The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [150]
21. And gave them to the Athenians to hold, for the Athenians were the greatest enemies of Egina.
22. Now it was not long after this that Cleomenes went mad and had to be restrained, and while under restraint committed suicide;
23. So then the Eginetans sent ambassadors to Sparta to complain about the hostages kept by Athens,
24. The Lacedaemons assembled a court of justice and gave sentence, saying that Leotychides had grossly affronted the people of Egina,
25. And should be handed to the ambassadors, to be led away in place of the men whom the Athenians held hostage.
26. The ambassadors were about to lead Leotychides away when Theasides the son of Leoprepes, a man greatly esteemed in Sparta, intervened and said:
27. ‘What are you minded to do, men of Egina? To lead away the king of the Spartans, whom his countrymen have given into your hands?
28. ‘Though now in anger they have passed this sentence, yet the time will come when they will punish you, if you do this, by destroying your country.’
29. On hearing this the Eginetans changed their plan, and, instead of taking Leotychides away captive, agreed with him that he should come with them to Athens, and get back their men.
30. The Athenians refused, and sent Leotychides and the Eginetans away. In revenge the latter captured an Athenian ship and imprisoned the noble youths who were aboard;
31. So the Athenians mustered a fleet and attacked Egina, defeating it in a sea battle.
32. This strife among the Greeks encouraged Darius in his plans.
33. Still every day a servant repeated three times, ‘Remember the Athenians’,
34. And about his court were a number of Greek exiles, not least among them the Pisistraditae, descendents of that Pisistratus who had once been tyrant of Athens,
35. Who had been driven out, and were always accusing their countrymen.
36. Darius now appointed Datis and Artaphernes to the head of his armed forces, and instructed them to reduce Eretria and Athens, and bring their citizens captive to Susa in chains.
Chapter 53
1. The new commanders took the army to Cilicia to meet the fleet and horse transports. Once embarkation was complete the fleet, consisting of six hundred triremes, sailed for Ionia.
2. Instead of proceeding along the shore to the Hellespont and Thrace, the fleet loosed from Samos and traversed the Icarian Sea through the islands,
3. Mainly because they feared the danger of doubling Mount Athos, where the year before their predecessors had suffered so grievously.
4. But another reason was their earlier failure to take Naxos, which they now planned to capture.
5. The Naxians, seeing their danger, fled into the hills. Some were captured by the Persians and put to death, and the city itself was looted and burned.
6. This done, the Persians sailed to the other islands. When they approached Delos they found that the citizens had fled as the Naxians had done.
7. Datis sent them a message saying, ‘Why have you fled? Why do you judge us so harshly?
8. ‘I have enough sense to spare you, even if the king had not already ordered me to do so; come back to your dwellings in safety.’
9. Then he sailed against Eretria, taking with him both Ionians and Aeolians.
10. After he left, the Delians returned home, thinking that the Persians were not so bad after all. Little did they guess the evils about to fall on them.
11. For in the three generations of Darius, Xerxes the son of Darius, and Artaxerxes the son of Xerxes (Xerxes means ‘Warrior’, and Artaxerxes means ‘Great Warrior’), more woes befell Greece than in the twenty generations preceding Darius;
12. Woes caused in part by the Persians, but in part arising from the contentions among the Greeks’ own chief men concerning the supreme power.
13. After loosing from Delos the Persians proceeded to touch at other islands, taking troops from each, and carrying off a number of the children as hostages.
14. In this way they came