Athens and for the world, one of them was a man, not only of the
highest military genius, but also of that energetic character
which impresses its own type and ideas upon spirits feebler in
conception.

Miltiades was the head of one of the noblest houses at Athens:
he ranked the AEacidae among his ancestry, and the blood of
Achilles flowed in the veins of the hero of Marathon. One of his
immediate ancestors had acquired the dominion of the Thracian
Chersonese, and thus the family became at the same time Athenian
citizens and Thracian princes. This occurred at the time when
Pisistratus was tyrant of Athens. Two of the relatives of
Miltiades--an uncle of the same name, and a brother named
Stesagoras--had ruled the Chersonese before Miltiades became its
prince. He had been brought up at Athens in the house of his
father Cimon, [Herodotus, lib. vi. c. 102] who was renowned
throughout Greece for his victories in the Olympic chariot-races,
and who must have been possessed of great wealth. The sons of
Pisistratus, who succeeded their father in the tyranny at Athens,
caused Cimon to be assassinated, but they treated the young
Miltiades with favour and kindness; and when his brother
Stesagoras died in the Chersonese, they sent him out there as
lord of the principality. This was about twenty-eight years
before the battle of Marathon, and it is with his arrival in the
Chersonese that our first knowledge of the career and character
of Miltiades commences. We find, in the first act recorded of
him, proof of the same resolute and unscrupulous spirit that
marked his mature age. His brother's authority in the
principality had been shaken by war and revolt: Miltiades
determined to rule more securely. On his arrival he kept close