14

In this order, and availing himself probably of the inequalities of the ground, so as to conceal his preparations from the enemy till the last possible moment, Miltiades drew up the eleven thousand infantry whose spears were to decide this crisis in the struggle between the European and the Asiatic worlds.

B.C. 490

wild horsemen from the steppes of Khorassan, the black archers of Ethiopia, swordsmen from the banks of the Indus, the Oxus, the Euphrates, and the Nile, made ready against the enemies of the Great King. But no national cause inspired them, except the division of native Persians; and in the large host there was no uniformity of language, creed, race, or military system. Still, among them there were inany gallant men, under a veteran general; they were familiarized with victory; and in contemptuous confidence their infantry, which alone had time to form, awaited the Athenian charge. On came the Greeks, with one unwavering line of levelled spears, against which the light targets, the short lances and scymetars of the Orientals offered weak defence.. The front rank of the Asiatics must have gone down to a man at the first shock. Still they recoiled not, but strove by individual gallantry, and by the weight of numbers, to make up for the disadvantages of weapons and tactics, and to bear back the shallow line of the Europeans. In the centre, where the native Persians and the Sacæ fought, they succeeded in breaking through the weaker part of the Athenian phalanx; and the tribes led by Aristides and Themistocles were, after a brave resistance, driven back over the plain, and chased by the Persians up the valley towards the inner country. There the nature of the ground gave the opportunity of rallying and renewing the struggle; and meanwhile, the Greek wings, where Miltiades had concentrated his chief strength, had routed the Asiatics opposed to them; and the Athenian and Platæan officers, instead of pursuing the fugitives, kept their troops well in hand, and wheeling round they formed the two wings together. Miltiades instantly led them against the Persian centre, which had hitherto been triumphant, but which now fell back, and prepared to encounter these new and unexpected assailants. Aristides and Themistocles renewed the fight with their re-organized troops, and the full force of the Greeks was brought into close action with the Persian and Sacian divisions of the enemy. Datis's veterans strove hard to keep their ground, and evening was approaching before the stern encounter was decided.

Instead of advancing at the usual slow pace of the phalanx, Miltiades brought his men on at a run. They were all trained in the exercises of the palæstra, so that there was no fear of their ending the charge in breathless exhaustion: and it was of the deepest importance for him to traverse as rapidly as possible the space of about a mile of level ground, that lay between the mountain foot and the Persian outposts, and so to get his troops into close action before the Asiatic cavalry could mount, form, and manoeuvre against him, or their archers keep him long under bow-shot, and before the enemy's generals could fairly deploy their masses.

"When the Persians," says Herodotus, "saw the Athenians running down on them, without horse or bowmen, and scanty in numbers, they thought them a set of madmen rushing upon certain destruction." They began, however, to prepare to receive them, and the Eastern chiefs arrayed, as quickly as time and place allowed, the varied races who served in their motley ranks. Mountaineers from Hyrcania and Affghanistan,

At last the previously unvanquished lords of Asia turned their backs and fled, and the Greeks followed, striking them down, to the water's edge, where the invaders were now hastily launching their galleys, and seeking to embark and fly. Flushed with success, the Athenians dashed at the fleet. 'Bring fire, bring fire," was their cry; and they began to lay hold of the ships. But here the Asiatics resisted desperately, and the principal loss sustained by the Greeks was in the assault on the fleet. Here fell the brave War-Ruler Callimachus, the general Stesilaus, and other Athenians of note. Conspicuous among them was Cynægeirus, the brother of the tragic poet Eschylus. He had grasped the ornamental work on the stern of one of the galleys, and had his hand struck off by an axe.

Seven galleys were captured; but the Persians succeeded in saving the rest. They pushed off from the fatal shore: but even here the skill of Datis did not desert him, and he sailed round to the western coast of Attica, in hopes to find the city unprotected, and to gain possession of it from some of the par tisans of Hippias. Miltiades, however, saw and counteracted his manœuvre. Leaving Aristides, and the troops of his tribe, to guard the spoil and the slain, the Athenian commander led his conquering army by a rapid night-march back across the country to Athens. And when the Persian fleet had doubled

the Cape of Sunium and sailed up to the Athenian harbor in the morning, Datis saw arrayed on the heights above the city the troops before whom his men had fled on the preceding evening. All hope of further conquest in Europe for the time was abandoned, and the baffled armada returned to the Asiatic coasts.

After the battle had been fought, but while the dead bodies were yet on the ground, the promised reinforcement from Sparta arrived. Two thousand Lacedæmonian spearmen, starting immediately after the full moon, had marched the hundred and fifty miles between Athens and Sparta in the wonderfully short time of three days. Though too late to share in the glory of the action, they requested to be allowed to march to the battle-field to behold the Medes. They proceeded thither, gazed on the dead bodies of the invaders, and then, praising the Athenians and what they had done, they returned to Lacedæmon.

The number of the Persian dead was six thousand four hundred; of the Athenians, a hundred and ninety-two. The number of the Plateans who fell is not mentioned, but as they fought in the part of the army which was not broken, it cannot have been large.

The apparent disproportion between the losses of the two armies is not surprising when we remember the armor of the Greek spearmen, and the impossibility of heavy slaughter being inflicted by sword or lance on troops so armed, as long as they kept firm in their ranks.

The Athenian slain were buried on the field of battle. This was contrary to the usual custom, according to which the bones of all who fell fighting for their country in each year were deposited in a public sepulchre in the suburb of Athens called the Cerameicus. But it was felt that a distinction ought to be made in the funeral honors paid to the men of Marathon, even as their merit had been distinguished over that of all other Athenians. A lofty mound was raised on the plain of Marathon, beneath which the remains of the men of Athens who fell in the battle were deposited. Ten columns were erected on the spot, one for each of the Athenian tribes; and on the monumental column of each tribe were graven the names of those of its members whose glory it was to have fallen in the great battle of liberation. The antiquary Pausanias read those names there six hundred years after the time when they were first graven. The columns have long perished, but the mound still marks the spot where the noblest heroes of antiquity repose.

Darius dying, was succeeded by his son Xerxes, the heir of his father's ambition, but not of his abilities. He armed, as is said, 5,000,000 of men, 1,200 ships of war, and 3,000 ships of burden, primarily for the conquest of Greece, but ultimately, as it is alleged, of all Europe, having expended four years in his preparations. Landing in Thessaly, he proceeded by rapid marches to Thermopylæ, a narrow defile on the Sinus Maliacus, the key of Greece, where, when he arrived, the too careless Greeks were celebrating the Olympian games. Nevertheless, the Athenians and Spartans, aided

only by the Thespians, Platæans and Egenites, determined to withstand the invaders. Leonidas, king of Sparta, was chosen to defend this important pass with 6,000 men. Xerxes, after a weak attempt to corrupt him, imperiously summoned him to lay down his arms. "Let him come," said Leonidas,

"and take them."

For two days the Persians in vain strove to force their way, and were repeatedly repulsed with great slaughter. An unguarded track being at length discovered, the defence of the pass became a fruitless attempt with part of the Greeks. Leonidas, foreseeing certain destruction, commanded all to retire, but three hundred of his countrymen. His motive was to give the Persians a just idea of the spirit of that foe whom they had to encounter. He, with his brave Spartans, were all cut off to a man, B.C. 480. A monument erected on the spot bore this noble inscription, "O stranger, tell it at Lacedæmon, that we died here in obedience to her laws."

The Persians poured down upon Attica. The inhabitants of Athens, after carrying their women and children to the islands for security, on an artful but successful suggestion of Themistocles, in the interpretation of an oracle, betook themselves to their fleet, abandoning, with a profusion of tears and lamentations, the city, which the Persians pillaged and burnt. The fleet of the Greeks, consisting of 378 sail, was attacked in the straits of Salamis, by that of the Persians, amounting to 1,200 ships. Xerxes himself beheld, from an eminence on the coast, the total discomfiture of his squadron. He then fled with precipitation across the Hellespont, alarmed at a false report that his bridge of boats was about to be destroyed. A second overthrow awaited his army by land; for Mardonius, at the head of 300,000 Persians, was totally defeated at Platea, by the combined army of the Athenians and Lacedæmonians, under the command of Pausanias, B.C. 479. On the same day the Greeks engaged and destroyed the remains of the Persian fleet at Mycale. From that hour the ambitious schemes of Xerxes were at an end; and his inglorious life was soon after terminated by assassination. He was succeeded on the throne of Persia by his son Artaxerxes Longimanus, B.C. 464.

At this time the national character of the Greeks was at its highest elevation. The common danger

had annihilated all partial jealousies between the States, and given them union as a nation. But with the cessation of danger those jealousies recommenced. Sparta meanly opposed the rebuilding of deserted Athens. Athens rising again into splendor, beheld with pleasure the depopulation of Sparta by an earthquake, and hesitated to give her aid in that juncture of calamity against a rebellion of her slaves.

Cimon, the son of Miltiades, after expelling the Persians from Thrace, attacked and destroyed their fleet on the coast of Pamphylia, and aided by his rival Pericles completed a series of victories by compelling Artaxerxes to sue for peace. Now came what is known as the age of Pericles; the era of the highest internal splendor and magnificence of Greece, albeit the national glory was on the

wane.

The famous Peloponnesian War, between Athens and Sparta, was brought about by a difficulty between Corinth and Corcyra, one of her colonies; and as Athens took sides with the latter, the Dorian Confederacy accused her of violating the terms of the thirty years' truce, and a Spartan army invaded Attica, B.C. 431. Unable with his few allies to contend against the superior military power of the Spartans, Pericles pursued the policy of keeping within the city and sending his numerous fleets to ravage the enemies' coasts. A violent plague, however, broke out in Athens, and Pericles fell a victim to it, B.C. 429.

The most noted events of the early part of the war were the revolt of Lesbos from Athens, and the brave defence of Platea against the Spartans. The flower of the Spartan army having been blockaded by the Athenian fleet, the Spartans applied to the Athenians for peace, which, through the influence of Cleon, a low and noisy demagogue, who had succeeded Pericles in the leadership of the popular assemblies, was refused. The Spartans were compelled to surrender Spachteria. The Athenians were severely defeated by Boeotians at Delium, and a short time afterward lost their empire in Thrace by the battle of Amphipolis, in which Brasidas, adistinguished Spartan leader, defeated Cleon, the Athenian, both generals being slain, B.C. 422.

The next year, through the influence of Nicias, who succeeded Cleon at Athens, peace was made at Sparta. Though designed to be a fifty years' truce,

it only lasted a few months. Alcibiades, a handsome and talented but dissolute pupil of the great philosopher, Socrates, persuaded Argos to renew the war. He then induced the Athenians to send an expedition into Syracuse, to the command of which he and Nicias were assigned. Alcibiades was, however, recalled, and being accused of great outrage and impiety, and condemned to death, fled to Sparta. Nicias suffered a most disastrous defeat; and as the armament had been one of the finest ever sent out by the Athenians they were greatly weakened by the event.

As the action at Syracuse is included amongst the fifteen decisive battles of the world a somewhat detailed account will prove of valuable interest.

SYNOPSIS OF EVENTS BETWEEN THE BATTLE OF MARATHON, B.C. 490, AND THE DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE, B.C. 413.

B.C. 490 to 487. All Asia is filled with the preparations made by King Darius for a new expedition against Greece. Themistocles persuades the Athenians to leave off dividing the proceeds of their silver mines among themselves, and to employ the money in strengthening their navy.

487. Egypt revolts from the Persians, and delays the expedition against Greece.

485. Darius dies, and Xerxes his son becomes King of Persia in his stead.

484. The Persians recover Egypt.

480. Xerxes invades Greece. Indecisive actions between the Persian and Greek fleets at Artemisium. Destruction of the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylæ. The Athenians abandon Attica and go on shipboard. Great naval victory of the Greeks at Salamis. Xerxes returns to Asia, leaving a chosen army under Mardonius, to carry on the war against the Greeks.

478. Mardonius and his army destroyed by the Greeks at Platea. The Greeks land in Asia Minor, and defeat a Persian force at Mycale. In this and the following years the Persians lose all their conquests in Europe, and many on the coast of Asia.

477. Many of the Greek maritime states take Athens as their leader, instead of Sparta.

466. Victories of Cimon over the Persians at Eurymedon. 464. Revolt of the Helots against Sparta. Third Messenian

war.

460. Egypt again revolts against Persia. The Athenians send a powerful armament to aid the Egyptians, which, after gaining some successes, is destroyed, and Egypt submits. This war lasted six years.

457. Wars in Greece between the Athenian and several Peloponnesian states. Immense exertions of Athens at this time. There is an original inscription still preserved in the Louvre, which attests the energies of Athens at this crisis, when Athens, like England in modern wars, at once sought conquests abroad, and repelled enemies at home. At the

period we now advert to (B.C. 457), an Athenian armament of two hundred galleys was engaged in a bold though unsuccessful expedition against Egypt. The Athenian crews had landed, had won a battle; they had then re-embarked and sailed up the Nile, and were busily besieging the Persian garrison in Memphis. As the complement of a trireme galley was at least two hundred men, we cannot estimate the forces then employed by Athens against Egypt at less than forty thousand men. At the same time she kept squadrons on the coasts of Phoenicia and Cyprus, and yet maintained a homefleet that enabled her to defeat her Peloponnesian enemies at Cecryphalæ and Ægina, capturing in the last engagement seventy galleys. This last fact may give us some idea of the strength of the Athenian home-fleet that gained the victory; and by adopting the same ratio of multiplying whatever number of galleys we suppose to have been employed, by two hundred, so as to gain the aggregate number of the crews, we may form some estimate of the forces which this little Greek state then kept on foot. Between sixty and seventy thousand men must have served in her fleets during that year. Her tenacity of purpose was equal to her boldness of enterprise.. Sooner than yield or withdraw from any of their expeditions the Athenians at this very time, when Corinth sent an army to attack their garrison at Megara, did not recall a single crew or a single soldier from Ægina or from abroad; but the lads and old men, who had been left to guard the city, fought and won a battle against these new assailants. The inscription which we have referred to is graven on a votive tablet to the memory of the dead, erected in that year by the Erecthean tribe, one of the ten into which the Athenians were divided. It shows, as Thrilwall has remarked, "that the Athenians were conscious of the greatness of their own effort;" and in it this little civic community of the ancient world still "records to us with emphatic simplicity, that its slain fell in Cyprus, in Egypt, in Phoenicia, at Haliæ, in Ægina, and in Megara, in the same year.'

455. A thirty years' truce concluded between Athens and Lacedæmon.

440. The Samians endeavor to throw off the supremacy of Athens. Samos completely reduced to subjection. Pericles is now sole director of the Athenian councils.

431. Commencement of the great Peloponnesian war, in which Sparta, at the head of nearly all the Peloponnesian states, and aided by the Boeotians and some of the other Greeks beyond the Isthmus, endeavors to reduce the power of Athens, and to restore independence to the Greek maritime states who were the subject allies of Athens. At the commencement of the war the Peloponnesian armies repeatedly invade and ravage Attica, but Athens herself is impregnable, and her fleets secure her the dominion of the sea.

430. Athens visited by a pestilence, which sweeps off large numbers of her population.

425. The Athenians gain great advantages over the Spartans at Sphacteria, and by occupying Cythera; but they suffer a severe defeat in Boeotia, and the Spartan general, Brasidas, leads an expedition to the Thracian coasts, and conquers many of the most valuable Athenian possessions in those regions.

421. Nominal truce for thirty years between Athens and Sparta, but hostilities continue on the Thracian coast and in other quarters.

415. The Athenians send an expedition to conquer Sicily.

The Defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse, B.C. 413.

The ancient city of Syracuse, in the time of the Peloponnesian war, was chiefly built on the knob of land which projects into the sea on the eastern coast of Sicily, between two bays; one of which, to the north, was called the bay of Thapsus, while the southern one formed the great harbor of the city of Syracuse itself. A small island, or peninsula (for such it soon was rendered), lies at the south-eastern extremity of this knob of land, stretching almost entirely across the mouth of the great harbor, and rendering it nearly landlocked. This island comprised the original settlement of the first Greek colonists from Corinth, who founded Syracuse over two thousand five hundred years ago; and the modern city has shrunk again into these primary limits.

The usual mode of assailing fortified towns in the time of the Peloponnesian war, was to build a double wall round them, sufficiently strong to check any sally out of the garrison from within, or any attack of a relieving force from without. The interval within the two walls of the circumvallation was roofed over, and formed barracks, in which the besiegers posted themselves, and awaited the effects of want or treachery among the besieged in producing a surrender.

A city built close to the sea, like Syracuse, was impregnable, save by the combined operations of a superior hostile fleet and a superior hostile army. And Syracuse, from her size, her population, and her military and naval resources, not unnaturally thought herself secure from finding in another Greek city a foe capable of sending a sufficient armament to menace her with capture and subjection. But in the spring of 414 B.C. the Athenian navy was mistress of her harbor and the adjacent seas; an Athenian army had defeated her troops, and cooped them within the town; and from bay to bay a blockading-wall was being rapidly carried across the strips of level ground and the high ridge outside the city (then termed Epipola, which, if completed, would have cut the Syracusans off from all succor from the interior of Sicily, and have left them at the mercy of the Athenian generals. The besiegers' works were, indeed, unfinished; but every day the unfortified interval in their lines grew narrower, and with it diminished all apparent hope of safety for the beleaguered town.

Athens was now staking the flower of her forces, and the accumulated fruits of seventy years of glory, on one bold throw for the dominion of the Western world. As Napoleon from Mount Cœur de Lion pointed to St. Jean de Acre, and told his staff that the capture of that town would decide his destiny, and would change the face of the world; so the Athenian officers, from the heights of Epipolæ, must have looked on Syracuse, and felt that with its fall all the known powers of the earth would fall beneath them. They must have felt also that Athens, if repulsed there, must pause for ever in her career of conquest, and sink from an imperial republic into a ruined and subservient community.

With the capture of Syracuse all Sicily, it was hoped, would be secured. Carthage and Italy were next to be assailed. With large levies of Iberian mercenaries she then meant to overwhelm her Peloponnesian enemies. The Persian monarchy lay in hopeless imbecility, inviting Greek invasion; nor did the known world contain the power that seemed capable

of checking the growing might of Athens, if Syracuse once could be hers.

The armament which the Athenians equipped against Syracuse was in every way worthy of the state which formed such projects of universal empire; and it has been truly termed "the noblest that ever yet had been sent forth by a free and civilized commonwealth." The fleet consisted of one hundred and thirty-four war-galleys, with a multitude of store ships. A powerful force of the best heavy-armed infantry that Athens and her allies could furnish was sent on board, together with a smaller number of slingers and bowmen. The quality of the forces was even more remarkable than the number. The zeal of individuals vied with that of the republic in giving every galley the best possible crew, and every troop the most perfect accoutrements. And with private as well as public wealth eagerly lavished on all that could give splendor as well as efficiency to the expedition, the fated fleet began its voyage for the Sicilian shores in the summer of 415 B.C.

The Syracusans themselves, at the time of the Peloponnesian war, were a bold and turbulent democracy, tyrannizing over the weaker Greek cities in Sicily, and trying to gain in that island the same arbitrary supremacy which Athens maintained along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. In numbers and in spirit they were fully equal to the Athenians, but far inferior to them in military and naval discipline. When the probability of an Athenian invasion was first publicly discussed at Syracuse, and efforts were made by some of the wiser citizens to improve the state of the national defences, and prepare for the impending danger, the rumors of coming war and the proposals for preparation were received by the mass of the Syracusans with scornful incredulity.

Alcibiades, the most complete example of genius without principle that history produces, the Bolingbroke of antiquity, but with high military talents superadded to diplomatic and oratorical powers, on being summoned home from his command in Sicily to take his trial before the Athenian tribunal, had escaped to Sparta; and he exerted himself there with all the selfish rancor of a renegade to renew the war with Athens, and to send instant assistance to Syracuse.

So nearly, indeed, had Nicias completed his beleaguering lines, and so utterly desperate had the state of Syracuse seemingly become, that an assembly of the Syracusans was actually convened, and they were discussing the terms on which they should offer to capitulate, when a galley was seen dashing into the great harbor, and making her way towards the town with all the speed that her rowers could supply. From her shunning the part of the harbor where the Athenian fleet lay, and making straight for the Syracusan side, it was clear that she was a friend; the enemy's cruisers, careless through confidence of success, made no attempt to cut her off; she touched the beach, and a Corinthian captain springing on shore from her, was eagerly conducted to the assembly of the Syracusan people, just in time to prevent the fatal vote being put for a surrender.

Providentially for Syracuse, Gongylus, the commander of the galley, had been prevented by an Athenian squadron from following Gylippus to South Italy, and he had been obliged to push direct for Syracuse from Greece.

The sight of actual succor, and the promise of more, revived the drooping spirits of the Syracusans. They felt that they were not left desolate to perish; and the tidings that a Spartan was coming to command them confirmed their resolution to

continue their resistance. Gylippus was already near the city. Crossing the straits of Messina, which the culpable negligence of Nicias had left unguarded, he landed on the northern coast of Sicily, and there began to collect from the Greek cities an army, of which the regular troops that he brought from Peloponnesus formed the nucleus. Such was the influence of the name of Sparta, and such were his own abilities and activity, that he succeeded in raising a force of about two thousand fully armed infantry, with a larger number of irregular troops. Nicias, as if infatuated, made no attempt to counteract his operations; nor, when Gylippus marched his little army towards Syracuse, did the Athenian commander endeavor to check him. The Syracusans marched out to meet him: and while the Athenians were solely intent on completing their fortifications on the southern side towards the harbor, Gylippus turned their position by occupying the high ground in the extreme rear of Epipola. He then marched through the unfortified interval of Nicias's lines into the besieged town; and, joining his troops with the Syracusan forces, after some engagements with varying success, gained the mastery over Nicias, drove the Athenians from Epipolæ, and hemmed them into a disadvantageous position in the low grounds near the great · harbor.

The attention of all Greece was now fixed on Syracuse; and every enemy of Athens felt the importance of the opportunity now offered of checking her ambition, and, perhaps, of striking a deadly blow at her power. Large reinforcements from Corinth, Thebes, and other cities, now reached the Syracusans. But Athens still was mistress of the sea, and she sent forth another fleet of seventy galleys, and another army, which seemed to drain the very last reserves of her military population, to try if Syracuse could not yet be won, and the honor of the Athenian arms be preserved from the stigma of a retreat. At the head of this second expedition she wisely placed her best general, Demosthenes, one of the most distinguished officers whom the long Peloponnesian war had produced, and who, if he had originally held the Sicilian command, would soon have brought Syracuse to submission. The fame of Demosthenes the general, has been dimmed by the superior lustre of his great countryman, Demosthenes the orator.

His arrival was critically timed; for Gylippus had encouraged the Syracusans to attack the Athenians under Nicias by sea as well as by land, and by an able stratagem of Ariston, one of the admirals of the Corinthian auxiliary squadron, the Syracusans and their confederates had inflicted on the fleet of Nicias the first defeat that the Athenian navy had ever sustained from a numerically inferior foe. Gylippus was preparing to follow up his advantage by fresh attacks on the Athenians on both elements, when the arrival of Demosthenes completely changed the aspect of affairs, and restored the superiority to the invaders. With seventy-three war-galleys in the highest state of efficiency, and brilliantly equipped, with a force of five thousand picked men of the regular infantry of Athens and her allies, and a still larger number of bowmen, javelin-men, and slingers on board, Demosthenes rowed round the great harbor with loud cheers and martial music, as if in defiance of the Syracusans and their confederates.

With the intuitive decision of a great commander, Demosthenes at once saw that the possession of Epipola was the key to the possession of Syracuse, and he resolved to make a prompt and vigorous attempt to recover that position, while