Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/333

 THEBES AND ^GINA SUBMIT TO DARIUS. 815 of Skapte Hyle. As in other cases, so in this : the jealousies among subject neighbors often procured revelations to the supe- rior power : the proceedings of the Thasians were made known, and they were forced to raze their fortifications as well as to sur- render all their ships to the Persians at Abdera. 1 Though dissatisfied with Mardonius, Darius was only the more eagerly bent on his project of conquering Greece, and Hippias was at his side to keep alive his wrath against the Athenians. 9 Orders were despatched to the maritime cities of his empire to equip both ships of war and horse-transports for a renewed attempt. His intentions were probably known in Greece itself by this time, from the recent march of his army to Macedonia ; but he thought it advisable to send heralds round to most of the Grecian cities, in order to require from each the formal token of submission, earth and water ; and thus to ascertain what extent of resistance his intended expedition was likely to experience. The answers received were to a high degree favorable. Many of the conti- nental Greeks sent their submission, as well as all those islanders to whom application was made. Among the former, we are probably to reckon the Thebans and Thessalians, though Herod- otus does not particularize them. Among the latter, Naxos, Euboea, and some of the smaller islands, are not included ; but ^Egina, at that time the first maritime power of Greece, is ex- pressly included. 3 Nothing marks so clearly the imminent peril in which the liber- ties of Greece, were now placed, and the terror inspired by the Persians after their reconquest of Ionia, as this abasement on the part of the .ZEginetans, whose commerce with the Asiatic islands and continent, doubtless impressed them strongly with the melan- choly consequences of unsuccessful resistance to the Great King. But on the present occasion, their conduct was dictated as much by antipathy to Athens as by fear, so that Greece was thus threatened with the intrusion of the Persian arm as ally and arbiter in her internal contests : a contingency which, if it had 1 Herodot. vi, 46-48. See a similar case of disclosure arising from jeal oasy between Tenedos and Lesbos (Thucyd. iii, 2).
 * Herodot. vi, 94.
 * Herodot. vi. 48-49 ; viii. 4fi.