The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [151]
15. So the Persians laid siege to Carystus, and wasted the country round, until at length the inhabitants were forced to submit.
16. Meanwhile the Eretrians, understanding that the Persian forces were coming against them, asked the Athenians for assistance.
17. Athens readily assigned four thousand men, landholders to whom they had allotted the estates of the Chalcidean Hippobatae.
18. At Eretria, however, things were in no healthy state; for though they had aid from Athens, yet they could not agree among themselves how to act.
19. Some wished to leave the city and take refuge in the heights of Euboea; others, hoping for rewards from the Persians, were getting ready to betray their country.
20. When these things came to the ears of Aeschines, the son of Nothon, one of the first men in Eretria,
21. He made known the whole state of affairs to the Athenians who had already arrived, advising them to return home to their own land and not perish with his countrymen.
22. The Athenians listened to his counsel, and, crossing over to Oropus, escaped the danger.
23. The Persian fleet now drew near and anchored on the coast of Eretria.
24. They proceeded to disembark their horses and make ready to attack. But the Eretrians were not minded to offer battle;
25. Their only care, after they had decided not to quit the city, was to defend their walls.
26. And now their fortress was assaulted in good earnest, and for six days great numbers died on both sides.
27. But on the seventh day two of the citizens betrayed the city to the Persians.
28. These no sooner entered than they plundered and burnt everything, and carried away all the inhabitants as slaves.
29. The Persians, having thus subjected Eretria, set sail for Attica, planning to deal with the Athenians as they had dealt with the Eretrians.
30. And, because there was no place in Attica so convenient for their horse as Marathon,
31. And Marathon lay moreover quite close to Eretria, Hippias, son of Pisistratus, took them there.
32. When news of this reached the Athenians, they likewise marched their troops to Marathon, and there stood on the defensive,
33. Having at their head ten generals, of whom one was Miltiades.
Chapter 54
1. Now Miltiades’ father, Cimon, son of Stesagoras, had been banished from Athens by the tyrant Pisistratus.
2. During his banishment he had won the four-horse chariot race at Olympia, whereby he gained the very same honour which had before been carried off by his half-brother on his mother’s side, also called Miltiades.
3. At the next Olympiad Cimon won the prize again with the same mares; upon which he caused Pisistratus to be proclaimed the winner,
4. Having made an agreement with him that on yielding him this honour he should be allowed to come back to his country.
5. Afterwards, still with the same mares, he won the prize a third time; whereupon he was put to death by the sons of Pisistratus, whose father was no longer living.
6. They set men to lie in wait for Cimon secretly by night, and they murdered him near the government-house.
7. He was buried outside the city, beyond what is called the Valley Road; and right opposite his tomb were buried the mares that had won the three prizes.
8. The same success had likewise been achieved only once before, by the mares of Evagoras the Lacedaemonian.
9. At the time of Cimon’s death Stesagoras, the elder of his two sons, was in the Chersonese, where he lived with Miltiades his uncle;
10. The younger, who was called Miltiades after the founder of the Chersonesite colony, was with his father in Athens.
11. It was this Miltiades who now commanded the Athenians, having been elected general by the free choice of the people.
12. Before they left Athens the generals sent a herald to Sparta, one Pheidippides, who was by birth an Athenian, and by profession and practice a trained runner.
13. By sustained fast running he reached Sparta on the