Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/59

 ATHENS AND SPARTA 47 Now King Darius was very wroth when he began to be aware that these insignificant Greek cities were making light of his power ; and when he had leisure, he listened to the complaints of Hippias, the son of Pisistratus, and sent a very great army, in- tending to set up Hippias as despot again at Athens, Marathon, and to order the other Greek cities to pay tribute. 49 <> B.C. But the Greek states in their own wars with each other had learnt to fight under discipline. No one else was ready to come to the help of the Athenians except the valiant folk of the little city of Plataea, which lay not many miles distant. Nevertheless the Athenians resolved to do battle for their freedom, and their army marched out to meet the great host of the Persians, where — ' The mountains look on Marathon And Marathon looks on the sea.' The Persian troops were ten to one — we cannot be very sure of the exact numbers — and they were reputed to be invincible soldiers, since they had overthrown Lydia and Babylon and Egypt. Nevertheless, the Greeks charged against them across the plain, shattered their ranks, and drove them down to their ships with a great slaughter ; indeed, they were hard put to it to escape at all. King Darius would have sent another army against the Greeks, but there was a revolt in Egypt against the Persian sway which delayed matters. So it was not till ten years after the Athenians had won the glorious victory of Marathon, when 2 The ffreat Darius was dead, that his son Xerxes raised a invasion, gigantic armament to overwhelm the Greeks. For 480 B,c - though Sparta and the rest had left Athens to fight by herself, they had agreed that they would pay no tribute to Persia. In the meantime a very clever Athenian named Themistocles had become the leading statesman at Athens, and by his advice the Athenians had been working hard to build and to train a very powerful navy. For Themistocles saw that the Greek state which had the strongest navy was almost certain to become the leader of the cities which stood on the sea, both among the islands and on the mainland. Also he saw that if the Greek fleets could defeat the Persian fleets on the seas, the Persians