The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [109]
6. The expelled Smyrnaeans were distributed among the other States of the Aeolians, and were everywhere admitted to citizenship.
7. Of the Aeolian islands, Lesbos contains five cities. Arisba, the sixth, was taken by the Methymnaeans, their kinsmen, and the inhabitants reduced to slavery.
8. Tenedos contains one city, and there is another on the Hundred Isles.
9. The Aeolians of Lesbos and Tenedos, like the Ionian islanders, had at this time nothing to fear from Persia.
10. The other Aeolians decided in their common assembly to follow the Ionians, whatever course they should pursue.
11. When the deputies of the Ionians and Aeolians, who had journeyed with all speed to Sparta, reached the city, they chose one of their number, Pythermus, a Phocaean, to be their spokesman.
12. In order to draw together as large an audience as possible, he clothed himself in a purple garment, and so attired stood up to speak.
13. In a long discourse he besought the Spartans to come to the assistance of his countrymen, but they were not to be persuaded, and voted against sending help.
14. The deputies accordingly went their way. But the Lacedaemonians, notwithstanding their refusal,
15. Dispatched a penteconter to the Asiatic coast with certain Spartans on board, for the purpose of observing what Cyrus might do to Ionia.
16. On their arrival these Spartans sent the most distinguished of their number, one Lacrines, to Sardis with a message to warn Cyrus, in the name of the Lacedaemonians, against molesting any city of Greece.
17. On hearing the herald, Cyrus asked some Greeks who were standing by, ‘Who are these Lacedaemonians, and how numerous are they, that they dare to send me such a message?’
18. When he had heard their reply, he turned to Lacrines and said, ‘I have never yet been afraid of any men, who have a set place in the middle of their city where they come together to cheat and lie.
19. ‘If I live, the Spartans shall have troubles enough of their own, without concerning themselves about the Ionians.’
20. Cyrus intended these words as a reproach against all Greeks because of the marketplaces in their cities where they buy and sell,
21. Which was a custom unknown to the Persians, who did not have a single marketplace in their whole country.
22. After this interview Cyrus left Sardis, putting Tabalus, a Persian, in charge of the city, but appointing Pactyas, a native Lydian, to collect the treasure belonging to Croesus and other Lydians.
23. Cyrus himself proceeded towards Ecbatana, taking Croesus with him, not regarding the Ionians as important enough to be his immediate object.
24. Larger designs were in his mind. He wished to war in person against Babylon, the Bactrians, the Sacae and Egypt; he therefore determined to assign to one of his generals the task of conquering the Ionians.
25. No sooner, however, was Cyrus gone from Sardis than Pactyas induced his Lydian countrymen to rise in revolt against him and his deputy Tabalus.
26. With the vast treasures at his disposal Pactyas went down to the sea, and employed them in hiring mercenary troops,
27. While at the same time he engaged the coastal people to join his army. He then marched on Sardis, where he besieged Tabalus.
28. When Cyrus, on his way to Ecbatana, received this news, he said to Croesus, ‘Where will all this end? It seems that Lydians will not cease to trouble both themselves and others.
29. ‘It might be best to sell them all for slaves. What I have done is as if I had killed the father but spared the child.
30. ‘You, who were more than a father to your people, I have carried off, and to that people I have entrusted their city. Can I be surprised at their rebellion?’
31. Alarmed at the thought that Cyrus would lay Sardis in ruins, Croesus replied: ‘O king, your words are reasonable;
32. ‘But do not, I beseech you, give vent to your anger and destroy an ancient city, guiltless alike of the past and the present trouble.
33. ‘I caused the one, and in my own person now pay for it. Pactyas has caused the other; let him bear the punishment.