ABSTRACT
I. We have seen that Darius rewarded with a tributary command the services of Grecian nobles during his Scythian expedition. The most remark-
able of these deputy tyrants was Histiæus, the tyrant of Miletus. Possessed of that dignity prior to his connexion with Darius, he had received from the generosity of the monarch a tract of land near the river Strymon, in Thrace, sufficing for the erection of a city called Myrcinus. To his cousin, Aristagoras, he committed the government of Miletus-repaired to his new possession, and
employed himself actively in the foundations of a colony which promised to be one of the most powerful that Miletus had yet established. The site of the infant city was selected with admirable judgment upon a navigable river, in the vicinity of mines, and holding the key of commercial communication between the long chain of Thracian tribes on the one side, and the trading enterprise of Grecian cities on the other. Histiæus was describing the walls with which the ancient cities were surrounded, when Megabazus, commander of the forces intended to consummate the conquest of Thrace, had the sagacity to warn the Persian king, then at Sardis, of the probable effects of the regal donation. “Have you, sire, done wisely”, said he, “in permitting this able and active Greek to erect a new city in Thrace? Know you not that that favoured land, abounding in mines of silver, possesses also every advantage for the construction and equipment of ships; wild Greeks and roving barbarians
any resolute and aspiring leader? Fear the possibility of a civil war-prevent the chances of the ambition of Histiæus,—have recourse to artifice rather than to force,—get him in your power, and prevent his return to Greece.”
