Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/308

 90 HISTORY OF GREECE. sympathetic, while the Spartans had none. Secondly, the ulti- mate result of their interference, as it stood in the time of Herod- otus, though purchased by severe intermediate hardship, wag one eminently gainful and glorifying, not less to Athens than to Greece. 1 When Aristagoras returned, he seems to have found the Per- sians engaged in the siege of Miletus. The twenty Athenian ships soon crossed the .zEgean, and found there five Eretrian ships which had also come to the succor of the lonians; tho Eretrians generously taking this opportunity to repay assistance formerly rendered to them by the Milesians in their ancient war with Chalkis. On the arrival of these allies, Aristagoras organ- ized an expedition from Ephesus up to Sardis, under the com- mand of his brother Charopinus, with others. The ships were left at Koressus, 2 a mountain and seaport five miles from Ephesus, while the troops marched up under Ephesian guides, first, along the river Kayster, next, across the mountain range of Tmolus to Sardis. Artaphernes had not troops enough to do more than hold the strong citadel, so that the assailants possessed themselves of the town without opposition. But he immediately recalled his force near Miletus, 3 and summoned Persians and Lydians from all the neighboring districts, thus becoming more than a match for Charopinus ; who found himself, moreover, obliged to evacu- ate Sardis, owing to an accidental conflagration. Most of tho houses in that city were built in great part with reeds or straw, and all of them had thatched roofs ; hence it happened that a spark touching one of them set the whole city in flame. Obliged to abandon their dwellings by this accident, the population of the town congregated in the market-place, and as reinforcements were hourly crowding in, the position of the lonians and Athe- 1 Herodot. v, 98 ; Homer, Iliad, v, 62. The criticism of Plutarch (Dc Malignitat. Herodot. p. 861 ) on this passage, is rather more pertinent than the criticisms in that ill-tempered composition generally are. 8 About Koressus, see Diodor. xiv, 99, and Xenophon, Hellen. i, 2, 7. 3 Charon of Lampsakus, and Lysanias in his history of Eretria, eeem to have mentioned this first siege of Miletus, and the fact of its being raised in consequence of the expedition to Sardis ; see Plutarch, de Herodot Malignit. p. 861, though the citation is given there confu edly, so thai ve cannot make much out of it.