first and then seek to set up such for the rest. As it is, however, you, who have never made trial of tyrants and take the greatest precautions that none will arise at Sparta, deal wrongfully with your allies. If you had such experience of that thing as we have, you would be more prudent advisers concerning it than you are now.”

Chapter 92B

1The Corinthian state was ordered in such manner as I will show.There was an oligarchy, and this group of men, called the Bacchiadae, held sway in the city, marrying and giving in marriage among themselves. Now Amphion, one of these men, had a crippled daughter, whose name was Labda. Since none of the Bacchiadae would marry her, she was wedded to Eetion son of Echecrates, of the township of Petra, a Lapith by lineage and of the posterity of Caeneus.

2When no sons were born to him by this wife or any other, he set out to Delphi to enquire concerning the matter of acquiring offspring. As soon as he entered, the Pythian priestess spoke these verses to him: Eetion,worthy of honor, no man honors you. Labda is with child, and her child will be a millstone Which will fall upon the rulers and will bring justice to Corinth.

3This oracle which was given to Eetion was in some way made known to the Bacchiadae. The earlier oracle sent to Corinth had not been understood by them, despite the fact that its meaning was the same as the meaning of the oracle of Eetion, and it read as follows: An eagle in the rocks has conceived, and will bring forth a lion, Strong and fierce. The knees of many will it loose. This consider well, Corinthians, You who dwell by lovely Pirene and the overhanging heights of Corinth.

Chapter 92C

1This earlier prophecy had been unintelligible to the Bacchiadae, but as soon as they heard the one which was given to Eetion, they understood it at once, recognizing its similarity with the oracle of Eetion. Now understanding both oracles, they kept quiet but resolved to do away with the offspring of Eetion. Then, as soon as his wife had given birth, they sent ten men of their clan to the township where Eetion dwelt to kill the child.

2These men came to Petra and passing into Eetion's courtyard, asked for the child. Labda, knowing nothing of the purpose of their coming and thinking that they wished to see the baby out of affection for its father, brought it and placed it into the hands of one of them. Now they had planned on their way that the first of them who received the child should dash it to the ground.

3When, however, Labda brought and handed over the child, by divine chance it smiled at the man who took it. This he saw, and compassion prevented him from killing it. Filled with pity, he handed it to a second, and this man again to a third.In fact it passed from hand to hand to each of the ten, for none would make an end of it.

4They then gave the child back to its mother, and after going out, they stood before the door reproaching and upbraiding one another, but chiefly him who had first received it since he had not acted in accordance with their agreement. Finally they resolved to go in again and all have a hand in the killing.

Chapter 92D

1Fate, however, had decreed that Eetion's offspring should be the source of ills for Corinth, for Labda, standing close to this door, heard all this. Fearing that they would change their minds and that they would take and actually kill the child, she took it away and hid it where she thought it would be hardest to find, in a chest, for she knew that if they returned and set about searching they would seek in every place—which in fact they did.

2They came and searched, but when they did not find it, they resolved to go off and say to those who had sent them that they had carried out their orders. They then went away and said this.

Chapter 92E

1Eetion's son, however, grew up, and because of his escape from that danger, he was called Cypselus, after the chest. When he had reached manhood and was seeking a divination, an oracle of double meaning was given him at Delphi. Putting faith in this, he made an attempt on Corinth and won it.

2The oracle was as follows: That man is fortunate who steps into my house, Cypselus, son of Eetion, the king of noble Corinth, He himself and his children, but not the sons of his sons. Such was the oracle. Cypselus, however, when he had gained the tyranny, conducted himself in this way: many of the Corinthians he drove into exile, many he deprived of their wealth, and by far the most he had killed.

Chapter 92F

1After a reign of thirty years, he died in the height of prosperity, and was succeeded by his son Periander. Now Periander was to begin with milder than his father, but after he had held converse by messenger with Thrasybulus the tyrant of Miletus, he became much more bloodthirsty than Cypselus.

2He had sent a herald to Thrasybulus and inquired in what way he would best and most safely govern his city. Thrasybulus led the man who had come from Periander outside the town, and entered into a sown field. As he walked through the corn, continually asking why the messenger had come to him from Corinth, he kept cutting off all the tallest ears of wheat which he could see, and throwing them away, until he had destroyed the best and richest part of the crop.

3Then, after passing through the place and speaking no word of counsel, he sent the herald away. When the herald returned to Corinth, Periander desired to hear what counsel he brought, but the man said that Thrasybulus had given him none. The herald added that it was a strange man to whom he had been sent, a madman and a destroyer of his own possessions, telling Periander what he had seen Thrasybulus do.

Chapter 92G

1Periander, however, understood what had been done, and perceived that Thrasybulus had counselled him to slay those of his townsmen who were outstanding in influence or ability; with that he began to deal with his citizens in an evil manner. Whatever act of slaughter or banishment Cypselus had left undone, that Periander brought to accomplishment. In a single day he stripped all the women of Corinth naked, because of his own wife Melissa.

2Periander had sent messengers to the Oracle of the Dead on the river Acheron in Thesprotia to enquire concerning a deposit that a friend had left, but Melissa, in an apparition, said that she would tell him nothing, nor reveal where the deposit lay, for she was cold and naked. The garments, she said, with which Periander had buried with her had never been burnt, and were of no use to her. Then, as evidence for her husband that she spoke the truth, she added that Periander had put his loaves into a cold oven.

3When this message was brought back to Periander (for he had had intercourse with the dead body of Melissa and knew her token for true), immediately after the message he made a proclamation that all the Corinthian women should come out into the temple of Hera. They then came out as to a festival, wearing their most beautiful garments, and Periander set his guards there and stripped them all alike, ladies and serving-women, and heaped all the clothes in a pit, where, as he prayed to Melissa, he burnt them.

4When he had done this and sent a second message, the ghost of Melissa told him where the deposit of the friend had been laid. “This, then, Lacedaimonians, is the nature of tyranny, and such are its deeds.

5We Corinthians marvelled greatly when we saw that you were sending for Hippias, and now we marvel yet more at your words to us. We entreat you earnestly in the name of the gods of Hellas not to establish tyranny in the cities, but if you do not cease from so doing and unrighteously attempt to bring Hippias back, be assured that you are proceeding without the Corinthians' consent.”

Chapter 93

1These were the words of Socles, the envoy from Corinth, and Hippias answered, calling the same gods as Socles had invoked to witness, that the Corinthians would be the first to wish the Pisistratidae back, when the time appointed should come for them to be vexed by the Athenians.

2Hippias made this answer, inasmuch as he had more exact knowledge of the oracles than any man, but the rest of the allies, who had till now kept silence, spoke out when they heard the free speech of Socles and sided with the opinion of the Corinthians, entreating the Lacedaemonians not to harm a Greek city.

Chapter 94

1His plan, then, came to nothing, and Hippias was forced to depart. Amyntas king of the Macedonians offered him Anthemus, and the Thessalians Iolcus, but he would have neither. He withdrew to Sigeum, which Pisistratus had taken at the spear's point from the Mytilenaeans and where he then established as tyrant Hegesistratus, his own bastard son by an Argive woman. Hegesistratus, however, could not keep what Pisistratus had given him without fighting,

2for there was constant war over a long period of time between the Athenians at Sigeum and the Mytilenaeans at Achilleum. The Mytilenaeans were demanding the place back, and the Athenians, bringing proof to show that the Aeolians had no more part or lot in the land of Ilium than they themselves and all the other Greeks who had aided Menelaus to avenge the rape of Helen, would not consent.

Chapter 95

1Among the various incidents of this war, one in particular is worth mention; In the course of a battle in which the Athenians had the upper hand, Alcaeus the poet took to flight and escaped, but his armor was taken by the Athenians and hung up in the temple of Athena at Sigeum.

2Alcaeus wrote a poem about this and sent it to Mytilene. In it he relates his own misfortune to his friend Melanippus. As for the Mytilenaeans and Athenians, however, peace was made between them by Periander son of Cypselus, to whose arbitration they committed the matter, and the terms of peace were that each party should keep what it had.

Chapter 96

1It was in this way, then, that Sigeum came to be under Athenian rule, but Hippias, having come from Lacedaemon into Asia, left no stone unturned, maligning the Athenians to Artaphrenes, and doing all he could to bring Athens into subjection to himself and Darius.

2While Hippias was engaged in these activities, the Athenians heard of it and sent messengers to Sardis, warning the Persians not to believe banished Athenians. Artaphrenes, however, bade them receive Hippias back, if they wanted to be safe.When his words were brought back to the Athenians, they would not consent to them, and since they would not consent, it was resolved that they should be openly at war with Persia.

Chapter 97

1It was when the Athenians had made their decision and were already on bad terms with Persia, that Aristagoras the Milesian, driven from Sparta by Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian, came to Athens, since that city was more powerful than any of the rest. Coming before the people, Aristagoras spoke to the same effect as at Sparta, of the good things of Asia, and how the Persians carried neither shield nor spear in war and could easily be overcome.

2This he said adding that the Milesians were settlers from Athens, whom it was only right to save seeing that they themselves were a very powerful people. There was nothing which he did not promise in the earnestness of his entreaty, till at last he prevailed upon them. It seems, then, that it is easier to deceive many than one, for he could not deceive Cleomenes of Lacedaemon, one single man, but thirty thousand Athenians he could.

3The Athenians, now persuaded, voted to send twenty ships to aid the Ionians, appointing for their admiral Melanthius, a citizen of Athens who had an unblemished reputation. These ships were the beginning of troubles for both Greeks and foreigners.

Chapter 98

1Aristagoras sailed before the rest, and when he came to Miletus, he devised a plan from which no advantage was to accrue to the Ionians (nor indeed was that the purpose of his plan, but rather to vex king Darius). He sent a man into Phrygia, to the Paeonians who had been led captive from the Strymon by Megabazus, and now dwelt in a Phrygian territory and village by themselves. When the man came to the Paeonians, he spoke as follows:

2“Men of Paeonia, I have been sent by Aristagoras, tyrant of Miletus, to show you the way to deliverance, if you are disposed to obey. All Ionia is now in revolt against the king, and it is possible for you to win your own way back safely to your own land, but afterwards we will take care of you.”

3The Paeonians were very glad when they heard that, and although some of them remained where they were for fear of danger, the rest took their children and women and fled to the sea. After arriving there, the Paeonians crossed over to Chios.

4They were already in Chios, when a great host of Persian horsemen came after them in pursuit. Unable to overtake them, the Persians sent to Chios, commanding the Paeonians to go back. The Paeonians would not consent to this, but were brought from Chios by the Chians to Lesbos and carried by the Lesbians to Doriscus, from where they made their way by land to Paeonia.

Chapter 99

1The Athenians came with their twenty ships as well as five triremes of the Eretrians who came to the war to please not the Athenians but the Milesians themselves, thereby repaying their debt (for the Milesians had once been the allies of the Eretrians in the war against Chalcis, when the Samians came to aid the Chalcidians against the Eretrians and Milesians). When these, then, and the rest of the allies had arrived, Aristagoras planned a march against Sardis.

2He himself did not go with the army but remained at Miletus, and appointed others to be generals of the Milesians, namely his own brother Charopinus and another citizen named Hermophantus.

Chapter 100

1When the Ionians had come to Ephesus with this force, they left their ships at Coresus in the Ephesian territory and marched inland with a great host, taking Ephesians to guide them on their way. They made their way along the river Caicus, and after crossing the Tmolus, they came to Sardis and captured it without any resistance. They took all of it except the citadel, which was held by Artaphrenes himself with a great force of men.

Chapter 101

1They were prevented from plundering the city by the fact that most of the houses in Sardis were made of reeds, and those made of brick had roofs of reeds. Accordingly, when one of these was seton fire by a soldier, the flames spread from house to house all over the whole city.

2While the city was burning, the Lydians and all the Persians who were in the citadel, being hemmed in on every side since the fire was consuming the outer parts and having no exit from the city, came thronging into the marketplace and to the river Pactolus, which flows through the marketplace carrying down gold dust from Tmolus and issues into the river Hermus, which in turn issues into the sea. They assembled in the marketplace by this Pactolus and were forced to defend themselves there.

3When the Ionians saw some of their enemies defending themselves and a great multitude of others approaching, they were afraid and withdrew to the mountain called Tmolus, from where they departed to their ships at nightfall.

Chapter 102

1In 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.

2It 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.

3The 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.

Chapter 103

1This, then is how they fared in their fighting. Presently, however, the Athenians wholly separated themselves from the Ionians and refused to aid them, although Aristagoras sent messages of earnest entreaty. Despite the fact that they had been deprived of their Athenian allies, the Ionians fervently continued their war against the king (for they remained committed by what they had done to Darius).

2They sailed to the Hellespont and made Byzantium and all the other cities of that region subject to themselves. Then sailing out from the Hellespont they gained to their cause the greater part of Caria, for even Caunus, which till then had not wanted to be their ally, now joined itself to them after the burning of Sardis.

Chapter 104

1The Cyprians did likewise of their own free will, all save the people of Amathus, for these too revolted from the Medes in such manner as I will show. There was a certain Onesilus, a younger brother of Gorgus king of the Salaminians, son of Chersis, whose father was Siromus, and grandson of Euelthon.

2This man had often before advised Gorgus to revolt from Darius, and now when he heard that the Ionians too had revolted, he was insistent in striving to move him. When, however, he could not persuade Gorgus, he and his faction waited till his brother had gone out of the city of Salamis, and shut him out of the gates.

3Gorgus, after having lost his city, took refuge with the Medes, and Onesilus, now king of Salamis, persuaded all Cyprus to revolt with him, all save the Amathusians, who would not consent. He accordingly stationed his forces in front of their city and besieged it.

Chapter 105

1Onesilus, 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,

2“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.”

Chapter 106

1After giving this order, he called before him Histiaeus the Milesian, whom Darius had kept with him for a long time now, and said, “I hear, Histiaeus, that the viceregent whom you put in charge of Miletus has done me wrong. He has brought men from the mainland overseas, and persuaded certain Ionians—who shall yet pay me the penalty for their deeds—to follow them and has robbed me of Sardis.

2Now then, I ask you, do you think that this state of affairs is good? How did such things come to pass without any advice from your side? See to it that you do not have cause to blame yourself hereafter.”

3To this Histiaeus answered: “My lord, what is this you say—that I and none other should devise a plan as a result of which any harm, great or small, was likely to come to you? What desire or feeling of deprivation would prompt me to do such a thing? All that you have is mine, and I am regarded worthy of hearing all your deliberations.

4If my vicegerent is indeed doing what you say, be assured that he has acted of his own accord. For myself, I cannot even go so far as to believe the report that the Milesians and my vicegerent are doing you some dreadful wrong. If, however,it is true that they are engaged in such activities and what you, O king, have heard has a basis in fact, then you can see how unwisely you acted when you forced me to leave the coast.

5It would seem, then, that as soon as I was out of sight, the Ionians did exactly what their hearts had long been set on. If I had been in Ionia no city would have stirred. Now send me off to Ionia right away, so that I may restore that country to peace and deliver into your hands that vicegerent of Miletus who has devised all this.

6Then, when I have done this to your satisfaction, I swear by the gods of your royal house that I will not take off the tunic I am wearing on my arrival in Ionia until I have made Sardo, the largest of the islands, tributary to you.”

Chapter 107

1With these words Histiaeus successfully deceived Darius who gave his consent and let him go, charging Histiaeus to appear before him at Susa when he had achieved what he promised.

Chapter 108

1Now while the message concerning Sardis was making its way to the king, and Darius, having done as I said with his bow, held converse with Histiaeus and permitted him to go to the sea, the following events took place. When Onesilus of Salamis was besieging the Amathusians, news was brought him that Artybius, a Persian, was thought to be coming to Cyprus with a great Persian host.

2Upon hearing this, Onesilus sent heralds all through Ionia to summon the people, and the Ionians, after no long deliberation, came with a great force. So the Ionians were in Cyprus when the Persians, crossing from Cilicia, marched to Salamis by land, and the Phoenicians were sailing around the headland which is called the keys of Cyprus.

Chapter 109

1In this turn of affairs, the tyrants of Cyprus called together the generals of the Ionians, and said to them: “Ionians, we Cyprians offer you the choice of engaging either the Persians or the Phoenicians.

2If you want to draw up your army on land and try your strength against the Persians, then it is time for you to disembark and array yourselves on land and for us to embark in your ships to contend with the Phoenicians. If, however, you desire rather to engage the Phoenicians, do so, but whichever you choose, see to it that Ionia and Cyprus become free.”

3To this the Ionians answered, “We were sent by the common voice of Ionia to guard the seas, not to deliver our ships to men of Cyprus and encounter the Persians on land. We will attempt then to bear ourselves bravely in the task which was given us. It is for you to prove yourselves valiant men, remembering what you suffered when you were enslaved by the Medians.”

Chapter 110

1This was the Ionians' response, and when the Persian army afterwards arrived on the plain of Salamis, the Cyprian kings ordered their battle line. They drew up the best of the Salaminians and Solians against the Persians, leaving the remaining Cyprians to face the rest of the enemy's army. Onesilus placed himself opposite Artybius, the Persian general.

Chapter 111

1Now the horse which Artybius rode was trained to fight with infantrymen by rearing up. Hearing this, Onesilus said to his attendant, a Carian of great renown in war and a valiant man,

2“I learn that Artybius' horse rears up and kicks and bites to death whomever he encounters. In light of this decide and tell me straightway which you will watch and strike down, Artybius himself or his horse.”

3To this his henchman answered, “My King, ready am I to do either or both, whatever you desire. Nevertheless, I will tell you what I think is in your best interest.

4To my mind, a king and general should be met in battle by a king and general (For if you lay low a man who is a general, you have achieved a great feat. Failing that, if he lays you low, as I pray he may not, it is but half the misfortune to be slain by a noble enemy). For us servants it is fitting that we fight with servants like ourselves and with that horse. Do not fear his tricks, for I promise that he will never again do battle with any man.”

Chapter 112

1This, then, was his response, and immediately afterwards war broke out on land and sea. The Ionians in their ships, displaying surpassing excellence that day, overcame the Phoenicians, and it was the Samnians who were most brave. On land, when the armies met, they charged and fought.

2As for the two generals, Artybius rode against Onesilus who as he had agreed with his attendant, dealt Artybius a blow as he bore down upon him. When the horse struck his hooves on Onesilus' shield, the Carian shore away the horse's legs with a stroke of his curved sword.

Chapter 113

1It was in this way that Artybius the Persian general, together with his horse, fell. While the rest were still fighting, Stesenor the ruler of Curium, allegedly an Argive settlement, played the traitor with great company of men under him. The war-chariots of the Salaminians immediately followed their lead, and the Persians accordingly gained the upper hand over the Cyprians.

2So the army was routed, and many were slain, among them Onesilus, son of Chersis, who had contrived the Cyprian revolt, as well as the king of the Solians, Aristocyprus son of Philocyprus, that Philocyprus whom Solon of Athens, when he came to Cyprus, extolled in a poem above all other tyrants.

Chapter 114

1As for Onesilus, the Amathusians cut off his head and brought it to Amathus, where they hung it above their gates, because he had besieged their city. When this head became hollow, a swarm of bees entered it and filled it with their honeycomb.

2In consequence of this the Amathusians, who had inquired concerning the matter, received an oracle which stated that they should take the head down and bury it, and offer yearly sacrifice to Onesilus as to a hero. If they did this, things would go better for them.

Chapter 115

1This the Amathusians did, and have done to this day. When, however, the Ionians engaged in the sea-battle off Cyprus learned that Onesilus' cause was lost and that the cities of Cyprus, with the exception of Salamis which the Salaminians had handed over to their former king Gorgus, were besieged, they sailed off to Ionia without delay.

2Soli was the Cyprian city which withstood siege longest; the Persians took it in the fifth month by digging a mine under its walls.

Chapter 116

1So the Cyprians, after winning freedom for a year, were enslaved once more. Daurises, Hymaees, and Otanes, all of them Persian generals and married to daughters of Darius, pursued those Ionians who had marched to Sardis, and drove them to their ships. After this victory they divided the cities among themselves and sacked them.

Chapter 117

1Daurises made for the cities of the Hellespont and took Dardanus, Abydus, Percote, Lampsacus, and Paesus, each in a single day. Then as he marched from Paesus against Parius, news came to him that the Carians had made common cause with the Ionians and revolted from the Persians. For this reason he turned aside from the Hellespont and marched his army to Caria.

Chapter 118

1It so happened that news of this was brought to the Carians before Daurises' coming, and when the Carians heard, they mustered at the place called the White Pillars by the river Marsyas which flows from the region of Idria and issues into the Maeander.

2When they had gathered together, many plans were laid before them, the best of which, in my judgment, was that of Pixodarus of Cindya, the son of Mausolus and husband of the daughter of Syennesis, king of Cilicia. He proposed that the Carians should cross the Maeander and fight with the river at their back, so that being unable to flee and compelled to stand their ground they might prove themselves even braver than nature made them.

3This opinion, however, did not prevail, and it was decided instead that the Persians and not the Cilicians should have the Maeander at their back, the intent being that if the Persians were overcome in the battle and put to flight, they would not escape but be hurled into the river.

Chapter 119

1Presently, when the Persians had come and had crossed the Maeander, they and the Carians joined battle by the river Marsyas. The Carians fought obstinately and for a long time, but at the last they were overcome by the odds. Of the Persians, as many as two thousand men fell, and of the Carians ten thousand.

2Those of them who escaped were driven into the precinct of Zeus of Armies at Labraunda, a large and a holy grove of plane-trees. (The Carians are the only people whom we know who offer sacrifices to Zeus by this name.) When they had been driven there, they deliberated how best to save themselves, whether it would be better for them to surrender to the Persians or to depart from Asia.

Chapter 120

1While they took counsel, the Milesians and their allies came to their aid, whereupon the Carians put aside their former plans, and prepared to wage a new war over again. They met the Persian attack and suffered a heavier defeat in the battle than the first; many of their whole army fell, but the Milesians were hardest stricken.

Chapter 121

1The Carians, however, rallied and fought again after this disaster, for learning that the Persians had set forth to march against their cities, they beset the road with an ambush at Pedasus. The Persians fell into this by night and perished, they and their generals, Daurises and Amorges and Sisimaces. With these fell also Myrsus, son of Gyges. The leader of this ambush was Heraclides of Mylasas, son of Ibanollis.

Chapter 122

1This, then, is how these Persians perished. Hymaees, who had been one of those who went in pursuit of the Ionians who marched on Sardis, now turned towards the Propontis, and there took Cius in Mysia.

2When he had taken this place and heard that Daurises had left the Hellespont and was marching towards Caria, he left the Propontis and led his army to the Hellespont, making himself master of all the Aeolians who dwell in the territory of Ilium, and of the Gergithae, a remnant of the ancient Trojans. While he was conquering these nations, however, Hymaees himself died of a sickness in the Troad.

Chapter 123

1This is how he met his end, and Artaphrenes, viceroy of Sardis, and Otanes, the third general, were appointed to lead the army against Ionia and the Aeolian territory on its borders. They took Clazomenae in Ionia, and Cyme in Aeolia.

Chapter 124

1Aristagoras the Milesian, as he clearly demonstrated, was a man of little courage, for after he had disturbed Ionia and thrown all into utter confusion, he, perceiving what he had done, began to deliberate flight. Moreover, it seemed to him to be impossible to overcome Darius.

2While the cities were being taken, he accordingly called his fellow-rebels together and took counsel with them, saying that it was best for them to have some place of refuge in case they should be thrown out of Miletus. He also asked them whether he should lead them from there to a settlement in Sardo, or Myrcinus in Edonia, which Histiaeus had received as a gift from Darius and fortified.

Chapter 125

1Hecataeus the historian, son of Hegesander, was of the opinion that they should set forth to neither of these places, but that Aristagoras should build a fortress in the island of Leros and reside there, if he were driven from Miletus. Afterwards, with this as a base, he could return to Miletus.

Chapter 126

1Such was the advice of Hecataeus, but Aristagoras himself thought it best to depart for Myrcinus. He accordingly entrusted Miletus to Pythagoras, a citizen of repute, and himself sailed to Thrace with any that would follow him and then took possession of the place to which he had come.

2After this he was put to the sword by the Thracians, he and his army, as he was besieging a town, even though the Thracians were ready to depart from it under treaty.