Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/350

 832 HISTORY OF GREECE. the city, yet so manifest was the absence of that stoutness of heart which could alone avail to save it, that a leading Eretrian named ^Eschines was not ashamed to forewarn the four thousand Athenian allies of the coming treason, and urge them to save themselves before it was too late. They followed his advice and passed over to Attica by way of Oropus ; while the Persians dis- embarked their troops, and even their horses, in expectation that the Eretrians would come out and fight, at Tamynae and other places in the territory. As the Eretrians did not come out, they proceeded to lay siege to the city, and for some days met with a brave resistance, so that the loss on both sides was considerable. At length two of the leading citizens, Euphorbus and Philagrus, with others, betrayed Eretria to the besiegers ; its temples were burnt, and its inhabitants dragged into slavery. 1 It is impossible to credit the exaggerated statement of Plato, which is applied by him to the Persians at Eretria, as it had been before applied by Herodotus to the Persians at Chios and Samos, that they swept the territory clean of inhabitants by joining hands and forming a line across its whole breadth. 2 Evidently, this is an idea illustrating the possible effects of numbers and ruinous conquest, which has been woven into the tissue of historical state- ments, like so many other illustrative ideas in the writings of Greek authors. That a large proportion of the inhabitants were carried away as prisoners, there can be no doubt. But the traitors who betrayed the town were spared and rewarded by the The story told by Herakleides Ponticus (ap. Athenoe. xii, p. 536), of an earlier Persian armament which had assailed Eretria and failed, cannot be at all understood ; it rather looks like a mythe to explain the origin of the great wealth possessed by the family of Kallias at Athens, the AC/CKO- TrAouroc. There is another story, having the same explanatory object, in Plutarch, Aristeides, c. 5. 1 Herodot. vi, 101, 102. 33; Herodot. "vi, 31: compare Strabo, x, p. 446, who ascribes to Herod- otus the statement of Plato about the aayrjvevaie of Eretria. Plato says nothing about the betrayal of the city. It is to be remarked that, in the passage of the Treatise de Legibtr?, Plato mentions this story (about the Persians having swept the territory of Eretria clean of its inhabitants) with some doubt as to its truth, and ad if it T?ere a rumor intentionally circulated byDatis with a view to fri.hten the Athenians. But in the Menexenus. the story is given as if it were an authentic historical fact.
 * Plato, Legg. iii, p. 698, and Menexen. c. 10, p. 240; Diogen. Laert. iii