owing as much to the particularist jealousies of the Greek cities
themselves as to vigorous measures taken against them by Darius on land
and his obedient Phoenicians at sea. A naval defeat sealed the fate of
Miletus, whose citizens found, to the horror of all Greece, that, on
occasion, the Persian would treat rebels like a loyal successor of
Shalmaneser and Nebuchadnezzar. But even though it failed, the Revolt
brought on a second act in the drama. For, on the one hand, it had
involved in Persian politics certain cities of the Greek motherlands,
notably Athens, whose contingent, greatly daring, affronted the Great
King by helping to burn the lower town of Sardes; and on the other, it
had prompted a despot on the European shore of the Dardanelles, one
Miltiades, an Athenian destined to immortal fame, to incense Darius yet
more by seizing his islands of Lemnos and Imbros.

Evidently neither could Asiatic Greeks be trusted, even though their
claws were cut by disarmament and their motives for rebellion had been
lessened by the removal of their despots, nor could the Balkan province
be held securely, while the western Greeks remained defiant and Athens,
in particular, aiming at the control of Aegean trade, supported the
Ionian colonies. Therefore Darius determined to strike at this city
whose exiled despot, Hippias, promised a treacherous co-operation; and
he summoned other Greek states to make formal submission and keep the
peace. A first armada sent to coast round the northern shore in 492
added Macedonia to the Persian Empire; but it was crippled and stayed by
storms. A second, sent two years later direct across the Aegean, reduced
the Cyclad isles, revenged itself on Eretria, one of the minor culprits
in the Sardian affair, and finally brought up by the Attic shore at
Marathon. The world-famous defeat which its landing parties suffered
there should be related by a historian rather of Greece than of the
East; and so too should the issue of a third and last invasion which,