Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/129

Rh as had not escaped to the interior were removed to the island of Styra to await transport to Asia.

And now came the crowning event of the invasion which has made the name of one man and of one small spot of earth immortal. In the Persian fleet was Hippias, once tyrant of Athens, now old and weary, but still set upon recovering his power. It was at his suggestion that the Persian commanders selected the shore of the Bay of Marathon as the place of landing upon Attic soil. The original intention had probably been to bail round Sunium and blockade Phalerum. But Hippias knew the advantages of Marathon, for he had once before landed there with his father Pisistratus, when he, too, came to capture Athens. The Persians, moreover, had brought a considerable body of horsemen, and skirting the bay of Marathon was a plain six miles in length and about a mile and a half in depth which would be more convenient for cavalry than the ground round the city.

Meanwhile, at Athens there had been a division of opinion. One party had wished to await the attack of the Persians at home, whether they came by sea to Phalerum or overland from Oropus or its neighbourhood; the other wished to march out of the city and meet them on the road which they believed the Persians intended to take. Miltiades, who had returned to Athens as a private citizen, after having been tyrant of the Chersonese, and was now one of the strategi, had all along been in favour of the latter course, and the news that the enemy had actually landed at Marathon seems to have settled the doubt. With