Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/353

 ADVENTURES OF MILTIADES 38fi What part lie took in that revolt we do not know. But he availed himself of the period while the Persian satraps were employed in suppressing it, and deprived of the mastery of the sea, to expel, in conjunction with forces from Athens, both the Persian garrison and Pelasgic inhabitants from the islands of Lemnos and Imbros. The extinction of the Ionic revolt threat- ened him with ruin ; so that when the Phenician fleet, in the eummer following the capture of Miletus, made its conquering appearance in the Hellespont, he was forced to escape rapidly to Athens with his immediate friends and property, and with a small squadron of five ships. One of these ships, commanded by his son Metiochus, was actually captured between the Cherso- nese and Imbros ; and the Phenicians were most eager to cap- ture himself, 1 inasmuch as he was personally odious to Darius from his strenuous recommendation to destroy the bridge over the Danube. On arriving at Athens, after his escape from the Phe- nician fleet, he was brought to trial before the judicial popular assembly for alleged misgovernment in the Chersonese, or for what Herodotus calls " his despotism " there exercised. 2 Nor is it improbable, that the Athenian citizens settled in that peninsula may have had good reason to complain of him, the more so as he had carried out with him the maxims of government preva- lent at Athens under the Peisistratids, and had in his pay a body of Thracian mercenaries. However, the people at Athens honor- ably acquitted him, probably in part from the reputation which he had obtained as conqueror of Lemnos ; 3 and he was one of tht ten annually-elected generals of the republic, during the year of this Persian expedition, chosen at the beginning of the Attic year, shortly after the summer solstice, at a time when Datis and Hippias had actually sailed, and were known to be approach- ing. The character of Miltiades is one of great bravery and decision, qualities preeminently useful to his country on the present aisif?> and the more useful as he was under the strongest motive 1 Herodot. vi, 43-104. * Herodot. vi, 39-104. battle of Marathon. How much his reputation had been heightened bf the conquest of Lemnos, see Herodot. vi, 136.
 * Herodot. vi, 132. MtXriad^f, KOI irporepov cv6oKifiuv t. e. before th