Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/278

 260 HISTORY OF GREECE. expedition of Darius, -with his own personal command and fresh appetite for conquest, been directed against Greece instead of against Scythia (between 516-514 B.C.), Grecian independence would have perished almost infallibly. For Athens was then still governed by the Peisistratids ; what she was, under them, we have had occasion to notice in a former chapter. She had then no courage for energetic self-defence, and probably Hippias himself, far from offering resistance, would have found it advan- tageous to accept Persian dominion as a means of strengthening his own rule, like the Ionian despots : moreover, Grecian habit of cooperation was then only just commencing. But fortunately, the Persian invader did not touch the shore of Greece until more than twenty years afterwards, in 490 B.C. ; and during that precious interval, the Athenian character had undergone the memorable revolution which has been before described. Their energy and their organization had been alike improved, and their force of resistance had become decupled ; moreover, their conduct had so provoked the Persian that resistance was then a matter of necessity with them, and submission on tolerable terms an impossibility. When we come to the grand Persian invasion of Greece, we shall see that Athens was the life and soul of all the opposition offered. "We shall see farther, that with all the efforts of Athens, the success of the defence was more than once doubtful ; and would have been converted into a very different result, if Xerxes had listened to the best of his own counsellors. But had Darius, at the head of the very same force which he conducted into Scythia, or even an inferior force, landed at Mar- athon in 514 B.C., instead of sending Datis in 490 B.C-, he would have found no men like the victors of Marathon Co meet him. As far as we can appreciate the probabilities, he would have met with little resistance except from the Spartans singly, who would have maintained their own very defensible territory against all his efforts, like the Mysians and Pisidia- is in Asia Minor, or like the Mainots of Laconia in later days ; but Hellas generally would have become a Persian satrapy. Fortunately, Darius, while bent on invading some country, had set his mind on the attack of Scythia, alike perilous and unprofitable. Ilia personal ardor was wasted on those unconquerable regions, where he narrowly escaped the disastrous fate of Cyrus, nor