V. The reign of Darius is also remarkable for the influence which
Grecian strangers began to assume in the Persian court--and the fatal
and promiscuous admission of Grecian mercenaries into the Persian
service. The manners of the Persians were naturally hospitable, and
Darius possessed not only an affable temper, but an inquisitive mind.
A Greek physician of Crotona, who succeeded in relieving the king from
the effects of a painful accident which had baffled the Egyptian
practitioners, esteemed the most skilful the court possessed,
naturally rose into an important personage. His reputation was
increased by a more difficult cure upon the person of Atossa, the
daughter of Cyrus, who, from the arms of her brother Cambyses, and
those of the magian impostor, passed to the royal marriage-bed. And
the physician, though desirous only of returning through some pretext
to his own country, perhaps first inflamed the Persian king with the
ill-starred wish of annexing Greece to his dominions. He despatched a
commission with the physician himself, to report on the affairs of
Greece. Many Hellenic adventurers were at that time scattered over
the empire, some who had served with Cambyses, others who had sided
with the Egyptians. Their valour recommended them to a valiant
people, and their singular genius for intrigue took root in every
soil. Syloson, a Greek of Samos, brother to Polycrates, the tyrant of
that state, who, after a career of unexampled felicity and renown,
fell a victim to the hostile treachery of Oretes, the satrap of
Sardis, induced Darius to send over Otanes at the head of a Persian
force to restore him to the principality of his murdered brother; and
when, subsequently, in his Scythian expedition, Darius was an
eyewitness of the brilliant civilization of Ionia, not only did Greece
become to him more an object of ambition, but the Greeks of his
respect. He sought, by a munificent and wise clemency, to attach them
to his throne, and to colonize his territories with subjects valuable