Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/136

 118 HISTORY OF GREECE. r.o Ooae in fortifying the narrow isthmus by a wall reaching all across from Kardia to Paktya, a distance of about fo.ir miles and a half; so that the Absinthian invaders were for the time effect- ually shut out, 1 though the protection was not permanently kept up. He also entered into a war with Lampsakus, on the Asutic side of the strait, but was unfortunate enough to fall into an am- buscade and become a prisoner. Nothing preserved his life except the immediate interference of Crossus king of Lydia, coupled with strenuous menaces addressed to the Lampsakenes, who found themselves compelled to release their prisoner ; Milti- ades having acquired much favor with this prince, in what man- ner we are not told. He died childless some time afterward?, while his nephew Stesagoras, who succeeded him, perished by assassination, some time subsequent to the death of Peisistratus at Athens. 2 The expedition of Miltiades to the Chersonese must have occurred early after the first usurpation of Peisistratus, since even his imprisonment by the Lampsakenes happened before the ruin of Croesus, (546 B.C.) But it was not till much later, probably during the third and most powerful period of Peisistra- tus, that the latter undertook his expedition against Sigeium in the Troad. This place appears to have fallen into the hands >f the Mityleneans : Peisistratus retook it, 3 and placed there his illegitimate son Hegesistratus as despot. The Mityleneans may 1 Thus the Scythians broke into the Chersonese even during the govern ment of Miltiades son of Kimon, nephew of Miltiades the rekist, about forty years after the wall had been erected. (Herodot. vi, 40). Again, Perikles reestablished the cross-wall, on sending to the Chersonese a fresh band of one thousand Athenian settlers (Plutarch, Perikles, c. 19): lastly, Derkyllidas the Lacedaemonian built it anew, in consequence of loud com- plaints raised by the inhabitants of their defenceless condition, about 397 B.C. (Xenophon, Hcllen. iii, 2, 8-10.) So imperfect, however, did the pro- tection prove, that about half a century afterwards, during the first years of the conquests of Philip of Macedon, an idea was entertained of digging Ihrough the isthmus, and converting the peninsula into an island (Demrs- then6s, Philippic ii, 6, p. 92, and De Haloneso, c. 10, p. 86) ; an idea, hew- ever, never carried into effect. 2 Herodot. vi 38, 39. 3 Herodot. v, 94. I have already said that I conceive this as a different wnr from that in which the poet AJkseus was engaged.