The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [148]
21. Of those who stayed to fight the greatest sufferers were the brave Chians, who lost nearly half their hundred ships.
22. When Dionysius saw that all was lost he likewise fled, and became a pirate in Sicily, plundering Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians.
23. When they had defeated the Ionians at sea the Persians besieged Miletus, driving mines under the walls and using every device and stratagem,
24. Until the city fell, six years from the time that the revolt broke out under Aristagoras.
25. All the citizens were enslaved; those whose lives were spared were moved to the city of Ampe at the mouth of the Tigris River,
26. And Miletus was kept by the Persians for themselves, and the hill-country nearby given to the Carians of Pedasus.
27. Those who mourned the downfall of Miletus most were the Athenians, for Miletus had been founded by them in earlier times.
28. They showed their affliction in many ways, and not least by their treatment of the poet Phrynichus,
29. For when his play The Capture of Miletus was staged, the whole theatre burst into tears,
30. And the people sentenced him to a fine of a thousand drachmas for reminding them of the misfortunes of their kin.
31. They likewise passed a law that his play should never again be staged.
32. Samos too ceased to be a Greek city, but not because its citizens were removed by the Persians;
33. Instead, the Samians chose to quit their city and start a new life in Sicily rather than become slaves to Darius.
34. At first they proposed to settle at Kale-Acte; but opportunity offered to capture the beautiful city of Zancle, which they did, and lived there thereafter.
Chapter 51
1. Having recaptured Miletus, the Persians proceeded to attack the islands off the coast, Chios, Lesbos and Tenedos, which were reduced without difficulty.
2. Whenever they became masters of an island, the barbarians, in every single instance, netted the inhabitants.
3. Netting is the practice in which men join hands so as to form a line across from the north coast to the south, and then march through the island hunting out every inhabitant.
4. The Persians also took all the Ionian towns on the mainland.
5. And now the Persian generals made good all the threats with which they had menaced the Ionians before the battle.
6. For no sooner did they get possession of the towns than they picked out the best-favoured boys and made them eunuchs,
7. While the most beautiful girls they tore from their homes and sent as presents to the king, at the same time burning the cities themselves.
8. Thereafter the Persians proceeded to the Hellespont, and took all the towns which lie on the left shore as one sails into the straits.
9. For the cities on the right bank had already been reduced by the land force of the Persians.
10. The places which border the Hellespont on the European side are the Chersonese, which contains a number of cities,
11. Perinthus, the forts in Thrace, Selybria and Byzantium.
12. The Byzantines at this time, and their opposite neighbours, the Chalcedonians, instead of awaiting the coming of the Phoenicians,
13. Quitted their country, and sailing into the Euxine, took up their abode at the city of Mesembria.
14. The Phoenicians, after burning all the places above mentioned, proceeded to Proconnesus and Artaca, which they likewise burned;
15. This done, they returned to the Chersonese, being minded to reduce those cities which they had not ravaged in their former cruise.
16. They left Cyzicus alone, because its inhabitants had made terms with Oebares son of Megabazus, the satrap of Dascyleium, and had submitted themselves to the king.
17. In the Chersonese the Phoenicians subdued all the cities, excepting Cardia.
18. And now Darius put into execution his plan to capture the cities of Greece, and in particular Athens, the mother of Miletus, about which he had made his promise by firing an arrow into the sky.
19. He appointed Mardonius son of Gobryas, one of the seven who had freed Persia from the Magus, to lead a great invasion force by land