Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/120

92 order from Artaphernes to readmit Hippias (who had retired to Sigeium and thence visited Sardis) "if they wished to be safe." This determined the Athenians to hold no terms with him, but openly to oppose the Persians everywhere. They soon had an opportunity of giving a practical exhibition of this policy.

For about five years (B.C. 507–502) after the Persian power had been asserted in the Greek cities of Thrace, and in the northern islands, the period of unfamiliar calm remained unbroken by alarms of war or revolution. But that there was smouldering discontent was shown by the rapidity with which the flame of rebellion spread when once the spark was put to the material. The jealousy of the Persian government was easily aroused. Histiaeus of Miletus had been rewarded for his services in keeping up the bridge over the Danube by a grant of land at Myrkinos, near what was afterwards Amphipolis. There he settled, leaving the government of Miletus to his son-in-law Aristogaras. But before long his activity in his new home woke the distrust of the Persian commander Otanes, and in consequence of his report Histiaeus was summoned to join the king on the honourable pretext of the need of his counsel, and was taken off by him in his train to Susa. Meanwhile affairs seemed going smoothly in Ionia without any sign of an outbreak.

But this peaceful state of things came to an end in B.C. 502 with a revolution in the island of Naxos, the largest of the Cyclades. The Persians as yet had no hold on the Cyclades, though Arta-