ABSTRACT
I. On the Cilician coast the Persian armament encamped-thence, in a fleet of six hundred triremes, it sailed to Samos-passed through the midst
of the clustering Cyclades, and along that part of the Ægæan Sea called “the Icarian”, from the legendary fate of the son of Dædalus-invaded Naxos-burnt her town and temples, and sparing the sacred Delos, in which the Median Datis rever-
enced the traditionary birthplace of two deities analogous to those most honoured in the Persian creed1-awed into subjection the various isles, until it arrived at Eubœa, divided but by a strait from Attica, and containing the city of the Eretrians. The fleet first assailed Carystus, whose generous citizens refused both to aid against their neighbours, and to give hostages for their conduct. Closely besieged, and their lands wasted, they were compelled, however, to surrender to the Persians. Thence the victorious armament passed to Eretria. The Athenians had sent to the relief of that city the four thousand colonists whom they had established in the island-but fear, jealousy, division, were within the walls. Ruin seemed certain, and a chief of the Eretrians urged the colonists to quit a city which they were unable to save. They complied with the advice, and reached Attica in safety. Eretria, however, withstood a siege of six days; on the seventh the city was betrayed to the barbarians by two of that fatal oligarchical party, who in every Grecian city seem to have considered no enemy so detestable as the majority of their own citizens; the place was pillaged-the temples burnt-the inhabitants enslaved. Here the Persians rested for a few days ere they embarked for Attica.
