The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [149]
20. To cross the Hellespont and proceed against Eretria and Athens. It was however an unlucky expedition.
21. First Mardonius captured Thasos, for the Thasians did not even lift a hand in their defence, and were quickly reduced by the sea force.
22. On land the army added the Macedonians to the slaves of the king. From Thasos the fleet stood across to the mainland, and sailed along the shore to Acanthus, from where an attempt was made to double Mount Athos.
23. But here a violent north wind sprang up, against which nothing could contend, shattering a large number of the ships and driving them aground.
24. Nearly three hundred ships were destroyed, and more than twenty thousand men were lost,
25. Some dashed violently against the rocks, some dying of cold, most drowning.
26. While this happened to the fleet, on land Mardonius and his army were attacked by night in their camp by the Brygi, a tribe of Thracians;
27. And great numbers of Persians were slain, even Mardonius himself receiving a wound.
28. The Brygi, nevertheless, did not succeed in maintaining their freedom, for Mardonius would not leave the country till he had made them subjects of Persia.
29. Still, though he brought them under the yoke, the blow they had given his army, and the destruction of the fleet, forced him to retreat;
30. And so this armament, having failed, returned to Asia. This was the second unsuccessful sortie into Europe by Persia.
Chapter 52
1. After this Darius resolved to make better preparation for conquering the Greeks,
2. And first he investigated which of them were inclined to resist him and which to make their submission.
3. He therefore sent heralds all round Greece, with orders to demand everywhere earth and water as marks of submission.
4. At the same time he sent other heralds to the various coastal towns which paid him tribute, and required them to provide ships of war and horse-transports.
5. These cities accordingly began their preparations. The heralds who had been sent into Greece obtained what the king demanded from a large number of states,
6. And likewise from all the islanders they visited. Among these last were the Eginetans, who, equally with the rest, consented to give earth and water.
7. When the Athenians heard what the Eginetans had done, believing that it was from enmity to themselves that they had submitted to Darius,
8. And that the Eginetans intended to join Darius in his attack on Athens, they immediately took the matter in hand.
9. In truth it rejoiced them to have such a good pretext; and accordingly they sent embassies to Sparta, making it a charge against the Eginetans that their conduct proved them traitors to Greece.
10. Accordingly Cleomenes, the son of Anaxandridas, who was then one of the two kings of Sparta, went in person to Egina, intending to arrest those whose guilt was the greatest.
11. But a number of the Eginetans resisted; a certain Crius, son of Polycritus, being the foremost. This person told Cleomenes he should not carry off a single Eginetan without it costing him dear; saying,
12. ‘The Athenians have bribed Cleomenes to make this attack, for which he has no warrant from his own government, otherwise both the Spartan kings would have come together.’
13. Hereupon Cleomenes, finding that he must quit Egina, asked Crius his name; and when Crius told him he said,
14. ‘Get your horns tipped with brass as quickly as possible, O Crius! For you will soon have to face great danger.’
15. Meanwhile in Sparta the other king, Demaratus son of Ariston, was bringing charges against Cleomenes,
16. Moved not so much by love of the Eginetans as by jealousy and hatred of his colleague.
17. Cleomenes therefore was no sooner returned from Egina than he pondered how he might unseat Demaratus.
18. He used an old story that Demaratus was not the true son of his father, and hence not entitled to the Spartan throne;
19. Once persuading the Spartans that this was so, Cleomenes was able to substitute Leotychides for him, and reduce Demaratus to the rank of a magistrate.
20. Then