Page:Constantinople by Brodribb.djvu/28

 to date Greek fame and grandeur. Byzantium joined the revolt, but its people were soon frightened into submission to the Persians by the approach of a vast Phœnician fleet, and, along with a host of fugitives from their neighbours of Chalcedon, who shared their panic, they sailed away northward into the Euxine, and settled themselves on its western shores at Mesembria, under the extremity of the Haemus range. Their own fair city, with many others in those part, was burnt to the ground, according to Herodotus, and we hear nothing more about it till the contest between the East and the West was decided by the victory of Plataea, in 479 B.C. The Spartan, Pausanias, who on that memorable day had commanded the Greek army, recovered the place from a Persian garrison for its old inhabitants, and, as he must have wished to restore them something better than a heap of ruins, he came to be spoken of as its founder. The fortunes of the city were now once more identified with those of the Greek world. It was at first its lot to become one of the maritime dependencies of Athens, which, soon after the war with Persia, occupied with colonists the fruitful lands of the Thracian Chersonese, and pushed her fleets through the Hellespont into the Propontis and Euxine. It was to be expected that Byzantium would fall under the control of such a power, and its possession was of course financially very valuable to Athens. Trading vessels from the Euxine would thus be made to swell the Athenian revenue. But when Athens lost both a fleet and an army in the disastrous expedition to Sicily, her loosely compacted