c. 430 BC 2026
This is an AI modernization of The Histories into contemporary English. The original is available from Standard Ebooks. Also available as an epub.
Herodotus came from Halicarnassus, a Greek city on the coast of what is now Turkey and at that time part of the Persian empire. He wrote around 430 BC, fifty years after the war his book builds toward. His purpose is in his first sentence: to set down what he had found out, so that great deeds would not fade with time, and above all so that the reason the Greeks and the Persians fought each other would be preserved. Nobody had written a book like it before. Cicero called him the father of history and the name stuck.
He takes his time getting to the war. Book One is mostly about Croesus of Lydia, a rich king who misread an oracle and lost his kingdom to the Persians. Book Two is Egypt from end to end — the Nile, the pyramids, mummification, the crocodile, the priests and what they eat. Book Four is Scythia and Libya: burial mounds, scalps used as hand towels, a people said to turn into wolves for a few days every year. Then the Persians move west, the Greek cities of Asia revolt, Darius sends an army that is beaten at Marathon in 490 BC, and ten years later his son Xerxes comes with everything he has. The nine books are named after the Muses, a tidy piece of work by later editors rather than by Herodotus.
The digressions are the book, not an interruption of it, and the reason is his method. He collects. He tells you who told him a story, gives you two or three versions when he has them, and says plainly when he does not believe what he has just written down — his rule is that he is obliged to report what people say and not obliged to believe it. Thucydides, writing a generation later about a war he had fought in, worked the opposite way: he composed the speeches himself and stated a method at the start. That history is in this collection too, and the two men together are where the whole business of writing history comes from.
What most readers come for is in Books Seven to Nine. Xerxes has the Hellespont whipped for wrecking his bridges. Three hundred Spartans hold the pass at Thermopylae. The Greek fleet fights in the narrows at Salamis while the king watches from the foot of a hill on the shore, and the following summer the armies meet at Plataea. Herodotus is at his best there and he is still the same man who wanted to know how they embalm a cat.
This edition is the complete work, all nine books and every digression, modernized from G. C. Macaulay's English translation of 1890. His section numbers are kept, so any passage can be found in another edition, and his distances and weights are given in miles, feet and pounds, except where he is doing arithmetic with his own units.
Book One: Clio
Book Two: Euterpe
Book Three: Thalia
Book Four: Melpomene
Book Five: Terpsichore
Book Six: Erato
Book Seven: Polymnia
Book Eight: Urania
Book Nine: Calliope
This is the account of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, set down so that the deeds of men may not be forgotten with time, and so that the great and marvelous works done by Greeks and non-Greeks alike may not lose their fame; and above all, so that the reason they went to war with each other may be remembered.
1. The Persians who know their history say that the Phoenicians started the quarrel. The Phoenicians, they say, came from the sea the Greeks call the Erythraean, the Persian Gulf, to our sea, the Mediterranean. They settled in the land where they still live today, and right away they took to making long voyages. They carried Egyptian and Assyrian goods to many places, and one of the places they came to was Argos. At that time Argos was in every way the leading city of the country now called Greece. So the Phoenicians arrived at Argos and began to sell off their cargo. On the fifth or sixth day after they arrived, when nearly all their goods were sold, a large crowd of women came down to the shore, and among them was the king's daughter. Her name, and the Greeks agree on this, was Io, the daughter of Inachus. The women were standing near the stern of the ship, buying whatever wares they liked best, when suddenly the Phoenicians passed the word to one another and rushed at them. Most of the women ran off and got away, but Io and some others were seized. The Phoenicians put them on board and sailed off at once for Egypt.
2. That, according to the Persians, is how Io came to Egypt; here they do not agree with the Greeks. And this, they say, was the first wrong. After this, they say, some Greeks (they can't say which people) put in at Tyre in Phoenicia and carried off the king's daughter Europa. These would presumably have been Cretans. That made them even for the first injury. But after this, they say, it was the Greeks who committed the second wrong. They sailed in a warship, the Argo of Jason and his crew, to Aea in Colchis, on the river Phasis at the far eastern end of the Black Sea, and when they had finished the other business they came for, they carried off the king's daughter Medea. The king of Colchis sent a herald to Greece to demand compensation for the kidnapping and to ask for his daughter back. But the Greeks answered that since the non-Greeks (the "barbarians," as the Greeks called anyone whose language was not Greek) had paid them no compensation for kidnapping Io of Argos, they would pay the non-Greeks none for this one.
3. In the next generation after this, they say, Alexander the son of Priam, the prince of Troy also called Paris, heard of these things and decided to get himself a wife from Greece by force. He was quite sure he would never have to pay for this wrong, since the Greeks had not paid for theirs. So he carried off Helen, the wife of Menelaus of Sparta. The Greeks decided first to send messengers to demand her back and to ask compensation for the kidnapping. When they made this demand, the other side threw the kidnapping of Medea back at them: the Greeks now wanted compensation from others, they said, though they had paid none themselves and had refused to hand the girl back when asked.
4. Up to this point, they say, it was only a matter of women being carried off on both sides. But after this the Greeks were very much to blame, because they started the fighting: they invaded Asia before the non-Greeks ever invaded Europe. Now, in the Persians' judgment, carrying off women by force is the act of wrongdoers, but making a great business of revenge for it is the act of fools; the sensible thing is to pay no attention once the women are gone, since obviously they would never be carried off if they did not want to go. And the Persians say that they, the people of Asia, made nothing of it when their women were carried off, but that the Greeks, for the sake of one woman from Sparta, gathered a great army, came to Asia, and destroyed the kingdom of Priam. From that time on, they say, they have always regarded the Greeks as their enemies. For the Persians claim Asia and the non-Greek peoples who live there as their own, while they consider Europe and the Greeks to be a separate world.
5. That is how the Persians say it happened, and they trace the start of their hostility to the Greeks back to the taking of Troy. But about Io the Phoenicians do not tell the story the way the Persians do. They deny that they took her to Egypt by force. They say instead that while they were at Argos she slept with the captain of their ship, and when she found she was pregnant she was ashamed to tell her parents, so she sailed away with the Phoenicians of her own free will, so as not to be found out. Those are the stories the Persians and the Phoenicians each tell. I am not going to say that these things happened one way or the other. Instead I will point out the man who, to my own knowledge, first began to wrong the Greeks, and then I will go on with my story, covering the cities of men, small and great alike. For most of the cities that were great long ago have become small, and the ones that were great in my own time used to be small. So, since I know that human prosperity never stays in one place for long, I will give both kinds their due.
6. Croesus was a Lydian by birth, the son of Alyattes, and ruler of the nations on this side of the river Halys. That river flows up from the south between the Syrians and the Paphlagonians and empties northward into the sea called the Euxine, the Black Sea. Croesus was the first non-Greek we know of who conquered some of the Greeks and made them pay tribute, while he won others over as friends. The ones he conquered were the Ionians, the Aeolians, and the Dorians who live in Asia; the ones he made his friends were the Spartans. Before Croesus' reign all the Greeks were free. The raid of the Cimmerians, a nomad people from north of the Black Sea, which struck Ionia before Croesus' time, was not a conquest of the cities, only a plundering expedition.
7. Now this is how the throne, which had belonged to the Heraclids, passed to Croesus' family, the Mermnads. Candaules, whom the Greeks call Myrsilus, was ruler of Sardis and a descendant of Alcaeus son of Heracles. Agron son of Ninus son of Belus son of Alcaeus was the first of the Heraclids to become king of Sardis, and Candaules son of Myrsus was the last. The kings who ruled this land before Agron were descended from Lydus son of Atys, after whom this whole people came to be called Lydians; before that they were called Meonians. The Heraclids, descended from Heracles and a slave girl of Iardanus, took over the government from these earlier kings; it was entrusted to them because of an oracle. They reigned for twenty-two generations, five hundred and five years, handing the power down from father to son, until the time of Candaules son of Myrsus.
8. This Candaules fell passionately in love with his own wife, and being in love, he was convinced that she was by far the most beautiful woman in the world. Believing this, he used to talk to Gyges son of Dascylus, the one among his bodyguards he liked best. He shared his most important business with Gyges, and he also used to praise his wife's beauty to him, far beyond all measure. Not long after, since disaster was fated to fall on Candaules, he said this to Gyges: "Gyges, I don't think you believe me when I tell you how beautiful my wife is. People's ears are less trusting than their eyes. So find a way to see her naked." Gyges cried out and said: "Master, what a foolish thing to say, telling me to look at my mistress naked! When a woman takes off her clothes, she takes off her modesty with them. Men worked out long ago the good sayings we ought to learn from, and one of them is this: each man should look at what is his own. I do believe she is the most beautiful of all women, and I beg you not to ask me to do what is wrong."
9. With words like these he resisted, afraid that some harm would come to him from it. But the king answered him: "Don't worry, Gyges, and don't be afraid, either of me, that I'm saying this to test you, or of my wife, that she might do you some harm. I will arrange it from the start so that she won't even know you have seen her. I'll put you in the room where we sleep, behind the open door. After I go in, my wife will come to bed too. There is a chair near the entrance of the room, and she will lay her clothes on it as she takes them off one by one. That way you will be able to look at her at your leisure. Then, when she walks from the chair to the bed and her back is to you, make sure she doesn't see you as you slip out through the door."
10. Since there was no way out, Gyges agreed. When Candaules thought it was time for bed, he led Gyges to the bedroom, and right after that his wife came in too. Gyges watched her come in and lay down her clothes. When her back was turned to him as she went to the bed, he slipped out of his hiding place and started to leave. But as he went out, the woman caught sight of him. She understood what her husband had done. She did not cry out, though she felt the shame of it, and she acted as if she had noticed nothing, because she meant to take revenge on Candaules. For among the Lydians, as among most other non-Greek peoples, it is a disgrace even for a man to be seen naked.
11. So for the moment she kept quiet, as I said, and gave no sign. But as soon as day came, she got ready the servants she knew were most loyal to her, and then sent for Gyges. He had no idea she knew anything of what had happened, and he came when she called, since he was used to going whenever the queen sent for him. When Gyges arrived, the woman said to him: "Gyges, two roads lie open to you now, and I give you the choice of which you will take. Either you kill Candaules and have both me and the kingdom of Lydia, or you must be killed yourself, here and now, so that you never again obey Candaules in everything and see what you should not. Either he must die, the man who planned this, or you must, the man who looked at me naked and did what is not allowed." For a while Gyges was stunned by what she said. Then he began to beg her not to force him to make such a choice. But he could not move her, and he saw that he truly had to choose: kill his master, or be killed by others himself. He chose to live. Then he asked her: "Since you are forcing me to kill my master against my will, tell me how we are going to attack him." She answered: "The attack will come from the same place where he showed me naked. We will attack him while he sleeps."
12. So they made their plan, and when night came (Gyges was not allowed to leave, and there was no escape for him: either he must be killed or Candaules must), he followed the woman to the bedroom. She gave him a dagger and hid him behind that very same door. Later, while Candaules was asleep, Gyges crept up to him and killed him, and so he won both the wife and the kingdom. The poet Archilochus of Paros, who lived at about that time, also mentioned Gyges in a poem in iambic verse.
13. Gyges won the kingdom, though, and was made secure in it, by the oracle at Delphi. The Lydians were furious about what had been done to Candaules and took up arms. But Gyges' followers and the rest of the Lydians came to an agreement: if the oracle declared that Gyges was to be king of the Lydians, he would be king; if not, he would give the power back to the descendants of Heracles. The oracle gave its answer, and so Gyges became king. Yet the Pythia, Apollo's priestess at Delphi who speaks his oracles, also said this: that vengeance for the Heraclids would come upon Gyges' descendants in the fifth generation. The Lydians and their kings paid no attention to this prophecy until it actually came true.
14. So the Mermnads drove out the Heraclids and took the throne. When Gyges became king he sent a great many offerings to Delphi. Of all the silver offerings at Delphi, more are his than anyone else's. Besides the silver he gave an enormous amount of gold, and in particular one gift more worth mentioning than the rest: six golden mixing bowls, the great bowls the Greeks mixed their wine and water in, which stand there as his offering. They weigh thirty talents, something like 1,700 pounds (the talent is a weight as well as a sum of money, and a talent of silver, about fifty-seven pounds of it, is a fortune). The bowls stand in the treasury of the Corinthians, though in truth this treasury does not belong to the people of Corinth but to Cypselus son of Aetion. This Gyges was the first non-Greek we know of to dedicate offerings at Delphi, except only Midas son of Gordias, king of Phrygia, who dedicated the royal throne he used to sit on when he judged cases in public. The throne is well worth seeing, and it stands in the same place as Gyges' bowls. The people of Delphi call the gold and silver Gyges dedicated "Gygian," after the man who gave it.
As soon as he became king, Gyges also led an army against Miletus and Smyrna, and he took the lower town of Colophon. But he did no other great deed in his reign, which lasted thirty-eight years, so we will pass him by with no more than has already been said.
15. Now I will speak of Ardys son of Gyges, who became king after him. Ardys took Priene and invaded the territory of Miletus. While he was ruling at Sardis, the Cimmerians, driven from their homes by the nomad Scythians, came into Asia and took Sardis, all except the citadel.
16. After Ardys had been king for forty-nine years, his son Sadyattes succeeded him and reigned twelve years, and after him came Alyattes. Alyattes made war on Cyaxares, the descendant of Deioces, and on the Medes. He drove the Cimmerians out of Asia, he took Smyrna, which had been founded from Colophon, and he invaded the territory of Clazomenae. From there he did not come back the way he wanted to, but with heavy losses. During his reign, though, he did other things very much worth mentioning, as follows.
17. He made war on Miletus, a war he had inherited from his father. This is how he used to invade their land and besiege Miletus. Whenever the crops in the fields were ripe, he would lead an army into their territory, marching to the music of pipes and harps and flutes, both low-pitched and high-pitched. When he came into the land of Miletus, he did not knock down the houses out in the countryside, or set fire to them, or tear off their doors; he left them standing as they were. But he destroyed the trees and the crops in the fields, and then went back the way he had come. The Milesians controlled the sea, so there was no point in his army trying to blockade them. And he left the houses standing so that the Milesians would have places to live while they sowed and worked the land, and so that their labor would give him something to destroy whenever he invaded.
18. He kept up this war against them for eleven years, and in the course of those years the Milesians suffered two great defeats: once in a battle at Limenion in their own territory, and again on the plain of the Maeander River. For six of the eleven years Sadyattes son of Ardys was still king of the Lydians, and he was the one who invaded Milesian land at those times of year; for it was this Sadyattes who started the war. For the five years that followed those first six, the war was carried on by Alyattes son of Sadyattes, who inherited it from his father (as I said before) and threw himself into it hard. None of the Ionians helped the Milesians carry the burden of this war except the people of Chios. The Chians came to their aid to repay a favor in kind, because the Milesians had earlier helped the Chians all through their war with the people of Erythrae.
19. Then in the twelfth year of the war, while the Lydian army was burning the standing grain, this happened. As soon as the grain caught fire, a strong wind drove the flames onto the temple of Athena called Athena of Assesus, and the temple caught fire and burned to the ground. At the time nobody thought anything of it. But later, after the army had gone back to Sardis, Alyattes fell sick. His illness dragged on, so he sent messengers to consult the oracle at Delphi, either because someone advised him to or because he himself thought it best to send and ask the god about his illness. But when the messengers reached Delphi, the Pythia said she would give them no answer until they had rebuilt the temple of Athena they had burned at Assesus in the territory of Miletus.
20. This much I know from what the people of Delphi told me. But the Milesians add to it that Periander son of Cypselus, who was a close guest-friend of Thrasybulus, then the tyrant of Miletus (a tyrant being a man who has seized sole power outside the law, not necessarily a cruel one), heard of the oracle given to Alyattes. Periander sent a messenger to tell Thrasybulus, so that he would know about it ahead of time and could plan whatever the situation required. That is the story the Milesians tell.
21. When this answer was reported to Alyattes, he sent a herald to Miletus at once, wanting to make a truce with Thrasybulus and the Milesians for as long as it took him to build the temple. So the envoy was on his way to Miletus. Meanwhile Thrasybulus, who had been told the whole story in advance and knew what Alyattes intended to do, came up with this trick. He gathered into the marketplace all the food that could be found in the city, both his own and what belonged to private citizens, and he announced to the Milesians that when he gave the signal they were all to start drinking and celebrating together.
22. Thrasybulus did this and gave this order so that the herald from Sardis would see a huge quantity of food piled up carelessly and the people feasting, and would report it to Alyattes. And that is just what happened. The herald saw all this, delivered to Thrasybulus the message the king of Lydia had given him, and went back to Sardis; and the peace that followed came about, as I am told, for this reason alone. Alyattes believed there was a severe famine in Miletus and that the people had been worn down to the depths of misery, and when the herald came back from Miletus he heard the opposite of what he had expected. After this the two sides made peace, on terms that they would be guest-friends and allies to each other. Alyattes built two temples to Athena at Assesus instead of one, and he recovered from his illness. That is how things went in the war Alyattes waged against the Milesians and Thrasybulus.
23. As for Periander, the man who told Thrasybulus about the oracle, he was the son of Cypselus and tyrant of Corinth. The Corinthians say (and the people of Lesbos agree with them) that a very great wonder happened in his lifetime: Arion of Methymna was carried ashore at Taenarum on the back of a dolphin. This Arion was a lyre-player second to none of his day, and the first, as far as we know, to compose a dithyramb, the choral hymn to Dionysus; he gave it that name and trained a chorus to perform it at Corinth.
24. This Arion, they say, spent most of his time at Periander's court, but he got the urge to sail to Italy and Sicily. There he made a great deal of money, and then he wanted to go back to Corinth. So he set out from Taras, in southern Italy, and since he trusted Corinthians more than anyone else, he hired a ship with a Corinthian crew. Out on the open sea, the story goes, the crew plotted to throw Arion overboard and keep his money. He found out about it and begged them, offering them his money and asking them to let him live. But he could not persuade them. The men taking him told him either to kill himself, so that he could have a burial on land, or to jump into the sea at once. Driven into this corner, Arion begged them, since that was their decision, to let him stand on the deck in his full singer's costume and sing, and he promised to kill himself after he had sung. They were delighted at the thought of hearing the best singer in the world, and they moved back from the stern to the middle of the ship. He put on his full costume, took up his lyre, stood on the deck, and performed the Orthian strain, a high, ringing hymn. When the song was over he threw himself into the sea just as he was, costume and all. The crew sailed on to Corinth. But a dolphin, they say, took Arion on its back and carried him ashore at Taenarum. When he reached land he went on to Corinth, still in his costume, and when he got there he told the whole story. Periander did not believe him. He kept Arion under guard and would not let him go anywhere, while he kept a careful lookout for the men who had carried him. When they arrived, Periander called them in and asked whether they had any news of Arion. They said he was safe and well in Italy, and that they had left him doing nicely at Taras. At that moment Arion suddenly appeared in front of them, looking just as he had when he jumped from the ship. They were so astonished that, when they were questioned, they could no longer deny it. That is the story the Corinthians and the people of Lesbos both tell, and at Taenarum there is an offering of Arion's, not very large: a bronze figure of a man riding on a dolphin.
25. After waging this war against the Milesians, Alyattes the Lydian eventually died, having reigned fifty-seven years. When he recovered from his illness, this king had dedicated an offering at Delphi, the second of his family to do so: a great silver mixing bowl with a stand of welded iron. The stand is a sight worth seeing above all the offerings at Delphi. It is the work of Glaucus of Chios, the first man in the world to discover the art of welding iron.
26. After Alyattes died, his son Croesus inherited the kingdom at the age of thirty-five. As I said, he fought against the Greeks, and the first of them he attacked were the Ephesians. When he besieged them, the Ephesians dedicated their city to Artemis by tying a rope from her temple to the city wall. The distance between the old city, which was the one under siege then, and the temple is about 4,200 feet, a little under a mile. These were the first Greeks Croesus attacked, but afterward he did the same to the other Ionian and Aeolian cities, one by one, accusing them of one thing or another. Where he could find serious grounds he brought serious charges; against some of them he charged only trivial offenses.
27. When the Greeks in Asia had been conquered and made to pay tribute, he planned next to build ships and attack the islanders. When everything was ready for the shipbuilding, they say that Bias of Priene came to Sardis (or, according to another version, Pittacus of Mytilene). Croesus asked him whether there was any news from Greece, and his answer put an end to the shipbuilding. "My king," he said, "the islanders are hiring 10,000 cavalry, and they mean to march on Sardis and fight you." Croesus thought he was telling the truth and said: "If only the gods would put it into the islanders' heads to come against the sons of the Lydians on horseback!" The other answered: "My king, I can see you are eager to catch the islanders on horseback on the mainland, and it is natural you should want that. But what do you think the islanders want? Ever since they heard you were going to build ships against them, what have they been praying for except to catch the Lydians at sea, so they can take revenge on you for the Greeks on the mainland whom you hold as slaves?" Croesus, they say, was delighted with this ending, and he took the advice, since he thought it was well said. He stopped building ships, and instead he made a treaty of friendship with the Ionians who lived on the islands.
28. As time went on, nearly all the peoples on this side of the river Halys were conquered. Except for the Cilicians and the Lycians, Croesus conquered every nation there and kept it under his rule: the Lydians, Phrygians, Mysians, Mariandynians, Chalybians, Paphlagonians, the Thracians both Thynian and Bithynian, the Carians, Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians and Pamphylians.
29. Once these had been conquered, and while Croesus was still adding to his Lydian empire, all the wise men of Greece who happened to be alive at the time came to Sardis, which was then at the height of its wealth, each brought there by his own reasons. One of them was Solon the Athenian. Solon had made laws for the Athenians at their request, and then he left home for ten years. He sailed off saying that he wanted to see the world, but really it was so that he would not be forced to repeal any of the laws he had made. The Athenians could not repeal them on their own, because they had bound themselves by solemn oaths to live for ten years under whatever laws Solon gave them.
30. So for this reason, and to see the world, Solon left home and visited Amasis, the king of Egypt, and then Croesus at Sardis. When he arrived, Croesus welcomed him as a guest in the royal palace. Then, on the third or fourth day, on Croesus' orders his servants took Solon around to see his treasuries and showed him everything, how great and splendid it all was. When Solon had looked at all of it and examined it as he pleased, Croesus asked him: "My Athenian friend, we have heard a great deal about you, both about your wisdom and about your travels: how you have gone through many lands to see them, in your search for wisdom. So now I have a great wish to ask you whether, of all the people you have seen, there is anyone you think is the happiest of all." He asked this because he thought he himself was the happiest man in the world. But Solon did not flatter him at all; he told the truth. "Yes, my king," he said: "Tellus the Athenian." Croesus was amazed at this and demanded: "Why do you judge Tellus to be the happiest?" Solon said: "First, Tellus lived when his city was prospering, and he had fine, good sons, and he saw children born to every one of them, and all of them lived to grow up. Second, he was well off by our standards, and at the end of his life he had a most glorious death. When the Athenians fought a battle at Eleusis against their neighbors, he brought up help, routed the enemy, and died there the finest of deaths. The Athenians gave him a public burial on the spot where he fell, and paid him great honor."
31. When Solon had stirred up Croesus with the story of Tellus and all the ways in which he had been happy, the king asked again whom he had seen who deserved second place after him. He was sure that he would at least get second place. But Solon answered: "Cleobis and Biton. They were from Argos, and they had enough to live on, and on top of that they had the bodily strength I am about to describe. Both of them had won prizes at the games, and this story is also told about them. There was a festival of Hera at Argos, and their mother absolutely had to be driven to the temple in a cart. But the oxen did not come back from the field in time. So the young men, with no time for anything else, put themselves under the yoke and pulled the cart themselves, with their mother riding in it. They pulled it for about five miles, and brought it to the temple. When they had done this, and the whole gathered crowd had seen them do it, their lives came to the best of ends; and in this the god showed that for a human being it is better to die than to live. The men of Argos stood around them praising the young men's strength, and the women of Argos praised the mother for having such sons. Their mother was overjoyed, both at what they had done and at the praise it won. She stood in front of the goddess's statue and prayed that she would give her sons Cleobis and Biton, who had honored her so greatly, the best gift a human being can receive. After this prayer, when they had sacrificed and feasted, the young men lay down to sleep in the temple itself, and they never got up again; that was the end that held them. The Argives had statues made of them and dedicated them at Delphi, because they had shown themselves to be the best of men."
32. So Solon gave these two second place for happiness. Croesus was angry, and said: "My Athenian friend, do you think so little of our prosperity that you rank us below even ordinary private citizens?" Solon answered: "Croesus, you are asking about human life, and you are asking someone who knows very well that heaven is jealous and loves to throw things into confusion. In a long lifetime a man gets to see many things he would rather not see, and to suffer many things he would rather not suffer. I set the limit of a man's life at seventy years. Those seventy years add up to 25,200 days, not counting any extra months. But if every other year is made a month longer, so that the seasons come around at the right time of year, there will be 35 extra months in those seventy years, and those months make 1,050 days. Of all these days, 26,250 in the seventy years, not one brings anything at all like what another brings. So you see, Croesus, a human being is nothing but chance. As for you, I can see that you are very rich and king over many people. But what you asked me about, I cannot call you yet, not until I learn that you have brought your life to a good end. The very rich man is not one bit happier than the man who has only enough for each day, unless his luck stays with him and he ends his life well, with all his good things still around him. Many very rich men are unhappy, while many with only modest means are lucky. In fact the rich man who is unhappy has only two advantages over the poor man who is lucky, while the lucky man has many over the rich man who is unhappy. The rich man is better able to satisfy his desires, and better able to bear a great disaster if one falls on him. But the other has the advantage of him in these ways. True, he cannot satisfy his desires or bear a disaster as well as the rich man can, but his good luck keeps those things away from him. He is sound in body, free of disease, untouched by suffering, the father of fine children, and good-looking himself. And if on top of all this he ends his life well, then he is the one you are looking for, the one who deserves to be called happy. But until he is dead, hold back: do not call him happy yet, only lucky. Now, no mere human being can have all these things at once. Just as no single country can supply everything it needs for itself, but has one thing and lacks another, and the country that has the most is the best, so it is with a man: no one person is complete in himself. He has one thing and lacks another. But whoever keeps the greatest number of these good things to the end, and then dies a gracious death, that man, my king, I think deserves the name. In everything, though, we have to look at the end, and see how it turns out at the last. For heaven gives many people a glimpse of happiness, and then tears them up by the roots and throws them down."
33. That is what Solon said, and he did not please Croesus. Croesus sent him away and thought nothing of him; he decided Solon was a complete fool, a man who ignored the good things in front of him and told people to look at the end of everything.
34. After Solon had gone, a great retribution from heaven fell on Croesus, probably because he had judged himself the happiest of all men. First a dream came and stood over him as he slept, and it showed him the truth about the evils that were about to happen to his son. Croesus had two sons. One of them was disabled, since he was deaf and unable to speak. The other far surpassed the young men of his own age in everything, and his name was Atys. About this Atys, then, the dream told Croesus that he would lose him, struck by an iron spear-point. When Croesus woke up and thought the matter over, he was terrified by the dream. First he found his son a wife. Then, although the young man had been in the habit of leading the Lydian armies, Croesus no longer sent him out anywhere on any such business. And he had the javelins and lances and every other weapon men use for fighting taken out of the men's quarters and piled up in the inner storerooms, for fear that something hanging on the wall might fall down on his son.
35. While Croesus was busy with his son's wedding, a man arrived at Sardis who was under a misfortune and whose hands were not clean of blood. He was a Phrygian by birth and of the royal family. This man came to Croesus' house and, following the custom of that country, asked to be purified of the killing, and Croesus purified him. (The Lydian way of purifying a man is almost the same as the Greek one.) When Croesus had done what custom required, he asked the man where he came from and who he was. "Stranger," he said, "who are you? From what part of Phrygia have you come to sit as a suppliant at my hearth? And what man or woman did you kill?" The man answered: "My king, I am the son of Gordias son of Midas, and my name is Adrastus. I killed my own brother without meaning to. That is why I am here: my father drove me out and stripped me of everything I had." Croesus answered: "You happen to come from a family who are our friends, and you have come to friends. As long as you stay in our country you will want for nothing. And you will find it best for yourself to bear this misfortune as lightly as you can." So Adrastus made his home with Croesus.
36. During this time a monstrous boar appeared on Mount Olympus in Mysia. It came down from that mountain and ravaged the fields of the Mysians. The Mysians went out against it many times, but they could do it no harm; instead it did harm to them. So at last messengers from the Mysians came to Croesus and said: "My king, a monstrous boar has appeared in our country and is destroying our fields. We are eager to kill it, but we can't. So now we ask you to send your son with us, and a picked band of young men with dogs, so that we can rid our land of it." That was their request. But Croesus remembered what the dream had said, and he answered them: "As for my son, don't mention him again in this matter. I will not send him with you, since he has just been married and that is what concerns him now. But I will send picked men of the Lydians with you, and my whole pack of hunting dogs, and I will order those who go to do everything they can to help you rid your land of the beast."
37. That was his answer. The Mysians were satisfied with it, but just then Croesus' son came in, having heard what the Mysians had asked. When Croesus said that he would not send his son with them, the young man said: "Father, in the past the finest and noblest part was ours: to go out again and again to war and to the hunt and to win a good name. But now you have shut me out of both, though you have never seen any cowardice or lack of spirit in me. How am I supposed to show my face now when I walk to and from the marketplace? What sort of man will the citizens think I am? What sort of man will my new wife think I am? What kind of husband will she think she has been married to? So either let me go to the hunt, or give me reasons and persuade me that things are better for me the way they are now."
38. Croesus answered: "My son, I am not doing this because I have seen any cowardice in you, or anything else unworthy. It is because a vision came and stood by me in a dream as I slept, and told me that you would die young, and that you would be killed by an iron spear-point. Because of this vision I hurried on your marriage, and because of it I now refuse to send you on this business. I am watching over you, to see if I can somehow steal you from your fate at least for as long as I live. For you are, as it happens, my only son: the other one I do not count, since he is deaf."
39. The young man answered: "Father, after a vision like that, no one could blame you for watching over me. But there is something you don't understand, a point in the dream whose meaning you have missed, and it is only right that I explain it to you. You say the dream told you I would die by an iron spear-point. But what hands does a boar have? What iron spear-point is there for you to be afraid of? If the dream had told you I would die by a tusk, or by anything else like that, then you would be right to do what you are doing. But it said 'by a spear-point.' So since our fight will not be against men, let me go."
40. Croesus answered: "My son, you have partly won me over with what you say about the dream. Since you have persuaded me, I will change my mind and let you go to the hunt."
41. Having said this, Croesus sent for Adrastus the Phrygian, and when he came Croesus said to him: "Adrastus, when you were struck by a terrible misfortune (and I do not hold it against you), I purified you, and I took you into my house and have paid for everything you need. Now, since you received kindness from me first, you owe me kindness in return. So I ask you to be the guardian of my son as he goes out to the hunt, in case some wicked robbers come upon you on the road to do you harm. And besides, you ought to go where you can win fame by your deeds yourself. It is your inheritance from your fathers to do so, and you have the strength for it too."
42. Adrastus answered: "My king, if it were not for this I would not be going to any contest of courage like this one. In the first place, it is not right for a man who has suffered such a misfortune as mine to seek the company of men his age who are prospering. In the second place, I have no wish to, and for many reasons I would have kept away. But now, since you urge me and I ought to please you (for I owe you kindness in return), I am ready to do it. So you may expect your son, whom you tell me to guard, to come home to you unharmed, as far as it depends on his guardian to keep him safe."
43. After Adrastus had answered Croesus with words like these, they set out, supplied with picked young men and with dogs. When they reached Mount Olympus they tracked the animal down. They found it, took their stand around it in a circle, and began hurling their spears at it. Then the guest, the man who had been purified of killing, whose name was Adrastus, threw his spear at the boar, missed it, and hit Croesus' son. So the young man was struck by the spear-point and fulfilled what the dream had foretold. Someone ran to tell Croesus what had happened, and when he reached Sardis he told him about the fight and about his son's fate.
44. Croesus was terribly shaken by his son's death, and he took it all the harder because his son had been killed by the very man he himself had purified of killing. Overwhelmed by the disaster, he called on Zeus the Purifier, calling him to witness what he had suffered at the hands of his guest. He called on the same god as Protector of Suppliants and as Guardian of Friendship too. He called him Protector of Suppliants because when he took the guest into his house he had, without knowing it, been sheltering his son's killer; and Guardian of Friendship because he had sent the man as a guardian and found him his worst enemy.
45. After this the Lydians arrived carrying the body, and behind it came the killer. He took his stand in front of the body and gave himself up to Croesus. He held out his hands and begged the king to kill him over the body. He spoke of his earlier misfortune, and said that now, on top of it, he had destroyed the man who had purified him of it, and that life was no longer worth living for him. When Croesus heard this he took pity on Adrastus, even though he was suffering so great a sorrow of his own, and said to him: "My friend, I have already had from you all the justice I am owed, since you condemn yourself to death. You are not the cause of this disaster, except in so far as you were its instrument, against your will. The cause is one of the gods, I suppose, the same one who warned me long ago of what was going to happen." So Croesus buried his son with proper rites. But Adrastus son of Gordias son of Midas, the man who had killed his own brother and had now killed the son of the man who purified him, waited until everyone had gone and the tomb was quiet. Then, knowing himself to be the most unfortunate of all the men he had ever heard of, he killed himself on the grave.
46. For two years after the loss of his son Croesus sat quietly in mourning. But after that, two things made Croesus put an end to his mourning: the overthrow of the rule of Astyages son of Cyaxares by Cyrus son of Cambyses, and the growing greatness of the Persians. Now he began to think how he might cut short the power of the Persians, if he could find any way, while it was still growing and before they became great.
With this plan in mind he set out at once to test the oracles, both the Greek ones and the one in Libya (as the Greeks call Africa). He sent messengers in different directions: some to Delphi, some to Abae in Phocis, some to Dodona. Some were sent to the shrine of the hero Amphiaraus and to the shrine of Trophonius, and others to Branchidae in the territory of Miletus. These are the Greek oracles Croesus sent to for prophecies. Others he sent to ask at the shrine of Ammon in Libya. He was sending the messengers out to test the oracles and to find out what they really knew. Then, if they turned out to know the truth, he would send a second time to ask whether he should go to war against the Persians.
47. He gave the Lydians he sent to test the oracles these instructions. Starting from the day they set out from Sardis, they were to count the days, and on the hundredth day they were to consult the oracles. They were to ask what Croesus son of Alyattes, king of the Lydians, happened to be doing at that moment. Whatever each oracle answered, they were to have it written down and bring it back to him. What the other oracles answered nobody reports. But at Delphi, the moment the Lydians entered the temple to consult the god and asked the question they had been told to ask, the Pythia spoke these words in hexameter verse:
I know the number of the grains of sand and the measure of the sea; I understand the mute, and I hear the one who does not speak. There has come to my senses the smell of a hard-shelled tortoise boiling in a bronze cauldron, with the flesh of a lamb mixed in; bronze lies beneath it, and bronze is laid over it like a cloak.
48. When the Pythia had spoken this oracle, the Lydians had the prophecy written down and went straight back to Sardis. When the others who had been sent around arrived with the answers of the oracles, Croesus unrolled the writings one by one and looked them over. At first none of them pleased him. But when he heard the one from Delphi, he immediately bowed in worship to the god and accepted the answer. He decided that the oracle at Delphi was the only true one, because it had found out what he himself had been doing. For after he had sent his messengers out to the various oracles to consult the gods, he kept the appointed day carefully in mind and came up with this trick. He thought of something it would be impossible for anyone to discover or to guess: he cut up a tortoise and a lamb and boiled them together himself in a bronze cauldron, with a bronze lid on top.
49. That, then, was the answer Croesus received from Delphi. As for the answer of Amphiaraus, I cannot say what he told the Lydians after they had performed the customary rites at his temple. There is no record of it, any more than of the others, except that Croesus believed that his oracle was a true one too.
50. After this Croesus tried to win the favor of the god at Delphi with great sacrifices. Of every kind of animal fit for sacrifice he offered three thousand. He heaped up couches plated with gold and silver, cups of gold, and purple robes and tunics, and made a great pyre of them and burned it, hoping this would win the god even more to the Lydians' side. And he proclaimed that every Lydian should sacrifice whatever he had. When he had finished the sacrifice, he melted down a vast quantity of gold and cast it into ingots, each eighteen inches long, nine inches wide and three inches high. There were one hundred and seventeen of them. Four were of pure gold, weighing two and a half talents each (about 140 pounds apiece). The others were of gold mixed with silver, weighing two talents each (about 115 pounds). He also had a lion made of pure gold, weighing ten talents (about 570 pounds). When the temple at Delphi burned down, this lion fell off the ingots, since it had been set on top of them. It now stands in the treasury of the Corinthians and weighs six and a half talents (about 370 pounds), because three and a half talents (about 200 pounds) of it melted away.
51. When Croesus had finished all these things he sent them to Delphi, and these other gifts along with them. There were two enormous mixing bowls, one of gold and the other of silver. The gold one stood on the right as you enter the temple and the silver one on the left. These too were moved after the temple burned down. The gold bowl now stands in the treasury of the people of Clazomenae, and it weighs eight and a half talents and twelve pounds more (close to 500 pounds in all). The silver one stands in the corner of the temple's front hall. It holds six hundred amphoras, about 6,000 gallons, and the Delphians fill it with wine at the feast of the Theophania. The people of Delphi say it is the work of Theodorus of Samos, and I think they are right, because the workmanship is clearly out of the ordinary. Croesus also sent four silver wine jars, which stand in the treasury of the Corinthians, and two basins for holy water, one of gold and the other of silver. The gold one is inscribed "From the Spartans," and the Spartans say it is their offering. But they are not right about that. This one too is from Croesus, but one of the Delphians wrote the inscription on it because he wanted to please the Spartans. I know his name, but I will not mention it. The statue of a boy through whose hand the water flows is from the Spartans, but neither of the basins is. Croesus sent many other offerings with these that were not specially marked out. Among them are some round silver castings, and also a gold figure of a woman four and a half feet tall, which the Delphians say is a statue of Croesus' baker. Croesus also dedicated the necklaces from his wife's neck and her belts.
52. Those are the things he sent to Delphi. To Amphiaraus, having heard of his courage and of his terrible fate (he was the seer who rode against Thebes and was swallowed up by the earth), Croesus dedicated a shield made entirely of gold, and a spear all of solid gold, the shaft as well as both points. Both of these were still there in my own time, at Thebes, in the temple of Ismenian Apollo.
53. Croesus told the Lydians who were to carry these gifts to the temples to ask the oracles another question as well: should Croesus go to war against the Persians, and if so, should he add an army of allies to his own? When the Lydians reached the places they had been sent to and had dedicated the offerings, they consulted the oracles and said: "Croesus, king of the Lydians and of other nations, believes that yours are the only true oracles in the world. He has given you gifts worthy of your discoveries, and now he asks you whether he should go to war against the Persians, and if so, whether he should add an army of men to his own as allies." That was their question, and the answers of both oracles agreed. Both told Croesus that if he went to war against the Persians, he would destroy a great empire. And they advised him to find out which Greeks were the most powerful and make them his friends.
54. When the answers were brought back and Croesus heard them, he was delighted with the oracles. Fully expecting to destroy the kingdom of Cyrus, he sent to Pytho (the old name for Delphi) once again. He found out how many men of Delphi there were and gave each of them two gold staters. In return the Delphians gave Croesus and the Lydians the right to consult the oracle first, freedom from all fees, and front seats at the games. They also gave them a privilege for all time: any of them who wished could become a citizen of Delphi.
55. After making these presents to the men of Delphi, Croesus consulted the oracle a third time. Once he had learned that the oracle told the truth, he used it again and again. This time he asked whether his kingdom would last a long time. The Pythia gave him this answer:
But when the day comes that a mule is king of the Medes, then, soft-footed Lydian, run by the pebbly Hermus; run and do not stay, and do not be ashamed to be called a coward.
56. When these lines reached him, Croesus was more pleased with them than with all the rest. He supposed that a mule would never rule the Medes in place of a man, and that he and his descendants would therefore never lose their power. After this he set about finding out which of the Greeks he should count as the most powerful and win over as his friends. When he looked into it, he found that the Spartans and the Athenians were the leaders, the Spartans of the Dorian people and the Athenians of the Ionian. These were the two most distinguished peoples in ancient times: the Ionians were originally Pelasgian (from the people who lived in Greece before the Greeks), and the Dorians Greek. The Ionian people never moved from their land in any direction. The Dorian people, on the other hand, were great wanderers. In the reign of Deucalion they lived in Phthiotis. In the time of Dorus son of Hellen they lived in the land below Mount Ossa and Mount Olympus, which is called Histiaeotis. When the sons of Cadmus drove them out of Histiaeotis, they settled in the Pindus mountains and were called Macednians. From there they moved again to Dryopis, and from Dryopis they came at last to the Peloponnese, where they began to be called Dorians.
57. What language the Pelasgians used to speak I can't say for certain. But if we must judge by the Pelasgians who are still left, we can draw a conclusion. There are the Pelasgians of the city of Creston, above the Tyrrhenians, who were once neighbors of the people now called Dorians and lived at that time in the land now called Thessaliotis. There are the Pelasgians who settled at Placia and Scylace on the Hellespont, who had earlier lived alongside the Athenians. And there are the people of the various other towns that really are Pelasgian, though they have lost the name. If we must judge by these, the Pelasgians used to speak a non-Greek language. So if the whole Pelasgian people was like these, then the people of Attica, being Pelasgian, must have unlearned their language at the same time as they changed and became Greek. For the people of Creston do not speak the same language as any of their neighbors, and neither do the people of Placia; but they speak the same language as each other. This proves that they still keep the form of language they brought with them when they moved to these places.
58. As for the Greek people, it seems clear to me that they have always used the same language since they first began. They split off from the Pelasgian people and were weak at first. But from that small beginning they have grown into the great number of peoples we see today, chiefly because many non-Greek peoples have joined them. And I think it is also true of the Pelasgian people that as long as they remained non-Greek, they never grew much.
59. Of these peoples, then, Croesus learned that the Athenians were held down and torn apart by faction under Pisistratus son of Hippocrates, who was tyrant of Athens at that time. A great wonder had happened to Hippocrates when, as a private citizen, he went to watch the Olympic games. After he had offered sacrifice, the cauldrons standing on the hearth, full of meat and water, boiled over without any fire under them. Chilon the Spartan happened to be there and saw the wonder. He advised Hippocrates, first, not to take a wife into his house to bear him children; second, if he had one already, to send her away; and if he happened to have a son, to disown him. Hippocrates, they say, would not take Chilon's advice, and afterward this Pisistratus was born to him. At Athens there was a feud between the people of the coast and the people of the plain. Megacles son of Alcmaeon led the coast faction, and Lycurgus son of Aristolaides led the faction of the plain. Pisistratus, aiming at tyranny for himself, raised a third party. He gathered supporters, called himself the leader of the hill-country men, and came up with this trick. He wounded himself and his mules, and then drove his cart into the marketplace as though he had just escaped from his enemies, who, he claimed, had tried to kill him as he was driving out to the country. He asked the people to give him a bodyguard. Before this he had won a reputation as a commander in the war against the Megarians, when he captured Nisaea and did other great services. The Athenian people were taken in and gave him a band of men picked from the citizens. They became not his spearmen but his club-bearers, because they followed him around carrying wooden clubs. These men rose up with Pisistratus and seized the Acropolis. After that Pisistratus ruled the Athenians. He did not upset the existing officials or change the old laws. He ran the city under the constitution that was already in place, and he governed it fairly and well.
60. But not long after this the followers of Megacles and those of Lycurgus joined forces and drove him out. That was how Pisistratus took Athens the first time, and how he lost power before it had taken firm root. But the men who had driven him out soon fell to feuding with one another again. Harassed by the party strife, Megacles sent a message to Pisistratus asking whether he would take his daughter as his wife, on condition that he would become tyrant. Pisistratus accepted the offer and agreed to the terms. Then, to bring him back, they worked out the silliest scheme ever practiced, as I think, by far. After all, the Greeks had been set apart from non-Greeks long ago as the cleverer people, further removed from foolish simplicity; and this was done among the Athenians, who are counted the first of the Greeks in intelligence. In the village of Paeania there was a woman named Phya. She was almost six feet tall (four cubits less three finger-widths), and good-looking as well. They dressed this woman in a full suit of armor, put her up in a chariot, and showed her the pose that would make her look most like the part. Then they drove to the city. They had sent heralds running ahead, and when the heralds reached the city they said what they had been told to say: "Athenians, welcome Pisistratus with goodwill. Athena herself has honored him above all men and is bringing him home to her Acropolis." So the heralds went all over the place saying this. At once a report spread to the villages of the countryside that Athena was bringing Pisistratus back, and meanwhile the people in the city, convinced that the woman was the goddess herself, were worshipping this human being and welcoming Pisistratus.
61. Having got back the tyranny in this way, Pisistratus married Megacles' daughter, as he had agreed with Megacles. But he already had sons who were grown men, and the descendants of Alcmaeon were said to be under a curse. Since he did not want to have children by his new wife, he had sex with her in an unnatural way. At first the woman kept this to herself, but later she told her mother, whether because her mother asked or not I cannot say, and the mother told her husband Megacles. Megacles was furious that Pisistratus had dishonored him, and in his anger he immediately went and made up his quarrel with the men of the other faction. When Pisistratus learned what was being done against him, he left the country altogether and went to Eretria, where he talked things over with his sons. Hippias' advice won out: they should try to win back the tyranny. So they began to collect gifts of money from the cities that owed them favors. Many gave large sums, but the Thebans gave more money than all the rest. Then, to make a long story short, time passed, and at last everything was ready for their return. Some Argives came from the Peloponnese as hired soldiers, and a man of Naxos named Lygdamis had come to them of his own accord and showed great zeal in supplying both money and men.
62. So they set out from Eretria and came back after ten years. The first place they seized in Attica was Marathon. While they were camped there, their supporters from the city came to join them, and others streamed in from the villages, people who preferred tyranny to freedom. So these were gathering. As for the Athenians in the city, they had thought nothing of it as long as Pisistratus was collecting money, and nothing of it even after he took Marathon. But when they heard that he was marching from Marathon toward the city, they went out to stop him. So they were marching out in full force to fight the returning exiles. Meanwhile Pisistratus' forces had set out from Marathon toward the city, and the two armies met at the temple of Athena Pallenis, where they camped facing each other. Then, guided by the gods, Amphilytus the Acarnanian, a seer, came to Pisistratus. He came up to him and spoke an oracle in hexameter verse:
The cast is made, and the net is spread out wide; the tunnies will dart through it in the moonlit night.
63. He spoke this oracle under divine inspiration. Pisistratus understood it, said he accepted the prophecy, and led his army against the enemy. The Athenians from the city were busy with their morning meal just then, and after eating some of them had turned to dice and others to sleep. Pisistratus' forces fell on them and routed them. As they fled, Pisistratus came up with a very clever plan to keep the Athenians from gathering together again and to keep them scattered. He put his sons on horseback and sent them on ahead. They caught up with the men who were running away and said what Pisistratus had told them to say: that they should not be afraid, and that each man should go home.
64. The Athenians did just that. So Pisistratus took Athens for the third time, and this time he rooted his tyranny firmly. He did it with many hired foreign soldiers and with a large income of money, which came partly from Attica itself and partly from the region around the river Strymon. He also took as hostages the sons of the Athenians who had stayed and had not fled at once, and put them on Naxos; for Pisistratus had conquered Naxos too in war and handed it over to Lygdamis. Besides this, he purified the island of Delos as the oracles commanded. This is how he purified it: as far as one could see from the temple, he dug up all the dead who were buried in that area and moved them to another part of Delos. So Pisistratus was tyrant of Athens. Of the Athenians, some had fallen in the battle, and others had gone into exile from their native land with the sons of Alcmaeon.
65. That was the state of things Croesus heard was going on among the Athenians at this time. About the Spartans, he heard that they had come through great troubles and had now got the upper hand over the Tegeans in their war. For back when Leon and Hegesicles were kings of Sparta, the Spartans had done well in all their other wars, but had met with disaster in just one: the war they fought against the men of Tegea, a city in Arcadia, their neighbor to the north. What is more, in the times before this, the Spartans had had the worst laws of almost any people in Greece, both in their dealings among themselves and in that they would have nothing to do with strangers. And this is how they changed over to good government. Lycurgus, a Spartan who was highly respected, came to the oracle at Delphi, and as soon as he entered the inner hall of the temple, the Pythia said this:
"You have come, Lycurgus, to my rich temple, dear to Zeus and to all who live in the halls of Olympus. Shall I call you a god or a man? My prophet's voice is in doubt, god or man; but rather a god, I think, Lycurgus."
66. Some people say that, on top of this, the Pythia also laid out for him the whole system of government the Spartans have now. But the Spartans themselves say that Lycurgus brought it from Crete, when he became guardian of his nephew Leobotes, who was king of the Spartans. As soon as he became guardian, he changed all the laws then in force, and he made sure that nobody broke the new ones he set up. After this Lycurgus organized their military life: the sworn bands called enomoties, the companies of thirty, and the common meals where the men ate together. Besides this he set up the ephors, the five officials elected each year, and the Council of Elders. With these changes the Spartans came to have good laws. When Lycurgus died they built a temple to him, and they still honor him greatly. So, as you would expect in a fertile land with a good number of men living in it, they shot up at once and grew prosperous. Then sitting still was no longer enough for them. They thought they were stronger than the Arcadians, so they asked the oracle at Delphi about conquering the whole of Arcadia. The Pythia answered them like this:
"You ask me for Arcadia. You ask a great deal; I will not give it. There are many men in Arcadia, tough men who live on acorns, and they will stop you. But I do not grudge you everything: I will give you Tegea, to dance on with stamping feet, and her fair plain, to measure out with a line and divide."
When the Spartans heard this report, they left the rest of the Arcadians alone and marched against the Tegeans, carrying chains with them. They trusted a deceptive oracle and expected to make slaves of the men of Tegea. But they were beaten in the fight, and the ones who were taken alive were put to work wearing the very chains they had brought with them, "measuring out with a line" the plain of the Tegeans after all. Those chains they had been bound with were still kept at Tegea in my own time, hanging around the temple of Athena Alea.
67. So in that earlier war, I say, they kept fighting the Tegeans and kept losing. But in Croesus' time, when Anaxandrides and Ariston were kings at Sparta, the Spartans had at last come out on top in the war, and this is how it happened. Since they were always being beaten by the men of Tegea, they sent messengers to consult the oracle at Delphi and asked which god they should win over in order to defeat the Tegeans. The Pythia answered that they must bring home to their own land the bones of Orestes son of Agamemnon. But they could not find Orestes' grave, so they sent again to ask the god where Orestes lay buried. When the messengers asked this, the priestess said:
"There is a Tegea in the land of Arcadia, built on level ground, where two winds blow, driven by hard force together, and there is blow and answering blow, and trouble laid on trouble. There the son of Agamemnon lies in the life-giving earth. Bring him home with you, and you will be master of Tegea."
When the Spartans heard this, they were still just as far from finding the grave, though they searched everywhere, until Lichas, one of the Spartans called "Well-doers," discovered it. The "Well-doers" are the oldest citizens leaving the ranks of the "Horsemen," the king's guard of young men, five of them each year. During the year in which they leave the "Horsemen," they are bound to let the Spartan state send them, without a break, wherever it needs them.
68. Lichas was one of these men, and he found the grave in Tegea by a mix of luck and cleverness. At that time there was a truce and the two sides had dealings with each other, and he had come into a smithy in Tegea and was watching iron being worked. He was amazed at what he saw being done. The smith noticed how amazed he was, stopped working, and said: "Well, my Spartan friend, if you had seen what I once saw, you would really have something to marvel at, since you marvel so much now at ironwork. I wanted to dig a well in this yard, and as I was digging I came upon a coffin ten and a half feet long. I didn't believe there had ever been men bigger than the men of today, so I opened it, and I saw that the body was as long as the coffin. I measured it, and then I filled the earth back in over it." So the smith told him what he had seen. Lichas thought over what he had been told and guessed that this was Orestes, as the oracle had said. He reasoned it out like this. The smith had two bellows, and Lichas concluded that these were the two winds; the anvil and the hammer were the blow and the answering blow; and the iron being worked was the trouble laid on trouble, since, he thought, iron was discovered to be an evil for mankind. Having worked this out, he went back to Sparta and told the Spartans the whole thing. They then brought a trumped-up charge against him and drove him into exile. So he came to Tegea, told the smith about his bad luck, and tried to rent the yard from him. At first the smith would not let him have it, but in the end Lichas talked him into it, and he moved in. Then he dug up the grave, gathered up the bones, and took them away to Sparta. From that time on, whenever the two sides tested each other in battle, the Spartans had much the better of the war. And by now they had also conquered most of the rest of the Peloponnese.
69. So Croesus learned all this, and he sent messengers to Sparta with gifts, to ask for an alliance, after telling them exactly what to say. When they arrived, they said: "Croesus, king of the Lydians and of other nations, has sent us here, and this is his message: 'Spartans, the god told me in an oracle to make the Greek my friend. Now I am told that you are the leaders of Greece. So, as the oracle says, I invite you to be my friends and allies, with no trickery and no deceit.'" That was Croesus' message to the Spartans through his messengers. The Spartans had heard about the oracle given to Croesus themselves, and they were glad the Lydians had come, and they swore oaths of friendship and alliance. They were also bound to Croesus by some favors he had done them before this. The Spartans had sent to Sardis to buy gold, which they meant to use for the statue of Apollo that now stands on Mount Thornax in Laconia, and when they asked to buy it, Croesus gave it to them as a gift.
70. That was one reason the Spartans accepted the alliance; the other was that he had chosen them as his friends over all the other Greeks. Not only were they ready to answer his call themselves, they also had a bronze mixing bowl made, covered with figures around the outside of the rim and big enough to hold three hundred amphoras, about 3,000 gallons. They sent it off, wanting to give it to Croesus as a gift in return. This bowl never reached Sardis, and two stories are told about why. The Spartans say that when the bowl was on its way to Sardis and came off the island of Samos, the Samians heard about it, sailed out in warships, and seized it. But the Samians themselves say that the Spartans who were carrying the bowl found they were too late: they heard that Sardis had fallen and Croesus was a prisoner, so they sold the bowl on Samos. Some private citizens bought it, they say, and dedicated it in the temple of Hera. And it is likely that the men who sold it said, when they got back to Sparta, that the Samians had robbed them of it.
71. So that is what happened with the mixing bowl. Meanwhile Croesus, who had mistaken the meaning of the oracle, was preparing to invade Cappadocia, expecting to overthrow Cyrus and the power of the Persians. While he was getting ready to march against the Persians, one of the Lydians gave him some advice. This man had been thought wise even before, but because of what he said now he won a very great name for wisdom among the Lydians. His name was Sandanis, and this is what he said: "My king, you are getting ready to march against men who wear trousers of leather, and the rest of their clothes are leather too. They eat not what they want but what they can get, because the land they live in is rough. What is more, they don't drink wine; they drink water. They have no figs for dessert, or anything else that is good. Now, if you beat them, what will you take from them, since they have nothing? But if you are beaten, think how many good things you will lose. Once they have had a taste of our good things, they will hold on to them tight, and there will be no driving them away. For my part, I thank the gods that they don't put it into the Persians' heads to march against the Lydians." That was his speech, but he did not persuade Croesus. And it is true that before the Persians conquered the Lydians they had no luxuries and nothing good at all.
72. The Greeks call the Cappadocians Syrians. Before the Persians came to power, these Syrians were subjects of the Medes, but at this time they were subjects of Cyrus. For the border between the Median empire and the Lydian was the river Halys. The Halys flows down from the mountains of Armenia through the land of the Cilicians. As it flows on, it has the Matienians on its right and the Phrygians on the other side. Then, passing by these and turning north, it marks the border with the Cappadocian Syrians on one side and the Paphlagonians on the left. In this way the river Halys cuts off from the rest of Asia almost all of its lower part, by a line running from the sea opposite Cyprus to the Black Sea. This stretch of land is the neck of the whole peninsula, and the distance across it is a five days' journey for a man traveling light.
73. Croesus was marching into Cappadocia for these reasons. First, he wanted to add the land to what he already had. But above all he trusted the oracle, and he wanted to punish Cyrus on behalf of Astyages. For Cyrus son of Cambyses had conquered Astyages and was holding him prisoner, and Astyages, the king of the Medes, was Croesus' brother-in-law. This is how he had become Croesus' brother-in-law. A horde of nomad Scythians, who had quarreled with the rest of their people, left and took refuge in the land of the Medes. At that time the ruler of the Medes was Cyaxares son of Phraortes son of Deioces. At first he treated these Scythians well, since they had come to him asking for protection. He thought very highly of them, and he handed some boys over to them to learn their language and the art of archery. As time went on, the Scythians would go out hunting all the time and always bring something back. Then once it happened that they caught nothing. When they came back empty-handed, Cyaxares (who was not, as he showed on this occasion, a man of the best temper) treated them very harshly and insulted them. After this treatment from Cyaxares, the Scythians felt they had been shamed. So they made a plan: they would kill one of the boys they were teaching and cut him up, prepare his flesh the way they used to prepare wild game, and bring it to Cyaxares as if it were game from the hunt. Once they had given it to him, they meant to get away as fast as they could to Alyattes son of Sadyattes at Sardis. And that is what was done. Cyaxares and the guests who ate at his table tasted that meat, and the Scythians, having done this, went to Alyattes and asked for his protection.
74. After this, since Alyattes would not hand the Scythians over when Cyaxares demanded them, war broke out between the Lydians and the Medes and went on for five years. In those years the Medes often beat the Lydians and the Lydians often beat the Medes, and among other battles they even fought one at night. They were still at war, and evenly matched, when in the sixth year a battle took place in which, after the fighting had begun, the day suddenly turned into night. Thales of Miletus had predicted this change in the day to the Ionians, naming as its limit the very year in which it actually happened. When the Lydians and the Medes saw night come on in place of day, they stopped fighting, and both sides became much more eager to make peace. The men who brought about the peace between them were Syennesis the Cilician and Labynetus the Babylonian. They were the ones who pressed them to swear an oath, and they arranged an exchange of marriages: they decided that Alyattes should give his daughter Aryenis to Astyages son of Cyaxares, since without some strong bond to hold them, agreements tend not to hold firm. These nations swear oaths with the same ceremonies as the Greeks, but in addition they cut the skin of their arms and lick up each other's blood.
75. This was the Astyages, then, the father of Cyrus' mother, whom Cyrus had conquered and taken prisoner, for a reason I will explain later in my history. This was the grievance Croesus had against Cyrus when he sent to the oracles to ask whether he should march against the Persians. And when a deceptive answer came back, he marched into the Persians' territory, thinking the answer was in his favor. When Croesus reached the river Halys, he took his army across, in my own account, by the bridges that were there. But according to the story most Greeks tell, Thales of Miletus got the army across for him. When Croesus was at a loss how to get his army over the river (for, they add, the bridges that are there now did not yet exist at that time), Thales, who was there with the army, made the river, which was flowing on the army's left, flow on its right as well. He did it like this, they say. Starting upstream of the camp, he dug a deep channel and curved it around like a crescent moon, so that the river would be turned out of its old bed into the channel, flow around behind the camp where it was pitched, and, once past the camp, fall back into its old bed. So as soon as the river was split in two, both branches could be waded. Some even say that the old bed of the river dried up completely. But I don't accept this story as true, because how did they cross the river on the way back?
76. When Croesus had crossed over with his army, he came to the place in Cappadocia called Pteria. Pteria is the strongest place in this region, and it lies roughly in line with the city of Sinope on the Black Sea. There he made camp and laid waste the farms of the Syrians. He also took the Pterians' city and sold its people as slaves, and he took all the towns around it too, and he drove the Syrians from their homes, though they had done him no wrong. Meanwhile Cyrus had gathered his own army, picked up in addition everyone who lived in the lands along the way, and was coming to meet Croesus. But before he set out with his army, he had sent heralds to the Ionians and tried to persuade them to revolt from Croesus; the Ionians would not do it. Then, when Cyrus had arrived and camped facing Croesus, the two sides tested their strength against each other in the land of Pteria. The fighting was hard, and many fell on both sides. In the end night came on, and they parted with neither side the winner.
77. That is how the two armies fought it out. Croesus blamed his own army for its size, since the army he fought with was far smaller than Cyrus'. Being unhappy with it for this reason, when Cyrus made no attempt to attack him the next day, he marched back to Sardis. He meant to call on the Egyptians to help him, according to the oath they had sworn, since he had made an alliance with Amasis, king of Egypt, even before his alliance with the Spartans. He meant to summon the Babylonians as well, since he had made an alliance with them too, and Labynetus was ruler of the Babylonians at that time. And he meant to send word to the Spartans to come at a set time. Once he had gathered all these together along with his own army, his plan was to let the winter pass and then march against the Persians at the start of spring. With this in mind, as soon as he reached Sardis he began sending heralds to each of his allies, telling them to gather at Sardis in the fifth month from then. But the army he had with him, the one that had fought the Persians, which was made up of hired soldiers, he dismissed and sent away completely. He never expected that Cyrus, after fighting such an even battle with him, would march on Sardis after all.
78. While Croesus was making these plans, the outskirts of the city suddenly filled up with snakes. When the snakes appeared, the horses left off grazing in their pastures and kept going there and eating them. When Croesus saw this, he believed it was an omen, as indeed it was. So he sent messengers at once to the Telmessians, who interpret omens. The messengers he sent to consult them got there and learned from the Telmessians what the omen meant, but they never managed to report the answer to Croesus. For before they sailed back to Sardis, Croesus had been taken prisoner. The Telmessians' verdict was this: Croesus should expect an army speaking a foreign language to invade his land, and when it came it would conquer the people who lived there. For the snake, they said, is born of the land, while the horse is an enemy and a stranger. That was the answer the men of Telmessus gave Croesus when he was already a prisoner, though they did not yet know anything of what had happened to Sardis or to Croesus himself.
79. But Cyrus, as soon as Croesus marched away after the battle in Pteria, learned that Croesus meant to disband his army once he had marched off. He thought it over and decided that the best thing for him was to march to Sardis as fast as he could, before the Lydians' strength could be gathered together again. Once he had decided this, he did it without delay. He led his army into Lydia so fast that he himself was the first to bring Croesus the news that he was coming. Croesus was now in a desperate position, since things had turned out the exact opposite of what he expected. Even so, he led the Lydians out to battle. At that time there was no nation in Asia braver or tougher in battle than the Lydians. They fought on horseback, carrying long spears, and they were excellent horsemen.
80. The armies met on the plain in front of the city of Sardis. It is a wide, open plain, with rivers running through it, especially the Hyllus, which all rush down to join the largest of them, the Hermus. The Hermus flows from the mountain sacred to the Mother goddess, called Dindymene, and runs out into the sea near the city of Phocaea. When Cyrus saw the Lydians lining up for battle, he was afraid of their cavalry, and on the advice of Harpagus, a Mede, he did this. He gathered together all the camels that were traveling with his army carrying food and baggage. He took off their loads and put men on them, equipped as cavalry. When he had fitted them out, he ordered them to go in front of the rest of the army, toward Croesus' horsemen. He ordered the infantry to follow behind the camels, and behind the infantry he placed all his cavalry. When all his men were in their places, he gave them orders to spare none of the Lydians, but to kill everyone who got in their way; only Croesus himself they were not to kill, not even if he fought back when they caught him. Those were his orders. He set the camels facing the horsemen for this reason: horses are afraid of camels and cannot stand either the sight of them or their smell. That was why the trick had been thought up, so that Croesus' cavalry would be useless, the very force with which the Lydian king expected to win the most glory. And when they came together for battle, as soon as the horses smelled the camels and saw them, they wheeled around and bolted, and all Croesus' hopes came to nothing at once. Even so, the Lydians did not turn cowards. When they saw what was happening, they jumped down from their horses and fought the Persians on foot. In the end, after many had fallen on both sides, the Lydians turned and fled. They were driven back inside the walls of their citadel and besieged there by the Persians.
81. So the Persians laid siege to them. But Croesus, thinking the siege would last a long time, sent more messengers from the citadel to his allies. The first messengers had gone around to tell them to gather at Sardis in the fifth month. But these he was sending to ask them to come to his help as fast as they could, because Croesus was under siege.
82. He sent to his other allies, and he sent to Sparta as well. But the Spartans too, as it happened, had a quarrel of their own on their hands at that very moment, with the Argives, over the district called Thyrea. This Thyrea was part of the Argives' territory, but the Spartans had cut it off and taken it for themselves. At that time the whole region to the west, as far down as Cape Malea, belonged to the Argives, both the land on the mainland and the island of Cythera and the other islands. When the Argives came out to save their territory from being cut away from them, the two sides met to talk and agreed that three hundred men from each side would fight, and whichever side won that fight would have the disputed land. They also agreed that the main body of each army would go back to its own country and not stay to watch the contest. They were afraid that if the armies were there, one side, seeing its own men losing, would come up to help them. When they had made this agreement, the armies withdrew, and the chosen men from both sides were left behind and fought each other. They fought and turned out to be evenly matched. In the end, out of six hundred men, only three were left: Alcenor and Chromius on the Argive side, and Othryades on the Spartan side. These three were still alive when night came on. The two Argives, thinking they had won, ran off to Argos. But the Spartan Othryades stripped the armor from the Argive dead, carried it to his own camp, and stayed at his post. The next day both sides came back to find out the result. For a while each claimed the victory. One side said more of their men had survived. The other side said those men had run away, while their own man had stood his ground and stripped the bodies of the other side's dead. In the end the argument led them to fall on each other and start fighting, and after many had fallen on both sides, the Spartans won. After this the Argives cut their hair short, though before this they had been required by law to wear it long. They made a law, with a curse on anyone who broke it, that from then on no Argive man would grow his hair long, and no Argive woman would wear gold jewelry, until they had won back Thyrea. The Spartans made the opposite law for themselves: from that time on they would wear their hair long, though before that they had not. And they say that Othryades, the one man left alive out of the three hundred, was ashamed to go back to Sparta when all his comrades had been killed, and killed himself there at Thyrea.
83. That was the state of things at Sparta when the herald from Sardis arrived to ask them to help Croesus, who was under siege. Even so, in spite of their own troubles, as soon as they heard the herald's news they were eager to go to his help. But when they had finished their preparations and their ships were ready, another message came, reporting that the Lydians' citadel had fallen and Croesus had been taken prisoner. Then, and only then, they gave up the effort, grieving over what had happened as a great disaster.
84. This is how Sardis was taken. On the fourteenth day after Croesus came under siege, Cyrus sent horsemen around to every part of his army to announce that he would give rewards to the first man to climb the wall. After this the army made an attempt, and it failed. When all the rest had given up the attack, a Mardian named Hyroeades tried to climb up on one side of the citadel where no guard had been posted. Nobody was afraid the citadel would ever be taken from that side, because there it is a sheer cliff and cannot be attacked. This was also the only part of the wall around which Meles, who had been king of Sardis in earlier times, had not carried the lion that his concubine bore him. The Telmessians had ruled that if the lion were carried around the wall, Sardis would never be captured. So Meles carried it around the rest of the wall, the parts of the citadel where the fortress could be attacked, but he skipped this part, since it was a sheer cliff and could not be attacked. This is the part of the city that faces toward Mount Tmolus. Now the day before, this Mardian Hyroeades had seen one of the Lydians climb down on that side of the citadel to fetch his helmet, which had rolled down from above, and pick it up. He noticed this and turned it over in his mind. So he climbed up himself, first of all, and other Persians came up after him. Then many more made their way up, and so Sardis was finally taken, and the whole city was plundered.
85. Meanwhile this is what happened to Croesus himself. He had a son, whom I mentioned earlier, who was a decent enough young man in other ways but could not speak. In his earlier days of good fortune, Croesus had done everything he could for him. Among the other things he tried, he had also sent messengers to Delphi to ask about him. And the Pythia told him this:
"Lydian, lord of many, Croesus, so blind to what is fated, do not wish to hear in your halls that longed-for voice, the voice of your son. It would be far better for you to be without it, for the first day he speaks will be a day of disaster."
Now as the citadel was being taken, one of the Persians, not knowing who Croesus was, was about to kill him. Croesus saw him coming, but he did not care, because of the disaster that had fallen on him; it made no difference to him whether he was struck down and killed. But when this son who could not speak saw the Persian coming at him, fear and grief broke open his voice, and he said: "Man, do not kill Croesus!" That was the first time the son ever spoke, and from then on he could speak for the rest of his life.
86. So the Persians took Sardis and captured Croesus himself. He had reigned fourteen years and had been under siege fourteen days, and he had fulfilled the oracle: he had brought his own great empire to an end. The Persians who had taken him brought him before Cyrus. Cyrus had a great pyre built and made Croesus climb up onto it, bound in chains, and with him twice seven sons of Lydians. Perhaps he meant to offer them to some god as the first fruits of his victory, or perhaps he wanted to fulfill a vow. Or perhaps he had heard that Croesus was a man who feared the gods, and made him climb onto the pyre because he wanted to find out whether any of the divine powers would save him from being burned alive. That, they say, is what Cyrus did. But as Croesus stood on the pyre, in all his misery, he remembered the saying of Solon: how Solon had said, as if inspired by heaven, that no one who is still alive may be called happy. When this thought came to him, they say, he sighed deeply and groaned aloud after a long silence, and three times he spoke the name "Solon." Cyrus heard this and told the interpreters to ask Croesus who this person was that he was calling on, and they came near and asked him. For a while, it is said, Croesus kept silent when they asked. But at last, when they pressed him, he said: "A man I would have given a great fortune to have every ruler talk with." Since this answer was unclear, they asked again what he meant. They kept pressing and gave him no peace, so he told them how Solon, an Athenian, had once come to him, looked over all his wealth, and made light of it, saying such and such. He told them how everything had turned out for him just as Solon had said, though Solon had not been speaking about Croesus in particular so much as about the whole human race, and especially about those who think themselves happy. While Croesus was telling them this, the pyre had already been lit, and its outer edges were burning. Then, they say, Cyrus heard from the interpreters what Croesus had said and changed his mind. He reflected that he too was only a man, and that he was handing another man over to the fire alive, a man who had once been no less fortunate than himself. Besides, he feared retribution, and he reflected that nothing human beings possess is secure. So, they say, he ordered his men to put out the fire as quickly as they could, and to bring Croesus and the others down from the pyre. But for all their efforts, they could no longer get the flames under control.
87. Then, as the Lydians tell it, when Croesus learned that Cyrus had changed his mind, and saw that everyone was trying to put out the fire but could no longer hold it back, he cried out to Apollo. If any gift of his had ever pleased the god, he begged, let the god come now and rescue him from the evil that was upon him. So he called on the god in tears, and suddenly, they say, out of a clear, calm sky clouds gathered and a storm broke. Rain came down in a violent torrent, and the pyre was put out. Then Cyrus, seeing that Croesus was a good man and dear to the gods, had him brought down from the pyre and asked him: "Croesus, who on earth persuaded you to march against my land and become my enemy instead of my friend?" Croesus said: "My king, I did it, to your good fortune and to my own misfortune. And the one to blame for it was the god of the Greeks, who urged me to march with my army. No one is so foolish as to choose war over peace: in peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons. But I suppose it pleased the gods that things should turn out this way."
88. That is what he said. Cyrus had his chains taken off, sat him down beside himself, and treated him with great respect. Cyrus himself and everyone around him looked at Croesus with wonder. Croesus sat lost in thought and said nothing. But after a while he turned and saw the Persians plundering the Lydians' city, and he said: "My king, should I tell you what is on my mind, or should I keep quiet, in my present condition?" Cyrus told him to speak freely and say whatever he liked. So Croesus asked him: "What is this great crowd of men doing so eagerly?" Cyrus said: "They are plundering your city and carrying off your wealth." Croesus answered: "It is not my city they are plundering, and not my wealth they are carrying off. None of these things belongs to me anymore. It is your wealth they are carrying and driving away."
89. What Croesus said troubled Cyrus. He sent everyone else away and asked Croesus what he saw in all this that Cyrus ought to act on. Croesus said: "Since the gods have given me to you as your slave, I think it right, if I see anything that others do not, to point it out to you. The Persians are proud and unruly by nature, and they are poor. So if you let them carry off great wealth as plunder and keep it, here is what you can expect: whoever gets hold of the biggest share will rise up in rebellion against you. So, if what I say pleases you, do this. Post spearmen of your guard at every gate. Have them take the goods away from the men carrying them out of the city, and tell them that a tenth of it has to be set aside for Zeus first. That way they will not hate you for taking the things from them by force, and they will let them go willingly, admitting to themselves that you are doing what is just."
90. Cyrus was delighted beyond measure when he heard this, because he thought Croesus' advice was good. He praised him warmly and ordered the spearmen of his guard to do what Croesus had advised. Then he said to Croesus: "Croesus, since you are ready, like the king you are, to do good deeds and speak good words, ask me for a gift, anything you want, and you shall have it at once." Croesus said: "Master, you will please me most if you let me send these chains to the god of the Greeks, whom I honored more than any other god, and ask him whether it is his custom to deceive those who treat him well." Cyrus asked him what charge he had against the god, to make such a request. So Croesus went back over the whole story for him: what he had intended, the answers of the oracles, and above all his offerings, and how the prophecy had urged him to march against the Persians. And as he told it, he came back again to his request that he be allowed to put this reproach to the god. Cyrus laughed and said: "You shall have this from me, Croesus, and anything else you ever ask me for." When he heard this, Croesus sent some Lydians to Delphi. He told them to lay the chains on the threshold of the temple and ask the god whether he was not ashamed of having urged Croesus with his prophecies to march against the Persians, persuading him that he would put an end to Cyrus' empire. And they were to show the chains and say that these were the first fruits of the spoils Croesus had won from it. This was what they were to ask, and also whether it was the custom of the gods of the Greeks to be ungrateful.
91. When the Lydians arrived and said what they had been told to say, the Pythia, it is said, answered them like this: "Not even a god can escape what is fated. Croesus has paid for the crime of his ancestor five generations back. That man was one of the spearmen of the Heraclids; he followed a woman's treacherous plan, killed his master, and took his royal office, which was not his by right. Loxias (that is, Apollo) was eager for the disaster of Sardis to fall on Croesus' sons rather than on Croesus himself, but he could not turn the Fates aside from their course. Whatever they allowed, he accomplished, and gave to Croesus as a gift. He put off the taking of Sardis for three years, and Croesus should know that he was captured three years later than the time fated for him. Second, he came to his rescue when he was about to be burned. As for the oracle, Croesus has no good grounds for complaint. Loxias told him beforehand that if he marched against the Persians he would destroy a great empire. When he heard that, if he had wanted to plan wisely, he should have sent and asked whether the god meant his own empire or Cyrus'. But since he did not understand what was said, and did not ask again, let him admit that he himself is to blame for what followed. And when he consulted the oracle for the last time, Loxias told him what he told him about a mule, and he did not understand that either. Cyrus was that mule. He was born of parents of two different peoples, his mother of nobler birth than his father. She was a Mede, the daughter of Astyages king of the Medes; but he was a Persian, one of a people subject to the Medes, and though he was beneath her in every way, he was the husband of his own royal mistress." That was the Pythia's answer to the Lydians. They brought it back to Sardis and repeated it to Croesus, and when he heard it he admitted that the fault was his own and not the god's. So that is how it went with the empire of Croesus and the first conquest of Ionia.
92. There are many other offerings of Croesus in Greece besides the ones I have mentioned. First, at Thebes in Boeotia there is a golden tripod, which he dedicated to Ismenian Apollo. Then at Ephesus there are the golden cows and most of the columns of the temple. And in the temple of Athena Pronaea, Athena of the Forecourt, at Delphi there is a large golden shield. These were still there in my own time, but others of his offerings have been lost. And his offerings at Branchidae, the shrine of the Milesians, were, as I am told, equal in weight and similar to those at Delphi. Now the offerings he sent to Delphi and to the shrine of Amphiaraus he dedicated from his own property, as the first fruits of the wealth he inherited from his father. But the other offerings came from the fortune of a man who was his enemy. Before Croesus became king, this man had stirred up a faction against him and had joined in trying to make Pantaleon ruler of the Lydians. Pantaleon was a son of Alyattes and Croesus' brother, but not by the same mother: Croesus was born to Alyattes by a Carian woman, and Pantaleon by an Ionian. When Croesus had taken possession of the kingdom, which his father gave him, he put to death the man who had opposed him by dragging him over a carding comb, a board set with iron spikes for combing wool. And the man's property, which he had vowed even before then to dedicate, he offered in the way I have described to the shrines I have named. So much for his offerings.
93. As for wonders worth writing about, Lydia has few compared with other lands, apart from the gold dust that washes down from Mount Tmolus. But it has one work to show that is far larger than any other, except only those in Egypt and Babylon. This is the tomb of Alyattes, Croesus' father. Its base is made of great stones, and the rest of it is a mound of heaped-up earth. It was built with contributions from the tradesmen, the craftsmen, and the girls who worked there as prostitutes. Down to my own time there were still five boundary stones standing on top of the tomb, with inscriptions carved on them recording how much of the work each group had done. When it was measured, the girls' share turned out to be the largest. For in Lydia the daughters of the common people all work as prostitutes, to earn their own dowries, and they keep at it until they marry; and the girls choose their own husbands. The circuit of the tomb is about 3,800 feet, nearly three-quarters of a mile, and its width is 1,300 feet. Next to the tomb is a large lake, which the Lydians say never runs dry, and it is called the Lake of Gyges. That is what this tomb is like.
94. The Lydians have very nearly the same customs as the Greeks, except that they make their daughters prostitutes. They were the first people we know of to strike and use coins of gold and silver, and they were also the first shopkeepers. The Lydians themselves say that the games now played among them and among the Greeks were their invention too. They say these were invented at the same time as they sent out colonists to Tyrrhenia, the land of the Etruscans in Italy, and this is the story they tell about them. In the reign of their king Atys son of Manes there was a severe famine all over Lydia. For a while the Lydians went on putting up with it. But when it did not stop, they looked for remedies, and different people came up with different ideas. That was when, they say, they discovered how to play dice and knucklebones and ball, and all the other games except draughts (the Lydians do not claim to have discovered that one). They invented these games as a way of dealing with the famine, and this is how they used them. On one day they would play games the whole time, so as not to feel the lack of food, and on the next they stopped playing and ate. They went on like this for eighteen years. But the hardship did not let up; it grew worse and worse. So their king divided the whole Lydian people into two halves and drew lots to decide which half would stay and which would leave the country. He put himself in charge of the half that drew the lot to stay, and his son in charge of the half that was leaving. His son's name was Tyrrhenus. So the half that drew the lot to leave went down to the sea at Smyrna. There they built ships, loaded into them all the goods they could carry, and sailed away to look for a living and a land to live in. They passed many peoples, until at last they came to the land of the Ombricans, in Italy. There they founded cities, and they live there to this day. They changed their name and stopped calling themselves Lydians; they took their name from the king's son who had led them out, and called themselves Tyrrhenians after him.
So the Lydians had been made subject to the Persians, as I have said.
95. After this, my history goes on to ask who this Cyrus was who destroyed the empire of Croesus, and how the Persians came to be the leaders of Asia. I shall follow the account of certain Persians, those who do not want to glorify the story of Cyrus but to tell what actually happened; it is their account I shall write. But I could also give the story in three other versions. The Assyrians ruled Upper Asia for five hundred and twenty years, and the first to revolt from them were the Medes. They fought the Assyrians for their freedom and proved themselves brave men; so they threw off the yoke of slavery and were set free. After them the other nations did the same as the Medes. But when all the peoples on the mainland were independent in this way, they came back under the rule of tyrants, and this is how it happened.
96. There was a clever man among the Medes named Deioces, the son of Phraortes. Deioces set his heart on becoming sole ruler, and this is what he did. The Medes lived in scattered villages. Deioces was already well thought of in his own village, and now he set himself to deal justly, much more than before and with greater zeal. He did this even though there was great lawlessness all over Media, and even though he knew that injustice is always at war with justice. The Medes of his village saw how he behaved and chose him as their judge. And since he was aiming at power, he was honest and fair, and by acting this way he won no small praise from his fellow villagers. So much so that people in the other villages heard that Deioces was the one man who judged cases rightly. Before this they had always suffered from unjust verdicts, so when they heard about him, they too gladly came to Deioces to have their disputes settled. In the end they would trust their cases to no one else.
97. More and more people kept coming to him, because they learned that his verdicts matched the truth. When Deioces saw that everything was being brought to him, he refused to sit any longer in the public place where he used to sit and hear cases, and said that he would judge no more. It did him no good, he said, to neglect his own affairs and spend all day judging his neighbors' disputes. So robbery and lawlessness spread through the villages, much worse than before, and the Medes gathered in one place and talked over among themselves the state they were in. And I suppose it was Deioces' friends who did most of the talking, saying something like this: "We can't go on living in this country the way things are. So let us set up a king from among ourselves. Then the country will be well governed, and we ourselves can get on with our work and not be ruined by lawlessness." With words like these they persuaded themselves to have a king.
98. When they then put the question of whom they should make king, Deioces was put forward and praised by everyone, until at last they agreed that he should be their king. He told them to build him a palace worthy of a king and to give him a bodyguard of spearmen for his protection. The Medes did so. They built him a large, strong palace in the part of the country he named, and they let him pick spearmen from among all the Medes. Once he had power over them, he made the Medes build a single fortified city and devote their attention to it, caring less about the other towns. The Medes obeyed him in this too, and he built large, strong walls, the ones now called Ecbatana, set in rings one inside another. The walls are designed so that each ring rises above the one outside it by the height of its battlements and no more. The lay of the land, I suppose, helps this to some extent, since the city stands on a hill; but it was done much more by design, since there are seven rings in all. Inside the innermost ring are the royal palace and the treasuries. The largest of these walls is about as long as the wall around Athens. The battlements of the first ring are white, of the second black, of the third crimson, of the fourth blue, and of the fifth red. So the battlements of all the rings are painted in different colors, and of the last two, the battlements of one are plated with silver and of the other with gold.
99. So Deioces built these walls for himself and around his own palace, and he ordered the people to live outside the wall. When everything was built, Deioces was the first to lay down these rules of royal conduct: no one was to come into the king's presence, but everyone was to deal with him through messengers; no one was to see the king; and besides, it was improper to laugh or spit in his presence, and this last applied to everyone without exception. He surrounded himself with all this ceremony so that the men of his own age, who had grown up with him and were of no lesser family and no less courage than he, would not see him and resent him and plot against him. If they never saw him, he thought, they would believe he was a different kind of being from themselves.
100. Once he had set these things in order and made himself secure in his rule as tyrant, he was strict in upholding justice. People would write down their cases and send them in to him, and he would decide the cases sent in and send them back out. That was how he handled the judging of cases. He also arranged things so that if he heard that anyone was behaving outrageously, he would send for him and punish him as each offense deserved. And he had watchers and listeners all over the land he ruled.
101. So Deioces united the Median people alone, and ruled over them. The tribes of the Medes are these: the Busae, the Paretacenians, the Struchates, the Arizantians, the Budians, and the Magi. That is how many tribes the Medes have.
102. Deioces' son was Phraortes. When Deioces died, after a reign of fifty-three years, Phraortes took the power in his turn. Once he had it, he was not content to rule the Medes alone. He marched against the Persians, attacked them before anyone else, and made them the first to be subject to the Medes. After this, ruling two nations, both of them strong, he set about conquering Asia, going from one people to the next. At last he marched against the Assyrians, the Assyrians who lived at Nineveh. They had once ruled the whole of Asia, but at that time they had been left without support, since their allies had revolted from them, though at home they were still doing well enough. Phraortes marched against these Assyrians, and he himself was killed, after reigning twenty-two years, and most of his army was destroyed.
103. When Phraortes' life had come to its end, the power passed to Cyaxares, son of Phraortes, son of Deioces. This king, they say, was much more warlike than his forefathers. He was the first to organize the men of Asia into separate units; that is, he was the first to separate the spearmen, the archers, and the horsemen from one another, since before that they had all been mixed together without any order. It was he who fought the Lydians on the day the daylight turned to night in the middle of the battle, and who brought under his rule the whole of Asia beyond the river Halys. He gathered all his subjects and marched against Nineveh, to avenge his father and also because he wanted to conquer that city. He fought a battle with the Assyrians and defeated them. But while he was besieging Nineveh, a great army of Scythians came down on him, led by Madyas son of Protohyas, king of the Scythians. They had invaded Asia after driving the Cimmerians out of Europe, and they had come into the land of Media chasing the Cimmerians as they fled.
104. From Lake Maeotis, the Sea of Azov, to the river Phasis and the land of the Colchians is a thirty-day journey for a traveler with no baggage. From Colchis it is not far to cross over into Media. There is only one people in between, the Saspeirians, and once you are past them you are in Media. But the Scythians did not make their invasion by this route. They turned off it and took the upper road, which is much longer, keeping the Caucasus Mountains on their right. Then the Medes fought the Scythians and were beaten in the battle. They lost their power, and the Scythians took control of all Asia.
105. From there the Scythians went on to invade Egypt. When they were in the part of Syria called Palestine, Psammetichus king of Egypt came to meet them, and with gifts and pleading he turned them from their purpose, so that they went no farther. As they were on their way back, they came to the city of Ascalon in Syria. Most of the Scythians passed through without doing any harm, but a few who had stayed behind plundered the temple of Aphrodite Urania, Heavenly Aphrodite. This temple, as I find by inquiry, is the oldest of all the temples of this goddess. The temple in Cyprus was founded from it, as the people of Cyprus themselves say, and the one on Cythera was founded by Phoenicians who came from this part of Syria. The Scythians who had plundered the temple at Ascalon, and their descendants forever after, were struck by the goddess with a disease that made them women instead of men. The Scythians say that this is the reason they suffer from the disease, and that this is why visitors to Scythia can see there, to this day, the condition of the men the Scythians call Enarees.
106. So for twenty-eight years the Scythians ruled Asia, and through their violence and recklessness everything was ruined. Besides demanding from each people the tribute they had laid on it, they rode around apart from the tribute and seized by force whatever each tribe had. Then Cyaxares and the Medes invited most of them to a banquet, got them drunk, and killed them. So the Medes won back their power and ruled the same peoples as before. They also took Nineveh (how it was taken I shall explain in another history), and they made the Assyrians subject to them, all except the land of Babylon.
107. After this Cyaxares died. He had reigned forty years, counting the years when the Scythians ruled, and his son Astyages took over the kingdom from him. Astyages had a daughter, whom he named Mandane. One night he dreamed that so much water flowed from her that it filled his city and flooded the whole of Asia besides. He handed this dream over to those of the Magi who interpreted dreams, and when they told him exactly what it meant, point by point, he was afraid. So later, when Mandane was old enough to marry, he would not give her to any of the Medes who were his equals in rank, because he feared the vision. Instead he gave her to a Persian named Cambyses. He found Cambyses to be of good family and quiet temperament, and he counted him far below a Mede of middling rank.
108. In the first year of Mandane's marriage to Cambyses, Astyages saw a second vision. He dreamed that a vine grew out of his daughter's womb, and that this vine spread over the whole of Asia. After he had seen this and laid it before the dream interpreters, he sent for his daughter, who was now pregnant, to come home from the land of the Persians. When she arrived he kept her under guard, because he meant to destroy whatever child she bore: the Magi who interpreted his dreams had told him that his daughter's child would become king in his place. To guard against this, when Cyrus was born, Astyages called in Harpagus. Harpagus was a close relative of his, the Mede he trusted above all others, and the man he had put in charge of all his affairs. Astyages said to him: "Harpagus, do not neglect in any way the task I am about to give you. Do not betray me, and do not take up anyone else's interests in place of mine, or you will bring ruin on yourself afterwards. Take the child Mandane has borne, carry it to your house, and kill it. After that, bury it any way you like." Harpagus answered: "My king, never in all the time past have you seen me give you any offense, and I mean to watch myself in the time to come as well, so that I never do you wrong. If it is your pleasure that this be done, then it is my duty to carry out your service properly."
109. That was his answer. The child was handed over to him, already dressed for death, and Harpagus went home weeping and told his wife everything Astyages had said. She asked him: "So what do you mean to do now?" And he answered: "Not what Astyages ordered. Not even if he goes still further out of his mind, and grows madder than he is now, will I go along with his wishes or serve him in a murder like this. There are many reasons why I will not kill the child. First, he is my own kin. Then, Astyages is old and has no son. And if, after he is dead, the power passes on with my hand in this, won't the greatest of dangers be waiting for me then? For my own safety this child has to die, but one of Astyages' people must be the one who kills him, not one of mine."
110. So he spoke, and at once he sent a messenger to one of Astyages' herdsmen, a man he knew grazed his herds on the pastures best suited to his purpose, in mountains thick with wild beasts. The man's name was Mitradates, and his wife was a slave like himself. Her name was Cyno in Greek and Spaco in the Median language, because the Medes call a female dog spaca, which in Greek is kyna. This herdsman kept his pastures on the foothills of the mountains north of Ecbatana, toward the North Wind and the Black Sea. Here, in the direction of the Saspeirians, the land of the Medes is high, mountainous and thickly forested; the rest of Media is all flat plain. So the herdsman came in great haste, since he had been summoned urgently, and Harpagus said to him: "Astyages orders you to take this child and leave it on the most desolate part of the mountains, so that it will die as quickly as possible. And he told me to tell you this: if you do not kill it, but save it from death in any way at all, he will put you to death in the most terrible way there is. I have been appointed to see that the child is exposed."
111. When the herdsman had heard this, he picked up the child, went back the way he had come, and reached his home. Now his wife, as it happened, had been expecting her baby any day, and by some chance of heaven she gave birth just then, while the herdsman was away in the city. Each of them was worried about the other. He was afraid for his wife in childbirth, and she was afraid because Harpagus had sent for her husband, which he had never done before. So as soon as he came back and stood before her, she, seeing him again when she had hardly hoped to, spoke first and asked why Harpagus had sent for him so urgently. He said: "Wife, when I got to the city I saw and heard something I wish I had never seen, and I wish it had never happened to our masters. The whole house of Harpagus was full of weeping. I was astonished and went inside, and as soon as I went in I saw a baby lying there in the open, gasping and screaming, dressed in gold jewelry and embroidered clothes. When Harpagus saw me he told me to pick up the child at once and carry it away and leave it on the part of the mountains most full of wild beasts. He said it was Astyages who had given me this job, and he made a lot of threats against me if I failed to do it. So I picked it up and carried it off. I thought it was the child of one of the household slaves, because I could never have guessed where it really came from. But I wondered to see it dressed in gold and fine clothes, and I wondered too that they were openly weeping for it in Harpagus' house. Then right away, on the road, I learned the whole story from the servant who came with me out of the city and handed me the baby. It is really the son of Mandane, Astyages' daughter, and of Cambyses son of Cyrus, and Astyages has ordered it killed. And here it is."
112. As he said this, the herdsman uncovered the baby and showed it to her. When she saw how big and beautiful the child was, she burst into tears, clung to her husband's knees, and begged him not to expose it, whatever happened. But he said he could not do anything else. Harpagus would be sending men back and forth to check that it was done, and he himself would die a miserable death if he failed to do it. When she could not persuade her husband after all, the wife said: "Since I can't persuade you not to expose it, then do this, if a child really has to be seen lying out there. I have had a baby too, but it was born dead. Take that one and expose it, and let us raise the child of Astyages' daughter as our own. That way you will not be caught wronging our masters, and we will not have done badly for ourselves either: the dead child will get a royal burial, and the living one will not lose his life."
113. The herdsman thought that, things being as they were, his wife was right, and he did as she said at once. The child he had brought home to be put to death he handed to his wife. His own child, the dead one, he took and put in the chest he had carried the other in. He dressed it in all the other child's finery, carried it to the most desolate part of the mountains, and left it there. On the third day after the child had been exposed, the herdsman left one of his under-herdsmen to keep watch and went to the city. At Harpagus' house he said he was ready to show the child's dead body. Harpagus sent the most trusted of his bodyguards, and through them he saw the herdsman's child and had it buried. So that child was buried; and the boy who was later called Cyrus was taken in by the herdsman's wife, who brought him up, giving him some other name, no doubt, not Cyrus.
114. When the boy was ten years old, something happened that revealed who he was. He was playing in the village where the cattle sheds were, playing, as I say, in the road with other boys his age. In their game the boys chose as their king this boy who was known as the herdsman's son. He assigned some of them to build palaces and others to be his bodyguards; one of them, no doubt, he made the King's Eye, and to another he gave the job of carrying messages, handing out a task to each. Now one of the boys playing with them, the son of Artembares, a man of standing among the Medes, would not do what Cyrus told him. So Cyrus ordered the other boys to seize him, and when they obeyed, he gave the boy very rough treatment and had him whipped. As soon as the boy was let go, he was all the angrier because he felt he had been treated so far beneath his dignity. He went down to the city and complained to his father about what Cyrus had done to him. He did not call him Cyrus, of course, since that was not yet his name, but "the son of Astyages' herdsman." In the heat of his anger Artembares went straight to Astyages, taking the boy with him. He said he had been treated in a way no one should be, and told the king: "My king, this is how we have been insulted by your slave, the son of a herdsman." And he showed him his son's shoulders.
115. When Astyages had heard and seen this, he wanted to punish the boy to satisfy Artembares' honor, so he sent for the herdsman and his son. When both were there, Astyages looked at Cyrus and said: "You, the son of a man as lowly as this, dared to treat the son of this man, who is first in my favor, with such disgraceful insult?" Cyrus answered: "Master, I was right to do it to him. The boys of the village, and he was one of them, made me their king in their game, because I seemed to them the best fitted for it. Now the other boys did what I told them, but this one disobeyed and paid no attention, until at last he got the punishment he deserved. So if I deserve to suffer anything for that, here I am."
116. As the boy was speaking, Astyages began to recognize him. The features of his face seemed like his own, and his answer seemed rather too free for a herdsman's son, and the time of the exposure seemed to match the boy's age. Struck with amazement at all this, he was speechless for a while. When at last, with difficulty, he had recovered himself, he wanted to send Artembares away so that he could get the herdsman alone and question him. So he said: "Artembares, I will deal with this so that you and your son will have no cause for complaint." With that he dismissed Artembares, and at Astyages' command the servants took Cyrus inside. When the herdsman was left alone with him, Astyages, now alone with the man, asked him where he had gotten the boy and who had handed him over. The herdsman said the boy was his own son, and that his mother was still living with him as his wife. Astyages told him he was ill-advised to want to be brought to the worst extremity, and as he said this he signaled to his bodyguards to seize him. So as he was being led off to be tortured, the herdsman told the story as it really was. He began at the beginning and went through all of it, telling the truth, and at the end he begged the king to pardon him.
117. Now that the herdsman had told the truth, Astyages cared less about him. But he was extremely angry with Harpagus, and ordered his bodyguards to summon him. When Harpagus came, Astyages asked him: "Harpagus, by what death did you kill the child I handed over to you, the child born of my daughter?" Harpagus saw that the herdsman was in the palace, so he did not turn to any false story, in case he should be refuted and caught out. Instead he said: "My king, as soon as I received the child, I thought hard about how I could do what you wanted, and how, without offending against your command, I might still not be guilty of murder against your daughter and against you yourself. So this is what I did. I called this herdsman and handed the child over to him. I told him first that it was you who ordered him to kill it, and in this at least I did not lie, because you did give that order. I handed it over, as I say, to this man, and told him to leave it on a desolate mountain and to stay by it and watch until it died, and I threatened him with every kind of punishment if he failed to carry this out. When he had done what he was ordered and the child was dead, I sent the most trusted of my eunuchs, and through them I saw it and had it buried. That, my king, is how it happened, and that was the death the child died."
118. So Harpagus told the truth. Astyages hid the anger he felt against him for what had happened. First he told the whole story back to Harpagus just as he had heard it from the herdsman. Then, when he had gone through it all, he ended by saying that the child was alive and that what had happened was all for the best. "For," he went on, "I was very troubled by what had been done to this child, and I did not take it lightly that I had fallen out with my daughter. So, since our luck has changed so happily, first send your son to keep company with the boy who has just arrived, and then come and dine with me yourself. I mean to offer a sacrifice of thanks for the boy's rescue to the gods to whom that honor belongs."
119. When Harpagus heard this, he bowed low before the king. He thought it a great thing that his offense had turned out so well for him, and that he had been invited to dinner on such a lucky occasion besides, and so he went home. As soon as he got there he sent off his son, his only son, a boy of about thirteen, telling him to go to Astyages' palace and do whatever the king commanded. And he himself, overjoyed, told his wife what had happened to him. But when Harpagus' son arrived, Astyages cut his throat and cut him apart limb by limb. He had some of the flesh roasted and some boiled, had it all prepared for eating, and kept it ready. When it was time for dinner and the other guests had arrived, Harpagus among them, tables loaded with mutton were set before the other guests and before Astyages himself. But before Harpagus was set the flesh of his own son, all of it except the head, the hands and the feet. These were put aside in a covered basket. When Harpagus seemed to have eaten his fill, Astyages asked him whether he had enjoyed the meal. Harpagus said he had enjoyed it very much. Then the men who had been given their orders brought him his son's head, hands and feet under a cover, stood beside him, and told him to uncover them and take whatever he liked. Harpagus did as he was told and lifted the cover, and he saw what was left of his son. Seeing it, he did not lose his self-control but kept himself in hand. Astyages asked him whether he knew what animal's flesh he had been eating. He said he knew, and that whatever the king did was pleasing to him. With that answer he picked up what was left of the flesh and went home. After that, I suppose, he meant to gather all the remains together and bury them.
120. That was the penalty Astyages laid on Harpagus. As for Cyrus, he thought it over and summoned the same Magi who had interpreted his dream in the way I have described. When they came, Astyages asked them how they had interpreted his vision, and they gave the same answer as before: the child would have become king if he had lived and not died first. He answered them: "The child is alive, not dead. While he was living in the country, the boys of the village made him their king, and he did everything that real kings do. He ruled, he appointed bodyguards and doorkeepers and message-bearers and all the rest, each to his place. So what do you think all this points to?" The Magi said: "If the child is alive and has been king already, without anyone planning it, then take heart and rest easy about him, because he will not rule a second time. Some even of our oracles have come to very little in the end, and what comes from dreams, at any rate, often turns out to mean something trivial." Astyages answered: "I too, Magi, am strongly inclined to think so: since the boy has been called king, the dream has been fulfilled, and he is no longer any danger to me. All the same, think it over carefully and advise me what will be safest both for my house and for yourselves." To this the Magi replied: "My king, it matters a great deal to us as well that your rule should stand firm. Otherwise it passes to foreigners, coming round to this boy, who is a Persian, and we, who are Medes, will be made slaves and count for nothing in the eyes of the Persians, since we are of a different race. But as long as you are established as our king, being one of our own people, we have our share of power and receive great honors from you. So we have every reason to look after you and your rule. If we saw anything in this to be afraid of, we would tell you everything in advance. But since the dream has come out in something trivial, we ourselves are confident, and we urge you to be confident too. As for this boy, send him out of your sight, away to the Persians and to his parents."
121. When he heard this Astyages was glad. He called Cyrus and said to him: "My boy, because of a dream that has not come true I did you a wrong, but by your own destiny you are still alive. So go now, and go in peace, to the land of the Persians, and I will send men with you to escort you. When you get there you will find a father and a mother of a very different kind from Mitradates the herdsman and his wife."
122. With these words Astyages sent Cyrus away. When he reached the house of Cambyses, his parents took him in. And when they learned who he was, they welcomed him warmly, since they had been quite sure that their son had died right after he was born. They asked him how he had survived. He told them that until now he had not known, but had been completely mistaken; on the way, however, he had learned his whole story. He had been quite sure he was the son of Astyages' herdsman, but since the journey from the city began he had heard everything from the men escorting him. He told them he had been raised by the herdsman's wife, and he kept praising her the whole time, so that Cyno was the main person in everything he said. His parents took up this name from him. And so that the Persians would think their son had been saved in a more miraculous way, they spread the story that Cyrus, when he was exposed, had been nursed by a female dog. That is where that story comes from.
123. As Cyrus grew up into a man, he was the bravest and best loved of all those of his age. Harpagus set about making a friend of him and kept sending him gifts, because he wanted to take revenge on Astyages. He could not see how punishment could come to Astyages from himself, a man with no power of his own; but when he saw Cyrus growing up, he tried to make him his ally, seeing a likeness between what Cyrus had suffered and what he had suffered himself. And even before this he had made some progress. Since Astyages was harsh toward the Medes, Harpagus had gone to the leading Medes one by one and persuaded them that they must make Cyrus their leader and put an end to Astyages' reign. When he had done this and everything was ready, Harpagus wanted to reveal his plan to Cyrus, who was living among the Persians. Since the roads were watched, he had no other way to do it, so he came up with this scheme. He got a hare ready and slit open its belly without pulling out any of the fur. Into it, just as it was, he put a letter in which he had written what he had decided. Then he sewed up the hare's belly again, gave some nets to the most trusted of his servants, as if he were a hunter, and sent him off to the land of the Persians. He told him by word of mouth to give the hare to Cyrus, and to tell him at the same time to cut it open with his own hands and to let no one else be there when he did it.
124. This was carried out, and Cyrus took the hare and cut it open. He found the letter inside, took it out, and read it. This is what it said: "Son of Cambyses, the gods watch over you; otherwise you would never have come to such good fortune. So take revenge on Astyages, your murderer. As far as his will goes, you are dead; it is by the care of the gods, and by mine, that you are alive. I think you learned long ago, from first to last, how things happened to you, and also what I have suffered at Astyages' hands because I did not kill you but gave you to the herdsman. Now, if you will take my advice, you will rule all the land Astyages now rules. Persuade the Persians to revolt and march against the Medes. Whether I am appointed to lead the army against you, or some other of the leading Medes, you have what you want, because these will be the first to turn on Astyages, desert him, come over to your side, and try to bring him down. So know that here, at least, everything is ready. Do this, then, and do it quickly."
125. When Cyrus heard this, he began to think about the cleverest way to persuade the Persians to revolt. After thinking it over, he found that this was the most suitable way, and this is what he actually did. First he wrote what he wanted on a sheet of paper, and he called an assembly of the Persians. Then he unrolled the paper and, reading from it, announced that Astyages had appointed him commander of the Persians. "And now, Persians," he went on, "I order each of you to come to me with a sickle." That was the order Cyrus gave. (The Persians are made up of many tribes. Some of them Cyrus gathered together and persuaded to revolt from the Medes: the tribes on which all the other Persians depend, namely the Pasargadae, the Maraphians and the Maspians. Of these the Pasargadae are the noblest, and the Achaemenids, the clan from which the Perseid kings come, are one of their families. The other Persian tribes are these: the Panthaliaeans, the Derusiaeans and the Germanians, who are all farmers; and the rest are nomads, namely the Daans, the Mardians, the Dropicans and the Sagartians.)
126. There was a certain stretch of Persian land overgrown with thorns, about two miles or a little more on each side. When they had all come with what they had been told to bring, Cyrus ordered them to clear this land for farming in a single day. When the Persians had finished the job set them, he told them to come back the next day, bathed and clean. Meanwhile Cyrus gathered in one place all his father's flocks of goats and sheep and his herds of cattle, slaughtered them, and got them ready to entertain the whole Persian host, along with wine and the most agreeable foods besides. When the Persians came the next day, he had them recline in a meadow and gave them a feast. After they had finished eating, Cyrus asked them which they liked better, what they had had the day before or what they had now. They said there was a great difference between the two: the day before had brought them nothing but hardship, and this day nothing but good things. Cyrus took up what they had said and laid bare his whole plan. "Men of Persia," he said, "this is how things stand with you. If you will do as I say, you will have these good things and ten thousand others, with no slave's labor at all. But if you will not do as I say, you will have countless labors like yesterday's. So do as I say, and make yourselves free. I believe I was born by some providence of heaven to take this work in hand, and I don't think you are worse men than the Medes, either in other things or in war. Since that is how things are, revolt from Astyages at once."
127. So the Persians, having found a leader, were glad to try to free themselves, since they had long resented being ruled by the Medes. When Astyages heard what Cyrus was doing, he sent a messenger to summon him. Cyrus told the messenger to report to Astyages that he would be with him sooner than Astyages himself would like. When he heard this, Astyages armed all the Medes, and, blinded by heaven, he appointed Harpagus to command the army, forgetting what he had done to him. When the Medes marched out and engaged the Persians, some of them, those who had not been let in on the plot, kept on fighting. Others went over to the Persians. But most of them deliberately held back and ran away.
128. So the Median army was shamefully scattered. As soon as Astyages heard of it, he said, threatening Cyrus: "Even so, Cyrus will not get away unpunished." With these words he first impaled the Magi who interpreted dreams, the ones who had persuaded him to let Cyrus go. Then he armed the Medes who had been left behind in the city, the young men and the old. He led these out, gave battle to the Persians, and was beaten. Astyages himself was taken alive, and he lost the Medes he had led out as well.
129. When Astyages was a prisoner, Harpagus came and stood beside him, gloating over him and taunting him. Among the other things he said to wound him, he asked him in particular how he liked being a slave instead of a king, meaning that dinner at which Astyages had served him the flesh of his own son. Astyages looked at him and asked in return whether he claimed what Cyrus had done as his own work. Harpagus said that since he had written the letter, the deed was rightly his. Then Astyages told him he was at once the stupidest and the most unjust of men. The stupidest, because when he could have become king himself, as he could have if what had now been done was really his doing, he had handed the supreme power to someone else. The most unjust, because on account of that dinner he had made the Medes slaves. If he really had to give the kingdom to someone else and not keep it himself, it would have been more just to give this prize to one of the Medes rather than to one of the Persians. As it was, the Medes, who had done nothing wrong, had become slaves instead of masters, and the Persians, who used to be the Medes' slaves, had now become their masters.
130. So Astyages, after reigning thirty-five years, was brought down in this way. Because of his cruelty the Medes bowed under the yoke of the Persians, after they had ruled Asia above the river Halys for one hundred and twenty-eight years, not counting the time when the Scythians ruled. Later on, however, they regretted having done this, and they revolted from Darius; but after revolting they were brought under again, beaten in a battle. At this time, then, in the reign of Astyages, the Persians under Cyrus rose up against the Medes, and from then on they were the rulers of Asia. As for Astyages, Cyrus did him no further harm, but kept him at his own court until he died. That is how Cyrus was born and raised and became king. After this he conquered Croesus, who, as I said earlier, was the one who started the quarrel; and once he had conquered him, he became ruler of all Asia.
131. These are the customs the Persians follow, as far as I know them. They do not think it right to set up statues of the gods, or temples, or altars. In fact they say that people who do these things are fools. The reason, as it seems to me, is that they do not believe the gods have human form, as the Greeks do. Their custom is to go up to the highest mountains and offer sacrifices to Zeus there, and the whole circle of the sky is what they call Zeus. They also sacrifice to the Sun and the Moon and the Earth, to Fire and to Water and to the Winds. These are the only gods they have sacrificed to from the very beginning. But they have also learned to sacrifice to Aphrodite Urania, and they learned it from the Assyrians and the Arabians. The Assyrians call Aphrodite Mylitta, the Arabians call her Alitta, and the Persians call her Mitra.
132. Now this is the way the Persians are accustomed to sacrifice to the gods I have named. They build no altars and they light no fire. When they mean to sacrifice, they use no libation, no music of the pipe, no garlands and no barley-meal for sprinkling. Instead, when a man wants to sacrifice to any one of the gods, he leads the animal to a clean place, one free of any pollution, and calls on the god, usually with a wreath of myrtle wound around his tiara, the soft cap the Persians wear. The man who sacrifices is not allowed to pray for good things for himself alone. He prays that all will be well with all the Persians and with the king, since he himself is of course counted among all the Persians. When he has cut the victim up into pieces and boiled the meat, he spreads out a bed of the freshest grass, clover above all, and lays all the pieces of meat on it right away. Once he has laid them out in order, a Magus, one of the Magi, the Persian priestly caste, stands beside them and chants a song over them about the birth of the gods (that, they say, is what their chant is), since it is against their law to sacrifice without a Magus. Then, after waiting a short time, the man who made the sacrifice carries the meat away and uses it for whatever he likes.
133. Of all the days of the year, each of them most honors the day he was born. On that day he thinks it right to serve a bigger feast than on other days. At this feast the richer Persians set on the table an ox or a horse or a camel or a donkey, roasted whole in an oven, while the poor set out smaller animals, cooked the same way. They eat few main dishes but many desserts, and these are not served all at once but one after another. That is why the Persians say that the Greeks get up from dinner still hungry: after dinner the Greeks are served nothing worth mentioning in the way of dessert, whereas if they were served a good dessert they would not stop eating so soon. The Persians are very fond of wine. It is not allowed for a man to vomit or to urinate in front of anyone else, and that is how they guard against these things. It is also their custom to discuss their most important business while they are drinking heavily. Whatever they decide in that discussion, the master of the house where they happen to be meeting puts before them again the next day, when they are sober. If they still like the decision when they are sober, they act on it; if they do not, they drop it. And whatever they discuss first when they are sober, they consider again when they are drunk.
134. When they meet each other in the street, you can tell whether the two who meet are of equal rank, because instead of greeting each other with words, equals kiss each other on the mouth. If one of them is a little lower in rank than the other, they kiss on the cheek. If one is of much humbler birth than the other, he throws himself down on the ground before him and bows in worship. After themselves, they honor most the nations that live nearest to them, then the ones that live next nearest, and so on, giving honor in proportion to distance. They honor least the people who live farthest away from them, since they think that they themselves are by far the best of all human beings in every way, that others have a share of merit in the proportion I have just described, and that those who live farthest from them are the worst. Under the rule of the Medes the different nations also governed one another by the same rule the Persians follow in giving honor. The Medes ruled over all of them, and directly over those who lived nearest to them; these in turn ruled over their own neighbors, and those again over the nations next to them. So the Median people extended their power step by step, from ruling directly to ruling through others.
135. The Persians take up foreign customs more readily than anyone else in the world. They wear Median clothes, because they think them better-looking than their own, and in war they wear the Egyptian breastplate. They also take up every kind of luxury as soon as they hear of it, and in particular they have learned from the Greeks to have sex with boys. Each of them marries several lawful wives, and they keep many more concubines besides.
136. Next to being brave in battle, the mark of a real man is to be able to show many sons, and every year the king sends gifts to the man who has the most, since they think that numbers are strength. They educate their sons from the age of five to the age of twenty in three things only: riding, shooting with the bow, and telling the truth. Before a boy is five he never comes into his father's sight, but lives with the women. This is done so that if the child dies while he is being raised, his death will cause his father no grief.
137. I approve of this custom of theirs, and also of the next one I am going to mention. The king himself does not put anyone to death for a single offense, and no other Persian does any harm that cannot be undone to any of his own servants for a single offense either. Only if he weighs things up and finds that the wrongs are more numerous and greater than the services does he let his anger loose. They also say that no one has ever killed his own father or mother. Whenever anything of that kind has been done, they say, it will always turn out on inquiry that the killer was a changeling or the child of adultery. For it is not reasonable, they say, that a true parent should be killed by his own son.
138. Whatever they are not allowed to do, they are not allowed even to talk about. The most shameful thing of all, in their view, is to tell a lie, and the next most shameful is to owe money. They have many reasons for this, but the chief one is that a man who owes money, they say, is bound to tell lies sometimes too. Any citizen who has leprosy, or the disease that turns the skin white, may not enter a city or mix with the other Persians. They say he has these diseases because he has sinned against the Sun in some way. A foreigner who catches these diseases is driven out of the country altogether in many parts of it, and so are white doves, which they charge with the same offense. They never urinate or spit into a river, and they do not wash their hands in one or let anyone else do these things. They hold rivers in very great reverence.
139. Something else is also true of them, which the Persians themselves have never noticed, but I have. Their names, which describe their bodies or their high position, all end in the same letter: the letter the Dorians call san and the Ionians call sigma, our s. If you look into it, you will find that every Persian name ends in this letter. Not some in this one and others in other letters, but all alike.
140. All this I can say for certain from my own knowledge. But what follows about their dead is told as a secret mystery and not openly: that the body of a Persian man is not buried until it has been torn by a bird or a dog. (I know for certain that the Magi do this, because they do it openly.) Be that as it may, the Persians coat the body in wax and then bury it in the ground. The Magi are very different from other men, and from the priests in Egypt in particular. The Egyptian priests make it a point of purity to kill nothing alive except the animals they sacrifice. But the Magi kill every kind of creature with their own hands, except dogs and human beings. They even make a great point of it, killing ants and snakes and every other creature that crawls or flies. As for this custom, let it stay as it was established from the beginning. Now I will go back to my earlier story.
141. As soon as the Lydians had been conquered by the Persians, the Ionians and the Aeolians sent messengers to Cyrus at Sardis. They wanted to be his subjects on the same terms as they had been subjects of Croesus. When Cyrus heard what they proposed, he told them a fable. A piper, he said, saw some fish in the sea and played his pipe to them, thinking they would come out onto the land. When his hopes came to nothing, he took a casting net, caught a great many of the fish in it, and hauled them out of the water. And when he saw them jumping about, he said to the fish: "You can stop dancing now. You wouldn't come out and dance before, when I piped to you." Cyrus told the Ionians and Aeolians this fable for a reason. Earlier, when Cyrus himself had sent a messenger asking the Ionians to revolt from Croesus, they had refused; and now, when the conquest was over, they were ready to obey Cyrus. So he spoke to them in anger. When the Ionians heard this answer brought back to their cities, each of them built a wall around itself, and they met together at the Panionium, the shrine of all the Ionians, all except the people of Miletus. With the Milesians alone Cyrus had sworn a treaty on the same terms the Lydians had granted them. The rest of the Ionians decided together to send messengers to Sparta, to ask the Spartans to help the Ionians.
142. These Ionians, the ones the Panionium belongs to, happen to have built their cities in the finest climate and the best seasons of any people we know. For no land, whether north of Ionia or south of it, east of it or west, does as well as Ionia itself. The lands in one direction suffer from cold and wet, and those in the other from heat and drought. These Ionians do not all speak the same language; they have four different dialects. The southernmost of their cities is Miletus, and next to it come Myus and Priene. These were settled in Caria, and they speak the same dialect as each other. The following cities are in Lydia: Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedus, Teos, Clazomenae and Phocaea. These cities speak nothing like the ones I just mentioned, but they agree with one another. There are three more Ionian cities left. Two of them are on islands, Samos and Chios, and one, Erythrae, is built on the mainland. The people of Chios and Erythrae speak the same dialect, but the Samians have one all their own. So that makes four separate dialects.
143. Of these Ionians, then, the Milesians were sheltered from danger, since they had sworn a treaty. The islanders had nothing to fear, because the Phoenicians were not yet subjects of the Persians, and the Persians themselves were not seafarers. Now these twelve cities had split off from the rest of the Ionians for no other reason than this. The whole Greek nation was weak at that time, but of all its peoples the Ionians were by far the weakest and the least regarded; apart from Athens they did not have a single city of any importance. The other Ionians, and the Athenians among them, avoided the name and did not want to be called Ionians; even now, I notice, most of them seem ashamed of it. But these twelve cities took pride in the name. They set up a temple of their own, which they named the Panionium, and they decided not to let any other Ionians share in it. (Nor did any others ask to share in it, except the people of Smyrna.)
144. In the same way, the Dorians of the district that is now called the Five Cities, though it used to be called the Six Cities, take care not to admit any of the neighboring Dorians to their temple at Triopium. They even shut out those of their own number who break the temple's rules. For example, at the games of Triopian Apollo they used to give bronze tripods as prizes to the winners, and the rule was that the winners must not carry them out of the temple, but must dedicate them to the god then and there. Then there was a man from Halicarnassus named Agasicles. When he won, he paid no attention to this rule. He carried the tripod off to his own house and hung it up there on a nail. For this the other five cities, Lindus, Ialysus and Camirus, Cos and Cnidus, shut the sixth city, Halicarnassus, out of any share in the temple.
145. That was the penalty they laid on the Halicarnassians. As for the Ionians, I think the reason they made themselves twelve cities and would not take any more into their league is this. When they lived in the Peloponnese, they were divided into twelve parts, just as the Achaeans, who drove the Ionians out, are divided into twelve parts now. Starting from the side nearest Sicyon, first comes Pellene, then Aegira, and Aegae, which has the river Crathis, a river that never runs dry (the river of the same name in Italy was named after it), and Bura, and Helice, where the Ionians fled for refuge when the Achaeans beat them in battle, and Aegium, and Rhypes, and Patrae, and Pharae, and Olenus, where the great river Peirus is, and Dyme, and Tritaea, the only one of them that lies inland. These are now the twelve divisions of the Achaeans, and in the old days they were the divisions of the Ionians.
146. That is why the Ionians, too, made themselves twelve cities. For it would be sheer folly to say that these are any more Ionian than the other Ionians, or that they come of any nobler descent. A large part of them are Abantians from Euboea, who do not even share the name of Ionia. Minyans of Orchomenus are mixed in with them, and Cadmeans, and Dryopians, and Phocians who broke away from their own state, and Molossians, and Pelasgians from Arcadia, and Dorians from Epidaurus, and many other peoples besides. And those who set out to found their colonies from the Prytaneum, the town hall of Athens, and who think themselves the noblest-born of the Ionians, brought no women with them to their new home. Instead they took Carian women, after killing their parents. Because of this slaughter the women made a rule for themselves, bound one another by oaths to keep it, and passed it on to their daughters: they would never eat with their husbands, and no wife would ever call her own husband by his name. The reason was that these men had killed their fathers and husbands and children, and then, after doing that, had taken them as wives. This happened at Miletus.
147. Some of them, too, chose Lycian kings to rule them, descendants of Glaucus and Hippolochus, while others were ruled by Cauconians from Pylos, descendants of Codrus son of Melanthus, and others again by kings from both families together. Still, since these twelve cities cling to the name more than the other Ionians, let them be called, if they like, the Ionians of truly pure descent. But in fact all are Ionians who are descended from Athens and keep the festival of the Apaturia. And all of them keep it except the people of Ephesus and Colophon. These alone of all the Ionians do not keep the Apaturia, and their reason is a certain murder.
148. The Panionium is a holy place on the north side of Mycale, set apart by the common agreement of the Ionians for Poseidon of Helice. Mycale is a headland of the mainland that runs out westward toward Samos. The Ionians used to gather there from their cities and hold a festival they called the Panionia. (And not only the festivals of the Ionians but those of all the Greeks alike follow the same rule: their names all end in the same letter, just like the names of the Persians.)
Those, then, are the Ionian cities.
149. The cities of Aeolia are these: Cyme, which is called Phriconis, Larisa, Neonteichus, Temnus, Cilla, Notium, Aegiroessa, Pitane, Aegaeae, Myrina and Gryneia. These are the ancient cities of the Aeolians, eleven in number, since one of them, Smyrna, was taken away from them by the Ionians. For these cities, the ones on the mainland, used to number twelve as well. These Aeolians happened to settle in a land that is more fertile than Ionia but does not have as good a climate.
150. This is how the Aeolians lost Smyrna. Some men of Colophon had lost out in a struggle between factions and been driven from their city, and the people of Smyrna took them in as refugees. Later these Colophonian exiles waited for a time when the people of Smyrna were holding a festival for Dionysus outside the walls. Then they shut the gates against them and took the city for themselves. After this, when all the Aeolians came to the rescue, the two sides made an agreement: the Ionians would hand over everything that could be carried away, and on that condition the Aeolians would give up Smyrna. When the people of Smyrna had done this, the other eleven cities divided them among themselves and made them their own citizens.
151. These, then, are the Aeolian cities on the mainland, apart from those on Mount Ida, which are separate from the rest. As for those on the islands, there are five on Lesbos. The sixth city on Lesbos, Arisba, was enslaved by the people of Methymna, even though its citizens were of the same blood as they were. There is one city on Tenedos, and another in what are called the Hundred Isles. Now the people of Lesbos and Tenedos, like the Ionians who lived on islands, had nothing to fear. But the rest of the cities agreed together to follow the Ionians wherever they led.
152. When the messengers from the Ionians and Aeolians reached Sparta (for all this was done in a hurry), they chose a Phocaean named Pythermus to speak for all of them. He put on a purple cloak, so that as many Spartans as possible would hear about it and come to listen. Then he was brought before the assembly, and he made a long speech asking the Spartans to help them. But the Spartans would not listen to him. On the contrary, they decided not to help the Ionians. So the messengers went away. But even though they had sent the Ionians' messengers away, the Spartans still sent some men off in a fifty-oared ship, to find out, as I suppose, how things stood with Cyrus and with Ionia. When these men reached Phocaea, they sent the most respected man among them, whose name was Lacrines, to Sardis, to give Cyrus the Spartans' message: he was to do no harm to any city in Greece, because they would not allow it.
153. When the herald had said this, Cyrus is said to have asked the Greeks he had with him who these Spartans were, and how many of them there were, that they dared make such a declaration to him. When he heard their answer, he said to the Spartan herald: "I have never yet been afraid of men like these, who have a place set aside in the middle of their city where they get together and cheat each other with false oaths. If I stay healthy, they will have their own troubles to talk about, and not the troubles of the Ionians." Cyrus threw out these words as an insult to all the Greeks, because they have marketplaces and buy and sell in them. The Persians themselves do not use markets, and they have no marketplace at all. After this Cyrus put Sardis in the charge of a Persian named Tabalus, and gave a Lydian named Pactyes the job of looking after the gold of Croesus and of the other Lydians. Then he marched off himself to Ecbatana, taking Croesus with him, and for the moment took no account of the Ionians. For Babylon still stood in his way, and so did the Bactrian nation, the Sacae and the Egyptians. He meant to lead the campaigns against these himself, and to send some other general against the Ionians.
154. But when Cyrus had marched away from Sardis, Pactyes led the Lydians in a revolt against Tabalus and against Cyrus. He went down to the coast, and since he had all the gold that had been in Sardis, he hired mercenaries and persuaded the people of the coast to march with him. So he marched on Sardis and besieged Tabalus, who had shut himself up in the citadel.
155. Cyrus heard about this on his march, and he said to Croesus: "Croesus, where will all this end? It looks as if the Lydians will never stop making trouble for me and having trouble themselves. I wonder whether it would be best to sell them all as slaves. As it is, I think I have acted like a man who kills the father and then spares the sons. That is just what I have done: I took you prisoner, and I am carrying you away, you who were much more than a father to the Lydians, and I handed the Lydians back their city. And after that, can I be surprised that they have revolted from me?" That is how he said what was on his mind. But Croesus was afraid that Cyrus would destroy Sardis, and he answered: "My king, what you say is reasonable. But do not give way to your anger completely, and do not destroy an ancient city that is innocent both of what happened before and of what is happening now. As for what happened before, I did it, and I carry the consequences on my own head. As for what is happening now, the wrongdoer is Pactyes, the man you put in charge of Sardis, so let him pay the penalty. But pardon the Lydians, and give them these orders, so that they will not revolt or be a danger to you. Send word forbidding them to own weapons of war. Tell them instead to wear tunics under their cloaks and soft high boots on their feet, and order them to teach their sons to play the lyre and the harp and to keep shops. Soon, my king, you will see that they have become women instead of men, and there will be no fear that they will revolt from you."
156. Croesus suggested this to him because he saw that it was better for the Lydians than being made slaves and sold. He knew that if he did not offer a good enough reason, he would not persuade Cyrus to change his mind. And he was afraid that at some later time, if the Lydians escaped the present danger, they might revolt from the Persians and be destroyed. Cyrus was very pleased with the suggestion. His anger cooled, and he said he agreed with Croesus' advice. Then he called for Mazares, a Mede, and ordered him to proclaim to the Lydians what Croesus had suggested. He also ordered him to sell as slaves all the others who had joined the Lydians in the march on Sardis, and above all, whatever it took, to bring Pactyes himself to Cyrus alive.
157. Cyrus gave these orders on the road and then marched on to the Persians' homeland. But when Pactyes heard that an army was coming to fight him, he was terrified and fled at once to Cyme. Then Mazares the Mede marched on Sardis with a part of Cyrus' army. He no longer found Pactyes or his followers at Sardis, so first he forced the Lydians to carry out Cyrus' orders, and by his orders the Lydians changed their whole way of life. After this Mazares sent messengers to Cyme, ordering the people to hand over Pactyes. The people of Cyme decided to refer the question of what to do to the god at Branchidae. There was an oracle there, set up long ago, which all the Ionians and Aeolians used to consult. The place is in the territory of Miletus, above the harbor of Panormus.
158. So the people of Cyme sent messengers to Branchidae to consult the god, and they asked what they should do about Pactyes in order to please the gods. When they asked, the answer they were given was that they should hand Pactyes over to the Persians. When they heard this answer reported, the people of Cyme were ready to hand him over. But when most of the people were ready to do it, Aristodicus son of Heraclides, a man of standing among the citizens, stopped them. He did not trust the answer, and he thought the messengers who had gone to consult the oracle were not telling the truth. In the end other messengers were sent to the oracle to ask a second time about Pactyes, and Aristodicus was one of them.
159. When they reached Branchidae, Aristodicus stepped forward from the others and put this question to the oracle: "Lord, Pactyes the Lydian came to us as a suppliant, asking for protection, running from a violent death at the hands of the Persians. The Persians are demanding him, and they order the people of Cyme to give him up. But although we are afraid of the power of the Persians, we have not yet dared to hand the suppliant over to them, not until your advice is made clear to us, telling us which of the two things we ought to do." That was his question, but the god gave them the same answer again, telling them to hand Pactyes over to the Persians. At this Aristodicus deliberately did the following. He went all around the temple, destroying the nests of the sparrows and of all the other kinds of birds that had hatched their young on the temple. While he was doing this, it is said, a voice came out of the inner shrine, speaking to Aristodicus: "You most wicked of men, how dare you do this? Are you dragging my suppliants by force out of my temple?" And Aristodicus, they say, was not at a loss at all, and answered: "Lord, is this how you come to the help of your own suppliants, while you tell the people of Cyme to hand over theirs?" And the god answered him again: "Yes, I do tell you to, so that you will be destroyed all the sooner for your wickedness, and so that you will never again come to the oracle to ask about handing over suppliants."
160. When the people of Cyme heard this reply reported, they did not want to be destroyed for handing him over, or to be besieged for keeping him. So they sent him away to Mytilene. But when Mazares sent messages to the Mytilenians, they got ready to hand Pactyes over for a price. What the price was I can't say for certain, because the deal was never completed. For when the people of Cyme learned what the Mytilenians were doing, they sent a ship to Lesbos and carried Pactyes off to Chios. There he was dragged by force out of the temple of Athena Poliuchus, Athena Guardian of the City, by the Chians, and handed over. The Chians handed him over and got Atarneus in return (Atarneus is a district of Mysia, opposite Lesbos). So the Persians took charge of Pactyes and kept him under guard, meaning to bring him before Cyrus. And for a long time afterward, none of the Chians would use barley grown in this district of Atarneus for sprinkling at a sacrifice to any god, or bake sacrificial cakes from the grain that grew there. Everything the land produced was kept out of every kind of sacred rite.
161. So the Chians had handed over Pactyes. After this Mazares marched against those who had joined in besieging Tabalus. First he enslaved the people of Priene. Then he overran the whole plain of the Maeander, letting his army plunder it, and he did the same to Magnesia. And right after this he fell sick and died.
162. After Mazares died, Harpagus came down to take his place in command. He too was a Mede by birth. He was the man whom Astyages, king of the Medes, had served that lawless banquet, and who had helped to give the kingdom to Cyrus. Now Cyrus appointed him commander, and he came to Ionia and began taking the cities by building up mounds of earth against them. Whenever he had shut a people up inside their walls, he would pile up mounds against the walls and take the city by storm. The first city in Ionia he attacked was Phocaea.
163. These Phocaeans were the first of the Greeks to make long sea voyages. It was they who discovered the Adriatic, and Tyrrhenia, and Iberia, and Tartessus, out past the Strait of Gibraltar. They did not sail in round-hulled merchant ships but in fifty-oared galleys. They came to Tartessus and made friends with the king of the Tartessians, whose name was Arganthonius. He ruled the Tartessians for eighty years and lived to be a hundred and twenty in all. The Phocaeans became such close friends with this man that first he invited them to leave Ionia and settle anywhere they liked in his own country. When he could not persuade them to do that, and later heard from them how the power of the Mede was growing, he gave them money to build a wall around their city. He gave it without stinting, for the wall runs a good mile or more around, and it is built entirely of large stones closely fitted together.
164. That is how the Phocaeans' wall came to be built. Harpagus marched his army against them and laid siege to the city. At the same time he made them an offer: he would be satisfied, he said, if the Phocaeans would just pull down one battlement of their wall and dedicate one single house to the king. But the Phocaeans hated the thought of slavery. They said they wanted one day to think the matter over, and after that they would give their answer, and they asked him to pull his army back from the wall while they deliberated. Harpagus said he knew perfectly well what they meant to do, but all the same he would let them deliberate. So, while Harpagus had his army pulled back from the wall, the Phocaeans dragged their fifty-oared galleys down to the sea. They put on board their children and women and all their movable goods. They also loaded the statues from the temples and the other offerings, all except the ones made of bronze or stone and the paintings; everything else went into the ships. Then they embarked themselves and sailed for Chios. The Persians took possession of Phocaea, a city empty of its people.
165. As for the Phocaeans, they asked the people of Chios to sell them the islands called the Oenussae, but the Chians would not. They were afraid the islands would become a center of trade and their own island would be shut out of it. So the Phocaeans set out for Cyrnus, the island of Corsica. Twenty years before this, following an oracle, they had founded a city on Cyrnus called Alalia. (By this time Arganthonius was dead.) But before setting out for Cyrnus they first sailed back to Phocaea and slaughtered the Persian garrison that Harpagus had left in charge of the city. When they had done this, they laid a solemn curse on any of their number who stayed behind from the voyage. They also sank a lump of iron in the sea and swore that they would not come back to Phocaea until that lump rose to the surface again. But as they were setting off for Cyrnus, more than half the citizens were seized with such longing and regret for their city and their homeland that they broke their oath and sailed back to Phocaea. Those who still kept the oath weighed anchor from the Oenussae islands and sailed away.
166. When they reached Cyrnus, they lived there for five years alongside the settlers who had come before them, and they built temples there. But they kept plundering the property of all their neighbors. So the Tyrrhenians and the Carthaginians (from Carthage, the Phoenician colony in North Africa) made an agreement and sailed against them, each with sixty ships. The Phocaeans manned their own ships, sixty in all, and went out to meet the enemy in what is called the Sardinian Sea. When they met in the sea battle, the Phocaeans won a kind of Cadmean victory, the kind that ruins the winner too: forty of their ships were destroyed, and the remaining twenty were put out of action, their rams bent aside. So they sailed into Alalia, took on board their children and women and as much of their other property as their ships could carry, left Cyrnus behind, and sailed to Rhegium.
167. As for the crews of the ships that were destroyed, the Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians captured by far the greater number of them. They brought them ashore and stoned them to death. After this the people of Agylla found that every living thing that passed the spot where the stoned Phocaeans lay became twisted, or crippled, or paralyzed: sheep and goats, pack animals and human beings alike. So the people of Agylla sent to Delphi, wanting to make amends for the offense. The Pythia told them to do what the people of Agylla still do today: they offer great sacrifices to the dead men and hold athletic games and horse races in their honor at that place. That was the fate of those Phocaeans. But the ones who took refuge at Rhegium set out from there and took possession of the city in the land of Oenotria that is now called Hyele. They founded it after learning from a man of Poseidonia that the Pythia's answer had meant them to found a shrine to Cyrnus, who was a hero, and not to found a settlement on the island of Cyrnus.
168. That is what happened at Phocaea in Ionia. The people of Teos did almost the same thing. As soon as Harpagus took their wall with a mound, they boarded their ships and sailed straight off to Thrace. There they founded the city of Abdera. Timesius of Clazomenae had founded it before them, but he got no good of it: the Thracians drove him out. Now he is honored as a hero by the Teans in Abdera.
169. These were the only Ionians who left their native cities rather than live in subjection. The other Ionians, except the Milesians, did fight Harpagus just as those who left had done, and they proved themselves brave men, each fighting for his own city. But when they were beaten and their cities taken, they all stayed where they were and did what they were ordered to do. The Milesians, as I said before, had made a sworn agreement with Cyrus himself and stayed out of it. So Ionia was enslaved for the second time. And when Harpagus had conquered the Ionians on the mainland, the Ionians who lived on the islands were so frightened by all this that they surrendered to Cyrus.
170. The Ionians had been badly treated, but they still kept holding their assemblies at the Panionium, as before. I am told that Bias of Priene gave the Ionians a piece of advice there, a most useful one, and if they had followed it they might have been the most prosperous of all the Greeks. He urged the Ionians to set out together in one common fleet, sail to Sardinia, and there found a single city for all Ionians. That way, he said, they would escape slavery and prosper, living on the largest of all islands and ruling over others. But if they stayed in Ionia, he said, he could not see how they would ever be free again. That was Bias of Priene's advice, given after the Ionians had been ruined. But good advice had also been given before Ionia's ruin, by Thales of Miletus, whose family was Phoenician by descent. He advised the Ionians to have one single seat of government and to put it at Teos, since Teos, he said, was at the center of Ionia. The other cities would go on being lived in as before, but would count as if they were only districts of one state.
These, then, were the plans these two men put before them.
171. Harpagus, having subdued Ionia, marched against the Carians and the Caunians and the Lycians, taking Ionians and Aeolians along to help him. The Carians had come to the mainland from the islands. Long ago they had been subjects of Minos, king of Crete, and were called Leleges. They lived on the islands and paid no tribute, as far back as I can find out by hearsay; but whenever Minos asked, they manned his ships for him. And since Minos conquered a great deal of land and was lucky in his wars, the Carians were in his day by far the most famous of all nations. They also produced three inventions that the Greeks took up. The Carians were the ones who started the fashion of fastening crests on helmets and of putting emblems on shields. They were also the first to put handles on their shields. Until then everyone who carried a shield carried it without a handle, steering it with a leather strap slung around the neck and over the left shoulder. Then, a long time afterward, the Dorians and Ionians drove the Carians out of the islands, and that is how they came to the mainland. That is how the Cretans tell the story of the Carians. The Carians themselves do not agree. They believe they have lived on the mainland from the beginning and have always gone by the same name they have now. As evidence they point to an ancient temple of Carian Zeus at Mylasa, which the Mysians and the Lydians share with them as kindred peoples, since they say Lydus and Mysus were brothers of Car. These peoples share the temple, but those of other races who have come to speak the same language as the Carians have no share in it.
172. In my opinion, though, it is the Caunians who have lived there from the beginning, even though they say themselves that they came from Crete. They have come to resemble the Carians in language, or else the Carians have come to resemble the Caunians; I can't say for certain which. But in their customs they are very different from all other people, the Carians included. For example, the finest thing in the world, to their way of thinking, is to gather in large groups for drinking, by age or by friendship, men, women and children alike. Again, they once set up temples to foreign gods, but afterward changed their minds and decided to worship only their own native gods. So all the young men of Caunus put on their armor and marched as far as the borders of the Calyndians, striking at the air with their spears and saying that they were driving the foreign gods out of the country. Those are the customs these people have.
173. The Lycians, on the other hand, came originally from Crete, for in ancient times all of Crete was held by non-Greeks. The two sons of Europa, Sarpedon and Minos, quarreled in Crete over who should be king. Minos won the struggle between their factions and drove out Sarpedon and his supporters. Once expelled, they came to the land of Milyas in Asia. (The land the Lycians live in now was called Milyas in the old days, and the Milyans were then called Solymi.) While Sarpedon reigned over them, they went by the name they had brought with them, which is still what their neighbors call the Lycians today: Termilae. But then Lycus son of Pandion came from Athens to the land of the Termilae and to Sarpedon, after he too had been driven out, by his brother Aegeus. From this Lycus, in time, they came to be called Lycians. Their customs are partly Cretan and partly Carian. But they have one custom all their own, which no other people shares: they take their names from their mothers and not from their fathers. If you ask a Lycian who he is, he will give you his mother's family, and list his mother's mother and her mothers before her. And if a woman who is a citizen marries a slave, her children are counted as nobly born. But if a man who is a citizen, even the first man among them, takes a slave as his wife or his concubine, his children have no citizen rights.
174. The Carians were conquered by Harpagus without doing anything brilliant, and so were the Greeks who live in that country. Among these, besides others, are the people of Cnidus, settlers from Sparta. Their land runs out into the sea; it is the region called Triopium, which begins at the peninsula of Bybassus. All of Cnidus except a small strip is washed by the sea: on the north side it is bounded by the Gulf of Ceramus, and on the south by the sea off Syme and Rhodes. So, while Harpagus was conquering Ionia, the Cnidians began to dig through this small strip, which is about half a mile across, wanting to make their land an island. Everything inside the isthmus was theirs, since the isthmus they were digging across is exactly where Cnidian territory ends on the mainland side. A great many men were at work on it. But it became clear that the workmen were getting hurt far more than you would expect, and in a way that seemed more than natural, in various parts of their bodies and especially in their eyes, whenever the rock was broken up. So they sent men to the oracle at Delphi to ask what was causing the trouble. And the Pythia, as the Cnidians themselves say, gave them this answer, in the three-beat iambic verse:
Do not wall off the isthmus with towers, and do not dig it through; had Zeus wanted your land to be an island, he would have made it one.
When the Pythia had given this oracle, the Cnidians not only stopped digging but surrendered to Harpagus without a fight when he came against them with his army.
175. There were also the Pedasians, who lived inland in the hill country above Halicarnassus. Whenever something bad is about to happen to them or their neighbors, the priestess of Athena there grows a long beard. This has happened to them three times. They were the only people anywhere in Caria who held out against Harpagus for any length of time. They gave him more trouble than anyone else, having fortified a mountain called Lida.
176. In time the Pedasians were conquered. When Harpagus marched his army into the plain of Xanthus, the Lycians came out against him and fought, a few against many, and gave proof of great courage. But they were beaten and shut up inside their city. Then they gathered their wives and children, their property and their servants into the citadel and set fire to it, so that the whole citadel went up in flames. When they had done this, they swore terrible oaths to one another, went out against the enemy, and were killed fighting, all the men of Xanthus. Of the Xanthians who now claim to be Lycians, most are newcomers from abroad, except for eighty households. Those eighty households happened to be away from home at the time, and so they survived. That is how Harpagus took Xanthus, and he took Caunus in much the same way, since the Caunians for the most part did as the Lycians had done.
177. So Harpagus was conquering the coastal regions of Asia, while Cyrus himself was doing the same in the interior, subduing every nation and passing over none. Most of these campaigns I will pass over in silence. But I will tell about the ones that gave him the most trouble and are most worth telling.
178. When Cyrus had brought all the rest of the mainland under his rule, he set about attacking the Assyrians. Assyria has many other great cities, of course, but the most famous and the strongest, where the seat of the kingdom had been set up after Nineveh was destroyed, was Babylon. And this is what kind of city it was. It lies in a great plain, and it is square, each side about thirteen and a half miles long, so that the whole circuit of the city comes to about fifty-four miles. That is the size of the city of Babylon, and it was more magnificent than any other city we know of. First, a moat runs all around it, deep and wide and full of water. Then comes a wall fifty royal cubits thick, about eighty feet, and two hundred cubits, some three hundred feet, high. The royal cubit, by the way, is three finger-widths longer than the ordinary cubit: about twenty inches against eighteen.
179. I must also explain what they did with the earth that came out of the moat, and how the wall was built. As they dug the moat, they made the earth they carried out of it into bricks. When they had molded enough bricks, they baked them in kilns. Then, using hot asphalt for mortar and laying in mats of woven reeds every thirty courses of brick, they built first the sides of the moat and then the wall itself in the same way. Along the top of the wall, at the edges, they built one-story chambers facing each other, and between the rows of chambers they left room to drive a four-horse chariot. All the way around the wall there are a hundred gates, all of bronze, with posts and lintels of bronze as well. There is another city eight days' journey from Babylon, called Is. There is a small river there, also called Is, which flows into the Euphrates. Along with its water, this river Is throws up great quantities of lumps of asphalt, and that is where the asphalt for the wall of Babylon came from.
180. That is how Babylon was walled. The city is in two halves, because a river called the Euphrates runs through the middle of it. It flows from the land of the Armenians, a large, deep, fast river, and empties into the Persian Gulf. On each side, the wall is carried down at its corners to the river, and from there a return wall of baked brick runs along each bank like a rampart. The city itself is full of houses three and four stories high. Its streets run in straight lines, including the cross streets that lead down to the river. At the end of each street there was a gate in the rampart along the river, as many gates as there were streets, and these were bronze too, and opened, like the streets, onto the river itself.
181. This wall I have described is like a breastplate for the city, and inside it another wall runs around, not much weaker for defense than the first but enclosing a smaller space. In the middle of each half of the city stood a building. In one was the king's palace, huge and strongly walled all around. In the other was the temple of Zeus Belus, with bronze gates. This still existed in my time, a square measuring 1,200 feet each way. In the middle of the temple grounds a solid tower is built, 600 feet long and 600 feet wide. On top of this tower stands a second tower, and on that a third, and so on up to eight towers. A ramp has been built winding around the outside of all the towers to climb them. About halfway up there is a landing with seats, where people going up sit down and rest. On top of the last tower there is a large shrine, and in the shrine a large couch is set, richly covered, with a golden table beside it. No statue has been set up there, and no human being spends the night there except one woman of the country, whichever woman the god chooses from all the women. So say the Chaldeans, who are the priests of this god.
182. These same men also say, though I do not believe them, that the god himself often comes to the shrine and rests on the couch. The same thing happens, according to the Egyptians, in Egyptian Thebes, where a woman also sleeps in the temple of Theban Zeus (both these women are said to have nothing to do with men). It happens too with the prophetess of the god at Patara in Lycia, whenever there is one, for there is not always an oracle there; but whenever there is one, she is shut up at night in the temple, inside the shrine.
183. In the temple at Babylon there is also another shrine lower down, with a great seated statue of Zeus made of gold. Beside it stands a large golden table, and his footstool and throne are gold as well. According to the Chaldeans, these things were made from eight hundred talents' weight of gold, about 45,000 pounds. Outside this shrine is a golden altar. There is also another, very large altar, where full-grown animals are sacrificed; on the golden altar it is forbidden to sacrifice anything but young animals still at the breast. On the larger altar, too, the Chaldeans burn a thousand talents' weight of frankincense, about 57,000 pounds, every year at the festival of this god. In those days, in the reign of Cyrus, there was also still standing in the sacred grounds a statue eighteen feet high, of solid gold. I did not see it myself; I am reporting what the Chaldeans say. Darius son of Hystaspes had designs on this statue but did not dare to take it. Xerxes son of Darius did take it, and he killed the priest who told him not to touch it. That is how magnificently this temple is furnished, and there are also many private offerings in it.
184. Babylon had many other rulers, whom I will mention in my Assyrian history, and who improved its walls and temples. Two of them were women. The first, called Semiramis, lived five generations before the other. She built embankments across the plain that are well worth seeing; before that, the river used to flood the whole plain like a sea.
185. The queen who came after her was called Nitocris, and she was wiser than the one who had reigned before. In the first place, she left monuments behind her, which I will describe. Then, seeing that the empire of the Medes was great and restless, and that it had taken many cities, Nineveh among them, she took every precaution against it that she could. First, the river Euphrates, which flows through the middle of their city: before her time it ran straight, but by digging channels upstream she made it so winding that it actually passes the same village in Assyria three times on its way. The village the Euphrates comes to is called Ardericca. Even today, people traveling from our sea, the Mediterranean, to Babylon, as they sail down the Euphrates, arrive at this same village three times, on three different days. That is one thing she did. She also built up an embankment along each bank of the river, amazing for its size and height. And a long way upstream from Babylon she dug a basin for a lake, running alongside the river at a short distance from it. She dug it deep enough everywhere to reach water, and made it so large that its circuit measured about forty-seven miles. The earth dug out of it she used up by piling it into the embankments along the river. When the basin was dug, she brought stones and lined it all around with a stone wall. She did both these things, making the river wind and turning the excavation into a marsh, so that the river would run more slowly with its force broken on its many bends, so that the voyage to Babylon would be a winding one, and so that after the voyage would come a long way around the lake. She carried out these works in the part of the country where the approach to it lay, on the shortest road from Media, so that the Medes could not mix with her people and find out about her affairs.
186. These were the defenses she threw around her city from deep in the country. Along with them she made another improvement that grew out of the same work. The city was in two halves, with the river between them. Under the earlier rulers, anyone who wanted to cross from one half to the other had to go over by boat, which, I imagine, was a nuisance. She took care of this too. While she was digging the basin for the lake, she got this other monument out of the same work. She had very long stones cut, and when the stones were ready and the basin dug, she turned the whole stream of the river into the place she had dug. While the basin was filling with water, the old riverbed dried out. In the meantime she lined the banks of the river with baked brick where it runs through the city, the same way as the wall, and also the steps leading down from the small gates to the river. Then, at about the middle of the city, as far as I can judge, she built a bridge out of the stones she had had quarried, binding the stones together with iron and lead. Across the top she laid squared timbers, which stayed in place during the day, and the people of Babylon used them to cross over. But at night they took the timbers away, for this reason: so that people would not cross back and forth at night and rob one another. When the excavation had been turned into a lake full of river water and the bridge had been finished, she led the Euphrates back out of the lake into its old bed. So the excavation, turned into a marsh, was thought to have served a good purpose, and the people of the city had been given a bridge.
187. This same queen also set the following trap. Over the gate of the city that more people passed through than any other, she had a tomb built for herself, right on top of the gate. On the tomb she had these words carved: "If any king of Babylon after me runs short of money, let him open my tomb and take as much as he wants. But let him not open it for any other reason, unless he is truly in need; for that will not turn out well." The tomb stayed undisturbed until the kingdom came to Darius. But Darius thought it outrageous not to make any use of this gate, and outrageous too, when money was lying there and the money itself was inviting him to take it, not to take it. The reason he would make no use of the gate was that he would have had a corpse over his head as he drove through. So he opened the tomb, and found not money but the corpse, and these words: "If you had not been so greedy for money and so shamelessly grasping, you would not have broken open the resting places of the dead."
188. That, they say, is the kind of woman this queen was. And it was her son, who had the same name as his father, Labynetus, and was ruler of the Assyrians, against whom Cyrus was now marching. When the Great King goes to war, he goes well supplied from home with food for his table and with cattle. He also takes water with him from the river Choaspes, which flows past Susa; this is the only river whose water the king will drink. A great many four-wheeled wagons drawn by mules carry a supply of this Choaspes water, boiled, in silver jars, and follow him wherever he marches.
189. On his way to Babylon, Cyrus came to the river Gyndes. Its springs are in the mountains of the Matienians, and it flows through the land of the Dardanians and into another river, the Tigris, which flows past the city of Opis and out into the Persian Gulf. Cyrus was trying to cross the Gyndes, a river big enough for boats, when one of his sacred white horses, full of spirit and high-handed, went into the river and tried to cross. The current swept it under and carried it away at once. Cyrus was furious with the river for this insolence, and he threatened to make it so weak that from then on even women would be able to cross it easily without wetting their knees. After making this threat, he broke off his march on Babylon and divided his army in two. Then he stretched out lines and marked out straight channels, a hundred and eighty on each bank of the Gyndes, running off in every direction, and he lined up his army along them and ordered them to dig. With so many men working, the job did get done, but they spent the whole summer at it.
190. When Cyrus had taken his revenge on the river Gyndes by splitting it into three hundred and sixty channels, and the next spring was just beginning, he finally went on with his advance on Babylon. The Babylonians had marched out of their city and were waiting for him. When he came near the city, the Babylonians gave battle, were beaten, and were shut up inside their city. But they had known well even before this that Cyrus was not one to sit still, and they had seen him attack every nation alike, so they had brought in provisions in advance for a great many years. So while they thought nothing of the siege, Cyrus did not know what to do, for a long time passed and he was getting nowhere.
191. So, whether someone else suggested it to him when he was at a loss, or whether he saw for himself what he should do, this is what he did. He posted the main body of his army where the river flows into the city, and another division behind the city, where the river flows out of it. He gave his army orders that as soon as they saw the river had become shallow enough to wade, they should go into the city that way. Having posted them like this and given them these orders, he himself marched off with the part of his army that was no use for fighting. When he came to the lake, Cyrus did the same things the queen of Babylon had done with the river and the lake. He led the river off through a channel into the lake, which was by then a marsh, and so the old riverbed became fordable as the water sank. When this had been done, the Persians who had been posted for this very purpose went into Babylon along the bed of the Euphrates, now that the stream had sunk to about the middle of a man's thigh. Now, if the Babylonians had known about this beforehand or had noticed what Cyrus was doing, they would have let the Persians into the city and then destroyed them miserably. For if they had shut all the gates leading down to the river and stood on the ramparts along the banks themselves, they would have caught them as if in a fish trap. But as it was, the Persians came on them unexpectedly. And because the city is so big, as the people who live there say, after the outer parts of the city had been captured, the Babylonians living in the middle had no idea they had been captured. They happened to be holding a festival, and they went on dancing and celebrating all that while, until they learned the truth all too well.
That is how Babylon was taken the first time.
192. How great the resources of the Babylonians are I will show by many other proofs, and among them by this one. Apart from the regular tribute, the whole land the Great King rules is divided into portions to supply him and his army with food. Now, there are twelve months in the year. For four of them he is supplied by the territory of Babylon, and for the other eight by all the rest of Asia put together. So the Assyrian land, in resources, amounts to a third of all Asia. And the governorship of this territory, which the Persians call a satrapy, is by far the best of all the governorships. When Tritantaechmes son of Artabazus held this province from the king, a full artaba of silver came in to him every single day. (The artaba is a Persian measure, about 1 2/3 bushels; it holds three Attic choenixes, about three quarts, more than the Attic medimnus.) As his own private property in this province, apart from his warhorses, he kept eight hundred stallions and sixteen thousand mares, each stallion serving twenty mares. And he kept so many Indian hounds that four large villages in the plain were let off all other taxes and assigned instead to feed the hounds.
193. That was the wealth that belonged to the ruler of Babylon. Now the land of the Assyrians gets very little rain. That little is enough to nourish the roots of the grain, but the crop is ripened and the ear grows full by watering from the river. This is not done, as in Egypt, by the river itself rising over the fields; here the crop is watered by hand or with swing-buckets. For the whole Babylonian country, like Egypt, is cut up by channels. The largest of these channels is navigable for ships, and it runs toward the point where the sun rises in winter, from the Euphrates to another river, the Tigris, on whose bank the city of Nineveh stood. Of all the lands we know, this is by far the best for growing grain. As for trees, it does not even try to grow them, neither fig nor vine nor olive. But for grain it is so good that it returns as much as two hundred times what was sown on average, and when it does its very best it yields three hundred times. The leaves of the wheat and barley there grow a full three inches wide. As for millet and sesame, I know for myself how tall a plant they grow into, but I will not record it, because I am well aware that even what I have already said about the crops has been enough to make people who have never been to Babylonia disbelieve me. They use no olive oil, only oil they make from sesame seed. Date palms grow all over the plain, most of them bearing fruit, and from the dates they make food, wine and honey. They tend these palms the same way people tend fig trees. In particular they take the fruit of the palms the Greeks call "male palms" and tie it onto the date-bearing palms, so that the gall wasp can get into the date and ripen it, and so that the fruit of the palm does not drop off. For the male palm carries gall wasps in its fruit, just as the wild fig does.
194. But the greatest wonder of all in that country, after the city itself, to my mind, is the one I am about to describe. Their boats, I mean the ones that go down the river to Babylon, are round and made entirely of leather. They cut willow in the land of the Armenians, who live upstream of the Assyrians, and make ribs out of it. Around the ribs they stretch hides, which serve as an outer covering, a hull. They do not broaden out a stern or draw the bow together to a point; they make the boats round, like a shield. Then they pack the whole boat with straw, load it with cargo, and let it float down the river. Mostly these boats carry down casks of palm wood full of wine. The boat is steered by two oars and two men standing upright: the man inside pulls his oar while the man outside pushes his. Some of these boats are built very large and some smaller; the largest of them carry as much as five thousand talents' weight, something like 140 tons. In each boat there is a live donkey, and in the larger ones several. So when they have finished the voyage to Babylon and disposed of their cargo, they auction off the ribs of the boat and all the straw, but they load the hides onto their donkeys and drive them off to Armenia. For it is simply impossible to sail up the river, because the current is so swift, and that is why they make their boats of hides and not of timber. Then, when they have come back to the land of the Armenians, driving their donkeys with them, they build more boats in the same way.
195. So much for their boats. Here is how they dress. They wear a linen tunic that reaches to the feet, over it another tunic of wool, and over that a white cloak wrapped around them. Their shoes are of a local style, rather like the slippers worn in Boeotia. They wear their hair long and tie bands around their heads, and they rub perfume all over their bodies. Each man has a seal and a hand-carved staff, and on every staff a design is carved: an apple, a rose, a lily, an eagle or something else. For it is not their custom to carry a staff without a design on it.
196. That is how they equip themselves. Their established customs are as follows. The wisest of them, in my opinion, is this one, which I am told the Eneti in Illyria also have. Once a year, in every village, it used to be done like this. When the girls reached the age for marriage, they gathered them all together and brought them as a group to one place, and a crowd of men stood around them. The auctioneer had each girl stand up in turn and put her up for sale. He started with the best-looking of all. Then, when she had been sold for a large sum of money, he would put up the next best-looking after her. They were sold to be married. All the rich Babylonians who were ready to marry would bid against one another for the most beautiful girls. But the ordinary men who were ready to marry had no need of good looks; they would take money along with a plainer girl. For when the auctioneer had finished selling the best-looking girls, he would stand up the least attractive one, or any who was crippled in some way, and announce her for sale, asking who would take her in marriage for the least amount of gold. She went to the man who was willing to accept the smallest sum. The gold came from the sale of the good-looking girls, so the beautiful ones provided dowries for the plain and the crippled. No man was allowed to marry off his own daughter to whomever he pleased, and no buyer was allowed to take a girl away without a guarantee. He had to put up guarantors that he would marry her before he could take her away, and if the couple did not get along, the law said he had to pay the money back. Anyone who wanted to could also come from another village and buy. This, then, was their finest custom. But it no longer exists in our time. Lately they have hit upon another way of doing things, so that the men will not mistreat the girls or take them off to another city. Ever since they were conquered and were oppressed and ruined, every man of the common people who has nothing to live on puts his daughters to work as prostitutes.
197. Next in wisdom after that is this other custom of theirs. They carry their sick out into the marketplace, since they make no use of doctors. People come up to the sick man and give him advice about his illness, if they have ever had anything like what he has themselves, or seen someone else who had it. They come up and advise him and recommend whatever treatment cured them of a similar illness, or cured someone else they saw. And no one is allowed to walk past the sick man in silence without asking what illness he has.
198. They bury their dead in honey, and their ways of mourning are similar to those in Egypt. Whenever a Babylonian man has had sex with his wife, he sits beside burning incense, and his wife does the same on the other side. In the morning they both wash, for they will not touch any vessel until they have washed. The Arabians do the same in this matter.
199. The most shameful of the Babylonians' customs is this. Every woman of the country must, once in her life, sit in the sacred precinct of Aphrodite and have sex with a stranger. Many women who are too proud to mix with the rest, because their wealth makes them arrogant, drive to the temple in covered carriages drawn by pairs of horses and take their places there, with a large crowd of servants following them. But most do it this way. In the sacred enclosure of Aphrodite great numbers of women sit with a wreath of cord around their heads; some are arriving and others leaving. Straight passageways run between the women in every direction, and the strangers walk along them and make their choice. Once a woman has taken her seat there, she does not go home again until one of the strangers has thrown a silver coin into her lap and had sex with her outside the temple. When he throws the coin he must say only these words: "I call on you in the name of the goddess Mylitta." Mylitta is the Assyrians' name for Aphrodite. The coin may be of any value. Whatever it is, she will not refuse it, for that is not lawful for her, since the act makes the coin sacred. She goes with the first man who throws a coin, and rejects no one. After that she goes home, having done her duty to the goddess, and from then on you could not offer her a gift big enough to win her. So the women who are tall and beautiful are soon released, but the plain ones stay there a long time, unable to fulfill the law; some of them stay as long as three or four years. In some parts of Cyprus, too, there is a custom like this one.
200. Those, then, are the established customs of the Babylonians. There are also three tribes among them that eat nothing but fish. When they have caught the fish and dried them in the sun, this is what they do: they throw them into brine, then pound them with pestles and strain them through fine cloth. They eat them either kneaded into a soft cake or baked like bread, as each one likes.
201. When Cyrus had conquered this nation too, he wanted to bring the Massagetae under his rule. This nation is said to be both large and warlike. They live toward the east, where the sun rises, beyond the river Araxes and opposite the Issedonians. Some also say that this nation is Scythian.
202. Some say the Araxes is larger than the Danube (which the Greeks call the Ister) and others that it is smaller. They say there are many islands in it about the size of Lesbos, and that people live on them who in summer eat roots of every kind, which they dig up. They have also found certain fruits on trees good to eat, and they store these up, it is said, in the season when they are ripe and live on them in the winter. It is also said that they have found other trees with a fruit of a special kind. They gather in groups in one place, light a fire, sit around it in a circle, and throw some of this fruit onto the fire. They breathe in the smell of the fruit as it burns and get drunk on the scent, as the Greeks get drunk on wine. The more fruit is thrown on, the drunker they get, until at last they get up to dance and start to sing. That, it is said, is how they live. As for the river Araxes, it flows from the land of the Matieni, the same place the Gyndes flows from, the river Cyrus divided into three hundred and sixty channels. It empties through forty mouths, and all of these but one end in swamps and shallow pools. They say that men live among these marshes who eat raw fish and usually dress in sealskins. But the one remaining mouth of the Araxes flows in a clear channel into the Caspian Sea.
203. The Caspian Sea is a sea on its own, not connected with the other sea. For the whole sea that the Greeks sail, and the sea beyond the Pillars of Heracles (the strait at the western end of the Mediterranean) that is called the Atlantic, and the Erythraean Sea, the Indian Ocean, are in fact all one. But the Caspian is separate and lies apart by itself. Its length is a voyage of fifteen days for a rowed ship, and its breadth, at its broadest, a voyage of eight days. Along its western side runs the Caucasus, the largest of all mountain ranges in extent and the highest. Many different peoples live in the Caucasus, mostly on the wild food of the forests. Among them, it is said, there are trees whose leaves have a special property: they pound them and mix them with water, and with this they paint figures on their clothes. The figures do not wash out, but wear out along with the wool, as if they had been woven into it from the start. And people say these tribes have sex in the open, like cattle.
204. So on the west of the sea called the Caspian, the Caucasus is the boundary, while to the east, toward the rising sun, comes a plain that stretches as far as the eye can see. The Massagetae hold a large part of this great plain, and it was against them that Cyrus was now eager to march. There were many strong reasons urging him on. The first was his birth, that is, the belief that he was something more than an ordinary mortal. The next was the good fortune he had had in his wars, for wherever Cyrus marched, no nation could escape him.
205. The ruler of the Massagetae was a woman, who had become queen after her husband's death, and her name was Tomyris. Cyrus sent to her and courted her, pretending he wanted to marry her. But Tomyris understood that it was not her he was courting but the kingdom of the Massagetae, and she turned down his advances. After this, since trickery got him nowhere, Cyrus marched to the Araxes and began an open campaign against the Massagetae. He built bridges of boats across the river for his army to cross, and put up towers on the boats that were to carry them over.
206. While he was busy with this work, Tomyris sent a herald with this message: "King of the Medes, stop pushing ahead with the work you are pushing ahead with now. You cannot know whether it will turn out to your advantage in the end. Stop, I tell you, and be king over your own people, and put up with seeing us rule the people we rule. But I know you will not want to take this advice, since you would choose anything rather than stay at peace. So if you are so very eager to try your strength against the Massagetae, come on: give up the labor of yoking the river's banks together. We will first withdraw a three days' journey from the river, and then you cross over into our land. Or if you would rather receive us in your land, do the same thing yourself." When Cyrus heard this, he called together the leading men of the Persians and, once they were gathered, put the matter before them for discussion, asking their advice on which of the two he should do. Their opinions all agreed: they told him to let Tomyris and her army come into his own country.
207. But Croesus the Lydian, who was there, found fault with this opinion and declared the opposite view. He said: "My king, I told you before that since Zeus had handed me over to you, I would do all I could to turn aside any fall I saw coming toward your house. And my sufferings, bitter as they have been, have taught me wisdom. If you think you are immortal, and that the army you command is immortal too, there is no point in my telling you what I think. But if you have realized that you are a mortal man yourself, and that the men you command are mortal too, then learn this first: human affairs turn on a wheel, and as it turns it does not let the same people be fortunate forever. So I hold an opinion on the matter before us that is the opposite of theirs. If we agree to let the enemy into our land, this is the danger for you. If you are beaten, you will lose your whole empire besides, because it is clear that if the Massagetae win, they will not turn back and run home; they will march on the provinces of your empire. On the other hand, if you win, your victory will not be as complete as if you had beaten the Massagetae after crossing into their land and then chased them as they fled. For I will set the same argument against the other side and say that once you have won, you will march straight on the kingdom of Tomyris. And besides all that, it would be a disgrace, not to be borne, for Cyrus son of Cambyses to give way to a woman and retreat from her land. So my advice is that we cross over, go forward from the crossing as far as they fall back, and then try to get the better of them like this. The Massagetae, I am told, have no experience of the good things Persians enjoy, and they have never had any great luxuries. So slaughter cattle without stinting, cook the meat, and lay out a feast for these men in our camp. Provide bowls of unmixed wine without stinting too, and food of every kind. When you have done that, leave behind the weakest part of your army and let the rest start to fall back from the camp toward the river. For unless I am mistaken, when they see all those good things they will fall on the feast, and after that it will be up to us to show what we can do."
208. Those were the two opposing opinions. Cyrus dropped the first one and chose Croesus' plan. He told Tomyris to withdraw, since he meant to cross over to her. She withdrew, as she had promised at first. But Cyrus put Croesus in the hands of his son Cambyses, to whom he meant to leave the kingdom, and strictly charged him to honor Croesus and treat him well if the crossing against the Massagetae should go badly. After giving these orders and sending the two of them away to Persia, he crossed the river himself with his army.
209. When he had crossed the Araxes and night had fallen, he had a dream as he slept in the land of the Massagetae. In his sleep Cyrus seemed to see the eldest of the sons of Hystaspes with wings on his shoulders, and with one of them he overshadowed Asia and with the other Europe. Now Hystaspes son of Arsames was a man of the Achaemenid clan, and his eldest son was Darius, who was then, I suppose, a young man of about twenty. He had been left behind in Persia, since he was not yet old enough to go to war. So when Cyrus woke up, he thought the dream over, and since it seemed to him to mean something important, he called Hystaspes, took him aside alone, and said: "Hystaspes, your son has been caught plotting against me and my throne. I will tell you how I know this for certain. The gods watch over me and show me in advance every danger that threatens me. Last night as I slept I saw the eldest of your sons with wings on his shoulders, and with one of them he overshadowed Asia and with the other Europe. Going by this dream, there is no way he is not plotting against me. So go back to Persia by the quickest road, and make sure that when I return there after conquering these lands, you bring your son before me to be questioned."
210. Cyrus said this because he thought Darius was plotting against him. But in fact the divine powers were showing him in advance that he was fated to die there and that his kingdom was going to pass to Darius. Hystaspes answered him like this: "My king, heaven forbid there should be any Persian born who would plot against you, and if there is one, I pray he dies as quickly as possible. For you made the Persians free men instead of slaves, and rulers of all nations instead of subjects of others. And if a dream tells you that my son is planning a rebellion against you, I hand him over to you to do with as you please."
211. With that answer Hystaspes crossed back over the Araxes and set off for Persia to keep watch over his son Darius for Cyrus. Cyrus, meanwhile, went forward a day's march from the Araxes, as Croesus had suggested. After this, Cyrus and the best part of the Persian army marched back to the Araxes, leaving behind the men unfit to fight. Then a third of the army of the Massagetae attacked and began killing the men Cyrus had left behind, who put up some resistance. When they had overcome their enemies and saw the feast laid out, they lay down and ate, and when they were stuffed with food and wine they fell asleep. Then the Persians came down on them. They killed many, and took even more prisoner than they killed. Among the prisoners was the son of Queen Tomyris, who was leading the army of the Massagetae; his name was Spargapises.
212. When she heard what had happened to her army and to her son, she sent a herald to Cyrus with this message: "Cyrus, you who can never get enough of blood, do not be puffed up by what has happened. It was the fruit of the vine that did it, the wine you fill yourselves with until you go mad, so that as the wine goes down into your bodies, ugly words come floating up. It was by setting a trap, I tell you, with a drug like that, that you beat my son, and not by courage in battle. So now take the advice I give you, and it is good advice. Give me back my son and leave this land unpunished, having triumphed over a third of the army of the Massagetae. If you will not, I swear to you by the Sun, the lord of the Massagetae, that I will give you your fill of blood, greedy for it as you are."
213. When this message was brought to Cyrus, he paid no attention to it. As for Spargapises, the son of Queen Tomyris, when the wine wore off and he understood how bad his situation was, he begged Cyrus to have his chains taken off, and Cyrus granted it. But as soon as he was free and had the use of his hands, he killed himself.
214. That was how he died. Tomyris, since Cyrus would not listen to her, gathered all her forces and fought a battle with him. Of all the battles ever fought between non-Greeks, I judge this one to have been the fiercest, and I am told it went like this. First, it is said, they stood at a distance and shot arrows at each other. Then, when their arrows were all used up, they charged and fought hand to hand with spears and daggers. They went on fighting like this for a long time, and neither side would run. But in the end the Massagetae won. Most of the Persian army was destroyed on the spot, and Cyrus himself died there, after reigning twenty-nine years in all. Then Tomyris filled a skin bag with human blood and had the Persian dead searched for Cyrus' body. When she found it, she pushed his head down into the skin, and as she defiled the corpse she said: "I am alive and I have beaten you in battle, and yet you destroyed me by taking my son through trickery. But I will give you your fill of blood, as I threatened." Many stories are told about the end of Cyrus' life, but this one I have told seems to me the most believable.
215. As for the Massagetae, they dress like the Scythians and live like them too. Some of them are horsemen and some do not ride (they follow both ways), and there are archers among them as well as spearmen. It is their custom to carry battle-axes. For everything they use either gold or bronze. For spear points, arrowheads and battle-axes they use bronze, but they decorate their headdresses, belts and the straps they wear around their armpits with gold. In the same way, they put bronze breastplates on their horses' chests, but use gold on their bridles, bits and cheek-pieces. They use no iron or silver at all, because there is none in their country, but they have gold and bronze in plenty.
216. These are their customs. Each man marries a wife, but they share their wives in common. The Greeks say the Scythians do this, but in fact it is not the Scythians who do it but the Massagetae: whenever a man of the Massagetae wants a woman, he hangs his quiver up in front of her wagon and has sex with her freely. They set no fixed limit to a man's life. But when a man grows very old, his closest relatives all come together and kill him as a sacrifice, along with some cattle, and then they boil the meat and feast on it. They consider this the happiest end. A man who has died of disease they do not eat; they bury him in the ground and count it a misfortune that he did not live to be sacrificed. They sow no crops but live on cattle and fish, which they get in plenty from the river Araxes, and they are milk drinkers. The only god they worship is the Sun, and they sacrifice horses to him. The idea behind the sacrifice is this: to the swiftest of the gods they give the swiftest of all mortal things.
1. When Cyrus came to the end of his life, Cambyses took over the royal power after him. He was the son of Cyrus and of Cassandane, the daughter of Pharnaspes. She had died before Cyrus did, and Cyrus had mourned her deeply himself and had also ordered all the peoples he ruled to go into mourning for her. Cambyses, then, the son of this woman and of Cyrus, looked on the Ionians and the Aeolians as slaves he had inherited from his father. He began to march an army against Egypt, and as his helpers he took with him not only the other nations he ruled but also those of the Greeks who were under his power.
2. Now before Psammetichus became their king, the Egyptians used to believe that they were the first of all people to come into being. But ever since Psammetichus became king and wanted to know which people really had come first, they have believed that the Phrygians came into being before them, though they themselves came before everyone else. Psammetichus had not been able to find any way of learning, by asking questions, who the first people were, so he came up with a scheme. He took two newborn children belonging to ordinary people and gave them to a shepherd to raise among his flocks. He told him how they were to be raised: no one was to say a single word in their presence; they were to lie by themselves in a room where no one could come in; at the proper times he was to bring goats to them; and when he had filled them up with milk, he was to do whatever else they needed. Psammetichus did this, and gave the shepherd these orders, because he wanted to hear what word the children would burst out with first, once they had stopped their meaningless crying. And that is just what happened. After two years had passed, with the shepherd carrying on in this way, one day he opened the door and went in, and both children fell down in front of him, stretched out their hands, and said the word "bekos." At first, when he heard this, the shepherd kept quiet about it. But the word came again and again whenever he visited them and looked after them, which he did constantly. So at last he told his master about it, and at the king's command he brought the children before him. Psammetichus heard the word himself, and then he began to inquire which nation of men called anything "bekos." In the course of his inquiries he found that it was the Phrygians' word for bread. In this way, and on the strength of this evidence, the Egyptians came to admit that the Phrygians were an older people than they were.
3. That this is how it happened I heard from the priests of Hephaestus at Memphis. The Greeks, though, tell many other silly stories, and one of them is that Psammetichus cut out the tongues of certain women and then had the children live with these women.
So much, then, for what they told me about the raising of the children. But I heard other things too at Memphis, when I talked with the priests of Hephaestus. I also went to Thebes and to Heliopolis for this very reason: I wanted to know whether the priests in those places would agree with the account of the priests at Memphis, since the men of Heliopolis are said to be the most learned in history of all the Egyptians. As for the stories I heard about the gods, I am not eager to tell them in full. I will only mention their names, because I think all people know equally little about such things. Whatever I do record about them I will record only because the course of my story forces me to.
4. But about human affairs the priests all agreed with one another. They said the Egyptians were the first people on earth to discover the course of the year, dividing it into twelve parts to make up the whole. They said they found this out from the stars. And in my opinion they calculate more wisely than the Greeks do. The Greeks throw in an extra month every other year to keep the seasons in line, while the Egyptians count twelve months of thirty days each and then add five days every year beyond that number, and so the circle of their seasons comes round to the same point it started from. They also said that the Egyptians were the first to use names for the twelve gods, and that the Greeks took the practice over from them; and that they were the first to give the gods altars and statues and temples, and the first to carve figures in stone. For most of these things they showed me actual proof that it was so. They said, too, that the first man to become king of Egypt was Min. In his time, they said, all of Egypt except the district of Thebes was a swamp, and none of the land that now lies below Lake Moeris was above water then. That lake is a seven days' voyage up the river from the sea.
5. And I thought what they said about the land was right. For it is plain to anyone who sees it, even if he has not heard it beforehand, as long as he has any sense, that the Egypt that Greek ships sail to is land the Egyptians have been given as an addition: it is a gift of the river. The same is true of the country above this lake for a distance of three days' sail, though they did not go on to say anything of the kind about it. That too is another example of the same thing. For this is what the land of Egypt is like. First, when you are still approaching it by ship and are a day's run from land, if you let down a sounding line you will bring up mud, and you will find yourself in sixty-six feet of water. This much shows that the land is being built out forward into the sea.
6. Second, there is Egypt itself. Its length along the sea is sixty schoeni, taking Egypt, as we define it, to stretch from the Gulf of Plinthine to Lake Serbonis, along which Mount Casius runs. It is from this lake that the sixty schoeni are measured. For people who have little land measure their country in fathoms (a fathom is six feet); those who are less poor in land, in stades (a stade is six hundred feet); those who have a lot of land, in parasangs; and those who have land in great abundance, in schoeni. A parasang equals thirty stades, about three and a third miles, and a schoenus, which is an Egyptian measure, equals sixty stades, about six and two-thirds miles. So the coastline of Egypt would be 3,600 stades long, about four hundred miles.
7. From there inland as far as Heliopolis, Egypt is broad. The land is all flat, without springs, and made of mud. The road inland from the sea up to Heliopolis is about the same length as the road from the altar of the twelve gods at Athens to Pisa and the temple of Olympian Zeus. If you worked it out, you would find that the difference between these two roads is very small, no more than a mile and two-thirds. The road from Athens to Pisa falls short of about 167 miles by that much, while the road from the sea to Heliopolis comes to the full 167.
8. From Heliopolis on up, though, Egypt is narrow. On one side a range of mountains belonging to Arabia runs alongside it, stretching from the north toward the south, where the noonday sun and the south wind are, and running on upward without a break to the sea called the Erythraean, the Indian Ocean. In this range are the stone quarries that were used to cut the stone for the pyramids at Memphis. On this side, then, the mountains end where I said, and then they turn back. Where the range is widest, as I was told, it is a two months' journey across from east to west, and its eastern edges are said to produce frankincense. That is what this mountain range is like. On the Libyan side of Egypt another range stretches out, rocky and covered in sand. The pyramids are in this range, and it runs in the same direction as the part of the Arabian mountains that goes toward the south. So, from Heliopolis on, the land that belongs to Egypt is no longer very wide. For about four days' sail up the river, Egypt proper is narrow. The land between the mountain ranges I have mentioned is level plain, but where it is narrowest it did not seem to me to be more than about twenty-two miles across, from the Arabian mountains to the ones called the Libyan. After this Egypt widens out again.
9. That is what this land is like. From Heliopolis to Thebes is a nine days' voyage up the river, and the distance is about 540 miles, or eighty-one schoeni. If you add up these measurements of Egypt, the result is as follows. I have already shown that the distance along the sea comes to about four hundred miles. Now I will tell you the distance inland from the sea to Thebes: it is about 680 miles. And from Thebes to the city called Elephantine is another two hundred miles.
10. As for most of this land I have been describing, I too thought, just as the priests said, that it had been won by the Egyptians as an addition. It was clear to me that the space between the mountain ranges I mentioned, the ones above the city of Memphis, was once a gulf of the sea. It was like the country around Troy and Teuthrania and Ephesus and the plain of the Maeander, if I may compare small things with great. And small those places are by comparison, since none of the rivers that piled up the soil in those regions deserves to be compared in volume with even one of the mouths of the Nile, and the Nile has five mouths. There are other rivers too, not at all equal to the Nile in size, that have done great things. I could name several, and above all the Achelous, which flows through Acarnania and out into the sea and has already turned half of the Echinades islands into mainland.
11. Now in Arabia, not far from Egypt, there is a gulf that runs in from the sea called the Erythraean. It is very long and narrow, as I am about to explain. As for its length, someone setting out from its innermost point to sail out through it into the open sea would spend forty days on the voyage, rowing. As for its width, where the gulf is broadest it is half a day's sail across. And it has a tide that ebbs and flows every day. I believe Egypt was once another gulf just like this one. The one ran in from the northern sea, the Mediterranean, toward Ethiopia. The other, the Arabian Gulf that I am describing, our Red Sea, ran from the south toward Syria. The two gulfs bored inland until their ends almost met, passing alongside each other with only a little space left between them. So if the Nile were to turn aside and flow into this Arabian Gulf, what would stop the river from filling that gulf up with silt as it kept on flowing, within twenty thousand years at any rate? For my part, I think it would be filled up within ten thousand. So in all the ages that passed before I was born, why should a gulf even much bigger than this one not have been filled up by a river so great and so hard-working?
12. So as for Egypt, I believe the people who say that this is how things are, and I am also strongly convinced of it myself. I have seen that Egypt juts out into the sea farther than the land on either side of it. Shells are found on its mountains. A crust of salt forms on the surface of the ground, so that even the pyramids are being eaten away by it. And of all the mountains of Egypt, the range above Memphis is the only one that has sand. Besides this, I notice that Egypt is not like the land of Arabia that borders it, nor like Libya, nor like Syria (it is Syrians who live in the parts of Arabia along the sea). Its soil is black and crumbles easily, because it really is mud and silt brought down from Ethiopia by the river. The soil of Libya, as we know, is reddish and rather sandy, while the soil of Arabia and Syria is more clay and rock.
13. The priests also gave me strong evidence about this land. In the reign of King Moeris, they said, whenever the river rose at least twelve feet it watered Egypt below Memphis. And when I heard this from the priests, not yet nine hundred years had passed since Moeris died. Now, though, unless the river rises twenty-four feet, or twenty-two and a half at the very least, it does not spread over the land. I think too that if that land keeps on growing in height at this rate, and keeps on increasing in area in the same way, then the Egyptians who live below Lake Moeris, especially in the region called the Delta, will suffer for all time to come, once the Nile no longer floods their land, the very thing they themselves said would one day happen to the Greeks. For when they heard that the whole land of the Greeks is watered by rain and not by rivers as theirs is, they said that someday the Greeks would be cheated of a great hope and would suffer terribly from famine. What this saying means is that if the god does not send them rain, but lets a drought go on for a long time, the Greeks will be wiped out by hunger, since in fact they have no other source of water to save them except Zeus alone.
14. That was a fair thing for the Egyptians to say about the Greeks. But now let me explain how things stand with the Egyptians themselves. If, as I said before, their land below Memphis (for this is the land that is growing) keeps on rising at the same rate as in the past, then certainly the Egyptians who live there will go hungry, since their land gets no rain and the river will not be able to spread over their fields. It is true, though, that at present they gather the fruits of the earth with less work than any other people, and with less work than the rest of the Egyptians too. They don't have to labor at breaking up furrows with a plow, or hoeing, or any of the other jobs that other people do to raise a crop. Instead, when the river has risen of its own accord and watered their fields, and after watering them has gone down again, each man sows his own field and turns pigs loose on it. When the pigs have trampled the seed into the ground, he waits for the harvest. Then he has the pigs thresh the grain, and so he gathers it in.
15. Suppose we wanted to follow the opinion of the Ionians about Egypt. They say that the Delta alone is Egypt. They count its coastline as running from what is called the Watchtower of Perseus to the fish-salting works of Pelusium, a distance of forty schoeni, about 267 miles, and they count it as reaching inland as far as the city of Cercasorus, where the Nile divides and runs to Pelusium and to Canopus. The rest of Egypt they assign partly to Libya and partly to Arabia. If, I say, we followed this account, we would be declaring that in earlier times the Egyptians had no land to live in at all. For, as we have seen, their Delta at least is land laid down by the river, and it has appeared only lately, so to speak, as the Egyptians themselves say and as I believe. So if at first there was no land for them to live in, why did they waste their effort trying to prove that they had come into being before all other people? They had no need to test the children to see what language they would speak first. But I do not believe that the Egyptians came into being at the same time as what the Ionians call the Delta. I believe they have always existed, ever since the human race came into being, and that as their land moved forward, many of them stayed behind in their first homes while many others gradually came down into the lower country. At any rate it is certain that in old times Thebes was called Egypt, and the distance around Thebes measures about 680 miles.
16. If our judgment on these matters is right, then the Ionians' opinion about Egypt is not sound. But if the Ionians' judgment is right, then I say that neither the Greeks nor the Ionians themselves know how to count. They say that the whole earth is made up of three parts, Europe, Asia and Libya. But by that reckoning they ought to count the Delta of Egypt as a fourth, since it belongs neither to Asia nor to Libya. For by their reckoning it cannot be the river Nile that divides Asia from Libya. The Nile splits at the point of the Delta and flows around it on both sides, and so this land would lie between Asia and Libya.
17. So we set aside the opinion of the Ionians and give a judgment of our own on this question as well. Egypt, we say, is all the land where Egyptians live, just as Cilicia is the land where Cilicians live and Assyria the land where Assyrians live. And we know of no boundary between Asia and Libya, properly speaking, except the borders of Egypt. But if we adopt the opinion the Greeks generally hold, we must suppose that the whole of Egypt, starting from the Cataract and the city of Elephantine, is split in two and so takes a share of both names, one side belonging to Libya and the other to Asia. For from the Cataract onward the Nile flows to the sea cutting Egypt down the middle. As far as the city of Cercasorus the Nile flows in a single stream, but from that city on it splits three ways. One branch, called the Pelusian mouth, turns east. The second branch heads west, and this is called the Canopic mouth. But the branch that runs straight on goes like this: when the river, flowing downward, comes to the point of the Delta, it cuts through the middle of the Delta and so runs out to the sea. This branch carries a share of the river's water that is neither the smallest nor the least famous, and it is called the Sebennytic mouth. There are also two other mouths that split off from the Sebennytic and run to the sea, and these are called the Saitic and the Mendesian. The Bolbitinic and Bucolic mouths, on the other hand, are not natural; they were dug.
18. The answer given by the oracle of Ammon, out in the Libyan desert, also bears out my opinion that Egypt is as large as I make it out to be in my account. And I heard about this answer only after I had formed my own opinion about Egypt. The people of the cities of Marea and Apis, who live in the part of Egypt that borders on Libya, believed that they themselves were Libyans and not Egyptians. They also found the rules of the Egyptian religion a burden, because they did not want to be forbidden to eat beef. So they sent to Ammon, saying that they had nothing in common with the Egyptians, since they lived outside the Delta and agreed with them about nothing, and they said they wanted to be allowed to eat everything without restriction. But the god would not allow them to do so. He said that Egypt was all the land that the Nile spread over and watered, and that Egyptians were all those who lived below the city of Elephantine and drank from that river. That was the answer the oracle gave them about this.
19. And when the Nile is in flood, it spreads not only over the Delta but also over parts of the land called Libyan and the land called Arabian, sometimes as far as two days' journey on each side, and at times even more than this, or at times less.
As for the nature of the river, I could not learn anything about it, either from the priests or from anyone else. And I was especially eager to learn from them about these things: why the Nile comes down rising in volume for a hundred days, starting from the summer solstice, and then, when it has reached that number of days, turns back and goes down again, its stream failing, so that it stays low all through the winter until the summer solstice comes round again. I could not get any explanation of any of this from the Egyptians, when I asked them what power the Nile has that makes it behave the opposite way from other rivers. I also asked because I wanted to know, besides what I have just said, why it is the only river that sends out no breezes blowing off it.
20. However, some Greeks who wanted to make a name for themselves for cleverness have explained this water in three different ways. Two of these I do not think worth even talking about, except to point out what they are. One of them says that the Etesian winds, the steady north winds of summer, are what make the river rise, by keeping the Nile from flowing out into the sea. But the Etesian winds often fail, and the Nile still does its usual work. Besides, if these winds were the cause, then all the other rivers that flow against the Etesian winds should have been affected in the same way as the Nile, and even more so, since they are smaller and push against the winds with a weaker current. But there are many such rivers in Syria and many in Libya too, and none of them behaves at all like the Nile.
21. The second explanation is even more ignorant than the one I have mentioned, and more of a marvel to tell. It says that the river does these things because it flows from the Ocean, and that the Ocean flows around the whole earth.
22. The third explanation sounds by far the most convincing, but it is the most mistaken of all. In fact it has no more truth in it than the others. It claims that the Nile flows from melting snow, when in fact it flows out of Libya through the middle of the Ethiopians and so comes out into Egypt. So how could it flow from snow, when it flows from the hottest places to cooler ones? Most of the facts are enough to convince a man, at least one who is capable of reasoning about such things, that it is not at all likely to flow from snow. The first and greatest piece of evidence is the winds, which blow hot from those regions. The second is that the land never has rain or frost, whereas after snow falls, rain must come within five days; so if it snowed in those parts, it would rain there. The third piece of evidence is the people who live there, who are dark-skinned because of the burning heat. On top of that, kites and swallows stay there all year round and never leave the country, and cranes fleeing the cold weather that comes on in the region of Scythia come regularly to these parts to spend the winter. So if it snowed even a little in the land the Nile flows through and where it rises, none of these things would happen, as the facts force us to admit.
23. As for the man who talked about the Ocean, he has carried his story off into the unknown, and so there is no need to refute him. For my part, I know of no river called Ocean. I think Homer, or one of the poets before him, invented the name and brought it into his poetry.
24. But if, after finding fault with the opinions others have put forward, I must give an opinion of my own on these puzzling questions, I will say what I think is the reason the Nile rises in summer. In the winter the Sun is driven out of his old path through the sky by the storm winds, and he comes to the upper parts of Libya. To put it as briefly as possible, that is the whole explanation. For whatever country this god comes closest to and stands directly over, that country, it is reasonable to suppose, is the most in need of water, and its own rivers dry up the most.
25. But to explain it at greater length, it works like this. As the Sun passes over the upper parts of Libya, this is what he does. The air in those parts is always clear and the land is always warm, since there are no cold winds, and so as he passes through it the Sun does just what he usually does in summer, when he travels through the middle of the sky. That is, he draws the water up to himself, and when he has drawn it up he drives it away to the upper parts of the country, and the winds catch it up, scatter it, and turn it into rain. So it is natural that the winds that blow from this region, the south and southwest winds, should be by far the rainiest of all winds. I think, though, that the Sun does not send away from himself all the water he draws each year from the Nile, but keeps some of it with him. Then, when the winter grows milder, the Sun goes back again to the middle of the sky, and from then on he draws water equally from all rivers. In the meantime, though, these other rivers flow full, because a great deal of rainwater mixes with them, since their country gets rain then and is full of torrents. In summer, however, they are weak, because the rain fails them and the Sun is drawing on them as well. But the Nile, the only river that gets no rain and is drawn on by the Sun all winter, naturally flows during that time with much less than its proper volume, much less than in summer. For in summer it is drawn on equally with all the other waters, but in winter it carries the burden alone. So I believe that the Sun is the cause of all this.
26. The Sun is also, in my opinion, the reason the air in those parts is dry, since he dries it out by scorching his path through the sky. So in the upper parts of Libya it is always summer. But suppose the stations of the seasons had been switched around. Suppose that where the north wind and winter now stand in the sky, there stood the south wind and the noonday, and where the south wind now stands, there stood the north. If that were so, then the Sun, driven out of the middle of the sky by winter and the north wind, would go to the upper parts of Europe, just as he now comes to the upper parts of Libya. And as he passed over the whole of Europe, I believe he would do to the Danube what he now does to the Nile.
27. As for the breeze, and why none blows off the river, my opinion is that nothing would naturally blow from very hot places, and that a breeze usually blows from something cold.
28. Let these things be, then, as they are and as they were from the beginning. But as for the sources of the Nile, not one of the Egyptians or Libyans or Greeks who talked with me claimed to know anything about them, except the scribe who kept the sacred treasury of Athena in the city of Sais in Egypt. And even this man seemed to me to be joking when he said he knew for certain. Here is what he said. There were two mountains with sharply pointed peaks, standing between the city of Syene, in the district of Thebes, and Elephantine. The names of the mountains were Crophi and Mophi. From between these two mountains, he said, flowed the springs of the Nile, which were bottomless. Half of the water flowed to Egypt and the north, and the other half to Ethiopia and the south. As for the springs being bottomless, he said that Psammetichus, king of Egypt, had put this to the test. He had a rope twisted many thousands of fathoms long, tens of thousands of feet, and let it down there, and it found no bottom. By this the scribe gave me to understand (if what he told me was really true) that there were powerful whirlpools there and a current flowing back on itself, and that because the water was dashing against the mountains, the sounding line could not get to the bottom when it was let down.
29. I was not able to learn anything about this from anyone else. But I learned as much as follows by the most careful inquiry, going as far as the city of Elephantine and seeing for myself, and from there on gathering what I know by hearsay. As you go up the river from the city of Elephantine, the country climbs steeply. So here you have to tie ropes to both sides of the boat, the way you would harness an ox, and make your way on like that. If the rope breaks, the boat is gone at once, swept away by the force of the current. This stretch takes about four days to sail through. In this part the Nile winds like the river Maeander, and the distance you have to travel in this way is twelve schoeni, about eighty miles. Then you come to a level plain, where the Nile flows around an island called Tachompso. (In the country above Elephantine, Ethiopians begin to live right away; they hold half of the island, and Egyptians the other half.) Next to this island there is a great lake, with nomad Ethiopian tribes living all around it. When you have sailed across this, you come to the stream of the Nile again, which flows into the lake. After this you get out and travel overland for forty days, because sharp rocks stick up out of the water in the Nile and there are many reefs, so that no boat can get through. Then, after you have crossed this country in the forty days I mentioned, you get on board another boat and sail for twelve days, and after that you come to a great city called Meroe. This city is said to be the mother city of all the other Ethiopians. The people who live there worship Zeus and Dionysus alone of the gods, and honor them greatly. They have an oracle of Zeus established there, and they go to war whenever this god commands them through his prophecies, and wherever he commands them to go.
30. Sailing on from this city, you will come to the "Deserters" in the same length of time again as it took you to get from Elephantine to the mother city of the Ethiopians. The name of these "Deserters" is the Asmach, and this word means, in Greek, "those who stand on the king's left hand." They were 240,000 Egyptians of the warrior class who revolted and went over to the Ethiopians, and this is why. In the reign of Psammetichus garrisons were posted: one at the city of Elephantine against the Ethiopians, another at Daphnae of Pelusium against the Arabians and Assyrians, and another at Marea against Libya. Even in my own time the Persians keep their garrisons posted in the same way as they were in the reign of Psammetichus, since the Persians have outposts both at Elephantine and at Daphnae. Now the Egyptians I am speaking of had been on guard duty for three years, and no one had come to relieve them. So they talked it over among themselves, agreed on a plan, revolted from Psammetichus all together, and set off for Ethiopia. When he heard this, Psammetichus went after them. When he caught up with them, he pleaded with them at length and tried to persuade them not to abandon the gods of their country and their children and wives. At that, the story goes, one of them pointed to his genitals and said that wherever these were, there they would have both children and wives. When they reached Ethiopia, they put themselves at the service of the king of the Ethiopians, and he rewarded them like this. There were certain Ethiopians who had quarreled with him, and he told the Egyptians to drive these people out and live in their land. And since these men settled among the Ethiopians, the Ethiopians have become gentler in their ways, having learned the customs of the Egyptians.
31. So, besides the part of its course that lies in Egypt, the Nile is known as far as a four months' journey by river and land. That is how many months you find, if you count them up, are spent in going from Elephantine to these "Deserters." And there the river flows from the west, from the setting of the sun. But what lies beyond that, no one can say for sure, because that country is desert on account of the burning heat.
32. This much, though, I heard from some men of Cyrene. They told me they had gone to the oracle of Ammon and had talked with Etearchus, king of the Ammonians. After talking about other things, it happened, they got onto the subject of the Nile, and how no one knew its sources. And Etearchus told them that once some men of the Nasamonians had come to him. (This is a Libyan people that lives in the Syrtis and in the land a short way to the east of the Syrtis.) When the Nasamonians arrived, he asked them whether they could tell him anything more than he knew about the desert parts of Libya. They told him that there had been among them some sons of chief men, unruly young fellows. When they grew up, these young men came up with various wild schemes, and among other things they chose five of their number by lot to go and look at the deserts of Libya, and see whether they could discover more than those who had explored the farthest before them. For along the part of Libya that lies on the northern sea, from Egypt as far as Cape Soloeis, which is the farthest point of Libya, Libyans live all along the whole coast, many peoples of them, except for what the Greeks and Phoenicians hold. But in the upper parts, above the seacoast and above the peoples whose land comes down to the sea, Libya is full of wild beasts. And beyond the land of wild beasts it is all sand, terribly waterless and utterly desert. So these young men (the Nasamonians said), sent off by their companions well supplied with water and food, first went through the inhabited country. When they had passed through that, they came to the country of wild beasts, and after that they crossed the desert, traveling westward, toward the west wind. They crossed a great stretch of sand over many days, and at last they saw trees growing on a level plain. They went up to them and began to pick the fruit that was on the trees. But just as they started picking it, some small men came at them, men shorter than average, and seized them and carried them off. The Nasamonians could not understand a word these people said, and their captors could not understand a word of the Nasamonians' speech either. They led them (so the story went) through enormous swamps, and after crossing these they came to a city where all the men were the same size as their captors and dark-skinned. Past the city flowed a great river, running from the west toward the sunrise, and crocodiles could be seen in it.
33. So much for the account of Etearchus the Ammonian, except to add that, as the men of Cyrene told me, he said that the Nasamonians got home safely, and that the people they had come to were all sorcerers. Etearchus guessed that this river flowing past the city was the Nile, and reason compels us to think so too. For the Nile flows out of Libya and cuts Libya through the middle. And as I guess, judging what is unknown by what can be seen, it starts as far from its mouth as the Danube does from its own. For the Danube begins among the Celts and at the city of Pyrene, and runs so as to divide Europe down the middle. (The Celts live beyond the Pillars of Heracles and border on the Cynesians, who live farthest west of all the peoples who make their homes in Europe.) And the Danube ends, after running through the whole of Europe, by flowing into the Black Sea at the place where the Milesians have their colony of Istria.
34. Now the Danube, since it flows through inhabited land, is known from the reports of many people. But no one can give an account of the sources of the Nile, because the part of Libya it flows through is uninhabited desert. About its course, though, I have told as much as it was possible to learn by the most careful inquiry, and it runs out into Egypt. Now Egypt lies roughly opposite the mountain country of Cilicia. From there to Sinope on the Black Sea is a five days' journey in a straight line for a man traveling light. And Sinope lies opposite the place where the Danube runs out into the sea. So I think that the Nile crosses the whole of Libya and is equal in length to the Danube.
So much for the Nile, then.
35. I am going to talk about Egypt at length, though, because it has more wonders than any other country, and more works to show than any land, works too great for words. That is why I will say more about it.
The Egyptians have a climate unlike any other, and a river that behaves differently from every other river. To match them, they have set up manners and customs that are the opposite of other people's in almost everything. Among them the women go to market and do the trading, while the men stay at home and weave. Other people weave by pushing the weft upward; the Egyptians push it downward. The men carry loads on their heads, the women on their shoulders. The women urinate standing up, the men squatting down. They relieve themselves indoors and eat outside in the streets, and they give this reason for it: things that are shameful but necessary should be done in private, and things that are not shameful should be done in public. No woman serves as priest of any god or goddess; men are the priests of all of them, male and female alike. Sons are not obliged in any way to support their parents if they don't want to, but daughters are forced to, however unwilling they may be.
36. In other lands the priests of the gods wear their hair long; in Egypt they shave their heads. Among other people the custom in mourning is for those closest to the dead to cut their hair short; but the Egyptians, when someone dies, let the hair grow long, both on the head and on the chin, after being clean-shaven before. Other people keep their daily living separate from their animals; the Egyptians live together with theirs. Other people live on wheat and barley, but for any Egyptian to live on these is a great disgrace; they make their bread from a grain called olyra, which some call spelt. They knead dough with their feet and clay with their hands, and they pick up dung with their hands too. Other men leave their genitals as nature made them, except those who have learned otherwise from the Egyptians; the Egyptians practice circumcision. As for clothing, each man wears two garments, each woman only one. Other people fasten the rings and ropes of the sails on the outside of the ship; the Egyptians fasten them on the inside. Finally, in writing letters and in counting with pebbles, the Greeks move the hand from left to right, but the Egyptians move it from right to left; and while they do this, they say that it is they who go the right way and the Greeks who go the wrong way. They use two kinds of writing, one called sacred and the other common.
37. They are religious to excess, more than any other people, and here are some of their customs. They drink from bronze cups and scour them out every day; not just some of them do this, but all. They wear linen clothes, always freshly washed, and they make a special point of this. They circumcise themselves for the sake of cleanliness, preferring to be clean rather than good-looking. The priests shave their whole bodies every other day, so that no louse or any other unclean thing may get on them while they serve the gods. The priests wear only linen clothes and sandals made of papyrus; they are not allowed to wear any other clothing or any other sandals. They wash in cold water twice a day and twice again every night, and they perform other religious rites that are practically countless. They also enjoy quite a few good things. They do not use up or spend anything of their own: sacred bread is baked for them, each of them gets a large supply of beef and goose meat every day, and they are given wine made from grapes as well. But they are not allowed to taste fish. The Egyptians do not sow beans in their land at all, and any beans that do grow there they will neither eat raw nor cook to eat. In fact the priests cannot even stand to look at them, believing beans to be an unclean kind of vegetable. Each god has not just one priest but many, and one of them is the high priest; and whenever a priest dies, his son takes his place.
38. They believe that bulls belong to Epaphus, and because of him they test them in this way. If the priest sees even a single black hair on the animal, he judges it not clean for sacrifice. One priest, appointed for the purpose, examines all this, both with the animal standing up and with it lying on its back. He pulls out its tongue as well, to see whether it is clean as far as the prescribed marks go, which I will describe in another part of my history. He also looks at the hairs of the tail to see whether they grow in the natural way. If the animal is clean in all these respects, he marks it with a strip of papyrus wound around the horns. Then he smears sealing clay on it and presses his signet ring into it, and after that they lead the animal away. Anyone who sacrifices an animal that has not been sealed is punished by death.
39. That is how the animal is tested, and this is how they sacrifice it. They lead the sealed animal to the altar where they are going to sacrifice, and light a fire. Then they pour wine over the altar so that it runs down onto the victim, call on the god, and cut its throat; and after cutting its throat they cut off its head. They skin the body. Over the head they first pronounce many curses, and then, if they have a market with Greek traders living among them, they carry it to the marketplace and sell it; if they have no Greeks among them, they throw it into the river. The curse they pronounce over the heads is a prayer that if any evil is about to fall on the people offering the sacrifice, or on Egypt as a whole, it may fall on this head instead. Now, as regards the heads of sacrificed animals and the pouring of wine over them, all Egyptians follow the same customs for all their sacrifices alike, and because of this custom no Egyptian will eat the head of this or of any other kind of animal.
40. But the way of taking out the victims' entrails and burning them differs from one sacrifice to another. I will describe the sacrifice to the goddess they consider the greatest of all, in whose honor they hold their greatest festival. When they have skinned the bull and pronounced the curse, they take out the whole of its lower entrails but leave the upper entrails and the fat inside the body. They cut off the legs, the end of the loin, the shoulders and the neck. When this is done, they stuff the rest of the carcass with consecrated loaves, honey, raisins, figs, frankincense, myrrh and every other kind of spice. Once it is filled, they burn it as an offering, pouring a great quantity of oil over it. They fast before they sacrifice, and while the offerings are burning they all beat their breasts in mourning. When they have finished beating themselves, they set out what is left of the sacrifice as a feast.
41. So all the Egyptians sacrifice clean bulls, both full-grown animals and calves. They are not allowed to sacrifice cows, which are sacred to Isis. The image of Isis is of a woman with cow's horns, just as the Greeks picture Io, and all Egyptians alike revere cows far more than any other kind of livestock. For this reason no Egyptian, man or woman, would kiss a Greek man on the mouth, or use a Greek's knife, or his roasting spits, or his cooking pot, or taste the meat even of a clean animal if it has been cut with a Greek knife. Cattle that die are buried this way. The cows they throw into the river. The bulls each town buries in its own outskirts, with one horn, or sometimes both, sticking up out of the ground to mark the spot. When the bodies have rotted and the appointed time comes round, a boat arrives at each city from the island called Prosopitis. This island is in the Delta, and it is about sixty miles around. On the island of Prosopitis there are many cities, and one of them is the city the boats come from to collect the bones of the cattle. Its name is Atarbechis, and it has a holy temple of Aphrodite. Many people go out from this city in all directions, some to one city and some to another. They dig up the bones of the cattle, carry them off, and all bury them together in a single place. They bury their other livestock, when it dies, in the same way as the cattle, because the same law covers those animals too; and they do not kill them either.
42. Now everyone who has a temple of Theban Zeus or who belongs to the district of Thebes sacrifices goats and refuses to sacrifice sheep. This is because not all Egyptians worship the same gods equally. The only exceptions are Isis and Osiris, who they say is Dionysus: these two they all worship alike. But those who have a temple of Mendes, or who belong to the Mendesian district, refuse to sacrifice goats and sacrifice sheep. The Thebans, and those who follow their example in keeping away from sheep, say the custom was established among them for this reason. Heracles, they say, very much wanted to see Zeus, and Zeus did not want to be seen by him. In the end, when Heracles kept begging, Zeus thought of a trick. He skinned a ram, cut off its head and held it in front of his face, put on the fleece, and showed himself to Heracles that way. That is why the Egyptians make their image of Zeus with a ram's face. The Ammonians do the same, following their example; they are settlers from both Egypt and Ethiopia, and they speak a language that is a mixture of the two. In my opinion the Ammonians also took their name from this god, because the Egyptians call Zeus Amun. So the Thebans do not sacrifice rams but hold them sacred, for this reason. On one day a year, however, at the festival of Zeus, they cut up and skin a single ram in the same way, and dress the image of Zeus in its fleece, and then they bring another image, of Heracles, up to it. When this is done, everyone in the temple beats his breast in mourning for the ram, and then they bury it in a sacred tomb.
43. About Heracles, I heard it said that he was one of the twelve gods. But of the other Heracles, the one the Greeks know, I could not hear anything anywhere in Egypt. There is plenty of evidence that the Egyptians did not take the name of Heracles from the Greeks, but that the Greeks took it from the Egyptians (I mean those Greeks who gave the name Heracles to the son of Amphitryon). The chief proof is this: the parents of this Heracles, Amphitryon and Alcmene, were both of Egyptian descent. Then too, the Egyptians say they do not know the names of Poseidon or of the Dioscuri, Castor and Polydeuces, the twin sons of Tyndareus, and these have not been accepted among their gods. Yet if they had taken the name of any god from the Greeks, these are the ones they would most naturally have remembered, assuming that in those days, as now, some Greeks made voyages and were seafaring people. I believe they were, and my judgment forces me to think so. So the Egyptians would have learned the names of these gods even sooner than the name of Heracles. In fact, though, Heracles is a very ancient Egyptian god. As they say themselves, it is 17,000 years from the time when the twelve gods, of whom they count Heracles as one, were born of the eight gods, down to the beginning of the reign of Amasis.
44. I wanted to learn something certain about these matters if I could, so I also made a voyage to Tyre in Phoenicia, since I heard there was a holy temple of Heracles there. I saw that it was richly furnished with many offerings, and in particular there were two pillars in it, one of pure gold and the other of emerald, so big that it shone at night. I got into conversation with the priests of the god and asked them how long it had been since their temple was built. I found that they too disagreed with the Greeks. They said that the temple of the god was built at the same time Tyre was founded, and that it had been 2,300 years since their people first settled at Tyre. I also saw at Tyre another temple of Heracles, the one called the Thasian. I went to Thasos as well, and there I found a temple of Heracles built by the Phoenicians, who had sailed out in search of Europa and had settled Thasos. And all this happened a good five generations before Heracles the son of Amphitryon was born in Greece. So my inquiries clearly show that Heracles is an ancient god. I think the Greeks who have built two temples of Heracles act most correctly: to one Heracles they sacrifice as an immortal god, under the title Olympian, and to the other they make offerings for the dead, as to a hero.
45. The Greeks tell many stories without thinking them through, and one especially silly one is the tale they tell about Heracles. They say that when he came to Egypt, the Egyptians put garlands on him and led him out in procession to sacrifice him to Zeus. For a while he kept quiet; but when they were starting to sacrifice him at the altar, he turned to his strength and killed them all. For my part I think that when the Greeks tell this story they know nothing at all about the nature and customs of the Egyptians. How could people who are not allowed to sacrifice even animals, except pigs, bulls and bull calves (the clean ones) and geese, how could they sacrifice human beings? Besides, how could Heracles, being only one person, and a man at that (as they claim), possibly kill tens of thousands? Having said this much on the subject, I pray that both gods and heroes may look kindly on what I have said.
46. Now the reason why the Egyptians I mentioned do not sacrifice goats, female or male, is this. The Mendesians count Pan as one of the eight gods, and they say these eight gods came into being before the twelve. Their painters and sculptors paint and carve the figure of Pan just as the Greeks do, with a goat's face and legs. They do not think he really looks like that; they think he is like the other gods. But why they represent him in this form I would rather not say. The Mendesians revere all goats, the males more than the females, and the goatherds too are held in greater honor than other herdsmen. One goat in particular is revered, and when he dies there is great mourning throughout the whole Mendesian district. In the Egyptian language both the goat and Pan are called Mendes. And in my own lifetime a wonder happened in that district: a he-goat had sex with a woman in public, and this was done so that everyone could see it.
47. The Egyptians regard the pig as an unclean animal. To begin with, if one of them brushes against a pig in passing, he goes to the river and plunges in at once, clothes and all. Then too, swineherds, even though they are native Egyptians, are the only people who may not enter any temple in Egypt. Nobody is willing to give his daughter in marriage to one of them or to take a wife from among them, so the swineherds marry among themselves, giving their daughters to each other and taking each other's. Now the Egyptians do not think it right to sacrifice pigs to any of the other gods; but to the Moon and to Dionysus alone they sacrifice pigs, at the same time, on the same full moon, and then they eat the meat. The Egyptians tell a story about why they hate pigs at all their other festivals but sacrifice them at this one. I know the story, but it is not a proper one for me to tell. The sacrifice of pigs to the Moon is done like this. When the priest has killed the victim, he puts together the tip of the tail, the spleen and the caul, the fatty membrane around the gut, and covers them with all the fat from around the animal's belly, and then he burns them as an offering. The rest of the meat they eat on the day of the full moon on which they made the sacrifice; on any later day they will not taste it. The poor among them, because they have so little, shape pigs out of dough, bake them, and offer these as their sacrifice.
48. For Dionysus, on the eve of the festival, each man kills a pig by cutting its throat in front of his own door, and then gives the pig back to the swineherd who sold it to him, for him to take away again. The rest of the festival of Dionysus the Egyptians celebrate in almost every way as the Greeks do, except for the choral dances. But instead of the phallus, the carved penis the Greeks carry in procession, they have invented something else: figures about eighteen inches high, worked by strings, which women carry around the villages. The figure's penis is made to move, and it is not much smaller than the rest of the body. A flute player goes in front, and the women follow, singing the praises of Dionysus. As for why the figure has a penis larger than nature and why it moves that one part of the body and no other, there is a sacred story told about it.
49. Now I think that Melampus son of Amytheon was not ignorant of this sacrifice but knew it well. For Melampus is the one who first introduced to the Greeks the name of Dionysus, the way of sacrificing to him and the procession of the phallus. Strictly speaking, he did not reveal the whole of it when he made it known; the wise men who came after him explained it more fully. But it was Melampus who taught about the phallus that is carried in procession for Dionysus, and it is from him that the Greeks learned to do what they do. So I say that Melampus, a clever man, worked out an art of prophecy for himself, and having learned many things from Egypt, he taught them to the Greeks, among them the rites of Dionysus, changing a few details. I will not say that what is done in the god's worship in Egypt and what is done among the Greeks just happened to turn out the same by accident: if so, the rites would be in keeping with Greek worship and not a recent import. Nor will I say that the Egyptians took this or any other custom from the Greeks. But I think it most likely that Melampus learned about Dionysus from Cadmus of Tyre and from those who came with him from Phoenicia to the land we now call Boeotia.
50. In fact, the names of almost all the gods came to Greece from Egypt. My inquiries tell me it is true that they came from non-Greeks, and I think it most likely they came from Egypt. For apart from Poseidon and the Dioscuri, as I said before, and Hera, Hestia (goddess of the hearth), Themis, the Charites (the Graces) and the Nereids (the sea nymphs), the Egyptians have always had the names of all the other gods in their country. What I say here is what the Egyptians themselves believe. As for the gods whose names they claim not to know, I think these were named by the Pelasgians, except for Poseidon. The Greeks learned about this god from the Libyans, because no people except the Libyans have had the name of Poseidon from the beginning and have always honored him. The Egyptians, I may add, have no custom of worshiping heroes at all.
51. So the Greeks adopted these customs, and others I will mention later, from the Egyptians. But making the statues of Hermes with the phallus, as they do, is something they learned not from the Egyptians but from the Pelasgians. The Athenians were the first Greeks to take up the custom, and the rest learned it from them. For it was just when the Athenians were starting to be counted as Greeks that the Pelasgians came to live with them in their land, and that is exactly why they began to be counted as Greeks. Anyone who has been initiated into the mysteries of the Cabeiri, which the Samothracians perform and which they received from the Pelasgians, knows what I mean. For these same Pelasgians who came to live with the Athenians had lived in Samothrace before that, and it was from them that the Samothracians received their mysteries. So the Athenians were the first Greeks to make statues of Hermes with the phallus, having learned it from the Pelasgians. The Pelasgians told a sacred story about it, which is revealed in the mysteries at Samothrace.
52. In the old days the Pelasgians used to make all their sacrifices with prayers to the gods, as I know from what I heard at Dodona, but they gave none of them a title or a name, because they had not yet heard any. They called them "theoi," gods, from the idea that they had "set" (thentes) all things in order and so held the sharing out of everything. Then, after a long time had passed, they learned the names of the gods from Egypt, all except Dionysus, whose name they learned much later. Some time after that, the Pelasgians consulted the oracle at Dodona about the names. This oracle is considered the most ancient of all the oracles among the Greeks, and at that time it was the only one. So when the Pelasgians asked the oracle at Dodona whether they should adopt the names that had come from foreigners, the oracle told them to use them. From then on they sacrificed using the names of the gods, and later the Greeks received them from the Pelasgians.
53. But where each of the gods came from, or whether they had all always existed, and what they looked like, the Greeks did not know until the other day, so to speak, or the day before. For I believe Hesiod and Homer lived four hundred years before my time and no more, and they are the ones who composed the Greeks' account of the gods' births, gave the gods their titles, divided up their honors and their skills, and described their forms. The poets who are said to have lived before these two were really, in my opinion, later than they. The first part of what I have said comes from the priestesses at Dodona; the last part, about Hesiod and Homer, is my own.
54. About the oracles, both the one in Greece and the one in Libya, the Egyptians tell this story. The priests of Theban Zeus told me that two women who served in the temple had been carried off from Thebes by Phoenicians. They had heard, they said, that one of the women was sold into Libya and the other to the Greeks, and that these were the women who first founded oracles among those peoples. I asked them how they knew this story so exactly, and they answered that the priests had made a great search for these women and had not been able to find them, but that afterward they had heard this story about them, the one they were telling me.
55. That is what I heard from the priests at Thebes. What follows is what the prophetesses of Dodona say. They say that two black doves flew from Thebes in Egypt, and one of them came to Libya and the other to their own land. This one settled on an oak tree and spoke in a human voice, saying that an oracle of Zeus must be founded there. The people believed that the message came from the gods, and so they founded one. The dove that went to the Libyans, they say, told the Libyans to found an oracle of Ammon, and this too is an oracle of Zeus. The priestesses of Dodona told me these things. The eldest of them was named Promeneia, the next Timarete, and the youngest Nicandra; and the other people of Dodona who served at the temple told the same story.
56. But my own opinion about it is this. If the Phoenicians really did carry off the consecrated women and sell one into Libya and the other into Greece, then I suppose that this second woman was sold, in the country now called Greece but formerly called Pelasgia, into the land of the Thesprotians. Then, while she was a slave there, she set up a shrine of Zeus under a real oak tree. That would be natural: having served in the sanctuary of Zeus at Thebes, she would remember him in the place she had come to. After this, once she understood the Greek language, she founded an oracle. And she reported, I suppose, that her sister had been sold into Libya by the same Phoenicians who had sold her.
57. I also think the people of Dodona called the women doves because they were foreigners, and because they seemed to them to make sounds like birds. After a while, they say, the dove spoke in a human voice: that is, when the woman began to speak so that they could understand her. As long as she spoke a foreign language, she seemed to them to be making sounds like a bird. For if it really had been a dove, how could it speak with a human voice? And in saying that the dove was black, they show that the woman was Egyptian. As it happens, the ways of giving oracles at Thebes in Egypt and at Dodona are very much alike. The art of prophecy from sacrificed victims came from Egypt too.
58. It is also true that the Egyptians were the first people to hold religious festivals, processions and solemn approaches to the temples, and that the Greeks learned these from them. My evidence for this is that the Egyptian festivals have been held since very ancient times, while the Greek ones were introduced only recently.
59. The Egyptians hold their festivals not once a year but many times. The chief one, held with the greatest zeal and devotion, is at the city of Bubastis, for Artemis. The second is at Busiris, for Isis. In this city there is a very great temple of Isis, and the city stands in the middle of the Delta of Egypt; Isis, in the Greek language, is Demeter. Third, they hold a festival at the city of Sais for Athena; fourth, at Heliopolis for the Sun, Helios; fifth, at the city of Buto in honor of Leto; and sixth, at the city of Papremis for Ares.
60. Now, when they are going to the city of Bubastis, this is what they do. Men and women sail together, a great crowd of both in every boat. Some of the women have rattles and shake them, some of the men play the flute the whole way, and the rest, women and men, sing and clap their hands. As they sail, whenever they come opposite some city along the way, they bring the boat close to shore. Some of the women keep on doing what I have described; others shout and jeer at the women of that city; some dance; and some stand up and pull up their skirts. They do this at every city along the riverbank. When they reach Bubastis, they hold a festival with great sacrifices, and more grape wine is drunk at this festival than in all the rest of the year. The people who gather here every year, so the locals say, number as many as 700,000 men and women, not counting children.
61. That is how it is done there. How they celebrate the festival of Isis at the city of Busiris I have already told. As I said, after the sacrifice they all beat their breasts in mourning, men and women together, many tens of thousands of people. But for whom they beat themselves, religion does not allow me to say. All the Carians who live in Egypt do this even more than the Egyptians themselves, since they also cut their foreheads with knives; and this shows that they are foreigners and not Egyptians.
62. When they gather at the city of Sais for their sacrifices, on a certain night they all light a great many lamps in the open air around their houses. The lamps are saucers filled with salt and oil mixed together, with the wick floating on top, and they burn all night long. The festival is called Lychnocaia, the Lighting of the Lamps. And those Egyptians who have not come to this gathering keep the night of the festival too, and they all light lamps as well, so that the lamps are lit not only in Sais but all over Egypt. As for the reason why this night is given light and honor, there is a sacred story told about that.
63. At Heliopolis and Buto they gather every year and only sacrifice. But at Papremis they sacrifice and worship as they do elsewhere, and besides that, when the sun is starting to go down, a few of the priests busy themselves with the image of the god, while most of them stand at the entrance of the temple holding wooden clubs. Opposite them stand more than a thousand other men, who are there to fulfill vows, and these all carry wooden staves too, and stand in a body. The image is in a small wooden shrine covered with gold, and on the day before, they carry it out to another sacred building. The few priests who were left with the image pull a four-wheeled cart carrying the shrine and the image inside it. The other priests, standing in the gateway, try to stop it from coming in, and the men under vows come to the god's help and strike them, while the priests defend themselves. Then there is a hard fight with staves, and they break each other's heads. I think many of them actually die of their wounds, though the Egyptians told me that nobody died. The local people say that they established this festival for the following reason. The mother of Ares, they say, used to live in this temple. Ares had been raised away from her, and when he grew up he came there wanting to visit his mother. But the attendants of his mother's temple, who had never seen him before, would not let him in and kept him out. So he brought men from another city to help him, roughed up the temple attendants, and went in to see his mother. That, they say, is how this exchange of blows became the custom at Ares' festival.
64. The Egyptians were the first to make it a religious rule not to have sex with women in temples, and not to enter a temple after being with a woman without bathing first. Almost all other people except the Egyptians and the Greeks have sex in temples and go into a temple after being with a woman without bathing, because they think there is no difference in this between people and animals. They say they see animals and all kinds of birds mating in the temples and in the sacred precincts of the gods; and if this did not please the god, the animals would not do it.
65. That is how these other peoples defend what they do, though I for my part do not accept it. But the Egyptians are extremely careful in their religious observances, both in other matters that concern the sacred rites and in the ones I am about to describe. Egypt borders on Libya, but it does not have a great many wild animals. Those it does have are all, every one of them, held sacred by the Egyptians, some living alongside people and others not. But if I were to say why the sacred animals have been dedicated in this way, I would find myself talking about the gods, which is the subject I most want to avoid; and whatever I have actually said that touches on it lightly, I said only because I had no choice. As for these animals, the custom is this. Certain Egyptians, both men and women, have been appointed to provide the food for each kind of animal separately, and the office passes down from father to son. The people in the various cities fulfill their vows to these animals in this way. When a man makes a vow to the god the animal belongs to, he shaves his children's heads, either the whole head or a half or a third of it. Then he weighs the hair on a scale against silver, and whatever it weighs, he gives that much silver to the woman who looks after the animals. She cuts up fish of the same value and feeds it to them. That is how food has been arranged for their keep. If anyone kills one of these animals on purpose, the penalty is death; if he kills one by accident, he pays whatever penalty the priests decide. But anyone who kills an ibis or a hawk, whether on purpose or by accident, must die.
66. There are a great many animals that live with people, and there would be many more if it were not for what happens to the cats. When the females have had kittens, they no longer go to the males, and the males, who want to mate with them, cannot. So the males have worked out a trick. They take the kittens away from the females, by force or by stealth, and kill them (though they do not eat them after killing them). The females, robbed of their young and wanting more, then come back to the males, since the cat is an animal that loves its young. And when a fire breaks out, something strange, almost supernatural, takes hold of the cats. The Egyptians stand around at intervals keeping watch on the cats and take no trouble to put out the fire, but the cats slip through or leap over the men and jump into the flames. When this happens, the Egyptians go into deep mourning. In any house where a cat has died a natural death, everyone who lives there shaves off their eyebrows, and only their eyebrows. But in a house where a dog has died, they shave their whole body and their head as well.
67. When cats die they are carried to sacred buildings in the city of Bubastis, where they are embalmed and buried. Dogs are buried by each people in their own city, in sacred tombs, and ichneumons (a kind of mongoose) are buried in just the same way as dogs. Shrews and hawks, however, are carried off to the city of Buto, and ibises to Hermopolis. Bears, which are rare there, and wolves, which are not much bigger than foxes, they bury on the spot where they find them lying.
68. The nature of the crocodile is as follows. During the four coldest months of winter it eats nothing. It has four feet and lives both on land and in water: it lays its eggs and hatches them on land, and it spends most of the day on dry ground, but the whole night in the river, because the water is actually warmer than the open air under a clear sky and the dew. Of all the living creatures we know of, this one grows from the smallest beginning to the greatest size. The eggs it lays are not much bigger than goose eggs, and the newly hatched young one is in proportion to the egg; but as it grows it reaches as much as twenty-five feet long, and sometimes even more. It has eyes like a pig's and large teeth like tusks, in proportion to the size of its body. Unlike every other animal, it grows no tongue. Nor does it move its lower jaw: it brings the upper jaw down onto the lower, and in this too it is unlike every other animal. It also has strong claws, and a scaly hide on its back that cannot be pierced. It is blind in the water, but in the air its sight is very sharp. Since it lives in the water, the inside of its mouth is always full of leeches. All other birds and animals run from it, but the trochilus is at peace with it, because the crocodile gets some good from her. When the crocodile has come out of the water onto land and opened its mouth (it usually does this facing the west wind), the trochilus goes into its mouth and gulps down the leeches. The crocodile is glad of the help and does the trochilus no harm.
69. To some of the Egyptians crocodiles are sacred; others do not hold them sacred at all but, on the contrary, treat them as enemies. The people around Thebes and around Lake Moeris consider them very sacred indeed. Each of these two peoples keeps one particular crocodile, chosen out of all the rest and trained to be tame. They hang earrings of glass and gold in its ears and put bracelets around its front feet. They give it special food and sacrificial offerings and treat it as well as they possibly can while it lives, and when it dies they embalm it and bury it in a sacred tomb. But the people around the city of Elephantine actually eat crocodiles, since they do not consider them sacred. Their name for them is not "crocodiles" but "champsae." It was the Ionians who called them crocodiles, comparing their shape to the lizards in their own country that live in stone walls, which they call crocodiles.
70. There are many different ways of catching them. I will describe the one that seems to me most worth telling. A man baits a hook with a pig's back and lets it out into the middle of the river, while he himself stands on the bank holding a live young pig, which he beats. The crocodile hears its squeals and heads toward the sound, and when it comes on the pig's back it swallows it. Then the men pull. When it has been dragged out onto land, the first thing the hunter does is plaster its eyes shut with mud. Once he has done that, he can master it very easily; but if he does not, he has a great deal of trouble.
71. The hippopotamus, the "river horse," is sacred in the district of Papremis, but not to the rest of the Egyptians. This is what it looks like. It has four feet and split hooves like an ox. It has a snub nose and a mane like a horse, and it shows tusk-like teeth. It has a horse's tail and a horse's voice, and it is as big as the biggest ox. Its hide is so extremely thick that once it is dried, it is used to make javelin shafts.
72. There are also otters in the river, which they consider sacred. Among fish they consider sacred the one called the lepidotus, and also the eel; these, they say, are sacred to the Nile. Among birds, the fox-goose is sacred.
73. There is another sacred bird too, called the phoenix. I have never seen one myself, except in paintings, because it comes to them very rarely: once every five hundred years, so the people of Heliopolis say. They say it comes regularly when its father dies. If it looks like the paintings, then this is its size and appearance: some of its feathers are the color of gold and others are red, and in outline and size it is very much like an eagle. They say this bird does something that I cannot believe. It sets out from Arabia, they say, carrying its father to the temple of the Sun (Helios), all plastered up in myrrh, and buries him in the temple of the Sun. This is how it carries him. First it shapes an egg out of myrrh, as big as it can carry. Then it tries carrying it. When it has tested it enough, it hollows out the egg and puts its father inside, and it plasters over with more myrrh the part of the egg it hollowed out to put him in. With the father inside, they say, the egg weighs exactly what it weighed before. After plastering it up, the bird carries the whole thing to Egypt, to the temple of the Sun. That, they say, is what this bird does.
74. Around Thebes there are also sacred snakes, which are not at all harmful to people. They are small, and have two horns growing from the top of the head. When they die, they are buried in the temple of Zeus, because they are sacred, they say, to that god.
75. There is also a place in Arabia, lying roughly opposite the city of Buto, where I went to ask about the winged serpents. When I got there I saw bones and spines of serpents in such enormous quantities that it is impossible to give the number. There were heaps of spines, some large, some smaller, and others smaller still, and there were a great many of these heaps. The place where the spines lie scattered on the ground is something like an entrance from a narrow mountain pass into a great plain, and this plain adjoins the plain of Egypt. The story goes that at the beginning of spring winged serpents fly from Arabia toward Egypt, and the birds called ibises meet them at the entrance to this country and do not let the serpents pass, but kill them. It is because of this deed, say the Arabians, that the ibis has come to be greatly honored by the Egyptians; and the Egyptians themselves also agree that this is why they honor these birds.
76. This is what the ibis looks like. It is jet black all over, with legs like a crane's and a strongly hooked beak, and it is about the size of a rail. That is the appearance of the black kind, the ones that fight the serpents. There are two distinct kinds of ibis, however, and the other kind, the ones that crowd most around people's feet, have a bare head and a bare throat all the way down. Their feathers are white except on the head and neck and the tips of the wings and the rump; in all the parts I have mentioned they are jet black. In their legs and the shape of their head they look like the other kind. As for the serpent, it looks like a water snake. It has wings without feathers, very much like a bat's wings. Let that be enough about sacred animals.
77. As for the Egyptians themselves, those who live in the farming part of Egypt cultivate memory more than any other people, and are by far the most learned in history of all the peoples I have come across. This is how they live. For three days in a row every month they purge themselves, seeking health through emetics and enemas, because they think that all the diseases people get come from the food they eat. In fact, the Egyptians are, for other reasons as well, the healthiest of all people after the Libyans. In my opinion this is because of their climate, since their seasons do not change; for it is changes in things generally, and above all changes in the seasons, that are most likely to bring on disease. As for their diet, it is this. They eat bread, making loaves out of spelt, which they call cyllestis. They regularly drink a wine made from barley, because they have no vines in their country. Some of their fish they dry in the sun and eat raw; others they eat cured in brine. Of birds, they eat quails, ducks and small birds raw, after first curing them in salt. Everything else they have in the way of birds or fish, apart from the ones they have set aside as sacred, they eat roasted or boiled.
78. At the dinner parties of the rich, when the meal is over, a man carries around a wooden model of a corpse in a coffin, painted and carved to look as real as possible, about eighteen inches or three feet long. He shows it to each of the guests in turn and says, "Look at this, then drink and enjoy yourself, for when you are dead this is what you will be." That is what they do at their drinking parties.
79. The customs they practice are the ones they inherited from their fathers, and they do not take on any others. Among their other customs worth mentioning, they have one song, the song of Linus, the same Linus who is sung of in Phoenicia, in Cyprus and elsewhere, though he has a different name among each people. This song is exactly the same as the one the Greeks sing when they call on the name of Linus. So of the many things that amaze me about Egypt, this amazes me most of all: where did they get the song of Linus? It is clear, though, that they have been singing it since time out of mind. In the Egyptian language Linus is called Maneros. The Egyptians told me that he was the only son of the first king of Egypt, that he died young, and that the Egyptians honored him with this lament, and that this was their first and only song.
80. In another respect the Egyptians agree with some of the Greeks, namely the Spartans, though not with the rest. When younger men meet their elders, they make way for them and step aside from the path, and when their elders come near, they stand up from their seats. But in the following custom they agree with none of the Greeks at all: instead of greeting each other in the street with words, they bow, lowering a hand down to the knee.
81. They wear linen tunics with fringes around the legs, which they call calasiris, and over these they throw cloaks of white wool. But woolen clothing is never taken into the temples, and no one is buried in it, because religion forbids it. In this they agree with the rites called Orphic and Bacchic, which are really Egyptian, and also with those of the Pythagoreans: anyone who takes part in these mysteries is likewise forbidden by religious law to be buried in woolen clothing. There is a sacred story told about this.
82. Besides these things, the Egyptians have also worked out which god each month and each day belongs to, and what fortune a man born on a given day will meet with, how he will die, and what sort of man he will be. These discoveries were taken up by those Greeks who busied themselves with poetry. The Egyptians have also discovered more omens than all the rest of mankind put together. Whenever an omen occurs, they watch and write down what comes of it, and if anything like it ever happens again, they believe the outcome will be the same.
83. Their prophecy is arranged like this. The art of prophecy does not belong to any human being, but to certain of the gods. In their country there are oracles of Heracles, of Apollo, of Athena, of Artemis, of Ares and of Zeus, and also the one they honor most of all, the oracle of Leto in the city of Buto. But the method of prophecy is not yet the same everywhere among them; it differs from place to place.
84. Medicine among them is divided up like this. Each doctor is a doctor for one disease and no more, and the whole country is full of doctors. Some set up as doctors for the eyes, others for the head, others for the teeth, others for disorders of the stomach, and others for the less obvious illnesses.
85. Their customs of mourning and burial are these. Whenever a household loses a man of any standing, all the women of that house at once smear their heads, or even their faces, with mud. Then they leave the body in the house and go roaming around the city, beating their breasts, with their clothes tied up by a belt and their breasts bare, and with them go all the women who were related to the dead man. On the other side the men beat their breasts, they too with their clothes tied up by a belt. When they have done this, they take the body to be embalmed.
86. There are men who practice this as their regular trade and inherit it as a craft. Whenever a body is brought to them, they show the people who brought it wooden models of corpses, painted to look real. The finest method of embalming, they say, is that of the one whose name I think it irreverent to mention in a matter of this kind. The second method they show is not as good as the first, and cheaper; and the third is the cheapest of all. After explaining all this, they ask the family which method they want used for the body of their loved one. Then the family agree on a price and go away, and the embalmers, left behind in their workshops, embalm the body. The most perfect way is this.
First, with a hooked iron tool, they draw the brain out through the nostrils, taking out part of it this way and the rest by pouring in drugs. Next, with a sharp Ethiopian stone, they make a cut along the side and take out all the contents of the belly. They clean out the cavity and rinse it with palm wine, and then rinse it again with crushed spices. Then they fill the belly with pure crushed myrrh, cassia and other spices, all except frankincense, and sew it up again. After this they cover the body with natron, a natural salt, and keep it for embalming for seventy days; they are not allowed to embalm it for longer than that. When the seventy days are over, they wash the body and wrap the whole of it in bandages cut from fine linen, smearing their undersides with gum, which the Egyptians generally use instead of glue. Then the relatives take the body back from them and have a wooden case made in the shape of a man. When it has been made, they shut the body up inside it and store it in a burial chamber, standing it upright against the wall.
87. That is how they deal with the bodies prepared in the most expensive way. For those who want the middle method and wish to avoid great expense, they prepare the body as follows. They fill their syringes with oil made from cedarwood and pump it straight into the belly of the corpse, without cutting it open or taking out the intestines: they inject the oil through the anus and stop it from running back out. Then they keep the body the set number of days for embalming, and on the last day they let out of the belly the cedar oil they put in earlier. The oil is so powerful that it brings out with it the intestines and inner organs, dissolved; and the natron dissolves the flesh, so that nothing is left of the body but the skin and bones. When they have done this, they hand the body back just as it is, without doing any more work on it.
88. The third kind of embalming, which is used for the bodies of those with less money, is this. They clean out the belly with a purge and then keep the body for embalming for the seventy days, and right after that they give it back to the people who brought it, to take away.
89. When the wives of prominent men die, they are not handed over to be embalmed right away, nor are women who are very beautiful or more highly regarded than others. They are given to the embalmers only on the third or fourth day after death, and not before. They do this so that the embalmers will not have sex with these women. For they say that one embalmer was once caught doing this with the body of a woman who had just died, and a fellow craftsman reported him.
90. Whenever anyone, whether an Egyptian or a foreigner, is found to have been carried off by a crocodile or killed by the river itself, the people of whatever city he washes up near are obliged to embalm him, lay him out as finely as they can, and bury him in a sacred tomb. None of his relatives or friends may touch him. Instead the priests of the Nile handle the body themselves and bury it, as if it were the body of someone more than human.
91. They refuse to follow Greek customs at all, and, to put it generally, they follow the customs of no other people whatever. Most of the Egyptians keep to this rule. But there is a large city called Chemmis in the Theban district, near Neapolis, and in this city there is a square temple of Perseus, the son of Danae, with date palms growing all around it. The gateway of the temple is built of stone and is very large, and at its entrance stand two great stone statues. Inside this enclosure is a shrine, and in it stands a statue of Perseus. The people of Chemmis say that Perseus often appears in their country, and often inside the temple, and that sometimes one of his sandals is found, which he has worn, three feet long; and whenever it turns up, the whole of Egypt prospers. That is what they say. And they honor Perseus in the Greek fashion, like this: they hold athletic games that include every kind of contest, and they offer cattle, cloaks and hides as prizes. I asked them why Perseus appeared to them alone, and why they were different from all the other Egyptians in holding athletic games. They said that Perseus was by descent a man of their city. Danaus and Lynceus, they said, were men of Chemmis who had sailed to Greece, and they traced the line of descent from them down to Perseus. They told me that he came to Egypt for the reason the Greeks also give, to bring the Gorgon's head from Libya, and that on that journey he visited them too and recognized all his relatives. They said he already knew the name of Chemmis well before he came to Egypt, because he had heard it from his mother, and that they hold the athletic games for him because he ordered it himself.
92. All these are the customs of the Egyptians who live above the marshes. Those who are settled in the marshland have mostly the same customs as the other Egyptians, both in other matters and in this one: each man lives with one wife only, as the Greeks do. But to make their food go further they have come up with these additional things. When the river is full and the plains are flooded, a great many lilies grow in the water, which the Egyptians call lotus. They cut these with a sickle and dry them in the sun. Then they pound up the part in the middle of the lotus that looks like a poppy head and make loaves out of it, baked over a fire. The root of this lotus is also good to eat and tastes rather sweet; it is round and about the size of an apple. There are other lilies too, with flowers like roses, which also grow in the river. Their fruit grows in a separate pod on a stalk that springs from the root beside the plant itself, and it looks very much like a wasps' nest. Inside it grow a great many edible seeds about the size of an olive pit, and these are eaten either fresh or dried. Besides this, they pull up from the marshes the papyrus that grows there every year. They cut off the upper parts and put them to other uses, but the lower part that is left, about eighteen inches long, they eat or sell. Those who want their papyrus at its very best bake it in a red-hot oven and then eat it. Some of these people live on fish alone. They catch them, take out the guts and dry them in the sun, and then, when they are dry, they eat them.
93. Fish that swim in schools are not much bred in the rivers; they are bred in the lakes, and this is what they do. When the urge to spawn comes over them, they swim out in schools toward the sea. The males lead the way, shedding their milt as they go, and the females follow behind and swallow it up, and from it they become pregnant. When they are full of young in the sea, they swim back up again, each school to its own home waters. But now the males no longer lead the way as before: the lead passes to the females. Going ahead in schools, they do just what the males did: they shed their eggs, a few grains at a time, and the males follow behind and swallow them up. Now these grains are fish, and from the grains that survive and are not swallowed, the fish grow that are later raised. The fish caught as they swim out to sea are found to be rubbed on the left side of the head, while the ones caught as they swim back up are rubbed on the right. This happens to them because, as they swim down to the sea, they keep close to the land on the left side of the river, and as they swim back up they keep to the same bank, coming as close to it and touching it as much as they can, no doubt for fear of being swept off course by the current. When the Nile begins to rise, the hollows in the land and the low places beside the river are the first to fill, as the water seeps through from the river. As soon as they are full of water, they are all at once full of little fish. I think I can see where these most likely come from. In the year before, when the Nile goes down, the fish lay their eggs in the mud and then leave with the last of the retreating water. When the season comes around again and the water once more comes over the land, the fish I am talking about are hatched at once from these eggs.
94. So much for the fish. For anointing themselves, the Egyptians who live in the marshes use oil from the castor-oil plant, which the Egyptians call kiki. This is how they do it. They plant it along the banks of the rivers and ponds. In Greece this plant grows wild by itself, but in Egypt it is planted, and it bears a great many berries, though they smell bad. When they have gathered them, some people chop them up and press the oil out of them; others first roast them and then boil them down, and collect what runs off. The oil is thick and greasy, and no worse than olive oil for lamps, but it gives off an unpleasant smell.
95. Against the gnats, which are very plentiful, they have come up with these defenses. Those who live above the marshland are helped by towers, which they climb up to when they go to bed, because the wind keeps the gnats from flying up high. But those who live in the marshland have worked out another method instead of towers. Every man of them owns a casting net, which he uses during the day to catch fish. At night he puts it to this use: he puts the net all around the bed he sleeps in, then crawls in underneath it and goes to sleep. If he sleeps wrapped up in a cloak or a linen sheet, the gnats bite right through it, but through the net they do not even try to bite.
96. The boats they use to carry cargo are made of the thorny acacia, a tree very much like the lotus of Cyrene in shape, which gives off a gum. From this tree they cut planks about three feet long and lay them like bricks, fastening the boat together by running a great many long bolts through the three-foot planks. When they have fastened the boat together this way, they lay crossbeams over the top. They use no ribs for the sides, and on the inside they caulk the seams with papyrus. They make a single steering oar for it, which passes through the bottom of the boat. They have a mast of acacia and sails of papyrus. These boats cannot sail upstream unless a strong wind is blowing, and they are towed from the bank. Downstream, though, they travel like this. They have a raft shaped like a door, made of tamarisk wood and reed mats sewn together, and also a stone with a hole bored through it, weighing about two talents, or about 115 pounds. The boatman lets the raft float ahead of the boat, tied on with a rope, and lets the stone drag behind on another rope. As the force of the current presses on the raft, it moves along quickly and pulls the baris (that is what these boats are called), while the stone, dragging behind and sunk deep in the water, keeps the boat on a straight course. They have great numbers of these boats, and some of them carry many thousands of talents' weight.
97. When the Nile floods the land, only the cities can be seen standing above the water, looking more like the islands in the Aegean Sea than anything else. All the rest of Egypt turns into a sea, and only the cities rise above it. So whenever this happens, people travel by boat no longer along the channels of the river but straight across the middle of the plain. For example, anyone sailing up from Naucratis to Memphis then passes right by the pyramids, though that is not the usual route even here: the usual route goes by the point of the Delta and the city of Cercasorus. And if you sail across the plain from the sea and from Canopus to Naucratis, you will pass by Anthylla and the city named after Archander.
98. Of these, Anthylla is a well-known city, and it is set aside especially for the wife of whoever rules Egypt, to keep her in shoes. This has been the arrangement ever since Egypt came under the Persians. The other city, it seems to me, takes its name from Archander, the son-in-law of Danaus and the son of Phthius, the son of Achaeus; for it is called the City of Archander. There may of course have been another Archander, but in any case the name is not Egyptian.
99. Up to this point, what I have said has rested on my own observation, my own judgment and my own inquiry. From here on I am going to tell the history of Egypt as I heard it, though I will add to it something of what I have seen for myself.
Min was the first king of Egypt, and the priests told me that he walled off the site of Memphis from the river. The whole stream of the river used to run along the sandy range of hills on the Libyan side. But about eleven miles south of Memphis, Min built embankments that formed the river's bend there, and so he dried up the old channel and led the river to flow down the middle, between the two ranges of hills. Even now the Persians keep a very careful watch on this bend of the Nile, to make sure it stays in the channel it has been confined to, and the embankment is repaired every year. For if the river were to break through and overflow on this side, Memphis would be in danger of being swept away by the flood. When Min, the first king, had turned the land he dammed off into dry ground, he did two things. First, he founded on it the city that is now called Memphis (for Memphis, too, lies in the narrow part of Egypt). Outside the city, on the north and west, he dug a lake around it, fed from the river; on the east side the Nile itself shuts the city in. Second, he built the temple of Hephaestus in the city, a great work and very well worth mentioning.
100. After this man, the priests read out to me from a papyrus roll the names of three hundred and thirty other kings. In all these generations of men, eighteen kings were Ethiopians and one was a woman, a native Egyptian; the rest were men, and Egyptians. The woman who reigned had the same name as the Babylonian queen: Nitocris. They told me that she wanted to take revenge for her brother. He had been king of Egypt, and the Egyptians had murdered him and then given his kingdom to her. So, wanting to avenge him, she used a trick to destroy a great many of the Egyptians. She had a very large room built underground. Then, pretending she meant to hold a feast to open it, while in her mind she was planning something else, she invited the Egyptians she knew had played the biggest part in the murder, and gave a great banquet. While they were feasting, she let the river in on them through a large secret channel. That was all they told me about her, except that when she had done this, she threw herself into a room full of hot embers, to escape the revenge that would follow.
101. As for the other kings, the priests could tell me of no great works they had produced, and they said none of them was famous except the last, Moeris. He, they said, left as a memorial of himself the gateway of the temple of Hephaestus that faces the north wind. He also dug a lake (I will set out later how many miles around it is), and in it he built pyramids, whose size I will give at the same time, when I come to speak of the lake itself. These, they said, were the works Moeris produced; none of the others produced any.
102. So I will pass over these kings and turn to the king who came after them, whose name was Sesostris. The priests said that he first set out with warships from the Red Sea and conquered the peoples living along the shores of the Indian Ocean, until in his voyage he reached a sea that could not be sailed any further because of shoals. Then, the priests said, after he came back to Egypt, he took a great army and marched across the continent, conquering every nation that stood in his way. Where he found a people brave and fighting desperately for their freedom, he set up pillars in their land with inscriptions telling his own name and his country's, and how he had conquered them by his power. But where he took the cities without a fight, or easily, he inscribed the pillars with the same words as he had for the nations that had shown courage, and on top of that he carved a woman's genitals on them, wanting to show by this that the people were cowards, no better than women.
103. In this way he went right across the continent, until at last he crossed over from Asia into Europe and conquered the Scythians and the Thracians as well. These, in my opinion, were the furthest people the Egyptian army reached: the pillars can be found set up in their country, but beyond it they are found no longer. From there he turned and started for home. When he came to the river Phasis, what happened next I can't say for certain. Either King Sesostris himself split off a part of his army and left the men there to settle the land, or else some of his soldiers were worn out by his long marches and stayed behind by the river Phasis.
104. For the people of Colchis are plainly Egyptian. I noticed this for myself before I heard it from anyone else. So when it had occurred to me, I asked both peoples about it. The Colchians remembered the Egyptians better than the Egyptians remembered the Colchians, but the Egyptians said they thought the Colchians were descended from part of Sesostris' army. I guessed as much myself, partly because they are dark-skinned and have tightly curled hair (though that by itself proves nothing, since other peoples are like that too), but much more because the Colchians, the Egyptians and the Ethiopians are the only peoples in the world who have practiced circumcision from the beginning. The Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine admit themselves that they learned it from the Egyptians. The Syrians who live around the rivers Thermodon and Parthenius, and their neighbors the Macronians, say they learned it recently from the Colchians. These are the only peoples who practice circumcision, and they plainly do it in the same way as the Egyptians. As for the Egyptians themselves and the Ethiopians, I can't say which learned it from the other, for it is clearly a very ancient custom. But that the other nations learned it through their dealings with the Egyptians, I take this, among other things, as strong proof: those Phoenicians who have dealings with Greece stop following the Egyptians' example in this, and do not circumcise their children.
105. Now let me mention one more thing about the Colchians, to show how much they resemble the Egyptians. They and the Egyptians are the only people who work flax in the same way, and the two nations are alike in their whole way of life and in their language too. The Greeks call the linen of Colchis "Sardonic," while the linen from Egypt they call "Egyptian."
106. Most of the pillars that Sesostris of Egypt set up in the various countries can no longer be seen. But in Palestinian Syria I saw them myself, still standing, with the inscription I have mentioned and the carved emblem. In Ionia, too, there are two figures of this man carved in the rock: one on the road from the territory of Ephesus to Phocaea, and the other on the road from Sardis to Smyrna. In each place the figure of a man is cut in the rock, about six feet nine inches tall, holding a spear in his right hand and a bow and arrows in his left. The rest of his gear matches these, for it is both Egyptian and Ethiopian. From one shoulder to the other, across the chest, runs an inscription carved in the sacred Egyptian characters, which says: "I won this land with my own shoulders." Who he is and where he comes from he does not say in these places, though he has said it elsewhere. Some who have seen these carvings guess that the figure is Memnon, the Ethiopian king who fought at Troy, but in this they are very far from the truth.
107. As this Egyptian Sesostris was on his way back, the priests said, bringing with him many men from the nations whose lands he had conquered, he came to Daphnae in the district of Pelusium on his journey home. There his brother, to whom Sesostris had entrusted the running of Egypt, invited him and his sons to a feast. Then the brother piled brushwood all around the house and set it on fire. When Sesostris found out what was happening, he at once asked his wife for advice, since (they said) he had brought his wife along with him too. She advised him to lay two of his sons, out of the six he had, across the burning pile, making a bridge over the flames, so that the rest of them could walk over their bodies and escape. Sesostris did this, they said, and two of his sons were burned to death in this way, but the others got away safely with their father.
108. Then Sesostris came back to Egypt and took his revenge on his brother. After that he put to work the crowds of people he had brought back from the lands he had conquered, in the following way. These were the men who dragged the huge stones that were brought to the temple of Hephaestus in this king's reign. They were also forced to dig all the channels that are now in Egypt. And so, without meaning to, they made Egypt, which until then had been good country for riding horses and driving carts, no longer fit for it. For ever since that time Egypt, flat as it is, has been no good for horses or carts, and the reason is these channels, which are many and run in every direction. The king's reason for cutting up the land in this way was that those Egyptians whose cities stood not on the river but inland ran short of water whenever the river went down, and had to drink brackish water from wells.
109. That is why Egypt was cut up with channels. And they said that this king divided the land among all the Egyptians, giving each man an equal square plot, and that he got his revenue from this by making them pay a fixed rent every year. If the river carried away part of a man's plot, he would come to the king and report what had happened. The king would then send men to inspect it and measure how much smaller the plot had become, so that from then on the man would pay less, in proportion to the rent that had been set. I think this is how geometry was invented, and that it afterwards came to Greece as well. As for the sundial, the gnomon and the division of the day into twelve parts, the Greeks learned those from the Babylonians.
110. Sesostris was also the only Egyptian king who ruled over Ethiopia. As memorials of himself he left two stone statues in front of the temple of Hephaestus, each forty-five feet high, of himself and his wife, and statues of his four sons, each thirty feet high. Long afterwards, the priest of Hephaestus refused to let Darius the Persian set up a statue of himself in front of them. He said that Darius had not done deeds equal to those of Sesostris the Egyptian. For Sesostris had conquered just as many other nations as Darius had, and the Scythians besides, whereas Darius had not been able to conquer the Scythians. So it was not right, he said, for Darius to set up a statue in front of the ones Sesostris had dedicated, unless he outdid him in his deeds. And Darius, they say, took this speech in good part.
111. When Sesostris' life came to an end, they told me, his son Pheros inherited the kingdom. He made no military expeditions, and it so happened that he went blind, through the following accident. The river had come down in a flood that rose to twenty-seven feet, higher than ever before, and had spread over the fields. Then a wind struck it and the river was whipped up into waves. And this king (they say), in a fit of reckless arrogance, took a spear and hurled it into the middle of the swirling water. Right after this he got a disease of the eyes and went blind. He was blind for ten years. In the eleventh year an oracle came to him from the city of Buto, saying that his time of punishment was over and that he would see again if he washed his eyes with the urine of a woman who had slept with her own husband and no other man. He tried his own wife first, and when he was still blind after that, he went on to try all the women, one after another. When at last he got his sight back, he gathered together all the women he had tried, except the one who had given him back his sight, into one city, which is now called Erythrabolus ("Red Soil"). When he had gathered them there, he burned them all, along with the city itself. But the woman who had given him back his sight he took as his own wife. After he was cured of his eye disease, he dedicated offerings at every one of the well-known temples. In particular (to mention only the one most worth mentioning) he dedicated at the temple of the Sun works that are well worth seeing: two stone obelisks, each made of a single block, each a hundred and fifty feet long and twelve feet wide.
112. After him, they said, the throne passed to a man of Memphis whose name, in Greek, was Proteus. There is a sacred precinct for him at Memphis now, very beautiful and well kept, on the side of the temple of Hephaestus that faces the north wind. Phoenicians from Tyre live all around this precinct, and the whole district is called the Camp of the Tyrians. Inside the precinct of Proteus there is a temple called the temple of the "Foreign Aphrodite." My guess is that this is a temple of Helen, the daughter of Tyndareus. I think so partly because I have heard the story of how Helen stayed with Proteus, but above all because it is called the temple of the "Foreign Aphrodite": none of the other temples of Aphrodite anywhere has the word "foreign" added to its name.
113. When I asked them, the priests told me that what happened with Helen was this. Alexander had carried off Helen and was sailing away from Sparta to his own country. When he reached the Aegean Sea, contrary winds drove him off his course into the Egyptian Sea. From there, since the gales did not let up, he came to Egypt itself, to what is now called the Canopic mouth of the Nile, and to Taricheae. On the shore there was then, as there still is now, a temple of Heracles. If any man's slave takes refuge in it and has the sacred marks put on him, giving himself over to the god, it is forbidden to lay a hand on him. This custom has stayed the same from the beginning right down to my own time. So some of Alexander's servants, having heard about this custom of the temple, ran away from him. They sat down as suppliants of the god and, wanting to do him harm, accused Alexander, telling the whole story of Helen and of the wrong done to Menelaus. They made this accusation not only to the priests but also to the warden of that river-mouth, a man named Thonis.
114. When Thonis heard their story, he at once sent a message to Proteus at Memphis, which said: "A stranger has come here, a Teucrian (that is, a Trojan) by birth, who has done an unholy thing in Greece. He seduced the wife of his own host, and now he has come here with the woman herself and a great deal of treasure, driven to your land by the winds. Should we let him sail away unharmed, or should we first take away from him what he has brought with him?" Proteus sent back a messenger in reply, who said: "Arrest this man, whoever he is, who has committed this crime against his own host, and bring him before me, so that I can hear what he has to say for himself."
115. When he heard this, Thonis arrested Alexander and held his ships, and then brought the man himself up to Memphis, together with Helen and his treasure, and the suppliants as well. When they had all been brought up there, Proteus began asking Alexander who he was and where he was sailing from. Alexander told him his ancestry and the name of his homeland, and explained the route he had sailed. After this Proteus asked him where he had got Helen. When Alexander started to wander in his answer and did not tell the truth, the men who had become suppliants proved him a liar and told the whole story of the wrong he had done. In the end Proteus gave them his judgment: "If I did not think it a very serious thing to kill any stranger who has been driven to my land by the winds, as none ever has been until now, I would have punished you on behalf of that Greek. You are the lowest of men. He took you in as his guest, and you committed a most unholy crime against him. You seduced your own host's wife. And even that was not enough for you: you stirred up her desire and went off with her like a thief. And even that by itself was not enough for you: you have come here with loot taken from your host's house. So now, go, since I have decided that it matters a great deal not to be a killer of strangers. But I will not let you take away this woman or this treasure. I will keep them safe for the Greek who was your host, until he comes himself and wants to take them home. As for you and your shipmates, I order you to leave your anchorage within three days and go from my land to some other. If you do not, you will be treated as enemies."
116. That, the priests said, was how Helen came to Proteus. I believe Homer had heard this story too. But since it did not suit his poem as well as the other one he used, he set it aside, while still making it clear that he knew this version as well. That is plain from the way he describes Alexander's wanderings in the Iliad (and nowhere else does he take back what he said there): when Alexander was bringing Helen home, he was carried off his course and wandered to various lands, and among other places he came to Sidon in Phoenicia. The poet mentions this in the part of the Iliad called "The Valor of Diomedes," and the lines run like this:
There were her robes of many colors, the work of the women of Sidon, women her own son, godlike Alexander, had carried away from Sidon, the time he sailed over the wide sea's paths bringing Helen home, the daughter of a noble father.
He mentions it in the Odyssey too, in these lines:
Such were the drugs the daughter of Zeus possessed, drugs of exquisite cunning, good ones, given to her by Polydamna, the wife of Thon, who lived in Egypt, the land whose generous fields grow more drugs than any other, many good when mixed, and many deadly.
And this is what Menelaus says to Telemachus:
The gods still kept me in Egypt, though I longed to come home, kept me from sailing home, since I had not made the sacrifice I owed.
In these lines Homer makes it clear that he knew of Alexander's wandering to Egypt, for Syria borders on Egypt, and the Phoenicians, whose city Sidon is, live in Syria.
117. These lines, and this passage above all, also show very clearly that the "Cyprian Epic" (the poem called the Cypria) was not written by Homer but by some other man. For the Cypria says that Alexander reached Troy with Helen on the third day after leaving Sparta, having had "a gently blowing wind and a smooth sea," whereas the Iliad says that he wandered off his course while he was bringing her.
118. So let us leave Homer and the Cyprian Epic. But I will say this. I asked the priests whether the story the Greeks tell about what happened at Troy is just an idle tale. They answered me as follows, saying that they knew it from what they had learned by questioning Menelaus himself. After Helen was carried off, they said, a large Greek army did indeed come to the land of the Teucrians to help Menelaus. When the army had come ashore from the ships and pitched its camp, they sent messengers to Troy, and Menelaus himself went with them. When they were inside the city wall, they demanded Helen back, along with the treasure Alexander had stolen from Menelaus and carried off, and they also demanded compensation for the wrongs done. The Teucrians gave the same answer then and ever afterwards, under oath and without it: that in actual fact they did not have Helen or the treasure being demanded; both were in Egypt, and it was not fair that they should be made to pay for what Proteus, the king of Egypt, was holding. The Greeks, though, thought the Trojans were mocking them, and they besieged the city until at last they took it. But when they had taken the wall and did not find Helen, and heard the same story as before, then they believed the first story and sent Menelaus himself to Proteus.
119. Menelaus came to Egypt and sailed up to Memphis. He told the truth about what had happened, and not only was he given a lavish welcome, but he also got Helen back unharmed, and all his own treasure too. And yet, after being treated like this, Menelaus repaid the Egyptians with ingratitude. When he set out to sail away, contrary winds held him back, and as this went on for a long time, he came up with an unholy plan: he took two children of local people and sacrificed them. When it became known that he had done this, he was hated for it, and when they chased him, he escaped and got away with his ships to Libya. Where he went after that, the Egyptians could not tell me. They said that they had found out part of all this by inquiry, but that what happened in their own land they reported from sure and certain knowledge.
120. That is what the Egyptian priests told me. And I myself agree with the story they told about Helen, and I add this reasoning of my own. If Helen had been in Troy, she would have been handed over to the Greeks, whether Alexander agreed or not. For surely Priam was not so mad, nor were the others of his family, as to want to risk their own lives and their children's and their city's just so that Alexander could have Helen as his wife. And even supposing they had felt that way at first, still, when many of the other Trojans were losing their lives every time they fought the Greeks, and two or three or even more of Priam's own sons were killed in every battle (if we can trust the epic poets at all), then, as things went this way, I believe that even if Priam himself had been married to Helen, he would have given her back to the Achaeans (as Homer calls the Greeks), if at least that would have freed him from the evils pressing on him. Nor was the kingdom going to pass to Alexander next, so that with Priam old the government would have been in his hands. Hector, who was both older than Alexander and more of a man, would have taken it after Priam's death. And it was not like Hector to let his brother go on with his wrongdoing, when such great evils were coming about because of him, both to Hector himself and to all the other Trojans. In truth, though, they did not have Helen to give back. And the Greeks did not believe them, even though they were telling the truth. This was because, in my opinion, the divine power was planning their total destruction, to make it plain to mankind that for great wrongs the gods send great punishments too. That is my opinion on these matters, and I have given it.
121. After Proteus, they told me, Rhampsinitus inherited the kingdom. As a memorial of himself he left the gateway of the temple of Hephaestus that faces west, and in front of the gateway he set up two statues, thirty-seven and a half feet high. The Egyptians call the one standing on the north side Summer, and the one on the south side Winter. The one they call Summer they worship and make offerings to, and to the other, called Winter, they do just the opposite. This king, they said, came to own a great fortune in silver, so great that none of the kings born after him could beat it, or even come close. Wanting to keep his treasure safe, he had a stone chamber built, with one of its walls forming part of the outside wall of his palace. But the builder had designs on it, and he worked out the following trick: he set one of the stones in such a way that two men, or even one, could easily take it out of the wall. When the chamber was finished, the king stored his money in it. Some time later the builder, coming to the end of his life, called his sons to him (he had two) and told them how he had built the king's treasury, and that he had done it all with an eye to their future, so that they would have plenty to live on. He explained to them clearly everything about taking out the stone and gave them the measurements, and told them that if they kept all this in mind, they would be the keepers of the king's treasury. Then he died. His sons lost no time getting to work. They went to the palace at night, found the stone in the wall of the chamber, removed it easily, and carried off a great deal of the treasure inside.
Then the king happened to open the chamber, and he was astonished to see that the jars were not as full as they should be. He did not know whom to blame, since the seals were unbroken and the chamber had been shut tight. But when he opened the chamber a second and a third time and each time the money was seen to have shrunk (for the thieves did not let up in their raids on it), he did this. He had traps made and set them all around the jars that held the money. When the thieves came as before and one of them went in, the moment he went near one of the jars he was caught in a trap. When he saw what a bad situation he was in, he at once called his brother, showed him what had happened, and told him to come in as quickly as he could and cut off his head, so that if he was seen and recognized he would not bring his brother to ruin as well. The other thought he was right, and was persuaded, and did it. Then he fitted the stone back in its place and went home, carrying his brother's head with him.
When day came, the king went into the chamber and was utterly amazed to see the thief's body caught in the trap without its head, and the chamber intact, with no way in or out. Not knowing what to make of it, he hung the thief's dead body on the wall and posted guards there, with orders to arrest anyone they saw weeping or mourning and bring him to the king. When the body had been hung up, the mother was deeply grieved. She spoke to the son who was still alive and ordered him to find some way, any way he could, to take down his dead brother's body and bring it home. And if he failed to do this, she threatened him in earnest, she would go to the king herself and tell him that her son had the money.
So since his mother was being so hard on him, and nothing he said to her could change her mind, the surviving son came up with the following scheme. He got some donkeys, filled some skins with wine and loaded them onto the donkeys, and then drove them off down the road. When he came to the men guarding the body that was hanging there, he pulled two or three of the skins toward him by the necks and loosened the cords that tied them shut. Then, as the wine was pouring out, he began to beat his head and shout loudly, as if he did not know which of the donkeys to deal with first. When the guards saw the wine flowing out in streams, they ran together into the road with cups in their hands and collected the spilling wine, thinking it was all profit for them. He swore at all of them furiously, pretending to be angry. But when the guards tried to calm him down, after a while he pretended to cool off and let his anger go, and finally he drove his donkeys off the road and began to put their loads right. Then they got talking some more, and one or two of the guards made jokes at his expense and got him laughing along with them, and in the end he gave them one of the skins as a present, on top of what they already had. At that they lay down right there without further ado, intending to drink, and they took him into their company and invited him to stay and drink with them. So he (as you might expect) let himself be persuaded and stayed. Then, as they toasted him in a friendly way over their drinks, he made them a present of another skin as well. And so at last, having drunk heavily, the guards got thoroughly drunk, and overcome by sleep they lay down to sleep on the very spot where they had been drinking. Then, since it was now late at night, he first took down his brother's body, and then, to mock them, shaved the right cheeks of all the guards. After that he put the dead body on the donkeys and drove them home. He had done what his mother ordered.
When the king was told that the thief's dead body had been stolen, he was furious. He was determined, whatever it took, to find out who it was who was coming up with these schemes, and so he did the following (or so they said, but I do not believe the story). He put his own daughter in a brothel and ordered her to take every man alike, but before having sex with any of them, to make him tell her the cleverest thing and the most wicked thing he had ever done in his whole life. And whoever told her the story of the thief, she was to grab him and not let him get away. So she did as her father ordered. The thief heard what all this was for, and since he wanted to outdo the king in cunning, he did this. He cut off the arm of a man who had just died, at the shoulder, and went with it hidden under his cloak. He went in to the king's daughter, and when she asked him what she asked the others, he told her that the most wicked thing he had ever done was cutting off his brother's head, when his brother was caught in a trap in the king's treasure chamber, and the cleverest was getting the guards drunk and taking down his brother's body where it hung. When she heard this, she tried to grab him. But the thief held out the dead man's arm to her in the darkness, and she seized it and held on, thinking she was holding the arm of the man himself. The thief left it in her hands and escaped out through the door.
When this too was reported to the king, he was at first astonished at the man's quick wits and daring. Then he sent messengers around to all the cities and proclaimed a free pardon for the thief, and promised him a great reward as well if he would come before him. The thief trusted the proclamation and came to the king. Rhampsinitus admired him enormously and gave him this daughter of his as his wife, reckoning him the cleverest man in the world: for the Egyptians stood out from all other people, and he stood out from the other Egyptians.
122. After these events, they said, this king went down alive to the place the Greeks call Hades, the land of the dead, and there played dice with Demeter. In some throws he beat her, and in others she beat him, and he came back up again with a gift from her, a golden handkerchief. They told me that because of Rhampsinitus' descent, the Egyptians held a festival after his return. I know for myself that they still keep it in my own time, but whether they keep the festival for this reason or for some other, I can't say. In any case, on the very day of the festival the priests weave a robe from start to finish. Then right away they tie a band over the eyes of one of the priests, lead him in the robe to the road that goes to the temple of Demeter, and go back again themselves. They say that this priest, with his eyes bound, is led by two wolves to the temple of Demeter, which is about two and a quarter miles from the city, and that afterwards the wolves lead him back again from the temple to the same spot.
123. Now, as for these stories the Egyptians tell, anyone who finds such things believable is welcome to accept them. As for me, it should be understood throughout this whole history that I write down, just as I heard it, what the people in each place report. The Egyptians say that Demeter and Dionysus rule the world below. The Egyptians are also the first to have put forward the teaching that the human soul is immortal: that when the body dies, the soul enters another creature that happens to be being born at that moment, and when it has gone the round of all the creatures of the land, the sea and the air, it enters a human body again as it is born; and that it makes this round in three thousand years. Certain Greeks have taken up this teaching, some earlier and some later, as if it were their own invention. I know their names, but I will not write them down.
124. Down to the time when Rhampsinitus was king, they told me, there was nothing in Egypt but good order and the rule of law, and Egypt prospered greatly. But after him Cheops became king over them, and he brought them to every kind of misery. First he shut up all the temples and kept the people from sacrificing there; then he ordered all the Egyptians to work for him. Some were assigned to drag stones from the quarries in the Arabian mountains down to the Nile. Others he ordered to receive the stones after they had been ferried across the river in boats, and to drag them on to what are called the Libyan mountains. They worked in gangs of a hundred thousand men at a time, each gang for three months on end. Ten years of this oppression went by just in building the causeway along which they dragged the stones. That causeway, in my view, is a work not much smaller than the pyramid itself. It is about 3,000 feet long and sixty feet wide, and at its highest point it is forty-eight feet high, and it is built of polished stone with figures carved on it. The ten years, they said, went on this, and on the underground chambers in the hill where the pyramids stand. He had these made as burial chambers for himself, on an island, by bringing in a channel from the Nile. The building of the pyramid itself took twenty years. The pyramid is square, each side measuring eight hundred feet, and its height is the same. It is built of polished stone, fitted together perfectly, and not one of the stones is less than thirty feet long.
125. This pyramid was built in steps, which some call "rows" and others "bases." When they had first built it in this way, they lifted the remaining stones with machines made of short pieces of timber. They raised a stone from the ground to the first tier of steps, and when it got there it was set on another machine standing on the first tier, and from there it was hauled up to the second tier on yet another machine. There were as many machines as there were tiers of steps; or perhaps they moved one and the same machine, built to be easily carried, from tier to tier, so as to lift the stones. I give it both ways, since both are reported. However that may be, the top of the pyramid was finished first, then the parts just below it, and last of all the parts nearest the ground, the lowest tiers. On the pyramid there is a record in Egyptian writing of how much was spent on radishes, onions, and leeks for the workmen. If I remember rightly what the interpreter said when he read the inscription to me, the sum was 1,600 talents of silver. If that is so, how much more is likely to have been spent on the iron tools they worked with, and on bread and clothing for the workmen? After all, they spent the time I have mentioned on the building itself, and, I suppose, no small time besides on cutting the stones, hauling them, and digging out the chambers underground.
126. Cheops sank to such wickedness, they said, that when he was short of money he put his own daughter in a brothel and ordered her to earn a certain sum from her customers (how much, they did not tell me). She earned the sum her father set. But she also made a private plan to leave a monument of her own, and she asked each man who came to her to give her one stone for her building. From these stones, they told me, was built the pyramid that stands in the middle of the three in front of the great pyramid, each of its sides a hundred and fifty feet long.
127. This Cheops, the Egyptians said, reigned fifty years, and when he died his brother Chephren took over the kingdom. This king behaved in the same way as the other in everything, and in particular he too built a pyramid. It does not reach the size of his brother's (I know this because I measured it myself). Besides, there are no underground chambers beneath it, and no channel comes to it from the Nile as it does to the other. At the other one the water comes in through a conduit built for the purpose and flows around an island inside, where they say Cheops himself is buried. For the base of his pyramid Chephren built the first course of many-colored Ethiopian stone, and he made it forty feet lower than the other, building it close to the great pyramid. The two stand on the same hill, which is about a hundred feet high. And Chephren, they said, reigned fifty-six years.
128. So here they count a hundred and six years, during which, they say, the Egyptians had nothing but misery, and the temples were kept shut and never opened in all that time. The Egyptians hate these kings so much that they are not very willing to name them. In fact they even call the pyramids after Philitis the shepherd, who grazed his flocks in that area at the time.
129. After him, they said, Mycerinus became king of Egypt. He was the son of Cheops, and his father's actions did not please him. He opened the temples, and he let the people, who had been ground down to the depths of misery, go back to their own work and their sacrifices. He also judged their lawsuits more justly than any other king. For this they praise him above all the kings who had ruled Egypt before him. Not only did he give fair judgments, but when a man complained about a decision, he would compensate him out of his own property and so satisfy him. But while Mycerinus was treating his subjects kindly and behaving as I have described, disasters began to fall on him. The first was this: his daughter died, the only child he had in his house. He was grieved beyond measure at what had happened to him, and wanting to bury his daughter in a more remarkable way than anyone else, he had a cow made of wood and covered with gold, and inside it he buried this daughter who, as I said, had died.
130. This cow was not buried in the ground. It could still be seen in my own time in the city of Sais, set inside the royal palace in a richly decorated room. Every day they burn incense of every kind before it, and every night a lamp burns beside it all night long. Near this cow, in another room, stand statues of Mycerinus' concubines, as the priests at Sais told me. There are in fact huge wooden statues there, about twenty of them, carved as naked figures. But who they are I can't say, beyond what is reported.
131. Some people, however, tell the following story about this cow and the huge statues. Mycerinus, they say, fell in love with his own daughter and then raped her. After this, they say, the girl hanged herself in her grief, and he buried her in this cow. Her mother cut off the hands of the maids who had handed her daughter over to her father, and that is why the statues of them now have suffered what the maids suffered in life. In my opinion those who say this are talking nonsense, especially about the statues' hands. For we saw for ourselves that their hands had simply dropped off with age, and they were still lying at the statues' feet in my own time.
132. The cow is covered with a crimson robe, all except the head and neck, which show, overlaid very thickly with gold. Between the horns there is the disk of the sun, worked in gold. The cow is not standing up but kneeling, and it is the size of a large living cow. Every year it is carried out of its room, at the time when the Egyptians beat their breasts in mourning for that god whom I will not name in a matter like this. At that time they also carry the cow out into the light of day. For they say that when the daughter was dying she asked her father Mycerinus to let her see the sun once a year.
133. After his daughter's death, they said, a second thing happened to this king. An oracle came to him from the city of Buto, saying that he had only six more years to live and would die in the seventh. He was indignant at this, and he sent a message to the oracle reproaching the god. His father and his uncle, he complained, had shut up the temples, had forgotten the gods, and had even been destroyers of men, and yet they had lived a long time; while he, who was devout, was to die so soon. A second message came back from the oracle. It said that this was exactly why his life was being cut short: he had not done what he was supposed to do. Egypt was fated to suffer misery for a hundred and fifty years, and the two kings before him had understood this, but he had not. When Mycerinus heard this, he took it that the sentence on him could not be undone. So he had a great many lamps made, and every night when darkness fell he lit them and drank and enjoyed himself, never stopping, day or night. He roamed the marshes and the woods and wherever he heard there were the best places for pleasure. He came up with this plan because he meant to prove the oracle a liar: by turning his nights into days, he would get twelve years of life instead of six.
134. This king too left a pyramid behind him, much smaller than his father's. It is square, each side 280 feet long, and it is built of Ethiopian stone up to half its height. Some of the Greeks say this pyramid was built by Rhodopis the courtesan, but they are wrong. In fact it is clear to me that the people who say this don't even know who Rhodopis was. Otherwise they would never have credited her with building a pyramid like this one, which cost what you might call countless thousands of talents. Besides, they don't know that Rhodopis was in her prime in the reign of Amasis, not in this king's reign; Rhodopis lived a great many years after the kings who left these pyramids. She was Thracian by birth, and she was the slave of Iadmon son of Hephaestopolis, a Samian, and a fellow slave of Aesop the writer of fables. For Aesop too was once Iadmon's slave, and the best proof of it is this. When the people of Delphi, obeying an oracle, proclaimed again and again that they were looking for someone to claim the compensation owed for Aesop's death, no one came forward except, in the end, Iadmon's grandson, who was also called Iadmon, and he took it. That shows that Aesop too was Iadmon's slave.
135. As for Rhodopis, she came to Egypt brought by Xanthes the Samian. She came there to work at her trade, and she was bought out of slavery for a large sum by a man of Mytilene, Charaxus son of Scamandronymus, the brother of Sappho the poet. So Rhodopis was set free. She stayed in Egypt, and her beauty made her so popular that she earned a great deal of money for a woman like Rhodopis, though not nearly enough to pay for a pyramid like this one. In fact there is no need to credit her with great riches, since a tenth of her wealth can still be seen today by anyone who wants to look. Rhodopis wanted to leave a memorial of herself in Greece: to have something made that no one else had happened to think of and dedicate in a temple, and to dedicate it at Delphi in her own memory. So with a tenth of her wealth she had iron spits made, big enough to roast a whole ox on, as many of them as her tenth would pay for, and she sent them to Delphi. They are still lying there today, heaped together behind the altar the Chians dedicated, right opposite the temple's inner shrine. The courtesans at Naucratis, it happens, are apt to become famous. This woman first, the one the story is about, became so famous that every Greek came to know the name of Rhodopis. And after her another, named Archidice, became the subject of songs all over Greece, though she was less talked about than the first. As for Charaxus, when he went home to Mytilene after buying Rhodopis' freedom, Sappho attacked him fiercely in one of her poems. But I will say no more about Rhodopis.
136. After Mycerinus, the priests said, Asychis became king of Egypt. He built the gateway of Hephaestus' temple that faces the sunrise, by far the most beautiful and the largest of the gateways. They all have figures carved on them and countless architectural ornaments besides, but this one has far more than the rest. In this king's reign, they told me, money changed hands very slowly, so a law was made for the Egyptians that a man could borrow the money he needed by putting up his father's dead body as security. A second law was added to this one: the lender would also have a claim on the borrower's whole family tomb. And the man who gave this security faced the following penalty if he refused to repay the debt: he himself would not be allowed burial when he died, either in that family tomb or in any other, and he would not be allowed to bury any of his relatives who died. This king, wanting to outdo the kings who had ruled Egypt before him, left as his monument a pyramid made of bricks. On it there is an inscription carved in stone, which says: "Do not think less of me beside the pyramids of stone, for I surpass them as far as Zeus surpasses the other gods. They thrust a pole into the lake, and whatever mud stuck to the pole they gathered up and made into bricks, and that is how they finished me."
Those were the deeds of this king.
137. After him reigned a blind man from the city of Anysis, whose name was Anysis. In his reign the Ethiopians and Sabacus, the king of the Ethiopians, marched on Egypt with a great army. So this blind man ran away and fled into the marshes, and the Ethiopian ruled Egypt for fifty years. This is what he did in that time. Whenever an Egyptian committed a crime, he never put him to death. Instead he sentenced each man according to how serious his crime was, setting him to work heaping up an embankment in front of the city he came from. In this way the cities were raised even higher than before. They had been built up first by the men who dug the canals in the reign of Sesostris, and then a second time in the reign of the Ethiopian, and so they became very high. Other cities in Egypt also stand high, but I think the earth was piled up most of all at the town of Bubastis. In this city there is a temple well worth mentioning. There are other temples that are larger and more costly, but none is more pleasing to the eye. Bubastis, in the Greek language, is Artemis.
138. Her temple is laid out like this. Except for the entrance it is completely surrounded by water. Two channels come in from the Nile, not joining each other, but each running as far as the temple's entrance, one flowing around one side and the other around the other side. Each is a hundred feet wide and shaded with trees. The gateway is sixty feet high, and it is decorated with figures nine feet tall, very remarkable ones. The temple stands in the middle of the city, and you can look down into it from all sides as you walk around. That is because the city has been built up high, while the temple has stayed where it was first built, so it is possible to see down into it. A stone wall with figures carved on it runs around it. Inside there is a grove of very tall trees, planted around a large shrine, and in the shrine is the statue of the goddess. The temple measures six hundred feet each way. Opposite the entrance there is a road paved with stone, about a third of a mile long, which runs east through the marketplace. It is about four hundred feet wide, and trees that reach to the sky grow on both sides of it. The road leads to the temple of Hermes. That is how this temple is laid out.
139. Egypt was finally rid of the Ethiopian, they said, in this way. He fled because of a dream. In it a man seemed to come and stand over him and advise him to gather together all the priests of Egypt and cut them in half. After he had this dream, he said that it seemed to him the gods were showing him this to give him a pretext for committing a sacrilege, so that he would suffer some harm either from the gods or from men. He would not do it, he said. Besides, in truth, the time was up during which it had been foretold that he would rule Egypt before he left. For when he was in Ethiopia, the oracles the Ethiopians consult had told him that he was fated to rule Egypt for fifty years. Since that time was now running out, and the dream also troubled him, Sabacus left Egypt of his own accord.
140. When the Ethiopian had gone away out of Egypt, the blind man came back from the marshes and began to rule again. He had lived there for fifty years on an island he had made by heaping up ashes and earth. Whenever any of the Egyptians visited him with food, as each of them in turn had been assigned to do without the Ethiopian's knowledge, he told them to bring some ashes too as part of their gift. No one could find this island before Amyrtaeus; that is, for more than seven hundred years the kings before Amyrtaeus were unable to find it. The island's name is Elbo, and it is a little over a mile across each way.
141. After him the throne went to the priest of Hephaestus, whose name was Sethos. This man, they said, treated the warrior class of the Egyptians with contempt, thinking he would never need them. Among other insults, he took away the land they had been given as a special grant under the earlier kings, twelve arourae of grain land to each man (an aroura is about two-thirds of an acre). After this, Sanacharib, king of the Arabians and Assyrians, marched a great army against Egypt. Then the Egyptian warriors refused to come to the rescue. The priest, in desperate straits, went into the inner shrine of the temple and wept before the god's statue over the danger that was hanging over him. As he lamented, sleep came over him, and in his dream the god seemed to come and stand beside him and encourage him. Nothing bad would happen to him, the god said, if he went out to meet the Arabian army, because the god himself would send him helpers. Trusting in this dream, he took with him, they said, those Egyptians who were willing to follow him, and camped at Pelusium, since that was the way the invasion was coming. Not one of the warrior class went with him: his men were shopkeepers, craftsmen, and market traders. When they arrived, field mice swarmed over their enemies in the night and gnawed through their quivers and their bows, and the handles of their shields as well. So the next day the enemy fled, with no weapons to defend themselves, and a great many of them fell. And to this day this king stands in stone in the temple of Hephaestus, holding a mouse in his hand, with an inscription in which he says: "Let whoever looks at me learn to fear the gods."
142. Up to this point in the story it was the Egyptians and their priests who gave the account. They declared that from the first king down to this priest of Hephaestus, who reigned last, there had been 341 generations of men, and that in that time there had been the same number of high priests and of kings. Now 300 generations of men come to 10,000 years, since three generations make a hundred years. And the forty-one generations left over, beyond the 300, come to 1,340 years. So over a period of 11,340 years, they said, no god had appeared in human form; and they did not report anything of the kind happening either before or afterward among the remaining kings of Egypt. In this time, they said, the sun had moved from its usual place of rising four times: twice it had risen where it now sets, and twice it had set where it now rises. And all that time nothing in Egypt had changed from its normal state, not the crops that come from the earth, not what comes to them from the river, not their diseases or their deaths.
143. Some time before me, when Hecataeus the historian was in Thebes, he traced his family tree back and linked it to a god sixteen generations earlier. The priests of Zeus did for him much what they did for me (though I did not trace my ancestry). They took me into the inner hall of the temple, which is very large, and counted up the number, showing me huge wooden statues, as many as they had said. For every high priest there sets up a statue of himself during his lifetime. So the priests counted these and showed them to me, and declared that each one was a son succeeding his own father. They went through the line of statues, starting from the statue of the one who had died most recently, until they had declared this of every one of them. And when Hecataeus traced his descent and linked his family to a god in the sixteenth generation, they set a family tree of their own against his, along with their count. They would not accept from him that a man had been born from a god. They traced their own line this way: each of the statues, they said, had been a Piromis son of a Piromis, until they had declared this of all 345 statues, each one called Piromis; and they linked their line neither to a god nor to a hero. Piromis means, in Greek, "a gentleman," a good and honorable man.
144. So what they showed was that the men the statues stood for had all been like this, and very far from being gods. But before these men, they said, gods had ruled in Egypt. They did not live among men, and there was always one of them in power at a time. The last of them to be king of Egypt was Horus son of Osiris, whom the Greeks call Apollo. He was the last king of Egypt, having overthrown Typhon. Osiris, in Greek, is Dionysus.
145. Among the Greeks, Heracles, Dionysus, and Pan are thought to be the youngest of the gods. But with the Egyptians, Pan is a very ancient god, one of the gods called the Eight; Heracles belongs to the second rank, the gods called the Twelve; and Dionysus belongs to the third rank, the gods who were born from the Twelve. I have already shown how old Heracles is by the Egyptians' own reckoning, counting down to the reign of Amasis. Pan is said to have existed even longer than that, and Dionysus the shortest time of the three. Yet even for him they count 15,000 years down to the reign of Amasis. The Egyptians say they know this for certain, because they have always kept count and written down the years as they passed. But the Dionysus who is said to have been born of Semele, the daughter of Cadmus, was born about 1,600 years before my time; Heracles, the son of Alcmene, about nine hundred years; and Pan, the son of Penelope (for the Greeks say Pan was born of her and Hermes), came into being after the Trojan War, about eight hundred years before my time.
146. Of these two accounts, anyone may adopt whichever he finds more believable when he hears it. I, for my part, have already given my opinion about them. If these two, Dionysus son of Semele and Pan son of Penelope, had also appeared openly and lived out their lives to old age in Greece, as Heracles son of Amphitryon did, then one might have said that they too had been born ordinary men, and named after the gods who had come into being long before. But as it is, the Greeks say of Dionysus that as soon as he was born Zeus sewed him up in his thigh and carried him to Nysa, which is beyond Egypt in Ethiopia; and as for Pan, they cannot say where he went after he was born. So it has become clear to me that the Greeks learned the names of these gods later than those of the others, and date their birth to the time when they first learned their names.
Up to this point, then, the history is told by the Egyptians themselves.
147. But now I will tell what other peoples also tell, with the Egyptians agreeing with them, about what happened in this country. And to this I will also add something of what I have seen myself.
After the reign of the priest of Hephaestus, the Egyptians were free; but they could never live for any length of time without a king, so they set up twelve kings over themselves, dividing all of Egypt into twelve parts. These kings intermarried and ruled together. They made an agreement not to overthrow one another, and not to try to get the better of one another, but to live in perfect friendship. The reason they made these agreements, and guarded them so strictly against being broken, was this. At the very start, when they first took power, they had been given an oracle that whichever of them poured a libation from a bronze cup in the temple of Hephaestus would become king of all Egypt (for they used to meet together in all the temples).
148. The twelve kings also decided to join together and leave a memorial of themselves. Having decided this, they had a labyrinth built, a little above Lake Moeris and nearly opposite the place called the City of Crocodiles. I have seen it myself, and I found it greater than words can say. If you were to put together and add up all the buildings and great works the Greeks have produced, they would turn out to have cost less labor and money than this labyrinth, even though the temple at Ephesus and the one at Samos are certainly works worth noting. The pyramids, too, were greater than words can say, and each one of them is equal to many of the Greeks' works, great as those may be; but the labyrinth surpasses even the pyramids. It has twelve roofed courts, with their gates facing one another, six on the north side and six on the south, all joined to one another, and the same wall surrounds them all on the outside. There are two kinds of rooms in it, one kind below ground and the other above, built on top of them, three thousand in number, fifteen hundred of each kind. The upper rooms we saw for ourselves, walking through them, and we describe them having looked at them with our own eyes. The underground rooms we know only by report, because the Egyptians in charge of them would not on any account show them to us. They said that the tombs of the kings who first built this labyrinth were down there, and the tombs of the sacred crocodiles. So we tell about the lower rooms from what we heard, while the upper ones we saw ourselves and found to be works greater than human. The passages through the rooms, and the winding ways this way and that through the courts, which were splendidly decorated, gave us endless cause for wonder as we went from a court into the rooms beyond it, and from the rooms into colonnades, and from the colonnades into other rooms, and then from the rooms again into other courts. Over the whole of it is a roof of stone, like the walls. The walls are covered with carved figures, and each court is surrounded by a colonnade of white stone, fitted together perfectly. At the far end of the labyrinth, by its corner, there is a pyramid 240 feet high, with large figures carved on it, and an underground passage has been made leading to it.
149. That is the labyrinth. But the lake called Lake Moeris, beside which the labyrinth is built, is an even greater wonder. Its shoreline runs about 400 miles all the way around (sixty schoeni), which is the same length as the whole coast of Egypt along the sea. The lake stretches lengthwise from north to south, and where it is deepest it is 300 feet deep. It is obvious that this lake was made by hand and dug out, because near the middle of it stand two pyramids, each rising 300 feet above the water, with an equal height built below the water. On top of each one is a colossal stone statue of a man seated on a throne. So these pyramids are a hundred fathoms high, and a hundred fathoms make up a stade of six hundred feet; the fathom is six feet, or four cubits, the foot is four palms, and the cubit is six palms. The water in the lake does not come from the spot itself, since the land there is very short of water. It has been brought in from the Nile by a canal. For six months the water flows into the lake, and for six months it flows back out into the Nile. During the six months that it flows out, the fish that are caught bring a talent of silver a day into the royal treasury, and twenty minas a day while the water is flowing in.
150. The people who live there also told me that this lake has an underground outlet to the Syrtis in Libya, running west toward the interior of the continent along the mountain range above Memphis. Now, I could not see the earth from this excavation lying anywhere, and that was something that caught my attention. So I asked the people who lived nearest the lake where the earth that had been dug out had gone. They told me where it had been carried, and I easily believed them, because I had heard that something similar was once done at Nineveh, the city of the Assyrians. There, some thieves once made a plan to carry off the treasure of King Sardanapalus son of Ninus. It was a very great treasure, and it was kept in underground treasure-houses. So the thieves started from their own house and, working out their direction, dug underground toward the king's palace. Each night, when it got dark, they carried the earth from their tunnel down to the river Tigris, which flows past the city of Nineveh, until at last they got what they were after. I heard that the lake in Egypt was dug in a similar way, except that the work was done by day and not by night. As the Egyptians dug, they carried the earth they had dug out to the Nile, and the river, once it received the earth, naturally carried it off and scattered it. That, they say, is how this lake was dug.
151. The twelve kings went on ruling justly. But as time went on, this is what happened. They had offered sacrifice in the temple of Hephaestus, and on the last day of the festival they were about to pour libations. The high priest brought out the golden cups they always used for pouring them, but he miscounted and brought only eleven for the twelve kings. So the one standing last in line, Psammetichus, having no cup, took off his helmet, which was made of bronze, held it out to receive the wine, and poured his libation with it. All the other kings wore helmets too, as was their custom, and they happened to have them on then. Psammetichus held out his helmet without any treacherous intent. But the others took note of what he had done, and they remembered the oracle, which had told them that whichever of them poured a libation from a bronze cup would become the sole king of Egypt. Remembering the oracle's words, they did not think it right to kill Psammetichus, since when they questioned him they found that he had not done it on purpose. But they decided to strip him of almost all his power and drive him off into the marshes, and to forbid him from having any dealings with the rest of Egypt from there.
152. This Psammetichus had once before been an exile. He had fled from Sabacus the Ethiopian, who had killed his father Necho, and he had lived as an exile in Syria. When the Ethiopian left Egypt because of the vision he saw in his dream, the Egyptians of the district of Sais brought Psammetichus back home. Later, when he was one of the kings, it was his fate to be an exile a second time, driven out into the marshes by the eleven kings because of the helmet. Believing that they had done him a great wrong, he thought about how he could take revenge on the men who had driven him out. He sent to the oracle of Leto in the city of Buto, which is the most truthful oracle the Egyptians have, and the answer came back that his revenge would come when men of bronze appeared from the sea. He was strongly inclined not to believe that men of bronze would come to help him. But not long afterward some Ionians and Carians who had sailed out on a raid for plunder were forced to put in to the shore of Egypt. They landed, dressed in bronze armor, and one of the Egyptians, who had never before seen men in bronze armor, went to the marshes and reported to Psammetichus that men of bronze had come from the sea and were plundering the plain. Psammetichus saw that the oracle's words were coming true. He treated the Ionians and Carians in a friendly way, and with large promises he persuaded them to join his side. Once he had persuaded them, he overthrew the other kings with the help of these foreign mercenaries and of the Egyptians who supported him.
153. Now that he had power over all of Egypt, Psammetichus built for Hephaestus the gateway of the temple at Memphis that faces south. Opposite this gateway he built a court for Apis, where Apis is kept whenever he appears. It has a colonnade all around it and is covered with carved figures, and instead of columns the roof of the court is held up by colossal statues eighteen feet tall. Apis, in the Greek language, is Epaphus.
154. To the Ionians and Carians who had helped him, Psammetichus gave plots of land to live on, facing one another across the Nile, and these were called the Encampments. He gave them this land, and he also paid them everything he had promised. He also put Egyptian boys in their care to be taught the Greek language, and the present class of interpreters in Egypt is descended from these boys, who learned the language thoroughly. The Ionians and Carians lived on these lands for a long time. They lie toward the sea, a little below the city of Bubastis, on the branch of the Nile called the Pelusian mouth. Later King Amasis moved them out of there and settled them at Memphis, making them his own bodyguard against the Egyptians. Because they have lived in Egypt, we Greeks, through our dealings with them, know accurately everything that has happened in Egypt from the reign of King Psammetichus onward, for they were the first people of a foreign language to settle in Egypt. In the land they were moved from, the sheds where they hauled up their ships and the ruins of their houses were still there in my own time.
So that is how Psammetichus got Egypt.
155. I have mentioned the Egyptian oracle many times before this, and now I will give an account of it, since it deserves to be described. This oracle in Egypt is sacred to Leto, and it is in a great city near the branch of the Nile called the Sebennytic mouth, on your way upriver from the sea. The name of the city where the oracle is, as I have said before when I mentioned it, is Buto. In this Buto there is a temple of Apollo and Artemis, and the shrine of Leto, where the oracle is, is large in itself and has a gateway sixty feet high. But I will now tell what amazed me most of all the things to be seen there. In this sacred enclosure there is a shrine of Leto made from a single stone, both in height and in length, and all its walls are the same in both directions, sixty feet each. Another stone is laid on top of it to make the roof, and its cornice is six feet deep.
156. Of all the things I saw at that temple, then, this shrine is the most amazing. Next after it comes the island called Chemmis. This island lies in a deep, broad lake beside the temple at Buto, and the Egyptians say that it is a floating island. I myself never saw it floating about or moved from its place, and I am astonished to hear it said, and I wonder whether it really is a floating island. On this island there is a great shrine of Apollo, with three altars set up inside it, and many palm trees grow on the island, along with other trees, some bearing fruit and some not. When the Egyptians say that the island floats, they add this story. This island, they say, did not float before. Leto, who was one of the first eight gods to come into being, and who lived in the city of Buto, where she has this oracle, was given Apollo by Isis to look after, and she kept him safe by hiding him on this island, which is now said to float. That was at the time when Typhon came after him, searching everywhere, hoping to find the son of Osiris. They say that Apollo and Artemis are the children of Dionysus and Isis, and that Leto was their nurse and protector. In the Egyptian language, Apollo is Horus, Demeter is Isis, and Artemis is Bubastis. It was from this story, and from nowhere else, that Aeschylus son of Euphorion took the idea I am about to mention, in which he differs from all the poets before him: he made Artemis the daughter of Demeter. And this, they say, is the reason the island came to float.
That is the story they tell.
157. As for Psammetichus, he was king of Egypt for fifty-four years. For twenty-nine of those years he sat outside Azotus, a great city of Syria, besieging it, until at last he took it. Of all the cities we know of, this Azotus held out longest under a siege.
158. Psammetichus' son was Necho, and he became king of Egypt. He was the first to begin the canal leading to the Erythraean Sea, which Darius the Persian finished later. Its length is a voyage of four days, and it was dug wide enough for two triremes, the three-banked warships, to row along it side by side. Its water is brought in from the Nile. The canal leaves the Nile a little above the city of Bubastis, passes by Patumus, the Arabian city, and runs into the Erythraean Sea. It is dug first along the parts of the Egyptian plain that face Arabia. Just above them run the mountains that stretch along opposite Memphis, where the stone quarries are. The canal follows the foot of these mountains from west to east for a long way. After that it turns toward a gap in the hills and runs from these mountains southward, toward midday and the south wind, to the Arabian Gulf, the Red Sea. Now the shortest and most direct crossing from the Northern Sea to the Southern Sea (which is also called the Erythraean), that is, from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, starts from Mount Casius, the boundary between Egypt and Syria; from there to the Arabian Gulf is exactly 111 miles. But the canal is much longer, since it winds a great deal. During Necho's reign, 120,000 Egyptians died digging it. Necho stopped in the middle of the digging because an oracle stood in his way: it said that he was working for the barbarian. The Egyptians call everyone who does not speak their language a barbarian.
159. After giving up work on the canal, Necho turned to making war. He had triremes built, some for the Northern Sea and others in the Arabian Gulf for the Erythraean Sea, and the sheds where they were kept can still be seen. He used these ships when he needed them. On land, too, Necho fought the Syrians at Magdolus and defeated them, and after this he took Cadytis, a great city of Syria. He dedicated the clothes he was wearing when he won these victories to Apollo, sending them to Branchidae in the territory of Miletus. After this, when he had reigned sixteen years in all, he died and handed the kingdom on to his son Psammis.
160. While this Psammis was king of Egypt, envoys came to him from the Eleans. The Eleans boasted that they ran the games at Olympia in the most just and honorable way possible, and they thought that not even the Egyptians, the wisest of men, could find anything to add to their rules. When the Eleans came to Egypt and explained what they had come for, the king called together the Egyptians who were thought to be the wisest. When these Egyptians had gathered, they heard the Eleans describe everything it was their job to do in running the games. When the Eleans had told them everything, they said they had come to learn whether the Egyptians could find anything to add that was fairer still. The Egyptians talked it over together and then asked the Eleans whether their own citizens took part in the games. The Eleans said that anyone who wanted to, whether one of their own people or any other Greek, was equally free to compete. At this the Egyptians said that in setting things up this way they had completely missed the mark of fairness. It was impossible, they said, for the Eleans not to favor a man from their own city if he was competing, and so to treat the outsider unfairly. If they really wanted to run the games fairly, as they said they did, and if this was the reason they had come to Egypt, the Egyptians advised them to set up the games so that only outsiders could compete, and no Elean would be allowed to. That was the advice the Egyptians gave the Eleans.
161. Psammis had been king of Egypt for only six years. He made an expedition into Ethiopia, and soon afterward he died. Apries, the son of Psammis, inherited the kingdom after him. Apries became the most prosperous of all the kings up to that time, except only for his great-grandfather Psammetichus. He reigned twenty-five years, and during that time he led an army against Sidon and fought a sea battle with the king of Tyre. But since it was fated that disaster should come on him, it came about through something I will tell at greater length in the Libyan part of my history, and only briefly here. Apries sent a great expedition against the people of Cyrene, and it met with a correspondingly great disaster. The Egyptians blamed him for this and rebelled against him. They believed that Apries had deliberately sent them out to certain ruin, so that (as they put it) there might be a slaughter of them, and he could rule the rest of the Egyptians more securely. Angry at this, both the men who had come back from the expedition and the friends of those who had died rose in open revolt.
162. When Apries heard this, he sent Amasis to them to talk them out of it. Amasis came and was trying to restrain the Egyptians. But while he was speaking and telling them not to do it, one of the Egyptians stood up behind him and put a helmet on his head, saying as he did it that he was putting it on him to crown him king. This was not altogether unwelcome to Amasis, as his conduct showed, for as soon as the rebel Egyptians had made him king, he got ready to march against Apries. When Apries heard this, he sent to Amasis one of the Egyptians of his own court, a man of high standing named Patarbemis, with orders to bring Amasis back to him alive. When Patarbemis arrived and summoned Amasis, Amasis, who happened to be sitting on horseback, lifted his leg and broke wind, and told him to take that back to Apries. All the same, they say, Patarbemis demanded that he go to the king, since the king had sent for him. Amasis answered that he had been getting ready to do that for some time, and that Apries would have no reason to complain of him. Patarbemis understood what he meant from what he said, and he also saw his preparations, so he left in a hurry, wanting to let the king know as quickly as possible what was going on. But when he came back to Apries without Amasis, the king would not listen to what he had to say. In a violent rage, he ordered his ears and nose to be cut off. When the rest of the Egyptians who were still on Apries' side saw the most respected man among them treated with such shameful outrage, they waited no longer. They went over to the rebels and gave themselves up to Amasis.
163. When Apries heard this too, he armed his foreign mercenaries and marched against the Egyptians. He had Carian and Ionian mercenaries with him, thirty thousand of them. His royal palace was in the city of Sais, and it was large and well worth seeing. So Apries and his army were advancing against the Egyptians, and Amasis and his men were advancing against the mercenaries. Both sides came to the city of Momemphis and were about to try their strength against each other.
164. The Egyptians are divided into seven classes. One class is called the priests, another the warriors, and the rest are the cowherds, the swineherds, the shopkeepers, the interpreters, and the boatmen. That is the number of the Egyptian classes, and they are named after the work they do. The warriors are called Calasirians and Hermotybians, and they come from the following districts, since all of Egypt is divided into districts.
165. The districts of the Hermotybians are Busiris, Sais, Chemmis, Papremis, the island called Prosopitis, and half of Natho. These are the districts the Hermotybians come from, and at their most numerous they reached 160,000. Not one of them has learned any trade; they are devoted entirely to war.
166. The districts of the Calasirians, in turn, are Thebes, Bubastis, Aphthis, Tanis, Mendes, Sebennytus, Athribis, Pharbaethus, Thmuis, Onuphis, Anytis, and Myecphoris, which last is on an island opposite the city of Bubastis. These are the districts of the Calasirians, and at their most numerous they reached 250,000 men. They, like the others, are not allowed to practice any trade. They practice only what has to do with war, and the skill is handed down from father to son.
167. Now whether the Greeks learned this too from the Egyptians I can't say for certain. I see that the Thracians, the Scythians, the Persians, the Lydians, and nearly all non-Greeks hold those of their citizens who learn trades, and their descendants, in less honor than the rest, while those who have nothing to do with working with their hands are counted noble, and above all those who are devoted to war. However that may be, all the Greeks have learned this attitude, the Spartans most of all. The Corinthians look down least on people who work at crafts.
168. This class, alone among the Egyptians apart from the priests, was given a special privilege: each man was granted twelve arourae of land, free of taxes. The aroura measures a hundred Egyptian cubits each way, about two-thirds of an acre, and the Egyptian cubit happens to be the same as the Samian. This privilege was given to all of them. They also had other benefits in turn, never the same men twice: each year a thousand Calasirians and a thousand Hermotybians served as the king's bodyguard. On top of their land, these men were given a daily ration of five pounds of bread each, two pounds of beef, and four half-pints of wine. That was the ration given to the men serving as the king's bodyguard at any one time.
169. So Apries, leading his foreign mercenaries, and Amasis, at the head of the whole body of the Egyptians, advanced on each other until they reached the city of Momemphis, and there they fought. The foreign troops fought well, but they were far fewer in number, and because of that they were beaten. Apries, they say, believed that not even a god could put an end to his rule, so firmly established did he think it was. But in that battle he was beaten. He was taken alive and brought to the city of Sais, to what had once been his own home and from then on was the palace of Amasis. He was kept in the palace there for some time, and Amasis treated him well. But in the end the Egyptians blamed Amasis, saying he was doing wrong to keep alive the man who was the worst enemy both of themselves and of him. So he handed Apries over to the Egyptians, and they strangled him and then buried him in the burial place of his ancestors. This is in the temple of Athena, close to the sanctuary, on the left as you go in. The people of Sais buried inside this temple all the kings who had come from their district. The tomb of Amasis is there too: it is farther from the sanctuary than that of Apries and his ancestors, but it is also inside the temple court. It is a great stone colonnade, with columns carved to look like date palms, and richly decorated in other ways. Inside the colonnade there are double doors, and inside the doors is the burial chamber.
170. At Sais there is also the burial place of one whose name I think it irreverent to mention in connection with such a matter. It is in the temple of Athena, behind the shrine of the goddess, and it runs along the whole length of its wall. In the sacred enclosure stand great stone obelisks, and near them is a lake, edged with stonework and neatly made in a circle. In size, it seemed to me, it is equal to the one at Delos called the Round Pool.
171. On this lake, at night, the Egyptians act out the story of his sufferings, and they call this the Mysteries. I know more fully how each of these things is done, but I will leave it unspoken. And about the secret rites of Demeter, which the Greeks call the Thesmophoria, I will also say nothing, although I know about them, except as much as religion permits me to tell. It was the daughters of Danaus who brought this rite out of Egypt and taught it to the Pelasgian women. Later, when the Dorians drove out all the inhabitants of the Peloponnese, the rite was lost, and only those Peloponnesians who were left behind and not driven out, that is, the Arcadians, kept it.
172. Now that Apries had been overthrown, Amasis became king. He came from the district of Sais, and the city he came from is called Siuph. At first the Egyptians looked down on Amasis and thought little of him, because he had been a commoner and came from no distinguished family. But later Amasis won them over by cleverness rather than by force. Among countless other treasures he owned, there was a golden footbath, in which Amasis himself and all his dinner guests always washed their feet. He had it broken up and made into the statue of a god, and he set it up in the city in the most suitable spot. The Egyptians kept coming to visit the statue and worshiped it devoutly. When Amasis learned what the people of the city were doing, he called the Egyptians together and told them the truth. The statue, he said, had been made from the footbath, which the Egyptians had once used to throw up in and urinate in and wash their feet in, and now they worshiped it devoutly. And just like the footbath, he went on, so it had gone with him: he used to be a commoner, but now he was their king. So he told them to honor him and treat him with respect.
173. That was how he won over the Egyptians, so that they agreed to serve him. And this was how he arranged his days. From early morning until the time the marketplace fills up, he worked willingly at whatever business was brought to him. After that he spent his time drinking and joking with his drinking companions, and he was frivolous and playful. His friends were troubled by this, and they warned him in words something like these:
"My king, you are not governing yourself properly when you let yourself sink into such trivial behavior. You ought to be sitting all day long in state on a stately throne and conducting your business. Then the Egyptians would be sure they were ruled by a great man, and you would have a better name. As it is, you are not acting like a king at all."
He answered them like this: "People who own bows string them when they want to use them, and when they have finished using them they unstring them again. If a bow were kept strung all the time, it would break, and then they couldn't use it when they needed it. It's the same with a man. If he wanted to be serious all the time and never let himself relax for a bit of fun at the proper time, he would either go mad or be struck senseless before he knew it. Since I know this well, I give a share of my time to each of the two ways of living."
That was his reply to his friends.
174. It is said, though, that even when he was a private citizen Amasis loved drinking and joking and was not at all a serious man. Whenever he ran out of money because of his drinking and high living, he would go around stealing. The people he stole from would accuse him of having their property, and when he denied it, they would take him for judgment to an oracle, whenever there was one in their area. Many times he was found guilty by the oracles, and many times he was acquitted. And then, when he finally became king, this is what he did. All the gods who had acquitted him and declared that he was not a thief he ignored: he gave nothing toward the upkeep of their temples, and he did not even visit them to offer sacrifice, because he considered them worthless and their oracles liars. But all the gods who had found him guilty of theft he treated with the greatest respect, because he considered them true gods with oracles that did not lie.
175. First, in Sais, he built and completed for Athena a temple gateway that is a great wonder. In it he far outdid everyone who had done such work before, both in its height and in its size, so large and so fine are its stones. Second, he dedicated great colossal statues and very large sphinxes with men's heads, and for repairs he brought in other stones of enormous size. Some of these he had brought from the stone quarries opposite Memphis, and others, of very great size, from the city of Elephantine, which is a voyage of no less than twenty days from Sais. But what amazes me most of all of them is this: a room carved from a single stone, which he brought from the city of Elephantine. It took three years to bring it, and two thousand men were assigned to haul it, all of them from the class of boatmen. On the outside this room is thirty-one and a half feet long, twenty-one feet wide, and twelve feet high. Those are the outside measurements of the one-stone room. Inside, it is twenty-eight feet three inches long, eighteen feet wide, and seven and a half feet high. It lies beside the entrance to the temple. They did not haul it inside the temple, the story goes, because while the room was being dragged along, its master builder groaned aloud, since so much time had gone into it and he was worn out by the work. Amasis took this to heart as a warning and would not let them drag it any farther. Others say, on the other hand, that one of the men moving it with levers was crushed to death under it, and that this is why it was not hauled in.
176. Amasis also dedicated, in all the other temples of any note, works that are worth seeing for their size. Among them is the colossal statue at Memphis that lies on its back in front of the temple of Hephaestus. It is seventy-five feet long, and on the same base, made of the same stone, stand two colossal statues, each twenty feet tall, one on each side of the large one. There is another stone statue of the same size at Sais, lying the same way as the one at Memphis. It was also Amasis who built and finished the temple of Isis at Memphis, which is very large and well worth seeing.
177. It is said that in the reign of Amasis Egypt was more prosperous than at any time before, both in what the river gives the land and in what the land gives its people, and that the inhabited towns in it at that time numbered twenty thousand in all. It was Amasis, too, who made the law that every year each Egyptian had to declare to the governor of his district how he made his living, and anyone who failed to do this, or who could not show that he made an honest living, was to be punished with death. Solon the Athenian took this law from Egypt and had it passed for the Athenians, and they still keep it, since it is a law no one can find fault with.
178. Amasis also became a friend of the Greeks. Among other signs of friendship that he showed to some of them, he gave the city of Naucratis to those who came to Egypt, as a place to live. To those who did not want to settle there but sailed there to trade, he gave plots of land where they could set up altars and sacred enclosures for their gods. The largest of these enclosures, and the most famous and most visited, is called the Hellenion, and it was founded jointly by the following cities: of the Ionians, Chios, Teos, Phocaea, and Clazomenae; of the Dorians, Rhodes, Cnidus, Halicarnassus, and Phaselis; and of the Aeolians, Mytilene alone. The enclosure belongs to these cities, and they are the ones that appoint the overseers of the port. Any other cities that claim a share in it are claiming something they have no right to. Apart from this, the Aeginetans set up a sacred enclosure of their own, dedicated to Zeus, the Samians one to Hera, and the Milesians one to Apollo.
179. In the old days Naucratis was the only trading port in Egypt; there was no other. If anyone came into any of the other mouths of the Nile, he had to swear that he had not come there of his own free will. When he had sworn this oath of innocence, he had to sail his ship around to the Canopic mouth. Or if he could not sail there because of contrary winds, he had to carry his cargo around the tip of the Delta in barges to Naucratis. That was how highly Naucratis was privileged.
180. Then there is the temple at Delphi. The temple that used to stand there had burned down by accident, and the Amphictyons, the league of neighboring states that looks after Delphi, contracted for the building of the temple that stands there now, at a price of three hundred talents. The people of Delphi were to supply a quarter of that payment, so they went around to various cities collecting contributions. When they did this, they got as much from Egypt as from anywhere. Amasis gave them a thousand talents' weight of alum, some 57,000 pounds, while the Greeks living in Egypt gave them twenty minas of silver.
181. Amasis also made a treaty of friendship and alliance with the people of Cyrene. He decided as well to marry a wife from there, either because he wanted a Greek wife, or else out of friendship for the people of Cyrene. However that may be, he married a woman who was, some say, the daughter of Battus, others say of Arcesilaus, and others of Critobulus, a respected citizen; and her name was Ladice. But whenever Amasis went to bed with her, he found he was unable to have sex with her, though with his other wives he managed as usual. This happened again and again, and Amasis said to his wife, this Ladice: "Woman, you have bewitched me with drugs, and you will die a worse death than any other woman ever has." Ladice denied it, but her denials did nothing to soften Amasis' anger against her. So she made a silent vow to Aphrodite: if Amasis had sex with her that night (since that was the only way out of her danger), she would send a statue of the goddess to be dedicated at Cyrene. And right after the vow Amasis did have sex with her, and from then on, whenever he came to her, he had sex with her, and after this he became very deeply attached to her. Ladice paid the vow she had made to the goddess: she had a statue made and sent it to Cyrene, and it was still there in my own time, standing with its face turned away from the city of Cyrene. When Cambyses conquered Egypt and learned from Ladice who she was, he sent her back to Cyrene unharmed.
182. Amasis also dedicated offerings in Greece. At Cyrene he dedicated a gilded statue of Athena and a painted portrait of himself. In the temple of Athena at Lindus he dedicated two stone statues and a remarkable linen breastplate worth seeing. And at Samos he dedicated to Hera two wooden statues of himself, which were still standing in my own time in the great temple, behind the doors. He made his offerings at Samos because of the bond of guest-friendship between himself and Polycrates son of Aeaces. At Lindus it was not because of any guest-friendship, but because the temple of Athena at Lindus is said to have been founded by the daughters of Danaus, who landed there when they were fleeing from the sons of Aegyptus. Those were the offerings Amasis dedicated. And he was the first man ever to conquer Cyprus and make it pay him tribute.
1. It was against this Amasis that Cambyses son of Cyrus was now marching. He took with him the other nations he ruled, and Greeks as well, both Ionians and Aeolians. The cause of the expedition was this. Cambyses sent an envoy to Egypt and asked Amasis for his daughter. He made the request on the advice of an Egyptian, who brought this trouble on Amasis because he had a grudge against him. The grudge went back to the time when Cyrus sent to Amasis and asked him for an eye doctor, the best there was in Egypt. Amasis had picked this man out of all the doctors in Egypt, torn him away from his wife and children, and handed him over to Persia. With this grievance in mind, the Egyptian kept urging Cambyses to ask Amasis for his daughter, so that Amasis would either be hurt if he gave her up or, if he refused, would make an enemy of Cambyses. So Amasis, who was both annoyed by the power of the Persians and afraid of it, could neither bring himself to give her nor see how to refuse. He was quite certain that Cambyses meant to take her not as his wife but as a concubine. So, having thought it through, he did this. There was a daughter of Apries, the king before him, a very tall and good-looking girl and the only member of her family still alive. Her name was Nitetis. Amasis dressed this girl in fine clothes and gold and sent her off to Persia as his own daughter. But some time later, when Cambyses greeted her by her father's name, the girl said to him: "My king, you don't realize how Amasis has fooled you. He dressed me up in finery and sent me off to you as if I were his own daughter. But in truth I am the daughter of Apries, his lord and master, against whom Amasis rose up with the Egyptians and whom he murdered." It was these words, and the occasion they gave him, that led Cambyses son of Cyrus, in a towering rage, to march against Egypt.
2. That is the Persians' account. The Egyptians, though, claim Cambyses as one of their own. They say he was born to this very daughter of Apries, and that it was Cyrus, not Cambyses, who sent to Amasis for his daughter. But they are wrong to say so. And they cannot have failed to notice (for the Egyptians know the laws and customs of the Persians as well as anyone does) two things: first, that among the Persians a son born outside marriage does not become king when there is a son born of a true marriage; and second, that Cambyses was the son of Cassandane, the daughter of Pharnaspes, a man of the Achaemenid family, and not of the Egyptian woman. They twist the truth of history because they want to claim kinship with the house of Cyrus. So much for that.
3. There is also another story told, which for my part I do not believe. One of the Persian women, it goes, came to visit the wives of Cyrus. When she saw the tall, good-looking children standing beside Cassandane, she praised them loudly and could not admire them enough. Then Cassandane, the wife of Cyrus, said: "And yet, even though I am the mother of children like these, Cyrus treats me with contempt and honors the woman he has brought in from Egypt." She said this, they say, out of resentment of Nitetis. At that Cambyses, the elder of her sons, said: "Then, mother, when I am grown up, I will turn Egypt upside down: what is on top I will put at the bottom, and what is at the bottom I will put on top." He is said to have said this when he was about ten years old, perhaps, and the women were astonished. And he, they say, never forgot it, so that when at last he had grown up and become king, he made the expedition against Egypt.
4. Something else also helped bring about this expedition, and it was this. Among Amasis' foreign mercenaries there was a man from Halicarnassus named Phanes, who was both sound in judgment and brave in war. This Phanes had some quarrel with Amasis (or so we may suppose), and he fled from Egypt by ship, hoping to get a hearing with Cambyses. Since he was a man of no small standing among the mercenaries and knew every detail of Egypt's affairs, Amasis went after him and thought it a matter of real importance to catch him. He sent the most trusted of his eunuchs after him in a trireme. The eunuch caught him in Lycia, but having caught him, he did not bring him back to Egypt, because Phanes outwitted him: he got his guards drunk and escaped to Persia. Now Cambyses had made up his mind to march on Egypt, but he was at a loss about the march itself, and how he could get safely across the waterless desert. Phanes arrived just then. Besides telling him everything else about Amasis' affairs, he advised him about the march too: he should send to the king of the Arabians and ask him for safe passage through this region.
5. This is the only known way into Egypt. From Phoenicia to the borders of the city of Cadytis the land belongs to the Syrians who are called the Syrians of Palestine. Cadytis is a city not much smaller than Sardis, I would guess. From Cadytis, the trading towns along the coast as far as the city of Ienysus belong to the king of Arabia. Then from Ienysus the land belongs to the Syrians again, as far as Lake Serbonis, along whose shore Mount Casius stretches down toward the sea. From Lake Serbonis, where Typhon, the monster, is said to lie hidden, the land is Egypt. The stretch between the city of Ienysus on one side and Mount Casius and Lake Serbonis on the other is no small one: it is a full three days' journey, and it is terribly short of water.
6. And now I will tell of something that few of those who sail to Egypt have noticed. Twice every year, earthenware jars full of wine are shipped into Egypt from all over Greece and from Phoenicia as well. And yet you could almost say that you will not see a single empty wine jar anywhere in the country.
7. So what becomes of them, you will ask? I will tell you this too. The headman of each district has to collect all the earthenware jars from his own town and carry them to Memphis. The people at Memphis have to fill them with water and carry them to that same waterless region of Syria. So the jars that keep arriving in Egypt and being emptied there are carried off to Syria to join the ones that went before. It was the Persians who prepared this route into Egypt in this way, supplying it with water as I have described, from the time they first took possession of Egypt. But at the time I am speaking of, no water had yet been provided. So Cambyses, following the advice of his guest from Halicarnassus, sent envoys to the Arabian king and asked him for safe passage. He got it, after giving the king pledges of friendship and receiving pledges from him in return.
8. The Arabians respect pledges of friendship as much as any people in the world, and this is how they make them. A third man, not one of the two who want to exchange pledges, stands between them. With a sharp stone he cuts the palms of their hands along the base of the thumb. Then he takes a thread from each man's cloak and with their blood smears seven stones that lie between them, and as he does this he calls on Dionysus and Urania. When he has finished these ceremonies, the man who has given the pledge commends the stranger to his friends (or his fellow tribesman, if he is giving the pledge to a member of his own tribe), and his friends consider themselves bound to honor the pledge as well. The only gods the Arabians believe in are Dionysus and Urania. They say that they cut their hair the same way Dionysus himself had his cut: they crop it in a circle all the way around and shave the temples. They call Dionysus Orotalt, and Urania they call Alilat.
9. So when the Arabian king had given his pledge of friendship to the men who had come to him from Cambyses, he did this. He took camel skins, filled them with water, and loaded them onto every live camel he had. Then he drove them to the waterless region and waited there for Cambyses' army. That is the more believable of the two accounts. But the less believable one must be told too, since it is the one people tell. There is a great river in Arabia called the Corys, which flows out into the sea called the Erythraean, the Indian Ocean. From this river, it is said, the king of the Arabians had a pipeline made of raw oxhides and other skins sewn together, long enough to reach the waterless region. Through this, if you please, he brought the water, and he had great cisterns dug in the waterless region to take the water in and store it. Now it is a twelve days' journey from the river to this waterless region. And what is more, the story says he brought the water by three pipelines to three different parts of it.
10. Meanwhile Psammenitus son of Amasis was camped at the Pelusian mouth of the Nile, waiting for Cambyses to come. For when Cambyses marched on Egypt, he did not find Amasis still alive. Amasis had died after a reign of forty-four years in which no great misfortune had befallen him. When he died he was embalmed and buried in the tomb he had built for himself in the temple. While Psammenitus son of Amasis was king, the Egyptians witnessed the greatest omen that had ever happened to them: rain fell at Thebes in Egypt. It had never rained there before, and it has never rained there since, down to my own time, as the Thebans themselves say; for in Upper Egypt no rain falls at all. But at the time I am speaking of, rain fell at Thebes in a light drizzle.
11. The Persians crossed the whole of the waterless region and camped near the Egyptians, ready to give battle. Then the Egyptian king's foreign mercenaries, who were Greeks and Carians, turned on Phanes. They hated him for having led a foreign-speaking army against Egypt, and they came up with this plan against him. Phanes had left his children behind in Egypt. The mercenaries brought them to their camp, where their father could see them, and set up a mixing bowl between the two camps. Then they led the children up one by one and cut their throats, so that the blood ran into the bowl. When they had gone through all the children, they brought wine and water and poured them into the bowl, and only when every one of the mercenaries had drunk some of the blood did they go into battle. The battle was hard fought, and a great many fell on both sides, but in the end the Egyptians broke and ran.
12. And I saw a great wonder here, which the people of the place pointed out to me. The bones of the men who fell in this battle lie scattered about, each side's apart, for the Persian bones lie on one side, where they were separated at the start, and the Egyptian bones on the other. The skulls of the Persians are so thin that if you just hit one with a pebble you will make a hole in it, while the skulls of the Egyptians are so tough that you could hardly break one if you struck it with a big rock. The reason, they told me, and I readily believe them, is this. The Egyptians shave their heads from early childhood, and the bone thickens in the sun. This is also why they do not go bald: you see fewer bald men among the Egyptians than among any other people. That, then, is why their skulls are strong. The reason the Persians' skulls are weak is that they keep their heads soft and shaded from the start by wearing tiaras, which are felt caps. So much for that. I also saw the same sort of thing at Papremis, among those who were killed along with Achaemenes son of Darius by Inaros the Libyan.
13. After their rout in the battle, the Egyptians fled in disorder and shut themselves up in Memphis. Cambyses sent a ship from Mytilene up the river carrying a Persian herald to call on the Egyptians to come to terms. But when they saw the ship come into Memphis, they poured out of the fortress all together, wrecked the ship, tore the men on board limb from limb, and carried them back into the fortress. After this the Egyptians were besieged, and in time they surrendered. The Libyans who live on the borders of Egypt were terrified by what had happened to Egypt, and they gave themselves up without a fight. They agreed to pay tribute and sent gifts. The people of Cyrene and Barca were just as terrified as the Libyans and did the same. Cambyses accepted the Libyans' gifts graciously, but he found fault with those that came from Cyrene, because, I suppose, they were too small (the Cyreneans in fact sent five hundred pounds of silver). He grabbed the silver by handfuls and scattered it among his soldiers with his own hand.
14. Ten days after he took the surrender of the fortress at Memphis, Cambyses had Psammenitus, the king of the Egyptians, who had reigned for six months, sit in the outskirts of the city to humiliate him. He set him there along with other Egyptians, and he put his spirit to the test in this way. He dressed Psammenitus' daughter in a slave's clothes and sent her out with a pitcher to fetch water. With her he sent other girls, chosen from the daughters of the leading men, dressed the same way as the king's daughter. As the girls passed their fathers, crying and wailing, all the other men began to cry out and wail aloud at the sight of their children so mistreated. But Psammenitus, when he saw it with his own eyes and understood, bowed his head to the ground. When the water carriers had gone by, Cambyses next sent out Psammenitus' son, along with two thousand other Egyptians of the same age, with ropes tied around their necks and bits in their mouths. They were being led off to execution in revenge for the men of Mytilene who had been killed at Memphis with their ship. For the Royal Judges had ruled that for each man, ten of the noblest Egyptians should die in return. Psammenitus saw them go past him and understood that his son was leading the way to his death. But while the other Egyptians sitting around him wept and showed their grief, he did just what he had done at the sight of his daughter. When these too had gone by, it happened that one of his old table companions, a man getting on in years, came past Psammenitus son of Amasis and the Egyptians sitting in the outskirts of the city. This man had lost everything he owned and had nothing left but what a beggar has, and he was begging from the soldiers. When Psammenitus saw him, he let out a great cry of grief, called his friend by name, and beat his own head. Now there were men, it seems, posted to watch him, who reported to Cambyses everything he did each time a group went past. Cambyses was amazed at what he did, and he sent a messenger to ask him this: "Psammenitus, your master Cambyses asks why, when you saw your daughter mistreated and your son going to his death, you did not cry out or weep for them, yet you honored with these signs of grief the beggar who, he hears from others, is no relation of yours at all." That was the question, and Psammenitus answered: "Son of Cyrus, my own troubles were too great for me to weep over aloud. But my friend's trouble called for tears: he has lost great wealth and fallen into beggary on the threshold of old age." When the messenger reported this answer, they all thought it well said. And according to the Egyptians, Croesus wept (for he too, as fortune would have it, had come with Cambyses to Egypt), and the Persians who were there wept as well. Even Cambyses himself felt some pity. At once he ordered that Psammenitus' son be saved from among those who were being put to death, and that Psammenitus himself be raised from his place in the outskirts of the city and brought before him.
15. As for the son, the men sent to fetch him found that he was no longer alive: he had been the first to be cut down. But they raised Psammenitus himself from his place and brought him before Cambyses, and he lived with him from then on without suffering any violence. And if he had known how to keep out of trouble, he would have been given Egypt back to rule. For the Persians make a practice of honoring the sons of kings; even if the kings have revolted against them, they still give the power back to their sons. That this is their settled rule can be seen from many other cases, and especially from that of Thannyras son of Inaros, who got back the power his father had held, and that of Pausiris son of Amyrtaeus, who also got back his father's power. And yet it is certain that no one up to this time ever did the Persians more harm than Inaros and Amyrtaeus. As it was, though, Psammenitus plotted mischief and got what he deserved. He was caught stirring up the Egyptians to revolt. When Cambyses found out, Psammenitus drank bull's blood and died on the spot. That was how he met his end.
16. From Memphis Cambyses went to the city of Sais, meaning to do exactly what he then did. When he had entered Amasis' palace, he at once ordered Amasis' corpse to be brought out of its tomb. When this had been done, he ordered them to whip it, pull out its hair, stab it, and treat it with every other kind of indignity. They went on doing this until they were worn out, for the corpse had been embalmed and held out against their violence without falling apart anywhere. Then Cambyses ordered it to be burned. In giving this order he was commanding something forbidden by religion, for the Persians hold fire to be a god. Burning the dead is not the custom of either people at all. It is not the Persians' custom, for the reason I have given, since they say it is wrong to give a man's dead body to a god. And the Egyptians believe that fire is a living wild beast that devours everything it catches, and that when it has eaten its fill it dies along with what it is devouring. But it is certainly not their custom to give a man's corpse to wild beasts; that is why they embalm it, so that worms will not eat it as it lies in the tomb. So Cambyses was ordering them to do something the customs of neither people allow. The Egyptians, however, say that it was not Amasis who suffered this outrage, but another Egyptian of the same height and build. The Persians, they say, did their outrage to him, thinking they were doing it to Amasis. For Amasis, they say, had learned from an oracle what was going to happen to him after his death. So to ward off the threatened harm, he buried the body of this man, the one who was whipped, just inside the doors of his own burial chamber, and instructed his son to lay his own body as far back in the innermost part of the chamber as he could. In my opinion these instructions, which Amasis is supposed to have given about his burial and about this man, were never given at all. I think the Egyptians just pretend they were, out of pride, and with no good reason.
17. After this Cambyses planned three separate expeditions: one against the Carthaginians, another against the Ammonians, and a third against the "Long-lived" Ethiopians, who live in the part of Libya that lies on the Southern Sea, the Indian Ocean. As he worked out these plans, he decided to send his fleet against the Carthaginians and a picked force from his land army against the Ammonians. To the Ethiopians he decided to send spies first. They were to see whether the Table of the Sun, which is said to exist among these Ethiopians, was really there, and to spy out everything else besides, while pretending to be bringing gifts for their king.
18. The Table of the Sun is said to be like this. In the outskirts of their city there is a meadow full of the boiled meat of every kind of four-legged animal. Here, it is said, the citizens who are in office at the time take care to lay out the meat by night, and by day anyone who wants to can come and eat his fill. The natives, it is reported, say that the earth itself produces these things, over and over.
19. That is what the so-called Table of the Sun is said to be like. So when Cambyses had made up his mind to send the spies, he at once sent to the city of Elephantine for some of the Fish-Eaters (the Ichthyophagi, as the Greeks call them) who knew the Ethiopian language. While men were going to fetch them, he ordered the fleet to sail against Carthage. But the Phoenicians said they would not do it. They were bound by solemn oaths not to, they said, and it would be an impious thing to make war on their own children, since Carthage was their colony. And since the Phoenicians were unwilling, the rest of the fleet was not strong enough to make the attempt. That is how the Carthaginians escaped being enslaved by the Persians. Cambyses did not think it right to force the Phoenicians, both because they had handed themselves over to the Persians of their own accord and because the whole navy depended on them. The Cyprians too had handed themselves over to the Persians and were taking part in the expedition against Egypt.
20. As soon as the Fish-Eaters came to Cambyses from Elephantine, he sent them to the Ethiopians, telling them what to say and giving them gifts to take: a purple robe, a twisted gold necklace with bracelets, an alabaster jar of perfume, and a jar of palm wine. These Ethiopians to whom Cambyses was sending them are said to be the tallest and most handsome people in the world. Besides their other customs, which are reported to differ from those of other peoples, there is this one in particular, it is said, about their kingship: whichever man of their nation they judge to be the tallest, and to have strength to match his size, is the one they make their king.
21. So when the Fish-Eaters reached this people, they presented their gifts to the king who ruled them, and said: "Cambyses, king of the Persians, wishes to become your friend and guest-friend. He has sent us with orders to speak with you, and he gives you as gifts these things, which are the things he himself most enjoys." But the Ethiopian saw that they had come as spies, and he said to them: "The king of the Persians did not send you with gifts because he thought it very important to become my guest-friend, and you are not telling the truth (for you have come to spy on my kingdom), and he is not a just man either. If he were just, he would not have coveted any land but his own, and he would not be leading into slavery people who have done him no wrong. Now, though, give him this bow and tell him this: The king of the Ethiopians advises the king of the Persians that when the Persians can draw bows as big as this one as easily as I do, then he should march against the Long-lived Ethiopians, provided he has the larger army. But until then he should thank the gods that they do not put it into the minds of the sons of the Ethiopians to win more land in addition to their own."
22. With that he unstrung the bow and handed it over to the men who had come. Then he picked up the purple robe and asked what it was and how it was made. When the Fish-Eaters told him the truth about the purple shellfish and how the cloth is dyed, he said that the men were deceitful and so were their clothes. Next he asked about the twisted gold of the necklace and the bracelets. When the Fish-Eaters explained how they were made, the king burst out laughing; he took them for shackles, and he said that they had stronger shackles than these in his country. Third, he asked about the perfume, and when they told him how it was made and how people anoint themselves with it, he said the same thing he had said about the robe. Then he came to the wine and learned how it was made, and he was so delighted with the taste of the drink that he went on to ask what the king ate and what was the longest a Persian lived. They told him that the king ate bread, explaining first how wheat is grown, and they said that eighty years was the longest life a Persian could expect. To this the Ethiopian replied that he was not surprised that they lived so few years when they ate dung. They would not even live as long as that, he said, if they did not revive themselves with this drink, and he pointed out the wine to the Fish-Eaters. In this one thing, he said, his own people fell well short of the Persians.
23. Then the Fish-Eaters asked the king in turn how long his people lived and how they lived. He answered that most of them reached a hundred and twenty years, and some lived even longer, and that their food was boiled meat and their drink was milk. When the spies marveled at the number of years, he took them to a certain spring. When they washed in its water their skin became sleeker, as if it were a spring of oil, and it gave off a scent like violets. The water of this spring, the spies said, was so thin that nothing would float on it, neither wood nor anything lighter than wood: everything sank to the bottom. If this water of theirs is really what it is said to be, it would surely be the reason the people live so long, since they use it for everything. When they left the spring, he took them to a prison for men, and there all the prisoners were bound in chains of gold. For among these Ethiopians bronze is the rarest and most precious thing of all. When they had seen the prison, they saw the so-called Table of the Sun as well.
24. After that, last of all, they saw their coffins, which are said to be made of crystal, in this way. They dry the corpse, either the Egyptian way or some other, then coat it all over with plaster and paint it, making the figure look as much like the living man as they can. After this they put it inside a hollowed-out block of crystal, which they dig up in great quantities and which is very easy to work. The body sits in the middle of the block and can be seen through it. It gives off no unpleasant smell and nothing else offensive, and every part of it can be seen as plainly as the body itself. The dead man's closest relatives keep the block in their house for a year, giving him the first share of everything and offering sacrifices to him. After that they carry it out and set it up around the city.
25. When they had seen everything, the spies left to go back. And when they reported all this, Cambyses flew into a rage at once and marched his army against the Ethiopians. He gave no orders for any supply of food, and he never stopped to think that he was about to march an army to the farthest ends of the earth. Instead, like a madman out of his right mind, he set out the moment he heard the Fish-Eaters' report. He ordered the Greeks who were with him to stay behind in Egypt and took his whole land army with him. When in the course of the march he reached Thebes, he split off about fifty thousand men from his army and ordered them to enslave the Ammonians and burn down the oracle of Zeus, while he himself went on against the Ethiopians with the rest of the army. But before the army had covered a fifth of the way, all the food they had ran out completely, and after the food, the pack animals too were eaten until they were gone. Now if Cambyses, when he saw this, had changed his mind and led his army back, he would have been a wise man in spite of his first mistake. As it was, he paid no attention but kept on going forward. So the soldiers kept themselves alive by eating grass, as long as they could find anything growing in the ground. But when they reached the sand, some of them did a terrible thing: out of every ten men they chose one by lot and ate him. When Cambyses heard of this, he was frightened by the cannibalism. He gave up the expedition against the Ethiopians and started back, and he reached Thebes having lost a great part of his army. From Thebes he came down to Memphis and let the Greeks sail home.
26. That is how the expedition against the Ethiopians turned out. Meanwhile the Persians who had been sent to march against the Ammonians set out from Thebes and went on their way with guides. It is known that they reached the city of Oasis, which is inhabited by Samians said to belong to the Aeschrionian tribe, and which lies seven days' journey from Thebes across sandy desert. In Greek this place is called the "Isle of the Blessed." The army, they say, got that far. But from there on, nobody can say anything about them, except the Ammonians themselves and those who have heard the story from them; for they never reached the Ammonians, and they never came back. The Ammonians themselves add this to the story. They say that as the army was marching from this Oasis across the sandy desert to attack them, and had reached a point about halfway between them and the Oasis, a violent south wind blew down on them while they were eating their morning meal. It carried heaps of desert sand along with it and buried them, and so they vanished and were never seen again. That, according to the Ammonians, is what happened to this army.
27. When Cambyses arrived at Memphis, Apis appeared to the Egyptians; this is the god the Greeks call Epaphus. As soon as he appeared, the Egyptians began to put on their finest clothes and to hold celebrations. Cambyses saw the Egyptians doing this and was sure they were rejoicing because things had gone badly for him. So he called for the officials in charge of Memphis. When they came before him, he asked them why the Egyptians had done nothing of the kind the last time he was at Memphis, but were doing it only now, when he had come back after losing a large part of his army. They told him that a god had appeared to them, one who usually appeared only at long intervals, and that whenever he appeared, all the Egyptians rejoiced and held a festival. When Cambyses heard this, he said they were lying, and he condemned them to death as liars.
28. After putting them to death, he next called the priests before him. When the priests gave him the same answer, he said he would find out whether some tame god had come to live among the Egyptians. With that he told the priests to bring Apis to him, and they went to fetch him. Now this Apis, or Epaphus, is a calf born of a cow that is never afterward allowed to conceive another calf. The Egyptians say that a flash of light comes down from the sky upon this cow, and from it she gives birth to Apis. This calf called Apis has the following markings: he is black, with a white square on his forehead and the likeness of an eagle on his back; the hairs of his tail are double; and on his tongue there is a mark like a beetle.
29. When the priests brought Apis in, Cambyses, who was already half mad, drew his dagger. He aimed at Apis' belly but struck his thigh. Then he laughed and said to the priests: "You miserable creatures, is this what gods are like, made of flesh and blood and able to feel an iron blade? This is certainly a god worthy of the Egyptians. But you, at least, will not get away with making a fool of me." With that he ordered the men whose job it was to whip the priests without mercy, and to put to death any other Egyptian they found celebrating the festival. So the Egyptians' festival was brought to an end, the priests were punished, and Apis lay dying in the temple from the wound in his thigh.
30. When he died of the wound, the priests buried him without Cambyses' knowledge. But Cambyses, as the Egyptians say, went completely mad immediately after this crime, though he had not really been in his right mind even before. The first of his crimes was to put to death his brother Smerdis, who had the same father and the same mother as he did. He had already sent this brother away from Egypt back to Persia out of envy, because Smerdis alone of all the Persians had been able to draw the bow that the Fish-Eaters had brought from the Ethiopian king, by about two finger-widths, an inch and a half; not one of the other Persians had managed it. Then, after Smerdis had gone back to Persia, Cambyses had a dream. It seemed to him that a messenger came from Persia and reported that Smerdis was sitting on the royal throne and that his head touched the sky. So he was afraid that his brother might kill him and reign in his place. He sent Prexaspes to Persia, the man he trusted most of all the Persians, with orders to kill him. Prexaspes went up to Susa and killed Smerdis. Some say he took him out hunting and killed him there; others say he took him to the Persian Gulf and drowned him.
31. This, they say, was the first of Cambyses' crimes. Next after this he put to death his sister, who had come with him to Egypt. He was also married to her, and she was his sister on both sides, by the same father and the same mother. This is how he came to marry her, for before this the Persians had never been in the habit of marrying their sisters at all. Cambyses fell in love with one of his sisters and wanted to marry her. Since what he had in mind was against custom, he called the Royal Judges and asked them whether there was any law that allowed a man who wished it to marry his sister. Now the Royal Judges are men chosen from among the Persians, and they hold office until they die or until they are found guilty of some injustice, and no longer. They give judgments for the Persians and interpret the laws handed down from their fathers, and every question is referred to them. So when Cambyses asked them, they gave him an answer that was both honest and safe. They said they could find no law that allowed a brother to marry his sister, but that they had found another law, which said that the king of the Persians could do whatever he wanted. So on the one hand they did not bend the law out of fear of Cambyses; and at the same time, so as not to be killed themselves for upholding the law, they found another law besides the one he had asked about, which suited a man who wanted to marry his sisters. So Cambyses then married the sister he was in love with, and not long afterward he married another sister as well. It was the younger of these, the one who had come with him to Egypt, whom he put to death.
32. About her death, as about the death of Smerdis, two different stories are told. The Greeks say that Cambyses had set a lion cub to fight a puppy, and this wife of his was watching too. When the puppy was losing, another puppy, its brother, broke its chain and came to help it, and once there were two of them instead of one, the puppies got the better of the cub. Cambyses was delighted to watch this, but she, sitting beside him, began to cry. Cambyses noticed and asked her why she was crying. She said she had cried when she saw the puppy come to help its brother, because she remembered Smerdis and realized that there was no one to come to his help. The Greeks say it was for saying this that Cambyses killed her. But the Egyptians say that as they were sitting at dinner, the wife took a head of lettuce and pulled off the leaves all around it. Then she asked her husband whether the lettuce looked better stripped like this or with all its leaves, and he said, "With all its leaves." Then she said: "And yet you once made something just like this lettuce, when you stripped bare the house of Cyrus." Cambyses was enraged and leaped on her. She was pregnant, and she miscarried and died.
33. These were the mad things Cambyses did to his own family, whether his madness really came about because of Apis or from some other cause, since many ills tend to fall upon men. For it is also said that Cambyses had suffered from birth from a serious illness, the one some people call the "sacred disease," epilepsy. And it was certainly nothing strange that when his body was suffering from a serious illness, his mind should not be sound either.
34. And here are the mad things he did to the other Persians. There was Prexaspes, the man he honored most, who used to carry his messages; Prexaspes' son was also Cambyses' cupbearer, and this too was no small honor. To him, it is said, Cambyses spoke as follows: "Prexaspes, what kind of man do the Persians think I am, and what do they say about me?" And Prexaspes said: "Master, in every other way they praise you highly, but they say you are too fond of wine." That is what he said about the Persians. At this Cambyses grew angry and answered: "So the Persians now say that I am given to wine, and that this has driven me out of my senses and out of my mind. Then what they said before was not sincere." For it seems that some time before this, when the Persians and Croesus were sitting with him in council, Cambyses had asked them what kind of man they thought he was compared with his father Cyrus. They answered that he was better than his father, because he not only held everything his father had held, but had also won Egypt and the sea besides. That is what the Persians said. But Croesus, who was there and was not satisfied with their judgment, said to Cambyses: "To me, son of Cyrus, you do not seem equal to your father, because you do not yet have a son like the one he left behind him in you." Cambyses was pleased to hear this and praised Croesus' judgment.
35. Remembering this, then, he said angrily to Prexaspes: "Now see for yourself whether the Persians are telling the truth, or whether when they say this it is they who are out of their senses. If I shoot at your son, standing there by the doorway, and hit him right in the middle of the heart, that will prove the Persians are talking nonsense. But if I miss, then you can say that the Persians are telling the truth and that I am not in my right mind." With that he drew his bow and hit the boy. When the boy fell, it is said that Cambyses ordered his body cut open and the wound examined. When the arrow was found lodged in the heart, he laughed with delight and said to the boy's father: "Prexaspes, you can see that it has now been proved that I am not mad and that it is the Persians who are out of their senses. Now tell me, have you ever in your life seen anyone shoot so straight?" Prexaspes saw that the man was not in his right mind, and he was afraid for himself. So he said: "Master, I don't think even a god could have hit the mark so well." That is what he did that time. On another occasion he condemned twelve Persians, men as good as the best of them, on some trivial charge, and buried them alive head downward.
36. While he was doing these things, Croesus the Lydian thought it right to warn him, in these words: "My king, do not give in to the heat of your youth and your temper in everything. Hold yourself back and keep yourself in check. It is a good thing to be prudent, and forethought is wisdom. But you are putting to death men of your own people, condemning them on trivial charges, and you are putting men's sons to death too. If you do many things like this, be careful that the Persians do not rise up against you. As for me, your father Cyrus charged me, and earnestly urged me, to warn you and to suggest to you whatever I found to be good." That was his advice, given out of goodwill. But Cambyses answered: "You dare to advise me? You, who governed your own country so very well, and gave my father such good advice when you urged him to cross the river Araxes and go against the Massagetae, when they were willing to cross over into our land! You utterly ruined yourself by misruling your own country, and you utterly ruined Cyrus, who followed your advice. But you will not escape punishment now, for I want you to know that I have long been looking for an excuse to deal with you." With that he took his bow, meaning to shoot him, but Croesus jumped up and ran out. Since Cambyses could not shoot him, he ordered his attendants to seize him and kill him. But the attendants knew his moods, so they hid Croesus. Their plan was this: if Cambyses changed his mind and wanted Croesus back, they could produce him and be rewarded for saving his life; but if he did not change his mind and did not want him back, then they would kill him. Not long afterward Cambyses did in fact want Croesus back, and the attendants, seeing this, told him that he was still alive. Cambyses said he was glad that Croesus was still alive, but that the men who had saved him would not get off: he would put them to death. And he did.
37. He did many mad things like this, both to Persians and to his allies, while he stayed at Memphis. He opened ancient tombs and examined the bodies of the dead. He also went into the temple of Hephaestus and made great fun of the god's image. For the image of Hephaestus looks very much like the Pataeci, the little figures the Phoenicians carry on the prows of their triremes; for anyone who has not seen these, I will describe it: it is the figure of a dwarf. He also went into the temple of the Cabeiri, which no one is permitted to enter except the priest alone. After mocking the images there at length, he even set them on fire. These too are like the images of Hephaestus, and they are said to be his children.
38. So it is clear to me, by every kind of proof, that Cambyses was utterly mad; otherwise he would never have set out to mock religious rites and established customs. For if you offered all the people in the world a choice, and told them to pick the best customs out of all the customs there are, every people, after looking them all over, would choose their own. That is how strongly everyone believes that their own customs are by far the best. So it is not likely that anyone but a madman would make fun of such things. There are many other proofs that all people feel this way about their customs, and this one in particular. During his reign Darius summoned the Greeks who were at his court and asked them what price would persuade them to eat their fathers' bodies when they died. They answered that no price in the world would make them do it. After this Darius summoned some of the Indians called Callatians, who eat their parents, and asked them, in front of the Greeks, who followed what was said through an interpreter, what payment would persuade them to burn their fathers' bodies when they died. They cried out loud and told him not to say such things. That is how firmly custom is fixed, and I think Pindar was right when he said that custom is king of all.
39. Now while Cambyses was marching on Egypt, the Spartans were also making an expedition against Samos and against Polycrates son of Aeaces, who had risen up and made himself ruler of Samos. At first he had divided the state into three parts and given a share to each of his brothers, Pantagnotus and Syloson. But afterward he killed one of them and drove out the younger, Syloson, and so took possession of all of Samos. Once it was his, he made a pact of guest-friendship with Amasis the king of Egypt, sending him gifts and receiving gifts from him in return. Right after this, in a short space of time, the power of Polycrates grew quickly, and he became famous not only in Ionia but across the rest of Greece too. For wherever he sent his forces, everything went his way. He had acquired a hundred fifty-oared ships and a thousand archers, and he plundered everyone, making no distinction between anyone. He used to say that he would win more gratitude from a friend by giving back what he had taken than by never taking it at all. So he had conquered many of the islands and many cities on the mainland as well. Among other things, he defeated the Lesbians in a sea battle as they were coming with all their forces to help the Milesians. He took them prisoner, and it was these men who dug the whole moat around the city wall of Samos, working in chains.
40. Now Amasis, as you might expect, did not fail to notice that Polycrates was extraordinarily lucky, and it worried him. And as more and more good fortune kept coming to Polycrates, he wrote this letter and sent it to Samos: "Amasis says this to Polycrates. It is pleasant to hear that a friend and guest-friend is doing well. But your great good fortune does not please me, because I know that heaven is jealous. For myself, and for those I care about, I think I would rather have some of our affairs go well and others fail, and so pass through life faring well and badly by turns, than be successful in everything. For I have never yet heard of anyone who was successful in everything and did not come to a thoroughly bad end at last. So take my advice and do as I say about your good fortune. Think it over, and whatever you find you value most, and would be most heartsick to lose, take that and throw it away, so that it will never again be seen by human eyes. And if from then on your good fortune still does not come mixed with disasters, use the remedy I have suggested again."
41. Polycrates read this and, thinking it over, saw that Amasis' advice was good. So he looked for which of his treasures he would be most heartsick to lose, and in looking he found the one I am about to name. He had a signet ring that he used to wear, an emerald set in gold, the work of Theodorus son of Telecles, of Samos. Since he decided this was the thing to throw away, here is what he did. He manned a fifty-oared ship with sailors, went on board himself, and told them to head out into the open sea. When he was well away from the island, he took off the signet ring and, in full view of everyone on board, threw it into the sea. After doing this he sailed home, and when he reached his house he grieved for his loss.
42. But on the fifth or sixth day after this, here is what happened to him. A fisherman caught a large and beautiful fish and thought it right to give it to Polycrates as a gift. So he carried it to the palace door and said he wanted to see Polycrates. When he was let in, he gave him the fish and said: "My king, when I caught this fish I didn't think I should take it to the market, even though I am a man who lives by the work of his hands. It seemed to me worthy of you and of your rule, so I have brought it to give to you." Polycrates was pleased with what he said and answered: "You have done very well, and you deserve double thanks, for your words and for your gift. We invite you to dinner." The fisherman went home thinking this a great honor. Then, as the servants were cutting up the fish, they found Polycrates' signet ring in its belly. As soon as they saw it and picked it up, they carried it to Polycrates, overjoyed. They gave him the ring and told him how it had been found. He realized that the hand of heaven was in this, so he wrote down everything he had done and everything that had happened to him, and when he had written it he sent the letter to Egypt.
43. When Amasis read the letter that had come from Polycrates, he understood that it is impossible for one man to rescue another from what is going to happen, and that Polycrates, who was successful in everything and even found again what he had thrown away, was not going to have a good end. So he sent a herald to him in Samos and said that he was breaking off their guest-friendship. He did this so that when some great and terrible disaster struck Polycrates, he would not himself have to grieve over him as a friend and guest.
44. It was against this Polycrates, then, successful in everything, that the Spartans were making their expedition. They had been called in to help by the Samians who later founded Cydonia in Crete. Now Polycrates, without the Samians knowing, had sent a messenger to Cambyses son of Cyrus while he was gathering an army to march against Egypt, asking him to send to Samos and request military help from him. Cambyses was very glad to hear this and sent to Samos to ask Polycrates to send a fleet with him against Egypt. So Polycrates picked out those citizens he most suspected of wanting to rise against him and sent them off in forty triremes, telling Cambyses not to send them back.
45. Now some say that these Samians sent away by Polycrates never reached Egypt. When they got as far as Carpathus on their voyage, they talked it over among themselves and decided not to sail any farther. Others say they did reach Egypt, were kept under guard there, and escaped. Then, as they were sailing back to Samos, Polycrates met them with his ships and fought them. The returning men won and landed on the island, but then they fought a battle on land there and were beaten, and so they sailed off to Sparta. Some, though, say that the men from Egypt defeated Polycrates. In my opinion that is not right. They would have had no need to call in the Spartans if they had been able to bring Polycrates to terms by themselves. Besides, it is not reasonable to think that a man with a great many foreign mercenaries and native archers was beaten by the returning Samians, who were only a few. Then Polycrates gathered up the children and wives of his citizens and shut them up in the ship-sheds. He kept them there ready, so that if his citizens went over to the returning exiles, he could burn them, sheds and all.
46. When the Samians who had been driven out by Polycrates reached Sparta, they were brought before the magistrates and made a long speech, pressing their request urgently. But at this first hearing the magistrates replied that they had forgotten what had been said at the beginning and could not understand what had been said at the end. After this they were brought in a second time. This time they brought a bag with them and said nothing but this: that the bag needed barley-meal. The Spartans replied that they had overdone it with the bag: even the word "bag" was one word too many. All the same, they decided to help them.
47. Then the Spartans got a force ready and sailed against Samos. According to the Samians, they did it to repay an old favor, because the Samians had once helped them with ships against the Messenians. But the Spartans say they made the expedition not so much because they wanted to help the Samians who asked them, as to take revenge on their own account for the theft of the mixing bowl they had been taking as a gift to Croesus, and of the linen breastplate that Amasis king of Egypt had sent them as a gift. For the Samians had carried off the breastplate too, the year before they took the bowl. It was made of linen, with many figures woven into it, and decorated with gold and with cotton. Every thread of this breastplate is a thing to marvel at: fine as each thread is, it is made of three hundred and sixty strands, every one of them visible. There is another just like it, which Amasis dedicated as an offering to Athena at Lindus.
48. The Corinthians also took part eagerly in this expedition against Samos, to make sure it happened. For the Samians had committed an outrage against them too, a generation before this expedition and at about the same time as the theft of the bowl. Periander son of Cypselus had sent three hundred sons of the leading men of Corcyra, the island now called Corfu, to Alyattes at Sardis to be castrated. The Corinthians who were taking the boys put in at Samos. When the Samians heard the story and learned why the boys were being taken to Sardis, they first told the boys to take hold of the temple of Artemis as suppliants, and then they would not let the Corinthians drag the suppliants away from the temple. And when the Corinthians cut the boys off from food, the Samians started a festival, which they still celebrate in the same way today. As long as the boys were suppliants, whenever night fell they held dances of girls and young men, and in arranging the dances they made it a rule of the festival that cakes of sesame and honey should be carried, so that the Corcyrean boys could snatch them and live on them. This went on until at last the Corinthians who were in charge of the boys gave up and left. As for the boys, the Samians took them back to Corcyra.
49. Now if the Corinthians had been on friendly terms with the Corcyreans after Periander's death, they would not have joined the expedition against Samos for the reason I have given. But as it is, the two have always been at odds with each other, ever since the Corinthians first colonized the island. This, then, was why the Corinthians bore a grudge against the Samians.
50. Periander had picked out the sons of the leading men of Corcyra and was sending them to Sardis to be castrated in order to take revenge. For the Corcyreans had started it, by doing him an outrageous wrong. After Periander had killed his wife Melissa, another misfortune happened to him on top of the one he had already suffered. This is how it went. He had two sons by Melissa, one seventeen years old and the other eighteen. Their mother's father Procles, who was tyrant of Epidaurus, sent for them and treated them kindly, as you would expect, since they were his own daughter's sons. When he was sending them home, he said to them as he said goodbye: "Do you know, boys, who killed your mother?" The elder paid no attention to this remark. But the younger, whose name was Lycophron, was so deeply hurt to hear it that when he got back to Corinth he would not speak to his father. When his father tried to talk with him, he would not talk back, and when his father asked him questions, he gave no answer, because he regarded him as his mother's murderer. In the end Periander grew furious with his son and drove him out of the house.
51. After driving him out, he asked the elder son what their grandfather had talked about with them. The elder son told him how kindly Procles had received them, but he did not remember the remark Procles had made as they left, since he had paid no attention to it. Periander said that Procles must surely have put some idea into their heads, and he kept pressing him with questions. At last the young man remembered and told him that too. Periander took note of it, and, determined to show no softness, he sent a messenger to the people his banished son was living with at the time and forbade them to take him into their houses. And whenever the boy was driven from one house and went to another, he was driven from that one too, because Periander threatened anyone who took him in and ordered them to shut him out. So, driven away again, he would go on to another house, where friends of his lived, and they took him in, perhaps because he was Periander's son, even though they were afraid.
52. At last Periander made a proclamation that anyone who took him into their house or even spoke with him would have to pay a sacred fine to Apollo, and he named the amount. Because of this proclamation, no one was willing either to speak to him or to take him into their house. And he himself did not think it right to try, since it had been forbidden. Instead he lay about in the colonnades, exposed to the weather. On the fourth day of this, Periander saw him filthy, wretched and starving, and he felt pity for him. His anger softened, and he went up to him and said: "Son, which is better: the life you are living now, or to inherit the power and wealth I have now, by doing as your father wishes? You are my son, the prince of rich Corinth, and yet you have chosen the life of a beggar by defying and raging against the one man you should least have treated that way. If any disaster has happened in the matter that makes you suspect me, it has happened to me first, and I bear more of it than anyone, since I am the one who did the deed. Now that you have learned how much better it is to be envied than to be pitied, and also what a hard thing it is to be angry with your parents and with those stronger than you, come back home." With these words Periander tried to win him back. But the son gave his father no other answer than this: that now his father owed the god a fine for having spoken with him. Then Periander saw that his son's sickness was hopeless and could not be overcome, so he sent a ship to Corcyra and sent him away out of his sight, for he was ruler of that island too. After sending him away, Periander made war on his father-in-law Procles, whom he blamed most for the state he was in. He took Epidaurus, and took Procles himself prisoner too.
53. But as time went on, Periander grew past his prime and realized that he was no longer able to oversee and manage the government of the state. So he sent to Corcyra and summoned Lycophron to come back and take power. For he did not see the ability needed in his elder son, but saw plainly that he was too slow-witted. Lycophron did not even bother to give the messenger an answer. Then Periander, who still clung to the young man out of love, sent him his own daughter, Lycophron's sister, thinking that he would listen to her more than to anyone else. She arrived and said to him: "Boy, would you rather see the tyranny fall to others, and your father's wealth carried off as plunder, than come back and have them yourself? Come home, and stop tormenting yourself. Pride is a dangerous thing to own. Do not cure one evil with another. Many people put what is fair ahead of what is strictly just, and many before now, in seeking their mother's due, have lost their father's. A tyranny is a slippery thing, and many people want it; and besides, he is an old man now and past his prime. Do not give away what is yours to others." She said the most persuasive things she could, for her father had coached her beforehand. But he answered that he would never come to Corinth as long as he heard his father was still alive. When she reported this, Periander sent a messenger for the third time. He said that he wanted to come to Corcyra himself, and he urged Lycophron at the same time to come back to Corinth and succeed him on the throne. The son agreed to return on these terms, and Periander was getting ready to sail to Corcyra and his son to Corinth. But the Corcyreans learned everything that had happened, and they killed the young man so that Periander would not come to their land. That is why Periander took his revenge on the people of Corcyra.
54. So the Spartans had come with a great force and were besieging Samos. They attacked the wall and took the tower that stands by the sea in the suburb of the city, but later, when Polycrates came up to the rescue with a large body of men, they were driven out of it. Meanwhile, by the upper tower, which stands on the ridge of the mountain, the foreign mercenaries and many of the Samians themselves had come out to fight. They held their ground against the Spartans for a short while and then began to fall back, and the Spartans followed them and were cutting them down.
55. Now if all the Spartans there that day had been the equals of Archias and Lycopas, Samos would have been taken. For Archias and Lycopas alone rushed inside the wall along with the fleeing Samians, and since they were cut off from retreat, they were killed inside the city of the Samians. I myself, moreover, talked in Pitane (that was the deme he belonged to) with the third in descent from this Archias: another Archias, the son of Samius son of Archias. He honored the Samians above all other foreigners. Not only that, but he said that his own father had been named Samius because his father, Archias, had died a glorious death on Samos; and he said that he honored the Samians because the Samians had given his grandfather a public funeral.
56. When the Spartans had been besieging Samos for forty days and were getting nowhere, they set off back to the Peloponnese. But there is a less believable account that has gone around about these events: that Polycrates struck a large number of a certain local coin in lead, had them gilded over, and gave them to the Spartans, and that they took them and then left. This was the first expedition the Spartans (who are Dorians) ever made into Asia.
57. The Samians who had led the expedition against Polycrates also sailed away when the Spartans were about to abandon them, and they went to Siphnos. They needed money, and the people of Siphnos were then at the height of their prosperity and richer than all the other islanders. They had gold and silver mines on their island, so rich that there is a treasury at Delphi dedicated from a tenth of the money that came in from those mines, and furnished as splendidly as the wealthiest of the treasuries there. The people used to divide among themselves the money that came in from the mines each year. So when they were setting up the treasury, they asked the oracle whether their present prosperity could stay with them for a long time, and the Pythia gave them this reply:
"But when the town hall in Siphnos shines out white, and white-browed is the marketplace, then a careful man is needed to beware of an army of wood and a herald in red."
Now at just that time the marketplace and town hall of the Siphnians had been decorated with Parian marble.
58. They could not understand this oracle, either then at first or when the Samians arrived. As soon as the Samians were putting in at Siphnos, they sent one of their ships to carry envoys to the city. Now in the old days all ships were painted red, and this was what the Pythia was warning the Siphnians about in advance, when she told them to guard against the "army of wood" and the "herald in red." So the messengers came and asked the Siphnians to lend them ten talents. When the Siphnians refused, the Samians began to ravage their land. As soon as the Siphnians heard of it they came out to the rescue, engaged the Samians in battle, and were defeated. Many of them were cut off from the city by the Samians and shut out of it, and after this the Samians made them pay a hundred talents.
59. Then the Samians bought the island of Hydrea, which lies near the coast of the Peloponnese, from the people of Hermione, and they handed it over to the Troezenians to look after. They themselves settled at Cydonia in Crete, though they had not sailed there for that purpose but to drive the Zacynthians out of the island. They stayed there and prospered for five years, so much so that they were the builders of the temples that stand in Cydonia today, and of the temple of Dictyna too. But in the sixth year the Aeginetans, together with the Cretans, beat them in a sea battle and made them slaves. They cut off the prows of their ships, which were shaped like boars' heads, and dedicated them in the temple of Athena on Aegina. The Aeginetans did this because they had a grudge against the Samians. The Samians had made the first attack, on Aegina, back when Amphicrates was king of Samos, and they had done the Aeginetans a great deal of harm and suffered a great deal of harm from them in return. That was the cause of it.
60. I have spoken about the Samians at greater length because they have three works that are greater than any others the Greeks have made. The first is a tunnel, started from the bottom and open at both ends, dug through a mountain that rises no less than 900 feet. The tunnel is 4,200 feet long, about four-fifths of a mile, and eight feet high and eight feet wide. All along its length a second channel has been dug, thirty feet deep and three feet wide, and through it water from a plentiful spring is carried in pipes to the city. The designer of this work was a man from Megara, Eupalinus son of Naustrophus. That is one of the three. The second is a breakwater in the sea around the harbor, built down to a depth of as much as 120 feet, and more than 1,200 feet long. The third work they have made is a temple, the largest of all the temples we know of. Its first architect was Rhoecus son of Philes, a native of Samos. That is why I have spoken at greater length about the Samians.
61. Now while Cambyses son of Cyrus was lingering in Egypt and had gone out of his mind, two brothers, both Magi, rose up against him. One of them had been left behind by Cambyses as steward of his household. This man rose against him because he saw that the death of Smerdis was being kept secret, that only a few of the Persians knew of it, and that most of them firmly believed he was still alive. So he set out to seize the kingdom, and this was his plan. He had a brother (the one who, as I said, rose up with him against Cambyses), and this brother looked very much like Smerdis son of Cyrus, whom Cambyses had killed, though Smerdis was his own brother. He looked like Smerdis, and not only that, he had the same name, Smerdis. The Magus Patizeithes persuaded this man that he would manage everything for him, and then brought him and seated him on the royal throne. After that he sent heralds around to all the provinces, and one in particular to the army in Egypt, to proclaim that from now on they must obey Smerdis son of Cyrus instead of Cambyses.
62. So the other heralds made this proclamation, and so did the one appointed to go to Egypt. He found Cambyses and his army at Ecbatana in Syria, stood up in the middle of them, and began to proclaim what the Magus had ordered him to. When Cambyses heard this from the herald, he believed the herald was telling the truth and that Prexaspes had betrayed him: that when Prexaspes had been sent to kill Smerdis, he had not done it. So Cambyses looked at Prexaspes and said: "Prexaspes, is this how you carried out the job I gave you?"
Prexaspes answered: "Master, it is not true that your brother Smerdis has risen against you, or that you will have any trouble from him, great or small. I myself did what you ordered me to do, and I buried him with my own hands. If the dead have come back to life, then you can expect Astyages the Mede to rise up against you too. But if things are as they always were, there is no fear that any trouble will spring up for you, at least not from him. So now I think we should send men after the herald and question him, and ask who sent him to proclaim to us that we are to obey Smerdis as king."
63. When Prexaspes had said this, Cambyses liked the advice, and so the herald was chased down at once and brought back. When he had come back, Prexaspes questioned him like this: "You say, man, that you have come as a messenger from Smerdis son of Cyrus. Now tell the truth and go away unharmed. I am asking you: did Smerdis himself appear before your eyes and give you this order, or was it one of his servants?"
He answered: "I have never yet seen Smerdis son of Cyrus, not since the day King Cambyses marched off to Egypt. It was the Magus whom Cambyses appointed steward of his household who gave me this order, and he said that it was Smerdis son of Cyrus who had commanded me to tell you these things."
That is what he told them, adding no lies to the truth. Then Cambyses said: "Prexaspes, you did what you were ordered like an honest man, and you are free of blame. But who among the Persians can this be who has risen up against me and taken the name of Smerdis?"
Prexaspes said: "My king, I think I understand what has happened. The Magi have risen against you: Patizeithes, whom you left as steward of your household, and his brother Smerdis."
64. When Cambyses heard the name Smerdis, he understood at once the true meaning of this news and of his dream. In his sleep he had dreamed that someone reported to him that Smerdis was sitting on the royal throne and that his head touched the sky. Seeing now that he had killed his brother for no reason, he began to weep for Smerdis. When he had wept for him and grieved bitterly over the whole disaster, he leaped onto his horse, meaning to march his army to Susa as fast as he could against the Magus. But as he leaped onto his horse, the cap of his sword's scabbard fell off, and the bare blade struck him in the thigh. He was wounded in the very place where he had once struck Apis, the god of the Egyptians. Believing the blow was a fatal one, Cambyses asked what the name of that town was, and they told him "Ecbatana." Even before this, the oracle at the city of Buto had told him that he would end his life in Ecbatana. He had supposed that he would die of old age in Ecbatana in Media, the seat of all his power; but the oracle, as it turned out, meant Ecbatana in Syria. So when he asked and learned the name of the town, the shock of the disaster the Magus had caused, and of the wound at the same time, brought him back to his senses. He understood the meaning of the oracle and said: "Here is where Cambyses son of Cyrus is fated to end his life."
65. That was all he said at the time. But about twenty days later he sent for the most distinguished of the Persians who were with him and said to them: "Persians, I am now forced to reveal to you the thing I used to keep more hidden than anything else. When I was in Egypt I saw a vision in my sleep, which I wish I had never seen. I dreamed that a messenger came from home and reported to me that Smerdis was sitting on the royal throne and that his head touched the sky. I was afraid my brother would take my power from me, so I acted quickly rather than wisely. For it seems that no human being can turn aside what is fated to happen. So I, fool that I was, sent Prexaspes off to Susa to kill Smerdis. When that great wrong had been done, I lived without fear, and never thought that some other man might one day rise up against me, now that Smerdis was out of the way. I missed the mark entirely about what was going to happen. I have made myself my brother's murderer, when there was no need, and I have lost the kingdom all the same. For it was really Smerdis the Magus that heaven was warning me about in the vision, saying he would rise against me.
"So that deed has been done by me, and you must understand that Smerdis son of Cyrus is no longer alive for you. It is the Magi who are really the masters of your kingdom: the one I left as steward of my household, and his brother Smerdis. The man who above all others should have avenged the insult I have suffered from the Magi has ended his life by an unholy death, at the hands of his own nearest kin. Since he is gone, the next best thing left to me, and the most necessary, is to charge you, Persians, with what I want done for me as I die. This, then, I lay on you, calling the gods of the royal house to witness: on all of you, and most of all on those of the Achaemenids who are here. Do not let the supreme power go back to the Medes. If they have taken it by trickery, take it from them by trickery; if they have won it by force of any kind, win it back by force and a strong hand. If you do this, may the earth bear its crops for you, and may your wives and your herds be fruitful, and may you stay free forever. But if you do not win back the power, or do not even try, I pray that the opposite of these blessings will fall on you, and on top of that, that every Persian will meet an end like the one that has come on me."
As soon as he had finished saying this, Cambyses began to weep and mourn over everything that had happened to him.
66. When the Persians saw the king weeping, they all tore the clothes they were wearing and mourned without restraint. After this the bone became infected and the thigh turned gangrenous, and the wound carried off Cambyses son of Cyrus. He had reigned seven years and five months in all, and he left no children at all, neither son nor daughter. The Persians who were there meanwhile were very little inclined to believe that the power was in the hands of the Magi. On the contrary, they were quite sure that Cambyses had said what he said about the death of Smerdis to deceive them, so that all the Persians would be stirred up to make war on Smerdis. So they were quite sure that it was Smerdis son of Cyrus who had been made king. For Prexaspes too denied very firmly that he had killed Smerdis, since now that Cambyses was dead it was not safe for him to say that he had killed the son of Cyrus with his own hand.
67. So when Cambyses had ended his life, the Magus took the throne without any trouble, posing as his namesake Smerdis son of Cyrus. He reigned for the seven months that were still lacking to make up Cambyses' eight years. During that time he did great good to all his subjects, so much so that when he died, everyone in Asia except the Persians themselves mourned for him. For the Magus sent messengers out to every nation he ruled and proclaimed that they would be free from military service and from tribute for three years.
68. He made this proclamation as soon as he was established on the throne. But in the eighth month it was found out who he was, in the following way. There was a man called Otanes son of Pharnaspes, second to none of the Persians in birth and in wealth. This Otanes was the first to suspect that the Magus was not Smerdis son of Cyrus but the man he really was. He drew this conclusion from two facts: the man never went out of the citadel, and he never summoned any of the distinguished Persians into his presence. Having become suspicious, he did this. Cambyses had married Otanes' daughter, whose name was Phaedyme, and the Magus was now keeping this same daughter as his wife and living with her, as he did with all the rest of Cambyses' wives. So Otanes sent a message to his daughter and asked her who the man was she slept beside: was it Smerdis son of Cyrus, or someone else? She sent word back that she did not know, because she had never seen Smerdis son of Cyrus, and she did not know in any other way who the man living with her was. Otanes then sent a second time and said: "If you do not know Smerdis son of Cyrus yourself, then ask Atossa who this man is, the man both she and you are living with as wives. She will surely know her own brother."
69. To this his daughter sent back word: "I can't speak with Atossa or see any of the other women who live here with me. As soon as this man, whoever he is, came to the throne, he split us up and put each of us in separate rooms of our own."
When Otanes heard this, the matter became clearer and clearer to him, and he sent another message in to her, which said: "Daughter, you are nobly born, and it is right for you to take on any risk your father tells you to take. For if this really is not Smerdis son of Cyrus but the man I suspect, he must not get away unpunished, either for taking you to his bed or for ruling over the Persians; he must pay the price. So now do as I say. When he is sleeping beside you and you can tell he is sound asleep, feel his ears. If it turns out that he has ears, then believe you are living with Smerdis son of Cyrus. But if not, believe it is Smerdis the Magus."
Phaedyme sent an answer saying that if she did this she would be running a great risk. If it turned out that he had no ears and she were caught feeling for them, she was quite sure he would put her to death. Even so, she said, she would do it. So she promised her father she would do this. Now this Smerdis the Magus had had his ears cut off by Cyrus son of Cambyses, while Cyrus was king, for some serious crime. So Phaedyme, the daughter of Otanes, set about doing everything she had promised her father. When her turn came to go to the Magus (for among the Persians the wives go to their husband in turn, each one regularly), she came and lay down beside him. When the Magus was deep asleep, she felt for his ears. She found, not with difficulty but easily, that her husband had no ears, and as soon as it was day she sent and told her father what had happened.
70. Then Otanes took Aspathines and Gobryas aside, who were leading men among the Persians and his own most trusted friends, and told them the whole story. They, as it turned out, already suspected the same thing themselves, and when Otanes reported this to them, they readily accepted his proposals. They decided that each of them should bring in the one Persian he trusted most. So Otanes brought in Intaphrenes, Gobryas brought in Megabyzus, and Aspathines brought in Hydarnes. When there were six of them, Darius son of Hystaspes arrived at Susa from the land of Persia, where his father was governor. So when he came, the six Persians decided to bring Darius in with them too.
71. So these seven came together, gave each other pledges of loyalty, and talked it over. When it was Darius' turn to give his opinion, he said to them: "I thought I was the only one who knew this: that it was the Magus who was ruling as king, and that Smerdis son of Cyrus was dead. And for that very reason I have come here, in earnest, to plan the Magus' death. But since it turns out that you know too, and not just me, I think we should act at once and not put it off. Delay is not the better way."
Otanes answered: "Son of Hystaspes, you come of a noble family, and you seem to be showing yourself in no way worse than your father. But do not rush this undertaking so hastily without thinking it through. Take it up more carefully. We must first become more in number, and then go ahead with it."
Darius said in reply: "You men here, if you follow the course Otanes suggests, you can be sure you will die miserably. For someone will carry word to the Magus, to get something for himself out of it. Your best course would have been to do this on your own risk alone. But since you decided to bring more people into it, and you told me, either we do the deed today, or you can be sure of this: if today goes by, no one will get in ahead of me as your accuser. I will tell the Magus all of it myself."
72. When Otanes saw Darius in such violent haste, he answered: "Since you are forcing us to hurry and won't let us wait, come, explain to us yourself how we are going to get into the palace and lay hands on them. There are guards posted in various places; you probably know that as well as we do, if not from seeing them then from hearing about them. How are we going to get past them?"
Darius replied: "Otanes, there are many things that cannot be explained in words, only in action. And there are other things that can be explained in words, but no famous deed comes of them. You can be sure, though, that the guards posted there are not hard to get past. In the first place, being who we are, there is no one who will not let us go by, partly, you may suppose, out of respect for us, and partly perhaps out of fear. In the second place, I have a perfectly convincing excuse to get us through. I will say that I have just come from Persia and want to give the king a message from my father. Where a lie has to be told, let it be told. We are all after the same thing, both those who lie and those who always tell the truth. The liars lie whenever they expect to gain something by getting people to believe their lies. The truth-tellers tell the truth so that they can win some gain for themselves by it, and so that people will trust them more readily. So we take different roads, but we are all after the same thing. If there were nothing to be gained by it, the truth-teller would lie and the liar would tell the truth, and neither would care. So any of the doorkeepers who lets us through willingly will be better off for it later. But any who tries to stand in our way, let him be marked as our enemy then and there. And after that, let us push our way in and get to work."
73. Then Gobryas said: "Friends, when will there ever be a better chance for us either to win back our rule, or, if we cannot get it back, to die? We are Persians, and we are being ruled by a Mede, a Magus, and a man whose ears have been cut off, at that. Besides, all of you who stood by Cambyses when he was sick surely remember what he laid on the Persians as he was dying, if they did not try to win back the power. We did not accept it then; we thought Cambyses had said it to deceive us. So now I vote that we follow Darius' advice, and that we do not leave this meeting to go anywhere except straight to attack the Magus." That is what Gobryas said, and they all approved the proposal.
74. While they were planning all this, something else was happening at the same time, by coincidence. The Magi had talked it over and decided to make Prexaspes their friend. They had three reasons. He had suffered a terrible wrong from Cambyses, who had shot his son dead with an arrow. He was the only one who knew for certain that Smerdis son of Cyrus was dead, since he had killed him with his own hands. And finally, Prexaspes was very highly respected among the Persians. For these reasons they summoned him and tried to win him over as a friend. They bound him with pledges and oaths that he would keep to himself, and reveal to no one, the trick they had played on the Persians, and they promised to give him countless things in return. When Prexaspes had promised to do this, the Magi, having persuaded him that far, proposed a second thing. They said they would call all the Persians together at the palace wall, and they told him to climb up a tower and speak to them, and tell them that they were living under the rule of Smerdis son of Cyrus and no one else. They gave him this task because they believed he was the most trusted man among the Persians, and because he had often declared that Smerdis son of Cyrus was still alive and had denied that he had killed him.
75. When Prexaspes said he was ready to do this too, the Magi called the Persians together, sent him up a tower, and told him to speak to them. But he deliberately forgot what they had asked of him. Starting from Achaemenes, he traced the ancestry of Cyrus on his father's side, and when he had come down to Cyrus himself, he went on at last to tell what great good Cyrus had done the Persians. When he had gone through all this, he went on to declare the truth. He said that he had kept it secret before, since it was not safe for him to tell what had been done, but that now he was forced to make it known. He told them how he himself had killed Smerdis son of Cyrus, because Cambyses forced him to, and that it was the Magi who were ruling now. Then he called down many curses on the Persians if they did not win back the power and take vengeance on the Magi, and with that he threw himself headfirst off the tower. So Prexaspes ended his life, a man who had been respected all his days.
76. Now the seven Persians, having decided to attack the Magi at once and not delay, prayed to the gods and set off, knowing nothing of what had happened with Prexaspes. As they were on their way, halfway there, they heard what had happened with Prexaspes. At that they stepped aside from the road and talked it over again. Otanes and his side strongly urged them to wait and not to go ahead while things were in such turmoil. Darius and his side urged them to go at once and do what they had decided, and not to delay. While they were arguing, seven pairs of hawks appeared, chasing two pairs of vultures, plucking out their feathers and tearing them. When they saw this, all seven of them approved Darius' view, and they went on to the king's palace, encouraged by the sight of the birds.
77. When they appeared at the gates, things happened very much as Darius had expected. The guards, out of respect for men who were among the first of the Persians, and not suspecting that they would do anything of the kind they intended, let them pass in, with heaven guiding them, and nobody asked them any questions. When they had passed into the courtyard, they met the eunuchs who carried messages in to the king. The eunuchs asked them what they had come for, and at the same time they threatened the gatekeepers with punishment for letting them in, and tried to stop the seven when they tried to go further. Then the seven gave each other the word, drew their daggers, and stabbed the men who were trying to stop them right there on the spot. Then they ran on toward the men's hall.
78. Now both of the Magi happened to be inside, talking over what Prexaspes had done. When they saw that the eunuchs had been attacked and heard them shouting, they both ran back, and when they saw what was happening they turned to defend themselves. One of them got down his bow and arrows before he was attacked, and the other took up his spear. Then the two sides came to grips. The one who had taken up his bow and arrows found them useless, since his enemies were close by and pressing hard on him. But the other defended himself with his spear. First he struck Aspathines in the thigh, and then Intaphrenes in the eye; Intaphrenes lost his eye from the wound, but he did not lose his life. So these two were wounded by one of the Magi. The other, when his bow and arrows turned out to be useless, ran into a bedroom that opened off the men's hall, meaning to shut the door, and two of the seven, Darius and Gobryas, rushed in with him. Gobryas was locked together with the Magus, wrestling, while Darius stood over them, not knowing what to do, because it was dark and he was afraid he would hit Gobryas. Seeing him standing there doing nothing, Gobryas asked him why he was not using his hands. Darius said: "Because I'm afraid I may stab you." And Gobryas answered: "Thrust with your sword, even if it goes through both of us." So Darius did as he said, thrust with his dagger, and happened to hit the Magus.
79. When they had killed the Magi and cut off their heads, they left their wounded behind, both because they were not able to go and so that they could hold the citadel. The other five took the heads of the Magi and ran out, shouting and clashing their weapons. They called on the other Persians to join them, told them what had been done, and showed them the heads, and at the same time they began killing every Magus who crossed their path. When the Persians heard what the seven had done and how the Magi had tricked them, they decided to do the same themselves. They drew their daggers and killed the Magi wherever they found one, so that if night had not come on and stopped them, they would not have left a single Magus alive. The Persians celebrate this day together more than any other day. They keep a great festival on it, which the Persians call the Slaughter of the Magi, and on it no Magus is allowed to appear in public; the Magi stay shut in their houses all that day.
80. When the uproar had died down and more than five days had passed, the men who had risen against the Magi began to discuss the state of the whole country. Speeches were made then that some Greeks do not believe were really spoken, but spoken they were all the same. Otanes urged that they should hand the government over to the whole body of the Persians, and this is what he said: "I think none of us should be sole ruler from now on, because that is neither pleasant nor good. You saw how far Cambyses' arrogance went, and you have had a taste of the Magus' arrogance too. How can the rule of one man be a well-ordered thing, when a monarch can do whatever he likes without answering to anyone for what he does? Put even the best man in the world in that position and it would change him from what he used to be. The good things he has breed arrogance in him, and envy is planted in human beings from the start. With those two he has every vice, because he does many reckless and wicked things, some out of arrogance born of having too much, some out of envy. And yet a tyrant, of all people, ought to be free from envy, since he has every good thing there is. But by nature he behaves toward his subjects in just the opposite way. He resents the best men for being alive at all, he enjoys the company of the worst citizens, and he is readier than anyone to listen to slander. And he is the most inconsistent of all creatures. If you admire him in moderation, he is offended that you are not courting him hard enough; if you court him extravagantly, he is offended at you for being a flatterer. But the most important thing is what I am about to say. He overturns the customs handed down from our fathers, he forces himself on women, and he puts men to death without trial. The rule of the many, on the other hand, first of all has the finest name there is: Equality. And second, the many do none of the things a monarch does. Offices are filled by lot, officials have to answer for what they do in office, and every question is brought before the public assembly. So my opinion is that we let monarchy go and raise up the power of the people, because everything is in the many."
81. That was the opinion Otanes gave. But Megabyzus urged that they hand things over to the rule of a few, and he said: "What Otanes said against tyranny, count it as said by me too. But when he urged us to hand power to the masses, he missed the best advice. Nothing is more senseless or more arrogant than a worthless mob. For men to escape the arrogance of a tyrant only to fall into the arrogance of an unruly people is not to be endured at all. When the tyrant does something, at least he knows what he is doing; the people cannot even know. How could anyone know who has never been taught anything good by others and has never seen anything good for himself, but rushes at things headlong and without sense, like a river in flood? Let the enemies of the Persians have rule by the people. But let us choose a group of the best men and give the power to them. We ourselves will be among them, and it is likely that the best men will make the best decisions."
82. That was the opinion Megabyzus gave. Third, Darius declared his opinion, saying: "I think that what Megabyzus said about the masses was right, but what he said about the rule of a few was not. Three things are set before us, and let us suppose each is the best of its kind: the best democracy, the best oligarchy, and the best monarchy. I say the last is far better than the others. Nothing better can be found than the rule of one man, if he is the best man. Using his own best judgment, he would guard the people without fault, and the plans he made against enemies would be best kept secret that way. In an oligarchy, many men work at doing good for the state, and so strong private hatreds often spring up among them. Each one wants to be the leader himself and to have his own way in the council, so they come to hate each other bitterly. From that come factions, from factions come murders, and from murders comes the rule of one man. And that shows how much the rule of one is the best. Then again, when the people rule, corruption is bound to arise. And when corruption arises in public life, the corrupt men do not come to hate each other; they become close friends, because those who are robbing the state put their heads together to do it in secret. This goes on until someone takes the lead of the people and puts a stop to such men. Because of that, this man is admired by the people, and being admired, he suddenly turns out to be a monarch. So he too proves that the rule of one is best. Finally, to sum it all up in a word: where did our freedom come from, and who gave it to us? Was it the people, or an oligarchy, or a monarch? My opinion, then, is that since one man set us free, we should keep that form of rule. And apart from that, we should not do away with our fathers' customs when they are good ones. That is not the better way."
83. These three opinions had been put forward, and the other four of the seven sided with the last. When Otanes, who wanted to give the Persians equality, saw that his view had lost, he spoke to the gathering: "My fellow conspirators, it is clear that one of us has to become king, whether he is chosen by lot, or by leaving the decision to the whole mass of the Persians and taking whoever they choose, or in some other way. Well, I will not compete with you. I want neither to rule nor to be ruled. I withdraw my claim to rule on this condition: that I shall not be ruled by any of you, neither I nor my descendants for all time to come." When he had said this, the six agreed to his terms. He did not compete with them but withdrew from the gathering. And to this day his house is the only free one among all the Persians. It obeys only as far as it chooses, though it does not break the laws of the Persians.
84. The rest of the seven went on discussing how to set up a king in the fairest way. They decided that if the kingdom went to any of the others among the seven, Otanes and his descendants after him should receive, as special gifts, a suit of Median clothes every year and all the presents the Persians count most valuable. They decided to give him these because he was the first to propose the business and the one who brought them together. These were the special gifts for Otanes. They also decided this for all of them in common: any one of the seven who wished could walk into the royal palace without anyone going in ahead to announce him, unless the king happened to be sleeping with his wife; and the king was not allowed to marry from any family except those of the men who had risen with him. About the kingdom itself they decided this: they would ride out on their horses into the outskirts of the city, and the man whose horse neighed first after sunrise would have the kingdom.
85. Now Darius had a clever groom named Oebares. When they had left their meeting, Darius said to him: "Oebares, we have decided this about the kingdom: the man whose horse neighs first after sunrise, when we are mounted, will be king. So if you have any cleverness in you, find a way for us to win this prize, and not someone else." Oebares answered: "Master, if it really depends on this whether you become king or not, take heart and don't worry about it. Nobody else will be king before you. I have just the charm for it." Then Darius said: "If you really have a trick like that, it's time to work it out, not to put it off, because our trial is tomorrow." When Oebares heard this, here is what he did. As night was coming on, he took one of the mares, the one Darius' stallion liked best, led her into the outskirts of the city, and tied her up. Then he brought Darius' stallion to her. For some time he led him around her, close enough to brush against the mare, and at last he let the stallion mount her.
86. At dawn the six rode up on their horses, as they had agreed. As they were riding through the outskirts of the city, they came near the spot where the mare had been tied up the night before, and Darius' horse ran up to the spot and neighed. Just as the horse did this, lightning flashed and thunder sounded out of a clear sky. These signs, coming to Darius on top of the neighing, made his claim complete, because they seemed to have happened by some design. The others leapt down from their horses and bowed down before Darius.
87. Some say this was Oebares' trick, but others tell it another way (the Persians tell the story both ways). In this version, he rubbed his hand on the mare's genitals and then kept his hand hidden inside his trousers. At sunrise, when they were about to let the horses go, Oebares pulled out his hand and held it to the nostrils of Darius' horse. The horse caught the smell, snorted, and neighed.
88. So Darius son of Hystaspes was proclaimed king. In Asia everyone except the Arabians was subject to him, since Cyrus had conquered them and Cambyses after him. The Arabians, though, were never subjects of the Persians. They had become their guest-friends when they let Cambyses pass through on his way to Egypt, because the Persians could not have invaded Egypt against the Arabians' will. Darius also made the most distinguished marriages a Persian could make. He married two daughters of Cyrus, Atossa and Artystone. Atossa had been the wife first of her brother Cambyses and after that of the Magus, while Artystone was a virgin. Besides them he married the daughter of Smerdis son of Cyrus, whose name was Parmys. And he also married the daughter of Otanes, the man who had found out the Magus. His power filled everything. First of all, he had a stone relief carved and set up. On it was the figure of a man on horseback, and he had it inscribed with these words: "Darius son of Hystaspes, by the excellence of his horse" (and here the horse's name was given) "and of his groom Oebares, won the kingdom of the Persians."
89. After he had done this in Persia, he set up twenty provinces, which the Persians themselves call satrapies. Once he had set up the provinces and put governors over them, he fixed the tribute each was to pay him, people by people. To each of the main peoples he joined its neighbors, or else, skipping over the nearest peoples, he assigned the more distant ones to various groups. He divided up the provinces and the yearly tribute as follows. Those who paid in silver were ordered to pay by the standard of the Babylonian talent, and those who paid in gold by the Euboean talent. The Babylonian talent is equal to seventy-eight Euboean minas, and since a mina is a sixtieth of a talent, that makes one Babylonian talent worth 1.3 Euboean talents. In the reigns of Cyrus and Cambyses nothing had been fixed about tribute; people used to bring gifts. Because Darius fixed the tribute, and did other things of the same kind, the Persians say that Darius was a shopkeeper, Cambyses a master, and Cyrus a father. Darius, because he ran all his affairs like a shopkeeper; Cambyses, because he was harsh and cared for no one; and Cyrus, because he was gentle and worked out every good thing for them.
90. From the Ionians, the Magnesians who live in Asia, the Aeolians, the Carians, the Lycians, the Milyans and the Pamphylians (he set one single sum as the tribute for all of these together) there came in four hundred talents of silver. He made this the first province. From the Mysians, the Lydians, the Lasonians, the Cabalians and the Hytennians there came in five hundred talents. This is the second province. From the Hellespontians who live on the right as you sail in, the Phrygians, the Thracians who live in Asia, the Paphlagonians, the Mariandyni and the Syrians, the tribute was three hundred and sixty talents. This is the third province. From the Cilicians there came in three hundred and sixty white horses, one for every day of the year, and five hundred talents of silver besides. Of this silver, one hundred and forty talents were spent on the cavalry that guarded the land of Cilicia, and the remaining three hundred and sixty came in to Darius year by year. This is the fourth province.
91. The province that begins at the city of Posideium, which Amphilochus son of Amphiaraus founded on the border between the Cilicians and the Syrians, runs all the way to Egypt. It does not include the territory of the Arabians, which was free from tribute. From it came three hundred and fifty talents. In this province are all of Phoenicia, the part of Syria called Palestine, and Cyprus. This is the fifth province. From Egypt and the Libyans who border on Egypt, and from Cyrene and Barca, which were assigned to the Egyptian province, there came in seven hundred talents. That is not counting the money from Lake Moeris, which came from its fish. Without counting that, I say, or the grain they also contributed by measure, there came in seven hundred talents. As for the grain, they supply 120,000 medimni of it (about 180,000 bushels) for the Persians stationed in the "White Fortress" at Memphis and for their foreign mercenaries. This is the sixth province. The Sattagydians, the Gandarians, the Dadicae and the Aparytae, grouped together, paid one hundred and seventy talents. This is the seventh province. From Susa and the rest of the land of the Cissians there came in three hundred. This is the eighth province.
92. From Babylon and the rest of Assyria there came in to him a thousand talents of silver and five hundred boys to be made eunuchs. This is the ninth province. From Ecbatana and the rest of Media, and from the Paricanians and the Orthocorybantians, came four hundred and fifty talents. This is the tenth province. The Caspians, the Pausicae, the Pantimathi and the Daritae paid together two hundred talents. This is the eleventh province. From the Bactrians as far as the Aegli the tribute was three hundred and sixty talents. This is the twelfth province.
93. From Pactyice, the Armenians, and the peoples bordering on them as far as the Black Sea came four hundred talents. This is the thirteenth province. From the Sagartians, the Sarangians, the Thamanaeans, the Utians, the Mycians, and the people who live on the islands of the Persian Gulf, where the king settles the people called the "Removed," those he has deported from their homes, from all these together came a tribute of six hundred talents. This is the fourteenth province. The Sacae and the Caspians paid two hundred and fifty talents. This is the fifteenth province. The Parthians, the Chorasmians, the Sogdians and the Areians paid three hundred talents. This is the sixteenth province.
94. The Paricanians and the Ethiopians of Asia paid four hundred talents. This is the seventeenth province. The Matienians, the Saspeirians and the Alarodians were assessed at two hundred talents. This is the eighteenth province. The Moschi, the Tibarenians, the Macrones, the Mossynoeci and the Mares were ordered to pay three hundred talents. This is the nineteenth province. The Indians are by far the most numerous people of any we know of, and they paid a tribute larger than all the rest: three hundred and sixty talents of gold dust. This is the twentieth province.
95. Now if we convert the Babylonian talents into Euboean ones, the silver comes to 9,880 talents. And if we count gold at thirteen times the value of silver, weight for weight, the gold dust comes to 4,680 Euboean talents. Add all these together, and the total collected every year in tribute for Darius comes to 14,560 Euboean talents. Sums smaller than these I leave out and do not mention.
96. This was the tribute that came in to Darius from Asia and from a small part of Libya. But as time went on, more tribute came in from the islands as well, and from the peoples of Europe as far as Thessaly. The king stores this tribute in his treasury in the following way. He melts it down and pours it into clay jars, and when the jars are full he breaks the clay away from the metal. Then, whenever he needs money, he cuts off as much as he needs at the time.
97. Those were the provinces and the tribute each was assessed. The land of Persia alone I have not listed as paying anything, because the Persians hold their land free of tribute. The following peoples had no tribute fixed for them, but brought gifts instead. First, the Ethiopians who border on Egypt, whom Cambyses conquered on his march against the Long-Lived Ethiopians, and those who live around sacred Nysa and hold festivals in honor of Dionysus. These Ethiopians and their neighbors use the same grain as the Callantian Indians, and they live in underground houses. These two peoples together brought every other year, and still bring down to my own time, two quarts of unrefined gold, two hundred logs of ebony, five Ethiopian boys, and twenty large elephant tusks. The Colchians also counted themselves among those who brought gifts, together with their neighbors as far as the Caucasus Mountains. (Persian rule reaches as far as these mountains, but the peoples who live beyond the Caucasus, toward the north wind, pay no attention to the Persians.) These peoples went on bringing the gifts they had fixed for themselves every four years, down to my own time: a hundred boys and a hundred girls. Finally, the Arabians brought a thousand talents' weight of frankincense every year (about 57,000 pounds). These were the gifts these peoples brought the king, apart from the tribute.
98. Now here is how the Indians get the great quantity of gold from which they bring the king the gold dust I mentioned. The part of India toward the sunrise is sand. Of all the peoples of Asia that we know of, or about whom anything certain is reported, the Indians live farthest to the east, toward the rising sun, since the country east of the Indians is desert because of the sand. There are many tribes of Indians, and they do not speak the same language. Some of them herd animals and some do not. Some live in the marshes of the river and eat raw fish, which they catch from boats made of cane, each boat made from a single joint of cane. These Indians wear clothes made of rushes. They gather and cut rushes from the river, weave them into a sort of mat, and wear it like a breastplate.
99. Other Indians, living to the east of these, are herders and eat raw meat. They are called the Padaei, and these are their customs. Whenever one of their tribe falls sick, woman or man, if it is a man, the men who are closest to him kill him. They say that the disease is wasting him and his flesh is being spoiled for them. All the while he flatly denies that he is sick, but they do not accept that, and after they have killed him they feast on his flesh. If it is a woman who falls sick, the women closest to her do the same to her as the men do in the other case. In fact, they even kill and feast on anyone who reaches old age. But very few of them ever get to be counted as old, because they kill everyone who falls sick before he reaches old age.
100. Other Indians, on the contrary, live like this. They kill no living thing, they sow no crops, and it is not their custom to have houses. They live on plants. They have a grain about the size of millet, in a husk, which grows wild from the ground. They gather it, boil it husk and all, and eat it. Whenever one of them falls sick, he goes off into the wilderness and lies there, and none of the others pays any attention, either to the dead or to the sick.
101. All these Indians I have spoken of have sex in the open, like cattle. They all have the same skin color, much like that of the Ethiopians. And the semen they ejaculate is not white like other peoples' but black, like their skin; the Ethiopians are the same in this respect. These tribes of Indians live beyond the reach of Persian power, toward the south wind, and they were never subjects of Darius.
102. Other Indians live on the borders of the city of Caspatyrus and the country of Pactyice, to the north of the rest of the Indians, and their way of life is much like that of the Bactrians. These are the most warlike of the Indians, and they are the ones who go on expeditions for the gold. In the parts where they live it is desert because of the sand. In this sandy desert there are ants smaller than dogs but bigger than foxes; in fact some of them, caught out there, are kept at the palace of the king of Persia. These ants make their homes underground and bring up the sand just the way the ants in Greece do, and they look very much like them too. And the sand they bring up has gold in it. To get this sand, the Indians set out into the desert, each man with three camels yoked together: a female in the middle and a male on each side, pulling like a trace horse. The man rides on the female himself, and he takes care that the one he yokes has been taken away from young she has just given birth to, the younger the better. Their female camels are as fast as horses, and they can carry much heavier loads besides.
103. I will not describe what the camel looks like, since the Greeks I am writing for already know what it looks like. But I will tell what is not commonly known about it. The camel has four thighs and four knees in its hind legs, and its genitals are between its hind legs, pointing back toward the tail.
104. So the Indians ride out for the gold in the way I have described, with their camels yoked like that. They time it so that they are carrying the gold off during the hottest part of the day, because the heat drives the ants underground. In those lands the sun is hottest in the morning, not at midday as it is elsewhere. From sunrise until the hour when the market closes, it gives off much more heat than the midday sun in Greece, so much that people there are said to soak themselves in water then. At midday the heat is about the same for the Indians as for everyone else. After midday their sun becomes like the morning sun elsewhere, and from then on, as it moves farther away, it gets cooler and cooler, until at sunset it is very cool indeed.
105. When the Indians reach the place, carrying bags, they fill them with the sand and ride back as fast as they can. The ants, the Persians say, catch the scent and at once start to chase them. This animal, they say, is faster than any other creature, so that if the Indians did not get a head start while the ants were gathering, not one of them would get away. The male camels are slower runners than the females, so if they start to drag, they are cut loose from the female's side, first one and then the other. The females, though, remembering the young they left behind, do not slacken at all. That is how the Indians get most of their gold, the Persians say. There is other gold in their country too, which they mine, but less of it.
106. It seems that the farthest parts of the inhabited world have been given the finest things, just as Greece has been given far the best-balanced climate. First, India, as I said a little earlier, is the farthest of the inhabited lands toward the east. In that land the animals, both the birds and the four-footed beasts, are much bigger than anywhere else, except for the horses, which are outdone by the Median horses called Nesaean, the famous breed of Media. There is also gold in abundance there, some of it mined, some carried down by rivers, and some stolen in the way I just explained. And there the trees that grow wild bear wool that is finer and better than sheep's wool, and the Indians wear clothes made from these trees.
107. Then again, Arabia is the farthest of the inhabited lands toward the south. It is the only land in the world where frankincense, myrrh, cassia, cinnamon and gum ladanum grow. All of these except myrrh the Arabians get only with great difficulty. They gather frankincense by burning storax, a fragrant gum, which the Phoenicians bring to Greece. They burn this to make smoke, and so they get the frankincense. The trees that bear frankincense are guarded by winged snakes, small and of many colors, great numbers of them around each tree. These are the same kind of snakes that try to invade Egypt. Nothing will drive them away from the trees except the smoke of storax.
108. The Arabians also say that the whole world would be full of these snakes by now if the same thing did not happen to them that I know happens to vipers. It seems that the forethought of the divine, wise as one would expect it to be, has made all the timid animals that are good to eat breed abundantly, so that they will not all be eaten up and die out, while it has made the fierce and harmful ones have few young. For example, because the hare is hunted by every beast and bird, and by man as well, it breeds very abundantly. It is the only animal that becomes pregnant again before its earlier young are born. It carries in its womb some young that already have fur, others still bare, and while one is just being formed in the womb, another is being conceived. That is how it is with the hare. The lioness, on the other hand, the strongest and boldest of creatures, gives birth to one cub only once in her life, because when she gives birth she casts out her womb along with her cub. The reason is this. When the cub inside its mother begins to move, its claws, which are far sharper than any other animal's, tear the womb, and the bigger it grows, the more it scratches through. At last, when the birth is near, there is nothing of the womb left whole at all.
109. In the same way, if vipers and the winged snakes of Arabia were born in the ordinary course of nature, people could not live on the earth. But as it is, when they mate and the male is in the act and releasing his seed, the female seizes him by the neck, fastens on, and does not let go until she has bitten clean through it. So the male dies in the way I said. But the female pays the price for the male in this way: while the young are still inside her, they avenge their father by eating through their mother, and once they have eaten through her belly, they make their way out. Other snakes, which do no harm to people, lay eggs and hatch a great many young from them. Now vipers are found all over the earth. But the winged snakes are found in great numbers together in Arabia and in no other land, and that is why they seem so numerous.
110. That, then, is how the Arabians get their frankincense, and here is how they get cassia, a spice bark much like cinnamon. They wrap their whole body and face, all but their eyes, in cowhide and other skins, and then they go out for the cassia. It grows in a shallow lake. Around the lake and in it there live, it seems, winged creatures very like bats, which screech horribly and fight fiercely. The men have to keep these away from their eyes while they cut the cassia.
111. Cinnamon they gather in an even more remarkable way. Where it grows and what land produces it, they cannot say, except that some say, and it is a likely story, that it grows in the regions where Dionysus was brought up. They say that large birds carry these dry sticks, the ones we have learned from the Phoenicians to call cinnamon, up to nests made of mud and stuck on the sheer faces of mountains, which no one can find any way to climb. So the Arabians have worked out this trick. They cut up the oxen and donkeys and other pack animals that die into pieces as large as they can handle, carry them to these places, and lay them down not far from the nests. Then they move off a good distance. The birds fly down and carry the pieces of the pack animals up to their nests. The nests cannot bear the weight, and they break and fall to the ground. Then the men come up and collect the cinnamon. That is how cinnamon is gathered, and from this people it reaches the other countries of the world.
112. Gum ladanum, which the Arabians call ladanon, comes about in a still stranger way. Though it is the sweetest-smelling of all things, it comes from the worst-smelling thing there is: it is found in the beards of billy goats, forming there like resin on wood. It is used in making many perfumes, and the Arabians burn it as incense more than anything else.
113. That is enough about spices. A wonderfully sweet scent of them blows from the land of Arabia. The Arabians also have two kinds of sheep worth marveling at, which are found in no other land. One kind has a long tail, no less than four and a half feet long. If the sheep were left to drag their tails behind them, they would get sores from the tails rubbing against the ground. But as it is, every shepherd there knows enough carpentry to make little carts, which they fasten under the tails, each animal's tail tied to a little cart of its own. The other kind of sheep has a broad tail, as much as a foot and a half across.
114. As you go on past the south and toward the setting sun, the land of Ethiopia is the farthest of all inhabited lands in that direction. It produces gold in abundance, huge elephants, trees of every kind growing wild, and ebony; and its men are the tallest of all men, the most beautiful, and the longest-lived.
115. These, then, are the extremities of the world in Asia and in Libya. But about the extremities of Europe toward the west I cannot speak with certainty. For one thing, I do not accept the story that there is a river which the non-Greeks call the Eridanus, flowing into the sea that lies toward the north wind, and that amber comes from there. Nor do I know for a fact that there are "Tin Islands," from which our tin comes. In the first place, the name Eridanus itself shows that it is Greek, not a word from any foreign language, and that some poet made it up. In the second place, though I have taken pains to find out, I have not been able to hear from anyone who has seen it with his own eyes that there is a sea on the far side of Europe. However that may be, tin and amber certainly do come to us from the far edge of Europe.
116. Then again, in the north of Europe there is clearly far more gold than in any other land. How it is got, here again I cannot say for certain; but it is said that the Arimaspians, a race of one-eyed men, steal it from the griffins. I do not believe this story either, that nature produces one-eyed men who are in every other way like other men. Still, it does seem that the extremities, which surround the rest of the world on every side and enclose it in the middle, have the things we think the most beautiful and the most rare.
117. Now there is a plain in Asia shut in by mountains on every side, and through the mountains there are five gorges. This plain once belonged to the Chorasmians, and it lies on the borders of the Chorasmians themselves, the Hyrcanians, the Parthians, the Sarangians, and the Thamanaeans; but ever since the Persians came to power it has belonged to the king. Out of this ring of mountains flows a great river, and its name is the Aces. In the old days it watered the lands of the peoples I have named: it was divided into five streams, and each stream was led through its own gorge in the mountains to its own people. But since they came under the Persians, this is what has happened to them. The king walled up the gorges in the mountains and set gates in each one. So the water was shut off from its way out, and the plain inside the mountains has become a lake, because the river runs into it and has no way out anywhere.
So the people who used to depend on the water can no longer use it, and they are in great trouble. In winter, it is true, the sky rains on them as it does on other people, but in summer, when they sow their millet and sesame, they need the river. So when no water is given to them, they go to Persia, men and wives together, and they stand at the gates of the king's palace crying and wailing. Then the king orders that the gates leading to the land of those who need it most be opened. When their land has drunk its fill, those gates are shut, and he orders the gates opened for others, the ones of the rest who need it most. And, as I have heard, he charges them large sums of money for opening the gates, on top of their regular tribute.
118. So much for these matters. Now of the seven men who had risen against the Magus, one, Intaphrenes, was put to death soon after their uprising, for an outrage which I will now relate. He wanted to go into the palace and speak with the king. The rule was, in fact, that those who had risen against the Magus could go in to the king without being announced, unless the king happened to be in bed with a woman. So Intaphrenes did not think anyone needed to announce him; as one of the seven, he meant to walk in. But the gatekeeper and the royal messenger tried to stop him, saying that the king was in bed with a woman. Intaphrenes thought they were lying. He drew his sword and cut off their ears and noses, threaded them on his horse's bridle, tied the bridle around their necks, and let them go.
119. They then showed themselves to the king and told him why this had been done to them. Darius was afraid that the six had done it by common agreement, so he sent for each of them separately and sounded him out, to see whether he approved of what had been done. When he was fully satisfied that Intaphrenes had not acted together with them, he arrested Intaphrenes himself, with his sons and all his relatives, since he strongly suspected that Intaphrenes and his family were plotting a revolt against him. Having seized them, he put them in chains, ready for execution.
Then Intaphrenes' wife began to come to the doors of the palace, weeping and lamenting. She kept on doing this, day after day, until she made Darius pity her. So he sent a messenger to say to her: "Woman, King Darius grants you the life of one of your relatives who are in chains, whichever one of them all you choose." She thought it over and answered: "If the king really grants me the life of one, then out of them all I choose my brother." When Darius heard this he was amazed at her answer, and he sent to ask her: "Woman, the king asks you what you were thinking of, to leave your husband and your children to die and choose your brother to live, when he is surely less close to you in blood than your children, and less dear to you than your husband." She answered: "My king, if heaven willed it, I could have another husband and other children, if I lost these. But I could never have another brother, since my father and my mother are no longer alive. That is what I was thinking when I said it." Darius thought the woman had spoken well. He set free the man whose life she had asked for, and the eldest of her sons as well, because he was pleased with her; but all the others he put to death. So one of the seven had died almost at once, in the way I have told.
120. Now at about the time of Cambyses' illness, this is what happened. There was a Persian named Oroetes whom Cyrus had made governor of the province of Sardis. This man set his heart on an unholy deed. He had never suffered any harm from Polycrates of Samos, never heard an offensive word from him, and had never even seen him before; yet he wanted to seize him and put him to death. Most of those who tell the story give this reason. Oroetes and another Persian named Mitrobates, the governor of the province of Dascylium, were sitting at the king's door, and they went from talking to quarreling. As they argued over which of them was the better man, Mitrobates taunted Oroetes: "Do you call yourself a man? You never won Samos for the king, though it lies right next to your province, and it is so easy to conquer that one of the islanders rose up against the government with fifteen hoplites, heavy-armed foot soldiers, took the island, and is its tyrant now." Some say that when Oroetes heard this, the taunt stung him, and he conceived a desire, not so much to take revenge on the man who said it, as to destroy Polycrates at any cost, since Polycrates was the reason he had been insulted.
121. A smaller number of those who tell the story say this instead. Oroetes sent a herald to Samos to ask for something or other (what it was is not recorded). Polycrates happened to be lying on a couch in the men's hall of his palace, and Anacreon of Teos, the poet, was there with him. And somehow, whether on purpose, because he thought little of Oroetes' affairs, or whether it just happened by chance, the envoy from Oroetes came in and spoke to him, and Polycrates, who happened to be turned toward the wall, did not turn around or give him any answer at all.
122. Those are the two different accounts of the cause of Polycrates' death, and you may believe whichever you like. Oroetes, at any rate, who lived at the Magnesia that stands on the river Maeander, sent Myrsus son of Gyges, a Lydian, to Samos with a message, because he had seen what Polycrates was aiming at. For Polycrates was the first of the Greeks we know of who set his mind on ruling the sea, apart from Minos of Cnossus and anyone else who may have ruled the sea before him. Of what we call the human race, Polycrates was the first; and he had high hopes of becoming ruler of Ionia and the islands.
Oroetes, then, seeing that this was his plan, sent him this message: "Oroetes says this to Polycrates. I hear that you are making plans to gain great power, and that you do not have the money to match your ambitions. Now if you do as I say, you will do well for yourself, and you will save me from ruin as well. For King Cambyses is planning to have me killed; this has been reported to me so plainly that I cannot doubt it. So take me out of danger, and my money with me. Keep part of the money yourself and let me keep the rest, and then, as far as money can do it, you will be ruler of all Greece. And if you do not believe what I say about the money, send whoever you trust most, and I will show it to him."
123. When Polycrates heard this he was delighted and inclined to agree. Since he had, it seems, a great desire for money, he first sent Maeandrius son of Maeandrius, a Samian who was his secretary, to look at it. This was the same man who not long afterward dedicated to the temple of Hera all the furnishings of the men's hall in Polycrates' palace, furnishings well worth seeing. When Oroetes heard that the inspector was expected soon, this is what he did. He filled eight chests with stones, all but a shallow layer at the very top of each, and laid gold on top of the stones. Then he tied up the chests and kept them ready. So Maeandrius came and looked at them and brought back his report to Polycrates.
124. Polycrates then got ready to go there himself. His soothsayers and his friends tried hard to talk him out of it, and besides, his daughter had seen a vision in her sleep. It seemed to her that her father was lifted high up in the air, and that Zeus was washing him and the Sun was anointing him. After she saw this vision, she tried every way she could to keep Polycrates from leaving home to go to Oroetes. And as he was walking to his fifty-oared galley, she went along beside him calling out words of ill omen. He threatened her that if he came back safe she would stay unmarried for a long time. But she prayed that it would turn out so, for she said she would rather stay unmarried a long time than lose her father.
125. But Polycrates ignored every warning and sailed off to Oroetes. He took many of his friends with him, and among them Democedes son of Calliphon, of Croton, a physician who practiced his art better than any other man of his time. When he reached Magnesia, Polycrates was put to a miserable death, unworthy of himself and of his great ambitions. For apart from the men who became tyrants of Syracuse, not one of the other Greek tyrants deserves to be compared with Polycrates for magnificence. Oroetes killed him in a way not fit to be told, and then he impaled his body. Of the men who had come with him, he let go all who were Samians, telling them they should be grateful to him for their freedom; but all the others in Polycrates' company, the foreign allies and the servants, he counted as slaves and kept them. And so Polycrates, hanging there, fulfilled his daughter's vision completely: he was washed by Zeus whenever it rained, and he was anointed by the Sun as the moisture ran out of his own body.
126. That was the end of Polycrates' great good fortune, just as Amasis, king of Egypt, had foretold to him. But not long afterward vengeance for Polycrates' murder caught up with Oroetes in his turn. After Cambyses' death, during the reign of the Magi, Oroetes stayed at Sardis and did nothing to help the Persians, when the Medes had taken their empire from them. Instead, in this time of upheaval, he killed Mitrobates, the governor of Dascylium, who had thrown Polycrates in his face as a reproach, and he also killed Cranaspes son of Mitrobates, both of them men of standing among the Persians. He committed many other outrages too. Once, when a royal messenger had come to him from Darius with a message he did not like, he had men lie in wait for the messenger on his way back and kill him; and after he was dead he made away with the bodies of both the man and his horse.
127. So when Darius had become king, he wanted to punish Oroetes for all his crimes, and above all for the murder of Mitrobates and his son. But he did not think it wise to act openly and send an army against him, since his own affairs were still unsettled and he had only just come to the throne, and he heard that Oroetes was very strong. Oroetes had a bodyguard of a thousand Persian spearmen, and he held the provinces of Phrygia, Lydia and Ionia. So Darius worked out a plan. He called together the most distinguished of the Persians and said to them: "Persians, which of you will do this job for me by cleverness, not by force or by making a commotion? Where cleverness is needed, force is no use. Which of you, I say, will either bring Oroetes to me alive or kill him? He has never done the Persians any good, and he has done them great harm. First he destroyed two of us, Mitrobates and his son. Then he kills the men I send to summon him, with an arrogance no one can tolerate. So before he does the Persians any more harm, we must stop him with his death."
128. That was Darius' question, and thirty men offered to do it, each of them wanting the job for himself. Darius stopped their arguing and told them to draw lots. When they drew, Bagaeus son of Artontes won the lot out of them all. Having won it, this is what Bagaeus did. He wrote many letters on all sorts of business, sealed them with Darius' seal, and took them with him to Sardis. When he got there and came before Oroetes, he took the covers off the letters one by one and handed them to the royal secretary to read aloud (every provincial governor has a royal secretary). Bagaeus handed over the letters to test the spearmen of the guard, to see whether they would accept a call to turn against Oroetes. He saw that they showed great respect for the letters, and even more for what was read out of them. So he handed over another letter, which said: "Persians, King Darius forbids you to serve as Oroetes' bodyguard." When they heard this they lowered their spears to him. Seeing that they obeyed the letter this far, Bagaeus took courage and gave the last of the letters to the secretary, and in it was written: "King Darius commands the Persians at Sardis to kill Oroetes." When the spearmen of the guard heard this, they drew their swords and killed him on the spot. So vengeance for the murder of Polycrates of Samos caught up with Oroetes.
129. When Oroetes' wealth had arrived, or been carried, up to Susa, it happened not long afterward that King Darius, out hunting wild animals, twisted his foot as he jumped down from his horse. It was twisted, it seems, quite badly, for the ball of his ankle joint was dislocated. Now he had long kept around him the Egyptians who were considered the best in the art of medicine, and he used their help now. But they twisted and forced the foot and only made the injury worse and worse. For seven days and seven nights Darius could not sleep for the pain. At last, on the eighth day, when he was in a bad way, someone who had heard talk at Sardis of the skill of Democedes of Croton told Darius about him, and Darius ordered them to bring him in at once. They found him somewhere among Oroetes' slaves, overlooked, and they brought him out before everyone, dragging his chains and dressed in rags.
130. When he was standing in front of them all, Darius asked him whether he knew the art of medicine. But he would not admit it, because he was afraid that if he showed what he really was, he would lose all hope of ever returning to Greece. Darius could see clearly that he did know the art and was trying to trick him, and he ordered the men who had brought him to fetch whips and goads. At that he spoke up, saying that he did not know it well, but that he had spent time with a physician and had some poor knowledge of the art. After this, when Darius had put himself in his hands, Democedes used Greek remedies and applied gentle treatment after the earlier rough methods. He got the king to sleep, and in a short time he made him completely well, though Darius had never expected to have a sound foot again.
After this Darius gave him a present of two pairs of golden chains. Democedes asked him whether he was deliberately doubling his misery as a reward for making him well. Darius was pleased with this remark and sent him to visit his wives. The eunuchs who took him in told the women that this was the man who had given the king back his life. Then each of them dipped a bowl into a chest of gold and gave it to Democedes, a gift so lavish that his servant, whose name was Sciton, followed along picking up the coins that fell from the bowls, and collected a very large sum of gold for himself.
131. This Democedes came from Croton, and this is how he had come to be with Polycrates. At Croton he was always quarreling with his father, who had a harsh temper, and when he could not stand him any longer, he left and went to Aegina. He settled there, and in his first year he outdid all the other physicians, though he had no equipment and none of the instruments used in the art. In his second year the city of Aegina hired him for a fee of one talent; in the third the Athenians hired him for a hundred pounds of silver; and in the fourth Polycrates hired him for two talents. That is how he came to Samos. And it was because of this man, more than anything else, that the physicians of Croton became famous. For this was the time when the physicians of Croton began to be spoken of as the best in Greece, with those of Cyrene in second place. At about this same time the Argives too had the reputation of being the best musicians in Greece.
132. So now, having cured King Darius, Democedes had a very large house in Susa and had been made one of the king's table companions. He had everything except the one thing he wanted: to go home to Greece. To begin with, when the Egyptian physicians who had tried to cure the king before him were about to be impaled for being outdone by a Greek physician, he asked the king to spare their lives and saved them from death. Second, he rescued a soothsayer from Elis who had come with Polycrates and had been overlooked among the slaves. In short, Democedes stood very high in the king's favor.
133. Not long after this, something else happened. Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus and wife of Darius, had a growth on her breast, which later broke open and kept spreading. As long as it was small, she hid it and told no one, because she was ashamed. But later, when it had become serious, she sent for Democedes and showed it to him. He said that he would cure her, and he made her swear that in return she would do for him whatever he asked her; and he said he would ask nothing shameful.
134. So after he had treated her and made her well, Atossa, coached by Democedes, said something like this to Darius in their bedroom: "My king, you have such great power, and yet you sit still and win no new nation or power for the Persians. But it is only right for a man who is young and master of great wealth to be seen doing some great deed, so that the Persians may know for sure that it is a real man who rules them. Doing this will help you in two ways: the Persians will know that their ruler is a man, and they will be worn down by war and have no time to plot against you. Now is the time when you could do some great deed, while you are still young. For as the body grows older the spirit grows old along with it, and goes dull for any kind of action."
That was what she said, as she had been told, and he answered her: "Woman, you have said all the things I already have in mind to do. I have decided to build a bridge joining this continent to the other and to march against the Scythians, and these plans will be carried out before long." Then Atossa said: "Listen, don't go against the Scythians first. They will be yours whenever you want them. Instead, please, march against Greece. I have heard about the women there, and I want Spartan women for my maids, and Argive, Athenian and Corinthian ones. And you have the man best fitted of all men to show you everything about Greece and be your guide: the man who cured your foot." Darius answered: "Woman, since you think we should try Greece first, I think it is better to send some Persians there first, together with the man you speak of, to scout it out. When they have learned and seen everything, they can report it all to us in detail, and then I will go and attack them knowing everything."
135. So he said, and he made his words into deeds at once. As soon as day dawned, he summoned fifteen Persians of high standing and ordered them to travel along the coasts of Greece with Democedes, and to make sure that Democedes did not escape from them, but to bring him back at all costs. Having given them these orders, he next summoned Democedes himself and asked him to guide the Persians through all of Greece and show it to them, and then come back. He told him to take all his household goods and carry them as presents to his father and brothers, and said he would give him many times as much in their place. On top of that, he said, he would add to the presents a merchant ship loaded with all kinds of goods, which would sail with him. In my opinion Darius made him these promises with no trick in mind. But Democedes was afraid that Darius was testing him, and he was in no hurry to accept everything offered. He said he would leave his own things where they were, so that he would have them when he came back; but he did accept the merchant ship Darius promised him for the presents to his brothers. Having given these orders to him as well, Darius sent them off to the coast.
136. So they went down to Phoenicia, to the city of Sidon, and at once manned two triremes and also loaded a large cargo ship with all kinds of goods. When they had everything ready they sailed for Greece. They put in at various places along its coasts, looked them over, and wrote down descriptions, until, when they had seen most of the famous places, they came to Taras in Italy. There Aristophilides, the king of Taras, as a favor to Democedes, unfastened and removed the steering oars of the Persian ships, and also locked the Persians up in prison, on the grounds, he said, that they had come as spies. While this was being done to them, Democedes got away and reached Croton. And when he had reached his own home city, Aristophilides set the Persians free and gave them back the parts of their ships he had taken.
137. Then the Persians sailed from there in pursuit of Democedes and reached Croton. They found him in the marketplace and seized him. Some of the men of Croton, afraid of Persian power, were ready to hand him over; but others grabbed hold of him and beat the Persians with their staffs. The Persians pleaded with them like this: "Men of Croton, be careful what you are doing. You are rescuing a runaway slave of King Darius. How do you think King Darius will take an insult like this? And how will it turn out well for you if you take him away from us? What city do you think we will march against before this one, and what city will we try to enslave first?" But for all they said, they did not persuade the men of Croton. Democedes was taken away from them, and so was the cargo ship they had brought with them, and they set sail back to Asia. Without their guide, they made no further attempt to visit or learn about any more of Greece. But as they were putting out to sea, Democedes gave them this message, telling them to say to Darius that Democedes was engaged to the daughter of Milo. For the wrestler Milo had a great name at the king's court. And I suppose that Democedes pushed hard for this marriage, spending a great deal of money on it, so that Darius would see that he was a man of honor in his own country too.
138. After the Persians put out from Croton, they were shipwrecked in Iapygia, the heel of Italy. While they were held there as slaves, Gillus, an exile from Taras, rescued them and brought them back to King Darius. In return Darius offered to give him whatever he wanted. Gillus chose to be allowed to return to Taras, and first he told the story of his misfortune. But so as not to throw all of Greece into turmoil, as would happen if a great armada sailed to invade Italy on his account, he said it would be enough for him if the men of Cnidus alone brought him back, and no one else. He thought that since they were friends of the people of Taras, they could most easily arrange his return from exile. Darius promised and kept his promise: he sent a message to Cnidus ordering them to bring Gillus back to Taras. The men of Cnidus obeyed Darius, but they could not persuade the people of Taras, and they were not strong enough to use force. That is how these things turned out. These were the first Persians who came from Asia to Greece, and they were sent as spies for the reason I have told.
139. After this, King Darius took Samos, the first of all the cities he captured, Greek or non-Greek, and this is how it came about. When Cambyses son of Cyrus was marching on Egypt, a great many Greeks came to Egypt. Some, as you would expect, joined the campaign to make a profit, and some came just to see the country. Among them was Syloson son of Aeaces, the brother of Polycrates, who was then in exile from Samos. A stroke of good luck came Syloson's way, and it was this. He had put on a flame-red cloak and was walking around the marketplace in Memphis. Darius, who was then one of Cambyses' spearmen and not yet a man of any great importance, saw him and wanted the cloak. He went up to him and offered to buy it. Syloson saw how badly Darius wanted the cloak, and by some divine prompting he said: "I won't sell this for any price. But I'll give it to you for nothing, if it seems it simply has to be yours." Darius accepted and took the cloak from him.
140. Syloson assumed without a doubt that he had simply lost it through his own good nature. But in time Cambyses died, the seven Persians rose up against the Magus, and out of the seven it was Darius who won the throne. Then Syloson heard that the kingdom had gone to the very man who had once asked him for his cloak in Egypt, and to whom he had given it. So he went up to Susa, sat down at the entrance to the king's palace, and announced that he was a benefactor of Darius. The doorkeeper heard this and reported it to the king. Darius was amazed and said to him: "What Greek is my benefactor, that I should owe him gratitude? I have held the throne only a short time, and hardly a single Greek has come up to our court yet. I can almost say I owe nothing to any Greek. Still, bring him in, so that I can find out what he means by this." So the doorkeeper brought Syloson in. When he stood before the king, the interpreters asked him who he was and what he had done to call himself the king's benefactor. Syloson told the whole story of the cloak and how he was the man who had given it. Darius answered: "Most generous of men, you are the one who gave me a gift when I had no power at all. It may have been a small gift, but the kindness counts with me as much as if someone gave me something great today. So in return I will give you gold and silver in abundance, so that you will never be sorry you did a service for Darius son of Hystaspes." Syloson replied: "My king, don't give me gold or silver. Win back my homeland, Samos, and give it to me. Now that my brother Polycrates has been killed by Oroetes, it is in the hands of our slave. Give it to me without bloodshed and without selling anyone into slavery."
141. When Darius heard this, he made ready to send an expedition under the command of Otanes, who had been one of the seven, with orders to carry out everything Syloson had asked. So Otanes went down to the coast and began preparing the expedition.
142. Now Samos was being ruled by Maeandrius son of Maeandrius, who had been left in charge of the government by Polycrates. He wanted to be the most just of men, but he did not manage it. When the news of Polycrates' death reached him, this is what he did. First he set up an altar to Zeus the Liberator and marked out a sacred precinct around it, the one that is still there today in the suburb outside the city. After he had done this, he called an assembly of all the citizens and said: "As you know as well as I do, the scepter of Polycrates and all his power have been entrusted to me, and right now I could be your ruler. But what I blame in my neighbor I will not do myself, as far as I can help it. I never approved of Polycrates being master over men who were just as good as he was, and I don't approve of anyone else who does that sort of thing. Well, Polycrates has met his destiny. I now hand the power over to the people, and I proclaim equality for you all. I do think it right, though, that I should be granted a few privileges: six talents should be taken out of Polycrates' wealth and given to me as a special gift, and on top of that I choose for myself, and for my descendants after me, the priesthood of Zeus the Liberator, since I founded his temple myself, and I am giving you your freedom." Those were the offers he made to the Samians. But one of them stood up and said: "No, you're not fit to rule us anyway. You're low-born, and a nasty piece of work besides. You'd do better to think about how you're going to account for the money you've been handling."
143. The man who said this was a citizen of good standing named Telesarchus. Maeandrius realized that if he gave up the power, someone else would set himself up as tyrant in his place, so he dropped all thought of giving it up. He withdrew into the citadel and sent for the leading men one at a time, pretending he was going to give an account of the money. Instead he seized them and put them in chains. So these men were in chains. But after this Maeandrius fell sick, and his brother, whose name was Lycaretus, expected him to die. To make it easier to take power over Samos himself, he put all the prisoners to death. And all this happened, it seems, because the Samians did not choose to be free.
144. So when the Persians arrived at Samos bringing Syloson home from exile, no one lifted a hand against them. In fact Maeandrius and his party said they were ready to leave the island under a truce. Otanes agreed to these terms and made a treaty, and the highest-ranking Persians had chairs set out for them in front of the citadel and were sitting there.
145. Now the tyrant Maeandrius had a brother who was somewhat out of his mind, named Charilaus. For some offense he had committed, he had been shut up in an underground dungeon. At the time I am describing, he heard what was going on, and when he put his head out of the dungeon and saw the Persians sitting there in peace, he began to shout that he wanted to speak with Maeandrius. Maeandrius heard his voice and ordered him to be released and brought before him. As soon as Charilaus was brought in, he began to abuse and insult his brother, trying to talk him into attacking the Persians. This is what he said: "You lowest of men! You put me in chains and thought me fit for an underground dungeon, me, your own brother, who had done nothing to deserve chains. And now you see the Persians throwing you out of your country and making you homeless, and you don't dare take any revenge, even though they are so easy to beat? Well, if you really are afraid of them, give me your mercenaries, and I'll make them pay for coming here. As for you, I'm willing to let you leave the island."
146. That is what Charilaus said, and Maeandrius took him up on it. In my opinion this was not because he had sunk so far into folly as to think his own forces could beat the king's. It was rather that he begrudged Syloson getting the city from him without any trouble and with no damage done to it. So he wanted to provoke the Persians to anger and leave Samos as weak as possible before he handed it over. He was well aware that once the Persians had suffered harm, they would probably be just as bitter against the Samians as against the men who had done the harm. And he knew he had a safe way off the island whenever he wanted it, because he had had a secret tunnel dug from the citadel down to the sea. So Maeandrius himself sailed away from Samos. Charilaus armed all the mercenaries, threw open the gates, and sent them out against the Persians. The Persians were expecting nothing of the kind; they thought everything had been settled. The mercenaries fell on them and began killing the Persians of the highest rank, the ones who had been carried there in their chairs. While they were busy with this, the rest of the Persian force came to the rescue, and the mercenaries were driven back and forced to retreat into the citadel.
147. Then Otanes, the Persian commander, seeing that the Persians had suffered heavy losses, deliberately forgot the orders Darius had given him when he sent him out: not to kill a single Samian or sell any into slavery, but to hand the island over to Syloson without any harm done to it. He deliberately forgot those orders and told his army to kill everyone they caught, man or boy, without distinction. So while part of the army besieged the citadel, the rest killed everyone who crossed their path, in a sanctuary or out of one, it made no difference.
148. Meanwhile Maeandrius had escaped from Samos and was sailing to Sparta. When he got there, he had the things he had brought away with him carried up to the city, and this is what he did. He would set out his silver and gold cups, and while the servants were polishing them, he would be talking with Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides, who was then king of Sparta, and walk him along to his house. When Cleomenes saw the cups he was struck with wonder at them, and Maeandrius would tell him to take away as many as he liked. Maeandrius said this two or three times. But here Cleomenes proved himself the most honest of men. Not only did he refuse to take what was offered, but he saw that Maeandrius would give presents to other citizens and so win support for himself. So he went to the ephors and told them it would be better for Sparta if this foreigner from Samos left the Peloponnese, in case he persuaded Cleomenes himself or some other Spartan to do something base. The ephors took his advice and banished Maeandrius by public proclamation.
149. As for Samos, the Persians swept it clean of its people and handed it over to Syloson empty of men. Later, though, the commander Otanes even helped to settle people there again. He was moved to do it by a vision he had in a dream and by a disease that struck him, a disease of the genitals.
150. While the fleet had gone against Samos in this way, the Babylonians revolted, and they were extremely well prepared for it. All through the reign of the Magus and the uprising of the seven, through all that time and the confusion that came with it, they had been getting ready to stand a siege, and somehow nobody noticed what they were doing. When they revolted openly, this is what they did. First they set aside their mothers. Then each man also set aside for himself one woman of his own household, whichever one he chose. All the rest of the women they gathered together and strangled. Each man kept the one woman I mentioned to bake his bread, and they strangled the rest so that they would not eat up the food supplies.
151. When Darius heard this, he gathered all his forces and marched against them. He brought his army up to Babylon and began to besiege the city. But the Babylonians did not care in the least about the siege. They would climb up onto the battlements of the wall and jeer at Darius and his army with gestures and with words, and one of them said this: "Why are you sitting here, Persians, instead of going away? You'll take us only when mules have foals." The Babylonian who said this did not imagine that a mule would ever have a foal.
152. So when a year and seven months had gone by, Darius and his whole army with him began to grow frustrated, because they could not conquer the Babylonians. Darius had tried every trick and every possible means against them, and even so he could not take the city. Among his other schemes he had tried the very one by which Cyrus had taken it, but the Babylonians were terribly watchful, and he could not conquer them.
153. Then in the twentieth month a portent came to Zopyrus, the son of the Megabyzus who had been one of the seven men who killed the Magus. To this Zopyrus son of Megabyzus, I say, a portent happened: one of the mules that carried his supplies had a foal. When this was reported to him, he did not believe it, and he went and saw the foal for himself. Then he ordered the men who had seen it not to tell anyone what had happened, and he thought over what to do. He kept in mind the words of the Babylonian who had said at the start that the wall would be taken when mules had foals. With this omen in mind, it seemed to Zopyrus that Babylon could now be taken. For he believed that it was by the will of heaven both that the man had said those words and that his own mule had foaled.
154. Since it seemed to him that Babylon was now fated to fall, he went to Darius and asked him whether he thought conquering Babylon was a matter of very great importance. When Darius answered that he thought it of great importance indeed, Zopyrus considered again how he could be the one to take it, and how the achievement could be his own; for among the Persians good service to the king is honored very highly. He decided that the only way he could bring the city down was to mutilate himself and desert to the Babylonians. So, holding himself cheap, he mutilated his own body past all cure. He cut off his nose and his ears, shaved his hair in a disgraceful way, whipped himself, and in that state went before Darius.
155. Darius was deeply distressed to see the most distinguished man in his service mutilated like this. He leaped up from his seat, cried out, and asked who had done this to him, and for what. Zopyrus answered: "There is no man except you who has power enough to put me in this state. No stranger did this, my king. I did it to myself, because I could not bear that the Assyrians should laugh at the Persians." Darius replied: "You most reckless of men, you have put the fairest name on the foulest deed when you say you have maimed yourself beyond cure because of the people we are besieging. How, you fool, will the enemy surrender to us any faster because you have mutilated yourself? You must have gone out of your mind to ruin yourself like this." Zopyrus said: "If I had told you what I was about to do, you would not have let me do it. So I did it on my own. Now, unless you fail to do your part, we will take Babylon. I'm going straight to the wall as a deserter. I'll tell them that you did this to me. And I think that once I have convinced them, I will be given command of part of their forces. On the tenth day after I get inside the wall, take a thousand men from the troops whose loss you won't mind, and station them by the gate called the gate of Semiramis. After that, on the seventh day after the tenth, station two thousand more, please, by the gate called the gate of the Ninevites. After that seventh day, let twenty days go by, and then bring four thousand others and station them by the gate called the gate of the Chaldeans. Neither the first groups nor this one should have any weapons to defend themselves except daggers; let them have those. Then, right after the twentieth day, order the rest of the army to attack the wall all the way around, and post the Persians, please, by the gates called the gate of Belus and the gate of Cissia. For I think that once I have done great deeds for them, the Babylonians will trust me with everything else, including the keys that draw the bolts of the gates. After that, it will be up to me and the Persians to do what has to be done."
156. With these instructions given, he set off for the gate of the city, turning to look behind him as he went, as if he really were a deserter. The men posted on that part of the wall saw him from the towers and ran down. They opened one leaf of the gate a crack and asked him who he was and what he had come for. He told them he was Zopyrus and that he had come over to them as a deserter. When the gatekeepers heard this, they took him to the Babylonian assembly. Brought before it, he began to lament his misfortunes. He said that the injuries he had in fact done to himself had been done to him by Darius, and that it was because he had advised the king to withdraw his army, since there really seemed to be no way of taking the city. "And now," he went on, "I have come to you, Babylonians, for your very great good, and for the very great harm of Darius and his army and the Persians. He will certainly not get away with treating me like this. And I know every one of his plans."
157. That is what he said. The Babylonians saw the most distinguished man among the Persians with his nose and ears cut off and covered with blood from the whipping, and they were quite sure he was telling the truth and had come to help them. So they were ready to give him whatever he asked for, and what he asked for was the command of a body of troops. When he had got this from them, he did what he had agreed with Darius to do. On the tenth day he led out the Babylonian troops, surrounded the thousand men he had told Darius to station there first, and killed them. The Babylonians saw that his deeds matched his words, and they were overjoyed and ready to obey him in everything. Then, when the agreed number of days had passed, he again picked out a force of Babylonians, led them out, and killed the two thousand of Darius' troops. When they saw this deed too, all the Babylonians had the name of Zopyrus on their lips and were loud in his praise. Then again, when the agreed days had passed, he led them out to the appointed place, surrounded the four thousand, and killed them. After this too, Zopyrus was everything to the Babylonians, and they made him both commander of their army and guardian of their walls.
158. But when Darius attacked the wall all the way around, as they had agreed, Zopyrus revealed his whole trick. While the Babylonians were up on the wall defending it against the attack of Darius' army, Zopyrus opened the gates called the Cissian gate and the gate of Belus and let the Persians inside the wall. Those Babylonians who saw what had happened fled to the temple of Zeus Belus. Those who did not see it stayed each at his own post, until in the end they too found out that they had been betrayed.
159. So Babylon was taken for the second time. When Darius had conquered the Babylonians, he first tore down the wall around their city and pulled down all the gates. When Cyrus took Babylon before him, he had done neither of these things. Next, Darius impaled the leading men, about three thousand of them. But he gave the city back to the rest of the Babylonians to live in. And to make sure the Babylonians would have wives, so that their people would go on having children, Darius did the following. (As I said at the beginning of this account, the Babylonians had strangled their own wives to make their food supplies last.) He ordered the peoples who lived around Babylon to send women there, setting a fixed number for each people, so that in all 50,000 women were brought together. It is from these women that the Babylonians of today are descended.
160. As for Zopyrus, in Darius' judgment no Persian ever surpassed him in good service, either among those who came after or among those who had gone before, except Cyrus alone; for no Persian has ever yet dared to compare himself with Cyrus. And Darius is said to have declared many times that he would rather have Zopyrus unharmed than gain twenty more Babylons on top of the one he had. He also gave him great honors. Every year he gave him the gifts the Persians count most honorable, and he granted him Babylon to rule free of tribute for as long as he lived, and he added many other gifts besides. This Zopyrus had a son, Megabyzus, who was made commander in Egypt against the Athenians and their allies; and this Megabyzus had a son, Zopyrus, who deserted from the Persians and went over to Athens.
1. After Babylon was taken, Darius himself marched against the Scythians. Asia was now flourishing, full of people, and large sums were coming in as revenue, so Darius conceived a desire to take revenge on the Scythians. They had been the first to invade the land of the Medes and had beaten in battle those who stood against them; so they had started the wrong. In fact, as I said before, the Scythians had ruled Upper Asia for twenty-eight years. They had invaded Asia in pursuit of the Cimmerians, and they had ended the rule of the Medes, who had ruled Asia before the Scythians came. But when the Scythians had been away from their own land for twenty-eight years and were coming home after all that time, they met a struggle no less hard than their war with the Medes. They found a sizable army drawn up against them. The reason was that the Scythians' wives, since their husbands had been away from them for so long, had been sleeping with the slaves.
2. Now, the Scythians blind all their slaves, because of the milk they drink. This is how they do it. They take blowpipes made of bone, just like flutes, insert them into the mare's vagina, and blow with their mouths, while others milk as they blow. They say they do this because blowing fills the mare's veins with air and makes the udder let down its milk. When they have drawn the milk, they pour it into hollowed-out wooden vessels, set the blind slaves around the vessels, and have them churn the milk. They skim off what rises to the top, which they think the more valuable part; what settles to the bottom they consider less good. That is why the Scythians blind everyone they capture: they are not farmers but nomads.
3. So it was from these slaves and the Scythians' wives that a generation of young men had been born and raised. When these young men learned how they had been born, they set out to resist the Scythians on their way home from Media. First they cut off their land by digging a wide trench from the Tauric mountains, the mountains of the Crimea, to Lake Maeotis, at the point where the lake is widest. Then, when the Scythians tried to invade, they took up a position against them and fought. They fought many times, and the Scythians could gain no advantage in the fighting. At last one of the Scythians said: "Scythians, what are we doing? We are fighting our own slaves. Every time we fight, more of us are killed, so there are fewer of us; and we are killing them too, so we will have fewer to rule in the future. So here is what I think we should do. Let's put down our spears and bows, and let each man take his horsewhip and go right up to them. As long as they saw us with weapons in our hands, they thought they were our equals and as well born as we are. But when they see us carrying whips instead of weapons, they will understand that they are our slaves, and once they admit that, they will not stand their ground."
4. When the Scythians heard this, they did what he said. The others were so terrified by what they saw that they forgot about fighting and ran. That is how the Scythians had ruled Asia, and how, after the Medes drove them out again, they had come back to their own land. And this is what Darius wanted to take revenge for, and why he was gathering an army to march against them.
5. The Scythians say that their nation is the youngest of all nations, and that this is how it began. The first man ever to live in their country, which was empty at that time, was a man named Targitaus. They say his parents were Zeus and the daughter of the river Borysthenes, the Dnieper. I do not believe this myself, but that is what they say. That, they say, was where Targitaus came from, and he had three sons: Lipoxais, Arpoxais, and the youngest, Colaxais. While these three were ruling, certain objects made of gold fell from the sky into the land of Scythia: a plow, a yoke, a battle-axe, and a cup. The eldest saw them first and went up to them, wanting to take them, but as he came near, the gold blazed up in fire. When he had gone away, the second brother went up to it, and the gold did the same thing again. So the gold drove these two away by blazing with fire. But when the third and youngest came up to it, the flames went out, and he carried the objects home. The two older brothers understood what this meant, and they handed over the whole of the kingship to the youngest.
6. From Lipoxais, they say, are descended the Scythians called the Auchatae clan; from the middle brother, Arpoxais, those called the Catiari and the Traspians; and from the youngest, the royal clan, called the Paralatae. All of them together, they say, are called Scoloti, after the name of their king; it was the Greeks who named them Scythians.
7. That is how the Scythians say they came into being. From their beginning, that is, from their first king, Targitaus, to Darius' crossing into their land, they say there were a thousand years and no more. The kings guard this sacred gold with the greatest care and visit it every year with solemn sacrifices to win the gods' favor. If anyone who is guarding the gold out in the open during the festival falls asleep, the Scythians say he will not live out the year; and he is given as much land as he can ride around on his horse in one day. Since the country was large, they say, Colaxais set up three kingdoms for his sons, and he made one of them larger than the others, and that is where the gold is kept. As for the regions farther north, beyond the people who live above their land, they say you cannot see any farther or travel any farther because of the feathers that pour down. The earth and the air are full of feathers, and that is what blocks the view.
8. That is what the Scythians say about themselves and about the country beyond them. But the Greeks who live around the Black Sea tell it this way. Heracles, driving the cattle of Geryon, came to this land, which was empty then and is now inhabited by the Scythians. Geryon, the story goes, lived far from the Black Sea, on the island the Greeks call Erythea, near Gadeira, which is Cádiz, outside the Pillars of Heracles, on the Ocean. (As for the Ocean, they say it flows around the whole earth, starting from where the sun rises, but they do not prove it with facts.) From there Heracles came to the land now called Scythia. A storm came over him, along with bitter cold, so he pulled his lion's skin over himself and went to sleep. While he slept, the mares that were harnessed to his chariot were grazing, and by some miraculous chance they disappeared.
9. When Heracles woke up, he went looking for them. He searched the whole country and at last came to the region called Hylaea, the Woodland. There, in a cave, he found a creature of double form, half girl and half serpent: from the buttocks up she was a woman, but below she was a snake. He looked at her in amazement and then asked whether she had seen any mares wandering anywhere. She said she had them herself and would not give them back until he had sex with her, and Heracles slept with her on condition that he would get them back. Then she kept putting off returning the mares, because she wanted to keep Heracles with her as long as she could, while he wanted to get the mares and leave. At last she gave them back and said: "When these mares wandered here, I kept them safe for you, and you have paid me for keeping them, because I am carrying three sons of yours. So tell me, what should I do with them when they grow up? Should I settle them here, since I alone rule this land, or send them away to you?" That was her question, and he answered, they say: "When you see that the boys have grown to be men, do this and you will not go wrong. Whichever of them you see can draw this bow the way I do now, and can put on this belt, make him the one who settles this land. Whichever of them fails at the tasks I am setting, send him out of the country. If you do this, you will be happy yourself, and you will have done what you were told."
10. With that he drew one of his bows (up to that time, they say, Heracles used to carry two) and showed her the belt. Then he gave her both the bow and the belt, which had a golden cup hanging from the end of its clasp, and once he had given them to her, he left. When her sons were born and had grown to be men, she first gave them names: she called one Agathyrsus, the next Gelonus, and the youngest Scythes. Then, remembering his instructions, she did what she had been told. Two of her sons, Agathyrsus and Gelonus, could not manage the task set for them, and they left the country, driven out by their own mother. But Scythes, the youngest, did the task and stayed in the land. From Scythes son of Heracles, they say, all the later kings of the Scythians are descended. And they say that it is because of that cup that the Scythians still wear cups hanging from their belts to this day. That one thing his mother arranged for Scythes' sake. That is the story told by the Greeks who live around the Black Sea.
11. But there is another story too, and this is the one I lean toward myself. It goes like this. The nomad Scythians who lived in Asia were hard pressed in war by the Massagetae, so they left their home, crossed the river Araxes, and moved toward the land of the Cimmerians. (The land the Scythians now occupy is said to have belonged to the Cimmerians in the old days.) When the Scythians were coming against them, the Cimmerians held a council, since they could see a great host coming to attack them. It turned out that they were split between two opinions, each held fiercely, though the better one was the kings'. The common people thought they ought to leave and not risk a fight against so many. The kings thought they ought to fight the invaders for their land. The people would not agree to the kings' plan, and the kings would not agree to the people's. So the people planned to leave without a fight and hand the country over to the invaders, while the kings decided to die and be buried in their own land rather than flee with the crowd. They thought of all the good fortune they had enjoyed there, and of all the misery that would likely come on them if they fled their native country. Once they had decided this, they split into two groups of equal size and fought each other. When they had all died at one another's hands, the Cimmerian people buried them beside the river Tyras, the Dniester, where their grave can still be seen. After they had buried them, they left the country, and when the Scythians arrived they found the land empty.
12. Even now there are Cimmerian walls in Scythia, and a Cimmerian ferry. There is also a region called Cimmeria, and the strait called the Cimmerian Bosporus, between the Crimea and the land to its east. It is also known that the Cimmerians, fleeing into Asia from the Scythians, settled on the peninsula where the Greek city of Sinope now stands. And it is known that the Scythians, chasing them, lost their way and invaded the land of Media. The Cimmerians kept to the coast all along as they fled, while the Scythians pursued them with the Caucasus on their right until finally they turned inland and burst into Media. So that is the other story, and Greeks and non-Greeks both tell it.
13. But Aristeas son of Caystrobius, a man of Proconnesus, said in the poem he wrote that he was seized by Phoebus Apollo and traveled to the land of the Issedonians. Beyond the Issedonians, he said, live the Arimaspians, a one-eyed people; beyond them, the griffins that guard the gold; and beyond them, the Hyperboreans, whose land stretches all the way to the sea. All of these except the Hyperboreans, starting with the Arimaspians, were always making war on their neighbors. The Issedonians were gradually pushed out of their country by the Arimaspians, the Scythians by the Issedonians, and so the Cimmerians, who lived on the southern sea, were pressed by the Scythians and left their land. So he does not agree with the Scythians' account of this country either.
14. I have already said where this Aristeas, the author of that poem, came from. Now I will also tell the story I heard about him in Proconnesus and Cyzicus. They say that Aristeas, who was as well born as any citizen there, went into a fuller's shop in Proconnesus, a cloth-cleaner's, and died there. The fuller shut up his workshop and went off to tell the dead man's relatives. The news that Aristeas was dead had spread around the city when a man of Cyzicus, who had come from the town of Artace, began to argue with the people who were saying so. He said he had met Aristeas on the road to Cyzicus and talked with him. While he was arguing hotly, the dead man's relatives came to the fuller's shop with everything they needed to take up the body for burial. But when the shop was opened, Aristeas was not there, dead or alive. In the seventh year after this he appeared in Proconnesus and composed the poem that the Greeks now call the Arimaspea, and after he had composed it he disappeared a second time.
15. That is what those cities tell. But I know that the following happened to the people of Metapontum in Italy two hundred and forty years after Aristeas disappeared the second time, as I worked out by putting together what I learned at Proconnesus and at Metapontum. The people of Metapontum say that Aristeas himself appeared in their country and told them to set up an altar to Apollo, and beside it a statue bearing the name of Aristeas of Proconnesus. He told them that theirs was the only land of all the Greeks in Italy that Apollo had come to, and that he, who was now Aristeas, had come with him; at the time when he went with the god, he had been a raven. After saying this he disappeared. The Metapontines say they sent to Delphi to ask the god what the apparition of the man meant. The Pythia told them to obey the apparition, and said that if they obeyed, it would go better for them. So they accepted this answer and did what they had been told. And there stands a statue bearing the name of Aristeas right beside the altar dedicated to Apollo, with laurel trees standing around it; the altar is set up in the marketplace. So much for Aristeas.
16. As for the land that this part of my account has begun to describe, nobody knows for certain what lies beyond it. I have not been able to hear of anyone who claims to know it as an eyewitness. Even Aristeas, the man I was just talking about, did not claim, even in his poem, that he went farther than the Issedonians. What lies beyond them he described from hearsay, and he said it was the Issedonians who told him these things. But as far as we have been able to reach certain knowledge by hearsay, pushing our inquiries as far as they would go, all of it will be told.
17. Start from the trading post of the Borysthenites, since of all the coast of Scythia this is the midpoint. Starting from there, the first land is held by the Callipidae, who are Greek Scythians. Beyond them is another people, called the Alazones. The Alazones and the Callipidae live like the Scythians in every other way, but they both sow grain and eat it, and also onions, leeks, lentils, and millet. Beyond the Alazones live Scythians who farm, and these sow their grain not to eat but to sell.
18. Beyond them live the Neuri, and beyond the Neuri, toward the north wind, the land is uninhabited, as far as we know. These peoples live along the river Hypanis, the Bug, west of the Dnieper. But once you cross the Dnieper, the first land from the coast is Hylaea. Beyond that, as you go up the river, live farming Scythians. The Greeks who live on the Bug call them Borysthenites, though they call themselves citizens of Olbia. These farming Scythians hold the land that stretches east for three days' journey, as far as a river called the Panticapes, and north for eleven days' sailing up the Dnieper. Right beyond them begins the desert, which runs a long way. On the far side of the desert live the Androphagi, the Man-eaters, a people all their own, with no connection to the Scythians. Beyond them begins land that is truly empty, with no people living in it, as far as we know.
19. East of these farming Scythians, once you cross the river Panticapes, live nomad Scythians, who neither sow anything nor plow the ground. This whole region is bare of trees except for Hylaea. These nomads hold a country that stretches east for fourteen days' journey, as far as the river Gerrhus.
20. On the other side of the Gerrhus are the lands called royal, and the Scythians who are the bravest and most numerous and who regard all the other Scythians as their slaves. These reach south as far as the Tauric land, the Crimea, and east as far as the trench dug by the sons of the blind slaves, and as far as the trading post called Cremni on Lake Maeotis. Some parts of their country reach the river Tanais, the Don. North of the Royal Scythians, toward the north wind, live the Melanchlaeni, the Black Cloaks, a different people and not Scythian. Beyond the Melanchlaeni the land is marshy and empty of people, as far as we know.
21. Once you cross the Don, you are no longer in Scythia. The first of the regions there belongs to the Sauromatae. Starting from the corner of Lake Maeotis, they hold land that stretches north toward the north wind for fifteen days' journey, completely bare of trees, both cultivated and wild. Above them, in the next region, live the Budini, whose land is entirely covered in forest of every kind of tree.
22. North of the Budini there is first desert, seven days' journey across. After the desert, turning somewhat more toward the east, you come to the land of the Thyssagetae, a large people and a separate race from the others. They live by hunting. Next to them, in the same regions, live a people called the Irycae, who also live by hunting, and this is how they do it. The hunter climbs a tree and lies in wait there for his game (there are plenty of trees all through this country). Each man keeps a horse ready, trained to lie down flat on its belly to keep low, and a dog as well. When he spots a wild animal from the tree, he first shoots his arrow, then mounts his horse and chases it, and the dog seizes it. Beyond these, toward the east, live other Scythians, who rebelled against the Royal Scythians and so came to this region.
23. As far as the country of these Scythians, all the land I have described is level plain with deep soil, but from there on it is stony and rough. After you have crossed a long stretch of this rough country, there are people living at the foot of high mountains who are said to be bald from birth, men and women alike. They have flat noses and large chins and speak a language of their own. They dress like Scythians and live on the fruit of trees. The tree whose fruit they live on is called the Pontic tree, and it is about the size of a fig tree. Its fruit is the size of a bean and has a stone in it. When the fruit is ripe, they strain it through cloths, and a thick black juice runs out of it, which is called aschy. They lick this up or drink it mixed with milk, and from the dregs, the solid part, they make cakes and eat them; they do not have many cattle, because the pasture there is not good at all. Each man lives under a tree. In winter he covers the tree all around with thick white felt, and in summer he leaves it uncovered. No one harms these people, because they are said to be sacred, and they own no weapons of war. They are also the ones who settle the quarrels that arise among their neighbors, and besides, any fugitive who takes refuge with them is harmed by no one. They are called the Argippaei.
24. As far as these bald men, there is plenty of clear information about the land and the nations on this side of them. Some Scythians travel to them, and it is not hard to get information from them, and so do some of the Greeks from the trading post on the Dnieper and the other trading posts on the Black Sea coast. The Scythians who go to them do their business through seven interpreters, in seven different languages.
25. As far as these people, then, the land is known. But nobody can say for certain what lies north of the bald men, because high mountains that no one can cross cut it off, and no one goes over them. The bald men do say (though I do not believe it) that the mountains are inhabited by men with goats' feet, and that beyond them are other people who sleep for six months of the year. This I do not accept at all. But the country east of the bald men is known for certain: the Issedonians live there. What lies north of both the bald men and the Issedonians, toward the north wind, is unknown, except for what we know from the reports of these peoples I have just mentioned.
26. The Issedonians are said to have these customs. When a man's father dies, all his relatives bring cattle to the house. They kill the animals and cut up the meat, and they also cut up the dead body of their host's father, mix all the meat together, and serve it as a feast. The skull, however, they strip of flesh, clean out, and cover with gold, and from then on they treat it as a sacred object and offer great sacrifices for the dead man every year. Each son does this for his father, just as the Greeks keep a memorial day for their dead. In other respects this people too is said to live justly, and their women have equal rights with the men.
27. So these people too are known. But as for the region beyond them, it is the Issedonians who report that one-eyed men live there, and griffins that guard the gold. The Scythians repeat this, having heard it from the Issedonians, and we, the rest of mankind, have taken our belief from the Scythians. We call these people by a Scythian name, Arimaspians, because the Scythians call the number one arima, and the eye spu.
28. The whole country I have described has a climate so harsh that for eight months of the year the frost is unbearably hard. During that time, if you pour out water, you will not make mud; you can make mud only by lighting a fire. The sea freezes, and so does the whole Cimmerian Bosporus, so that the Scythians who live inside the trench make expeditions across the ice and drive their wagons over into the country of the Sindians. So it is winter for eight months on end, and even in the other four it is cold there. This winter is different in character from the winters anywhere else in the world. In the season when rain usually falls, it hardly rains at all, while in summer it rains all the time. Thunder does not come when it comes in other countries; it is very frequent in summer, and if there is thunder in winter, people wonder at it as a portent. In the same way, if there is an earthquake in Scythia, in summer or in winter, it is taken as a portent. Horses can endure this winter, but mules and donkeys cannot endure it at all; whereas in other countries horses that stand in the frost get frostbite and lose their limbs to it, while donkeys and mules endure it.
29. I think it is also for this reason that the hornless breed of cattle there grow no horns. There is a line of Homer in the Odyssey that supports my view. It goes:
"And Libya, where the lambs grow horns so quickly,"
and it is rightly said that in hot places horns grow quickly, while in extreme cold animals grow no horns at all, or hardly any.
30. In Scythia, then, this happens because of the cold. But (since my account has gone looking for side-stories from the start) I am puzzled that in the whole land of Elis no mules can be bred, though the region is not cold and there is no other obvious cause. The Eleans themselves say that mules are not conceived in their country because of a curse. So when the time comes for the mares to conceive, they drive them out into the neighboring lands, and there, in their neighbors' country, they put the male donkeys to them until the mares are pregnant, and then they drive them home again.
31. As for the feathers that the Scythians say fill the air, so that they cannot see or travel through the farther parts of the continent, here is my opinion. In the lands beyond Scythia it snows all the time, though less in summer than in winter, as you would expect. Anyone who has seen thick snow falling close up knows what I mean without further explanation, because snow is like feathers. And because the winter there is as harsh as I have described, the northern parts of this continent are uninhabitable. So I think that when the Scythians and their neighbors talk about feathers, they are speaking figuratively and mean snow. That, then, is as far as the reports go.
32. About a Hyperborean people the Scythians report nothing, and neither do any of the other peoples who live in that region, except perhaps the Issedonians. But in my opinion the Issedonians do not report anything either, because if they did, the Scythians would report it too, as they do about the one-eyed people. Hesiod, however, has spoken of the Hyperboreans, and so has Homer in the poem the Epigoni, at least if Homer really was the author of that epic.
33. But much the most is said about them by the people of Delos. They say that sacred offerings wrapped in wheat straw are carried from the land of the Hyperboreans and come to the Scythians. From the Scythians, each neighboring nation in turn receives them and carries them westward, and they end up as far west as the Adriatic. From there they are sent on south, and the people of Dodona are the first of the Greeks to receive them. From Dodona they come down to the Malian Gulf and are carried across to Euboea, where city passes them on to city as far as Carystus. After that Andros is skipped, because the Carystians carry them to Tenos, and the Tenians carry them to Delos. That, they say, is how these sacred offerings come to Delos. But in the beginning, they say, the Hyperboreans sent two girls to carry the offerings, whose names, according to the Delians, were Hyperoche and Laodice. With them, to protect them, the Hyperboreans sent five men of their own people as an escort, the ones now called the Perpherees, the Bearers, who are greatly honored on Delos. But since the people they had sent out never came back, the Hyperboreans were troubled at the thought that it would always be their lot to send people out and never get them back. So they carried the offerings, wrapped in wheat straw, to the border of their country and charged their neighbors to send them on from there to the next nation. That, they say, is how these things are passed along until they reach Delos. And I know for myself that something similar to these offerings is done: the women of Thrace and Paeonia, when they sacrifice to Artemis the Queen, never make their offerings without wheat straw.
34. These women, I know, do as I have said. And for the Hyperborean girls who died on Delos, the girls and boys of Delos cut their hair. The girls, before their marriage, cut off a lock, wind it around a spindle, and lay it on the tomb (the tomb is on the left as you go into the temple of Artemis, and an olive tree grows over it). All the Delian boys wind some of their hair around a green shoot of some plant and lay it on the tomb as well.
35. That is the honor the people of Delos pay these girls. The same people say that Arge and Opis also came to Delos from the Hyperboreans, passing through the same nations I have named, and that they came even before Hyperoche and Laodice. Hyperoche and Laodice, they say, came bringing Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, the tribute their people had pledged in return for a quick and easy birth. But Arge and Opis came along with the gods themselves, and the people of Delos have given them honors of a different kind. The women, they say, take up a collection for them and call on them by name in the hymn that Olen, a man from Lycia, composed in their honor. The people of the other islands and the Ionians have learned from the Delians to sing hymns calling on Opis and Arge by name and to take up collections. (This Olen came from Lycia and also composed the other ancient hymns that are sung on Delos.) They say, too, that when the thighbones of the sacrificed animals have been burned on the altar, their ashes are thrown on the grave of Opis and Arge. Their grave is behind the temple of Artemis, facing east, close to the banquet hall of the Ceans.
36. That is enough about the Hyperboreans. I will not tell the story of Abaris, who is said to have been a Hyperborean, and how he carried the arrow all over the earth without eating anything. But if there are Hyperboreans, people beyond the north wind, then there must also be Hypernotians, people beyond the south wind. And I laugh when I see how many people before now have drawn maps of the earth, and not one of them has explained it sensibly. They draw Ocean flowing all around the earth, and the earth perfectly round, as if drawn with a compass, and they make Asia the same size as Europe. In a few words I will show how big each of these divisions is and what shape each one has.
37. The Persians live in Asia, and their land reaches down to the Southern Sea, the one called the Erythraean, which is the Indian Ocean. Above them, toward the north wind, live the Medes. Above the Medes live the Saspeirians, and above the Saspeirians the Colchians, whose land reaches to the Northern Sea, the Black Sea, where the river Phasis flows out. These four nations fill the land from sea to sea.
38. From there two peninsulas stretch westward out of Asia into the sea, and I will describe them both. The first peninsula has a northern side and a southern side. On the north it begins at the Phasis and runs along the coast of the Black Sea and the Hellespont, as far as Sigeum in the land of Troy. On the south the same peninsula runs from the Myriandric Gulf, which lies near Phoenicia, toward the sea as far as the headland of Triopium. Thirty different peoples live in this peninsula.
39. That is one of the peninsulas. The other begins from the land of the Persians and stretches along the Erythraean Sea. It takes in Persia, then Assyria next to Persia, and Arabia after Assyria. It ends (or rather, it is commonly supposed to end) at the Red Sea, into which Darius dug a channel from the Nile. Now, along the stretch from the land of the Persians as far as Phoenicia, the land is broad and there is plenty of room. But past Phoenicia this peninsula runs along the shore of our own sea, the Mediterranean, by Palestine, Syria and Egypt, where it ends. Only three nations live in it.
40. Those are the parts of Asia that lie west of the Persian land. As for what lies beyond the Persians, the Medes, the Saspeirians and the Colchians, toward the east and the sunrise, on one side the Erythraean Sea runs along it, and on the north both the Caspian Sea and the river Araxes, which flows toward the rising sun. Asia is inhabited as far as India. But from there on to the east it is desert, and no one can say what sort of land it is.
41. That is the shape and size of Asia. Libya is part of the second peninsula, since Libya begins right where Egypt ends. Around Egypt this peninsula is narrow: from our sea to the Erythraean Sea the distance there is 600,000 feet, which comes to about 115 miles. But past this narrow neck, the part of the peninsula called Libya happens to be extremely broad.
42. So I am surprised at the people who have marked out the world and divided it into Libya, Asia and Europe, because the difference between them is not small. In length Europe stretches along beside both of the others, and in breadth it seems to me far larger than either, beyond all comparison. Libya, for its part, gives proof that it is surrounded by sea, except for the part that borders on Asia. The first person we know of to show this was Necho, king of the Egyptians. When he had stopped digging the canal that runs from the Nile to the Red Sea, he sent out some Phoenicians in ships. He ordered them to sail around and come back through the Pillars of Heracles into the Northern Sea, the Mediterranean, and so home to Egypt. So the Phoenicians set out from the Red Sea and sailed into the Southern Sea. Whenever autumn came, they would put in to shore wherever in Libya they happened to be on their voyage, sow the land, and wait for the harvest. Once they had reaped the grain they sailed on. In this way, after two years had gone by, in the third year they rounded the Pillars of Heracles and came back to Egypt. And they reported something I cannot believe, though someone else may: that as they sailed around Libya they had the sun on their right hand.
43. That is how this country was first found to be what it is. After this it is the Carthaginians who report on it. For Sataspes son of Teaspis, the Achaemenid, did not sail around Libya, though he was sent to do exactly that. The length of the voyage and the emptiness of the land frightened him, so he turned back and never finished the task his mother had set him. Here is how that came about. This man had raped a young unmarried daughter of Zopyrus son of Megabyzus. King Xerxes was about to have him impaled for this crime, when Sataspes' mother, who was a sister of Darius, begged for his life. She said that she herself would lay a heavier penalty on him than Xerxes would: he would be forced, she said, to sail around Libya, until in sailing around it he came to the Red Sea. Xerxes agreed to these terms. So Sataspes went to Egypt, got a ship and sailors from the Egyptians, and sailed to the Pillars of Heracles. He sailed through them, rounded the point of Libya called Cape Soloeis, and sailed on toward the south. He crossed a great deal of sea over many months, but there was always more and more still to sail, so he turned around and sailed back to Egypt. From there he went to King Xerxes and made his report. At the farthest point he reached, he said, he was sailing past a people of very small stature who wore clothes made from the palm tree. Whenever he and his crew came to land with their ship, these people would leave their towns and run away to the mountains. His men, he said, did them no harm when they went into the towns; they only took food. And the reason he had not sailed all the way around Libya, he said, was that the ship could go no farther but was stuck fast. Xerxes did not believe he was telling the truth. Since Sataspes had not done the task he was given, the king had him impaled, carrying out the penalty pronounced before. Sataspes had a eunuch who, as soon as he heard that his master was dead, ran away to Samos with a great deal of money. A man of Samos took that money for himself. I know his name, but I am leaving it out on purpose.
44. Most of Asia was explored by Darius. He wanted to know where the river Indus flows out into the sea. (The Indus is the second of all the rivers in the world that produce crocodiles.) So he sent ships, with men he trusted to tell the truth, and among them was Scylax, a man of Caryanda. They started from the city of Caspatyrus and the land of Pactyice and sailed down the river toward the east and the sunrise until they reached the sea. Then they sailed west across the sea, and in the thirtieth month they came to the very place from which the king of the Egyptians had sent out the Phoenicians I spoke of before, to sail around Libya. After these men had made their voyage along the coast, Darius conquered the Indians and made use of this sea. In this way it has been found that Asia too, except for the parts toward the rising sun, is like Libya, surrounded by water.
45. But as for Europe, no one clearly knows whether it is surrounded by sea, either on the side toward the rising sun or on the north. What is known is that in length it stretches along beside both of the other two. And I cannot understand why the earth, which is one, should have three different names, all of them women's names, or why the boundaries set to divide it should be the Nile, the river of Egypt, and the Phasis in Colchis (or, as some say, the Don, the river of Maeotis, and the Cimmerian Strait). Nor can I find out who the people were who drew these boundaries, or why they gave the names. Most Greeks say that Libya is named after Libya, a woman of that country, and Asia after the wife of Prometheus. But the Lydians claim this last name for themselves. They say Asia was named after Asies son of Cotys son of Manes, and not after Asia the wife of Prometheus, and they say the Asian tribe in Sardis takes its name from him too. As for Europe, no one knows whether it is surrounded by sea, and it is not clear where it got this name or who gave it, unless we say that the land took its name from Europa of Tyre. If so, it would seem that before this it had no name, like the others. But this Europa was plainly from Asia, and she never came to the land the Greeks now call Europe. She went only from Phoenicia to Crete, and from Crete to Lycia. Enough said about these matters; we will go by the accounts that are generally accepted.
46. Now the region of the Black Sea, which Darius was preparing to invade, holds the most ignorant nations of any land, apart from the Scythians. We cannot point to a single nation living around the Black Sea that stands out for its intelligence, nor do we know of any man of learning who has come from there, except the Scythian nation and Anacharsis. The Scythians have worked out the most important thing in all human affairs more cleverly than any other people we know of. In other respects I do not admire them much. But this most important thing they have discovered is this: no one who comes to attack them can escape, and no one can catch them if they do not want to be found. A people that has no towns and no walls, that carries its houses along with it, that fights as mounted archers, that lives not by the plow but by its herds, and whose homes are on wagons: how could such people be anything but unbeatable and impossible to come to grips with?
47. They have found this out because their land is suited to it and their rivers fight on their side. First of all, the land is flat, grassy and well watered. Then there are rivers running through it, not many fewer in number than the canals of Egypt. I will name the ones that are worth mentioning and can be sailed up from the sea. There is the Danube, with five mouths, and after it the Dniester, the Bug, the Dnieper, the Panticapes, the Hypacyris, the Gerrhus and the Don. Here is how they flow.
48. The Danube, the greatest of all the rivers we know, always flows with the same volume, summer and winter alike. It is the first of the Scythian rivers from the west, and it has become the greatest of all rivers because other rivers flow into it. These are the ones that make it great. Five of them flow through the land of Scythia: the one the Scythians call the Porata and the Greeks the Pyretus, and besides that the Tiarantus, the Ararus, the Naparis and the Ordessus. The first of these is a large river lying to the east, and there it joins its waters with the Danube. The second, the Tiarantus, is farther west and smaller. The Ararus, the Naparis and the Ordessus run between these two and flow into the Danube.
49. Those are the native Scythian rivers that swell its stream. From the land of the Agathyrsians the Maris flows in and joins the Danube. From the peaks of Haemus three other large rivers, the Atlas, the Auras and the Tibisis, flow north and fall into it. Through Thrace and the land of the Thracian Crobyzians flow the rivers Athrys, Noes and Artanes, which empty into the Danube. From the Paeonians and Mount Rhodope the river Cius cuts through the middle of Haemus and runs into it as well. From the Illyrians the river Angrus flows north into the Triballian plain and into the river Brongus, and the Brongus flows into the Danube; so the Danube takes in both of them, and they are large rivers. From the region above the Ombricans, the river Carpis and another river, the Alpis, also flow north and run into it. For the Danube in fact flows through the whole of Europe. It begins in the land of the Celts, who, after the Cynesians, live farthest west of all the peoples of Europe. So it flows through all of Europe and empties into the sea along the side of Scythia.
50. So it is because all these rivers I have named, and many others, add their water to it that the Danube becomes the greatest of rivers. If we compare single streams, river against river, the Nile carries more water, since no river or spring flows into the Nile to add to its volume. And the reason the Danube always runs at the same level, summer and winter, is something like this, I think. In winter it is its natural size, or only a little larger than its nature, because that country gets very little rain in winter but has snow all the time. In summer, though, the snow that fell in great quantities during the winter melts and runs into the Danube from every side. This snow runs into the river and helps swell it, and so do many violent rainstorms, since it rains there in summer. So the water that pours into the Danube is greater in summer than in winter by about as much as the water the sun draws up to itself in summer is greater than what it draws up in winter. When these things are set against each other, they balance out, and so the river is always seen at the same volume.
51. So the Danube is one of the Scythians' rivers. After it comes the Dniester, which starts in the north and begins its course from a large lake that forms the boundary between the land of the Scythians and the land of the Neuri. At its mouth live Greeks who are called Tyritae.
52. The third river is the Bug. It starts in Scythia and flows out of a great lake around which white wild horses graze, and this lake is rightly called the Mother of the Bug. This is where the Bug rises, and for five days' sail it runs shallow and still sweet. But from there to the sea, for four days' sail, it is very bitter. That is because the water of a bitter spring flows into it, a spring so extremely bitter that, small as it is, it changes the water of the Bug when it mixes with it, though the Bug is a river few can equal in size. This spring lies on the border between the land of the farming Scythians and that of the Alazones. The spring, and the place it flows from, are called Exampaeus in Scythian, which is in Greek Hierai Hodoi, the Sacred Ways. Now the Dniester and the Bug come close to each other in their windings in the land of the Alazones, but after that each turns away, and they flow on with a widening space between them.
53. The fourth is the Dnieper. It is the largest of these rivers after the Danube, and in my opinion it is the most useful, not only of the Scythian rivers but of all the rivers in the world besides, except the Nile of Egypt, since no other river can be compared with the Nile. Of the rest, though, the Dnieper is the most useful. It provides the finest and richest pastures for cattle, and fish that are far better and more plentiful than in any other river. Its water is the sweetest to drink and runs clear, while the rivers beside it are muddy. Along its banks crops grow better than anywhere else, and where the land is not sown the grass grows deepest. At its mouth, salt forms by itself in great quantities. It also produces huge fish with no spine, which they call antacaei and use for salting, and many other things worth wondering at. As far as the region of the Gerrhi, which is forty days' voyage upstream, the Dnieper is known to flow from the north. Above that no one can say what nations it flows through. It is certain, though, that it runs through empty country down to the land of the farming Scythians, since these Scythians live along its banks for ten days' sail. This river and the Nile are the only two whose sources I cannot tell, and I think no other Greek can either. When the Dnieper comes near the sea, the Bug joins it, running out into the same marsh. The land between these two rivers, which juts out like a ship's beak, is called the Point of Hippoles. A temple of the Mother stands on it, and opposite the temple, on the Bug, live the Borysthenites.
54. So much for these rivers. After them there is a fifth river as well, called the Panticapes. This one too flows from the north and from a lake. The farming Scythians live in the land between this river and the Dnieper. It runs out into the region of Hylaea, and after passing through it, it joins the Dnieper.
55. Sixth comes the river Hypacyris. It starts from a lake, flows through the middle of the nomad Scythians, and runs out into the sea by the city of Carcinitis, skirting on its right bank the region of Hylaea and the place called the Racecourse of Achilles.
56. Seventh is the Gerrhus. It branches off from the Dnieper at about the point in that country where the Dnieper stops being known. It branches off, as I say, in this region, and it has the same name as the region itself, Gerrhus. As it flows to the sea it forms the border between the land of the nomad Scythians and that of the Royal Scythians, and it runs out into the Hypacyris.
57. The eighth is the Don. It starts at first from a large lake and runs out into a still larger lake called Maeotis, which is the boundary between the Royal Scythians and the Sauromatae. Another river, called the Hyrgis, flows into this Don.
58. These are the notable rivers the Scythians are supplied with. As for their cattle, the grass that grows in Scythia produces more bile in them than any other grass we know of, and you can see for yourself that this is so when you cut the cattle open.
59. So they have plenty of the things that matter most. As for the rest, their customs are these. The only gods they worship are these: first and foremost Hestia, then Zeus and Earth (they believe Earth is the wife of Zeus), and after these Apollo, Heavenly Aphrodite, Heracles and Ares. All the Scythians have established worship for these gods, and the ones called the Royal Scythians sacrifice to Poseidon as well. In Scythian, Hestia is called Tabiti; Zeus is called Papaeus, which means Father, and in my opinion that is exactly the right name for him; Earth is Api; Apollo is Oetosyrus; Heavenly Aphrodite is called Argimpasa; and Poseidon is Thagimasadas. It is not their custom to make images, altars or temples for any god except Ares; for him it is their custom to make them.
60. They have one and the same way of sacrificing established for all their rites alike, and it is done like this. The animal stands with its forefeet tied together. The priest who is making the sacrifice stands behind it, pulls the end of the cord, and throws the beast down. As it falls he calls on the god he is sacrificing to. Then at once he throws a noose around its neck, puts a small stick through the noose, and twists it until the animal is strangled. He lights no fire, makes no first offering from the victim, and pours no wine over it. When he has strangled it and skinned it, he sets about boiling it.
61. Since the land of Scythia has very little wood, they have invented this way of boiling the meat. When they have skinned the victims, they strip the flesh off the bones and put it into cauldrons, if they happen to have any. These are made in their own country and look very much like the mixing bowls of Lesbos, except that they are much larger. They put the meat into these and boil it by lighting the victim's bones underneath. If they have no cauldron at hand, they put all the meat into the animals' stomachs, add water, and light the bones underneath. The bones burn beautifully, and the stomachs easily hold the meat once it has been stripped off the bones. So an ox is made to boil itself, and each of the other victims boils itself too. When the meat is cooked, the man making the sacrifice takes a first offering of the meat and of the vital organs and throws it on the ground in front of him. They sacrifice various kinds of livestock, but horses most of all.
62. That is how they sacrifice to the rest of the gods, and those are the animals they use. But to Ares they sacrifice as follows. In each district of each of their provinces they have a temple of Ares, built like this. Bundles of brushwood are heaped up to make a pile about 1,800 feet long and as many wide, but not as high. On top of it a flat square is made. Three of its sides are sheer, but on the fourth side the pile can be climbed. Every year they heap on a hundred and fifty wagonloads of brushwood, because the pile is always settling under the weather. On top of this pile each people has an ancient iron sword set up, and this is the sacred image of Ares. Every year they bring offerings of cattle and horses to this sword, and on top of what they offer the other gods, they make it one more sacrifice besides: of all the enemies they take prisoner in war, they sacrifice one man in every hundred. They do not do it the way they sacrifice cattle, but in a different way. First they pour wine over the men's heads. Then they cut their throats over a bowl, so that the blood runs into it. Then they carry the bowl up to the top of the brushwood pile and pour the blood over the sword. That is what they carry up. Meanwhile, down below beside the temple, they do this: they cut off the right arms of all the slaughtered men, hands and all, and throw them up into the air. Then, when they have finished offering the other victims, they go away. Each arm lies wherever it happened to fall, and the body lies apart from it.
63. Those are the sacrifices established among them. They make no use of pigs, and in fact they will not keep them in their country at all.
64. War is arranged among them like this. When a Scythian kills his first man, he drinks some of his blood. He takes the heads of all the men he kills in battle to the king, because if he brings a head he gets a share of the plunder they have taken, and if not, he gets none. He takes the skin off the head by cutting all the way around it at the ears, then taking hold of the scalp and shaking it loose. After that he scrapes off the flesh with an ox's rib and works the skin with his hands. When he has softened it this way, he keeps it as a napkin to wipe his hands on. He hangs it from the bridle of the horse he rides himself, and he is proud of it, because the man who has the most of these skins to wipe his hands on is judged the bravest. Many of them also make cloaks to wear out of the skins they have taken off, stitching them together like shepherds' leather coats. Many also take the skin, fingernails and all, off the right hands of their dead enemies and make it into covers for their quivers. Human skin, it seems, is thick and glossy, a brighter white than any other skin. And many take the skin off whole bodies, stretch it on wooden frames, and carry it around on their horses.
65. Those are their established customs in these matters. With the skulls themselves (not everyone's, but those of their worst enemies) they do this. The man saws off everything below the eyebrows and cleans out the inside. If he is poor, he just stretches oxhide around the outside and uses it as it is. If he is rich, he stretches oxhide around it and also gilds the inside, and uses it as a drinking cup. They do this with their own relatives as well, if one of them has quarreled with a man and the man has beaten him in a trial before the king. When guests he thinks highly of come to visit, he brings out these skulls and tells them how these men, though they were his own family, made war on him, and how he beat them. They count this as proof of a man's courage.
66. Once a year each governor of a district mixes a bowl of wine in his own district, and the Scythians who have killed enemies drink from it. Those who have not done this do not taste the wine, but sit apart in disgrace, and this is the greatest shame there is among them. But those who have killed a great many men drink from two cups together at the same time.
67. There are many soothsayers among the Scythians, and they tell the future with a lot of willow rods, in this way. They bring large bundles of rods, lay them on the ground and untie them. Then they set out each rod separately and make their prophecies. While they are speaking, they gather the rods together again, and then lay them out one by one a second time. This way of divining has come down to them from their fathers. But the Enarees, the "man-women," say that Aphrodite gave them the gift of prophecy, and they divine with the bark of the linden tree. The man splits the linden bark into three strips, braids them together in his fingers and unbraids them again, and as he does this he speaks the oracle.
68. When the king of the Scythians falls ill, he sends for the three soothsayers with the best reputation, who divine in the way I have described. What they usually say is something like this: that so-and-so has sworn falsely by the king's hearth. And they name one of the citizens, whoever it happens to be. (It is the Scythians' general custom to swear by the king's hearth when they want to take their most solemn oath.) The man they say has sworn falsely is seized at once and brought in, held on both sides. When he arrives, the soothsayers accuse him: their divination shows, they say, that he has sworn falsely by the king's hearth, and that this is why the king is in pain. He denies it, insists he did not swear falsely, and protests in outrage. When he denies it, the king sends for twice as many other soothsayers. If these too look into their divination and find him guilty of false swearing, they cut off his head at once, and the first soothsayers divide his property among themselves by lot. But if the soothsayers who came in second acquit him, more soothsayers come in, and then more after them. If most of them acquit the man, the sentence is that the first soothsayers must be put to death themselves.
69. They put them to death in this way. First they fill a wagon with brushwood and yoke oxen to it. Then they tie the soothsayers' feet, bind their hands behind them, gag their mouths, and fasten them down in the middle of the brushwood. Then they set it on fire, frighten the oxen, and let them go. Often the oxen are burned to death along with the soothsayers. Often, too, they get away singed, once the pole they are yoked to has burned through. They burn soothsayers in this way for other reasons as well, calling them false prophets. And when the king puts anyone to death, he does not leave their sons alive either. He kills all the males, but does no harm to the females.
70. When the Scythians swear an oath to anyone, they do it like this. They pour wine into a large earthenware cup and mix into it blood from the men who are swearing to each other, taking it either by pricking themselves with an awl or by making a small cut in their bodies with a dagger. Then they dip a sword, arrows, a battle-axe and a javelin into the cup. When they have done this, they call down many curses on whoever breaks the oath, and then they drink it, both the men making the oath and the most respected of their followers.
71. The kings are buried in the land of the Gerrhi, at the point up to which the Dnieper can be navigated. There, when their king dies, they dig a large square pit in the ground. When they have it ready, they take up the body. It has been coated all over with wax, and its belly has been slit open, cleaned out, filled with chopped galingale, spices, parsley seed and anise, and sewn up again. They carry it on a wagon to another nation. The people who receive the body when it is brought to them do the same as the Royal Scythians: they cut off part of an ear, shave their heads all around, cut their arms all over, gash their foreheads and noses, and drive arrows through their left hands. From there they carry the king's body on the wagon to another of the nations they rule, and the people they visited before go along with them. When they have carried the body around to all of them, they are in the land of the Gerrhi, who live farthest away of all the nations they rule, and they have reached the place of burial. Then they lay the body in the tomb on a bed of leaves, plant spears on either side of it, lay pieces of wood across them, and roof the place over with matting. In the rest of the space in the tomb they strangle and bury one of the king's concubines, his cupbearer, his cook, his groom, his personal servant and his messenger, and also horses, and first portions of everything else, and gold cups; they use no silver at all, and no bronze either. When they have done this, they all work together to heap up a great mound, competing with one another and striving hard to make it as large as possible.
72. Then, when the year comes around again, they do this. They take the most capable of the king's remaining servants. These are native Scythians, since the king is served by whomever he himself orders to serve him; his servants are not bought with money. Of these attendants they strangle fifty, and also fifty of the finest horses. They take out their guts, clean out the belly, fill it with chaff and sew it up again. Then they fix half of a wheel, hollow side up, on two stakes, and the other half of the wheel on two other stakes, and they set up a number of these in this way. After that they run thick poles through the horses lengthwise, up to the neck, and mount them on the half-wheels. The front half-wheels hold up the horses' shoulders, and the back ones support their bellies near the thighs, and both the front and back legs hang in the air. They put bridles and bits on the horses, pull the reins tight in front of them, and tie them to pegs. Then they take each of the fifty strangled young men and mount him on his horse. To do this they first run a straight stake through each body along the spine up to the neck. Part of this stake sticks out at the bottom, and they fix it into a socket in the other pole, the one that runs through the horse. When they have set horsemen like these in a circle around the tomb, they ride away.
73. That is how they bury their kings. As for the other Scythians, when they die their nearest relatives lay them in wagons and carry them around to their friends one after another. Each friend, when he receives the body, gives a feast for the people who come with it, and serves the dead man about the same amount of every dish as he serves the others. Ordinary people are carried around like this for forty days, and then they are buried. After the burial the Scythians purify themselves in this way. They soap their heads and wash them well. Then, for their bodies, they set up three poles leaning toward one another and stretch woolen felt blankets around them. When they have closed these up as tightly as they can, they throw red-hot stones into a basin set in the middle, among the poles and the felt blankets.
74. Now, hemp grows in their country. It is very much like flax, except in thickness and height, and in these the hemp is far greater. It grows both wild and under cultivation. The Thracians even make clothes out of it, very much like linen ones, so that anyone who did not know it well could not tell whether the clothes were made of flax or of hemp. And someone who had never seen hemp cloth before would think the garment was made of flax.
75. The Scythians take the seed of this hemp, creep in under the felt blankets, and throw the seed onto the red-hot stones. It smolders like incense and gives off so thick a vapor that no steam bath in Greece could beat it. The Scythians are delighted with this steam bath and howl like wolves. It takes the place of washing for them, since in fact they never wash their bodies in water at all. Their women, though, grind cypress, cedar and frankincense wood on a rough stone, adding water as they grind, and they plaster this thick paste all over their bodies and faces. This not only makes them smell sweet, but when they take the plaster off the next day, their skin is clean and shining.
76. This nation, too, is strongly against adopting foreign customs. They reject even those of other tribes among themselves, but above all those of the Greeks, as the story of Anacharsis, and later of Scyles, proved. First, Anacharsis. He had traveled to many lands and shown great wisdom in them, and he was on his way back to the Scythians' country. As he sailed through the Hellespont he put in at Cyzicus, and there he found the people of Cyzicus celebrating a festival in honor of the Mother of the gods with great splendor. So Anacharsis made a vow to the Mother: if he got home to his own land safe and sound, he would sacrifice to her with the same rites he saw the people of Cyzicus using, and he would also hold an all-night festival for her. When he reached Scythia, he went down into the region called Hylaea. (It lies alongside the Racecourse of Achilles, and it happens to be full of trees of every kind.) Into this woodland Anacharsis went down, and there he performed the whole ceremony of the goddess' festival, with a drum, and with little images hung all over himself. But one of the Scythians saw him doing it and reported it to Saulius the king. The king came himself, and when he saw Anacharsis doing this, he shot him with an arrow and killed him. And so today, if you ask about Anacharsis, the Scythians say they do not know him, and the reason is that he went abroad to Greece and took up foreign customs. As I heard from Tymnes, the steward of Ariapeithes, Anacharsis was the uncle, on the father's side, of Idanthyrsus king of the Scythians, and he was the son of Gnurus, the son of Lycus, the son of Spargapeithes. If Anacharsis really was of this family, then let it be known that he died at the hand of his own brother. For Idanthyrsus was the son of Saulius, and Saulius was the man who killed Anacharsis.
77. I have heard another story too, told by the Peloponnesians. They say that Anacharsis was sent out by the king of the Scythians and became a student of Greece. When he came back, they say, he told the king who had sent him that all the Greeks were busy with every kind of cleverness except the Spartans, but that the Spartans alone knew how to talk sensibly with one another. But this story is a groundless invention of the Greeks themselves. Whatever the truth of it, the man was killed in the way I described above.
78. That is how badly Anacharsis fared because of foreign customs and his dealings with Greeks. And many years later Scyles the son of Ariapeithes met almost the same fate. Ariapeithes king of the Scythians had other sons, and Scyles was one of them. He was born of a woman from Istria, a Greek city on the coast, and certainly not a native of Scythia, and his mother taught him the Greek language and Greek letters. Some time later Ariapeithes was killed by treachery at the hands of Spargapeithes, king of the Agathyrsi, and Scyles succeeded to the throne. He took over not only the kingdom but also his father's wife, whose name was Opoea. This Opoea was a native Scythian, and she had borne Ariapeithes a son named Oricus. Now when Scyles was king of the Scythians, he was not at all satisfied with the Scythian way of life. Because of the way he had been brought up, he leaned much more toward Greek ways, and this is what he used to do. Whenever he came with his Scythian troops to the city of the Borysthenites (these Borysthenites say they are colonists from Miletus), he would leave his band in the outskirts, go inside the walls himself, and have the gates shut. Then he would take off his Scythian gear and put on Greek clothes. Dressed like that, he would walk about the marketplace with no bodyguard and nobody else with him. Meanwhile people kept watch on the gates, so that no Scythian would see him in this dress. He lived like a Greek in other ways too, and he worshiped the gods according to Greek custom. After staying a month or more, he would put on his Scythian clothes again and leave. He did this many times. He even built himself a house in Borysthenes and took a local woman there as his wife.
79. But since it was fated that things would go badly for him, it came about in this way. He conceived a desire to be initiated into the rites of Dionysus as Bacchus, and just as he was about to be initiated, a very great portent happened. He had a house in the city of the Borysthenites, the one I mentioned a little earlier, very large and built at great expense, with sphinxes and griffins of white stone set all around it. Zeus struck this house with a thunderbolt, and it burned to the ground. All the same, Scyles went through with his initiation. Now the Scythians hold these Bacchic rites against the Greeks. They say it is not right to make up a god like this, who drives people mad. So when Scyles had been initiated into the rites of Bacchus, one of the Borysthenites went off to the Scythians and said: "You laugh at us, Scythians, because we perform the Bacchic rites and the god takes hold of us. Well, now this god has taken hold of your own king too. He is joining in the Bacchic rites, and the god is driving him mad. If you don't believe me, follow me and I will show you." The leading men of the Scythians followed him, and the Borysthenite brought them secretly into the town and placed them on a tower. So when Scyles went by with his band of revelers and the Scythians saw him taking part in the Bacchic rites, they were deeply upset. They went out and told the whole army what they had seen.
80. After this, when Scyles rode back home, the Scythians rose up against him and set up his brother Octamasades as their leader. Octamasades was the son of the daughter of Teres. When Scyles saw what was being done against him, and why, he fled to Thrace for refuge. Octamasades heard of it and marched against Thrace. When he reached the Danube, the Thracians met him. They were about to join battle when Sitalces sent a messenger to Octamasades with this message: "Why should we test each other in a fight? You are my sister's son, and you have my brother in your hands. Give him back to me, and I will hand over your brother Scyles to you. Let neither of us put our armies at risk, neither you nor I." That was the offer Sitalces sent him by a herald, because a brother of Sitalces was with Octamasades, having fled into exile out of fear of him. Octamasades agreed. He handed over his own uncle, his mother's brother, to Sitalces, and received his brother Scyles in exchange. Sitalces took his brother and led him away a prisoner, but Octamasades cut off Scyles' head right there on the spot. That is how carefully the Scythians guard their own customs, and those are the penalties they inflict on anyone who takes up foreign ones besides their own.
81. How many Scythians there are I could not find out exactly. I heard different reports of their number: some say they are very many, others that they are few, at least as far as the true Scythians go. But this much they showed me with my own eyes. Between the rivers Dnieper and Bug there is a place called Exampaeus, which I mentioned a little earlier when I said there was a spring of bitter water in it, whose water flows out and makes the Bug undrinkable. In this place stands a bronze bowl at least six times the size of the mixing bowl at the mouth of the Black Sea, the one dedicated by Pausanias the son of Cleombrotus. For anyone who has never seen that one, I will make it clear this way: the bowl in Scythia easily holds six hundred amphoras, about 6,000 gallons, and this Scythian bowl is six finger-widths thick, about four and a half inches. The people of the place told me it had been made from arrowheads. Their king, they said, whose name was Ariantas, wanted to know how many Scythians there were. So he ordered every Scythian to bring him one arrowhead, each from his own arrow, and he threatened death to anyone who did not bring one. A huge pile of arrowheads was brought in, and he decided to make a memorial out of them and leave it behind him. So, they said, he made this bronze bowl out of them and dedicated it here at Exampaeus.
82. That is what I heard about the number of the Scythians. This land has no marvels, except that its rivers are by far the largest and the most numerous of any land. But there is one thing worth mentioning that it has to show, which is worth wondering at besides the rivers and the vastness of the plain. They point out a footprint of Heracles in the rock by the bank of the river Dniester. It is shaped like the print of a man's foot, but it is three feet long. So much for that. Now I will go back to the story I set out to tell at the beginning.
83. Darius was preparing to march against the Scythians. He was sending messengers out with orders: some peoples were to supply a land army, others ships, and others were to bridge the Thracian Bosporus. Meanwhile Artabanus son of Hystaspes, Darius' brother, begged him not to make the expedition against the Scythians at all, telling him how hard the Scythians were to deal with. But though his advice was good, he did not persuade him, and he stopped urging it. When all his preparations were made, Darius began to march his army out of Susa.
84. Then one of the Persians, Oeobazus, who had three sons all serving in the expedition, asked Darius to leave one of them behind for him. Darius answered that since he was a friend and his request was a reasonable one, he would leave all of them behind. Oeobazus was overjoyed, thinking his sons had been released from service. But Darius ordered the officers in charge of such things to put all the sons of Oeobazus to death.
85. So they were left behind, killed on the spot where they stood. Meanwhile Darius set out from Susa and reached the place on the Bosporus, in the territory of Chalcedon, where the bridge of boats had been built. There he went aboard a ship and sailed to the so-called Cyanean Rocks, which the Greeks say once moved back and forth. He sat down at the temple there and gazed out at the Black Sea, which is well worth seeing. Of all seas it is the most marvelous by nature. It is about 1,230 miles long, and about 370 miles wide at its widest point. The mouth of this great sea is only about half a mile across. The length of the mouth, that is, of the neck of water called the Bosporus, where, as I said, the bridge of boats had been built, is no less than about thirteen miles. The Bosporus runs into the Propontis, the Sea of Marmara. The Propontis is about fifty-five miles wide and about 155 miles long, and it empties into the Hellespont, which is less than a mile wide at its narrowest point, though it is about forty-four miles long. The Hellespont runs out into the open stretch of sea called the Aegean.
86. I worked out these measurements as follows. On average a ship covers about 78 miles in a long day and about 67 miles in a night. Now we know that from the mouth of the sea to the river Phasis (which is where the Black Sea is longest) is a voyage of nine days and eight nights. That comes to about 1,230 miles. Then from the land of the Sindians to Themiscyra on the river Thermodon (which is where the Black Sea is widest) is a voyage of three days and two nights, which comes to about 370 miles. That is how I have measured this sea, the Bosporus and the Hellespont, and they are as I have described them. The Black Sea also has a lake that empties into it, not much smaller than the sea itself. It is called Maeotis, and also the "Mother of the Black Sea."
87. After gazing at the Black Sea, Darius sailed back to the bridge, whose chief builder was Mandrocles of Samos. He gazed at the Bosporus too, and then he set up two pillars of white stone beside it, carved with writing, one in Assyrian letters and the other in Greek. They listed all the nations he was leading with him, and he was leading every nation he ruled. Not counting the fleet, the whole army was reckoned at 700,000 men, cavalry included, and six hundred ships had been gathered. Some time after the events I am describing, the people of Byzantium carried these pillars off to their city and used them for the altar of Artemis Orthosia, except for one stone covered with Assyrian writing, which was left standing beside the temple of Dionysus in Byzantium. The place on the Bosporus where Darius built his bridge is, by my reckoning, halfway between Byzantium and the temple at the mouth of the Black Sea.
88. After this Darius, pleased with his floating bridge, rewarded its chief builder, Mandrocles of Samos, with gifts tenfold. From these gifts Mandrocles paid for a painting as an offering, showing the whole scene: the bridge over the Bosporus, King Darius sitting in a seat of honor, and his army crossing. He had this painted and dedicated it in the temple of Hera, with this inscription:
He bridged the Bosporus and its waters thick with fish, and to Hera Mandrocles gives this as a record of his work. He set a crown on his own head and won the Samians glory, and he did everything for Darius just as he wished.
89. That was the memorial left by the man who built the bridge. And Darius, after rewarding Mandrocles with gifts, crossed over into Europe. Before crossing, he ordered the Ionians to sail into the Black Sea as far as the Danube, and when they reached the Danube to wait for him there, building a bridge over the river in the meantime. For the leading part of his fleet was made up of Ionians, Aeolians and men of the Hellespont. So the fleet sailed through between the Cyanean Rocks and headed straight for the Danube. They sailed up the river two days' voyage from the sea and began to build a bridge across its neck, so to speak, where the mouths of the Danube branch off. Darius, meanwhile, crossed the Bosporus on the floating bridge and marched through Thrace. When he came to the sources of the river Tearus, he camped there for three days.
90. The people who live near the Tearus say it is the best of all rivers for healing in general, and especially for curing skin diseases in both men and horses. It has thirty-eight springs, all flowing from the same rock, some of them cold and some warm. The way to them is the same length from the city of Heraeum near Perinthus and from Apollonia on the Black Sea: two days' journey by either road. This Tearus runs into the river Contadesdus, the Contadesdus into the Agrianes, and the Agrianes into the Hebrus, which flows into the sea by the city of Aenus.
91. So Darius came to this river and camped there. He was so pleased with it that he set up a pillar there too, with this inscription: "The headwaters of the river Tearus give the best and finest water of all rivers. To them came, leading an army against the Scythians, the best and finest of all men, Darius son of Hystaspes, king of the Persians and of the whole continent." Those were the words written there.
92. Darius set out from there and came to another river, called the Artescus, which flows through the land of the Odrysians. When he reached this river he did this: he marked out a spot for his army and ordered every man to put one stone on that spot as he went past it. When the army had done this, he marched it on, leaving great piles of stones behind.
93. But before he reached the Danube, the first people he conquered were the Getae, who believe they are immortal. The Thracians who hold Salmydessus and live inland from the cities of Apollonia and Mesambria, the ones called the Cyrmianae and the Nipsaei, surrendered to Darius without a fight. But the Getae, who are the bravest and most law-abiding of all the Thracians, stubbornly resisted, and they were conquered at once.
94. This is their belief about immortality. They hold that they do not die, but that anyone who dies goes to Salmoxis, a divine being, whom some of them call Gebeleizis. Every four years they choose one of their own by lot and send him as a messenger to Salmoxis, with instructions about whatever they want to ask for at the time. This is how they send him. Some of them, appointed for the job, stand holding three javelins. Others take the man who is being sent to Salmoxis by his hands and feet, swing him up, and throw him into the air so that he falls on the spear points. If he is pierced through and dies, they think the god is favorable to them. If he does not die, they blame the messenger himself, saying he is a worthless man, and after blaming him they send another. They give him his instructions beforehand, while he is still alive. These same Thracians also shoot arrows up at the sky when there is thunder and lightning, threatening the god, since they do not believe there is any god but their own.
95. I hear from the Greeks who live around the Hellespont and the Black Sea that this Salmoxis was a man, and that he was a slave on Samos; in fact he was the slave of Pythagoras the son of Mnesarchus. Then, they say, he was freed and made a great deal of money, and afterward he went back to his own country. The Thracians lived a hard life and were rather simple-minded. But this Salmoxis knew the Ionian way of life and manners more refined than the Thracians were used to, since he had spent time among Greeks, and not just any Greek but Pythagoras, by no means the least of the Greek philosophers. So he built a banquet hall, where he entertained and feasted the leading men of his people, and taught them as he did so that neither he nor his guests nor their descendants after them would ever die. Instead, he said, they would go to a place where they would live forever and have every good thing. While he was doing what I have described and saying these things, he was also building himself a chamber underground. When the chamber was finished, he vanished from among the Thracians, went down into it, and lived there for three years. The Thracians missed him and mourned for him as if he were dead. Then in the fourth year he appeared to them again, and that is how they came to believe what Salmoxis had told them.
96. That is what they say he did. As for this business of the underground chamber, I neither disbelieve it nor believe it very strongly. But I think this Salmoxis lived many years before Pythagoras. In any case, whether there was ever a man called Salmoxis or whether he is simply a native god of the Getae, let us say goodbye to him now.
97. These Getae, with the customs I have described, were conquered by the Persians and marched on with the rest of the army. When Darius and his land army reached the Danube and everyone had crossed, Darius ordered the Ionians to break up the floating bridge and to follow him overland, together with the rest of the troops from the ships. The Ionians were about to break it up and do as he ordered when Coes son of Erxander, the commander of the men of Mytilene, spoke to Darius, after first asking whether he would be willing to hear an opinion from someone who wanted to give one. "My king," he said, "you are about to march into a land where you will see no farmland and no inhabited town. So let this bridge stand where it is, and leave the men who built it to guard it. Then if we find the Scythians and things go the way we want, we have a way back. And even if we cannot find them, at least our way back is safe. I have never yet been afraid that the Scythians would beat us in battle. What I fear is that we may not be able to find them, and may come to some disaster wandering around. Perhaps someone will say I am saying this for my own good, so that I can stay behind. But in truth, my king, I am offering you the opinion I think best for you, and I myself will go with you and will not be left behind." Darius was very pleased with this advice and answered him: "My friend from Lesbos, when I have come home safely to my palace, be sure to come and see me, so that I can repay your good advice with good deeds."
98. When he had said this, he tied sixty knots in a leather strap, called the Ionian tyrants to a meeting and said: "Men of Ionia, I have given up the opinion I gave you earlier about the bridge. Take this strap and do as I tell you. From the moment you see me set out against the Scythians, begin untying one knot each day. If I am not back within that time, and you find that the days counted by the knots have run out, sail home to your own lands. Until then, since we have changed our plan, guard the floating bridge, and do everything you can to keep it safe and protect it. If you do this, you will be doing me a very great service." That is what Darius said, and he hurried on his march.
99. Now Thrace lies out in front of Scythia toward the sea. Where a bay is formed in this land, Scythia begins, and the Danube flows out into the sea there, its mouth facing southeast. Starting from the Danube, I will now describe the coastline of Scythia proper and give its measurements. Right at the Danube begins the old land of Scythia, which faces south toward midday and the south wind and stretches as far as the city called Carcinitis. Beyond this, the land along the coast of the same sea, a mountainous country that juts out into the Black Sea, is held by the Tauric people as far as the peninsula called the Rugged Chersonese, and this reaches to the sea that lies to the east. For two sides of Scythia's borders run along the sea, one along the sea to the south and the other along the sea to the east, just as with Attica. In fact the Tauri hold a part of Scythia much like a part of Attica. It is as if, in Attica, some other people and not the Athenians held the hill country of Sunium, if you imagine that it juts farther out into the sea at the point: the region, that is, cut off by a line from Thoricus to Anaphlystus. That, if I may compare small things with great, is the shape of the Tauric land. But for anyone who has not sailed along that part of the coast of Attica, I will make it clear with another comparison. It is as if, in Iapygia, some other people and not the Iapygians had cut off and held the tip of the land bounded by a line from the harbor of Brentesium, Brindisi, to Taras. In naming these two similar cases, I am suggesting many others that the Tauric land resembles too.
100. Right after the Tauric land come Scythians again. They hold the country above the Tauri and the coast of the eastern sea, that is, the land west of the Cimmerian Bosporus and of Lake Maeotis, as far as the river Don, which runs into the corner of this lake. On its inland side, as we know, Scythia is bounded first by the Agathyrsi, starting from the Danube, then by the Neuri, then by the Androphagi, and last by the Melanchlaeni.
101. So Scythia can be thought of as a square, with two of its sides along the sea, and its boundaries are the same length in each direction, the one running inland and the one running along the sea. From the Danube to the Dnieper is ten days' journey, and from the Dnieper to Lake Maeotis is ten days more. And the distance inland to the Melanchlaeni, who live beyond the Scythians, is a journey of twenty days. I have reckoned a day's journey at about twenty-two miles. By this reckoning the sides of Scythia that run across would be about 440 miles long, and the sides that run inland would be the same. That is the size of this land.
102. The Scythians, meanwhile, reasoned that they could not drive off Darius' army on their own in a pitched battle, so they sent messengers to their neighbors. The kings of these nations had already met and were holding a council together, since so great an army was marching against them. The kings who had come together were those of the Tauri, the Agathyrsi, the Neuri, the Androphagi, the Melanchlaeni, the Gelonians, the Budini and the Sauromatae.
103. Of these, the Tauri have the following customs. They sacrifice to the Maiden both shipwrecked sailors and any Greeks they can capture by putting out to sea against them. This is how they sacrifice them. After the opening rites over the victim, they strike him on the head with a club. Some say they then push the body off the top of the cliff (for the temple stands on a cliff) and set the head up on a stake. Others agree about the heads but say that the body is not pushed off the cliff but buried in the ground. The Tauri themselves say that this goddess they sacrifice to is Iphigenia the daughter of Agamemnon. With enemies they have defeated, they do this: each man cuts off a head and carries it home, then sticks it on a long pole and sets it up high above his house, usually above the chimney. These heads hung up there, they say, are guards that protect the whole household. This people lives by plunder and war.
104. The Agathyrsi live in great luxury and wear gold ornaments most of the time. They also have their women in common, so that they may all be brothers, and since they are all close kin, they feel no envy or ill will toward one another. In their other customs they have come to resemble the Thracians.
105. The Neuri follow Scythian customs. One generation before Darius' expedition, it happened that they were forced to leave their land entirely because of snakes. Their own land produced huge numbers of snakes, and even more came down on them from the desert country beyond their borders, until at last, hard pressed, they left their land and settled among the Budini. These people may be sorcerers. For the Scythians, and the Greeks who live in Scythia, say that once every year each of the Neuri turns into a wolf for a few days and then turns back into his own shape. For my part, I do not believe them when they say this, but they say it all the same, and they swear to it too.
106. The Androphagi have the most savage ways of any people on earth. They recognize no justice and keep no law. They are nomads and dress like the Scythians, but they have a language of their own, and alone of all these nations they eat human flesh.
107. The Melanchlaeni all wear black clothes, which is where their name, the Black Cloaks, comes from. They follow Scythian customs.
108. The Budini are a great and numerous people, and they all have very blue eyes and fair skin. In their land there is a city built of wood, called Gelonus. Each side of its wall is about three and a third miles long, and the wall is high and all of wood. Their houses are wooden too, and so are their temples. For there are temples of Greek gods there, furnished in the Greek way with sacred images, altars and shrines, all of wood. Every other year they hold a festival for Dionysus and celebrate his Bacchic rites. That is because the Gelonians were originally Greeks. They moved away from the trading posts on the coast and settled among the Budini, and their language is partly Scythian and partly Greek. But the Budini do not speak the same language as the Gelonians, and their way of life is different.
109. The Budini are native to the land and nomads, and alone of the peoples in this region they eat pine cones. The Gelonians farm the land, eat grain and have gardens, and are nothing like the Budini in looks or in coloring. The Greeks, however, call the Budini Gelonians too, which is not right. Their whole land is thickly covered with forests of every kind of tree. In the thickest forest there is a large, deep lake, surrounded by marshland and reeds. Otters are caught in it, and beavers, and other wild animals with square faces. Their fur is sewn as a trim around the edges of the people's leather coats, and their testicles are used as a remedy for diseases of the womb.
110. About the Sauromatae, this story is told. When the Greeks fought against the Amazons, the warrior women of legend (the Scythians call the Amazons Oeorpata, which in Greek means "man-killers," for "oior" is their word for "man" and "pata" means "to kill"), then, as the story goes, the Greeks won the battle at the river Thermodon and sailed away, carrying off in three ships as many Amazons as they had been able to take prisoner. Out at sea the Amazons attacked the men and threw them overboard. But they knew nothing about ships, or how to use a rudder or sails or oars. So after throwing the men overboard they were driven along by wind and wave, and they came to the place on Lake Maeotis where Cremni stands. Cremni is in the land of the free Scythians. There the Amazons got off their ships and made their way inland. The first thing they came across was a herd of horses grazing. They seized them, and mounted on these horses they raided the Scythians' property.
111. The Scythians could not make sense of it. They did not know the raiders' language or their dress or what people they belonged to, and they wondered where they had come from. They took them for men, all of about the same young age they appeared to be, and in the end they fought a battle with them. After the battle the Scythians took possession of the bodies of the dead, and that is how they found out they were women. So they held a council and decided not to go on trying to kill them at all, but to send out their youngest men against them, guessing at their number so as to send just as many men as there were women. These young men were told to camp near the women and to do whatever they did. If the women came after them, they were not to fight but to fall back, and when the women stopped, they were to come close and camp near them again. The Scythians adopted this plan because they wanted to have children by them.
112. So the young men were sent out and did as they had been told. When the Amazons saw that they had not come to do them any harm, they left them alone. Every day the two camps moved closer together. The young men, like the Amazons, had nothing but their weapons and their horses, and they made their living, just as the Amazons did, by hunting and raiding.
113. At midday the Amazons used to scatter, one at a time or two together, going off some distance from each other to relieve themselves. The Scythians noticed this and did the same. One of the Scythians came up to one of these Amazons who was off on her own, and she did not push him away but let him have sex with her. She could not speak to him, since they did not understand each other's language. But she made signs with her hand for him to come the next day to the same place and bring another man with him, signaling that there should be two of them and that she would bring another woman with her. When the young man got back, he told the others. The next day he came to the place himself and brought another man with him, and he found the Amazon waiting with another woman. When the rest of the young men heard about this, they won over the rest of the Amazons for themselves in the same way.
114. After this they joined their camps and lived together, each man keeping as his wife the woman he had first been with. The men could not learn the women's language, but the women picked up the men's. When they understood each other, the men said this to the Amazons: "We have parents and we have property. So let us not live this kind of life any longer. Let us go back to the main body of our people and live with them. We will have you as our wives, and no others." But the women answered: "We could not live with your women, because our customs and theirs are not the same. We shoot with bows, throw javelins and ride horses, but we never learned women's work. Your women do none of the things we have mentioned. They stay in the wagons and do women's work, and never go out hunting or anywhere else. So we could not get along with them. But if you want to keep us as your wives and be thought honorable men, go to your parents and get your share of their property, and then let us go off and live by ourselves."
115. The young men agreed and did this. When they had got the share of property that was theirs and come back to the Amazons, the women said to them: "We are full of fear and dread at the thought of living in this place. We have separated you from your fathers, and we have done great damage to your land. Since you think it right to have us as your wives, do this with us: come, let us leave this land, cross the river Don and live there."
116. The young men agreed to this too. They crossed the Don and traveled east, toward the rising sun, for three days' journey from the Don, and north, toward the north wind, for three days' journey from Lake Maeotis. When they reached the place where they live now, they settled there. And ever since, the women of the Sauromatae have kept their old way of life. They go out hunting on horseback, both with the men and without them; they go to war; and they wear the same clothes as the men.
117. The Sauromatae speak the Scythian language, but they have spoken it badly from the start, because the Amazons never learned it properly. Their rule about marriage is this: no girl may marry until she has killed a man of the enemy. Some of them grow old and die unmarried, because they cannot fulfill the law.
118. These, then, are the nations I have listed in order, and it was to their kings that the Scythians' messengers came. They found them gathered together in one place, and told them what was happening. The Persian king, they said, had already brought everything in the other continent under his power. He had laid a bridge across the narrow neck of the Bosporus and crossed over to this continent, and once across he had conquered the Thracians. Now he was building a bridge over the Danube, because he wanted to bring all these lands under his power as well. "So whatever you do," they said, "don't stand aside and let us be destroyed. Let's all be of one mind and stand together against the man who is coming at us. If you won't do this, we will be forced by necessity either to leave our land, or to stay in it and come to terms with the invader. What else can we do, if you refuse to help us? And after that, things will be no easier for you. The Persian has come against you just as much as against us, and once he has conquered us he won't be content to leave you alone. We can give you strong proof that what we say is true. If the Persian were making this expedition against us alone, because he wanted revenge for the time when his people were our subjects, he would have left everyone else alone and come straight to invade our land. That way he would have made it clear to all that he was marching against the Scythians and not against anyone else. But in fact, ever since he crossed over to this continent, he has forced everyone in his path to submit to him. He already holds the rest of the Thracians, and the Getae too, who are our nearest neighbors."
119. When the Scythians made this proposal, the kings who had come from the various nations talked it over, and their opinions were divided. The kings of the Gelonians, the Budini and the Sauromatae agreed with one another and accepted the proposal: they would help the Scythians. But the kings of the Agathyrsians, the Neuri, the Androphagi, the Melanchlaeni and the Tauri gave the Scythians this answer: "If you had not been the first to wrong the Persians and to start the war, then we would certainly think you were in the right to ask for what you are asking now. We would have agreed to your request and shared your fortunes. As it is, though, you invaded their land without us, and you ruled over the Persians for as long as heaven allowed you to. Now they, stirred up by the same heaven, are paying you back in kind. As for us, we did these men no wrong back then, and we will not start wronging them now, unprovoked. If the Persians come against our land too, and wrong us first, then we too will refuse to submit. But until we see that happen, we will stay where we are. In our opinion the Persians have not come against us at all, but against the people who started the wrong."
120. When this answer was reported to the Scythians, they decided not to fight an open, pitched battle, since these nations would not join them as allies. Instead they would fall back before the Persians and drive their cattle away ahead of them. As they went, they would choke up the wells and springs they passed with earth and destroy the grass on the ground. For this they split themselves into two bodies. They decided that the Sauromatae should be added to one of their divisions, the one Scopasis was king of. If the Persians turned in their direction, this force was to move straight toward the river Don, retreating before the enemy along the shore of Lake Maeotis; and when the Persian marched back again, they were to follow and harry him. That was one division of their kingdom, assigned to the route I have described. The other two kingdoms, the large one ruled by Idanthyrsus and the third, ruled by Taxacis, were to join together into one force, with the Gelonians and the Budini added to them. They too were to fall back before the Persians, staying one day's march ahead of them, getting out of their way and carrying out the plan. First they were to head straight for the lands of the nations that had refused to be their allies, so as to drag them into the war as well. These peoples had not taken up the war with the Persians willingly, but they would be dragged into it all the same, against their will. After that the Scythians would turn back to their own land and attack the enemy, if they decided in council that this was the thing to do.
121. With this plan made, the Scythians went out to meet Darius' army, sending their best horsemen ahead as scouts. But all the wagons that their children and women lived in they sent on ahead, along with all their cattle, except for as much as they needed for food, and ordered them to keep moving steadily toward the north. So the wagons were carried on ahead.
122. When the scouts riding in front of the Scythians found the Persians, about three days' march from the Danube, the Scythians, having found them, kept pitching their camp one day's march ahead of them, utterly destroying everything that grew from the ground. When the Persians saw that the Scythian horsemen had appeared, they came after them, following in their tracks, while the Scythians kept moving on. After this, since the Persians had set off after the first of the divisions, they kept on pursuing eastward, toward the river Don. When the Scythians crossed the Don, the Persians crossed after them and kept up the pursuit, until they had gone right through the land of the Sauromatae and come to that of the Budini.
123. Now as long as the Persians were marching through Scythia and the land of the Sauromatae, they had nothing to destroy, since the land was bare. But when they invaded the land of the Budini, they came upon the wooden-walled city there. The Budini had abandoned it and left it completely empty, and the Persians burned it down. After that they kept following the enemy's tracks onward, until they had passed through the whole of that land and reached the desert. This desert has no people living in it at all. It lies beyond the land of the Budini and stretches for seven days' journey. Beyond the desert live the Thyssagetae, and four large rivers flow down from their country through the land of the Maeotians and empty into what is called Lake Maeotis. Their names are the Lycus, the Oarus, the Don and the Syrgis.
124. So when Darius came to the desert, he stopped his advance and halted his army on the river Oarus. Then he began to build eight large forts, at equal distances from one another, about seven miles apart; their ruins were still standing in my own time. While he was busy with this, the Scythians he was chasing circled around through the country to the north and went back into Scythia. Since they had vanished completely and the Persians could no longer see them anywhere, Darius left the forts half finished, turned back, and began to march west. He supposed that these were the whole body of the Scythians, and that they were fleeing toward the west.
125. He marched his army as fast as he could, and when he reached Scythia he ran into the two combined divisions of the Scythians. When he came upon them he kept up the pursuit, while they kept withdrawing out of his way, always a day's march ahead. Since Darius would not stop coming after them, the Scythians, following the plan they had made, kept retreating before him toward the lands of the nations that had refused to be their allies, and first toward that of the Melanchlaeni. When the Scythians and the Persians together had invaded the Melanchlaeni and thrown them into turmoil, the Scythians led the way into the country of the Androphagi. When these had been thrown into turmoil too, they went on into the land of the Neuri; and while these too were in turmoil, the Scythians kept retreating before the enemy toward the Agathyrsians. But the Agathyrsians saw their neighbors fleeing from the Scythians in turmoil, and before the Scythians could invade their land they sent a herald. He warned the Scythians not to set foot across their borders: if they tried to invade the country, they would first have to fight the Agathyrsians. After giving this warning, the Agathyrsians marched out in arms to their borders, meaning to drive back anyone who came at them. But the Melanchlaeni, the Androphagi and the Neuri, when the Persians and Scythians invaded them together, did not put up a brave defense. They forgot their earlier threats and fled in confusion, farther and farther north, into the desert. As for the Scythians, once the Agathyrsians had warned them off, they made no further attempt to go there. Instead they led the Persians out of the country of the Neuri and back into their own land.
126. This went on for a long time and showed no sign of ending, so Darius sent a horseman to Idanthyrsus, the king of the Scythians, with this message: "You strange, extraordinary man, why do you keep running away, when you could do one of two things? If you think you are strong enough to stand up to my power, then stop wandering about, stand still, and fight. But if you admit you are too weak, then in that case too stop running, and come and talk with your master, bringing him the gifts of earth and water that show you submit."
127. Idanthyrsus, the king of the Scythians, answered him this way: "This is how things stand with me, Persian. I have never yet run away out of fear, not from any other man before now, and not from you now. What I am doing now is no different from what I do in peacetime too. And I will tell you why I don't fight you right away. We have no cities and no farmland that we need to worry might be captured or laid waste, which would make us join battle with you sooner. But if you absolutely must come to a fight soon, then know this: we have tombs where our fathers are buried. So come on, find them, and try to destroy them, and then you will see whether we fight you for the tombs or not. Until then, unless we feel like it, we will not join battle with you. That is enough said about fighting. As for masters, I recognize none but Zeus, my forefather, and Hestia, the queen of the Scythians. Instead of gifts of earth and water, I will send you the kind of gifts that you deserve to get. And in return for your calling yourself my master, I say: be damned to you." This is what is proverbially called "the Scythian saying."
128. So the herald had gone off to report this to Darius. The kings of the Scythians, hearing talk of being subject to a master, were filled with fury. They sent off the division that had been assigned to join the Sauromatae, the one commanded by Scopasis, with orders to go and talk with the Ionians, the ones guarding the bridge over the Danube. Meanwhile those who stayed behind decided to stop leading the Persians around in circles, and to attack them constantly whenever they were out gathering food. So they watched Darius' soldiers as they foraged and carried out what they had decided. The Scythian cavalry always routed the Persian cavalry. But the Persian horsemen, as they fled, would fall back on their foot soldiers, and the infantry would come up to help them; and at that point the Scythians, having driven in the cavalry, would turn back, because they were afraid of the men on foot. The Scythians made attacks like these by night as well.
129. Now I will tell you the thing that, strange to say, most helped the Persians and most hindered the Scythians when they attacked Darius' camp: it was the braying of the donkeys and the look of the mules. For Scythia produces neither donkeys nor mules, as I have explained before, and because of the cold there is not a single donkey or mule anywhere in the Scythian country. So the donkeys, braying wildly, would throw the Scythian cavalry into confusion. Often, just as the Scythians were in the middle of a charge against the Persians, their horses would hear the donkeys' voices and turn back in confusion, amazed, pricking up their ears. They had never heard a sound like that before, or seen a creature of that shape.
130. So for a small part of the war the Persians had the upper hand in this. But whenever the Scythians saw that the Persians were growing uneasy, they did something to keep them in Scythia longer, so that by staying they would suffer from running short of everything. They would leave some of their own cattle behind with the herdsmen and ride off somewhere else, and the Persians would come upon the cattle and take them, and having taken them they were pleased with themselves.
131. This happened again and again, until at last Darius began to be in difficulties. When the kings of the Scythians saw this, they sent a herald bringing Darius gifts: a bird, a mouse, a frog and five arrows. The Persians asked the man who brought them what the gifts meant. But he said that his only orders were to hand them over and get away as fast as possible. If the Persians were clever, he said, they could work out for themselves what the gifts were meant to say.
132. When they heard this, the Persians discussed it among themselves. Darius' opinion was that the Scythians were surrendering to him, giving him both themselves and their earth and water. He reasoned it out this way: a mouse is born in the earth and eats the same food from the earth as a man does; a frog lives in the water; a bird is very like a horse; and in giving the arrows they were handing over their own fighting strength. That was the opinion Darius put forward. But Gobryas, one of the seven men who killed the Magus, disagreed. He guessed that the gifts were saying this: "Unless you turn into birds, Persians, and fly up into the sky, or turn into mice and sink down under the earth, or turn into frogs and leap into the lakes, you will never get back home. You will be shot down by these arrows."
133. So the Persians were trying to guess the meaning of the gifts. Meanwhile the single division of the Scythians, the one that had first been assigned to keep guard along Lake Maeotis and then to go to the Danube and talk with the Ionians, reached the bridge and said this: "Ionians, we have come to bring you freedom, if only you are willing to listen to us. We are told that Darius ordered you to guard the bridge for sixty days only, and if he had not arrived within that time, to go home to your own land. So now, if you do what we say, neither he nor we will have anything to blame you for. Stay the number of days you were given, and after that, go." When the Ionians promised to do this, the Scythians hurried back again by the fastest route.
134. Meanwhile, after the gifts had come to Darius, the Scythians who had stayed behind drew themselves up against the Persians, foot and horse together, meaning to give battle. But when the Scythians were in battle order, a hare darted out through their ranks into the space between the two armies. Every company of them that saw the hare started to chase it. The Scythians fell into disorder and raised a great shouting, and Darius asked what all the noise from the enemy was about. When he heard that they were chasing the hare, he said to the men he usually talked things over with: "These men think very little of us. I see now that Gobryas was right about the Scythian gifts. Since I now think so myself, we need good advice on how to make our way home safely." Gobryas answered him: "My king, even from what people said, I was nearly sure how hard these men would be to deal with. Since I came here I have learned it even better, because I could see they were making fun of us. So here is my advice. As soon as night falls, let us light the campfires as we always do, and deceive with some false story the men least able to bear hardship. Let us tie up all the donkeys and get away, before the Scythians make for the Danube to destroy the bridge, or the Ionians decide on something that could be the end of us."
135. That was Gobryas' advice, and when night came Darius acted on it. He left behind in the camp the men who were worn out with fatigue and whose loss mattered least, and he left the donkeys there too, tied up. His reasons for leaving the donkeys and the weaker part of his army were these: the donkeys, so that their noise would be heard; the men, in reality because of their weakness, but on the pretext, which he announced openly, that he was going to attack the Scythians with the fit part of the army, and that they were to guard the camp in the meantime. Once he had given these instructions to the men he was leaving, and had the campfires lit, Darius hurried away by the fastest route toward the Danube. The donkeys, no longer having the usual crowd around them, brayed all the more loudly because of it. So the Scythians, hearing the donkeys, were quite sure the Persians were still where they had been.
136. But when day came, the men who had been left behind realized that Darius had betrayed them. They held out their hands to the Scythians in surrender and told them how things stood. When the Scythians heard this, they gathered as fast as they could, the two combined divisions of the Scythians and the single division together, with the Sauromatae, the Budini and the Gelonians too, and set off after the Persians, heading straight for the Danube. But most of the Persian army was on foot, and it did not know the roads, since the roads there are not marked out with tracks; while the Scythian army was all on horseback and knew the shortcuts. So the two armies missed each other, and the Scythians reached the bridge long before the Persians. Finding out that the Persians had not yet arrived, they said to the Ionians, who were in their ships: "Ionians, the number of your days is up, and you are not doing right by staying here still. Before, it was fear that kept you here. Now break up the crossing as fast as you can and go away free and unharmed, and thank the gods and the Scythians for it. As for the man who used to be your master, we will deal with him so thoroughly that he will never again march with an army against anyone."
137. At this the Ionians held a council. Miltiades the Athenian, who was the commander and tyrant of the people of the Chersonese on the Hellespont, the Gallipoli peninsula, was for taking the Scythians' advice and setting Ionia free. But Histiaeus of Miletus held the opposite opinion. At present, he said, each one of them ruled his city as tyrant thanks to Darius. If Darius' power were destroyed, neither he himself would be able to go on ruling the Milesians, nor would any of the others be able to go on ruling any other city, because every one of the cities would choose to be governed by its people rather than by a tyrant. When Histiaeus put forward this view, they all went over to it at once, though at first they had been siding with Miltiades.
138. The men who cast their votes between the two views, and who counted for something in the king's eyes, were these. First, the tyrants of the Hellespont: Daphnis of Abydos, Hippoclus of Lampsacus, Herophantus of Parium, Metrodorus of Proconnesus, Aristagoras of Cyzicus and Ariston of Byzantium; these were the ones from the Hellespont. From Ionia there were Strattis of Chios, Aeaces of Samos, Laodamas of Phocaea, and Histiaeus of Miletus, whose view was the one set against Miltiades'. Of the Aeolians the only man of importance there was Aristagoras of Cyme.
139. Once these men had adopted Histiaeus' view, they decided to add to it the following words and deeds. They would break up the part of the bridge on the Scythian side, as far out as an arrow can fly. That way they would seem to be doing something, when in fact they were doing nothing, and it would also stop the Scythians from trying to force their way across the Danube by the bridge. And while they were breaking up the part of the bridge toward Scythia, they would say that they would do everything the Scythians wanted. They added this to the view they had adopted, and then Histiaeus stepped forward from among them and answered the Scythians this way: "Scythians, you have brought good news, and you have hurried to bring it just in time. You are giving us good guidance, and we are doing you good service in return. As you can see, we are breaking up the crossing, and we will show every eagerness in our wish to be free. While we break up the bridge, you should be out searching for those men you talk about, and when you find them, take revenge on them, for us as well as for yourselves, the way they deserve."
140. So the Scythians, believing a second time that the Ionians were telling the truth, turned back to search for the Persians, but they missed their line of march through the country altogether. The Scythians themselves were to blame for this, since they had destroyed the horse pastures in that region and choked up the springs with earth. If they had not done that, they could easily have found the Persians if they had wanted to. As it was, the very measures they thought they had planned best were what made them fail. The Scythians went through the parts of their own land where there was grass for horses and springs of water and searched for the enemy there, thinking that the Persians too would be retreating through country like that. But in fact the Persians marched carefully along the track they had made before, and so they found the crossing of the river, though only with difficulty. They arrived by night, and when they found the bridge broken up they were terrified that the Ionians had deserted them.
141. Now Darius had with him an Egyptian with the loudest voice of any man on earth. Darius ordered this man to stand on the bank of the Danube and call for Histiaeus of Miletus. He did so, and Histiaeus heard the very first shout. He brought up all the ships to ferry the army across, and put the bridge back together as well.
142. That is how the Persians escaped, and the Scythians, searching for them, missed them a second time. And this is the Scythians' verdict on the Ionians: if you look at them as free men, they are the most worthless and cowardly of all men; but if you look at them as slaves, they are the most devoted to their master and the least likely to run away of all slaves. That is the insult the Scythians throw at the Ionians.
143. Darius marched through Thrace and came to Sestos in the Chersonese. From there he crossed over with his ships to Asia himself, but he left Megabazus, a Persian, in command of his army in Europe. This was the man Darius once honored, in Persia, with the following remark. Darius was starting to eat some pomegranates, and as soon as he opened the first one, his brother Artabanus asked him what he would like to have as many of as there were seeds in the pomegranate. Darius said he would rather have that many men like Megabazus than have Greece under his rule. That was how he honored him in Persia, with those words; and now he left him in command, with 80,000 men of his army.
144. This Megabazus made one remark that left an undying memory of him among the peoples of the Hellespont. Once, when he was at Byzantium, he heard that the people of Chalcedon, across the strait, had settled there seventeen years before the Byzantines. When he heard it, he said that the people of Chalcedon must have been blind at the time. Surely they would never have chosen the worse site, when they could have settled on the better one, if they had not been blind. It was this Megabazus who was now left in command in the land of the Hellespont, and he set about conquering everyone who was not on the Persian side.
145. That, then, was what Megabazus was doing. At this very same time another great expedition was being made, this one against Libya. I will tell what brought it about, but first I must tell the story that follows. The grandchildren of the men who sailed in the Argo had been driven out of Lemnos by the Pelasgians, the same Pelasgians who carried off the Athenian women from Brauron. Driven out of Lemnos by them, they left and sailed to Sparta, and there they sat down on Mount Taygetus and lit a fire. When the Spartans saw this, they sent a messenger to ask who they were and where they came from. They answered the messenger's question by saying that they were Minyans, children of the heroes who sailed in the Argo; for these heroes, they said, had put in at Lemnos and fathered the people they were descended from. The Spartans heard this story of the Minyans' descent and sent a second time to ask what they had come into the country for, and why they were making a fire blaze. They said that they had been thrown out by the Pelasgians and had now come to the land of their fathers, for that was the most just thing to do. And they said that what they asked was to be allowed to live among the Spartans, with a share of the rights of citizens and a portion of the land allotted to them. The Spartans were willing to take in the Minyans on the very terms the Minyans themselves wanted. What moved them to this most of all was that the sons of Tyndareus had been among the crew of the Argo. So they took the Minyans in, gave them a share of land, and distributed them among the tribes. The Minyans at once married Spartan wives, and gave the women they had brought with them from Lemnos in marriage to other men.
146. But before very long the Minyans grew arrogant. They demanded a share of the royal power and did other unholy things as well. So the Spartans resolved to put them to death; they seized them and threw them into prison. Now the Spartans carry out every execution they carry out at night, never by day. So when they were about to kill them, the wives of the Minyans, who were Spartan-born and daughters of the leading men of Sparta, begged to be allowed into the prison so that each of them could speak with her own husband. The Spartans let them in, never suspecting any trick from them. But once they were inside, the women handed over to their husbands all the clothes they were wearing and put on their husbands' clothes themselves. So the Minyans dressed in the women's clothes and walked out of the prison as women. Having escaped this way, they went back to Taygetus and sat down there again.
147. Now at this very same time Theras son of Autesion, son of Tisamenus, son of Thersander, son of Polynices, was getting ready to set out from Sparta to found a colony. This Theras was of the line of Cadmus, and he was the uncle, on their mother's side, of the sons of Aristodemus, Eurysthenes and Procles. While these sons were still children, Theras held the royal power in Sparta as their guardian. But when his nephews grew up and took power into their own hands, Theras could not bear to be ruled by others after he had had a taste of ruling himself. He said he would not stay in Sparta but would sail away to his kinsmen. Now on the island that is now called Thera, but was formerly called Callista, there lived descendants of Membliarus son of Poeciles, a Phoenician. For Cadmus son of Agenor, while he was searching for Europa, put in at the island now called Thera. Whether it was that the country pleased him when he landed, or whether he chose to do it for some other reason, he left on this island a number of Phoenicians, among them one of his own kinsmen, Membliarus. These people had lived on the island called Callista for eight generations before Theras came from Sparta.
148. It was to these people that Theras was getting ready to set out, taking with him men from the tribes. He meant to settle there alongside them, not to drive them out; on the contrary, he very strongly claimed them as his kin. And when the Minyans, after escaping from the prison, went and sat down on Taygetus, and the Spartans were planning to put them to death, Theras begged the Spartans to let there be no killing, and promised that he himself would take them out of the country. The Spartans agreed to this, and he sailed away with three thirty-oared ships to the descendants of Membliarus. He did not take all the Minyans with him by any means, only a few. Most of them turned instead toward the land of the Paroreatae and the Caucones. They drove these peoples out of their country, divided themselves into six groups, and founded the following towns in their territory: Lepreum, Macistus, Phrixae, Pyrgus, Epium, and Nudium. The Eleans sacked most of these within my own lifetime. The island, meanwhile, took its name of Thera from Theras, who led the colony.
149. Theras' son said he would not sail with him. So Theras said that he would leave him behind like a sheep among wolves. Because of that saying, the young man got the name Oeolycus, "Sheep-Wolf," and as it happened this name won out over the one he had before. Oeolycus fathered Aegeus, after whom the Aegids are named, a powerful clan in Sparta. The men of this clan found that their children were not living to grow up, so on the advice of an oracle they founded a temple to the Furies of Laius and Oedipus, the avenging spirits of that house. After this, the descendants of these men kept up the same custom in Thera.
150. Up to this point in the story the Spartans and the people of Thera tell it the same way. But what comes next, only the people of Thera say happened as follows. Grinnus son of Aesanius, a descendant of the Theras I have mentioned, and king of the island of Thera, came to Delphi bringing a hecatomb, a sacrifice of a hundred beasts, from his city. Among the citizens who came with him was Battus son of Polymnestus, who by descent belonged to the family of Euphemus, of the line of the Minyans. While Grinnus, the king of the Therans, was consulting the oracle about other matters, the Pythia answered by telling him to found a city in Libya. He replied: "Lord, I am already rather old and slow to get moving. Tell one of these younger men to do it." As he said this, he pointed at Battus. That was all for the time being. But afterward, when they had come home, they were at a loss what to do about the oracle's words. They knew nothing about Libya, not even what part of the world it was in, and they did not dare to send a colony off into the unknown.
151. After this, for seven years no rain fell on Thera, and in those years every tree on the island withered up except one. When the Therans consulted the oracle, the Pythia declared that the cause was this business of colonizing Libya. So, since they had no other remedy for their trouble, they sent messengers to Crete to find out whether any of the Cretans, or any foreigners living in Crete, had ever been to Libya. As these messengers wandered around the island, they came to the city of Itanus. There they met a fisherman who caught the shellfish for purple dye, a man named Corobius. He told them that he had been carried off course by the winds to Libya, and in Libya to the island of Platea. They paid this man to come with them and took him to Thera. From Thera a party set sail to explore, only a few men at first. Corobius guided them to this same island of Platea, and they left him there with enough food for a certain number of months. Then they sailed back as fast as they could to report about the island to the people of Thera.
152. But they stayed away longer than the time they had agreed on, and Corobius ran out of everything. Then a Samian ship, whose captain was Colaeus, was blown off course on its way to Egypt and came to this island of Platea. The Samians heard the whole story from Corobius and left him food for a year. Then they put out to sea from the island and sailed on, trying to reach Egypt, but they were driven steadily westward by the east wind. Since the wind never let up, they passed through the Pillars of Heracles and came to Tartessus, guided there by the hand of heaven. Now at that time no one had ever traded at this market, so when the Samians came home again they made a bigger profit from their cargo than any other Greeks we have certain knowledge of, except at least for Sostratus son of Laodamas, of Aegina; no other man can compete with him. The Samians set aside six talents, a tenth of their profits, and had a bronze vessel made in the shape of an Argive mixing bowl, with the heads of griffins projecting in a row all around its rim. They dedicated this as an offering in the temple of Hera, and set it on three colossal bronze statues, each about ten and a half feet tall, kneeling on their knees. It was this deed above all that first made the people of Cyrene and Thera close friends of the Samians.
153. Meanwhile the Therans who had left Corobius on the island arrived back at Thera and reported that they had settled an island off the coast of Libya. The people of Thera resolved to send one of every two brothers, chosen by lot, along with men from all the districts of the island, of which there are seven. They resolved, too, that Battus should be both their leader and their king. So they sent off two fifty-oared ships to Platea.
154. That is the Therans' account. From this point on, for the rest of the story, the Therans agree with the people of Cyrene, but only from this point on, because about Battus the Cyreneans tell a very different tale. Their account goes like this. There is a city in Crete called Oaxus, where a man named Etearchus became king. He had a daughter named Phronime, whose mother had died, and in spite of her he took another wife. This woman came into the house and decided to be a stepmother to Phronime in deed as well as in name. She treated her badly and schemed in every way she could to hurt her, and in the end she accused her of sleeping around and persuaded her husband that it was true. He was convinced by his wife and plotted an unholy deed against his daughter. There was in Oaxus a merchant from Thera named Themison. Etearchus made him his guest-friend and had him swear to do him whatever service he asked. When he had made him swear this, he brought out his daughter, handed her over, and told him to take her away and throw her into the sea. Themison was furious at being tricked into the oath. He broke off his friendship with Etearchus, and this is what he did. He took the girl and sailed away, and when he was out on the open sea, to clear himself of the oath Etearchus had made him swear, he tied ropes around her, lowered her into the sea, pulled her up again, and went on to Thera.
155. After that, Polymnestus, a man of standing among the Therans, took Phronime from Themison and kept her as his concubine. In time she bore him a son who had a speech impediment and a lisp. Both the Therans and the Cyreneans say he was given the name Battus. But I think he was given some other name at first, and only took the name Battus after he came to Libya, adopting it as a title because of the oracle that was given him at Delphi and the rank he had won. For the Libyans' word for king is "battus," and that, I think, is why the Pythia called him that in her prophecy: she used the Libyan word because she knew he would be a king in Libya. For when he had grown up, he went to Delphi to ask about his voice, and when he asked, the priestess answered him:
Battus, you came for a voice; but Phoebus Apollo, your lord, sends you to settle in Libya, the land so rich in sheep.
It was just as if she had said in Greek, "King, you came for a voice." He answered: "Lord, I came to you to ask about my voice, and you answer me with other things, impossible things, telling me to go and found a colony in Libya. With what power, with what army of men, am I supposed to go?" Saying this did nothing to persuade her to give him any other answer, and as she began prophesying the same things to him again, Battus walked out while she was still speaking and went home to Thera.
156. After this, things went badly both for Battus himself and for the rest of the people of Thera. The Therans did not understand what was happening to them, and they sent to Delphi to ask about the troubles they were suffering. The Pythia answered that if they joined Battus in founding Cyrene in Libya, they would do better. So after this the Therans sent Battus out with two fifty-oared ships. These sailed to Libya, but then came back again to Thera, because they did not know what else to do. The Therans pelted them with missiles when they tried to land, would not let them come ashore, and told them to sail back. So, having no choice, they sailed back and founded a settlement on an island off the coast of Libya, which, as I said before, is called Platea. This island is said to be the same size as the city of Cyrene as it is today.
157. They stayed on this island for two years. But since things did not go well for them, they left one of their number behind, and all the rest sailed away to Delphi. When they came to the oracle, they consulted it, saying that they were living in Libya, and that for all their living there they were no better off. The Pythia answered them like this:
If you know Libya, the land so rich in sheep, better than I do, you who have not been there, than I who have, I marvel at your wisdom.
When Battus and his companions heard this, they sailed back again; for the god plainly would not let them off the duty of founding a colony until they had come to Libya itself. They came to the island, picked up the man they had left there, and founded a settlement on the mainland of Libya itself, at a place opposite the island called Aziris. It is shut in on both sides by very beautiful woods, and a river runs past it on one side.
158. They lived in this place for six years. In the seventh year the Libyans persuaded them to leave, asking them to go and saying that they would lead them to a better region. So the Libyans led them away from that place, getting them to set out toward evening. They had worked out the hours of daylight so that they could lead them past the finest place of all by night, and the Greeks would not see it as they went through. This region is called Irasa. Then they brought them to what is called the Spring of Apollo and said: "Greeks, here is a good place for you to live, for here the sky is full of holes." They meant that it rained there.
159. Now in the lifetime of the first settler, Battus, who reigned forty years, and of his son Arcesilaus, who reigned sixteen years, the Cyreneans lived there in the same numbers as when they first set out to found the colony. But in the time of the third king, called Battus the Prosperous, the Pythia gave an oracle urging Greeks everywhere to sail out and join the Cyreneans in settling Libya. For the Cyreneans were inviting them, promising them a share of the land. The oracle she gave was this:
Whoever comes to lovely Libya too late, after the land is shared out, I say he will one day regret it.
Then great numbers of people gathered at Cyrene. The Libyans who lived around them had large pieces of their land cut away, and so they and their king, whose name was Adicran, since they were being robbed of their country and also treated with great arrogance by the Cyreneans, sent to Egypt and put themselves in the hands of Apries, the king of Egypt. He gathered a great army of Egyptians and sent it against Cyrene. The men of Cyrene marched out to the region of Irasa and the spring of Theste, and there they fought the Egyptians and defeated them. The Egyptians had never before tested themselves against Greeks in battle and so looked down on them, and they were slaughtered so badly that only a few of them got back to Egypt. Because of this, and because they blamed Apries for it, the Egyptians revolted against him.
160. This Battus had a son named Arcesilaus. As soon as he became king, he quarreled with his own brothers, until finally they left and went to another part of Libya. There they struck out on their own and founded the city that was called Barca then and is still called Barca now. At the same time as they were founding it, they persuaded the Libyans to revolt from the Cyreneans. After this, Arcesilaus marched against the Libyans who had taken his brothers in and had also revolted from Cyrene. The Libyans were afraid of him and fled toward the Libyan tribes in the east. Arcesilaus followed them as they fled, chasing them all the way to Leucon in Libya, and there the Libyans decided to attack him. They fought a battle and beat the Cyreneans so completely that seven thousand Cyrenean hoplites fell there. After this disaster Arcesilaus fell sick and had taken some medicine when his brother Haliarchus strangled him. Then Haliarchus was murdered by a trick by Arcesilaus' wife, whose name was Eryxo.
161. Then Battus son of Arcesilaus inherited the kingdom. He was lame and could not walk properly. In view of the disaster that had struck them, the Cyreneans sent men to Delphi to ask what kind of government they should set up so as to live as well as possible. The Pythia told them to bring in a reformer from Mantinea in Arcadia to set their state in order. So the people of Cyrene asked for one, and the Mantineans gave them the most respected of their citizens, a man named Demonax. This man came to Cyrene and looked thoroughly into everything. First, he gave them three tribes, divided like this: one tribe he made of the Therans and the people living around them, another of the Peloponnesians and Cretans, and a third of all the islanders. Second, he set aside royal estates and priesthoods for King Battus, but all the other powers the kings had held before, he handed over to the people as public property.
162. In the reign of this Battus things stayed that way. But in the reign of his son Arcesilaus there was great unrest over the offices of state. For Arcesilaus, the son of Battus the Lame and of Pheretime, said he would not put up with the arrangements Demonax of Mantinea had made, and demanded back the royal rights of his ancestors. After this he stirred up civil strife, lost, and went into exile in Samos, while his mother went to Salamis in Cyprus. At that time the ruler of Salamis was Euelthon, the man who dedicated the incense burner at Delphi, a piece well worth seeing, which stands in the treasury of the Corinthians. Pheretime came to him and asked him for an army to restore herself and her son to Cyrene. But Euelthon was ready to give her anything rather than that. Whenever she accepted what he gave her, she would say that this too was a fine gift, but a finer one would be the gift she was asking for, an army. Since she said this about every gift, in the end Euelthon sent her a present of a golden spindle and distaff, with wool on it too. When Pheretime said the same thing again about this present, Euelthon said that these were the sort of gifts given to women, not armies.
163. Meanwhile Arcesilaus, in Samos, was gathering everyone he could by promising a redistribution of land. While a great host was being collected, Arcesilaus set out for Delphi to ask the oracle about his return from exile. The Pythia gave him this answer: "For four named Battus and four named Arcesilaus, eight generations of men, Loxias grants you to be kings of Cyrene; beyond that he advises you not even to try. As for you, keep quiet when you have come back to your country. If you find the kiln full of jars, do not fire the jars hard, but send them off with a fair wind. But if you do fire the kiln hard, do not go into the place that has water all around it; for if you do, you will die, both you and the bull that is the finest of the herd."
164. That was the Pythia's answer to Arcesilaus. He took the men from Samos with him and made his return to Cyrene. But once he had got control of the government, he forgot what the oracle had said and set about punishing the men of the opposing party for driving him out. Some of them escaped from the country altogether, but some Arcesilaus got into his hands, and he sent them off to Cyprus to be put to death. These men were driven off course to Cnidus, and the people of Cnidus rescued them and sent them away to Thera. Some other Cyreneans took refuge in a great tower that belonged to a private citizen named Aglomachus, and Arcesilaus piled brushwood around it and burned them alive. After he had done this, he realized that this was what the oracle meant when the Pythia forbade him, if he found the jars in the kiln, to fire them hard. So he deliberately kept away from the city of Cyrene, afraid of the death the oracle had foretold, and supposing that Cyrene was the place with water all around it. Now he was married to a kinswoman of his, the daughter of the king of Barca, whose name was Alazeir. He went to Alazeir, and some men of Barca, together with some of the exiles from Cyrene, caught sight of him walking in the marketplace and killed him, and his father-in-law Alazeir along with him. So Arcesilaus, whether he missed the meaning of the oracle on purpose or not, fulfilled his own destiny.
165. Meanwhile his mother Pheretime, all the time that Arcesilaus was living at Barca after bringing ruin on himself, held her son's royal power at Cyrene herself. She exercised all his other rights and also sat in the council. But when she heard that her son had been killed in Barca, she left and fled to Egypt. For she had in her favor the services Arcesilaus had done for Cambyses son of Cyrus: this was the Arcesilaus who had handed Cyrene over to Cambyses and had agreed to pay him tribute. So Pheretime came to Egypt and sat down as a suppliant before Aryandes, asking him to help her. Her reason, she said, was that her son had been killed because he took the side of the Persians.
166. Now this Aryandes had been made governor of Egypt by Cambyses. Some time after these events he lost his life for trying to make himself Darius' equal. He had heard, and seen for himself, that Darius wanted to leave behind a monument to himself that no other king had ever made, and he copied him, until in the end he got what he deserved. For Darius refined gold to the greatest possible purity and had coins struck from it; and Aryandes, as governor of Egypt, did the same thing with silver. Even now the purest silver is the kind called Aryandic. When Darius learned that he was doing this, he put him to death, though on a different charge: that he was plotting a revolt.
167. But at the time I am speaking of, this Aryandes took pity on Pheretime and gave her all the forces in Egypt, both the army and the navy. He appointed Amasis, a Persian of the Maraphian tribe, to command the army, and Badres, of the Pasargadae, to command the fleet. But before he sent the force off, Aryandes sent a herald to Barca to ask who it was that had killed Arcesilaus. The people of Barca all took the responsibility on themselves, for they said they had suffered many great wrongs at his hands in the past. When he heard this, Aryandes at last sent off the army, and Pheretime with it. That was the pretext given; but in fact, I believe, the army was being sent to conquer Libya. For the Libyans are many peoples of every kind, and only a few of them were subjects of the king, while most of them paid no attention to Darius at all.
168. Now this is how the Libyans are settled. Starting from Egypt, the first of the Libyans are the Adyrmachidae. For the most part they follow the same customs as the Egyptians, but they dress like the other Libyans. Their women wear a bronze ring on each leg and let the hair on their heads grow long. When one of them catches her lice, she bites each one back in revenge and then throws it away. They are the only Libyans who do this. They are also the only ones who show their girls to the king when they are about to be married, and whichever of them pleases the king is deflowered by him. These Adyrmachidae stretch along the coast from Egypt as far as the harbor called Plynus.
169. Next after them come the Giligamae, who hold the country toward the west as far as the island of Aphrodisias. Within this stretch, off the coast, lies the island of Platea, where the Cyreneans made their first settlement; and on the mainland coast there is Port Menelaus, and Aziris, where the Cyreneans used to live. From here the silphium begins, and it grows along the coast from the island of Platea as far as the mouth of the Syrtis. This people has customs much like those of the rest.
170. West of the Giligamae are the Asbystae. They live inland above Cyrene and do not reach down to the sea, because the land along the sea is held by the Cyreneans. More than any other Libyans they drive four-horse chariots, and in most of their customs they try to copy the Cyreneans.
171. Next after the Asbystae, to the west, come the Auschisae. They live inland above Barca and reach down to the sea at Euesperides. In the middle of the Auschisae's country live the Bacales, a small tribe, who reach down to the sea at the town of Taucheira in the territory of Barca. They follow the same customs as the people above Cyrene.
172. West of the Auschisae come the Nasamonians, a large people. In summer they leave their flocks behind by the sea and go up to the region of Augila to harvest the dates from the palm trees there, which grow thick and very tall and all of them bear fruit. They hunt the wingless locusts, dry them in the sun, pound them up, and then sprinkle them on milk and drink them. Their custom is for each man to have many wives, and they have sex with them in common, in much the same way as the Massagetae: a man sets up his staff in front of the door and then has sex with the woman inside. When a Nasamonian man marries for the first time, it is the custom for the bride, on the first night, to go around all the guests in turn and have sex with each of them; and each man, after he has slept with her, gives her a gift, whatever he has brought with him from home. Their oaths and their ways of telling the future are these. They swear by the men among them who are said to have been the most just and the bravest, laying their hands on those men's tombs as they swear. And to learn the future they go to the burial mounds of their ancestors, pray, and lie down to sleep on them; whatever the man sees in his dream, he takes as his answer. They pledge their word to each other like this: each one gives the other a drink from his own hand and drinks from the other's hand in turn. If they have nothing to drink, they pick up some dust from the ground and lick it.
173. Next to the Nasamonians is the country of the Psylli. They have been wiped out completely, in this way. The south wind blew on them and dried up all their water tanks, and their land, which lies entirely inside the Syrtis, was left without water. So they held a council, agreed on a plan together, and marched out in arms against the south wind. (I am only reporting what the Libyans report.) When they reached the sandy country, the south wind blew and buried them in the sand. So they were wiped out completely, and from that time on the Nasamonians have held their land.
174. Above these, to the south, in the country of the wild beasts, live the Garamantians. They run from every man and avoid the company of everyone; they own no weapon of war and do not know how to defend themselves against an enemy.
175. These live inland above the Nasamonians. Next to the Nasamonians along the coast, toward the west, come the Macae. They shave their heads so as to leave tufts: they let the hair in the middle grow long and shave it close to the skin all around. For fighting they carry shields made of ostrich skin. Through their land the river Cinyps runs out into the sea. It flows from a hill called the Hill of the Charites. This hill is thickly covered with forest, while the rest of Libya I have described so far is bare of trees. From the sea to this hill is about twenty-two miles.
176. Next to these Macae are the Gindanes. Each of their women wears a number of anklets made of animal skin, and the reason, so they say, is this: for every man who has slept with her, a woman ties on an anklet; and the woman with the most anklets is thought the finest, since she has been loved by the greatest number of men.
177. On a headland that juts out into the sea from the land of these Gindanes live the Lotophagi, the Lotus-Eaters, who live on nothing but the fruit of the lotus. The lotus fruit is about the size of the berry of the mastic tree, and it tastes like a date. The Lotus-Eaters even make wine out of it.
178. After the Lotus-Eaters along the coast come the Machlyans. They also use the lotus, but less than the people I just mentioned. Their land reaches to a great river called the Triton, which runs out into a great lake called Tritonis, and in this lake there is an island named Phla. They say that an oracle once told the Spartans to found a settlement on this island.
179. This story is told as well. When Jason had finished building the Argo at the foot of Mount Pelion, he put on board a hecatomb and a bronze tripod besides, and sailed around the Peloponnese, meaning to go to Delphi. But as he was sailing near Cape Malea, a north wind caught his ship and carried it off to Libya, and before he caught sight of land he found himself in the shallows of Lake Tritonis. He did not know how to get his ship out. Then, the story goes, Triton appeared to him and told Jason to give him the tripod, saying that in return he would show them the channel and send them on their way unharmed. Jason agreed. So Triton showed them the way out between the shallows and set the tripod in his own temple. But first he spoke a prophecy over the tripod and told Jason and his crew the whole matter: whenever one of the descendants of the men who sailed with him on the Argo carried off this tripod, it was fated that a hundred Greek cities would be founded around Lake Tritonis. When the native Libyans heard this, they hid the tripod.
180. Next to these Machlyans are the Auseans. They and the Machlyans live around Lake Tritonis, and the river Triton is the border between them. The Machlyans let their hair grow long at the back of the head, and the Auseans let it grow long in front. At a yearly festival of Athena their girls form two sides and fight each other with stones and sticks. In doing this, they say, they are performing the rites their fathers handed down for the goddess who was born in their land, the one we call Athena. Any girls who die of their wounds they call "false maidens." But before they let the fight begin, they do this: all of them together dress up the girl judged the most beautiful that year in a Corinthian helmet and a full set of Greek armor, put her up in a chariot, and drive her all around the lake. What they dressed the girls in long ago, before the Greeks settled near them, I cannot say. But I suppose they used to dress them in Egyptian armor, since it was from Egypt, I maintain, that both the shield and the helmet came to the Greeks. They also say that Athena is the daughter of Poseidon and of Lake Tritonis, and that she had some quarrel with her father, so she gave herself to Zeus, and Zeus made her his own daughter. That is the story they tell. These people have sex with women in common: they do not marry, but couple like cattle. When a woman's child is well grown, the men hold a meeting within three months, and the child is brought before it; whichever man the child looks like is counted as its father.
181. Those, then, are the nomadic Libyans who live along the coast. Above them, inland, is the part of Libya where the wild beasts live. Above the wild-beast country stretches a ridge of sand that runs from Thebes in Egypt to the Pillars of Heracles. Along this ridge, about every ten days' journey, there are great lumps of salt piled up into hills. At the top of each hill, from the middle of the salt, a spring of cold, sweet water shoots up. People live around these springs, at the farthest edge toward the desert, beyond the wild-beast country. The first, ten days' journey from Thebes, are the Ammonians. Their temple is copied from the temple of Theban Zeus; for at Thebes too, as I have said before, the image of Zeus has a ram's head. The Ammonians, as it happens, also have another spring of water. In the early morning it is warm. At the hour when the market fills up it is cooler, and by noon it is quite cold; that is when they water their gardens. As the day wears on, it loses its chill, until at sunset the water is warm. It keeps getting hotter until midnight, when it boils and bubbles up. After midnight it cools down little by little until dawn. This spring is called the Fountain of the Sun.
182. After the Ammonians, as you go on along the ridge of sand, there is, again ten days' journey on, a hill of salt like the Ammonians' and a spring of water, with people living around it. This place is called Augila. It is here that the Nasamonians come every year to harvest the dates.
183. From Augila, again ten days' journey on, there is another hill of salt and spring of water, and a great many date palms bearing fruit, as there are in the other places too. The people who live here are called the Garamantians, a very large people. They carry earth and spread it over the salt, and then they sow their crops in it. From here is the shortest way to the Lotus-Eaters: it is thirty days' journey from them to the country of the Garamantians. Among the Garamantians, too, are found the cattle that graze walking backward. They graze backward for this reason: their horns curve down and forward, and so they walk backward as they graze; they cannot go forward, because their horns would stick into the ground in front of them. In no other way are they different from other cattle, except in this and in the thickness and toughness of their hide. These Garamantians I am speaking of hunt the Cave-Dwelling Ethiopians from their four-horse chariots. For the Cave-Dwelling Ethiopians are the fastest runners of all the peoples we hear reports about. The Cave-Dwellers live on snakes and lizards and other such creeping things, and they speak a language like no other: they squeak in it exactly like bats.
184. From the Garamantians, again ten days' journey on, there is another hill of salt and spring of water, and the people who live around it are called the Atarantians. They are the only people we know of who have no names. All of them together are called Atarantians, but no one of them has a name of his own. They curse the sun when it is high overhead and heap every kind of foul abuse on it, because its burning heat wears them down, both them and their land. After this, ten days' journey on, there is another hill of salt and spring of water, with people living around it. Near this salt hill is a mountain called Atlas. It is narrow and round on every side, and it is said to be so tall that no one can see its peaks, because the clouds never leave them, summer or winter. The natives say it is the pillar of the sky. These people took their name from this mountain, for they are called Atlantians. They are said to eat nothing that has life in it and never to have dreams.
185. As far as these Atlantians I can give in order the names of the peoples who live along the ridge of sand, but beyond them I can no longer do so. The ridge, however, stretches as far as the Pillars of Heracles and beyond them too. On it, ten days' journey from the Atlantians, there is a salt mine with people living by it. All of these people build their houses of blocks of salt, since these parts of Libya we have now reached get no rain; if it rained, walls made of salt could not last. The salt dug there is both white and purple. Beyond the ridge, to the south and into the interior of Libya, the land is empty of people, without water, without wild beasts, without rain and without trees, and there is not a trace of moisture in it.
186. So from Egypt as far as Lake Tritonis, as I have said, the Libyans are nomads who eat meat and drink milk. They will not taste the meat of cows, for the same reason the Egyptians avoid it, and they do not keep pigs. The women of Cyrene, too, think it wrong to eat beef, because of the Egyptian goddess Isis, and they even keep fasts and hold festivals in her honor. The women of Barca will not taste pork either, as well as beef.
187. So much for that. But west of Lake Tritonis the Libyans are no longer nomads. They do not follow the same customs, and they do nothing like what the nomads do to their children. For the nomadic Libyans (whether all of them, I can't say for certain, but many of them) do this: when their children are four years old, they burn the veins on the crown of their heads with a greasy tuft of sheep's wool, and some of them burn the veins at the temples. This is so that for the rest of their lives the cold phlegm will not run down from their heads and harm them. And this, they say, is why they are so healthy. In fact the Libyans are the healthiest of all the peoples we know of. Whether this is the reason I can't say for certain, but the healthiest they certainly are. If a child has a convulsion while they are burning him, they have found a cure for that too: they sprinkle him with a he-goat's urine and so save him. I am reporting what the Libyans themselves report.
188. The nomads sacrifice like this. They cut off a piece of the animal's ear as a first offering and throw it over the house, and when they have done this they wring the animal's neck. They sacrifice only to the Sun and the Moon. All the Libyans sacrifice to these two, but those who live around Lake Tritonis sacrifice most of all to Athena, and after her to Triton and Poseidon.
189. It seems, too, that the Greeks copied the dress and the aegis of Athena's statues from the Libyan women. Except that the Libyan women's dress is of leather, and the tassels hanging from their aegis are not snakes but leather thongs, in every other way Athena is dressed just like them. The name itself shows that the dress of the statues of Pallas came from Libya. For over their other clothes the Libyan women wear goatskins, aigeas, with the hair taken off, fringed with tassels and dyed red with madder; and from the name of these goatskins the Greeks made the word aegis. I think too that the loud, wailing cry raised during sacred rites first began here, since the Libyan women do it very well. And it was from the Libyans that the Greeks learned to yoke four horses together.
190. The nomads bury their dead exactly the way the Greeks do, except for the Nasamonians. They bury their dead sitting up. When a man is dying they take care to sit him up, and they do not let him die lying on his back. Their houses are made of asphodel stalks woven together with rushes, and they are built so that they can be carried about. Those are the customs of these tribes.
191. West of the river Triton, next after the Auseans, come Libyans who farm the land and are used to living in fixed homes. They are called the Maxyans. They let their hair grow long on the right side of their heads and cut it short on the left, and they paint their bodies with red ochre. They say they are descended from the men who came from Troy.
This country, and the rest of Libya to the west, has far more wild beasts and far more forest than the nomads' country. For the eastern part of Libya, where the nomads live, is low and sandy as far as the river Triton; but the part that comes after it to the west, where the farmers live, is very mountainous, thickly wooded, and full of wild beasts. In their land are found the giant snakes and the lions, the elephants, bears, poisonous snakes and horned asses, and also the dog-headed men and the headless men with their eyes in their chests (at least, so the Libyans say), and the wild men and wild women, and a great many other animals that are not made up like these.
192. In the nomads' country, though, there are none of these, but other animals instead: white-rumped antelopes, gazelles, buffaloes, and asses, not the horned kind but another kind that goes without water (in fact they never drink at all); oryxes, whose horns are used for the arms of the Phoenician lyre (this animal is about the size of an ox); small foxes, hyenas, porcupines, wild rams, wolves, jackals, panthers, boryes, land crocodiles about four and a half feet long that look very much like lizards, ostriches, and small snakes, each with one horn. All these wild animals are found in this country, as well as those found elsewhere, except for the deer and the wild boar; Libya has no deer and no wild boars at all. There are also three kinds of mice in this country: one is called the "two-legged" mouse, another the zegeris (a Libyan name, which means "hill" in Greek), and the third the "prickly" mouse. There are also weasels that live in the silphium, very much like the ones at Tartessus. Those are the wild animals of the Libyans' land, as far as we could find out by inquiring as widely as we could.
193. Next to the Maxyan Libyans are the Zaueces, whose women drive their chariots for them in war.
194. Next to them are the Gyzantes. In their country bees make a great deal of honey, but men, they say, make a great deal more, working at it as a trade. However that may be, all these people paint themselves with red ochre and eat monkeys, which are very plentiful in their mountains.
195. Off their coast, the Carthaginians say, lies an island called Cyrauis. It is about twenty-two miles long but narrow, and you can walk across to it from the mainland. It is full of olive trees and vines. On the island, they say, there is a pool, and the local girls bring up gold dust out of its mud with birds' feathers smeared with pitch. Whether this is true I do not know; I am writing down what is reported. But anything is possible, for on Zacynthus I have seen with my own eyes pitch being drawn up out of a pool of water. There are several pools there, and the largest of them is seventy feet across each way and twelve feet deep. They plunge into it a pole with a myrtle branch tied to the end, and with the myrtle branch they bring up pitch. It smells of asphalt, but in every other way it is better than the pitch of Pieria. They pour it into a pit dug next to the pool, and when they have collected a good deal, they pour it from the pit into jars. Anything that falls into the pool goes underground and comes up again in the sea, which is less than half a mile from the pool. So the report about the island off the coast of Libya may well be true too.
196. The Carthaginians tell this story as well. There is a place in Libya, they say, with people living there, beyond the Pillars of Heracles. When the Carthaginians come there, they unload their goods from their ships and lay them out in a row along the beach. Then they go back on board and send up a smoke signal. When the natives see the smoke, they come down to the sea, put down gold in exchange for the goods, and then move back a good distance from the goods. The Carthaginians then come ashore and look at it. If they think the gold is a fair price for their goods, they take it and go on their way. If not, they go back on board their ships and sit there, and the natives come up and add more gold to what they put down before, until the Carthaginians are satisfied. And they say that neither side cheats the other: the Carthaginians do not touch the gold until it matches the value of their goods, and the natives do not touch the goods until the Carthaginians have taken the gold.
197. These are the Libyan tribes we are able to name. Most of them pay no attention to the king of the Medes now, and they paid none then either. I have this much more to say about this land: as far as we know, four peoples live in it and no more. Two of these peoples are native to the land and two are not. The Libyans and the Ethiopians are native, the one living in the northern parts of Libya and the other in the southern; the Phoenicians and the Greeks are newcomers.
198. Besides that, I think that in the quality of its soil Libya is not especially good compared with Asia or Europe, except for the region of Cinyps, which has the same name as its river. This region is as good as the best land anywhere for growing grain, Demeter's gift, and it is not like the rest of Libya at all. It has black soil and is watered by springs; it has nothing to fear from drought, and it is not harmed by drinking in too much rain (for in this part of Libya it does rain). Its crops yield as much as the land of Babylon does. The land of the Euesperites is good too: in its best years it yields a hundredfold, but the land around Cinyps sometimes yields as much as three hundredfold.
199. The land of Cyrene, too, which is the highest part of the Libya held by the nomads, has three harvest seasons within its borders, which is something to marvel at. First the crops along the coast are ripe for reaping and the grapes for picking. When these have been gathered in, the land above the coast, the middle belt they call the Hills, is ripe for harvest. And as soon as this middle crop has been gathered in, the crop in the highest part of the country ripens and is ready. So by the time the first crop has been eaten and drunk, the last one is just coming in. In this way the Cyreneans' harvest lasts eight months. Let what I have said about these things be enough.
200. Now when Pheretime's Persian allies, sent from Egypt by Aryandes, arrived at Barca, they laid siege to the city. They demanded that the people of Barca hand over the men guilty of the murder of Arcesilaus. But since the whole people had shared in the guilt, they refused. So the Persians besieged Barca for nine months, digging tunnels toward the wall and making fierce attacks on it. The tunnels were discovered by a bronzesmith, using a shield plated with bronze. This was his idea. He carried the shield all around the inside of the wall, laying it on the ground of the city. In most places where he laid it, it made no sound, but wherever there was digging going on, the bronze of the shield rang. So the men of Barca would dig a countertunnel there and kill the Persians who were digging. That is how the tunnels were discovered, as I have said, and the attacks were beaten back by the men of Barca.
201. A long time passed in this hardship, and many were falling on both sides, especially on the Persian side. Then Amasis, the commander of the land army, came up with a plan. Seeing that the people of Barca could not be beaten by force but might be beaten by a trick, he did this. At night he dug a wide trench and laid weak planks across it, and on top of the planks he spread earth, so that it was level with the rest of the ground. At daybreak he invited the men of Barca to a parley. They were glad to come, and in the end they agreed to make a treaty. They swore the treaty with each other standing over the hidden trench. The terms were these: as long as this ground stayed as it was, the oath would stand firm; the people of Barca promised to pay the king a fair tribute, and the Persians would do the people of Barca no further harm. After the oath, the people of Barca trusted the agreement. They came out of the city themselves, opened all the gates, and let any of the enemy who wished come inside the walls. But the Persians broke down the hidden bridge and then rushed into the city. The reason they broke down the bridge they had made was so that they would be keeping their oath. They had sworn to the men of Barca that the oath would stand firm for as long as the ground stayed as it then was; once they had broken the bridge down, the oath no longer stood.
202. When the Persians handed the most guilty of the people of Barca over to Pheretime, she impaled them in a ring all around the city wall. She cut off their wives' breasts and set those, too, in a row around the wall. The rest of the people of Barca she told the Persians to take away as plunder, except for those who belonged to the house of Battus and had no share in the murder. To these Pheretime handed over the city.
203. So the Persians enslaved the rest of the people of Barca and set out for home. When they appeared at the gates of Cyrene, the Cyreneans let them pass through their city, so as not to neglect some oracle. While the army was going through, Badres, the commander of the fleet, urged that they capture the city. But Amasis, the commander of the land army, would not agree, saying that they had been sent against no Greek city but Barca. When they had passed through, however, and were camped on the hill of Zeus Lycaeus, they were sorry they had not taken Cyrene, and they tried to get into it again. But the Cyreneans would not let them in. Then, though no one was fighting them, a sudden panic fell on the Persians, and they ran about seven miles before they made camp. After they had pitched camp there, a messenger came from Aryandes calling them back. So the Persians asked the Cyreneans for food for their march, and they got it. With the food they set off for Egypt. From then on the Libyans picked them off: any who lagged or straggled behind at any point, they killed for their clothes and gear, until at last the Persians reached Egypt.
204. This Persian army got as far as Euesperides, and that was the farthest they went into Libya. The people of Barca whom they had enslaved were taken on from Egypt to the king, and King Darius gave them a village in the land of Bactria to settle in. They named the village Barca, and it was still inhabited by them in my own time, in the land of Bactria.
205. But Pheretime did not end her life happily either, any more than they did. As soon as she had come back from Libya to Egypt, after taking her revenge on the people of Barca, she died a horrible death: while she was still alive she suddenly swarmed with worms. For, as it seems, punishments that are too harsh, when men inflict them, are hateful to the gods. Such, and so great, was the vengeance that Pheretime, the wife of Battus, took on the people of Barca.
1. Meanwhile the Persians whom Darius had left behind in Europe, under the command of Megabazus, had conquered the people of Perinthus. They were the first of the peoples on the Hellespont to be subdued, because they refused to become Darius' subjects. The Perinthians had been roughly handled once before, in earlier times, by the Paeonians. The Paeonians from the river Strymon had been commanded by an oracle of their god to march against the Perinthians. If the Perinthians, when they were camped facing them, shouted aloud and called them by their name, the Paeonians were to attack; but if they did not shout to them, they were not to attack. And that is what the Paeonians did. The Perinthians camped facing them in the outskirts of their city, and a challenge was made to single combat in three different forms: they matched man against man, horse against horse, and dog against dog. The Perinthians were winning two of the three contests, and in their delight they raised the victory shout "Paean!" The Paeonians guessed that this was the very thing the oracle had spoken of, and no doubt they said to one another, "Now surely the oracle is coming true for us. Now it is time to act." So the Paeonians attacked the Perinthians after they had raised the shout of "Paean!", and they had much the better of the fight and left only a few of them alive.
2. That is what had happened to the Perinthians at the hands of the Paeonians in earlier times. This time, although the Perinthians proved themselves brave men in defense of their freedom, the Persians under Megabazus got the better of them by sheer numbers. After Perinthus had been conquered, Megabazus marched his army through the length of Thrace, forcing every city and every people living there to submit to the king. Those were Darius' orders to him: to subdue Thrace.
3. The Thracians are the most numerous people in the world, after the Indians. If they were ruled by one man, or could agree among themselves, they would be unbeatable in war and by far the strongest of all nations, in my opinion. But this is impossible for them, and there is no way it will ever happen; and that is why they are in fact weak. They have many names, one for each of their tribes in its own region, but they all follow customs that are nearly the same in every respect, except for the Getae, the Trausians, and the people who live north of the Crestonians.
4. Of these, I have already described the practices of the Getae, who believe they are immortal. The Trausians do everything else the same way as the other Thracians, but at a birth and a death they do as follows. When a child is born, its nearest relatives sit around it and mourn over all the troubles it will have to live through, now that it is born, listing every one of the sorrows of human life. But when a man dies, they bury him in the earth with laughter and rejoicing, telling one another how many great troubles he has escaped and how he is now completely happy.
5. The people who live north of the Crestonians do this. Each man has many wives, and when a man dies, there is a great contest among his wives, with their friends working hard on their behalf, over which of them their husband loved best. The one who is judged the winner, and so honored, is first praised by both the men and the women; then her nearest relative cuts her throat over the grave, and she is buried with her husband. The other wives are bitterly upset, because for them this is the greatest disgrace.
6. Among the other Thracians, the custom is to sell their children to be taken abroad. They do not watch over their unmarried girls, but let them have sex with any men they please; their wives, though, they watch very closely. They buy their wives from the women's parents for large sums of money. To be tattooed is considered a mark of noble birth, and to have no tattoos is a sign of low birth. Not working is thought the most honorable thing of all, and working the land the most dishonorable. Living by war and plunder is the most honorable life there is.
7. Those are their most remarkable customs. Of the gods, they worship only Ares, Dionysus, and Artemis. Their kings, however, unlike the rest of the people, worship Hermes above all the gods and swear by him alone, and they say they are descended from Hermes.
8. This is how the rich among them are buried. For three days they lay out the corpse for people to see, and they sacrifice every kind of animal and feast, after first mourning. Then they bury the body, either burning it or putting it in the ground unburned. When they have heaped up a mound over it, they hold games with every kind of contest, and the biggest prizes, as is only reasonable, go to single combat. That is how the Thracians bury their dead.
9. As for the region farther north of this country, no one can say for certain who lives there. But the land just beyond the Danube is known to be empty and enormous. The only people I can hear of who live beyond the Danube are said to be called the Sigynnae, and they dress in the Median fashion. Their horses, it is said, are covered all over with shaggy hair as much as five fingers (nearly four inches) long. The horses are small and snub-nosed and too weak to carry men, but yoked to chariots they are very spirited, so the people of the country drive chariots. This people's territory reaches, it is said, as far as the land of the Eneti, who live on the Adriatic. They say the Sigynnae are colonists from the Medes. How they could have come to be colonists from the Medes I cannot work out for myself, but anything can happen in the long course of time. However that may be, the Ligurians who live inland above Massalia (the Greek city that is now Marseille) call traders "sigynnae," and the people of Cyprus use the same word for spears.
10. The Thracians say that the land on the other side of the Danube is full of bees, and that because of them it is impossible to get through and go any farther. But to me, when they say this, they seem to be saying something unlikely. Bees are known to hate the cold, and it seems to me that it is the cold climate that makes the lands toward the north uninhabitable. These, then, are the stories told about this country. However that may be, Megabazus was now bringing its coastal regions under Persian rule.
11. Meanwhile Darius, as soon as he had crossed the Hellespont and reached Sardis, remembered the service Histiaeus of Miletus had done him and the advice of Coes of Mytilene. He sent for them to come to Sardis and offered them a choice of rewards. Histiaeus, since he was already tyrant of Miletus, did not ask to rule anywhere else in addition. Instead he asked for Myrcinus, a district in the land of the Edonians, because he wanted to found a city there. That was Histiaeus' choice. Coes, who was not a tyrant but an ordinary citizen, asked to be made tyrant of Mytilene.
12. Both men got what they wanted, and each went off to what he had chosen. At this same time it happened that Darius saw something that made him want to order Megabazus to conquer the Paeonians and move them by force out of Europe into Asia. This is what it was. There were two Paeonians named Pigres and Mantyas. After Darius had crossed back into Asia, they came to Sardis, because they wanted to become rulers of the Paeonians themselves, and they brought their sister with them, a tall, good-looking woman. They waited for a time when Darius was sitting in public in the outskirts of the Lydian city. Then they dressed up their sister as well as they could and sent her out to fetch water. She carried a water jar on her head, led a horse behind her by a bridle looped over her arm, and was spinning flax as she went. As the woman passed by him on her way out of the city, Darius took notice, because what she was doing was not the Persian way, nor the Lydian way, nor the custom of any people in Asia. So he sent some of his spearmen and told them to watch what the woman would do with the horse. They followed her. When she reached the river, she watered the horse. After she had watered it and filled her jar, she came back the same way, carrying the water on her head, leading the horse behind her by the bridle looped over her arm, and turning her spindle as she went.
13. Darius was amazed both at what he heard from the men he had sent to watch and at what he saw for himself, and he ordered them to bring her before him. When she was brought, her brothers came too; they had been watching all this from not far off. Darius asked what country she came from, and the young men said that they were Paeonians and that she was their sister. He replied, "Who are these Paeonians, and where on earth do they live?" He also asked them what they wanted, that they had come to Sardis. They told him that they had come to put themselves in his hands; that Paeonia was a country on the river Strymon; that the Strymon was not far from the Hellespont; and finally that they were colonists from the Teucrians of Troy. They told him all of this, point by point. Then he asked whether all the women of their country were as hardworking as their sister. They were very quick to say that yes, they were, because that was the very point of what they had been doing.
14. Then Darius wrote a letter to Megabazus, whom he had left in command of his army in Thrace, ordering him to uproot the Paeonians from their homes and bring them to the king, the men themselves together with their children and their wives. At once a horseman set off at full speed to carry the message to the Hellespont. He crossed over to the other side and gave the letter to Megabazus. Megabazus read it, got guides from Thrace, and set out to march on Paeonia.
15. When the Paeonians learned that the Persians were coming against them, they gathered all their forces and marched out toward the sea, thinking that the Persians would make their attack from that side when they invaded. So the Paeonians were ready, as I said, to drive back Megabazus' army when it came. But the Persians heard that the Paeonians had gathered their forces and were guarding the approach from the sea. With their guides, they took the upper road instead, slipped past the Paeonians without being seen, and fell on their cities, which had been left empty of men. Finding them undefended, they took them easily. When the Paeonians heard that their cities were in enemy hands, they scattered at once, each tribe to its own home, and began to surrender to the Persians. And so it was that these tribes of the Paeonians, namely the Siropaeonians, the Paeoplians, and all the tribes as far as Lake Prasias, were uprooted from their homes and taken to Asia.
16. But the peoples around Mount Pangaeum, around the Doberians, the Agrianians, and the Odomantians, and around Lake Prasias itself, were not conquered by Megabazus at all. He did try to remove even the people who live on the lake itself. Their homes are built like this. A platform, fastened together and set on tall piles, stands out in the middle of the lake, and a single narrow bridge leads to it from the shore. The piles that hold up the platform were no doubt set up in the first place by all the members of the community working together. But since then they have gone on setting them by this rule: every man who marries brings three piles from the mountain called Orbelus for each wife and sets them up as supports, and each man takes many wives. This is how they live. Each man has a hut of his own on the platform, where he lives, and a trapdoor leading down through the platform to the lake. They tie their small children by the foot with a rope, for fear they will roll into the water. They feed their horses and pack animals on fish. There are so many fish that if a man opens his trapdoor and lets an empty basket down into the lake on a cord, he waits only a very short time and then pulls it up full of fish. There are two kinds of fish, which they call paprax and tilon.
17. So the Paeonians who had been conquered were being taken off to Asia. Meanwhile Megabazus, after conquering the Paeonians, sent seven Persians as envoys to Macedonia; after himself, they were the most distinguished men in the army. They were sent to Amyntas to demand earth and water for King Darius. From Lake Prasias it is a very short way into Macedonia. First, right next to the lake, there is the mine that later brought Alexander a talent of silver every single day. Past the mine, once you have crossed the mountain called Dysorum, you are in Macedonia.
18. When the Persians sent to Amyntas arrived, they came before him and demanded earth and water for King Darius. He was willing to give it, and he also invited them to be his guests. He prepared a magnificent dinner and received the Persians with every kindness. When dinner was over and they were drinking toasts to one another, the Persians said, "Our Macedonian host, it is the custom among us Persians, when we give a great dinner, to bring in our concubines and our lawful wives as well, to sit beside us. You have welcomed us readily, you are entertaining us magnificently as your guests, and you are willing to give King Darius earth and water. So agree to follow our custom." Amyntas answered, "Persians, that is not our custom here. With us men and women are kept apart. But since you are our masters and you ask this as well, you shall have this too." With that Amyntas sent for the women. When they had been summoned and came, they sat down in a row facing the Persians. Then the Persians, seeing that the women were beautiful, spoke to Amyntas and told him that what he had done was not at all well thought out. It would have been better for the women not to come at all than to come and not sit beside them, but sit across from them and be a torment to their eyes. So Amyntas, under pressure, told the women to sit beside the Persians. As soon as the women did so, the Persians, who were very drunk, began to fondle their breasts, and some, no doubt, also tried to kiss them.
19. Amyntas saw this and kept quiet, angry as he was, because he was terribly afraid of the Persians. But his son Alexander, who was there and saw it, was young and had never known disaster, and he could not stand it any longer. Unable to bear it, he said to Amyntas, "Father, give in to your age: go and rest, and don't stay on drinking any longer. I will stay here and see that our guests have everything they need." Amyntas understood that Alexander meant to do something violent, and he said, "Son, you are burning with anger, and I think I understand what you are saying: you want to send me away and then do something violent. So I am asking you not to do anything violent to these men, or it will be the ruin of us. Put up with what is happening and watch it. As for my leaving, though, I will do as you say."
20. When Amyntas had made this request and gone, Alexander said to the Persians, "Guests, you are completely free to do as you like with these women: sleep with all of them, if you wish, or with as many of them as you want. You shall have the say in this. But now, since it is almost time for you to go to bed and I can see you have had a good deal to drink, let these women go and bathe, if that suits you, and when they have bathed, take them back into your company." With that, since the Persians readily agreed, he sent the women out, and when they had gone he sent them to the women's quarters. Then Alexander took young men with no beards yet, as many as there were women, dressed them in the women's clothes, gave them daggers, and led them into the banquet hall. As he led them in, he said to the Persians, "Persians, I think you have been treated to a feast that lacked nothing. Everything we had, and everything besides that we could find and provide, has all been set before you. And on top of that there is this, the greatest gift of all: we freely give you our own mothers and sisters as well, so that you may see that we honor you as fully as you deserve, and so that you may report to the king who sent you that a Greek, his governor of the Macedonians, entertained you well at table and in bed." With that, Alexander seated a Macedonian man dressed as a woman beside each Persian, and when the Persians tried to lay hands on them, the Macedonians killed them.
21. So the envoys died this way, they and their servants with them. For they had brought carriages and servants and all the usual baggage of a great embassy, and all of it disappeared along with them. Not long afterward the Persians made a great search for these men. But Alexander was clever enough to stop it. He gave a large sum of money, and his own sister, whose name was Gygaea, to Bubares, a Persian who commanded the men searching for the missing envoys. By giving these things to Bubares, Alexander stopped the search.
22. And so the death of these Persians was hushed up. Now, that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I happen to know for myself, and what is more, I will prove it later in my history. The Hellanodicae, the judges who run the games at Olympia, have also ruled that they are Greeks. When Alexander wanted to compete in the games and had come down into the arena for this purpose, the Greeks who were to run against him tried to keep him out, saying that the contest was for Greeks, not for barbarians. But Alexander proved that he was of Argive descent, and he was judged to be a Greek. He entered the footrace, and his lot was drawn to run in the first heat.
23. That is how these things turned out. At the same time Megabazus arrived at the Hellespont with the Paeonians, crossed the strait from there, and came to Sardis. Histiaeus of Miletus was already building a wall around the place he had asked for and been given by Darius as a reward for keeping the bridge of boats safe. This place was the one called Myrcinus, on the bank of the river Strymon. Megabazus had seen what Histiaeus was doing, and as soon as he reached Sardis with the Paeonians he said to Darius, "My king, what is this you have done? You have let a clever, cunning Greek found a city in Thrace, in a place where there is plenty of timber for shipbuilding, a great deal of wood for oars, and silver mines, and where huge numbers of Greeks and non-Greeks live all around. Once they have a leader, they will do whatever he tells them, day and night. So stop this man from doing it, so that you won't find yourself in a war at home. Stop him by sending for him politely. But once you have him in your hands, make sure he never goes back to Greek lands again."
24. With these words Megabazus easily persuaded Darius, who thought he had seen clearly what was likely to happen. So Darius sent a messenger to Myrcinus with this message: "Histiaeus, King Darius says this. Thinking it over, I find there is no one more truly loyal than you to me and to my power, and I know this from deeds, not words. Now, since I have great plans in mind, you must come to me, so that I can share them with you." Histiaeus believed these words, and he also thought it a great thing to become one of the king's advisers, so he came to Sardis. When he arrived, Darius said to him, "Histiaeus, this is why I sent for you. When I came back from Scythia and you were gone out of my sight, I never wanted anything so soon as I wanted then to see you and to talk with you. For I have come to see that the most valuable thing a man can have is a friend who is both wise and truly loyal, and I know you have both these qualities. I can bear witness to them from my own affairs. So now, since you have done well to come, this is what I offer you. Leave Miletus and your new city in Thrace, come with me to Susa, and share everything I have. Eat at my table and be my adviser."
25. So said Darius. He appointed Artaphernes, his brother by the same father, governor of Sardis, and marched off to Susa, taking Histiaeus with him, after first naming Otanes commander of the people along the coast. This Otanes' father, Sisamnes, had been one of the Royal Judges. King Cambyses had put him to death because he had taken money to give an unjust verdict, and had flayed off all his skin. Once the skin was torn off, Cambyses had it cut into strips of leather and stretched them across the chair where Sisamnes used to sit to give judgment. When he had stretched them across the seat, Cambyses appointed the son of the Sisamnes he had killed and flayed to be judge in his father's place, and told him to remember what seat he was sitting in when he gave judgment.
26. This Otanes, then, who was made to sit in that chair, now succeeded Megabazus in the command. He conquered the Byzantines and the Chalcedonians, and he conquered Antandrus in the Troad, and Lamponium. Then, with ships he got from the Lesbians, he conquered Lemnos and Imbros, both of which were still inhabited at that time by Pelasgians.
27. Of these, the Lemnians fought well and held out for a long time, but in the end they were ruined. Over those who survived, the Persians set up as governor Lycaretus, the brother of the Maeandrius who had been king of Samos. This Lycaretus ruled Lemnos until he died. And the reason was this: he went on enslaving and subduing everyone, accusing some of deserting to the Scythians and others of attacking Darius' army as it came back from Scythia.
28. That much, then, Otanes achieved after he was made commander. After this there was a short break from troubles. Then troubles began to fall on the Ionians a second time, and they came from Naxos and Miletus. Naxos was richer than any of the other islands, and Miletus, at that very same time, had just reached the height of its prosperity and was the jewel of Ionia. But before this, for two generations, Miletus had suffered terribly from civil strife, until the Parians set it in order. The Milesians had chosen the Parians, out of all the Greeks, to reform their state.
29. This is how the Parians healed their divisions. Their best men came to Miletus, and seeing that the Milesians were in a badly ruined state, they said they wanted to go over the land. They did this, passing through the whole territory of Miletus, and wherever they saw a well-farmed field in the middle of that ruined countryside, they wrote down the name of the field's owner. When they had gone through the whole country and had found only a few such men, they went straight back to the city, called a general assembly, and put these men, the ones whose fields they had found well farmed, in charge of the state. They said they thought these men would take care of public affairs the way they had taken care of their own. And they ordered the rest of the Milesians, who had been split into factions before, to obey these men.
30. So that is how the Parians reformed the Milesians. But at the time I am speaking of, troubles began to come to Ionia from these two states in the following way. Certain men of the wealthier class were driven out of Naxos by the common people, and once in exile they came to Miletus. Now the man in charge of Miletus at that time happened to be Aristagoras son of Molpagoras. He was both the son-in-law and the cousin of Histiaeus son of Lysagoras, whom Darius was keeping at Susa. For Histiaeus was the tyrant of Miletus, and he happened to be at Susa at the time when the Naxians came; and these Naxians had been guest-friends of Histiaeus in earlier days. So when the Naxians arrived, they asked Aristagoras whether he might give them a force, so that they could return from exile to their own land. Aristagoras thought that if they went home with his help, he would become ruler of Naxos. But he used his guest-friendship with Histiaeus as a pretext, and he made them this proposal: "I can't promise to give you a force big enough to bring you back from exile against the will of the Naxians who control the state. I hear that the Naxians have an army 8,000 shields strong and many warships. But I will do everything I can to find a way, and this is my plan. It happens that Artaphernes is my friend. Artaphernes, you should know, is a son of Hystaspes and the brother of King Darius. He governs all the peoples of the coast of Asia, and he has a great army and many ships. I think this man will do whatever we ask of him." When the Naxians heard this, they handed the matter over to Aristagoras to manage as best he could. They told him to promise gifts and the costs of the expedition, which they said they would pay themselves. For they fully expected that when they appeared at Naxos, the Naxians would do whatever they told them, and so would the other islanders too. For of these islands, the Cyclades, not one was yet under Darius.
31. So Aristagoras went to Sardis and told Artaphernes that Naxos was an island not large in size, but beautiful all the same, with rich soil, close to Ionia, and full of wealth and slaves. "So send an expedition against this land," he said, "and bring back the men who are now exiled from it. If you do this, first, I have large sums of money ready for you, apart from the costs of the expedition, which it is only fair that we who lead it should pay. Second, you will win for the king not only Naxos itself but also the islands that depend on it, Paros and Andros and the others called the Cyclades. And starting out from these you will easily attack Euboea, a large and wealthy island, as big as Cyprus, and very easy to conquer. A hundred ships are enough to subdue them all." Artaphernes answered him in these words: "You are bringing good news to the king's house, and all your advice is good, except for the number of ships. Instead of one hundred, two hundred will be ready for you by the beginning of spring. But the king himself must approve this too."
32. When Aristagoras heard this, he went back to Miletus delighted. Meanwhile Artaphernes sent to Susa and reported what Aristagoras had said, and when Darius himself had approved it too, he got ready two hundred triremes and a very large force of Persians and their allies. He appointed as their commander Megabates, a Persian of the Achaemenid clan, a cousin both of himself and of Darius. (It was to this man's daughter, at least if the story is true, that Pausanias the Spartan, son of Cleombrotus, later got himself engaged, because he had conceived a desire to become tyrant of Greece.) Having made Megabates commander, Artaphernes sent the force off to Aristagoras.
33. Megabates took the force on board, together with the Naxians, and sailed, pretending to be heading for the Hellespont. But when he reached Chios, he steered his ships to Caucasa, so that he could cross from there to Naxos with a north wind. Then, since it was not fated that the Naxians should be destroyed by this expedition, something happened that I will now tell. As Megabates was making his rounds of the guards posted on the ships, it happened that on a ship from Myndus there was no one on watch. He was furious, and he ordered his spearmen to find the ship's captain, a man named Scylax, and tie him through one of his ship's oar-holes, with his head outside the ship and his body inside. When Scylax had been tied up this way, someone reported to Aristagoras that Megabates had tied up his guest-friend from Myndus and was treating him shamefully. So Aristagoras came and asked the Persian to release him. When he got nothing of what he asked for, he went himself and set Scylax loose. When Megabates was told of this, he was extremely angry and burst out in rage at Aristagoras. But Aristagoras answered him: "What business is this of yours? Didn't Artaphernes send you to obey me, and to sail wherever I order? Why are you meddling in things that are none of your concern?" That is what Aristagoras said. Megabates was enraged by this, and when night came he sent men in a ship to Naxos to tell the Naxians about all the danger that threatened them.
34. For the Naxians had not been expecting this expedition to be aimed at them at all. But when they were told, they at once brought everything they had in the fields inside the wall, stocked up food and drink as if for a siege, and strengthened their wall. So they were getting ready for the war that was coming at them. The others, meanwhile, crossed with their ships from Chios to Naxos, and when they attacked, they found the place well defended. They besieged it for four months. Then, when the money the Persians had brought with them had all been spent, and Aristagoras himself had spent a great deal on top of that, and the siege kept demanding more and more, they built a fortress for the Naxian exiles and went back to the mainland, having failed.
35. So Aristagoras was not able to keep his promise to Artaphernes. At the same time he was hard pressed by the demand to pay the costs of the expedition, and he was afraid, both because the force had failed and because he had made an enemy of Megabates. He supposed he would be stripped of his rule over Miletus. With all these fears together, he began to plan a revolt. For it also happened that just at this time the man with the marked head had come from Histiaeus at Susa, telling Aristagoras to revolt from the king. Histiaeus wanted to tell Aristagoras to revolt, but he had no other safe way to do it, since the roads were guarded. So he shaved the head of the most trusted of his slaves, marked it by pricking letters into the skin, and waited until the hair had grown back. As soon as it had grown, he sent him off to Miletus with no other instructions than this: when he got to Miletus, he was to tell Aristagoras to shave his hair off and look at his head. And the marks, as I said before, meant revolt. Histiaeus was doing this because he was deeply frustrated at being held at Susa. He had high hopes that if a revolt broke out, he would be sent down to the coast; but if nothing changed at Miletus, he expected never to go back there again.
36. So Histiaeus sent the messenger with this aim, and it happened that all these things came upon Aristagoras at the same moment. So he held a council with his supporters, and he told them both his own view and the message from Histiaeus. All the rest gave the same opinion, urging him to revolt, except Hecataeus the historian. First Hecataeus advised them not to go to war with the king of the Persians, listing all the nations Darius ruled and the extent of his power. When he could not persuade them of that, he advised next that they should make themselves masters of the sea. This could not happen in any other way, as far as he could see, he went on, because he knew the Milesians' forces were weak. But if they seized the treasures in the temple at Branchidae, the offerings that Croesus the Lydian had dedicated, he had high hopes that they could become masters of the sea. That way they would have the wealth to use themselves, and the enemy would not be able to carry it off as plunder. These treasures were of great value, as I showed in the first part of my history. This advice did not win the day. But they did decide to revolt, and to send one of their number by sea to Myus, to the force that had come back from Naxos and was there at the time, to try to seize the commanders who had sailed with the ships.
37. Iatragoras was sent to do this, and by a trick he seized Oliatus son of Ibanollis of Mylasa, Histiaeus son of Tymnes of Termera, Coes son of Erxander, to whom Darius had given Mytilene as a gift, Aristagoras son of Heraclides of Cyme, and many others. Then Aristagoras revolted openly and planned every harm he could against Darius. First, so that the Milesians would be willing to join his revolt, he pretended to give up his sole power and gave Miletus equality under the law. After that he did the same thing in the rest of Ionia too. Some of the tyrants he drove out; but the ones he had taken from the ships that had sailed with him to Naxos he handed over, because he wanted to please their cities, giving each man up to the city he came from.
38. Now the people of Mytilene, as soon as they had Coes in their hands, took him outside the city and stoned him to death. But the people of Cyme let their tyrant go, and most of the others let theirs go as well. So the tyrants were deposed in the different cities. And after deposing the tyrants, Aristagoras the Milesian told each people to appoint generals in their own cities, and then he himself set out as an envoy to Sparta; for he really did need to find some powerful ally.
39. Now at Sparta, Anaxandrides son of Leon was no longer alive and king, but had come to the end of his life, and Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides held the kingship. He had not gained it by merit, but by right of birth. For Anaxandrides had married his own sister's daughter, and he loved her very much, but no children were born to him by her. That being so, the ephors called him before them and said: "If you will not look out for your own interests in time, we still cannot allow the line of Eurysthenes to die out. So send away the wife you have now, since, as you know, she bears you no children, and marry another. If you do that, you will please the Spartans." He answered that he would do neither of these two things. They were not giving him honorable advice, he said, when they told him to send away the wife he had, though she had done him no wrong, and to bring another into his house. In short, he would not follow their advice.
40. At this the ephors and the Council of Elders consulted together and put this proposal to Anaxandrides: "Since we see that you are firmly attached to the wife you have now, agree to do this, and don't oppose it, or the Spartans may make some decision about you that nobody would want. We are not asking you to send away the wife you have. Go on giving her everything you give her now, but also take another wife into your house besides her, to bear you children." When they spoke to him this way, Anaxandrides agreed. So he had two wives, which was not at all the Spartan way.
41. Not long after this, the second wife gave birth to this Cleomenes we have been speaking of. And just as she was bringing an heir to the Spartan throne into the world, the first wife, who had been childless all that time before, somehow became pregnant, as it happened just at that very time. And though she really was with child, the relatives of the second wife, when they heard of it, made an uproar against her. They said she was making an empty boast and meant to pass off someone else's child as her own. Since they made such a show of outrage, when her time was close the ephors, who did not believe her either, sat around her and watched while she gave birth. She bore Dorieus, then right away conceived Leonidas, and right after him Cleombrotus. Some even say that Cleombrotus and Leonidas were twins. But the wife who had borne Cleomenes, the one who had come in after the first wife, the daughter of Primetades son of Demarmenus, never had another child.
42. Now Cleomenes, it is said, was not quite in his right mind but on the edge of madness, while Dorieus was the first of all the young men of his age, and he was confident that he would become king on merit. So he held that opinion. But when Anaxandrides died, the Spartans followed their usual custom and made the eldest, Cleomenes, king. Dorieus resented this and did not think it right to be ruled by Cleomenes. So he asked the Spartans for a body of men and led them off to found a colony. He did not ask the oracle at Delphi what land he should go to and settle, and he did none of the things that are usually done. Instead, in his anger he sailed off with his ships to Libya, with men from Thera as his guides. When he reached the Cinyps, he founded a settlement in the finest spot in all Libya, along the banks of the river. But in the third year he was driven out of there by the Macae, the Libyans and the Carthaginians, and he went back to the Peloponnese.
43. Then Antichares, a man of Eleon, advised him, on the strength of the oracles of Laius, to found a settlement at Heraclea in Sicily. The whole land of Eryx, he said, belonged to the Heraclids, since Heracles himself had won it. When Dorieus heard this, he went straight to Delphi to ask the oracle whether he would be able to conquer the land he was setting out for. The Pythia answered that he would conquer it. So Dorieus took with him the force he had led to Libya before and sailed along the coast of Italy.
44. Now at this time, the people of Sybaris say, they and their king Telys were about to march against Croton. The people of Croton were terrified and asked Dorieus to help them, and he agreed. So Dorieus joined them in their campaign against Sybaris and helped them take it. That is what the Sybarites say about what Dorieus and his men did. But the people of Croton say that no foreigner helped them in the war against the Sybarites except Callias of Elis, a seer and one of the descendants of Iamus. And he helped them this way, they say: he ran away from Telys, the tyrant of the Sybarites, when the sacrifices he was making for the expedition against Croton did not turn out favorable, and so he came over to them.
45. Those are the stories the two sides tell, and each of them offers the following evidence for its own. The Sybarites point to a sacred precinct and a temple beside the dried-up bed of the Crathis, which they say Dorieus set up to Athena "of the Crathis" after he had helped to take the city. Besides this, they consider Dorieus' own death the strongest evidence of all. He died, they think, because he went against the oracle he had been given. If he had not done anything on the side, but had stuck to what he had been sent to do, he would have conquered the land of Eryx and held it once he had conquered it, and he and his army would not have been destroyed. The people of Croton, on the other hand, point out that many special grants of land in the territory of Croton were given to Callias of Elis, which Callias' descendants still held in my own time, while nothing was given to Dorieus or to Dorieus' descendants. Yet if Dorieus had really helped them in the war with Sybaris, they say, he would have been given many times as much as Callias. That is the evidence the two sides produce, and we may each agree with whichever of them we find more believable.
46. Other Spartans also sailed with Dorieus as co-founders of the colony: Thessalus, Paraebates, Celeas and Euryleon. When they had reached Sicily with their whole force, they were defeated in battle by the Phoenicians and the people of Egesta and were killed. Of the co-founders, only Euryleon survived this disaster. He gathered together the survivors of the expedition and took over Minoa, the colony of Selinus, and helped the people of Selinus to free themselves from their tyrant Peithagoras. But afterward, when he had deposed Peithagoras, he seized the tyranny of Selinus himself and ruled there alone, though only for a short time. For the people of Selinus rose against him and killed him, even though he had fled for refuge to the altar of Zeus of the Marketplace.
47. Another man who went with Dorieus and died with him was Philip son of Butacides, a man of Croton. He had become engaged to the daughter of Telys the Sybarite, and for that he was exiled from Croton. Then, when the marriage fell through, he sailed away to Cyrene, and from there he set out and joined Dorieus with a trireme of his own, paying the costs of the crew himself. This man had won at the Olympic Games, and he was the most handsome Greek of his day. Because of his good looks he received from the people of Egesta something no one else ever received from them: they built a hero's shrine over his grave, and they still offer sacrifices to win his favor.
48. That is how Dorieus ended his life. But if he had put up with being ruled by Cleomenes and had stayed in Sparta, he would have been king of Sparta himself. For Cleomenes did not reign very long, and he died leaving no son to succeed him, only a daughter, whose name was Gorgo.
49. Anyway, Aristagoras, the tyrant of Miletus, arrived at Sparta while Cleomenes was king, and it was with him that he came to talk. He brought with him, as the Spartans say, a bronze tablet with a map of the whole earth engraved on it, with all the sea and all the rivers. When he came to talk with Cleomenes, he said this to him: "Don't be surprised, Cleomenes, at how eager I was to come here, for this is how things stand. That the sons of the Ionians should be slaves instead of free men is a disgrace and a grief, most of all to us ourselves, but of everyone else, most of all to you, since you are the leaders of Greece. So now I beg you, by the gods of Greece, to rescue the Ionians, your own kin, from slavery. And you can do it easily. For the foreigners are not brave fighters, while you have reached the very peak of courage in war. This is how they fight: with bows and arrows and a short spear, and they go into battle wearing trousers and with caps on their heads. So they are easy to beat. Besides, the people who live on that continent have more good things than all the other nations of the world put together: first gold, then silver and bronze, embroidered clothing, pack animals and slaves. All of it could be yours, if you wanted it. And these nations live next to each other in the order I will now show you. Here are the Ionians. Next to them are the Lydians, who not only live in a fertile land but are extremely rich in gold and silver." And as he said this he pointed to the map of the earth, which he had brought with him engraved on the tablet. "And here, next to the Lydians," Aristagoras went on, "are the Eastern Phrygians, who have more sheep and cattle than any people I know, and the richest crops as well. Next to the Phrygians are the Cappadocians, whom we call Syrians. Bordering on them are the Cilicians, whose land comes down to this sea here, where the island of Cyprus lies. They pay the king five hundred talents a year in tribute. Next to these Cilicians are the Armenians, here, as you can see, and they too have great numbers of sheep and cattle. Next to the Armenians are the Matienians, who hold this country here. And next to them is the land of Cissia, here, and in that land, on the banks of this river, the Choaspes, stands the city of Susa, where the great king lives and where his money is stored in treasuries. Once you have taken that city, you can boldly challenge Zeus himself in wealth. Tell me, can it really be that you feel you must risk battles against the Messenians and the Arcadians and the Argives, who are an even match for you, for land that is not large or very fertile, and for borders that are small, when these peoples have no gold or silver at all, the things that make a man want to fight and die? Can that be, I ask you, and will you choose that way now, when you could easily rule all of Asia?" That is what Aristagoras said, and Cleomenes answered: "My friend from Miletus, I will put off my answer until the day after tomorrow."
50. That is as far as they got that time. When the day set for the answer came and they met at the agreed place, Cleomenes asked Aristagoras how many days' journey it was from the Ionian sea to where the king lived. Now Aristagoras, who had been clever in everything else and had been handling Cleomenes well, made a mistake here. He should not have told him the truth, at least if he wanted to bring the Spartans out to Asia. But in fact he told him it was a journey of three months inland from the sea. Cleomenes cut short the rest of the description of the road that Aristagoras had started to give, and said: "My friend from Miletus, get out of Sparta before sunset. What you are saying does not sound good to Spartan ears, wanting to take them a three months' journey away from the sea."
51. After saying this, Cleomenes went home. But Aristagoras took up an olive branch, the sign of a suppliant, and went to Cleomenes' house. He went in as a suppliant and asked Cleomenes to send the child away and listen to him. For Cleomenes' daughter, whose name was Gorgo, was standing beside him; she happened to be his only child, and she was eight or nine years old. But Cleomenes told him to say what he wanted to say and not to hold back because of the child. Then Aristagoras began to promise him money if he would do what he was asking, starting with ten talents. When Cleomenes refused, Aristagoras kept raising the sum he offered, until at last he had promised fifty talents. At that the child cried out: "Father, the stranger will do you harm, unless you leave him and go." Cleomenes was pleased with the child's advice and went off into another room, and Aristagoras left Sparta altogether. He never got the chance to explain any further about the road inland from the sea to the king's residence.
52. As for this road, the truth is as follows. All along it there are royal stations with excellent inns, and the whole road runs through country that is inhabited and safe. Through Lydia and Phrygia there are twenty stations, covering ninety-four and a half parasangs, about 315 miles. After Phrygia comes the river Halys, where there is a gate you must pass through to cross the river, and a strong guard-post stands there. Then, after crossing into Cappadocia, it is twenty-eight stations, or 104 parasangs, about 347 miles, along this road to the borders of Cilicia. On the Cilician border you pass through two separate gates and go by two separate guard-posts. After passing these, it is three stations, fifteen and a half parasangs, about fifty-two miles, to travel through Cilicia. The boundary between Cilicia and Armenia is a river you can sail on, called the Euphrates. In Armenia there are fifteen stations with inns, covering fifty-six and a half parasangs, about 188 miles, and there is a guard-post on the way. Then, when you leave Armenia and enter the land of Matiene, there are thirty-four stations, covering 137 parasangs, about 457 miles. Four navigable rivers flow through this land, and they can only be crossed by ferry. First is the Tigris. The second and third are both called by the same name, though they are not the same river and do not flow from the same region: the first of these two flows from Armenia and the other from the land of the Matienians. The fourth river is called the Gyndes, the one Cyrus once split into three hundred and sixty channels. Going on from there into the land of Cissia, there are eleven stations, forty-two and a half parasangs, about 142 miles, to the river Choaspes, which is also navigable; and on it the city of Susa is built. These stations come to one hundred and eleven in all.
53. That is the number of stations with inns as you go up from Sardis to Susa. Now if the royal road has been measured correctly in parasangs, and if a parasang equals thirty stades, as it certainly does, then the distance from Sardis to what is called the palace of Memnon is 13,500 stades, which is 450 parasangs, about 1,500 miles. So if you travel 150 stades, about seventeen miles, a day, the journey takes exactly ninety days.
54. So Aristagoras of Miletus spoke correctly when he told Cleomenes the Spartan that the journey up from the sea to the king's residence took three months. But if anyone wants an even more exact figure than this, I will give him that too. We should also add the length of the road from Ephesus to Sardis. So I say that the whole distance from the Greek sea to Susa (for that is the name of the city of Memnon) is 14,040 stades, about 1,560 miles, since from Ephesus to Sardis is 540 stades, about sixty miles. And so the three months' journey is lengthened by three days.
55. So Aristagoras, driven out of Sparta, went on to Athens. Athens had been set free from its tyrants, and I will tell how. Hipparchus, the son of Pisistratus and brother of the tyrant Hippias, had seen a vision in a dream that plainly foretold his fate, and after it he was killed by Aristogeiton and Harmodius, who were Gephyraeans by descent. But for four years after this the Athenians went on living under tyranny just as before, and in fact under a harsher one.
56. This was the dream Hipparchus had. On the night before the Panathenaea, the great festival of Athena, he dreamed that a tall, handsome man came and stood over him and spoke these riddling verses:
"Endure, lion, with an enduring heart, what cannot be endured: no man who does wrong will escape the punishment appointed for him."
As soon as it was day he told these verses openly to the interpreters of dreams. But afterward he put the vision out of his mind and took his part in the procession, and it was during that procession that he was killed.
57. The Gephyraeans, the family the murderers of Hipparchus belonged to, say that they came originally from Eretria. But as I find when I trace the matter back, they were Phoenicians, part of the company who came with Cadmus to the land now called Boeotia, and they lived in the district of Tanagra, which had been allotted to them there. The Cadmeans were driven out first, by the Argives; then these Gephyraeans in their turn were driven out by the Boeotians, and they turned toward Athens. The Athenians took them in as citizens on certain fixed terms, laying down rules that shut them out of a number of things not worth mentioning here.
58. These Phoenicians who came with Cadmus, the Gephyraeans among them, settled in this land of Boeotia and brought many skills to the Greeks. Above all they brought writing, which, as it seems to me, the Greeks did not have before this. At first they used the same letters all Phoenicians use, but as time went on they changed the shape of the letters along with their language. In most of the places around them at that time the Greeks who lived nearest were Ionians. The Ionians learned the letters from the Phoenicians, changed their shape a little, and used them, and when they did they called them "phoenicians," which was only fair, since the Phoenicians had brought them into Greece. The Ionians have also called papyrus "skins" from ancient times, because once, when papyrus was scarce, they wrote on the skins of goats and sheep. Even in my own time many non-Greeks still write on such skins.
59. I have seen Cadmean letters myself, in the temple of Ismenian Apollo at Thebes in Boeotia, carved on some tripods, and for the most part they look like the Ionian letters. One of these tripods carries the inscription:
"Amphitryon dedicated me, home from the land of the Teleboans."
This inscription would date from about the time of Laius son of Labdacus, son of Polydorus, son of Cadmus.
60. A second tripod says, in hexameter verse:
"Scaeus dedicated me to you, Apollo who shoots from afar, when he won the boxing match, a beautiful gift in your honor."
This Scaeus would be the son of Hippocoon, if it really was he who dedicated it and not another man with the same name as the son of Hippocoon, and he would have lived about the time of Oedipus son of Laius.
61. The third tripod, also in hexameter verse, says:
"Laodamas, while he was king, dedicated me to you, Apollo of the true aim, from his own wealth, a beautiful gift in your honor."
It was in the reign of this very Laodamas son of Eteocles that the Cadmeans were driven out by the Argives and went off to the Enchelians. The Gephyraeans were left behind then, and later the Boeotians forced them to withdraw to Athens. They have temples of their own established in Athens, in which the other Athenians have no share. These are different from the rest, and the chief of them is a temple of Demeter Achaea, with her secret rites, the Mysteries.
62. I have now told about the dream Hipparchus saw, and where the Gephyraeans came from, the family his murderers belonged to. Now I must go back and continue the story I set out to tell at the start: how the Athenians were freed from their tyrants.
Hippias was tyrant, and he was treating the Athenians harshly because of Hipparchus' death. The Alcmaeonids, an Athenian family who had been exiled by the sons of Pisistratus, had joined the other Athenian exiles in an attempt to come home by force and set Athens free. They fortified Leipsydrium, above Paeonia, but the attempt failed and they suffered a heavy defeat. After that the Alcmaeonids, still trying every means against the sons of Pisistratus, took the contract to build the temple at Delphi, the one that stands there now, which did not yet exist then. They were wealthy and had been men of standing from ancient times, and they built the temple more beautifully than the plan required. In particular, though the contract was for a temple of ordinary limestone, they built its front of Parian marble.
63. Then, as the Athenians say, these men stayed at Delphi and bribed the Pythia to tell any Spartans who came to consult the oracle, whether on private business or public, that they should set Athens free. Since the Spartans got the same answer every time, they sent Anchimolius son of Aster, a man of standing among their citizens, with an army to drive the sons of Pisistratus out of Athens. They did this even though the sons of Pisistratus were bound to them by close ties of guest-friendship, because they held that the god's business must come before men's. They sent this force by sea, in ships.
Anchimolius put in at Phalerum, the harbor of Athens, and landed his army. But the sons of Pisistratus had learned of it in advance and called for help from Thessaly, since they had an alliance with the Thessalians. At their request the Thessalians, by public decree, sent a thousand cavalry and their king Cineas, a man of Conium. With these allies in hand, the sons of Pisistratus made a plan. They cut down the trees on the plain of Phalerum to make the ground fit for horses, and then they sent the cavalry against the enemy's camp. The cavalry fell on it and killed many of the Spartans, Anchimolius himself among them, and they shut the survivors up in their ships. That was how the first expedition from Sparta ended. Anchimolius' tomb is at Alopece in Attica, near the temple of Heracles at Cynosarges.
64. After this the Spartans fitted out a larger expedition and sent it against Athens. They made their king Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides its commander, and this time they sent it by land instead of by sea. When they invaded Attica, the Thessalian cavalry met them first, and before long the Thessalians were routed and lost more than forty men. The survivors went straight home to Thessaly without more ado. Then Cleomenes, along with those Athenians who wanted to be free, came to the city and began to besiege the tyrants, who had shut themselves up behind the Pelasgian Wall.
65. The Spartans would never have captured the sons of Pisistratus at all. They had no plans for a long blockade, and the defenders were well supplied with food and drink, so after a siege of a few days the Spartans would have gone back home to Sparta. But as it happened, something occurred just then that was bad luck for one side and help for the other: the children of the sons of Pisistratus were captured as they were being smuggled out of the country. When that happened, all their plans were thrown into confusion. To get their children back they surrendered on the Athenians' terms, which were that they should leave Attica within five days. So they left the country and went to Sigeum on the Scamander, after their family had ruled the Athenians for thirty-six years. They too were originally Pylians, descendants of Neleus, from the same ancestors as the family of Codrus and Melanthus, who had come from abroad earlier and become kings of Athens. That was why Hippocrates had named his son Pisistratus, as a reminder, after Pisistratus the son of Nestor.
So the Athenians were freed from their tyrants. Before I go any further, I will first set out the things worth telling that they did or suffered after they were freed, up to the time when Ionia revolted from Darius and Aristagoras of Miletus came to Athens and asked them for help.
66. Athens had been great even before, but now, rid of its tyrants, it grew greater still. Two men held power there. One was Cleisthenes, a descendant of Alcmaeon, the man who is said to have bribed the Pythia. The other was Isagoras son of Tisander, of a highly respected family; I can't say what his family's origins were, but his relatives sacrifice to Carian Zeus. These two men fought each other for power, and when Cleisthenes was getting the worst of it, he made the common people his partners. After this he divided the Athenians into ten tribes instead of the old four. He did away with the old tribal names, which came from the sons of Ion (Geleon, Aegicores, Argades and Hoples), and found new names for them after other heroes, all of them native Athenians except Ajax. Ajax he added, although he was no Athenian, as a neighbor and an ally.
67. In this, it seems to me, this Cleisthenes was imitating his mother's father, Cleisthenes the tyrant of Sicyon. When that Cleisthenes went to war with Argos, the first thing he did was stop the contests of the rhapsodes, the reciters of Homer, in Sicyon, because Homer's poems are full of praise for the Argives and Argos almost from end to end. The second thing was this. In the marketplace of Sicyon there was (and there still is) a shrine to the hero Adrastus son of Talaus, and Cleisthenes wanted to throw him out of the country, because he was an Argive.
So he went to Delphi and asked the oracle whether he should throw Adrastus out. The Pythia answered that Adrastus was king of the Sicyonians, and Cleisthenes was only fit to stone them. Since the god would not let him do it, he went home and thought about how to make Adrastus leave of his own accord. When he thought he had found a way, he sent to Thebes in Boeotia and said he wanted to bring Melanippus son of Astacus into his city, and the Thebans let him. So Cleisthenes brought Melanippus in, gave him a sacred precinct in the town hall itself, and set him up there in the strongest spot. Cleisthenes brought in Melanippus (I must tell this too) because he had been Adrastus' worst enemy: he had killed both Adrastus' brother Mecisteus and his son-in-law Tydeus. Once he had given Melanippus his precinct, he took the sacrifices and festivals away from Adrastus and gave them to Melanippus.
The Sicyonians had been in the habit of honoring Adrastus very greatly. This land had once belonged to Polybus, and Adrastus was Polybus' grandson, his daughter's son; and when Polybus died without sons, he left his kingdom to Adrastus. So the Sicyonians gave Adrastus other honors, and in particular they honored him for his sufferings with tragic choruses, paying that honor not to Dionysus but to Adrastus. Cleisthenes, however, gave the choruses back to Dionysus, and the rest of the rites he gave to Melanippus.
68. That is what he did to Adrastus. He also changed the names of the Dorian tribes, so that the Sicyonians would not have the same tribes as the Argives. In this he made a great mockery of the Sicyonians, because he took the new names from the words for "pig" and "donkey," changing only the endings, except for his own tribe, which he named after his own rule. So the men of his tribe were called Archelai, the "Rulers of the People," while of the rest, one tribe was called the Hyatae, the "Hog-men," another the Oneatae, the "Donkey-men," and the last the Choereatae, the "Swine-men." The men of Sicyon used these tribal names not only while Cleisthenes ruled but for sixty years after his death. Then, however, they talked it over and changed them to Hylleis, Pamphyli and Dymanatae, and added a fourth tribe, which they called the Aegialeis after Aegialeus son of Adrastus.
69. That is what Cleisthenes of Sicyon had done. And the Athenian Cleisthenes, his daughter's son, who was named after him, despised the Ionians, I suppose, as his grandfather despised the Dorians, and so he imitated his namesake to keep the Athenians from having the same tribes as the Ionians. At the time I am speaking of, he had won over to his side the whole body of the Athenian common people, whom he had looked down on before. So he changed the names of the tribes and made more of them than there had been: he made ten tribal chiefs instead of four, and he divided the demes among the tribes, ten to each. With the common people on his side, he was far stronger than his rivals.
70. Then Isagoras, losing in his turn, came up with a countermove. He called in Cleomenes of Sparta to help him. Cleomenes had been his guest-friend ever since the siege of the sons of Pisistratus, and Cleomenes was also accused of having an affair with Isagoras' wife. First Cleomenes sent a herald to Athens demanding that Cleisthenes be banished, and many other Athenians with him, calling them "the accursed." He sent this message on Isagoras' instructions, because the Alcmaeonids and their party were blamed for the killing this name referred to, while Isagoras and his friends had no part in it.
71. This is how the Athenians "under the curse" got their name. There was a man in Athens named Cylon, a victor at the Olympic games. He grew arrogant and wanted to make himself tyrant. He formed a band of young men his own age and tried to seize the Acropolis, but when he could not take it, he sat down as a suppliant at the statue of the goddess. The presidents of the naucraries, the officials who ran Athens at that time, persuaded them to leave sanctuary on a promise that they would face any punishment short of death. But they were killed, and the Alcmaeonids are blamed for killing them. All this happened before the time of Pisistratus.
72. When Cleomenes sent his demand that Cleisthenes and the accursed be banished, Cleisthenes himself slipped away. But even so, Cleomenes came to Athens afterward with a fairly small force. When he arrived, he banished seven hundred Athenian families as accursed, families whose names Isagoras had given him. Having done this, he next tried to dissolve the Council, and he put the offices of state in the hands of three hundred of Isagoras' supporters. But the Council resisted and refused to obey, and so Cleomenes, Isagoras and his supporters seized the Acropolis. Then the rest of the Athenians, all of one mind, joined together and besieged them for two days. On the third day all of them who were Spartans left the country under a truce.
So the ominous words that had been spoken to Cleomenes came true. When he went up to the Acropolis intending to take it over, he was going into the shrine of the goddess to pray to her. But the priestess rose from her seat before he had got through the door and said: "Spartan stranger, go back. Do not enter the temple. It is not lawful for Dorians to come in here." He said: "Woman, I am not a Dorian. I am an Achaean." So, paying no attention to the omen, he made his attempt, and then he was thrown out again along with the Spartans. The rest of the men the Athenians put in chains, to be executed. Among them was Timesitheus of Delphi, about whom I could tell of very great deeds of strength and courage.
73. So these men were put in chains and executed. After this the Athenians called back Cleisthenes and the seven hundred families Cleomenes had banished. Then they sent envoys to Sardis, wanting to make an alliance with the Persians, because they were sure that Cleomenes and the Spartans were now their deadly enemies. When the envoys arrived at Sardis and were delivering the message they had been given, Artaphernes son of Hystaspes, the governor of Sardis, asked who these people were who wanted to be allies of the Persians, and where on earth they lived. When the envoys had told him, he gave them his answer in short: if the Athenians would give earth and water to Darius, he would make an alliance with them; if not, they could leave. The envoys, acting on their own authority, said they would do it, because they wanted the alliance.
74. When they got home, they were sharply condemned for it. Meanwhile Cleomenes, who felt that the Athenians had insulted him outrageously in word and deed, was raising an army from the whole of the Peloponnese. He did not say what he was raising it for, but he wanted revenge on the Athenian people, and he meant to make Isagoras tyrant, since Isagoras too had come out of the Acropolis with him. So Cleomenes marched into Eleusis with a large army. At the same time the Boeotians, by agreement with him, took Oenoe and Hysiae, the demes on the very edge of Attica, and on the other side the Chalcidians invaded and began plundering various parts of Attica. The Athenians were attacked on more than one side, but they decided they would remember the Boeotians and the Chalcidians later, and they drew up their army to face the Peloponnesians at Eleusis.
75. Then, just as the armies were about to engage, the Corinthians were the first to change their minds. They decided among themselves that they were not doing right, and they left. After them Demaratus son of Ariston did the same. He was the other king of Sparta besides Cleomenes, and he had led the army out from Sparta together with him, and until then he had never been at odds with Cleomenes. Because of this split, a law was made at Sparta that when an army went out, both kings might not go with it, as they had both done up to then. And since one of the kings was now released from service, one of the sons of Tyndareus was to be left at home as well; before this both of them had been called on for help and had gone out with the armies.
76. So at Eleusis the rest of the allies, seeing that the kings of Sparta disagreed and that the Corinthians had left their place in the line, also left and hurried away. This was the fourth time the Dorians had come into Attica: twice they had invaded it to make war, and twice they had come to help the Athenian common people. The first was when they also founded Megara (this expedition may rightly be dated to the time when Codrus was king of Athens); the second and third were when they marched from Sparta to drive out the sons of Pisistratus; and the fourth was this one, when Cleomenes led the Peloponnesians into Eleusis. So this was the fourth time the Dorians invaded Athens.
77. Once this army had broken up so ingloriously, the Athenians wanted revenge, and they marched first against the Chalcidians. The Boeotians came to the Euripus, the strait between the mainland and Euboea, to help the Chalcidians. When the Athenians saw the Boeotian relief force, they decided to attack the Boeotians before the Chalcidians. So they fought the Boeotians and beat them soundly. They killed a great many and took seven hundred prisoners. On that very same day the Athenians crossed over to Euboea and fought the Chalcidians as well. They beat them too, and they left 4,000 settlers, each given an allotment of land, on the land of the "Horse-breeders," as the wealthier Chalcidians were called.
All the Chalcidians they captured they kept in prison along with the Boeotian prisoners, bound in fetters. Later they let them go, setting their ransom at two minas a head. But they hung up the fetters they had been bound with on the Acropolis, and these were still there in my own time, hanging on walls scorched by the Persians' fire, facing the shrine that looks toward the west. They also dedicated a tenth of the ransom as an offering and made a bronze four-horse chariot out of it. It stands on the left as you enter the Propylaea, the great gateway of the Acropolis, and on it is this inscription:
"When the tribes of Boeotia and Chalcis met them in the work of war, the sons of Athens won, and broke them in battle. In dark chains of iron they quenched their arrogance, and from the ransom they give these horses to Athena, a tenth."
78. So the Athenians grew in power. And it is clear, not from one example only but in every way, that equality is an excellent thing. While the Athenians were ruled by tyrants they were no better at war than any of their neighbors, but once they were rid of the tyrants they became by far the best. This proves that while they were held down they held back on purpose, because they were working for a master, but once they were free, each man was eager to achieve something for himself.
79. That was how the Athenians were doing. After this the Thebans sent to the god at Delphi, wanting to be avenged on the Athenians. The Pythia said that they could not get revenge by their own strength alone. She told them to lay the matter before "the many-voiced" and to ask help from "those nearest" to them. So when the men sent to the oracle returned, the Thebans held a general assembly and the envoys reported the answer. When the Thebans heard that they were to ask help from those nearest to them, they said: "Surely the people who live nearest to us are the men of Tanagra and Coronea and Thespiae. They always fight hard on our side and see the war through with us to the end. Why should we need to ask them? Perhaps that isn't what the oracle means."
80. While they were discussing it this way, at last someone saw the point and said: "I think I understand what the oracle means to tell us. Asopus, they say, had two daughters, Thebe and Aegina. Since these two are sisters, I think the god's answer means that we should ask the men of Aegina to be our helpers." No one could offer a better opinion than this, so they sent at once to the Aeginetans and asked them for help, calling on them in the name of the oracle. When the Thebans made their request, the Aeginetans said they would send the sons of Aeacus, their heroes, to help them.
81. The Thebans tried their luck with the sons of Aeacus as allies and were roughly handled by the Athenians. So they sent again, gave the Aeginetans back the sons of Aeacus, and asked them for men instead. The Aeginetans, riding high on great prosperity and remembering an old grudge against the Athenians, answered the Thebans' request by starting a war on the Athenians without a declaration. While the Athenians were busy with the Boeotians, they sailed against Attica in warships and ravaged Phalerum and many demes along the rest of the coast, and by doing this they made the Athenians very angry indeed.
82. Now the grudge the Aeginetans already owed the Athenians had its beginning in this way. The land of the Epidaurians produced no crops for the people who lived there. So, because of this disaster, the Epidaurians went to Delphi to ask the oracle about it. The Pythia told them to set up statues of Damia and Auxesia, and said that once they had set these up, their luck would improve. The Epidaurians then asked a further question: should they make the statues of bronze or of stone? The Pythia told them to use neither, but to make them from the wood of a cultivated olive tree. So the Epidaurians asked the Athenians to let them cut down an olive tree, since they believed the Athenian olives were the most sacred. Some people even say that at that time there were no olive trees anywhere on earth except at Athens. The Athenians said they would allow it on one condition: that every year the Epidaurians would bring the proper offerings to Athena Polias, the guardian of the city, and to Erechtheus, the hero-king of early Athens. The Epidaurians agreed to these terms and got what they asked for. They made statues out of the olive wood and set them up, and their land bore crops again, and they went on doing for the Athenians what they had agreed to do.
83. Now during this time, and before it too, the Aeginetans were subject to the Epidaurians. Among other things, they used to cross over to Epidaurus to have their lawsuits against one another settled there. But after this time they built ships for themselves and, out of sheer stubbornness, revolted from the Epidaurians. Since they were now at odds with them, they kept doing them damage, for in fact they controlled the sea. Above all, they stole these very statues of Damia and Auxesia from them. They carried them off and set them up in the interior of their own island, at a place called Oea, about two and a quarter miles from their city. Once they had set them up in this spot, they worshipped them with sacrifices and with choruses of women who sang mocking, insulting songs. Ten men were appointed for each of the two goddesses to provide the choruses. The choruses insulted no man, only the women of the place. The Epidaurians had these same rites too; and they also have rites that may not be revealed.
84. Once these statues had been stolen, the Epidaurians stopped doing for the Athenians what they had agreed to do. So the Athenians sent to the Epidaurians and complained. The Epidaurians, though, argued that they were doing nothing wrong. As long as they had the statues in their country, they said, they had kept their agreement; but since they had been robbed of them, it was not fair that they should go on making the offerings. They told the Athenians to demand the offerings from the men of Aegina, who had the statues now. So the Athenians sent to Aegina and demanded the statues back. But the Aeginetans said they had no business with the Athenians at all.
85. The Athenians say that after this demand, the citizens sent out by the state went in a single trireme. When they reached Aegina, they tried to pull the statues off their bases, claiming that they were made of wood that belonged to Athens, so that they could carry them home. But they could not get hold of them that way (so the Athenians say), so they threw ropes around them and began to haul on them. Suddenly, as they hauled, there came thunder, and with the thunder an earthquake. The crew of the trireme who were hauling were driven out of their minds by these things. In that state they killed one another as if they were enemies, until in the end only one man out of all of them was left, and he went back alone to Phalerum.
86. That is how the Athenians say it happened. But the Aeginetans say that the Athenians did not come with just one ship. One ship, they say, or even a few more than one, they could easily have driven off, even if they had happened to have no ships of their own. Instead, they say, the Athenians sailed against their country with a large fleet, and they themselves gave way before them and did not fight a sea battle. But they cannot say for certain whether they gave way because they admitted they were not strong enough to fight at sea, or because they meant to do something like what they actually did. The Athenians, they say, since no one came out to fight them, landed from their ships and went for the statues. They could not pull them off their bases, so at last they threw ropes around them and began to haul, until the statues, as they were being hauled, both did the same thing. (And here they tell something I cannot believe, though someone else may.) They say that the statues fell on their knees in front of the Athenians, and have stayed in that position ever since. That, they say, is what the Athenians were doing. Meanwhile they themselves (so the Aeginetans say) had learned that the Athenians were about to attack them, and had got the Argives ready to help. Just as the Athenians had landed on Aeginetan soil, the Argives arrived to rescue them. They had crossed over unnoticed from Epidaurus to the island, and they fell on the Athenians before the Athenians had heard anything about it, cutting them off from the way back to their ships. And it was at this very moment that the thunder and the earthquake came upon them.
87. This is the account the Argives and the Aeginetans both give, and the Athenians too agree that only one of their men survived and came back to Attica. Only, the Argives say this one man was left alive when they destroyed the Athenian army, while the Athenians say the destroyer was the divine. But even this one man did not stay alive. He died, they say, in the following way. When he came back to Athens, he reported the disaster. The wives of the men who had gone on the expedition to Aegina heard it, and they were furious that he alone out of all of them had survived. So they gathered around this man and stabbed him with the brooch pins of their cloaks, each of them asking him where her husband was. That is how he was killed. And to the Athenians the women's deed seemed even more terrible than the disaster itself. Not knowing, it is said, how else to punish the women, they changed their style of dress to the Ionian. Before this, the Athenian women had worn Dorian dress, very like the Corinthian; now the Athenians changed it to the linen tunic, so that the women would have no use for brooches.
88. The truth is, though, that this style of dress is not Ionian in origin but Carian. The old Greek dress for women everywhere was the same as the one we now call Dorian. It is said, too, that because of these events the Argives and Aeginetans each made it a custom in their own country to have brooch pins made half as long again as the size then in use. Their women were to offer brooches above all in the temple of these two goddesses. And no Athenian pottery, or anything else made in Athens, was to be brought into the temple; instead, the custom from then on was to drink there only from pitchers made in their own lands.
89. From this time on, the women of the Argives and Aeginetans, because of the quarrel with the Athenians, went on wearing larger brooches than before, and they still do even in my time. And that is how the Athenians' hostility toward the Aeginetans began. So at this time, when the Thebans made war on the Athenians, the Aeginetans readily came to the help of the Boeotians, remembering what had happened over the statues. The Aeginetans, then, were raiding the coast of Attica, as I have said. The Athenians were determined to make war on the Aeginetans, but an oracle came to them from Delphi. It told them to wait for thirty years, counted from the time of the Aeginetans' wrong, and in the thirty-first year to mark out a sacred precinct for Aeacus, the hero who was Aegina's legendary ancestor, and then begin the war against the Aeginetans; then they would succeed as they wished. But if they attacked at once, it said, they would suffer a great deal of harm in the meantime and also do a great deal, but in the end they would conquer them. When the Athenians heard this report, they marked out a sacred precinct for Aeacus, the one that now stands next to the marketplace. But they could not bear to hear that they must wait thirty years, when they had suffered wrongs from the Aeginetans.
90. But while they were getting ready to take revenge, trouble arose from the Spartans and got in their way. The Spartans had learned what the Alcmaeonids had arranged with the Pythia, and what the Pythia had arranged against them and against the sons of Pisistratus. They were doubly upset: first, because they had driven into exile men who were their guest-friends, and second, because after they had done it the Athenians had shown them no gratitude at all. On top of this, they were spurred on by the oracles which said that they would suffer many wrongs at the hands of the Athenians. They had known nothing of these oracles before, but they knew of them now, because Cleomenes had brought them to Sparta. In fact, Cleomenes had taken them from the Acropolis of Athens. The sons of Pisistratus had owned them before and had left them in the temple when they were driven out, and Cleomenes picked them up after they had been left behind.
91. So at this time the Spartans had got hold of the oracles, and they saw that the Athenians were growing in power and were not at all willing to obey them. They realized that the Athenian people, now that it was free, was becoming a match for their own, whereas under tyrants it had been weak and ready to take orders. Seeing all this, they sent for Hippias son of Pisistratus to come from Sigeum on the Hellespont, where the family of Pisistratus goes for refuge. When Hippias came at their summons, the Spartans also sent for envoys from their other allies, and spoke to them as follows:
"Allies, we know in our own hearts that we have not acted rightly. Stirred up by false oracles, we drove into exile men who were very close friends of ours, bound to us as guest-friends, and who promised to keep Athens obedient to us. Then, having done that, we handed the city over to an ungrateful mob. As soon as it had raised its head, freed by our efforts, it threw out us and our king with insult and violence. And now, swollen with pride, it is growing in power, so that its neighbors first of all, the Boeotians and the Chalcidians, have already learned that they made a mistake, and perhaps others will learn it later on. But since we went wrong in doing what we have described, we will now try to take revenge on them, going there together with you. That is exactly why we sent for Hippias, whom you see here, and for you too, to come from your cities: so that with shared counsel and a shared army we might bring him back to Athens and give back to him what we once took away."
92. That is what they said; but most of the allies did not approve of their words. The rest kept silent, but Socles of Corinth spoke as follows:
"Surely now the sky will be below the earth, and the earth will be lifted up above the sky, and men will live in the sea, and fish will live where men lived before, now that you, Spartans, are doing away with free governments and preparing to bring tyranny back into our cities. There is nothing among men more unjust than tyranny, and nothing more murderous. If you really think it a good thing for cities to be ruled by tyrants, then set up a tyrant in your own state first, and after that try to set them up for others. As things are, you are treating your allies unfairly: you have never had any experience of tyrants yourselves, and at Sparta you take the greatest care that it never happens. If you had had experience of it, as we have, you would be able to offer better judgement about it than you do now.
"This is how the Corinthian state was arranged. The government was an oligarchy, and the oligarchs, who were called the Bacchiads, ran the state and married only among themselves. Now one of these men, named Amphion, had a daughter who was lame, and her name was Labda. Since none of the Bacchiads wanted to marry her, she was taken as wife by Aetion son of Echecrates, who came from the village of Petra but was by descent a Lapith, one of the race of Caeneus. Neither by this wife nor by any other did he have children, so he set off to Delphi to ask about having a family. As soon as he came in, the Pythia greeted him with these lines:
'You deserve great honor, yet no one gives you honor. Labda is with child, and she will bear a rolling boulder that will crash down on the heads of the kings, and bring punishment on Corinth.'
"Somehow this answer given to Aetion was reported to the Bacchiads. An earlier oracle had come to Corinth that they had not been able to understand, an oracle that pointed to the same thing as Aetion's and said this:
'An eagle is with child among the rocks, and will bear a lion, strong and savage, who will loosen the knees of many. Think this over well, Corinthians, you who live around the fair spring of Peirene and in steep Corinth.'
"This oracle, which had come to the Bacchiads earlier, had been a riddle to them. But afterward, when they heard the one that had come to Aetion, they understood the first one at once: it agreed with Aetion's. And understanding this one too, they kept quiet, intending to kill the child that would be born to Aetion. So as soon as his wife gave birth, they sent ten of their own number to the village where Aetion lived, to kill the child. When these men had come to Petra and gone into the courtyard of Aetion's house, they asked for the child. Labda had no idea why they had come. She supposed they were asking for the baby out of friendship for its father, so she brought it out and put it in the hands of one of them. Now they had decided on the way, it seems, that whichever of them first took the child would dash it to the ground. But when Labda brought it and handed it over, it so happened, by the hand of heaven, that the baby smiled at the man who had taken it. He saw this, and pity kept him from killing it. Moved by pity, he handed it to the next man, and he to the third. So it passed through the hands of all ten, handed from one to the next, since not one of them could bring himself to kill it. So they gave the child back to its mother and went outside. And then, standing by the door, they argued and blamed one another, especially the man who had taken the child first, because he had not done what they had agreed. At last, after some time, they decided to go in again and all share in the murder.
"But it was fated that evils would grow for Corinth from Aetion's offspring. For Labda was listening to all this as she stood right by the door. Afraid that they would change their minds, take the child a second time and kill it, she carried it off and hid it in the place she thought least likely to be found: a grain chest. She was sure that if they came back to search, they would look everywhere. And that is exactly what happened. When they came and searched and could not find it, they decided to go back and tell those who had sent them that they had done everything they had been ordered to do.
"So they went away and said this. After that, Aetion's son grew up, and because he had escaped this danger, he was given the name Cypselus, after the grain chest (in Greek, kypsele). When Cypselus had grown to manhood and was consulting the oracle, he was given an answer at Delphi that could be read two ways. Trusting in it, he made his attempt on Corinth and took control of it. The answer was this:
'Happy indeed is the man who now comes into my house: son of Aetion, who will be king of famous Corinth, Cypselus, he and his sons, but his sons' sons no longer.'
"That was the oracle. And once Cypselus became tyrant, this is the kind of man he was: many of the Corinthians he drove into exile, many he robbed of their wealth, and far more of their lives.
"He ruled for thirty years and ended his life in prosperity, and his son Periander succeeded him as tyrant. At first Periander was gentler than his father. But after he had been in touch through messengers with Thrasybulus, the tyrant of Miletus, he became far more murderous even than Cypselus. He sent a messenger to Thrasybulus to ask what arrangement of affairs would be safest for him to make, so that he could govern his city best. Thrasybulus led the man who had come from Periander out of the city and went into a field of growing grain. As he walked through the crop, he kept questioning the messenger, over and over, about why he had come from Corinth; and all the while, whenever he saw an ear of grain standing taller than the rest, he cut its head off. As he cut the heads off, he threw them away, until in this way he had destroyed the finest and richest part of the crop. Then, having gone through the field, he sent the messenger away without offering a single word of advice. When the messenger got back to Corinth, Periander was eager to hear the advice he had been given. But the man said that Thrasybulus had given him none. He added that he was amazed Periander had sent him to such a man, for the man was out of his mind and was destroying his own property; and he told what he had seen Thrasybulus do.
"Periander understood what had been done. He saw that Thrasybulus was advising him to put to death the most outstanding of his citizens, and from then on he showed every kind of cruelty to the people of his city. Whatever killing and exiling Cypselus had left undone, Periander finished. And in a single day he stripped all the women of Corinth of their clothes, because of his own wife Melissa. He had sent messengers to the Thesprotians, on the river Acheron, to ask the oracle of the dead about some money a guest-friend had left with him for safekeeping. Melissa appeared, and said she would not tell where the money had been put, because she was cold and naked: the clothes he had buried with her were of no use to her, since they had not been burned. And as proof that she was telling the truth, she said, Periander had put his loaves into a cold oven. When this was reported back to Periander, the token convinced him, for he had had sex with Melissa after she was dead. Right after he got the message, he had it proclaimed that all the women of Corinth were to come out to the temple of Hera. So they came as if to a festival, in their finest clothes. He had hidden the spearmen of his bodyguard in ambush, and he stripped them all alike, the free women and their maidservants too. He gathered all their clothes into a pit and burned them, praying to Melissa as he did it. After he had done this and sent to her a second time, the ghost of Melissa told him where he had put the money his guest-friend had left with him.
"There, Spartans, you have it: that is what tyranny is, and those are its deeds. We Corinthians were amazed at first when we saw you sending for Hippias, and now we are even more amazed to hear you say these things. We call on the gods of Greece and beg you not to set up tyrannies in the cities. But if you will not give up your plan, and try to bring Hippias back against all justice, then know this: the Corinthians, for their part, do not consent to what you are doing."
93. That was the speech of Socles, the envoy of Corinth. Hippias answered him, calling on the same gods as he had, and said that the Corinthians, more than anyone, would surely long for the sons of Pisistratus when the appointed days came for them to be harassed by the Athenians. That was Hippias' answer, for he knew the oracles more exactly than any other man. But the rest of the allies, who had held themselves back for a while and kept silent, now heard Socles speak his mind, and every one of them spoke out and said what he felt. They sided with the Corinthian envoy and begged the Spartans not to do any violence to a Greek city.
94. So that plan came to nothing. When Hippias was sent away from there, Amyntas king of the Macedonians offered him Anthemus, and the Thessalians offered him Iolcus. But he accepted neither, and went back again to Sigeum. Pisistratus had taken this city by force of arms from the Mytilenians. Once he had it, he made his own illegitimate son Hegesistratus, born to him by a woman of Argos, tyrant of the place. But Hegesistratus did not keep what he received from Pisistratus without a fight. For the Mytilenians and the Athenians fought a long war, with their strongholds at Achilleum and at Sigeum respectively. The Mytilenians demanded the place back. The Athenians, for their part, refused, and argued that the Aeolians had no better claim to the land of Troy than they themselves and all the other Greeks who had helped Menelaus take revenge for the carrying off of Helen.
95. While they were fighting this war, among the many and various things that happened in the battles, there was this. Once, in a fight the Athenians were winning, Alcaeus the poet ran away. He himself escaped, but the Athenians kept his armor and hung it up on the walls of the temple of Athena at Sigeum. Alcaeus wrote a song about this and sent it to Mytilene, telling his own misfortune to a man named Melanippus, a friend of his. In the end, Periander son of Cypselus made peace between the Athenians and the Mytilenians, for they referred the matter to him to decide. He made peace between them on condition that each side should keep the land it then held.
96. That is how Sigeum came under Athenian rule. Meanwhile, when Hippias had come back to Asia from Sparta, he left no stone unturned. He stirred up hostility between the Athenians and Artaphernes, and he did everything he could to bring Athens under the rule of himself and Darius. That, then, was what Hippias was doing. When the Athenians heard of it, they sent envoys to Sardis and tried to keep the Persians from listening to the exiled Athenians. But Artaphernes ordered them, if they wanted to be saved, to take Hippias back. When this answer was reported, the Athenians were not at all inclined to accept it. And since they did not accept it, it became the settled view among them at once that they were enemies of the Persians.
97. The Athenians were thinking this way, and had already been set at odds with the Persians, when at this very moment Aristagoras of Miletus arrived in Athens, after Cleomenes the Spartan had ordered him out of Sparta. He came to Athens because it was the most powerful of all the other cities, after Sparta. Aristagoras came before the assembly of the people and said the same things he had said at Sparta: how much wealth there was in Asia, and how the Persians made war, using neither shield nor spear, so that they were easy to beat. That is what he said, and he added this too: the Milesians were colonists from Athens, and it was only reasonable that the Athenians, with all their power, should rescue them. There was nothing he did not promise, so hard did he press his request, until at last he won them over. It seems it is easier to deceive many people than one: he could not deceive Cleomenes the Spartan on his own, but he managed it with thirty thousand Athenians. So the Athenians, persuaded, voted to send twenty ships to help the Ionians, and they appointed as commander Melanthius, one of their citizens, a man highly respected in every way. These ships were the beginning of troubles for Greeks and non-Greeks alike.
98. Aristagoras, however, sailed on ahead and came to Miletus. There he worked out a plan that was not likely to do the Ionians any good. In fact that was not why he was doing it; he did it to annoy King Darius. He sent a man to Phrygia, to the Paeonians whom Megabazus had carried off as captives from the river Strymon, and who were living by themselves in a district and village of Phrygia. When the messenger reached the Paeonians, he said: "Paeonians, Aristagoras the tyrant of Miletus has sent me to offer you a way to save yourselves, if you are willing to do as he says. All Ionia has now revolted from the king, and you have a chance to get home safe to your own land. Getting to the sea is your business; after that, it will be ours." The Paeonians welcomed this as the best news they could have heard. They took their children and their women and fled for the sea, though some of them were afraid and stayed where they were. When the Paeonians reached the coast they crossed over to Chios. They were already on Chios when a large force of Persian cavalry arrived on their trail, chasing them. Since the horsemen had not caught them, they sent over to Chios to order the Paeonians to come back. The Paeonians refused. Instead the people of Chios carried them from Chios to Lesbos, the Lesbians brought them to Doriscus, and from there they went on by land and reached Paeonia.
99. Meanwhile the Athenians arrived with their twenty ships, bringing with them five triremes from Eretria as well. The Eretrians had not joined the expedition for the Athenians' sake but for the Milesians', to repay a debt they owed them. In earlier times the Milesians had stood with the Eretrians through the whole of their war with the Chalcidians, at the time when the Samians were helping the Chalcidians against the Eretrians and Milesians. So when these ships had arrived and the other allies were on the spot, Aristagoras launched a march on Sardis. He did not go on this march himself. He stayed in Miletus and put others in command of the Milesians: his brother Charopinus, and one of the other citizens, Hermophantus.
100. With this force the Ionians came to Ephesus. They left their ships at Coresus in Ephesian territory and went inland themselves in a large body, with Ephesians to guide them on the march. They marched along the river Cayster, crossed the range of Tmolus, and when they arrived they took Sardis without a fight, all except the citadel. The citadel Artaphernes saved from capture himself, since he had a sizable force of men with him.
101. They took the city, but they were kept from plundering it, and this is why. Most of the houses in Sardis were built of reeds, and even the ones built of brick had roofs thatched with reeds. One of these houses was set on fire by a soldier, and at once the fire spread from house to house over the whole town. As the town burned, the Lydians and all the Persians who were in the city were cut off: the fire had hold of the outskirts all around them, and they had no way out of the town. So they streamed together into the marketplace and to the river Pactolus. The Pactolus carries down gold dust for them from Tmolus. It flows right through the middle of their marketplace and then runs out into the river Hermus, and the Hermus into the sea. At the Pactolus and in the marketplace, then, the Lydians and Persians gathered and were forced to defend themselves. When the Ionians saw some of the enemy standing their ground and others coming on to attack in great numbers, they lost their nerve and pulled back to the mountain called Tmolus. Then, at nightfall, they set off for their ships.
102. So Sardis was burned, and with it the temple of Cybebe, the goddess of that country. Later the Persians used this as their reason for burning the temples in Greece in return. At the time I am speaking of, though, the Persians who held provinces on this side of the river Halys had learned of the attack beforehand and were gathering to come to the Lydians' help. As it happened, when they got there they found the Ionians already gone from Sardis. But they followed hard on their trail and caught up with them at Ephesus. The Ionians lined up against them, but when the battle was joined they were badly beaten. The Persians cut down many men of note, and among those who fell was Eualcides, the Eretrian commander, a man who had won garlands at the games and whom Simonides of Ceos praised again and again in his poems. The Ionians who survived the battle scattered to their various cities.
103. That was how they fought that time. After the battle the Athenians abandoned the Ionians altogether. Aristagoras sent messenger after messenger begging for their help, but they said they would not help them. Even without their Athenian allies, though, the Ionians went on preparing for war with the king, since they had already done Darius so much harm. They also sailed to the Hellespont and brought Byzantium and all the other cities in that region under their control. Then they sailed out of the Hellespont and won most of Caria over to their alliance as well. Even Caunus, which had refused to become their ally before, joined them too after they had burned Sardis.
104. The Cyprians also joined their alliance of their own accord, all except the people of Amathus. They too had revolted from the Persians, and this is how. There was a man named Onesilus, the younger brother of Gorgus king of Salamis in Cyprus. He was the son of Chersis, son of Siromus, son of Euelthon. Even in earlier times this man had often urged Gorgus to revolt from the king, and now, when he heard that the Ionians had revolted, he pressed him very hard and tried to drive him to it. But since he could not persuade Gorgus, Onesilus waited for a time when Gorgus had gone out of the city of Salamis, and then, with the men of his own faction, he shut him out of the gates. Robbed of his city, Gorgus fled to the Persians for refuge. Onesilus became ruler of Salamis and tried to persuade all the Cyprians to revolt with him. He persuaded the rest. But the people of Amathus refused to do what he wanted, so he camped before their city and laid siege to it.
105. So Onesilus was besieging Amathus. Meanwhile King Darius was told that Sardis had been taken and burned by the Athenians and the Ionians together, and that the leader of the alliance that had brought all this about was Aristagoras of Miletus. It is said that when he first heard the news, he paid no attention to the Ionians, because he knew that they at any rate would not get away with their revolt unpunished. But he asked who the Athenians were. When he had been told, he asked for his bow. He took it, fitted an arrow to the string, and shot it upward toward the sky, and as he shot it into the air he said: "Zeus, grant that I may take revenge on the Athenians!" After saying this he ordered one of his servants to say to him three times, every time his dinner was served: "Master, remember the Athenians."
106. After giving this order, he called in Histiaeus of Miletus, whom he had now kept with him for a long time, and said: "I am told, Histiaeus, that your deputy, the man you left in charge of Miletus, has rebelled against me. He brought men over against me from the other continent, and he persuaded the Ionians too (who will pay me the penalty for what they have done) to join them, and so he robbed me of Sardis. Now, how do you think this looks? And how could anything like this have been done without your advice? Be careful you don't find yourself to blame for this later." Histiaeus answered: "My king, what are you saying? That I advised something that was likely to cause you trouble, great or small? What more could I want than what I have, that I would do such things? What do I lack? I have everything you have, and you think me worthy to hear all your plans. No: if my deputy really is doing anything like what you say, you can be sure he has done it entirely on his own. For my part I don't even accept the report as true, that the Milesians and my deputy are doing anything rebellious against your rule. But if it turns out that they really are doing something of the kind, and what you have heard, my king, is the truth, then see what you did when you took me away from the coast. It seems that once I was out of the Ionians' sight, they did what they had long wanted to do. If I had been in Ionia, not one city would have stirred. So let me set out for Ionia as quickly as possible, so that I can put everything back as it was for you and hand over to you this deputy of Miletus who has plotted all this. And when I have done this to your satisfaction, I swear by the gods of the royal house that I will not take off the tunic I am wearing when I go down to Ionia until I have made Sardinia, the largest island in the world, pay you tribute."
107. That was what Histiaeus said, trying to deceive the king. Darius was persuaded and let him go, ordering him to come back to him at Susa when he had done what he had promised.
108. Meanwhile, while the news about Sardis was going up to the king, and while Darius, after what he did with the bow, was talking with Histiaeus, and while Histiaeus, released by Darius, was making his way down to the coast, all through that time the following events were taking place. As Onesilus of Salamis was besieging the people of Amathus, he received word that a Persian named Artybius was expected to arrive in Cyprus shortly, bringing a large Persian army with him by ship. When he heard this, Onesilus sent heralds to various places in Ionia to call the Ionians to his help. They talked it over among themselves and came at once with a large force. The Ionians arrived in Cyprus just when the Persians had crossed over by ship from Cilicia and were marching overland to attack Salamis, while the Phoenicians with the fleet were sailing around the headland called the "Keys of Cyprus."
109. Things being so, the tyrants of Cyprus called the Ionian commanders together and said: "Ionians, we Cyprians give you the choice of which enemy you would rather fight, the Persians or the Phoenicians. If you would rather line up on land and try your strength against the Persians, then it is time for you to get off your ships and form up on land, and for us to board your ships and fight the Phoenicians. But if you would rather take on the Phoenicians, then whichever of the two you choose, you must do your best, as far as it lies with you, to see that both Ionia and Cyprus are free." The Ionians answered: "We were sent out by the common council of the Ionians to guard the sea, not to hand our ships over to the Cyprians and fight the Persians on land ourselves. So we will try to serve well at the post we were given. And you must remember all you suffered when you were slaves of the Persians, and prove yourselves brave men."
110. That was the Ionians' answer. Afterward, when the Persians had come into the plain of Salamis, the Cyprian kings drew up their battle line. They chose the best of the troops from Salamis and from Soli to face the Persians, and set the other Cyprians against the rest of the enemy's troops. And Onesilus, by his own choice, took his place in the line facing Artybius, the Persian commander.
111. Now Artybius rode a horse that had been trained to rear up against a hoplite. Onesilus heard about this. He had a shield-bearer, a Carian by birth, who had a fine reputation as a soldier and was full of courage besides, and he said to him: "I am told that Artybius' horse rears straight up and attacks with both its hooves and its teeth anyone it is driven against. So think it over, and tell me right away which of the two you would rather watch for and strike, the horse or Artybius himself." His attendant answered: "My king, I am ready to do both, or either one, and in every case to do whatever you order. But I will tell you the way I think best suits your position. I say it is right for a king and commander to fight a king and commander. If you kill the enemy commander, it brings you great glory; and on the other hand, if he kills you, which heaven forbid, even death at the hands of a worthy enemy is only half a misfortune. For us who serve under you, it is right to fight the others who serve under him, and his horse. And don't be afraid of the horse's tricks at all. I promise you that after this, at least, it will never stand up against any man again." That is what he said, and soon afterward the two sides joined battle, on land and with their ships.
112. On that day the Ionians fought outstandingly and beat the Phoenicians, and of the Ionians the Samians fought best. Meanwhile on land the armies met, came to close quarters, and fought. As for the two commanders, this is what happened. When Artybius rode at Onesilus on his horse, Onesilus, as he had arranged with his shield-bearer, struck at Artybius himself as he came at him. And when the horse planted its hooves on Onesilus' shield, the Carian struck with a curved sword and cut off the horse's feet.
113. So Artybius, the Persian commander, fell there on the spot, together with his horse. While the rest were still fighting, Stesenor, the tyrant of Curium, deserted them with a large body of men (these men of Curium are said to be settlers from Argos), and as soon as the men of Curium deserted, the war chariots of the men of Salamis did the same as they had. When this happened, the Persians got the upper hand over the Cyprians. Their army was routed, and many fell. Among them were Onesilus son of Chersis, the man who had brought about the Cyprians' revolt, and also the king of Soli, Aristocyprus son of Philocyprus: that same Philocyprus whom Solon the Athenian, when he came to Cyprus, praised in verse above all other tyrants.
114. The people of Amathus cut off Onesilus' head, because he had besieged them. They took it to Amathus and hung it over the city gate. As the head hung there, once it had become hollow, a swarm of bees got into it and filled it with honeycomb. When this happened, the people of Amathus consulted an oracle about the head. The answer told them to take it down and bury it, and to sacrifice to Onesilus every year as a hero; if they did this, things would go better for them.
115. The people of Amathus went on doing this down to my own time. As for the Ionians who had fought the sea battle off Cyprus, they saw that Onesilus' cause was lost and that the Cyprian cities were under siege, all except Salamis, and that the Salaminians had handed Salamis over to Gorgus, their former king. As soon as they saw this, the Ionians sailed back to Ionia. Of the cities in Cyprus, Soli held out against the siege the longest. The Persians took it in the fifth month by digging a tunnel under the wall all around.
116. So the Cyprians, after being free for one year, had been made slaves once again. Meanwhile Daurises, who was married to a daughter of Darius, and Hymaees and Otanes, who were also Persian commanders and also married to daughters of Darius, had chased the Ionians who had marched on Sardis, beaten them in battle and driven them back to their ships by force. After this they divided the cities among themselves and set about sacking them.
117. Daurises headed for the cities on the Hellespont. He took Dardanus, Abydos, Percote, Lampsacus and Paesus, one each day. As he was marching from Paesus against the city of Parium, word came that the Carians had made common cause with the Ionians and revolted from the Persians. So he turned back from the Hellespont and marched his army against Caria.
118. As it happened, news of this reached the Carians before Daurises arrived. When they heard it, the Carians gathered at the place called the "White Pillars," on the river Marsyas, which flows from the region of Idrias and empties into the Maeander. When the Carians had gathered there, many plans were put forward. The best of them, I think, was that of Pixodarus son of Mausolus, a man from Cindya, who was married to the daughter of Syennesis, king of the Cilicians. His advice was that the Carians should cross the Maeander and fight the Persians with the river at their backs. That way the Carians, unable to run away and forced to stand where they were, would prove even braver fighters than they naturally were. This advice did not carry the day. Instead they decided that the Persians, and not they themselves, should have the Maeander at their backs. Their idea, clearly, was that if the Persians were routed and beaten in the battle, they would never get home but would end up in the river.
119. After this the Persians arrived and crossed the Maeander, and the Carians met them on the river Marsyas. They fought a hard battle that went on a long time, but in the end the Carians were beaten by sheer numbers. As many as two thousand Persians fell, but ten thousand Carians. Those of them who escaped were penned in at Labraunda, in the sanctuary of Zeus Stratius, Zeus of Armies, which is a large sacred grove of plane trees. The Carians are the only people we know of who sacrifice to Zeus Stratius. Penned in there, they were discussing how to save themselves: whether they would do better to surrender to the Persians or to leave Asia altogether.
120. While they were discussing this, the Milesians and their allies came to their aid. Then the Carians dropped the plans they had been considering and got ready to start the war all over again. When the Persians came to attack them, they met them and fought a battle, and were beaten even worse than before. Many fell on every side, but the Milesians suffered most.
121. Later on, though, the Carians made up for this loss and recovered from their defeat. They learned that the Persians had set out to march against their cities, and they laid an ambush on the road near Pedasus. The Persians fell into it by night and were wiped out, they and their commanders, Daurises, Amorges and Sisimaces; and Myrsus son of Gyges died with them too. The leader of this ambush was Heraclides son of Ibanollis, a man from Mylasa.
122. That was how these Persians were destroyed. Meanwhile Hymaees, another of those who had pursued the Ionians who marched on Sardis, headed for the Propontis and took Cius in Mysia. After conquering this city, when he heard that Daurises had left the Hellespont and was marching toward Caria, he left the Propontis and led his army to the Hellespont. There he conquered all the Aeolians who live in the region of Troy, and also the Gergithes, who are what is left of the ancient Teucrians. While he was conquering these peoples, Hymaees himself died of an illness in the Troad.
123. So he came to his end. Then Artaphernes, the governor of the province of Sardis, was appointed, together with Otanes, the third of the commanders, to march against Ionia and the part of Aeolis next to it. In Ionia they took the city of Clazomenae, and in Aeolis, Cyme.
124. While the cities were being taken, Aristagoras of Miletus showed, in this case, that he was not a man of any great courage. He had stirred up Ionia and set great things going, and when he saw how matters stood, he thought of running away. Besides, it had become clear to him that there was no way to beat King Darius. With all this in mind, he called the men of his own party together and talked it over with them. He told them it would be better to have a refuge ready for themselves, in case they were driven out of Miletus after all. And he put the question to them whether he should lead them from there to Sardinia to found a colony, or to Myrcinus in the land of the Edonians, which Histiaeus had been fortifying after receiving it as a gift from Darius. That was the question Aristagoras put to them.
125. Now the advice of Hecataeus son of Hegesander, the historian, was that he should not lead a colony to either of these places. Instead, if he were forced out of Miletus, he should build himself a fortress on the island of Leros and lie low. Later, using this as his base, he would be able to return to Miletus.
126. That was Hecataeus' advice. But Aristagoras leaned most toward going to Myrcinus. So he handed the government of Miletus over to Pythagoras, a respected man among the citizens, and he himself sailed off to Thrace, taking with him everyone who wanted to go, and took possession of the region he had set out for. But setting out from there to make war, he was killed by the Thracians, both Aristagoras himself and his army, while he was camped around a certain city whose Thracian defenders wanted to leave it under a truce.
1. So Aristagoras, after causing Ionia to revolt, came to his end in this way. Meanwhile Histiaeus, the tyrant of Miletus, had been let go by Darius and had arrived at Sardis. When he came from Susa, Artaphernes, the governor of Sardis, asked him why he supposed the Ionians had revolted. Histiaeus said that he could not tell. What is more, he expressed surprise at what had happened, pretending that he knew nothing about the state of affairs. But Artaphernes saw that he was being dishonest, and since he knew the truth about the revolt, he said: "This is how it is with you and these matters, Histiaeus. You stitched this shoe, and Aristagoras put it on."
2. That is what Artaphernes said about the revolt. Histiaeus was afraid of Artaphernes, because Artaphernes understood the business, so as soon as night fell the next evening he ran away to the coast. He had deceived King Darius: he had promised to bring Sardinia, the largest of the islands, under the king's control, and instead he was trying to take over the leadership of the Ionians in their war against Darius. He crossed over to Chios, and there the Chians put him in chains, accusing him of working on Darius' orders to overthrow their government. But when the Chians learned the whole story and heard that he was an enemy of the king, they set him free.
3. Then the Ionians asked Histiaeus why he had pressed Aristagoras so urgently to revolt from the king and had brought so great a disaster on the Ionians. He did not by any means tell them the real reason. Instead he told them that King Darius had decided to move the Phoenicians out of their country and settle them in Ionia, and to settle the Ionians in Phoenicia; and that, he said, was why he had sent the message. In this way he tried to frighten the Ionians, though the king had never decided anything of the kind.
4. After this Histiaeus used a messenger, a man of Atarneus named Hermippus, to send letters to some Persians at Sardis, written as though he had already talked over a revolt with them. But Hermippus did not deliver the letters to the men he was sent to. He took them instead and handed them to Artaphernes. Artaphernes, seeing everything that was going on, told Hermippus to carry Histiaeus' letters on and deliver them to the men they were meant for, and then to hand over to him the replies the Persians sent back to Histiaeus. Once all this had been found out, Artaphernes put many of the Persians to death.
5. So the plan at Sardis came to nothing. When Histiaeus had been let down in this hope, the Chians tried to bring him back to Miletus, at his own request. But the Milesians had been glad before to be rid of Aristagoras, and they were by no means eager to take another tyrant into their country, now that they had had a taste of freedom. In fact, when Histiaeus tried to get back into Miletus by force, under cover of night, one of the Milesians wounded him in the thigh. Driven away from his own city, he went back to Chios. From there, since he could not persuade the Chians to give him ships, he crossed over to Mytilene and tried to persuade the people of Lesbos to give him some. They manned eight triremes and sailed with Histiaeus to Byzantium. They stationed themselves there and seized the ships sailing out of the Black Sea, except those whose crews said they were ready to do whatever Histiaeus told them.
6. While Histiaeus and the men of Mytilene were doing this, a great army, both a fleet and a land force, was getting ready to attack Miletus itself. The Persian commanders had joined their forces into one single army and were marching on Miletus, counting the other towns of less importance. Of the fleet, the most eager were the Phoenicians, and with them served the Cyprians, who had just been conquered, and the Cilicians and the Egyptians.
7. So these forces were advancing on Miletus and the rest of Ionia. Meanwhile the Ionians, when they heard of it, sent delegates chosen from among themselves to the Panionium. When the delegates arrived there and talked it over, they decided not to gather a land army to face the Persians. The Milesians would defend their walls by themselves, and the Ionians would man their fleet, leaving out not a single ship, and then gather as soon as possible at Lade to fight a sea battle in defense of Miletus. Lade is a small island lying opposite the city of Miletus.
8. Then the Ionians manned their ships and came to Lade, and with them came the Aeolians who live on Lesbos. They were drawn up in this order. The eastern end of the line was held by the Milesians themselves, who supplied eighty ships. Next to them were the men of Priene with twelve ships and the men of Myus with three. Next to the men of Myus were the men of Teos with seventeen ships, and after the men of Teos, the Chians with a hundred. After them were stationed the men of Erythrae and of Phocaea, the first with eight ships and the second with three. Next to the Phocaeans were the Lesbians with seventy ships. Last of all, holding the western end of the line, were the Samians with sixty ships. All together these came to 353 triremes.
9. Those were the Ionian ships, and the ships on the non-Greek side numbered six hundred. When these too had arrived off the coast of Miletus, and the whole land army was there as well, the Persian commanders learned how many ships the Ionians had. They were afraid that they might not be able to beat them. In that case they would not be able to take Miletus, since they would not control the sea, and at the same time they would be in danger of being punished by Darius. With this in mind they gathered the tyrants of the Ionians. These men had been driven out of their cities by Aristagoras of Miletus and had fled to the Persians, and they happened to be taking part in the expedition against Miletus. The commanders called together those of them who were there and spoke to them like this: "Men of Ionia, now let each of you show that he is a benefactor of the king's house. That is, let each of you try to separate his own people from the rest of the alliance. Make them an offer, and promise them at the same time that they will suffer nothing unpleasant because of the revolt: neither their temples nor their homes will be burned, and they will be treated no worse than they were before. But if they will not do this, and are determined to fight it out with us, then threaten them, and tell them what will truly happen to them. If they are beaten in the battle, they will be made slaves. We will make their sons eunuchs, we will carry their young girls off to Bactria, and we will hand their land over to others."
10. That is what they said, and the tyrants of Ionia each sent a message by night to his own people, telling them this. But the Ionians who received these messages stood firm and would not consider betraying their cause. Each people thought the Persians were sending this message to them alone.
11. This happened as soon as the Persians arrived at Miletus. After this the Ionians who had gathered at Lade held meetings. Others no doubt made speeches to them too, but above all the Phocaean commander Dionysius, who said this: "Men of Ionia, our fortunes stand on a razor's edge: whether we will be free or slaves, and slaves who are treated as runaways at that. So if you are willing to take on hardships now, you will have hard work for the time being, but you will be able to beat the enemy and be free. But if you go on being soft and undisciplined, I have no hope that you will escape paying the king the penalty for your revolt. So do as I say, and put yourselves in my hands. If the gods give us a fair fight, I promise you that either the enemy will not fight us at all, or, if he does, he will be badly beaten."
12. When they heard this, the Ionians put themselves in Dionysius' hands. Every day he would take the ships out in single file, so that he could train the rowers by having the ships break through each other's line, and so that the marines on board would be armed and ready. Then for the rest of the day he would keep the ships at anchor. So he kept the Ionians working the whole day long. For seven days they put up with it and did what he ordered. But on the day after that, the Ionians, who were not used to such hard work and were worn out by the labor and the hot sun, said to one another: "Which of the gods have we offended, to fill up our share of misery like this? We have surely handed ourselves over to a Phocaean, a fraud, who brings only three ships. He has got us in his hands and is treating us so badly that we will never recover. Many of us have already fallen sick, and many more are likely to suffer the same thing soon. It would be better for us to put up with anything else in the world than these miseries, and better to face the slavery that is coming, whatever it turns out to be, than to be crushed by the one we have now. Come on, let's not obey him any more." That is what they said, and at once every one of them refused to obey him. They pitched their tents on the island like an army camp and stayed in the shade, and they would not go on board their ships or do any training.
13. When the Samian commanders saw what the Ionians were doing, they at last accepted the offer that Aeaces son of Syloson had sent them earlier at the Persians' bidding, asking them to leave the Ionian alliance. The Samians accepted this offer because they saw how completely undisciplined the Ionians were. At the same time it was clear to them that it was impossible to beat the king's power, and they knew well that even if they beat the fleet Darius had there now, another five times as large would come against them. So they seized on this excuse, and as soon as they saw that the Ionians refused to do their duty, they thought it would be a gain for themselves to save their temples and their own property. This Aeaces, whose offer the Samians accepted, was the son of Syloson son of Aeaces. He had been tyrant of Samos, and like the other tyrants of Ionia he had been deprived of his power by Aristagoras of Miletus.
14. So when the Phoenicians sailed out to attack, the Ionians also put out their ships against them, sailing in single file. When they came close and the battle began, I cannot say for certain from that point on which of the Ionians proved themselves cowards and which proved themselves brave in this sea battle, because they all blame each other. But it is said that the Samians, as they had agreed with Aeaces, then raised their sails, left their place in the line, and sailed off home to Samos, all except eleven ships. The captains of these stayed in their places and fought in the battle, refusing to obey the commanders of their squadron. Because of this the Samian state granted them the honor of having their names, and their fathers' names too, inscribed on a pillar as men who had proved themselves brave, and this pillar still stands in their marketplace. Then the Lesbians, when they saw the ships next to them in the line running away, did the same as the Samians had done, and so did most of the Ionians.
15. Of those who stayed and fought, the Chians were hit hardest, because they did brilliant deeds and refused to play the coward. As I said before, they had supplied a hundred ships, and on each of them forty picked men from among their citizens served as marines. When they saw most of their allies deserting them, they did not think it right to behave like the cowards among them. Left with only a few of their allies, they kept on fighting and kept breaking through the enemy's line, until at last, after they had captured many enemy ships, they lost most of their own.
16. The Chians then fled home to their own island with the rest of their ships. But the Chians whose ships had been disabled by damage were chased, and they fled for refuge to Mycale. There they ran their ships aground and left them, and went on overland on foot. On the way the Chians entered the territory of Ephesus. They came into it at night, at a time when the women of the place were celebrating the Thesmophoria. The Ephesians had not heard beforehand what had happened to the Chians, and when they saw an armed band entering their land, they were quite sure these men were robbers who had come after the women. So they turned out in full force to the rescue and killed the Chians.
17. That was the fate of these men. But Dionysius the Phocaean, when he saw that the Ionian cause was lost, captured three enemy ships and sailed away. He did not go back to Phocaea, because he knew very well that it would be made slaves along with the rest of Ionia. Instead he sailed at once straight for Phoenicia. There he sank some merchant ships and took a great deal of plunder, and then he sailed on to Sicily. With Sicily as his base he became a pirate, though he never plundered any Greeks, only Carthaginians and Etruscans.
18. So the Persians, having beaten the Ionians in the sea battle, besieged Miletus by land and by sea. They dug mines under the walls and brought every kind of siege engine against it. In the sixth year after the revolt of Aristagoras they took the city completely and made the people slaves, so that the disaster agreed with the oracle that had been given about Miletus.
19. For when the Argives were consulting the oracle at Delphi about the safety of their city, they were given an oracle with two parts. One part was about the Argives themselves, while the part added on at the end was about the Milesians. The part about the Argives I will record when I reach that point in my history. But what the oracle said about the Milesians, who were not there, is this:
"And at that time, Miletus, you plotter of evil deeds, you will be made a feast and a glorious prize for many. Your wives will wash the feet of the long-haired men, and others will tend my temple at Didyma."
These things came upon the Milesians at the time I am speaking of. Most of their men were killed by the Persians, who wear their hair long, and their women and children were treated as slaves. The temple at Didyma, with its shrine and the seat of the oracle, was plundered and then burned. I have often mentioned the treasures in this temple in other parts of my history.
20. After this the Milesians who had been taken prisoner were brought to Susa. King Darius did them no further harm. He settled them on the sea called the Erythraean, the Persian Gulf, in the city of Ampe, where the river Tigris flows past on its way out to the sea. Of the land of Miletus, the Persians kept for themselves the country around the city and the plain, and they gave the hill country to the Carians of Pedasa to own.
21. When the Milesians suffered this at the hands of the Persians, the people of Sybaris, who had lost their own city and were living in Laus and Scidrus, did not repay them in kind. When Sybaris was taken by the men of Croton, all the Milesians, from the young men up, had shaved their heads and gone into deep mourning; for these two cities were bound by closer ties of friendship than any others we know of. The Athenians were not like the Sybarites. They made it plain that they were grieved at the capture of Miletus, in many other ways and especially in this one. When Phrynichus wrote a play called "The Capture of Miletus" and put it on the stage, the whole audience burst into tears. The Athenians fined the poet a thousand drachmas for reminding them of their own misfortunes, and they ordered that no one should ever put on that play again.
22. So Miletus was stripped of its old inhabitants. But among the Samians, the men of property were not at all happy with the deal their fleet's commanders had made with the Persians. They held a meeting right after the sea battle, and they decided to sail away and found a colony before their tyrant Aeaces arrived in the country, rather than stay behind and be slaves to the Persians and to Aeaces. For just at this time the people of Zancle in Sicily were sending messengers to Ionia, inviting the Ionians to come to the "Fair Shore," because they wanted to found a city of Ionians there. This place called the Fair Shore is in the land of the Sicels, the native people of Sicily, on the side of the island that faces Tyrrhenia. So when the Zanclaeans made this invitation, the Samians alone of all the Ionians set out, taking with them those Milesians who had escaped. And in the course of this business, here is what happened.
23. On their way to Sicily the Samians reached Locri Epizephyrii, the Locri of the West. At that same time the people of Zancle, along with their king, whose name was Scythes, were camped around a town of the Sicels, trying to capture it. When Anaxilaus, the tyrant of Rhegium, saw this, since he was on bad terms with the Zanclaeans, he got in touch with the Samians and persuaded them to leave the Fair Shore alone, where they were sailing, and seize Zancle instead, since it was now left without men to defend it. The Samians did as he said and took Zancle. When the Zanclaeans learned that their city was in enemy hands, they set out to rescue it, and they called in Hippocrates, the tyrant of Gela, who was their ally, to help them. But when Hippocrates had come up with his army to rescue them, first he put Scythes, the ruler of the Zanclaeans, in chains, on the grounds that he was to blame for the loss of the city, and with him his brother Pythogenes, and he sent them off to the town of Inycus. Then he betrayed the rest of the Zanclaeans by coming to terms with the Samians and exchanging oaths with them. In return for this the Samians had promised that Hippocrates would receive as his share half of all the movable goods and the slaves in the city, and everything out in the countryside. So he put most of the Zanclaeans in chains and kept them as his own slaves. But the leading men among them, three hundred in number, he handed over to the Samians to be put to death. The Samians, however, did not do it.
24. Scythes, the ruler of the Zanclaeans, escaped from Inycus to Himera, and from there he went to Asia and up to the court of Darius. Darius considered him the most honest of all the men who had come up to him from Greece. For he got the king's permission to go away to Sicily, and then came back again from Sicily to the king; and at last he died among the Persians, an old man and very rich. So the Samians, having escaped the rule of the Persians, had won themselves the fine city of Zancle without any effort.
25. After the sea battle that was fought for Miletus, the Phoenicians, on the Persians' orders, brought Aeaces son of Syloson back to Samos, because he had been of great service to them and had done great things for them. Of all who had revolted from Darius, the Samians alone did not have their city or their temples burned, because of the ships that deserted in the sea battle. Then, after the capture of Miletus, the Persians at once took possession of Caria. Some of the cities submitted to them of their own free will, and others they brought over by force.
26. That is how these things turned out. Meanwhile Histiaeus of Miletus was at Byzantium, seizing the Ionians' merchant ships as they sailed out of the Black Sea, when the news reached him of what had happened at Miletus. He handed over his business in the Hellespont to Bisaltes son of Apollophanes, a man of Abydos, while he himself sailed with the Lesbians to Chios. When a garrison of the Chians would not let him land, he fought them at the place in Chian territory called the "Hollows." Histiaeus killed many of them. Then, using Polichne in Chios as his base, he and the Lesbians conquered the rest of the Chians too, since they had suffered heavy losses in the sea battle.
27. Heaven usually, I suppose, gives some sign beforehand when great disasters are about to fall on a city or a people. And the Chians too had had remarkable signs before these events. First, when they had sent a chorus of a hundred young men to Delphi, only two came home again; the other ninety-eight were struck down by a plague and died. Second, in their city at about the same time, a little before the sea battle, the roof fell in on some children while they were being taught their letters in school, so that of 120 children only one escaped. These were the signs heaven showed them beforehand. After that the sea battle came upon them and brought their state to its knees, and since the Chians had suffered such heavy losses, Histiaeus conquered them without difficulty.
28. From there Histiaeus led an expedition against Thasos, with a large force of Ionians and Aeolians. While he was camped around the town of Thasos, news came to him that the Phoenicians were sailing up from Miletus to conquer the rest of Ionia. When he heard this, he left Thasos unconquered and hurried to Lesbos himself, taking his whole army with him. Then, since his army was short of food, he crossed over from Lesbos to harvest the grain in Atarneus, and also the grain in the plain of the Caicus, which belonged to the Mysians. In those parts there happened to be a Persian named Harpagus in command of a sizable army. He fought Histiaeus after he had landed, took Histiaeus himself prisoner, and destroyed most of his army.
29. This is how Histiaeus was taken prisoner. The Greeks were fighting the Persians at Malene in the district of Atarneus. When they had been fighting hand to hand for a long time, the cavalry at last charged and fell on the Greeks; in fact it was the cavalry that decided the battle. So when the Greeks had been put to flight, Histiaeus, trusting that the king would not put him to death for the wrong he had just done, was seized with a love of life. When he was being caught in his flight by a Persian, and was just about to be run through at the moment of his capture, he spoke in Persian and told the man who he was: Histiaeus of Miletus.
30. Now if he had been taken prisoner and brought to King Darius, he would not, I think, have suffered any harm; Darius would have forgiven him the crime he was charged with. But as it was, for this very reason, and so that he would not escape punishment and become powerful with the king again, Artaphernes, the governor of Sardis, and Harpagus, the man who had captured him, put him to death on the spot when he reached Sardis on his way to the king. They impaled his body, but they embalmed his head and sent it up to Darius at Susa. When Darius learned of this, he blamed the men who had done it, because they had not brought Histiaeus up to him alive. He ordered that Histiaeus' head be washed and properly cared for, and then buried as the head of a man who had been a great benefactor both of the king himself and of the Persians.
31. That is what happened to Histiaeus. Meanwhile the Persian fleet wintered near Miletus, and when it put to sea again the next year, it easily conquered the islands lying off the mainland, Chios, Lesbos and Tenedos. Whenever they took one of the islands, the Persians, as each was conquered, swept it clear of its people with a dragnet. This is how they do it. The men link hands, each holding the hand of the next, and stretch in a line from the sea on the north to the sea on the south, and then they march across the whole island, hunting the people out of it. They also took the Ionian cities on the mainland in the same way, except that they did not sweep off the inhabitants like this, because it was not possible.
32. Then the Persian commanders proved that their threats against the Ionians, made when the two sides were camped facing each other, had not been empty. When they conquered the cities, they picked out the best-looking boys and castrated them, making them eunuchs, and they carried off the most beautiful girls by force to the king. And not only this: they also burned the cities, temples and all. So the Ionians had been made slaves for the third time, first by the Lydians and then twice in a row by the Persians.
33. Leaving Ionia, the fleet went on to conquer all the places on the left-hand side of the Hellespont as you sail in; those on the right had already been conquered by the Persians themselves, coming at them by land. The cities on the European side of the Hellespont are these. First comes the Chersonese, which has many cities in it; then Perinthus, the forts along the Thracian border, Selymbria, and Byzantium. The people of Byzantium, and the people of Chalcedon across the strait from them, did not even wait for the Phoenician ships to come. They had left their own land first and gone away into the Black Sea, and there they settled in the city of Mesambria. So the Phoenicians burned the places I have named and then headed for Proconnesus and Artace. When they had set fire to these too, they sailed back to the Chersonese to destroy the remaining cities, the ones they had not sacked when they put in there before. But they did not sail against Cyzicus at all, because the people of Cyzicus had already submitted to the king of their own accord, even before the Phoenicians sailed in. They had made terms with Oebares son of Megabazus, the Persian governor at Dascylium.
34. In the Chersonese, then, the Phoenicians took all the cities except Cardia. Up to that time the tyrant of these cities had been Miltiades son of Cimon son of Stesagoras. An earlier Miltiades, the son of Cypselus, had won this rule in the way I will now describe. The people who lived in this Chersonese were Thracians called the Dolonci. These Dolonci were being hard pressed in a war with the Apsinthians, so they sent their kings to Delphi to consult the oracle about the war. The Pythia answered that they must bring into their country, as the founder of a settlement, the first man who offered them hospitality on their way back from the temple. So the Dolonci went along the Sacred Way through the lands of the Phocians and the Boeotians, and since no one invited them in, they turned aside and came to Athens.
35. At that time Pisistratus held power in Athens, but Miltiades son of Cypselus was also a man of some influence. He came from a family rich enough to keep four-horse chariot teams. The family was descended in the beginning from Aeacus and the nymph Aegina, though in more recent times it had been Athenian; the first of the house to become an Athenian was Philaeus son of Ajax. This Miltiades was sitting in the porch of his house when he saw the Dolonci going by, wearing clothes that were not Athenian in style and carrying spears. He called out to them, and when they came over, he offered them a place to stay and his hospitality. They accepted, and after he had entertained them they told him everything the oracle had said. When they had told it, they asked him to do as the god had said. As soon as Miltiades heard it, he was inclined to agree, because he was tired of Pisistratus' rule and wanted to be out of the way. So he set out at once for Delphi to ask the oracle whether he should do what the Dolonci were asking of him.
36. The Pythia told him to do it too. So Miltiades son of Cypselus, who had already won the four-horse chariot race at Olympia, took with him every Athenian who wanted to join the expedition, sailed with the Dolonci, and took possession of the land; and the people who had invited him made him their tyrant. The first thing he did was build a wall across the isthmus of the Chersonese, from the city of Cardia to Pactye, so that the Apsinthians could not invade the land and do them harm. At this point the isthmus is about four miles across, and from this isthmus the Chersonese inside it is about forty-seven miles long in all.
37. When Miltiades had walled off the neck of the Chersonese and had kept the Apsinthians out in this way, the first people he made war on were the people of Lampsacus. The Lampsacenes laid an ambush and took him prisoner. Now Miltiades had become a friend of Croesus the Lydian. So when Croesus heard what had happened, he sent word to the Lampsacenes, ordering them to let Miltiades go; if not, he threatened to wipe them out like a pine tree. The Lampsacenes went round in circles arguing over what Croesus could mean by this threat, that he would wipe them out like a pine tree. At last one of the older men worked out the truth, with difficulty. He said that the pine is the only tree that, once it has been cut down, never puts out any new shoots, but dies and is gone for good. So the Lampsacenes, out of fear of Croesus, set Miltiades free and let him go.
38. So Miltiades escaped, thanks to Croesus. But later he died without leaving a son, and he passed his power and his property to Stesagoras, the son of Cimon, his half-brother on his mother's side. The people of the Chersonese still offer sacrifices to Miltiades since his death, as the custom is for a city's founder, and they hold a contest of horse races and athletics in his honor, in which no one from Lampsacus is allowed to compete. After this there was war with the Lampsacenes, and Stesagoras too died without a son. He was struck on the head with an axe in the town hall by a man who pretended to be a deserter, but who turned out in fact to be an enemy, and a rather hot-tempered one at that.
39. After Stesagoras had died in this way, Miltiades son of Cimon, the brother of the dead Stesagoras, was sent out in a trireme to the Chersonese to take over the government. The sons of Pisistratus sent him. They had treated him well at Athens too, pretending that they had had no part in the death of his father Cimon; how that death came about I will explain in another part of my history. When Miltiades arrived in the Chersonese, he stayed shut up in his house, apparently paying honor to the memory of his brother Stesagoras. When the leading men of the Chersonese in every town heard of this, they gathered from all the cities and came in a body to offer their sympathy, and when they arrived he had them thrown in chains. So Miltiades held the Chersonese, keeping a force of five hundred mercenaries. He married Hegesipyle, the daughter of Olorus, king of the Thracians.
40. Now this Miltiades son of Cimon had only recently come back to the Chersonese at the time I am speaking of. After he came back, worse misfortunes fell on him than the ones that had already happened. Two years before this he had been driven out of the country by the Scythians. The nomad Scythians, provoked by King Darius, had joined forces in a body and marched as far as this Chersonese. Miltiades had not waited for them to attack, but had fled from the Chersonese, until at last the Scythians went away and the Dolonci brought him back again. All this happened two years before the troubles that now pressed on him.
41. But now, when he learned that the Phoenicians were at Tenedos, he loaded five triremes with the property he had at hand and sailed off for Athens. He set out from the city of Cardia and was sailing across the Gulf of Melas. As he was passing along the coast of the Chersonese, the Phoenicians came upon his ships. Miltiades himself escaped to Imbros with four of his ships, but the fifth was caught by the Phoenicians as they chased him. It happened that the captain of this ship was Metiochus, the eldest of Miltiades' sons, whose mother was not the daughter of Olorus the Thracian but another woman. The Phoenicians captured him along with his ship. When they found out that he was Miltiades' son, they took him up to the king, thinking that they would earn a great deal of gratitude for it. For it was Miltiades who had given his opinion to the Ionians that they should do as the Scythians said, back when the Scythians asked them to break up the bridge of boats and sail home. But when the Phoenicians brought Metiochus son of Miltiades up to Darius, Darius did him no harm at all. On the contrary, he did him a great deal of good. He gave him a house and property and a Persian wife, and the children she bore him have been counted as Persians. Meanwhile Miltiades made his way from Imbros to Athens.
42. During this year the Persians did nothing more against the Ionians that led to conflict, but in this same year they did the following things, which were very much to the Ionians' advantage. Artaphernes, the governor of Sardis, sent for envoys from all the cities and made the Ionians agree among themselves to settle their disputes by law and not to raid one another's land. He forced them to do this. He also measured their territories in parasangs, which is what the Persians call a distance of thirty stades, about three and a third miles. Using this measure, he fixed an amount of tribute for each people. That tribute has stayed unchanged from that time down to my own day, just as Artaphernes fixed it; and he fixed it at nearly the same amount for each people as it had been before.
43. These measures made for peace among the Ionians. But at the beginning of spring, after the king had removed all the other commanders, Mardonius son of Gobryas came down to the coast. He brought with him a very large army and a very large fleet. He was a young man, and he had recently married Artozostra, the daughter of King Darius. When Mardonius reached Cilicia at the head of this army, he went on board a ship himself and sailed on with the rest of the fleet, while other commanders led the land army to the Hellespont. Mardonius sailed along the coast of Asia and came to Ionia. And here I will report something that will amaze those Greeks who refuse to believe that Otanes, speaking to the seven Persians, gave it as his opinion that the Persians ought to be governed by the people. For Mardonius removed all the Ionian tyrants and set up democracies in the cities. After doing this he hurried on to the Hellespont. When a huge number of ships and a large land army had been gathered there, they crossed the Hellespont in the ships and began to march through Europe. Their goal was Eretria and Athens.
44. Those two cities, that is, were their excuse for the expedition. But what they had in mind was to conquer as many of the Greek cities as they could. First, with the fleet, they conquered the Thasians, who did not even lift a hand to defend themselves. Then with the land army they made the Macedonians their subjects, adding them to the peoples they already ruled; for all the nations east of the Macedonians had already come under their power before this. So they crossed from Thasos to the mainland opposite and went along close to the shore as far as Acanthus. Then, setting out from Acanthus, they tried to round Mount Athos. But as they were sailing around it, a violent north wind fell on them. They could do nothing against it, and it handled them very roughly, wrecking a great many of their ships on Athos. In fact, it is said that three hundred ships were destroyed and more than twenty thousand men. For the sea around Athos is full of sea monsters, and some of the men were seized by these and died that way; others were dashed against the rocks; some did not know how to swim and drowned for that reason; and others died of the cold.
45. That is what happened to the fleet. Meanwhile, while Mardonius and the land army were camped in Macedonia, the Brygian Thracians attacked them by night. The Brygians killed many of them and wounded Mardonius himself. Even so, not even the Brygians escaped being enslaved by the Persians, for Mardonius did not leave that region until he had made them his subjects. But once he had conquered them, he led his army back home, since he had suffered heavy losses, with his land army in the fighting against the Brygians and with his fleet in the voyage around Athos. So this expedition went back to Asia having won no glory in its struggles.
46. In the year after this, Darius first sent a messenger to the Thasians, whose neighbors had accused them of planning a revolt. He ordered them to pull down the wall around their town and bring their ships to Abdera. The fact was that the Thasians, having been besieged by Histiaeus of Miletus, and having large revenues coming in at the same time, were spending their money on building warships and on surrounding their city with a stronger wall. Their revenues came from the mainland and from the mines. From the gold mines at Scapte Hyle there generally came in eighty talents a year, and from the mines on Thasos itself somewhat less than that. Altogether the Thasians, who paid no taxes on what their land produced, generally had a revenue from the mainland and the mines of two hundred talents a year, and in the best years three hundred.
47. I saw these mines myself. By far the most remarkable of them were the ones discovered by the Phoenicians who first settled this island together with Thasos; the island got the name it has now from this Thasos, the Phoenician. These Phoenician mines are in the part of Thasos between the places called Aenyra and Coenyra, opposite Samothrace, where there is a great mountain that has been turned completely upside down in the search for metal. So much for that. At the king's command the Thasians tore down their walls and brought all their ships to Abdera.
48. After this Darius began to test the Greeks, to find out what they meant to do: whether they would make war on him or surrender themselves. So he sent heralds out, assigning them to different places all over Greece, and ordered them to demand earth and water for the king. He sent these to Greece. At the same time he was sending other heralds to the tribute-paying cities of his own along the coast, ordering them to build warships and also transport ships for horses.
49. So they were busy preparing these. Meanwhile, when the heralds arrived in Greece, many of the peoples on the mainland gave what the Persian demanded, and so did all the islanders the heralds came to with their demand. The islanders gave earth and water to Darius, and among them were the Aeginetans. As soon as they had done so, the Athenians went after them hard. They believed the Aeginetans had given it out of hostility to themselves, meaning to join the Persians in an attack on Athens; and they were also glad to get hold of an excuse against them. So they went back and forth to Sparta, accusing the Aeginetans of what they had done and charging them with having betrayed Greece.
50. Because of this accusation, Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides, king of the Spartans, crossed over to Aegina, meaning to arrest the Aeginetans who were most to blame. But when he tried to seize them, some of the Aeginetans resisted him, above all Crius son of Polycritus. Crius said that Cleomenes would not get away with carrying off a single Aeginetan. He was doing this, Crius said, without the authority of the Spartan state, because the Athenians had bribed him to do it; otherwise he would have come with the other king to arrest them. He said this because of a message he had received from Demaratus. As Cleomenes was leaving Aegina, he asked Crius what his name was, and Crius told him the truth. Cleomenes, playing on the name, which means "Ram" in Greek, said to him: "Well then, Ram, you had better plate your horns with bronze now, because you are about to run into big trouble."
51. Meanwhile Demaratus son of Ariston had stayed behind in Sparta and was making accusations against Cleomenes. Demaratus too was king of the Spartans, but of the junior house. This house is junior in no other way, since both houses descend from the same ancestor; but the house of Eurysthenes has always been honored more, apparently because he was the elder brother.
52. For the Spartans, who on this point disagree with all the poets, say that it was Aristodemus son of Aristomachus son of Cleodaeus son of Hyllus, while he was their king, who led them himself into the land they now hold, and not the sons of Aristodemus. Not long afterward, they say, Aristodemus' wife, whose name was Argeia, gave birth to twins. She was the daughter, they say, of Autesion son of Tisamenes son of Thersander son of Polynices. Aristodemus lived just long enough to see his children, and then he fell sick and died. The Spartans of that time decided, following their established custom, to make the elder of the children their king. But they did not know which one to choose, because the two were alike and the same size. When they could not tell them apart (or even before this), they asked the mother. She said that even she could not tell one from the other. She said this although in fact she knew perfectly well, because she wanted both of them to become kings somehow. So the Spartans were at a loss, and being at a loss, they sent to Delphi to ask what they should do. The Pythia told them to treat both children as their kings, but to give more honor to the elder. That, they say, was the answer the priestess gave them. But the Spartans were still at a loss how to find out which was the elder, until a Messenian named Panites gave them a suggestion. Panites suggested that the Spartans watch the mother and see which of the children she washed and fed first. If she was seen to do it always in the same order, then they would have everything they were looking for and wanted to find out. But if she too was uncertain and did it in a different order at different times, it would be clear to them that she knew no more than anyone else, and they would have to try some other way. So the Spartans, following the Messenian's advice, watched the mother of Aristodemus' sons, and they found that she always gave first place to the firstborn, both in feeding and in washing; for she did not know why she was being watched. So they took the child its mother favored and brought it up at public expense as the firstborn, and it was named Eurysthenes, while the other was called Procles. When the two grew up, they say, though they were brothers, they quarreled with each other their whole lives long, and their descendants have gone on the same way.
53. That is the account the Spartans give, and they alone of all the Greeks. But what follows I write according to what the Greeks in general say. I mean that these kings of the Dorians are correctly listed by the Greeks back as far as Perseus the son of Danae (leaving out the god, Zeus, who was Perseus' father), and are shown to be Greek by descent; for even at that time they were already counted as Greeks. I said "as far as Perseus" and did not take the line back any higher, because no mortal father is named for Perseus, the way Amphitryon is named as the mortal father of Heracles. So I had good reason, as you can see, to say "correctly as far as Perseus." But if you trace their ancestors back generation by generation from Danae the daughter of Acrisius, the leaders of the Dorians will turn out to be Egyptians by direct descent.
54. That is how I have traced the line according to the Greeks' account. But according to the story the Persians tell, Perseus himself was an Assyrian who became a Greek, and Perseus' ancestors were not Greeks. As for the ancestors of Acrisius, who according to this account were not related to Perseus at all, the Persians say that they were Egyptians, just as the Greeks say.
55. Let that be enough said about these matters. How and by what deeds these men, who were Egyptians, came to hold the royal scepter over the Dorians, I will leave out, since others have told it. But I will speak of the things other writers have not dealt with.
56. These are the royal privileges the Spartans have given their kings. First, two priesthoods: of Zeus Lacedaemon and of Zeus Uranius, "Zeus of the Sky." Next, the right to make war on any land they please; no Spartan may stand in the way of this right, and anyone who does falls under a curse. When they go out on campaign, the kings go out first and come back last. A hundred picked men guard them on campaign. On their expeditions they may use as many cattle for sacrifice as they wish, and they take the hides and the chines of all the animals that are sacrificed.
57. Those are their privileges in war. In peace, the following has been granted to them. Whenever a sacrifice is made at public expense, the kings have the right to sit down to the feast before everyone else. The servers begin with them, and serve each of them a double portion of everything the other guests get. They have the first pouring of the libations, and the hides of the animals sacrificed. On the first day of every month, and on the seventh, each of them is given at public expense a full-grown animal for sacrifice in the temple of Apollo, along with a bushel and a half of barley meal and a Laconian "quarter" of wine. At all the games they have seats of honor set apart for them. It is also their privilege to appoint whichever citizens they like as protectors of foreigners, the official hosts of visiting strangers, and each king chooses two "Pythians." The Pythians are men sent to consult the god at Delphi, and they eat with the kings at public expense. If the kings do not come to the public dinner, the rule is that two quarts of barley meal apiece and half a pint of wine are sent out to them at their houses. If they are present, they are given a double share of everything; and they are honored in this same way when private citizens invite them to dinner. The kings also have charge of the oracles that are given, though the Pythians know them as well. The rule is that the kings alone decide the following cases, and only these: who should marry a girl who has inherited her father's property, if her father has not engaged her to anyone; and cases about the public roads. And if a man wants to adopt a son, he must do it in the presence of the kings. They also sit in council with the Elders, who number twenty-eight. If the kings do not come, the Elders most closely related to them hold the kings' privileges and cast two votes for them besides their own, which makes three in all.
58. These are the rights the Spartan state has granted its kings while they are alive. After they die they receive the following. Horsemen ride all through Laconia announcing what has happened, and in the city women go around beating on bronze kettles. Whenever this happens, two free people from every household, a man and a woman, must go into mourning, and heavy penalties are laid down for those who fail to do it. Now the Spartans' custom at the deaths of their kings is the same as that of the non-Greek peoples of Asia; for most non-Greeks follow the same customs at the deaths of their kings. Whenever a king of the Spartans dies, a fixed number of the "dwellers around" (the free men of the Laconian towns, who are not Spartan citizens) must come from all over Lacedaemon, not counting the Spartans themselves, to the funeral.
59. When many thousands of these men, and of the helots (the serfs of the Spartans), and of the Spartans themselves, have gathered in one place, with their women mixed among them, they beat their foreheads with a will and wail without end, saying that this king, the one who has died most recently, was the best of them all. Whenever one of their kings is killed in war, they make an image of him and carry it out for burial on a couch spread with fine coverings. After they have buried him, no assembly meets for ten days and there is no meeting to elect officials; instead they mourn through those days. In another way, too, the Spartans are like the Persians. When a king dies and another takes the throne, the new king, on coming to power, frees any Spartan who owed a debt to the king or to the state. Among the Persians, likewise, the king who comes to the throne cancels the tribute that all the cities owe him in arrears.
60. In this point the Spartans are also like the Egyptians: their heralds, flute-players and cooks inherit their fathers' trades. A flute-player is the son of a flute-player, a cook of a cook, and a herald of a herald. Other men do not push into the job because they have loud, clear voices and so shut these out of it; they carry on the trade they inherited from their fathers.
61. That is how these things are done. At the time I am speaking of, while Cleomenes was on Aegina working for the common good of Greece, Demaratus was bringing charges against him, not so much because he cared about the Aeginetans as because he was envious and jealous of him. So Cleomenes, after he came back from Aegina, made plans to remove Demaratus from the kingship, and he attacked him through the following matter. When Ariston was king in Sparta, he had married two wives, but no children were born to him. Since he would not admit that he himself was the cause of this, he married a third wife. This is how he married her. He had a friend, a Spartan, to whom he was closer than to any other citizen. It happened that this man's wife was by far the most beautiful woman in Sparta, and what is more, she had become the most beautiful after being the ugliest. As a baby she had been plain to look at. Her nurse saw that she was the daughter of rich people and yet was ugly, and she saw too that the parents were unhappy about it. Taking all this in, the nurse came up with a plan. Every day she carried the child to the temple of Helen, which is in the place called Therapne, above the temple of Phoebus Apollo. Each time she carried her there, she stood her in front of the statue and prayed the goddess to free the child from her ugliness. Once, the story goes, as the nurse was leaving the temple, a woman appeared to her and asked what she was carrying in her arms. The nurse told her she was carrying a child. The woman asked her to show it to her, but the nurse refused, because the parents had forbidden her to show the child to anyone. But the woman kept urging her in every way to show it. So the nurse, seeing how badly the woman wanted to see the child, showed it to her. Then the woman stroked the child's head and said that she would be the most beautiful of all the women in Sparta. And from that day on her looks changed. Later, when she was old enough to marry, she married Agetus son of Alcides, the friend of Ariston I spoke of.
62. Now Ariston, it seems, was always burning with desire for this woman, so he came up with a plan. He made an agreement with his friend, whose wife she was: he would give his friend any one thing from his own possessions that the friend chose, and he asked his friend to make him the same offer in return. The friend had no fears for his wife, since he saw that Ariston had a wife too, so he agreed; and on these terms they swore oaths to each other. Then Ariston, for his part, gave Agetus whatever it was that Agetus had chosen from his treasures. And when he came to claim the same from him in return, he tried to take his friend's wife away from him. Agetus said that he agreed to give anything but this one thing. But at last, forced by his oath and by the trick that had been played on him, he let her be taken from him.
63. So Ariston sent away his second wife and brought the third into his house. And this wife, in less than the full ten months, gave birth to the Demaratus we have been speaking of. One of his servants brought him the news that a son had been born to him while he was sitting in council with the ephors. Ariston knew when he had taken the woman as his wife, and he counted up the months on his fingers and swore an oath, saying, "He can't be mine." The ephors heard this, but at the time they thought nothing of it. The child grew up, and Ariston was sorry for what he had said, since he believed that Demaratus was certainly his own son. He named him Demaratus, which means "Prayed for by the People," for this reason: before all this happened, the Spartan people had all prayed together that a son might be born to Ariston, who was the most famous of all the kings Sparta had ever had.
64. That is why he was named Demaratus. As time went on Ariston died, and Demaratus became king. But it was fated, it seems, that these things should come out and cost Demaratus his throne. And so Demaratus had fallen out badly with Cleomenes, once before, when he led his army away from Eleusis, and now above all, when Cleomenes had crossed over to arrest the Aeginetans who had gone over to the Persians.
65. So Cleomenes, eager for revenge, made an arrangement with Leotychides son of Menares son of Agis, who was of the same royal house as Demaratus. The deal was that if Cleomenes made him king in place of Demaratus, Leotychides would go with him against the Aeginetans. Now Leotychides had become a bitter enemy of Demaratus for the following reason. Leotychides had been engaged to Percalus, the daughter of Chilon son of Demarmenus, but Demaratus plotted against him and robbed him of his marriage, carrying Percalus off first and making her his own wife. That was how Leotychides' hatred of Demaratus began. And now, urged on by Cleomenes, Leotychides swore a formal charge against Demaratus, saying that he was not the lawful king of the Spartans because he was not Ariston's son. After making this charge he brought a lawsuit against him. He dragged up the old words Ariston had spoken when his servant brought him the news that a son was born to him, when Ariston counted up the months and swore that the child was not his. Basing his case on these words, Leotychides set out to prove that Demaratus was not Ariston's son and was not the lawful king of Sparta. As witnesses he brought forward the ephors who happened to have been sitting in council with Ariston at the time and had heard him say it.
66. In the end, since there was a dispute about these matters, the Spartans decided to ask the oracle at Delphi whether Demaratus was Ariston's son. Cleomenes arranged for the question to be put to the Pythia, and then he won over Cobon son of Aristophantus, the most powerful man in Delphi. Cobon persuaded Perialla, the prophetess of the oracle, to say what Cleomenes wanted said. So when the envoys sent to consult the god asked their question, the Pythia ruled that Demaratus was not Ariston's son. Later, however, all this came out. Cobon was banished from Delphi, and Perialla the prophetess was removed from her office.
67. That is how Demaratus came to be deposed. But he became an exile and went to the Persians because of an insult, which I will now tell. After he was deposed, Demaratus held a public office he had been elected to. It was the time of the Gymnopaedia, the festival of the Naked Youths, and Demaratus was there watching. Leotychides, who was now king himself in place of Demaratus, sent his servant to ask Demaratus, to mock and insult him, what it was like to be an official after having been king. Demaratus, stung by the question, answered that he himself had now tried both, but Leotychides had not; this question, though, he said, would be the beginning for the Spartans either of countless troubles or of countless blessings. After saying this he covered his head and left the theater for his own house. He made preparations at once and sacrificed an ox to Zeus, and after the sacrifice he called for his mother.
68. When his mother came, he put some of the animal's innards into her hands and pleaded with her, saying: "Mother, I beg you, in the name of all the other gods and above all of Zeus here, the guardian of our house, tell me the truth: who is really my father? Leotychides said in our quarrel that you were already pregnant by your former husband when you came to Ariston. And others tell an even sillier story: that you slept with one of the servants, the man who looked after the donkeys, and that I am his son. So I beg you by the gods to tell me the truth. If you have done any of the things people say, you're not the only one; many other women have done the same. And there's a common rumor in Sparta that Ariston was not able to father children, since otherwise his earlier wives would have had children too."
69. That is what he said, and she answered him: "My son, since you plead with me so earnestly to tell you the truth, I will tell you the whole truth. When Ariston had brought me into his house, on the third night a phantom came to me that looked like Ariston. It slept with me, and then it put on me the garlands it was wearing. The phantom left at once, and after that Ariston came. When he saw me wearing garlands, he asked who had given them to me. I said that he had, but he would not admit it. So I began to swear to it, and I said he was wrong to deny it, since he had come in, I said, only a little while before, slept with me, and given me the garlands. When Ariston saw that I was swearing to it, he realized that this was the work of the gods. For one thing, the garlands turned out to come from the hero's shrine that stands by the courtyard gate of the house, the one they call the shrine of Astrabacus. For another, the seers answered that it was this same hero who had come to me. So there you have it, my son, everything you want to know. Either you were fathered by this hero, and the hero Astrabacus is your father, or Ariston is your father; for I conceived you that night. As for the point your enemies hold on to hardest, saying that Ariston himself, when your birth was announced, declared in front of many people that you were not his son because the full time, the ten months, had not yet passed: he blurted that out because he did not know about such things. For women give birth at nine months and even at seven, and not all of them after a full ten months. And I gave birth to you, my son, at seven months. Not long afterward Ariston himself realized that he had spoken foolishly. So do not believe any other stories about your birth, for you have heard the whole truth. And as for Leotychides and the people who tell these stories, may their own wives bear them children by donkey-keepers!"
70. That is what she said. Demaratus, having learned what he wanted to know, packed supplies for a journey and set out for Elis, pretending that he was going to Delphi to consult the oracle. But the Spartans suspected that he was trying to escape, and they went after him. As it happened, Demaratus had already crossed over from Elis to Zacynthus before they got there. The Spartans crossed after him, laid hands on him, and took his servants away from him. But since the people of Zacynthus refused to hand him over, he crossed from there to Asia, to King Darius. Darius received him as a guest with great honor and also gave him land and cities. That is how Demaratus came to Asia, and such was the fortune he had met with. He had won distinction among the Spartans in many ways, both by his deeds and by his advice, and above all he had won them a victory at Olympia in the four-horse chariot race. He was the only one of all the kings Sparta ever had who did this.
71. After Demaratus was deposed, Leotychides son of Menares succeeded to the kingship. He had a son, Zeuxidemus, whom some of the Spartans called Cyniscus. This Zeuxidemus never became king of Sparta, because he died before Leotychides, leaving a son, Archidemus. After losing Zeuxidemus, Leotychides married a second wife, Eurydame, the sister of Menius and daughter of Diactorides. By her he had no son, only a daughter, Lampito, whom Leotychides gave in marriage to Archidemus son of Zeuxidemus.
72. But Leotychides himself did not grow old in Sparta. He paid for what he had done to Demaratus, in this way. He led a Spartan army in an invasion of Thessaly, and when he could have brought the whole country under control, he took bribes amounting to a large sum. He was caught in the act, there in the camp, sitting on a glove full of money. So he was put on trial and banished from Sparta, and his house was torn down. He went into exile at Tegea and died there.
73. Those things happened later. But at this time, as soon as Cleomenes had carried his business with Demaratus through to success, he took Leotychides with him and went straight against the Aeginetans, because he was furious with them for the insults they had given him. Now that both kings had come against them, the Aeginetans for their part decided to resist no longer. The Spartans picked out the ten Aeginetans who stood highest in wealth and birth and took them away as prisoners. Among them were Crius son of Polycritus and Casambus son of Aristocrates, who had the most power in Aegina. They carried these men off to Attica and left them in the keeping of the Athenians, who were the Aeginetans' bitterest enemies.
74. After this it became known that Cleomenes had plotted against Demaratus, and he grew afraid of the Spartans and slipped away to Thessaly. From there he went to Arcadia and began to stir up trouble, trying to unite the Arcadians against Sparta. He made them swear various oaths that they would certainly follow him wherever he led them, and besides these he was very eager to bring the chief men of Arcadia to the city of Nonacris and make them swear by the water of the Styx, the river of the underworld by which even the gods swear. For the Arcadians say that the water of the Styx is near this city, and there is in fact something of the kind there: a little stream of water can be seen trickling down from a rock into a hollow ravine, and a wall of rough stones runs around the ravine. Nonacris, where this spring happens to be, is a city of Arcadia near Pheneus.
75. When the Spartans heard what Cleomenes was doing, they were afraid, and they brought him back to Sparta to rule on the same terms as before. But as soon as he came back he was struck by madness (he had been a little out of his mind even before this). Whenever he met any Spartan, he would jab his staff into the man's face. Since he kept doing this and had gone completely out of his senses, his relatives bound him in the stocks. While he was bound like this, he saw that his guard had been left alone by the others, and he asked him for a knife. At first the guard refused, but Cleomenes threatened him with what he would do to him later if he did not, until at last the guard, who was one of the helots, was frightened by the threats and gave him a knife. Once Cleomenes had the blade, he began to mutilate himself, starting from his legs. He went on slicing his flesh lengthwise from his shins to his thighs, and from his thighs to his hips and sides, until he came at last to his belly. He cut this into strips, and that is how he died. Most of the Greeks say this happened to him because he persuaded the Pythia to say what she said about Demaratus. The Athenians alone say it was because when he invaded Eleusis he ravaged the sacred precinct of the goddesses, Demeter and her daughter. And the Argives say it was because he called out of their sanctuary of Argos the Argives who had taken refuge there after the battle and cut them down, and then set fire to the sacred grove itself, with no respect for it at all.
76. This is what happened. When Cleomenes consulted the oracle at Delphi, he was told that he would conquer Argos. So he led out the Spartans and came to the river Erasinus, which is said to flow out of the Stymphalian lake. This lake, they say, drains away into a hidden chasm and comes up again above ground in the land of Argos, and from that point on the Argives call its water the Erasinus. When he reached this river, Cleomenes made sacrifices to it. The omens were not at all favorable for crossing, so he said he admired the Erasinus for not betraying its own countrymen, but that even so the Argives would not get away. After this he drew back from there and led his army down to Thyrea. There he sacrificed a bull to the Sea, and then he carried his men in ships to the land of Tiryns and Nauplia.
77. When the Argives learned of this, they marched down to the sea to defend their country. When they had come near Tiryns, to the place called Hesipeia, they camped facing the Spartans, leaving no very wide space between the two armies. There the Argives were not afraid of fighting in the open. What they feared was being beaten by a trick, because they thought this was what the oracle meant that the Pythia had given to them and to the Milesians together. It went like this:
But when the female at last conquers the male in battle, drives him out, and wins glory among the Argives, then many Argive wives will tear both their cheeks in mourning, so that someday a man of a later age will say, "The terrible three-coiled serpent perished, beaten down by the spear."
All these things coming together made the Argives afraid, and to deal with it they decided to make use of the enemy's herald. Having decided this, here is what they did: whenever the Spartan herald gave an order to the Spartans, the Argives did the same thing too.
78. Cleomenes noticed that the Argives were doing whatever the Spartan herald announced. So he passed the word to the Spartans that when the herald announced that they were to get their breakfast, they should instead pick up their arms and go and attack the Argives. The Spartans did exactly that. While the Argives were getting their breakfast as the herald had ordered, the Spartans attacked them. They killed many of them, but many more fled for safety into the sacred grove of Argos, and the Spartans sat down around the place and kept watch on them. Then Cleomenes did the following.
79. He had deserters with him, and by questioning them he found out the names of the Argives who were shut up in the sanctuary. Then he sent a herald to call them out one by one by name, saying that he had received their ransom. Among the Peloponnesians the ransom is fixed at two minas of silver for each prisoner. So Cleomenes called out about fifty of the Argives one at a time and killed them. As it happened, the rest of the men inside the grove did not notice this was going on. The grove was thick, and those inside could not see what was happening to those outside, at least until one of them climbed a tree and saw from above what was being done. After that they no longer came out when they were called.
80. So then Cleomenes ordered all the helots to pile brushwood around the sacred grove, and when they had done it he set the grove on fire. When it was already burning, he asked one of the deserters which god the grove belonged to. The man answered that it belonged to Argos, the hero the city was named after. When Cleomenes heard that, he groaned aloud and said, "Apollo, god of oracles, you have badly deceived me when you said that I would conquer Argos. I take it the oracle has already been fulfilled for me."
81. After this Cleomenes sent most of his army back to Sparta, but he himself took a thousand of his best men and went to the temple of Hera to sacrifice. When he wanted to sacrifice at the altar, the priest forbade him, saying that religious law did not allow a foreigner to sacrifice there. But Cleomenes told the helots to take the priest away from the altar and whip him, and he made the sacrifice himself. When he had done this, he went back to Sparta.
82. After his return his enemies brought him before the ephors. They accused him of taking bribes, and said that was why he had not conquered Argos when he could easily have taken it. He gave them an answer. Whether he was lying or telling the truth, I can't say for certain; at any rate, this is what he said. When he had captured the sanctuary of Argos, he thought the god's oracle had been fulfilled for him. So he did not think it right to make an attempt on the city, at least not before he had sacrificed and learned whether the goddess would allow it or was standing against him. And while he was sacrificing for omens in the temple of Hera, a flame blazed out from the breasts of the statue. From this he knew the truth of the matter: he would not conquer Argos. If the fire had blazed out from the statue's head, he would have conquered the city from top to bottom. But since it blazed from the breasts, everything the god meant to happen had already been done for him. When he said this, the Spartans thought his account was believable and reasonable, and he got away from his accusers easily.
83. Argos, however, was so emptied of men that the slaves took over the whole state, ruling it and running its affairs until the sons of the men who had been killed grew up. Then these young men, trying to win Argos back for themselves, drove the slaves out, and the slaves, once driven out, took Tiryns by force. For a time the two sides were on friendly terms. But later a prophet named Cleander came to the slaves, a Phigalian from Arcadia by birth. This man persuaded the slaves to attack their masters, and as a result there was war between them for a long time, until at last, with difficulty, the Argives got the better of them.
84. The Argives say, then, that this is why Cleomenes went mad and came to a bad end. But the Spartans themselves say that Cleomenes was not driven mad by any divine power. They say he had picked up the habit of drinking his wine unmixed from spending time with Scythians, and that this was what made him go mad. The nomad Scythians, they say, after Darius had invaded their land, were eager to pay him back. So they sent to Sparta and tried to make an alliance. Their plan was that the Scythians themselves would try to invade Media by way of the river Phasis, while the Spartans would set out from Ephesus and march inland, and then the two armies would meet in one place. And they say that when the Scythians came to Sparta for this purpose, Cleomenes spent a great deal of time with them, and from spending more time with them than was good for him, he learned to drink his wine unmixed with water. That, the Spartans think, is why he went mad. And from that time on, as they say themselves, whenever they want a stronger drink they say, "Pour it Scythian-style." That is what the Spartans say about Cleomenes. But to me it seems that this was the price Cleomenes paid for what he did to Demaratus.
85. When the Aeginetans heard that Cleomenes was dead, they sent messengers to Sparta to accuse Leotychides over the hostages who were being held at Athens. The Spartans convened a court and ruled that Leotychides had treated the Aeginetans outrageously. They sentenced him to be taken to Aegina and handed over in exchange for the men who were being held at Athens. Then, as the Aeginetans were about to take Leotychides away, Theasides son of Leoprepes, a man of high standing in Sparta, said to them: "What are you planning to do, men of Aegina? Do you mean to carry off the king of the Spartans, now that his own fellow citizens have handed him over to you? The Spartans have decided this now because they are angry. But be careful: if you do this, they may someday bring ruin on your land that will destroy it." When they heard this, the Aeginetans held back from taking him. Instead they agreed that Leotychides should go with them to Athens and get the men back for the Aeginetans.
86. But when Leotychides came to Athens and asked for the hostages he had left there, the Athenians did not want to give them up, and they made excuses for refusing. They claimed that two kings had left the men with them, and they did not think it right to give them back to one without the other. So when the Athenians said they would not give them back, Leotychides spoke to them like this:
"Athenians, do whichever you want. You know that if you give them up, you are doing what religion requires, and if you refuse, you are doing the opposite. But I want to tell you what happened once in Sparta over something left in someone's keeping. We Spartans tell how, about two generations before my time, there lived in Sparta a man named Glaucus son of Epicydes. We say this man was first-rate in every way, and above all everyone living in Sparta at that time spoke well of him for his honesty. And we tell how in due course this happened to him. A man from Miletus came to Sparta and asked to speak with him, and he gave these reasons: 'I am a Milesian,' he said, 'and I have come here because I want to profit from your honesty, Glaucus. All over the rest of Greece, and in Ionia too, there is a great deal of talk about your honesty. So I thought it over. Ionia is always in danger, while the Peloponnese is safe and settled, and we never see wealth stay with the same people for long. Thinking about all this and talking it over with myself, I decided to turn half of everything I own into money and leave it with you, since I am sure that if it is with you, it will be safe. So please take the money, and take and keep these tallies too. Whoever comes and asks for the money back with the tokens that match these, give it back to him.'
"That was what the stranger from Miletus said, and Glaucus accepted the money on the terms offered. Then, after a long time had passed, the sons of the man who had left the money with Glaucus came to Sparta. They went to talk with Glaucus, showed him the tokens, and asked for the money back. But he turned them away with this answer: 'I don't remember the matter, and nothing you say brings it back to my mind. But I do want to remember and to do everything that is right. If I took the money, I want to return it honestly. And if I never took it at all, I will deal with you according to the customs of the Greeks. So I am putting off settling the matter with you for three months from today.'
"So the Milesians went away unhappy, because they thought they had been robbed of their money. But Glaucus set off for Delphi to consult the oracle. When he asked the oracle whether he should rob them of the money by swearing an oath, the Pythia rebuked him with these lines:
Glaucus, son of Epicydes, for the moment it pays you better to win the case by an oath and rob them of the money. Swear, then: death waits for the man who keeps his oath as well. But know that Oath has a son, who has no name, no hands, no feet; yet without feet he pursues, without hands he seizes, until he has destroyed the whole race and house of the man who breaks his oath. But the race of the man who keeps his oath fares better in time to come.
"When Glaucus heard this, he begged the god to forgive him for what he had said. But the priestess told him that to put the god to the test and to do the deed came to the same thing.
"So Glaucus sent for the Milesians and gave them back their money. But now, Athenians, I will tell you why I set out to tell you this story. Today there is no descendant of Glaucus left, and no household that is counted as Glaucus' own. He has been wiped out root and branch from Sparta. So it is a good thing, when people have left something in your keeping, not even to think about it except to give it back when they ask for it."
87. That is what Leotychides said, but even so the Athenians would not listen to him, and he went home. Now the Aeginetans had not yet paid the penalty for the wrongs they had done the Athenians earlier, when they attacked them to please the Thebans. But before they paid it, they did this. They complained about the way the Athenians had treated them and thought they had been wronged, so they got ready to take revenge on the Athenians. The Athenians were holding their festival at Sunium, which comes every four years, so the Aeginetans lay in wait for the sacred ship that was sent to it and captured it. The ship was full of leading Athenians, and once they had taken it, they put the men in chains.
88. After the Aeginetans had done them this wrong, the Athenians no longer held back from plotting every possible harm against them. Now there was a man of some standing in Aegina, Nicodromus son of Cnithus. He had a grievance against the Aeginetans because they had earlier driven him out of the island. When he heard that the Athenians had made up their minds to do the Aeginetans harm, he made an agreement with the Athenians to betray Aegina to them. He told them on what day he would make his attempt, and by what day they would need to come and help him.
89. After this Nicodromus seized what is called the Old City, as he had agreed with the Athenians. But the Athenians did not arrive in time to support him. As it happened, they did not have enough ships to fight the Aeginetans. So while they were asking the Corinthians to lend them ships, their cause fell apart. The Corinthians, who were very friendly with them at this time, gave the Athenians twenty ships when they asked. They handed them over by selling them at five drachmas each, since their law did not allow them to give ships away as a free gift. The Athenians took these ships and their own, manned seventy ships in all, and sailed to Aegina. They arrived one day later than the day agreed.
90. Meanwhile, since the Athenians had not come to support him in time, Nicodromus boarded a ship and escaped from Aegina, and some other Aeginetans went with him. The Athenians gave them Sunium to live in, and from there these men kept raiding the Aeginetans on the island.
91. That happened later. But at the time I am talking about, the wealthy Aeginetans got the upper hand over the common people, who had risen up against them together with Nicodromus. Once they had them in their power, they began leading their prisoners out to be executed. Because of this a curse fell on them, and they could not wash it away with sacrifices, though they tried every means they could think of. They were driven out of the island before the goddess was appeased. Here is what happened. They had taken seven hundred of the common people prisoner and were leading them out to execution, when one of them broke free of his chains and fled for sanctuary to the doorway of the temple of Demeter the Lawgiver. He took hold of the door handle and clung to it. When they found they could not drag him away from it by pulling, they cut off his hands and carried him off that way, and his hands were left clinging to the door handle.
92. That is what the Aeginetans did to one another. When the Athenians arrived, the Aeginetans fought them with seventy ships. They were beaten in the sea battle, and so they called for help from the same people they had called on before, the Argives. But this time the Argives would not come to help them. They held a grudge because Aeginetan ships, pressed into service by Cleomenes, had put in on the coast of Argos, and their crews had gone ashore with the Spartans. Men from ships of Sicyon had also landed with them in that same invasion. As a penalty for this the Argives had laid a fine of a thousand talents on them, five hundred for each state. The Sicyonians admitted they had done wrong and made an agreement to pay a hundred talents and be let off the rest. But the Aeginetans would not admit their wrong and were more stubborn. For this reason, when they asked for help this time, no Argives came at the state's expense. But volunteers came, about a thousand of them, and their leader was a commander named Eurybates, a man who had trained in the pentathlon, the five-event contest. Most of these men never came home but were killed by the Athenians on Aegina. Their commander Eurybates himself fought in single combat, killed three men that way, and was killed by the fourth, Sophanes of Decelea.
93. The Aeginetans, however, attacked the Athenian fleet while it was in disorder and beat it, and they captured four of their ships along with the crews.
94. So the Athenians were at war with the Aeginetans. Meanwhile the Persian king was pushing ahead with his plan. His servant kept reminding him, as he had ordered, to remember the Athenians; the sons of Pisistratus were close at hand and kept bringing charges against the Athenians; and at the same time Darius himself wanted to seize on this pretext to conquer those peoples of Greece that had not given him earth and water. Since Mardonius had fared so badly on his expedition, Darius removed him from his command. He appointed other generals and sent them out against Eretria and Athens. They were Datis, a Mede by birth, and Artaphernes son of Artaphernes, the king's own nephew. Darius sent them off with orders to enslave Athens and Eretria and to bring the slaves back into his presence.
95. These newly appointed commanders marched from the king's court to the Aleian plain in Cilicia, bringing with them a large and well-equipped land army. While they were camped there, the whole fleet came up to join them, the ships that the various subject peoples had been ordered to supply. With it came the horse transports, which Darius had ordered his tributaries to get ready the year before. They put their horses on board these, embarked the land army on the ships, and sailed for Ionia with six hundred triremes. From there they did not keep their ships along the mainland coast toward the Hellespont and Thrace. Instead they set out from Samos and made their way across the Icarian Sea and through the islands. The reason, I think, is that they feared the voyage around Athos more than anything else, since the year before they had met with a great disaster when they went that way. Naxos also drew them this way, since it had not been conquered the time before.
96. They came at Naxos from the Icarian Sea, for Naxos was the first place the Persians meant to attack, because they remembered what had happened there before. But the Naxians did not wait for them. They fled at once to the mountains. The Persians enslaved all of them they could catch and set fire to both the temples and the town. After this they put out to sea to attack the other islands.
97. While they were doing this, the Delians too had left Delos and fled to Tenos. As the fleet sailed toward Delos, Datis went ahead and would not let the ships anchor at the island of Delos. He had them anchor instead at Rhenaea, across the channel. He found out by asking where the Delians had gone, and he sent a herald to them with this message: "Holy men, why have you run away, thinking so badly of me? I have sense enough of my own, and besides, the king has ordered me not to do any harm to the land where the two gods were born, neither to the land itself nor to the people who live there. So now go back to your homes and live on your island." That was the message he sent the Delians by his herald. After this he heaped up three hundred talents' weight of frankincense on the altar, about 17,000 pounds, and burned it.
98. When he had done this, Datis sailed away with his army to attack Eretria first, taking Ionians and Aeolians along with him. After he had put out to sea from there, Delos was shaken by an earthquake. The Delians told me that the island had never been shaken before that time, or since, down to my own day. And surely this was a sign from heaven, showing men the troubles that were coming. For in the time of Darius son of Hystaspes, of Xerxes son of Darius, and of Artaxerxes son of Xerxes, three generations one after another, more troubles came upon Greece than in all the twenty generations before Darius. Some of these troubles came from the Persians, and others from the leading Greek states themselves, fighting one another for supremacy. So it was not unreasonable that Delos should be shaken, though it had never been shaken before. And there was an oracle written about it, which said:
"I will shake even Delos, though it has never been shaken."
In Greek, these names mean the following: Darius means "Doer," Xerxes "Warrior," and Artaxerxes "Great Warrior." That is what the Greeks would rightly call these kings in their own language.
99. After they left Delos, the Persians put in at the islands as they went. From each they picked up more troops and took the sons of the islanders as hostages. Sailing around among the islands, they put in at Carystus too. But the Carystians would neither give them hostages nor agree to join an expedition against their neighbors, by which they meant Eretria and Athens. So the Persians laid siege to them and ravaged their land, until in the end the Carystians also came around to doing what the Persians wanted.
100. Meanwhile the Eretrians learned that the Persian fleet was sailing to attack them, and they asked the Athenians for help. The Athenians did not refuse. As helpers they gave them the four thousand settlers who had been given the land of the wealthy Chalcidians. But it turned out that the Eretrians had no sound plan. They had sent for the Athenians, but they were of two minds. Some of them proposed to leave the city and take to the heights of Euboea, while others, expecting to profit personally from the Persians, were getting ready to betray the place. Aeschines son of Nothon, one of the leading men of Eretria, found out about both these plans. He told the Athenians who had come the whole state of affairs and begged them to leave and go home, so that they would not be destroyed along with everyone else. The Athenians took Aeschines' advice.
101. So they crossed over to Oropus and saved themselves. The Persians, meanwhile, sailed on and brought their ships to land at Temenus, Choereae and Aegilea, in the territory of Eretria. When they had taken these places, they began at once to unload their horses and to prepare to advance against the enemy. The Eretrians did not mean to come out and fight. Their aim was to hold out behind their walls if they could, since the proposal to abandon the city had been voted down. Then the Persians made a violent assault on the wall, and for six days many men fell on both sides. But on the seventh day two respected citizens, Euphorbus son of Alcimachus and Philagrus son of Cyneus, betrayed the city to the Persians. The Persians entered the city, plundered the temples and set them on fire, in revenge for the temples that had been burned at Sardis. They also enslaved the people, as Darius had commanded.
102. Once they had Eretria in their power, they stayed a few days and then sailed for Attica. They pressed on hard, expecting that the Athenians would do just what the Eretrians had done. Marathon was the best place in Attica for cavalry to operate, and it was also very close to Eretria, so it was to Marathon that Hippias son of Pisistratus guided them.
103. When the Athenians learned of this, they too marched out to Marathon to defend their land. They were led by ten generals. The tenth was Miltiades, whose father Cimon son of Stesagoras had been forced into exile from Athens by Pisistratus son of Hippocrates. While he was in exile, Cimon happened to win a victory at the Olympic games with a four-horse chariot. In winning it he did the same thing his half-brother Miltiades had done, who had the same mother as he did. Then at the next Olympic games he won again with the same mares, and let Pisistratus be proclaimed the winner. Having handed the victory over to him, he came back to his own country under a peace agreement. Then, after he had won with the same mares at yet another Olympic festival, it was his fate to be killed by the sons of Pisistratus, Pisistratus himself being no longer alive. They killed him near the town hall, after setting men to lie in wait for him at night. Cimon is buried outside the city, beyond the road called Through Coele (the Hollow), and directly opposite him are buried the mares that won at three Olympic games. The mares of Evagoras the Laconian did the same thing, but no others ever have. Cimon's elder son, Stesagoras, was at that time being raised in the Chersonese by his father's brother Miltiades. The younger son was being raised in Athens with Cimon himself, and he had been named Miltiades after Miltiades who founded the settlement in the Chersonese.
104. This Miltiades, then, had come from the Chersonese and was now a general of the Athenians, after escaping death twice over. First, the Phoenicians had chased him as far as Imbros, very eager to catch him and bring him up to the king. Then, after he had escaped them and reached his own country and seemed to be safe from then on, his enemies were lying in wait for him there. They brought him to court and prosecuted him for his rule as tyrant in the Chersonese. He escaped them too, and had then been made a general of the Athenians, elected by the people.
105. First of all, while they were still in the city, the generals sent a herald off to Sparta. This was Pheidippides, an Athenian, who was also a long-distance runner who did this for a living. As Pheidippides himself said, and as he reported to the Athenians, Pan met him on Mount Parthenium, above Tegea. Pan called out Pheidippides' name and told him to take a message to the Athenians: why did they pay no attention to him, when he was friendly to the Athenians, had been useful to them many times before, and would be again? The Athenians believed this story was true. So when their affairs had come out well, they built a shrine of Pan below the Acropolis, and because of this message they have honored him ever since with yearly sacrifices and a torch race.
106. But at that time, the time when he said Pan appeared to him, this Pheidippides, sent by the generals, was in Sparta on the day after he left Athens. He came before the magistrates and said: "Men of Sparta, the Athenians ask you to come to their help, and not to let the most ancient city in Greece fall into slavery at the hands of foreigners. Eretria has already been enslaved, and Greece is the weaker by one famous city." He delivered the message he had been given, and the Spartans resolved to help the Athenians. But they could not do it at once, because they did not want to break their law. It was the ninth day of the month, and they said they would not march out on the ninth, or until the moon was full.
107. So the Spartans waited for the full moon. Meanwhile Hippias son of Pisistratus was guiding the Persians in to Marathon. The night before, he had seen a vision in his sleep: it seemed to Hippias that he slept with his own mother. From this dream he concluded that he would return to Athens, get back his power, and end his life as an old man in his own country. That is what he concluded from the dream. Then, as he guided the Persians in, he first landed the slaves from Eretria on an island that belongs to the Styrians, called Aegleia. Next, as the ships came to shore at Marathon, he anchored them there, and when the troops had come ashore from the ships, he set about posting them in their places. While he was arranging all this, he happened to sneeze and cough more violently than usual. He was an old man, and most of his teeth were loose, so the cough shook them, and one of them flew out with the force of it. The tooth fell into the sand, and he tried hard to find it. But when it could not be found, he groaned aloud and said to the men around him: "This land is not ours, and we will not be able to conquer it. Whatever share of it was mine, the tooth has."
108. Hippias decided that this was how his vision had come true. Meanwhile, when the Athenians had taken up their position in the sacred precinct of Heracles, the Plataeans came to help them with their whole force. The Plataeans had given themselves into the Athenians' keeping, and the Athenians had already gone through a great deal of trouble on their behalf. This is how the Plataeans had given themselves to them. When the Thebans were pressing them hard, the Plataeans first tried to give themselves to Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides and the Spartans, who happened to be in the area. But the Spartans would not accept them. They said: "We live too far away, and help like ours would be cold comfort to you. You could be enslaved many times over before any of us even heard about it. We advise you to give yourselves to the Athenians instead. They are your neighbors, and they are not bad at helping." The Spartans gave this advice not so much out of goodwill toward the Plataeans as because they wanted the Athenians to have trouble on their hands, tangled in a conflict with the Boeotians. That was the Spartans' advice to the men of Plataea, and the Plataeans took it. When the Athenians were sacrificing to the Twelve Gods, the Plataeans sat down at the altar as suppliants, and in that way gave themselves to Athens. When the Thebans heard of this, they marched against the Plataeans, and the Athenians came to their aid. They were about to join battle when the Corinthians, who happened to be there, stopped them and settled the quarrel. Both sides left the matter to them, and the Corinthians fixed boundaries for the land, on condition that the Thebans should leave alone any Boeotians who did not want to be counted as Boeotians. After giving this decision the Corinthians left. But as the Athenians were going home, the Boeotians attacked them, and were beaten in the fight. At that the Athenians went beyond the boundaries the Corinthians had set for the Plataeans, and made the river Asopus itself the boundary between Thebes and the lands of Plataea and Hysiae. That, then, is how the Plataeans had given themselves to the Athenians, and now they came to Marathon to help them.
109. The Athenian generals were divided in their opinions. One side urged them not to fight, because they were too few to take on the Persian army. The others, Miltiades among them, urged them to fight. They were split, and the worse opinion was about to win. But there was an eleventh vote, belonging to the man chosen by lot to be polemarch of the Athenians, the war-archon (in the old days the Athenians gave the polemarch an equal vote with the generals). At that time the polemarch was Callimachus of the deme of Aphidnae. Miltiades went to him and said: "Callimachus, it is up to you now. You can bring Athens into slavery, or you can make her free and leave behind you, for as long as men live, a memorial greater than even Harmodius and Aristogeiton left. The Athenians have now come to the greatest danger they have faced since they first became a people. If they give in to the Persians, it is already settled what they will suffer, once they are handed over to Hippias. But if this city wins, it may become the first of the cities of Greece. How this can happen, and how the decision comes to rest with you of all people, I will now explain. We generals, ten of us, are divided: some say we should fight, and some say we should not. Now, if we do not fight, I expect some great spirit of discord will fall on the Athenians and shake their resolve until they go over to the Persians. But if we fight before any rot sets in among any part of the Athenian people, then, if the gods give us a fair chance, we can win the battle. All of this now belongs to you and depends on you. If you side with my view, you will have a country that is free and a city that will be the first in Greece. But if you choose the view of those who are dead set against fighting, you will have the opposite of all the good things I have just described."
110. With these words Miltiades won Callimachus over. With the polemarch's vote added, it was decided to fight. After this, the generals who had voted to fight each handed over his command to Miltiades when his day to command came around. Miltiades accepted, but he still would not start the battle until his own day to command had come.
111. When his day came round, the Athenians were drawn up for battle in this order. The polemarch Callimachus led the right wing, since it was the Athenian custom at that time for the polemarch to hold the right wing. After him, with him in the lead, came the tribes in the order of their numbers, one after another, and last of all the Plataeans were drawn up on the left wing. Ever since this battle, when the Athenians offer sacrifices at the great festivals held every four years, the Athenian herald prays "that blessings may come to the Athenians and the Plataeans both." At this time, though, as the Athenians were being drawn up at Marathon, something like this happened. Their line was made as long as the Persian line, and so the center was only a few ranks deep, and there the army was weakest, while each wing was strong in numbers.
112. When they had taken their places and the sacrifices came out favorable, the Athenians were let loose, and they charged the enemy at a run. The distance between the two armies was at least 4,800 feet, nearly a mile. When the Persians saw them coming at a run, they got ready to meet them, and they thought the Athenians had gone mad, a madness that would destroy them, since there were so few of them and yet they were rushing forward at a run, with no cavalry and no archers. That is what the Persians thought. But once the Athenians closed with them all together, they fought in a way that deserves to be remembered. They were the first Greeks we know of who charged the enemy at a run, and the first who stood their ground at the sight of Median dress and the men who wore it. Until then, the Greeks had been terrified just to hear the name of the Medes.
113. The fighting at Marathon went on for a long time. In the center of the line, where the Persians themselves and the Sacae were posted, the Persians were winning. There they broke through and chased the Athenians inland. But on both wings the Athenians and the Plataeans each won. Having won, they let the beaten part of the enemy run away unchallenged, brought their two wings together, and fought the troops who had broken through their center. And the Athenians won. Then they followed the fleeing Persians, cutting them down, until they reached the sea. There they called for fire and began to lay hold of the ships.
114. In this part of the fighting the polemarch Callimachus was killed, after proving himself a brave man. One of the generals, Stesilaus son of Thrasylaus, was also killed. Besides these, Cynegirus son of Euphorion took hold of the ornament on the stern of a ship, had his hand cut off with an axe, and fell. And many other well-known Athenians were killed as well.
115. In this way the Athenians captured seven of the ships. With the rest, the Persians pushed off from shore. They picked up the Eretrian captives from the island where they had left them and sailed around Sunium, meaning to reach the city before the Athenians. A charge went around among the Athenians that the Alcmaeonids had put them up to this plan. The Alcmaeonids, it was said, had an understanding with the Persians and held up a shield as a signal to them when they were already back on their ships.
116. So the Persians were sailing around Sunium. Meanwhile the Athenians hurried back as fast as they could to defend the city, and they got there before the Persians arrived. They had come from the precinct of Heracles at Marathon, and now they camped at another precinct of Heracles, the one at Cynosarges. The Persians came and lay at anchor off Phalerum, which was the harbor of Athens at that time. They anchored their ships off this place for a while, and then sailed back to Asia.
117. In this battle at Marathon about 6,400 of the Persians were killed, and 192 of the Athenians. That was the number who fell on each side. A strange thing also happened there. An Athenian, Epizelus son of Cuphagoras, was fighting in the thick of it and proving himself a brave man when he lost the sight of his eyes, though he had not been struck anywhere on his body or hit by anything thrown. He stayed blind for the rest of his life. I was told that he used to tell this story about what happened to him: it seemed to him that a tall man in full armor stood against him, whose beard overshadowed his whole shield; this figure passed him by and killed the man standing next to him. That, as I was told, is the story Epizelus told.
118. Datis, though, on his way back to Asia with his army, saw a vision in his sleep when he reached Myconos. What the vision was is not reported. But as soon as day dawned he had the ships searched, and in a Phoenician ship he found a gilded statue of Apollo. He asked where it had been taken from, and when he learned which temple it came from, he sailed in his own ship to Delos. The Delians had returned to their island by then. Datis set the statue in the temple and told the Delians to take it back to Delium in Theban territory, which lies on the coast directly opposite Chalcis. After giving this order, Datis sailed away. The Delians, however, never took the statue back. Twenty years later the Thebans themselves brought it to Delium, because of an oracle.
119. As for the Eretrians who had been enslaved, Datis and Artaphernes took them up to Susa when they reached Asia. King Darius had been very angry with the Eretrians before they were captured, because they had wronged him first, without provocation. But when he saw them brought before him and in his power, he did them no further harm. Instead he settled them in the land of Cissia, on one of his own estates, called Ardericca. This is about twenty-three miles from Susa, and about four and a half miles from the well that yields three different things: they draw asphalt, salt and oil from it. This is how it is done. The liquid is drawn up with a swing-pole, which has half a skin tied to it instead of a bucket. A man dips this down into the well, draws it up, and pours it into a cistern. From there it runs into another vessel and separates three ways. The asphalt and the salt harden at once. The oil, which the Persians call rhadinace, is black and has an unpleasant smell. That is where King Darius settled the Eretrians, and they were still living in that land in my time, keeping their old language. So much for what happened to the Eretrians.
120. Two thousand Spartans came to Athens after the full moon. They were in such a hurry to be in time that they reached Attica on the third day after leaving Sparta. Although they had come too late for the battle, they still wanted to see the Persians. So they went out to Marathon and looked at the bodies of the dead. Then they went home, praising the Athenians and what they had done.
121. Now it amazes me, and I do not accept the report, that the Alcmaeonids could ever have held up a shield as a signal to the Persians by a prior arrangement, wanting the Athenians to be under the non-Greeks and under Hippias. For they plainly hated tyrants as much as, or more than, Callias did, the son of Phaenippus and father of Hipponicus. Callias, for his part, was the only man in all Athens who dared to buy the property of Pisistratus when it was put up for sale by the state after Pisistratus was driven out of Athens, and in other ways too he plotted every kind of hostility against him.
122. This Callias deserves to be remembered by everyone, for many reasons. First, for what I have just said: he was a man of real distinction in freeing his country. Then also for what he did at the Olympic games, where he won the horse race and came second in the chariot race; and before that he had won at the Pythian games, so that he was famous among all the Greeks for the money he spent. And finally, because he showed himself so generous toward his daughters, who were three in number. When they were old enough to marry, he gave them the most magnificent dowry and also let them have their own way: whichever man in all Athens each of them wanted to choose as her husband, to that man he gave her.
123. And just like him, the Alcmaeonids hated tyrants as much as he did, or more. So this amazes me, and I do not accept the charge that they were the ones who held up the shield. They were in exile, away from the tyrants, the whole time the tyrants ruled, and it was by their scheming that the sons of Pisistratus gave up their power. It follows that they were the ones who set Athens free, much more than Harmodius and Aristogeiton were, in my judgment. Those two, by killing Hipparchus, only enraged the rest of Pisistratus' family; they did nothing at all to end the others' tyranny. But the Alcmaeonids plainly did set Athens free, at least if they really were the men who persuaded the Pythia to tell the Spartans to set Athens free, as I have explained before.
124. It might be said, however, that they had some grievance against the Athenian people, and so tried to betray their own city. But on the contrary, no men had a higher reputation than they did, at least among the Athenians, and none had been more highly honored. So it is not reasonable to suppose that they would have held up a shield for any such purpose. A shield was held up, though; that cannot be denied, because it happened. But as to who it was who held it up, I cannot say any more than this.
125. Now the family of the Alcmaeonids was distinguished in Athens even in the earliest times, and from the time of Alcmaeon, and of Megacles after him, they became very distinguished indeed. First, Alcmaeon son of Megacles made himself a helper to the Lydians who came from Croesus at Sardis to the oracle at Delphi, and he assisted them eagerly. When Croesus heard from the Lydians who had gone to the oracle that this man had done him good service, he sent for him to come to Sardis. When he came, Croesus offered him a gift of as much gold as he could carry away on his own body at one time. With that gift in mind, and since it was a gift of that kind, Alcmaeon got himself ready and made his preparations like this. He put on a large tunic, leaving a deep fold in it hanging down in front, and he pulled onto his feet the widest boots he could find, and in these he went into the treasury they led him to. There he fell on a heap of gold dust. First he packed as much gold down beside his legs as his boots would hold. Then he filled the whole fold of his tunic with gold, sprinkled some of the gold dust in his hair, and took some into his mouth. After that he came out of the treasury, barely able to drag his boots along and looking like anything in the world rather than a man, since his mouth was stuffed full and every part of him was swollen out. Croesus burst out laughing when he saw him, and not only gave him all of that but gave him as much again on top of it. That is how this house became enormously rich, and that is how this Alcmaeon came to keep chariot horses and won a victory at Olympia.
126. Then, in the next generation, Cleisthenes the tyrant of Sicyon raised the family up, so that it became far better known among the Greeks than it had been before. Cleisthenes son of Arisonymus, son of Myron, son of Andreas, had a daughter named Agariste, and he wanted to find the best man in all Greece and give her to him in marriage. So when the Olympic games were being held and Cleisthenes won at them with a four-horse chariot, he had a proclamation made: any Greek who thought himself worthy to be Cleisthenes' son-in-law should come to Sicyon by the sixtieth day, or earlier if he liked, because Cleisthenes meant to settle the marriage within a year, counting from the sixtieth day. Then all the Greeks who were proud either of themselves or of their families came as suitors, and Cleisthenes had a running track and a wrestling ground built for them and kept them for their use alone.
127. From Italy came Smindyrides son of Hippocrates, of Sybaris, the man who went further in luxury than anyone else on earth (Sybaris was then at the height of its prosperity), and Damasus of Siris, the son of the Amyris who was called the Wise. Those came from Italy. From the Ionian Gulf came Amphimnestus son of Epistrophus, of Epidamnus; he came from the Ionian Gulf. From Aetolia came Males, the brother of the Titormus who was stronger than any other Greek and who fled from human company to the farthest corners of the Aetolian land. From the Peloponnese came Leocedes son of Pheidon, the tyrant of Argos. This was the Pheidon who set up the measures the Peloponnesians use, and who outdid all other Greeks in arrogance, since he threw out the officials the Eleans had appointed to run the games and ran the games at Olympia himself. His son came, and so did Amiantus son of Lycurgus, an Arcadian from Trapezus; and Laphanes, an Azanian from the city of Paeus, son of the Euphorion who (so the story goes in Arcadia) received the Dioscuri as guests in his house, and from then on made a practice of entertaining everyone who came; and Onomastus son of Agaeus, of Elis. Those came from the Peloponnese itself. From Athens came Megacles, the son of the Alcmaeon who went to Croesus, and besides him Hippocleides son of Tisander, who outdid the other Athenians in wealth and good looks. From Eretria, which was flourishing at that time, came Lysanias, the only one from Euboea. From Thessaly came Diactorides of Crannon, one of the Scopad family. And from the Molossians came Alcon.
128. That is how many suitors there were. When they had arrived by the appointed day, Cleisthenes first asked each of them about his country and his family. Then he kept them for a year, testing them continually for their courage, their temper, their upbringing and their manners. He spent time with each of them alone and with all of them together. He tested them by taking the younger ones out to athletic exercises, and above all at the shared table: for the whole time he kept them he did everything that could be done, and at the same time he entertained them magnificently. As it happened, the suitors who pleased him most were the ones from Athens, and of these he rather preferred Hippocleides son of Tisander, both for his manly qualities and because he was related by descent to the Cypselids at Corinth.
129. Then the appointed day came for the wedding feast and for Cleisthenes himself to announce which of them all he had chosen. Cleisthenes sacrificed a hundred oxen and feasted both the suitors themselves and all the people of Sicyon. When dinner was over, the suitors began to compete with each other in music and in speeches before the whole company. As the drinking went on, Hippocleides, who was very much holding everyone's attention, told the flute player to play him a dance tune. When the flute player did, he danced. And it so happened that he was very pleased with his own dancing, but Cleisthenes watched the whole performance with suspicion. After a while Hippocleides told someone to bring in a table. When the table came in, he first danced Laconian figures on it, then Attic ones as well, and third, he planted his head on the table and waved his legs in the air. While he was dancing the first and second rounds, Cleisthenes was already disgusted at the thought that Hippocleides might still become his son-in-law, because of his dancing and his shamelessness, but he held himself back, not wanting to explode at him. But when he saw him waving his legs in the air, he could not hold back any longer, and said:
"You have danced away your marriage, son of Tisander!"
And Hippocleides answered:
"Hippocleides doesn't care!"
130. And that is where the saying comes from. Then Cleisthenes called for silence and spoke to the company: "Suitors of my daughter, I think well of you all, and if it were possible I would satisfy you all, not picking one of you out above the others or rejecting the rest. But since I am deciding about only one girl, it is not possible to please everyone. So to those of you who are turned down for this marriage I give a talent of silver each, for the honor you did me in wanting to marry into my house, and for your time away from home. And to Megacles son of Alcmaeon I engage my daughter Agariste, according to the laws of the Athenians." Megacles said that he accepted the engagement, and so Cleisthenes settled the marriage.
131. That is how the judging of the suitors turned out, and that is how the Alcmaeonids became famous all over Greece. From this marriage was born the Cleisthenes who set up the tribes and the democracy for the Athenians. He was named after his mother's father, Cleisthenes of Sicyon. He was one son born to Megacles; Hippocrates was another. Hippocrates had a son, another Megacles, and a daughter, another Agariste, named after Agariste the daughter of Cleisthenes. This Agariste married Xanthippus son of Ariphron, and when she was pregnant she had a dream in which she seemed to give birth to a lion. A few days later she bore Xanthippus a son, Pericles.
132. After the defeat of the Persians at Marathon, Miltiades, who had already been well thought of in Athens, rose much higher still in the Athenians' esteem. He asked them for seventy ships, an army and money. He did not tell them which country he meant to attack, but said he would make them rich if they followed him, because he would lead them to a land where they could easily get gold in abundance. That was what he said as he asked for the ships, and the Athenians, carried away by his words, handed them over.
133. Once he had the army, Miltiades sailed for Paros. His excuse was that the Parians had started it, by sending triremes with the Persians to Marathon. That was the pretext he gave, but he also had a grudge against the Parians because of Lysagoras son of Tisias, a Parian by birth, who had slandered him to Hydarnes the Persian. When Miltiades arrived where he was sailing, he shut the Parians up inside their wall and laid siege to them with his army. He sent a herald in to demand a hundred talents, saying that if they refused, his army would not go home until it had captured them. But the Parians had no intention of giving Miltiades any money. All their thought was on how to defend their city. They came up with various plans, and this one besides: wherever the wall was open to attack at any point, they built it up at night to twice its former height.
134. Up to this point the story is told by all the Greeks, but what happened next only the Parians tell, and they say it went like this. When Miltiades was at a loss, the story goes, a woman came to talk with him. She was a prisoner of war, a Parian by birth named Timo, an under-priestess of the Earth goddesses. She came before Miltiades, they say, and advised him that if he thought it very important to take Paros, he should do what she would suggest; and then she told him what she meant. So he went to the hill in front of the city and, since he could not open the gate, jumped over the fence of the temple of Demeter the Lawgiver. Once over, he went on toward the shrine to do something inside, whether to lay hands on some of the things that must not be touched or whatever else he meant to do. But when he reached the door, a shuddering terror came over him at once, and he started back the way he had come. As he jumped down from the rough stone wall, he dislocated his thigh, or, as others say, he hit his knee against the wall.
135. So Miltiades, in a bad way, sailed for home. He brought the Athenians no wealth and had not won Paros for them; he had besieged the city for twenty-six days and laid waste the island. When the Parians learned that Timo, the under-priestess of the goddesses, had guided Miltiades, they wanted to punish her for it. As soon as they had a breathing space after the siege, they sent messengers to Delphi to consult the god. The messengers were to ask whether they should put to death the under-priestess of the goddesses, who had guided their enemies to the capture of her own city and had revealed to Miltiades the mysteries that no man may be told. But the Pythia forbade it. Timo, she said, was not the real cause of these things; since it was fated that Miltiades would come to a bad end, she had appeared to him to lead him on to his ruin.
136. That was the Pythia's answer to the Parians. Meanwhile, when Miltiades got back from Paros, the Athenians had a great deal to say about him, and Xanthippus son of Ariphron more than anyone. He brought Miltiades to trial before the people on a capital charge and prosecuted him for deceiving the Athenians. Miltiades did not speak in his own defense, though he was there; he could not, because his thigh was rotting. Instead he lay on a couch in full view, while his friends spoke for him. They talked a great deal about the battle at Marathon and about the taking of Lemnos: how he had conquered Lemnos, punished the Pelasgians, and handed the island over to the Athenians. The people came over to his side so far as to acquit him of the death penalty, but they fined him fifty talents for his wrongdoing. After this Miltiades died, when his thigh turned gangrenous and rotted, and his son Cimon paid the fifty talents.
137. Now this is how Miltiades son of Cimon had taken Lemnos. The Pelasgians had been driven out of Attica by the Athenians, whether justly or unjustly. On that point I can only tell what is reported, which is this. Hecataeus son of Hegesander said in his history that it was done unjustly. According to him, the Athenians had given the Pelasgians the land below Mount Hymettus to live on, as payment for the wall they had once built around the Acropolis. When the Athenians saw that this land, which had been poor and worthless before, was now well farmed, they were seized with envy and a longing to have it, and so they drove the Pelasgians out, without giving any other excuse. But according to the Athenians' own account, they drove them out justly. For the Pelasgians, settled below Hymettus, used it as a base to wrong them, like this. The Athenians' daughters and sons used to go regularly for water to the spring called Enneacrunus, the Nine Fountains, because at that time neither the Athenians nor any other Greeks had household slaves yet. And whenever the girls came, the Pelasgians, out of arrogance and contempt for the Athenians, would assault them. Not content with that, they were finally caught in the act of plotting to attack the city. And the tellers say that in this the Athenians proved themselves better men than the Pelasgians: they could have killed the Pelasgians, who had been caught plotting against them, but they chose not to, and only ordered them to leave the country. Having left the country in this way, the Pelasgians took over various places, and Lemnos in particular. The first story is the one Hecataeus told; the second is the one the Athenians tell.
138. These Pelasgians, then, living on Lemnos after this, wanted revenge on the Athenians. Since they knew the Athenian festivals well, they got some fifty-oared galleys and lay in wait for the Athenian women when they were celebrating the festival of Artemis at Brauron. They carried off a number of them from there, sailed away home, took the women to Lemnos, and kept them as concubines. As these women had more and more children, they made a point of teaching their sons the Attic language and the Athenian ways. These boys would not mix with the sons of the Pelasgian women, and if any one of them was hit by one of those boys, they all came running in a body to help each other. On top of that, the boys claimed the right to rule over the other boys, and easily got the better of them. When the Pelasgians saw this, they talked it over among themselves. As they discussed it, fear came over them. If these boys were already determined to stand by each other against the sons of the lawful wives, and were already trying from the start to rule over them, what would they do once they were grown men? So they decided to kill the sons of the Athenian women, and they actually did it; and along with the sons they killed their mothers too. Because of this deed, and the one done before it, when the women of Lemnos killed Thoas and the rest of their own husbands, it has become the custom all over Greece to call any deed of great cruelty a "Lemnian deed."
139. After the Pelasgians had killed their own sons and wives, the earth bore them no crops, and their women and their flocks and herds did not bear young as they had before. Hard pressed by famine and childlessness, they sent to Delphi to ask how they might be released from the evils that were on them. The Pythia told them to pay the Athenians whatever penalty the Athenians themselves should name. So the Pelasgians went to Athens and announced that they were willing to pay the penalty for all the wrong they had done. The Athenians spread a couch in the town hall as beautifully as they could, set beside it a table loaded with every good thing, and told the Pelasgians to hand over their land to them in that same condition. The Pelasgians answered: "When a ship sails from your land to ours with a north wind in a single day, then we will hand it over." They said this because they were sure it could never happen, since Attica lies far to the south of Lemnos.
140. That was how things stood at that time. Very many years later, after the Chersonese on the Hellespont had come under Athenian control, Miltiades son of Cimon, while the Etesian winds were blowing steadily, made the voyage in a single ship from Elaeus in the Chersonese to Lemnos. He told the Pelasgians to leave the island, reminding them of the oracle, which the Pelasgians had never expected to see fulfilled. The people of Hephaestia obeyed. But the people of Myrina refused to admit that the Chersonese was Attica, and were besieged until at last they too gave in. That is how the Athenians and Miltiades took Lemnos.
1. When the news of the battle fought at Marathon reached Darius son of Hystaspes, the king was angrier than ever. He had been furious with the Athenians even before this, because of their attack on Sardis, but now his indignation was far greater, and he was far more eager to march against Greece. So he sent messengers at once to the various cities and ordered them to get an army ready. He assigned each people a much larger share than they had supplied before, and not only warships but also horses, provisions and transport ships. When these orders went round, all Asia was in turmoil for three years, because the best men everywhere were being enlisted for the expedition against Greece and were getting ready for it. In the fourth year, however, the Egyptians, whom Cambyses had conquered, revolted from the Persians. Then Darius was even more eager to march, and against both nations.
2. While Darius was preparing to set out against Egypt and against Athens, a great quarrel broke out among his sons over who should hold the supreme power. According to Persian custom, they said, he must not set out on his campaigns until he had named one of them king. Darius had three sons born to him before he became king, by his first wife, the daughter of Gobryas, and four more after he became king, by Atossa the daughter of Cyrus. The eldest of the first group was Artobazanes, and the eldest of the later group was Xerxes. Since they did not have the same mother, the two of them were rivals. Artobazanes argued that he was the eldest of all the sons, and that it was a custom held by all mankind that the eldest should rule. Xerxes argued that he was the son of Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, and that it was Cyrus who had won the Persians their freedom.
3. Darius had not yet announced his decision when it happened that Demaratus son of Ariston arrived in Susa at this very time. He had been stripped of his kingship in Sparta and had sent himself into exile from Laconia. When this man heard of the dispute between Darius' sons, he came to Xerxes (so the story goes) and advised him to add something to the arguments he was already making. Xerxes should say, Demaratus suggested, that he had been born to Darius when Darius was already king and held supreme power over the Persians, while Artobazanes had been born when Darius was still a private citizen. It was therefore neither fitting nor just that anyone else should have the honor ahead of him. Even in Sparta, Demaratus pointed out, this was the custom: if some sons were born before their father became king, and another was born later, while he was reigning, the succession to the kingdom belonged to the one born later. So Xerxes used Demaratus' suggestion, and Darius, seeing that what he said was just, named him king. My own opinion, however, is that Xerxes would have become king even without this advice, because Atossa held all the power.
4. Having named Xerxes to the Persians as their king, Darius was ready to set out on his campaigns. But in the year after this, and after the revolt of Egypt, Darius himself died, after reigning thirty-six years in all. So he never got his revenge, either on the Egyptians who had revolted or on the Athenians.
5. When Darius was dead, the kingdom passed to his son Xerxes. At first Xerxes was not at all eager to march against Greece, though he went on gathering an army against Egypt. But Mardonius son of Gobryas, who was Xerxes' cousin (his mother was Darius' sister), was always at his side, and he had more influence with him than any other Persian. He kept saying things like this: "Master, it is not right that the Athenians should do the Persians such great harm and not pay the penalty for what they have done. For now, why not finish the work you have in hand? Then, when you have tamed Egypt, which has risen against us so insolently, march an army against Athens. That way men will speak well of you, and in future everyone will think twice before attacking your land." That much of his argument was about revenge. To it he would add that Europe was a very beautiful country, that it grew every kind of cultivated fruit tree, that it was wonderfully fertile, and that the king alone of all mortals deserved to own it.
6. He kept saying these things because he had an appetite for risky ventures and wanted to be governor of Greece under the king himself. In time he won Xerxes over and persuaded him to do it, because other things also worked on his side and helped him persuade Xerxes. First, messengers had come from Thessaly, sent by the Aleuadae, inviting the king to invade Greece and showing great zeal for his cause. (These Aleuadae were the kings of Thessaly.) Second, the sons of Pisistratus who had come up to Susa were inviting him too. They used the same arguments as the Aleuadae, and they offered him something more besides. There was an Athenian named Onomacritus, who delivered oracles and had also collected and arranged the oracles of Musaeus, the legendary poet and seer. The Pisistratids had brought this man up with them to Susa, after first making up their old quarrel with him. For Onomacritus had been banished from Athens by Hipparchus son of Pisistratus. Lasus of Hermione had caught him slipping into the works of Musaeus an oracle of his own, which said that the islands lying off Lemnos would disappear under the sea. That was why Hipparchus banished him, though before that he had consulted him a great deal. Now, however, Onomacritus had come up to Susa with them. Whenever he came into the king's presence, the sons of Pisistratus praised him in grand terms, and he recited some of the oracles. If any of them foretold disaster for the Persians, he said nothing about it. Instead he picked out the most favorable ones, and told how it was fated that a Persian would yoke the Hellespont with a bridge, and he described how the march would go. So he kept pressing Xerxes with oracles, while the sons of Pisistratus and the Aleuadae pressed him with their advice.
7. Once Xerxes had been persuaded to make war on Greece, he marched first against the rebels, in the year after Darius' death. He crushed them and reduced all Egypt to a far harsher slavery than it had known under Darius, and he handed over the government of the country to his own brother Achaemenes, a son of Darius. Later, while he was governor of Egypt, this Achaemenes was killed by Inaros son of Psammetichus, a Libyan.
8. After conquering Egypt, Xerxes was about to take the expedition against Athens in hand. So he called together an assembly of the leading Persians, both to hear their opinions and to tell them all, face to face, what he meant to do. When they had gathered, Xerxes spoke to them as follows:
"Persians, I am not going to be the first to bring in a new custom among you. I received this one from others, and I will follow it. As I am told by those older than I am, we have never yet sat still since we took over this supremacy from the Medes, when Cyrus overthrew Astyages. It is a god who leads us this way, and when we busy ourselves with many things, it turns out well for us. About the nations that Cyrus and Cambyses and my father Darius conquered and added to our empire, there is no need for me to speak: you know them well. As for me, from the day I inherited this throne I sit on, I have always thought hard about how I might not fall short of those who held this high place before me, nor add less power to the empire of the Persians. And thinking hard about it, I find a way by which we can win glory, and a land no smaller and no worse than the one we have now (and in fact richer in what it produces), and at the same time get our vengeance and our revenge. That is why I have called you together now, to tell you what I have in mind to do.
"I intend to yoke the Hellespont with a bridge and march an army through Europe against Greece, so that I can punish the Athenians for everything they have done to the Persians and to my father. You saw how my father Darius was also planning to march against these men. But he has died, and he never got his revenge on them. I, though, on his behalf and on behalf of the rest of the Persians, will not stop until I have taken Athens and burned it, since they wronged me and my father without any provocation. First they came to Sardis with Aristagoras of Miletus, our slave, and set fire to the sacred groves and the temples. And second, you all know well, I think, what they did to us when we landed in their country, at the time when Datis and Artaphernes were in command of our army.
"For these reasons I have decided to march against them, and when I count up what we stand to gain, I find these good things, as you will hear. If we conquer these people and their neighbors, who live in the land of Pelops the Phrygian, we will make the Persian land border on nothing but the sky of Zeus. The sun will look down on no land that borders ours. With your help I will make all lands into one land, once I have passed through the whole of Europe. For I am told the situation is this: once the people I have just mentioned are out of the way, there is no city of men left, and no race of human beings, that will be able to stand up to us in battle. So those who have wronged us will bear the yoke of slavery, and so will those who have done us no wrong.
"Here is how you will please me best. Whenever I signal to you the time you should come, every one of you must report, and report eagerly. And whoever comes with the best-equipped force, to him I will give the gifts our country counts most honorable. That is how this must be done. But so that I may not seem to you to be following my own advice alone, I put the matter before you for discussion, and I invite any of you who wishes to give his opinion."
9. With that he stopped, and after him Mardonius spoke: "Master, you are the best not only of all the Persians who have lived before you, but of all who will come after. In everything else you have said, your words have hit on what is best and truest, and on top of that you will not allow the Ionians who live in Europe to make fools of us, when they have no right to. It would be a strange thing indeed if we have conquered Sacae, Indians, Ethiopians, Assyrians and many other great nations, who never did the Persians any wrong, and keep them as our subjects, simply because we wanted to enlarge our empire, and yet we do not take revenge on the Greeks, who wronged us without provocation.
"What should we be afraid of? Their numbers? The size of their wealth? We know how they fight, and we know their resources are weak. Besides, we have already conquered their sons, I mean the ones settled in our land who are called Ionians, Aeolians and Dorians. I myself have tried marching against these men before, under orders from your father. I marched as far as Macedonia, and came close to reaching Athens itself, and no one came out to fight me.
"It is true that the Greeks do make war, but from what I hear they go about it very foolishly, out of stubbornness and lack of skill. When they have declared war on one another, they look for the finest, flattest stretch of ground they can find, and they go down there and fight. The result is that even the winners come away with heavy losses, and as for the losers, I won't even mention them, because they are wiped out completely. Since they all speak the same language, they ought to use heralds and messengers to settle their differences, any way at all rather than by battle. And if they absolutely must fight each other, each side ought to find the place where it is hardest to beat, and make its stand there. So the Greeks, since their way of war is no good, did not even make up their minds to fight me when I had marched as far as Macedonia.
"Who, then, is likely to stand against you, my king, and offer you war, when you are leading the whole multitude of Asia and the whole of your fleet? For my part, I don't think the Greek states have grown as bold as that. But if after all I turn out to be wrong, and they are carried away by reckless folly and come out to fight us, they will learn that we are the best soldiers in the world. Whatever happens, let us leave nothing untried. Nothing comes about by itself; everything men achieve comes from trying."
10. With these words Mardonius had smoothed the way for Xerxes' proposal, and he stopped. The other Persians kept silent and did not dare to offer an opinion against what had been proposed. Then Artabanus son of Hystaspes, who was Xerxes' uncle, his father's brother, and who relied on that relationship, spoke as follows:
"My king, if opposing opinions are not spoken, it is impossible to choose the better one; you have to accept whatever has been said. But if opposing opinions are spoken, then you can choose. It is like pure gold: we cannot tell it is pure when it lies by itself, but when we rub it on the touchstone beside other gold, then we can tell which is better. I advised your father Darius, my own brother, not to march against the Scythians, a people who have no settled city anywhere on earth. But he expected to conquer those nomad Scythians, and he did not listen to me. He marched, and he came back having lost many good men from his army. You, my king, are planning to march against men far better than the Scythians, men said to be excellent fighters both at sea and on land. What there is to fear in this, it is only right that I should tell you.
"You say you will yoke the Hellespont with a bridge and march an army through Europe to Greece. Now suppose we happen to be beaten, either on land or at sea, or even both, for these men are said to be brave fighters. (And we can judge for ourselves that it is true, since the Athenians on their own destroyed that great army that came to Attica with Datis and Artaphernes.) Or suppose they do not win on both. Still, if they attack with their ships and win a sea battle, and then sail to the Hellespont and break up the bridge, that alone, my king, will put us in great danger.
"I am not guessing at this out of any wisdom of my own. I am only guessing at the kind of disaster that very nearly fell on us the last time, when your father had yoked the Thracian Bosporus and bridged the Danube, and had crossed over to attack the Scythians. At that time the Scythians tried every kind of plea to persuade the Ionians, who had been given the job of guarding the bridges over the Danube, to break up the crossing. And at that time, if Histiaeus the tyrant of Miletus had gone along with the opinion of the other tyrants and had not opposed them, the power of the Persians would have come to an end. Yet it is a frightening thing even to hear it said that the whole power of the king once hung on a single human being.
"So do not plan to run into any such danger when there is no need. Do as I say instead. Dismiss this assembly for now. Then later, whenever you see fit, once you have thought it over carefully by yourself, announce whatever seems best to you. For I hold that good planning is the greatest gain there is. Even if something goes against us, the plan was no less good; it was simply defeated by bad luck. But a man who planned badly, if luck goes with him, has stumbled on a prize by chance, and his plan was bad all the same.
"You see how the god strikes with his thunderbolts the creatures that stand out above the rest, and does not let them show off, while the small ones do not provoke his jealousy at all. You see also how he always hurls his bolts at the tallest buildings and the tallest trees. For the god likes to cut down everything that stands out above the rest. In the same way a huge army is destroyed by a small one, in a way like this: when the god grows jealous of them and sends panic among them, or thunder from the sky, they are destroyed utterly, in a way they did not deserve. For the god does not allow anyone but himself to think big thoughts.
"Besides, hurrying any business breeds failures, and great losses usually come from them. But in waiting there are many good things, and even if they do not look good at first, in time you will find that they are.
"That is my advice to you, my king. But you, son of Gobryas, Mardonius, stop talking nonsense about the Greeks. They do not deserve to be belittled. By slandering the Greeks you are urging the king himself to march against them, and that, I think, is exactly what you are straining every nerve to bring about. Don't let it happen. Slander is a terrible thing: in slander there are two wrongdoers and one victim. The slanderer does wrong because he speaks against someone who is not there. The listener does wrong because he believes the story before he finds out the truth of it. And the man who is not present when the words are spoken is wronged by both: slandered by the one, and taken for a bad man by the other.
"But if we really must march against these men, then come: let the king himself stay at home in the land of the Persians, and let the two of us stake our sons on it. Then you lead the army by yourself, choosing whatever men you like and taking as large an army as you think fit. If things turn out for the king the way you say, let my sons be put to death, and let me be put to death with them. But if they turn out the way I predict, let your sons suffer that, and you with them, if you ever come home. And if you are not willing to submit to this test, but are set on leading an army against Greece no matter what, then I say this: those left behind here will one day hear that Mardonius has done the Persians great harm and lies torn apart by dogs and birds somewhere in the land of the Athenians, or else perhaps in the land of the Spartans, unless it has happened even before that, along the way. And they will hear that you have learned at last what kind of men you are persuading the king to march against."
11. That was what Artabanus said. Xerxes was furious, and answered him: "Artabanus, you are my father's brother, and that will save you from getting the reward your foolish words deserve. But I lay this disgrace on you, since you are a coward with no spirit in you: you will not march with me against Greece, but stay here with the women. And I will accomplish everything I said even without your help. May I not be descended from Darius son of Hystaspes, son of Arsames, son of Ariaramnes, son of Teispes, or from Cyrus son of Cambyses, son of Teispes, son of Achaemenes, if I do not take revenge on the Athenians! For I know well that if we keep quiet, they will not. They will march against our land again, if we can judge by what they have already done, since they burned Sardis and marched into Asia. So it is impossible for either side to back away from this quarrel. The question before us is whether we act or are acted on: whether all these lands of ours fall under the Greeks, or all of theirs under the Persians. In our hostility there is no middle way. So it is right for us, since we were wronged first, to take our revenge. That way I will also find out what this terrible thing is that I am going to suffer if I lead an army against these men, men whom Pelops the Phrygian, a slave of my forefathers, conquered so thoroughly that to this day both the people themselves and their land are named after the man who conquered them."
12. That was how far the talk went. But later, when night came on, Artabanus' opinion kept tormenting Xerxes. He made the night his counselor, and he decided that it was not at all in his interest to march against Greece. Having made this new decision, he fell asleep, and in the night, as the Persians tell it, he saw a vision like this. Xerxes dreamed that a tall, handsome man came and stood over him and said: "So you are changing your mind, Persian, about leading an army against Greece, now that you have proclaimed that the Persians are to gather their forces? You do wrong to change your mind, and the one who stands here before you will not forgive you for it. Go the way you decided to go in the daytime."
13. When he had said this, Xerxes dreamed that the man flew away. When day came, Xerxes paid no attention to this dream. He called together the same Persians he had assembled before and said to them: "Persians, forgive me for changing my plans so quickly. My judgment has not yet come to its full strength, and those who urge me to do what I said never leave me alone for long. When I first heard Artabanus' opinion, my youthful temper boiled over, so that I threw out words I should not have said to a man older than I am. But now I admit he is right, and I will follow his advice. So consider that I have changed my mind about marching against Greece, and stay quietly at home."
14. When the Persians heard this they were delighted, and they bowed down before him. But when night came on, the same dream came again and stood over Xerxes as he slept and said: "Son of Darius, so it is plain that you have given up this expedition in front of the Persian assembly, and that you have paid no attention to my words, as if you had heard them from nobody at all. So be quite sure of this: if you do not set out on your march at once, this is what will come of it for you. Just as you became great and mighty in a short time, so you will quickly be brought low again."
15. Xerxes was badly shaken by fear of the vision. He leapt up from his bed and sent a messenger to summon Artabanus. When he came, Xerxes said to him: "Artabanus, at first I lost my head, when I spoke foolish words to you in return for your good advice. But not long after I changed my mind and saw that I ought to do what you had suggested. But I cannot do it, though I want to. Ever since I turned around and changed my mind, a dream keeps visiting me, and it will not allow me to do it at all. Just now it has left me with a threat. Now, if it is a god who sends it to me, and it is his absolute will that an army should go against Greece, this same dream will fly to you as well, and give you the same orders it has given me. And it occurs to me that this might happen if you take all my clothes and put them on, and then sit on my throne, and after that lie down to sleep in my bed."
16. That was what Xerxes said to him. At first Artabanus was unwilling to obey, because he did not think himself worthy to sit on the royal throne. But at last, when he was pressed further, he did as he was told, though first he said this:
"In my judgment, my king, it is equally good for a man to be wise himself or to be willing to follow good advice from someone else. You have both of these good things, but the company of bad men leads you astray. It is like what they say of the sea, the most useful of all things to mankind: the blasts of wind that fall on it keep it from behaving according to its own nature. As for me, when you insulted me, I was not hurt so much by that. What hurt me was this. Two opinions were put before the Persians. One tended to increase arrogance. The other tended to check it, and said what a bad thing it is to teach the soul always to want more than it has. And when these two opinions were put before us, you chose the one that was more dangerous both for yourself and for the Persians.
"Now that you have turned to the better plan, you say that when you were ready to give up the expedition against the Greeks, a dream sent by some god kept haunting you and forbidding you to abandon the enterprise. But here too you are mistaken, my son. This has nothing divine about it. I am many years older than you, and I will tell you what kind of thing these dreams are that come drifting to men in their sleep. The visions in our dreams mostly take the shape of whatever we were thinking about during the day. And in these past days we have been very much taken up with this campaign.
"But if after all this is not what I take it to be, and there is something divine in it, then you have said everything there is to say: let it appear to me too, as it did to you, and give me orders. But if it wants to appear to me at all, it is not any more bound to appear to me if I am wearing your clothes than if I am wearing my own, or any more if I am resting in your bed than in mine. Surely this thing, whatever it is, that appears to you in your sleep is not so foolish that it will see me and think I am you, just because I am wearing your clothes. What we have to find out now is this: whether it will take no notice of me and not see fit to appear to me, whether I have my own clothes on or yours, but go on haunting you. If it really does keep haunting you, I will be inclined to say myself that it is divine. But if you have made up your mind that it shall be done this way, and there is no turning you from it, and I must go to sleep in your bed, very well: let it appear to me too, when I have done these things. But until then I will hold to the opinion I have now."
17. Having said this, Artabanus did what he was told, expecting to prove that Xerxes was talking nonsense. He put on Xerxes' clothes, sat on the royal throne, and after that went to bed. And when he had fallen asleep, the same dream that had been coming to Xerxes came to him. It stood over Artabanus and said: "So you are the one who is trying to talk Xerxes out of marching against Greece, pretending that you are looking out for him? But you will not get away unpunished, either in the future or now, for trying to turn aside what is fated to happen. As for Xerxes, what he must suffer if he disobeys has already been shown to the man himself."
18. That was how the dream seemed to Artabanus to threaten him, and at the same moment it seemed about to burn out his eyes with red-hot irons. He leapt up from his bed with a loud cry, and sitting down beside Xerxes, he told him the whole vision of the dream from start to finish. Then he said to him: "My king, I have seen many great things brought down by lesser ones, and so I urged you not to give in to every impulse of your youth, since I knew how bad it is to want too many things. I remembered how Cyrus' march against the Massagetae turned out, and also Cambyses' march against the Ethiopians, and I myself took part with Darius in the campaign against the Scythians. Knowing these things, I believed that as long as you stayed quiet, all men would count you fortunate. But since there is a push from heaven, and, it seems, a destruction sent by the gods is taking hold of the Greeks, I am changing my mind myself, and I reverse my opinion. Tell the Persians the message heaven has sent you, and order them to carry out the preparations you first commanded. And see to it that nothing is lacking on your side, since the god is putting this into your hands." After this was said, both of them were encouraged by the vision. As soon as it was day, Xerxes told the Persians about it, and Artabanus, who before had been the only one to come forward and argue against the plan, now came forward to urge it on.
19. Xerxes was now eager to make the expedition, and after this a third vision came to him in his sleep. When the Magi heard it, they explained that it referred to dominion over the whole earth, and meant that all mankind would be his subjects. The vision was this. Xerxes dreamed that he had been crowned with a wreath of olive, and that shoots growing from the olive tree spread over the whole earth, and that after that the wreath, set on his head as it was, vanished. When the Magi had interpreted the vision this way, every one of the Persians who had been assembled went straight home to his own province and set about carrying out the orders with every kind of zeal, each man wanting to win for himself the gifts that had been offered. And so Xerxes went on gathering his army, searching every region of the continent.
20. For four full years after the conquest of Egypt, Xerxes was getting the army ready, along with everything the army would need. Then, in the course of the fifth year, he set out on campaign with an enormous host. Of all the armies we know of, this one was by far the greatest. Next to it, the army Darius led against the Scythians looks like nothing at all. So does the Scythian host, back when the Scythians chased the Cimmerians, invaded the land of the Medes, and conquered and occupied nearly all of upper Asia, the invasion Darius later tried to punish them for. So does the army the sons of Atreus, Agamemnon and Menelaus, led to Troy, to judge by what is reported of that expedition. And so does the army of the Mysians and Teucrians before the Trojan War, who crossed over into Europe by the Bosporus, conquered all the Thracians, and came down as far as the Ionian Sea and as far south as the river Peneus.
21. All these expeditions put together, with any others there may have been added to them, do not equal this one alone. For what nation of Asia did Xerxes not lead out against Greece? And what water was not drunk dry by his host, except for the great rivers? Some peoples supplied ships, and others were assigned to serve in the land army. Some were ordered to provide cavalry, and others ships to carry horses, while also serving in the expedition themselves. Others were told to provide warships for the bridges, and others again ships loaded with provisions.
22. First of all, since the earlier fleet had come to disaster sailing around Athos, preparations had been going on at Athos for about three years. Triremes lay at anchor at Elaeus in the Chersonese, and with this as their base, men of every nation in the army were made to dig, driven to it with whips. They went to the work in regular shifts, one group after another. The people who lived around Athos dug too. Two Persians were put in charge of the work: Bubares son of Megabazus and Artachaees son of Artaeus.
Athos is a great and famous mountain that runs down into the sea, and people live on it. Where the mountain ends on the landward side, the place is like a peninsula, with an isthmus about a mile and a third across. This isthmus is flat ground or low hills, running from the sea off Acanthus to the sea off Torone. On this isthmus, where Athos ends, stands a Greek city called Sane. Beyond Sane, out on the peninsula of Athos itself, are other cities, and at this time the Persian king had decided to make them island cities instead of mainland ones. They are Dion, Olophyxus, Acrothoum, Thyssus and Cleonae.
23. Those are the cities on Athos. And this is how they dug. The ground was divided among the various peoples of the army for the work. At the city of Sane they drew a straight line across the isthmus. When the channel got deep, the men standing at the bottom dug, and handed the earth as it came out to other men standing above them, as if on steps. These passed it up to others in turn, until it reached the men at the very top, who carried it away and dumped it. All of them except the Phoenicians had twice the work, because the steep sides of their trench kept caving in. They were trying to make the opening at the top the same width as the bottom, so something like that was bound to happen as they worked. But the Phoenicians, who show their skill in everything they build, showed it in this work too. When they had been given their share by lot, they started digging with the opening at the top twice as wide as the channel itself was meant to be. As the work went down, they kept narrowing it, so that by the time they reached the bottom their section was the same width as everyone else's. There is a meadow there, where a market was set up for them, a place for buying and selling, and large amounts of grain came for them regularly from Asia, already ground into flour.
24. Making my own guess about this work, it seems to me that Xerxes ordered the canal dug out of a love of grandeur. He wanted to show off his power and leave a monument behind him. For they could have dragged the ships across the isthmus without much trouble, but he ordered them to dig a channel for the sea wide enough for two triremes to be rowed through it side by side. The same men who were assigned the digging were also assigned to bridge the river Strymon, joining its two banks.
25. So that was how Xerxes was going about these things. Meanwhile he also had cables prepared for the bridges, made of papyrus and of white flax, and gave this job to the Phoenicians and the Egyptians. He was also arranging to store up provisions along the route, so that neither the army nor the pack animals would go short as they marched against Greece. He found out by inquiry which places were best, and ordered depots set up in the most convenient spots, with supplies shipped in to different points by merchant ships and ferryboats from every country in Asia. Most of the grain was carried to a place in Thrace called Leuce Acte, "White Cape." Others carried supplies to Tyrodiza in the territory of Perinthus, others to Doriscus, others to Eion on the Strymon, and others to Macedonia, the work being divided among them.
26. While these people were working at the jobs they had been given, the whole land army had been gathered and was marching with Xerxes to Sardis, setting out from Critalla in Cappadocia. That was where the whole army that was to go with Xerxes himself by land had been ordered to assemble. Which of the provincial governors brought the best-equipped force and won the prizes the king had offered, I can't say, because I do not know that it ever even came to a judging. After they crossed the river Halys and entered Phrygia, they marched through that country and came to Celaenae. There the springs of the river Maeander rise, and also those of another river no smaller than the Maeander, called the Catarractes. This one rises right in the marketplace of Celaenae and runs into the Maeander. Also in this city hangs the skin of Marsyas the Silenus, the satyr who challenged Apollo to a music contest; the Phrygians say Apollo flayed it off him and hung it up there.
27. In this city a Lydian, Pythius son of Atys, was waiting for the king. He entertained Xerxes himself and his whole army with the most lavish hospitality, and declared he was ready to supply money for the war as well. When Pythius offered money, Xerxes asked the Persians who were with him who this Pythius was and how much money he had, to make an offer like that. They said: "My king, this is the man who gave your father Darius the golden plane tree and the golden vine. And even now he is the richest man we know of, after you alone."
28. Xerxes was amazed at the last part of this, and next he asked Pythius himself how much money he had. Pythius said: "My king, I will not hide the truth from you, or pretend I don't know what I own. I will count it out for you exactly, since I know the truth of it. As soon as I heard that you were coming down to the Greek sea, I wanted to give you money for the war, so I found out the facts. When I added it up, I found I had 2,000 talents of silver, and of gold, 4,000,000 daric staters, the Persian gold coin, less 7,000. All of this I give to you. For myself, my slaves and my estates give me enough to live on."
29. That is what he said. Xerxes was pleased with his words and replied: "My Lydian host, since I left the land of Persia I have met no one else up to now who wanted to entertain my army, or who came before me and offered of his own free will to contribute money to me for the war, no one except you. You have not only entertained my army magnificently, you are now offering me huge sums of money as well. So in return I give you these rewards. I make you my guest-friend. And I will make up your 4,000,000 staters by giving you the 7,000 myself, so that your 4,000,000 will not fall 7,000 short, and you will have a round sum, made complete by me. Keep what you have earned for yourself, and be sure always to act like this. If you do, you will never be sorry for it, either now or later."
30. Having said this and kept his promise, he marched on. He passed a Phrygian city called Anaua and a lake where salt is harvested, and came to Colossae, a great city of Phrygia. There the river Lycus drops into an opening in the earth and disappears from sight. Then, after about half a mile, it comes up into view again, and this river too flows into the Maeander. Setting out from Colossae toward the border of Phrygia and Lydia, the army reached the city of Cydrara. A pillar stands there, set up by Croesus, with an inscription declaring that the border is at that spot.
31. From Phrygia, then, he entered Lydia. Here the road splits in two. The left-hand road leads toward Caria, and the right-hand one to Sardis. Taking the right-hand road, you have to cross the river Maeander and pass the city of Callatebus, where the men make honey for a living, out of the tamarisk tree and wheat flour. Xerxes took this road, and on it he found a plane tree so beautiful that he adorned it with gold and appointed a man to guard it forever, one keeper after another. On the next day he came to the Lydians' capital.
32. When he reached Sardis, the first thing he did was send heralds to Greece to demand earth and water, and also to give notice in advance that dinners should be prepared for the king. He sent to every state except Athens and Sparta; to those two he did not send to ask for earth. The reason he sent a second time to ask for earth and water was this: he thought that all those who had not given it when Darius sent before would certainly give it now, out of fear. He wanted to know this for certain, and so he sent.
33. After this he got ready to march to Abydos. Meanwhile his men were bridging the Hellespont from Asia to Europe. In the Chersonese on the Hellespont, between the city of Sestos and Madytus, there is a broad headland running down into the sea directly opposite Abydos. This is the place where, not long afterward, the Athenians under Xanthippus son of Ariphron captured Artayctes, a Persian who was governor of Sestos, and nailed him alive to a plank with his hands and feet stretched out. (He was the man who used to bring women into the temple of Protesilaus at Elaeus and do things there that are forbidden.)
34. It was to this headland that the men given the job built their bridges, starting from Abydos. The Phoenicians built one with cables of white flax, and the Egyptians the other, made with papyrus cables. From Abydos to the opposite shore is a distance of about 4,200 feet, a little under a mile. But when the strait had been bridged, a great storm blew up, smashed all the work to pieces and broke it apart.
When Xerxes heard this he was furious. He ordered the Hellespont to be given three hundred lashes with the whip and a pair of shackles to be dropped into the sea. I have even heard that he sent branders along with them to brand the Hellespont. In any case, he ordered them, as they whipped it, to say these barbarous and arrogant words: "You bitter water, your master lays this punishment on you, because you wronged him when he had done you no wrong. And King Xerxes will cross you whether you like it or not. It is right, it seems, that no man offers you sacrifice, since you are a treacherous and salty river." That was how he ordered them to punish the sea. And he ordered that the men in charge of bridging the Hellespont should have their heads cut off.
36. So the men who had been given this ugly duty carried it out, and meanwhile other master builders set to work on the bridges. This is how they built them. They lashed together fifty-oared galleys and triremes, 360 to go under the bridge on the Black Sea side and 314 under the other. The ships lay along the line of the Hellespont's current (though crosswise to the Black Sea), to take the strain of the cables. They set them side by side like this and let down very large anchors: on the one side, toward the Black Sea, because of the winds that blow out from it, and on the other side, toward the west and the Aegean, because of the southeast and south winds. They also left a gap to pass through, so that anyone who wanted could sail into the Black Sea in small boats, and out of it again.
When this was done, they stretched the cables tight from the shore, hauling them taut with wooden windlasses. This time they did not use the two kinds of cable separately. Instead they gave each bridge two cables of white flax and four of papyrus. The thickness and the quality of the work were the same for both, but the flax cables were heavier in proportion: every foot and a half of this cable weighed a talent, about fifty-seven pounds. When the strait was bridged, they sawed up logs, cut them to the width of the bridge, and laid them across the taut cables. Once they had set them in a row, they fastened them down on top. When this was done, they brought on brushwood, and when the brushwood was in place, they brought earth on top of that. When they had stamped the earth down hard, they built a fence along each side, so that the pack animals and horses would not be frightened by looking out over the sea.
37. When the bridges had been finished, and word came that the works at Athos were fully complete, both the canal itself and the breakwaters at its two mouths (these were built to keep the surf from filling up the mouths), the army, which had spent the winter at Sardis, set out from there at the beginning of spring, fully equipped, to march to Abydos. Just as it was setting out, the sun left its place in the sky and vanished, though there were no clouds and the sky was perfectly clear, and day turned into night. When Xerxes saw and understood this, it worried him, and he asked the Magi what the sign meant. They declared that the god was showing the Greeks in advance that their cities would be abandoned. The sun, they said, foretold the future for the Greeks, but the moon for the Persians. When he heard this, Xerxes went on with the march overjoyed.
38. As he was leading his army out, Pythius the Lydian, alarmed by the sign in the sky and made bold by the gifts he had received, came to Xerxes and said: "Master, I would like to ask you for something. It happens to be an easy thing for you to grant, but a great thing for me, if I get it." Xerxes, who thought the request would be anything but what it turned out to be, said he would grant it, and told him to say what he wanted. When Pythius heard this, he took courage and said: "Master, it happens that I have five sons, and it is their lot to be marching with you, all of them together, against Greece. So, my king, take pity on me, now that I have come to such an old age, and release one of my sons from serving in the expedition, the eldest, so that he can take care of me and of my property. Take the other four with you, and when you have done what you have in mind, may you come home safe."
39. Xerxes was furiously angry and answered him: "You miserable man! I am marching against Greece myself, taking my sons and my brothers and my relatives and friends, and you dare to mention a son of yours? You, who are my slave, and who ought to be following me yourself with your whole household, your wife included? Now understand this: a man's spirit lives in his ears. When it hears good things it fills the body with delight, but when it hears the opposite it swells up with rage. When you did us good service before and offered to do more of the same, you could not boast of having outdone the king in generosity. And now that you have turned shameless, you will not get what you deserve, but less than you deserve. Your hospitality will save you and four of your sons from death. But you will pay the penalty with the life of the one you cling to most." After giving this answer, he immediately ordered the men whose job it was to find Pythius' eldest son and cut him in half through the middle. When they had cut him in two, they were to set the halves on either side of the road, one on the right and one on the left, and the army was to march out between them.
40. When they had done this, the army marched out between the halves. First came the baggage carriers with their pack animals, and after them the host of every kind of nation, all mixed together without distinction. When more than half of these had gone by, a space was left, to keep them apart from the king. In front of the king came first a thousand horsemen, picked from all the Persians. After them came a thousand spearmen, also picked from all the Persians, carrying their spears with the points turned down toward the ground. Then came ten sacred horses called "Nesaean," in the finest possible harness. The horses are called Nesaean for this reason: there is a wide plain in Media called the Nesaean plain, and it breeds the big horses I am talking about. Behind these ten horses came the sacred chariot of Zeus, drawn by eight white horses. Behind the horses followed the charioteer on foot, holding the reins, since no human being ever climbs up onto the seat of that chariot. Behind this came Xerxes himself, in a chariot drawn by Nesaean horses, and beside him rode a charioteer whose name was Patiramphes, son of Otanes, a Persian.
41. That was how Xerxes marched out of Sardis, and whenever he felt like it he would change from the chariot to a covered carriage. Behind him came a thousand spearmen, the best and noblest of the Persians, holding their spear points up in the usual way. After them came another thousand horsemen picked from the Persians, and after the horsemen ten thousand men picked from the rest of the Persians. These went on foot. A thousand of them had golden pomegranates on their spears instead of the spikes on the butt end, and these thousand surrounded the others on the outside, while the other nine thousand marched inside them and had silver pomegranates. The men with their spear points turned toward the ground also had golden pomegranates, and those who followed right behind Xerxes had golden apples. Behind the ten thousand came a body of ten thousand Persian cavalry. After the cavalry a gap of as much as 1,200 feet was left, and then the rest of the host came marching along without distinction.
42. So the army made its way from Lydia to the river Caicus and the land of Mysia. Setting out from the Caicus, and keeping Mount Cane on its left, it marched through the region of Atarneus to the city of Carene. From there it went through the plain of Thebe, passing the city of Adramyttium and Antandrus of the Pelasgians. Then, keeping Mount Ida on its left, it came into the land of Troy. The first thing that happened there was that when it stopped for the night right under Mount Ida, thunder and lightning bolts fell on it and killed a great many men on that very spot.
43. Then the army came to the river Scamander. Of all the rivers they had reached since setting out from Sardis on their march, this was the first whose stream gave out and was not enough for the army and its animals to drink. When Xerxes had come to this river, he went up to the citadel of Priam, because he wanted to see it. When he had seen it and asked about everything there, one thing after another, he sacrificed a thousand heifers to Athena of Troy, and the Magi poured offerings to the heroes. After they had done this, a panic fell on the army in the night. At daybreak he marched on from there, keeping on his left the cities of Rhoeteum, Ophryneum and Dardanus, which borders on Abydos, and on his right the Gergithian Teucrians, a people descended from the old Trojans.
44. When Xerxes had reached the middle of Abydos, he wanted to see his whole army. A raised throne of white stone had already been built for him on purpose on a hill there; the people of Abydos had made it on the king's orders, given in advance. There he sat, looking down at the shore, and gazed at both the land army and the ships. As he looked at them he wanted to see the ships race. The race was held, and the Phoenicians of Sidon won it, and he was delighted both with the race and with his whole force.
45. And when he saw the whole Hellespont covered with ships, and all the shores and plains of Abydos full of men, Xerxes called himself a happy man, and after that he began to weep.
46. His uncle Artabanus noticed. This was the same man who had at first spoken his mind so boldly, advising Xerxes not to march against Greece. Seeing that Xerxes was weeping, he asked: "My king, how different from each other are what you did just now and what you did a moment ago! You called yourself a happy man, and now you are in tears." Xerxes said: "Yes, because as I was counting them up, it came into my mind to feel pity at how short the whole of a man's life is, since out of all these thousands, not one will be alive a hundred years from now." Artabanus answered: "There is something else we suffer in the course of our lives that is more pitiful than that. Short as life is, no man, whether among these here or anywhere else, is born so happy that the wish to be dead rather than alive will not come to him many times, and not just once. Misfortunes fall on us, and diseases trouble us, and they make life seem long, short as it really is. So, since life is full of trouble, death has become the most welcome refuge for a man. And heaven, which has given us a taste of how sweet life is, turns out in this to be full of jealousy."
47. Xerxes answered: "Artabanus, human life is what you say it is, but let us stop talking about it, and let's not remember bad things when we have good things in hand. Tell me this instead. If the vision in the dream had not appeared so clearly, would you still hold your earlier opinion and be trying to stop me from marching against Greece, or would you have changed your mind? Come, tell me exactly." Artabanus answered: "My king, may the vision in the dream come true the way we both want it to! But even now I am full of fear and can hardly contain myself. I am taking many things into account, and above all I see that the two greatest things of all are your bitter enemies."
48. Xerxes answered: "You strangest of men, what are these two things you say are my bitter enemies? Is there something wrong with the size of the land army? Do you think the Greek army will turn out to be many times bigger than ours? Or that our fleet will fall short of theirs? Or both together? If you think our power falls short in these ways, another force could be gathered at once."
49. Artabanus answered: "My king, no one with any sense would find fault with this army, or with the number of the ships. In fact, if you gather more, the two things I mean will become even more your enemies. These two things are the land and the sea. On the sea, as I imagine, there is no harbor anywhere big enough to take in this fleet of yours if a storm blows up, and to keep the ships safe until it is over. And there ought to be not just one such harbor, but harbors like it all along the coast of the mainland you are sailing past. Since there are no harbors to take in your ships, understand that men do not rule chance; chance rules men. Now that I have told you one of the two things, I will tell you the other. The land is your enemy in this way. If nothing comes to oppose you, the land grows more hostile to you the farther you advance, always drawn on a little farther, for men are never satisfied with good fortune. What I am saying is this: with no one standing against you, the land you cover will keep growing as time goes on, and it will bring you famine. A man is at his best when he is afraid while he is making his plans, counting on suffering everything that could possibly happen, but bold when he is carrying them out."
50. Xerxes answered: "Artabanus, what you say about these things is reasonable. But don't fear everything, or weigh every danger equally. If you were to weigh every danger equally in every matter that came up, you would never do anything at all. It is better to have courage about everything and suffer half the evils that threaten than to be afraid of everything in advance and suffer nothing at all. And if you argue against everything that is proposed, but never point out the safe course, then you are just as open to the charge of failure as the man who argues the opposite. So the two are evenly matched. But how can a mere man know the safe course? I don't think he can. As a rule, the people who are willing to act are the ones who gain, while those who weigh everything and hold back don't gain much. You see the power of the Persians, how great it has grown. If the kings before me had held opinions like yours, or, without holding them, had had advisers like you, you would never have seen it come this far. As it is, they brought it this far by taking risks, because great power is generally won by taking great risks. So we are following their example. We are marching at the finest season of the year, and when we have conquered all Europe we will come home again without having met famine anywhere or suffered anything else unpleasant. For one thing, we are marching with great stores of food of our own. For another, we will have the grain crops of every people whose land we come to. And we are marching against men who farm the soil, not against nomads."
51. Then Artabanus said: "My king, since you will not let us fear anything, at least take one piece of advice from me. When there is a lot to discuss, it takes a lot of talk. Cyrus son of Cambyses conquered all of Ionia except Athens, and made it pay tribute to the Persians. My advice is that you should on no account lead these Ionians against the people they came from. We are strong enough to beat our enemies even without them. Suppose they come with us. Then they must either prove themselves great wrongdoers, by helping to enslave their mother city, or great doers of right, by helping to set her free. If they turn out great wrongdoers, they don't add very much to our gains. But if they turn out great doers of right, they are in a position to do your army a great deal of damage. So take to heart this old saying too, how true it is: at the beginning of a thing, its end is never fully in view."
52. Xerxes answered: "Artabanus, of all the opinions you have given, this one is the most mistaken. You are afraid the Ionians will change sides. But about them we have the surest proof there is. You are a witness to it yourself, and so are all the others who went with Darius on his march against the Scythians. At that time the safety of the whole Persian army depended on these men, whether they chose to destroy it or to save it. And they showed honesty and loyalty, and nothing hostile at all. Besides, since they have left their children and wives and property in our land, we must not even imagine that they will rebel. So don't be afraid of this either. Keep up your courage, and keep my house and my rule safe. For to you, out of all men, I am handing over my scepter."
53. After saying this, Xerxes sent Artabanus back to Susa. Next he summoned the most distinguished of the Persians, and when they had come before him he said to them: "Persians, I have brought you together because I want this from you: that you show yourselves brave men and do not disgrace the deeds the Persians have done before, which are great and glorious. Let each one of us on his own, and all of us together, put our hearts into this enterprise, because what we are working for is the common good of all. And I urge you to keep at this war without letting up, because, as I am told, we are marching against brave men. If we beat them, there is no other army in the world that will ever stand against us. So let us begin the crossing, after we have prayed to the gods who have Persia in their keeping."
54. All that day they were getting ready to cross. On the next day they waited for the sun, wanting to see it rise, and meanwhile they burned all kinds of incense on the bridges and strewed the road with myrtle branches. Then, as the sun was rising, Xerxes poured an offering into the sea from a golden cup and prayed to the sun that no accident would happen to him that would stop him from conquering Europe until he had reached its farthest borders. After this prayer he threw the cup into the Hellespont, and with it a golden mixing bowl and a Persian sword of the kind they call an akinakes. But whether he threw them into the sea as an offering to the sun, or whether he regretted whipping the Hellespont and wanted to give the sea a gift to make up for it, I can't say for certain.
55. When Xerxes had done this, they began to cross. The whole fighting army, foot and horse, went over by one bridge, the one on the Black Sea side, while the pack animals and the camp followers went over by the other, toward the Aegean. First came the ten thousand Persians, all wearing wreaths, and after them the mixed host of every kind of nation. These crossed on the first day. On the next day the first to cross were the horsemen and the men who carried their spear points turned down, these also wearing wreaths. After them came the sacred horses and the sacred chariot, then Xerxes himself with the spearmen and the thousand horsemen, and after them the rest of the army. Meanwhile the ships too put out from shore and crossed to the other side. But I have also heard another account, which says that the king crossed over last of all.
56. When Xerxes had crossed into Europe, he watched his army crossing under the whip. His army took seven days and seven nights to cross, going on without a break. And then, it is said, when Xerxes had crossed the Hellespont, a man who lived there on the shore cried out: "Zeus, why have you taken the shape of a Persian man and the name of Xerxes instead of Zeus, and why are you bringing all the nations of the world with you to lay Greece waste? You could have done it without any of them."
57. When they had all crossed over and set out on their way, a great portent appeared to them. Xerxes took no notice of it, although its meaning was easy to guess: a mare gave birth to a hare. The meaning was easy to guess in this way: Xerxes was about to march an army against Greece in great pride and splendor, but he would come back again to the place he started from, running for his life. There had also been a portent of another kind while he was still at Sardis. A mule gave birth, and the foal was a mule with sex organs of both kinds, male and female, with the male organs above. But Xerxes took no notice of either portent. He went on his way, and the land army with him.
58. Meanwhile the fleet was sailing out of the Hellespont and along the coast, heading in the opposite direction from the land army. The fleet was sailing west, making for the headland of Sarpedon, where it had been ordered in advance to go and wait for the army. The land army, meanwhile, was marching east, toward the sunrise, through the Chersonese. It kept the tomb of Helle the daughter of Athamas on its right and the city of Cardia on its left, and it marched straight through the middle of a town called Agora. From there it curved around the gulf called Melas and crossed the river Melas, which gives the gulf its name. That river's water was not enough for the army this time, and it ran dry. After crossing it, the army went on westward, past Aenus, a city of the Aeolians, and past the lake of Stentoris, until at last it came to Doriscus.
59. Doriscus is a beach and a very large plain in Thrace, and the great river Hebrus flows through it. A royal fortress had been built there, the one that is now called Doriscus, and Darius had kept a garrison of Persians in it ever since the time he marched against the Scythians. So it seemed to Xerxes that this was a convenient place to put his army in order and count it, and that is what he did. When the commanders of the fleet arrived at Doriscus, on Xerxes' orders they brought all their ships to the beach next to Doriscus. On that stretch of coast stand Sale, a city of the Samothracians, and Zone, and at its far end is the well-known headland of Serrheum; in ancient times the region belonged to the Ciconians. They brought their ships in to this beach, hauled them up on land, and let them dry out. During this time Xerxes was counting the army at Doriscus.
60. Now I cannot give exact figures for the number each separate nation supplied, because no one reports it. But the whole land army taken together came to 1,700,000 men. This is how they counted them. They gathered 10,000 men together in one place, packed them in as tightly as they could, and drew a circle around them on the outside. Once they had drawn the circle, they let the 10,000 men go, and built a wall of rough stones around the line of the circle, up to the height of a man's navel. When this was done, they made other men go into the walled space, and then others, until in this way they had counted them all. After they had counted them, they arranged them by nations.
61. Those who served were as follows.
The Persians, with this equipment. On their heads they wore soft felt caps called tiaras. On their bodies they wore colorful tunics with sleeves, covered with iron scales that looked like the scales of a fish, and on their legs they wore trousers. Instead of ordinary shields they carried shields of wickerwork, with their quivers hanging underneath. They had short spears, large bows, arrows of reed, and daggers hanging from their belts beside the right thigh. Their commander was Otanes, the father of Xerxes' wife Amestris. In ancient times the Greeks called these Persians Cephenes, but they called themselves Artaeans, and so did their neighbors. Then Perseus, the son of Danae and Zeus, came to Cepheus the son of Belus and married his daughter Andromeda. A son was born to them, and Perseus named him Perses. He left this son behind there, since Cepheus happened to have no male children, and the people took their name from him.
62. The Medes served in the army with exactly the same equipment, for this equipment is in fact Median, not Persian. Their commander was Tigranes, an Achaemenid. In ancient times everyone called them Arians, but when Medea the Colchian came from Athens to these Arians, they changed their name too. That is what the Medes themselves say about themselves. The Cissians served with equipment like the Persians' in other respects, but instead of felt caps they wore headbands. The commander of the Cissians was Anaphes the son of Otanes. The Hyrcanians were armed like the Persians. Their leader was Megapanus, the same man who later became governor of Babylon.
63. The Assyrians served wearing helmets of bronze on their heads, or else helmets woven in a foreign style that is hard to describe. They had shields and spears, daggers like the Egyptian knives, wooden clubs studded with iron, and linen breastplates. The Greeks call these people Syrians, but the non-Greeks have always called them Assyrians. Among them were the Chaldeans. Their commander was Otaspes the son of Artachaees.
64. The Bactrians served wearing on their heads almost the same headgear as the Medes, with native bows of reed and short spears. The Sacan Scythians wore tall caps on their heads, stiff and upright and coming to a point. They wore trousers and carried native bows and daggers, and also battle-axes of the kind called sagaris. These were called Amyrgian Sacae, though in fact they were Scythians, for the Persians call all Scythians Sacae. The commander of the Bactrians and Sacae was Hystaspes, the son of Darius and of Cyrus' daughter Atossa.
65. The Indians wore clothes made of tree-wool, that is, cotton. They had bows of reed and arrows of reed tipped with iron. That was how the Indians were equipped. They served under Pharnazathres the son of Artabates.
66. The Arians were equipped with Median bows, and otherwise like the Bactrians. The commander of the Arians was Sisamnes the son of Hydarnes. The Parthians, the Chorasmians, the Sogdians, the Gandarians and the Dadicans served with the same equipment as the Bactrians. Their commanders were Artabazus the son of Pharnaces, over the Parthians and Chorasmians; Azanes the son of Artaeus, over the Sogdians; and Artyphius the son of Artabanus, over the Gandarians and Dadicans.
67. The Caspians served wearing coats of skin, with native bows of reed and short swords. That was how they were equipped, and their leader was Ariomardus, the brother of Artyphius. The Sarangians stood out from the rest because they wore dyed clothes. They had boots that came up to the knee, and Median bows and spears. Their commander was Pherendates the son of Megabazus. The Pactyans wore coats of skin and had native bows and daggers. Their commander was Artayntes the son of Ithamitres.
68. The Utians, the Mycians and the Paricanians were equipped like the Pactyans. Their commanders were Arsamenes the son of Darius, over the Utians and Mycians, and Siromitres the son of Oeobazus, over the Paricanians.
69. The Arabians wore loose cloaks belted up, and carried long bows at their right side that bent backward. The Ethiopians wore the skins of leopards and lions tied on them. Their bows were made from a strip of palm wood and were very long, at least six feet. With these they used small arrows of reed tipped not with iron but with a sharpened stone, the same kind of stone they use to carve seals. They also had spears, and on them, for a spearhead, the sharpened horn of a gazelle. They also had studded clubs. When they went into battle they painted half of their bodies with white and the other half with red. The commander of the Arabians and of the Ethiopians who live beyond Egypt was Arsames, the son of Darius and of Artystone the daughter of Cyrus. Artystone was the wife Darius loved most of all his wives, and he had a statue of her made of beaten gold.
70. So Arsames commanded the Ethiopians from beyond Egypt and the Arabians. But the Ethiopians from the east (for there were two bodies of Ethiopians) had been assigned to serve with the Indians. They were no different from the other Ethiopians except in their language and their hair. The eastern Ethiopians have straight hair, while the Ethiopians of Libya have the thickest, most tightly curled hair of any people on earth. These Ethiopians from Asia were armed mostly like the Indians, but on their heads they wore the skin of a horse's forehead, stripped off with the ears and the mane still on it. The mane served as a crest, and they kept the horse's ears standing up straight and stiff. Instead of shields they held up in front of them guards made of the skins of cranes.
71. The Libyans came in leather gear and used javelins hardened in the fire at the point. Their commander was Massages the son of Oarizus.
72. The Paphlagonians served with woven helmets on their heads, small shields, spears of no great size, javelins and daggers. On their feet they wore native boots reaching halfway up the shin. The Ligyans, the Matienians, the Mariandynians and the Syrians served with the same equipment as the Paphlagonians. (These Syrians are the people the Persians call Cappadocians.) The commander of the Paphlagonians and Matienians was Dotus the son of Megasidrus. The commander of the Mariandynians, the Ligyans and the Syrians was Gobryas, the son of Darius and Artystone.
73. The Phrygians had equipment very much like the Paphlagonians', with only small differences. According to the Macedonians, the Phrygians were called Brigians for as long as they lived in Europe as neighbors of the Macedonians. But when they moved to Asia they changed their name along with their country and were called Phrygians. The Armenians were armed exactly like the Phrygians, since they are colonists of the Phrygians. The commander of these two peoples together was Artochmes, who was married to a daughter of Darius.
74. The Lydians had weapons very close to those of the Greeks. In old times the Lydians were called Meonians, and they changed their earlier name and took a new one from Lydus the son of Atys. The Mysians wore native helmets on their heads, carried small shields, and used javelins hardened in the fire at the point. They are colonists of the Lydians, and they are called Olympieni after Mount Olympus. The commander of the Lydians and Mysians was Artaphernes the son of Artaphernes, the man who invaded at Marathon together with Datis.
75. The Thracians served wearing fox skins on their heads and tunics on their bodies, with colorful loose cloaks wrapped over them. On their feet and lower legs they wore boots of deerskin. They also had javelins, small round shields and little daggers. When they crossed over into Asia they came to be called Bithynians, but before that, as they themselves say, they were called Strymonians, because they lived on the river Strymon. They say they were driven out of their homes by the Teucrians and the Mysians. The commander of the Thracians who lived in Asia was Bassaces the son of Artabanus.
76. The next people's name has dropped out of the text as it has come down to us. They had small shields of raw oxhide, and each man carried two hunting spears of Lycian make. On their heads they wore bronze helmets, and on the helmets were the ears and horns of an ox, made of bronze, and crests on top of those. Their lower legs were wrapped in strips of red cloth. These people have an oracle of Ares.
77. The Meonian Cabelians, who are called Lasonians, had the same equipment as the Cilicians, and I will explain what that was when I come to the Cilician contingent in the course of my list. The Milyans had short spears and wore their clothes fastened with brooches. Some of them had Lycian bows, and on their heads they wore leather caps. The commander of all these was Badres the son of Hystanes.
78. The Moschians wore wooden helmets on their heads and carried shields and small spears with long points set on them. The Tibarenians, the Macronians and the Mossynoecians served with equipment like the Moschians'. These were grouped together under the following commanders. The Moschians and Tibarenians were under Ariomardus, the son of Darius and of Parmys, who was the daughter of Smerdis son of Cyrus. The Macronians and Mossynoecians were under Artayctes the son of Cherasmis, who was governor of Sestos on the Hellespont.
79. The Mares wore native woven helmets on their heads and carried small shields of hide and javelins. The Colchians wore wooden helmets on their heads and carried small shields of raw oxhide, short spears and also knives. The commander of the Mares and Colchians was Pharandates the son of Teaspis. The Alarodians and the Saspeirians served armed like the Colchians, and their commander was Masistius the son of Siromitres.
80. The island peoples who came with the army from the Persian Gulf, from the islands where the king settles the people called "the Removed," had clothing and weapons very much like the Medes'. The commander of these islanders was Mardontes the son of Bagaeus, who was one of the generals at Mycale the year after these events and was killed in the battle.
81. These were the nations that served on land in this campaign and had been assigned to the infantry. The men I have named were the commanders of this army. They were the ones who arranged it in divisions and counted it, and who appointed the commanders of thousands and the commanders of ten thousands. The commanders of hundreds and of tens were appointed by the commanders of ten thousands. There were also others who were leaders of companies and nations.
82. The men I have named were the commanders of the army. Over them, and over the whole infantry together, the generals were Mardonius the son of Gobryas; Tritantaechmes the son of that Artabanus who had advised against the march on Greece; Smerdomenes the son of Otanes (these two were sons of Darius' brothers, and so cousins of Xerxes); Masistes the son of Darius and Atossa; Gergis the son of Ariazus; and Megabyzus the son of Zopyrus.
83. These were the generals of the whole infantry together, except for the 10,000. The general of those 10,000 picked Persians was Hydarnes the son of Hydarnes. These Persians were called the "Immortals," because whenever any one of them dropped out of the number, carried off by death or by sickness, another man was chosen in his place. So they were never more and never fewer than 10,000. Of all the nations, the Persians made the most splendid show, and they were also the best fighters. They had the equipment I have described, and besides that they stood out from the rest because they wore gold in great quantities, lavishly. They brought carriages with them, and in them their concubines and a crowd of well-equipped servants. Camels and pack animals carried their food, separate from the rest of the soldiers'.
84. The nations that serve as cavalry are these, though not all of them supplied cavalry, only the ones listed here. The Persians were equipped the same way as their infantry, except that some of them wore headpieces of hammered bronze or iron.
85. There are also certain nomads called Sagartians, Persian by race and language, whose dress is halfway between that of the Persians and that of the Pactyans. These supplied 8,000 horsemen. It is not their custom to carry any weapons of bronze or iron except daggers. Instead they use ropes plaited out of strips of leather, and rely on these when they go to war. This is how these men fight. When they meet the enemy, they throw the ropes, which have nooses at the end. Whatever a man catches with his throw, horse or man, he drags toward himself, and the victims, tangled up in the coils, are killed.
86. That is how these men fight, and they were posted next to the Persians. The Medes had the same equipment as their infantry, and so did the Cissians. The Indians were armed the same way as their infantry, and they both rode horses and drove chariots pulled by horses or wild donkeys. The Bactrians were equipped like their infantry, and so were the Caspians. The Libyans were equipped like their infantry too, and they all drove chariots as well. In the same way, the Caspians and Paricanians were equipped like their infantry, and they all rode camels, which were every bit as fast as horses.
87. These nations alone served as cavalry, and the number of the cavalry came to 80,000, not counting the camels and the chariots. The rest of the cavalry was drawn up in squadrons, but the Arabians were posted behind them, last of all. The horses could not stand the camels, and so the Arabians were placed last to keep the horses from being frightened.
88. The commanders of the cavalry were Harmamithres and Tithaeus, the sons of Datis. The third commander of cavalry with them, Pharnuches, had been left behind sick at Sardis. Just as they were setting out from Sardis, he met with an unlucky accident. As he was riding, a dog ran under his horse's feet. The horse, which had not seen it coming, took fright, reared up and threw Pharnuches off its back. He vomited blood from the fall, and his illness turned into a wasting disease. As for the horse, his servants did at once what he ordered: they led it away to the place where it had thrown its master and cut off its legs at the knees. That is how Pharnuches lost his command.
89. The number of the triremes came to 1,207, and these are the peoples who supplied them. The Phoenicians, together with the Syrians who live in Palestine, supplied 300. They were equipped like this: on their heads they wore leather helmets made very much in the Greek style, and they wore linen breastplates and carried shields without rims, and javelins. These Phoenicians, as they themselves say, lived in ancient times on the Persian Gulf. From there they crossed over and settled on the coast of Syria, and this part of Syria, and all the land as far as Egypt, is called Palestine. The Egyptians supplied 200 ships. They wore woven helmets on their heads and carried hollow shields with broad rims, spears made for fighting at sea, and large axes. Most of them wore breastplates and carried large knives.
90. That was how these men were equipped. The Cyprians supplied 150 ships, and were equipped as follows. Their kings wore headbands wound around their heads, and the rest wore tunics, but in other respects they were like the Greeks. They are made up of various peoples: some come from Salamis and Athens, some from Arcadia, some from Cythnus, some from Phoenicia and some from Ethiopia, as the Cyprians themselves say.
91. The Cilicians supplied 100 ships. They too wore native helmets on their heads, and for shields they carried small round targets of raw oxhide. They wore woolen tunics, and each man had two javelins and a sword made very much like the Egyptian knives. In old times they were called Hypachaeans, and they took their later name from Cilix the son of Agenor, a Phoenician. The Pamphylians supplied 30 ships and were armed in the Greek style. These Pamphylians are descended from the people who were scattered from Troy with Amphilochus and Calchas.
92. The Lycians supplied 50 ships. They wore breastplates and greaves, and carried bows of cornel wood, arrows of reed without feathers, and javelins. They wore goatskins hanging over their shoulders, and on their heads felt caps with a ring of feathers around them. They also had daggers and curved swords. The Lycians were once called Termilae and came originally from Crete. They took their later name from Lycus the son of Pandion, an Athenian.
93. The Dorians of Asia supplied 30 ships. They had Greek weapons and came originally from the Peloponnese. The Carians supplied 70 ships. They were equipped like Greeks in other respects, but they also had curved swords and daggers. What their earlier name was I have already told in the first part of my history.
94. The Ionians supplied 100 ships and were equipped like Greeks. As long as the Ionians lived in the Peloponnese, in the land now called Achaea, before Danaus and Xuthus came to the Peloponnese, they were called, as the Greeks say, the Pelasgians of the Coast. Later they were called Ionians after Ion the son of Xuthus.
95. The islanders supplied 17 ships and were armed like Greeks. They too are a Pelasgian people, but later they came to be called Ionian by the same rule as the Ionians of the twelve cities, who came from Athens. The Aeolians supplied 60 ships. They were equipped like Greeks, and in old times they were called Pelasgians, as the Greeks say. The Hellespontians supplied 100 ships, except for the people of Abydos, whom the king had ordered to stay at home and guard the bridges. The rest of those who joined the expedition from the Black Sea region supplied these 100 ships, and they were equipped like Greeks. They are colonists of the Ionians and the Dorians.
96. On all the ships the fighting men were Persians, Medes or Sacae. Of the ships, the best sailers were supplied by the Phoenicians, and among the Phoenicians, by the men of Sidon. Over all these men, and over the ones of them assigned to the land army too, each people had its own native chiefs. I do not mention them, since the course of my inquiry does not oblige me to. For one thing, the chiefs of each separate nation were not worth mentioning; for another, in each nation there were as many chiefs as there were cities. These men came on the expedition not as commanders but as slaves, like the rest of the soldiers. The generals who held full power and commanded the different nations, the ones who were Persians, I have already named.
97. The commanders of the navy were Ariabignes the son of Darius, Prexaspes the son of Aspathines, Megabazus the son of Megabates, and Achaemenes the son of Darius. Ariabignes, the son of Darius and of Gobryas' daughter, commanded the Ionian and Carian fleet. Achaemenes, Xerxes' full brother on both his father's and his mother's side, commanded the Egyptians. The other two commanded the rest of the fleet. In addition, ships of thirty oars and of fifty oars, light boats, and long transports for carrying horses had been brought together, and their number came to 3,000.
98. Of the men who sailed in the fleet, after the commanders, these were the most notable: from Sidon, Tetramnestus son of Anysus; from Tyre, Matten son of Siromus; from Aradus, Merbalus son of Agbalus; from Cilicia, Syennesis son of Oromedon; from Lycia, Cyberniscus son of Sicas; from Cyprus, Gorgus son of Chersis and Timonax son of Timagoras; and from Caria, Histiaeus son of Tymnes, Pigres son of Hysseldomus, and Damasithymus son of Candaules.
99. I make no mention of the rest of the officers, since I am not obliged to, except for Artemisia. She amazes me more than anyone, a woman who joined the expedition against Greece. Her husband had died, and she held power herself. She had a son who was a young man, so no necessity was laid on her, but she went on the expedition out of her own high spirit and a man's courage. Her name, as I said, was Artemisia. She was the daughter of Lygdamis, and by descent she came from Halicarnassus on her father's side and from Crete on her mother's. She ruled the people of Halicarnassus, Cos, Nisyros and Calydna, and supplied five ships. The ships she supplied had the best reputation in the whole fleet after the Sidonians', and of all the king's allies she gave him the best advice. The states I said she led are, I declare, all Dorian by race: the people of Halicarnassus are Troezenians, and the rest are Epidaurians. So much for the navy.
100. When Xerxes had counted the army and it had been drawn up in divisions, he wanted to drive through it himself and inspect it, and afterward he did. He drove through in a chariot past each nation, asking questions about them, while his scribes wrote down the names, until he had gone from one end to the other of both the cavalry and the infantry. When he had done this, the ships were launched into the sea. Xerxes stepped from his chariot onto a ship of Sidon, sat down under a golden canopy and sailed along past the prows of the ships, asking about all of them just as he had about the land army, and having the answers written down. The captains had taken their ships out about four hundred feet from the beach and anchored them there, all with their prows turned toward the shore in an even line and all their fighting men armed as if for battle. He inspected them by sailing along the inside, between the prows of the ships and the beach.
101. When he had sailed past them all and had come ashore from his ship, he sent for Demaratus the son of Ariston, who was marching with him against Greece. When he had called him, he asked him this:
"Demaratus, it is my pleasure now to ask you something I want to know. You are a Greek, and not only that: as I hear both from you and from the other Greeks who come and talk with me, you are from a city that is neither the smallest nor the weakest in Greece. So tell me this: will the Greeks dare to raise their hands against me? As I see it, even if all the Greeks and all the remaining peoples who live in the west were gathered together, they would not be strong enough in battle to stand up to my attack, if they were my enemies. But I want to hear your opinion as well, and what you have to say about these matters."
That was his question, and Demaratus answered: "My king, shall I tell you the truth, or what will please you?"
Xerxes told him to tell the truth, and said that he would suffer nothing unpleasant for it, any more than he had before.
102. When Demaratus heard this, he said: "My king, since you order me by all means to tell the truth, and to speak as a man who will never later be caught by you in a lie, I say this. In Greece, poverty has always been native to the soil, while courage is something brought in, won by good sense and the strength of law. By means of courage Greece keeps off both poverty and slavery to a master. Now I have praise for all the Greeks who live in those Dorian lands, but what I am about to say does not concern them all, only the Spartans. About the Spartans I say, first, that there is no way they will ever accept your terms, which mean slavery for Greece. And second, I say that they will meet you in battle even if all the other Greeks take your side. And as for their numbers, do not ask how many of them there are, that they can do this. If a thousand of them happen to march out into the field, those thousand will fight you, and so will any number, whether fewer than that or more."
103. When Xerxes heard this he laughed and said: "Demaratus, what a thing to say, that a thousand men will fight this enormous army! Come, tell me this. You say you were once king of these men. Would you be willing, then, to fight ten men on your own, here and now? And yet if your whole state is the way you describe it, you, as their king, ought by your laws to take on twice as many as anyone else. If each of them is a match for ten men of my army, then I expect you to be a match for twenty. That would prove what you say. But if you, who boast so loudly, are men like the Greeks who usually come and talk with me, and no bigger than you yourself are, then watch out that what you have said does not turn out to be empty bragging. Come, let me look at it from every side, and see what is likely. How could a thousand, or ten thousand, or even fifty thousand men stand against so great an army, if they were all equally free and not ruled by one man? Suppose there are five thousand of them: we would still be more than a thousand against each one. If they were ruled by one man, the way we are, they might perhaps, out of fear of him, become braver than their nature, or they might be driven by the whip to fight against greater numbers though they were fewer. But left free, they would do neither. For my part I believe that even if the numbers were equal, the Greeks would hardly dare to fight the Persians alone. No, what you are talking about exists among us, but only in a few men, and rarely. Among my spearmen there are Persians who would gladly fight three Greeks at once. But you have no experience of such things, and so you are talking a great deal of nonsense."
104. To this Demaratus replied: "My king, I was sure from the start that if I told the truth I would not say what pleased you. But since you forced me to speak the plain truth, I told you how things stand with the Spartans. And yet how fond I am of them at present, you know better than anyone. First they took away the rank and the privileges that came to me from my fathers, and then they made me a man without a country, an exile. But your father took me in and gave me a living and a house to live in. Surely no sensible man is likely to push away kindness when it is offered to him; he will accept it and be grateful. Now I do not claim that I can fight ten men, or two. If I had my way, I would not even fight one. But if I had to, or if there were some great cause driving me into the fight, I would most gladly fight one of these men of yours who say they are a match for three Greeks. In the same way, the Spartans are as good as any men in the world when they fight one by one, and when they fight together they are the best of all men. For though they are free, they are not free in everything. They have a master over them, the Law, and they fear it far more than your people fear you. At any rate they do whatever it commands, and it always commands the same thing: never to run from battle, however many men they face, but to stay in their place and either win or die. But if you think I am talking nonsense when I say these things, then from now on I would rather keep silent about the rest. I spoke now only because you made me. Still, my king, may it all turn out as you wish."
105. That was Demaratus' answer. Xerxes turned the whole thing into a joke, showed no anger at all, and sent him away kindly. After this conversation, Xerxes appointed Mascames son of Megadostes to be governor there at Doriscus, removing the governor Darius had appointed. Then he marched his army on through Thrace to invade Greece.
106. Mascames, the man he left behind there, proved to be of such quality that Xerxes used to send gifts to him alone, because he considered him the best of all the governors that either he or Darius had ever appointed. He sent him these gifts every year, and Artaxerxes son of Xerxes did the same for Mascames' descendants. For even before this march, governors had been appointed in Thrace and all around the Hellespont. After the expedition, all of them, both those in Thrace and those on the Hellespont, were conquered by the Greeks, all except the one at Doriscus. Mascames at Doriscus no one was ever able to conquer, though many tried. That is why the gifts keep coming for him from whoever is king of Persia.
107. Of the governors the Greeks did conquer, Xerxes did not think any was a good man except Boges, who was at Eion. Him he never stopped praising, and he gave the highest honors to the children of Boges who survived him in Persia. And truly Boges proved himself worthy of great praise. When he was besieged by the Athenians under Cimon son of Miltiades, he could have marched out under a truce and gone home to Asia. He chose not to, for fear the king would think he had saved his life through cowardice, and he held out to the very end. Then, when there was no food left inside the walls, he built a great pyre. He cut the throats of his children, his wife, his concubines and his servants, and threw them into the fire. After this he scattered all the gold and silver in the city from the wall into the river Strymon, and when he had done that, he threw himself into the fire. So the Persians rightly praise him to this day.
108. From Doriscus Xerxes went on toward Greece, and as he went he forced every people he came to, one after another, to join his march. For, as I have explained before, the whole country as far as Thessaly had been made subject and was paying tribute to the king, conquered first by Megabazus and later by Mardonius. On his way from Doriscus he passed first the strongholds of the Samothracians, of which the farthest to the west is a city called Mesambria. Next to this comes Stryme, a city belonging to the Thasians, and between the two flows the river Lisus. At this time its water was not enough to supply Xerxes' army, and the stream ran dry. This country used to be called Gallaica but is now called Briantica; strictly speaking, though, it too belongs to the Cicones.
109. After crossing the dried-up bed of the river Lisus, he passed by these Greek cities: Maronea, Dicaea and Abdera. He passed them by, and also the well-known lakes that lie near them: the Ismarian lake, between Maronea and Stryme, and the Bistonian lake near Dicaea, into which two rivers pour their water, the Travus and the Compsantus. At Abdera Xerxes passed no lake worth mentioning, but he did pass the river Nestus, which flows into the sea there. After these places he went by the mainland cities. Near one of them there happens to be a lake about three and a third miles around, full of fish and very salty. The baggage animals alone drank it dry. The name of this city is Pistyrus.
110. These coastal cities, which belonged to Greeks, he passed by, keeping them on his left. The Thracian tribes through whose country he marched were these: the Paetians, the Cicones, the Bistones, the Sapaeans, the Dersaeans, the Edonians and the Satrians. Of these, the ones settled along the coast went with him in their ships, and the ones who lived inland, whom I have just listed, were forced to go with him by land, all except the Satrians.
111. The Satrians have never yet obeyed any man, as far as we know. Down to my own time they remain free, the only Thracians who are. They live in high mountains covered with every kind of forest and with snow, and they are also very skilled at war. These are the people who own the oracle of Dionysus, which is on their highest mountains. Among the Satrians the ones who serve as prophets of the temple are the Bessians. It is a priestess who speaks the oracles, as at Delphi, and beyond this there is nothing remarkable about it.
112. After crossing the land I have described, Xerxes next passed the strongholds of the Pierians, one called Phagres and the other Pergamus. He marched this way, close under their walls, keeping on his right Mount Pangaeum. It is a great, high mountain, and in it there are gold and silver mines owned by the Pierians and the Odomantians, and above all by the Satrians.
113. So, passing the Paeonians, the Doberes and the Paeoplae, who live north of Pangaeum, he went on westward until at last he came to the river Strymon and the city of Eion. Boges, the man I was speaking of a little while ago, was commander there as long as he lived. The country around Mount Pangaeum is called Phyllis. It stretches west to the river Angites, which flows into the Strymon, and south to the Strymon itself. At this river the Magi made a sacrifice for good omens, killing white horses.
114. They did this, and many other things besides, as charms to win over the river. Then, at the Nine Ways in the land of the Edonians, they went on by the bridges, for they found the Strymon already spanned by bridges. When they learned that the place was called the Nine Ways, they buried alive there that many boys and girls, children of the local people. Burying people alive is a Persian custom. I am told that Amestris, Xerxes' wife, when she had grown old, also buried fourteen children of distinguished Persians, as a thank-offering for her own life to the god who is said to live beneath the earth.
115. As the army marched on from the Strymon, it came to a stretch of beach running toward the sunset and passed the Greek city of Argilus, which stands there. This region, and the land above it, is called Bisaltia. From there, keeping on its left the gulf that lies off Posideium, it went through what is called the plain of Syleus, passing Stagirus, a Greek city, and so came to Acanthus. As it went it took along every one of these tribes, and also the peoples who live around Mount Pangaeum, just as it had the ones I listed before: the men who lived on the coast served in the ships, and those who lived inland went along on foot. The road along which King Xerxes marched his army the Thracians do not disturb and do not plant crops on; they treat it with the greatest reverence down to my own time.
116. When Xerxes reached Acanthus, he declared the people of Acanthus his guest-friends, presented them with Median dress, and praised them, because he saw how eager they were to help him in the war and because he had heard about the digging of the canal.
117. While Xerxes was at Acanthus, it happened that the man who had been put in charge of making the canal, Artachaees by name, died of an illness. He was a man Xerxes valued highly, and he belonged to the Achaemenid family. He was also the tallest man in Persia, just four finger-widths short of five royal cubits, a little over eight feet, and he had the loudest voice of any man alive. So Xerxes was deeply grieved at his loss. He gave him a magnificent funeral and burial, and the whole army helped to raise a mound over him. The people of Acanthus, at the bidding of an oracle, sacrifice to this Artachaees as a hero, calling on him by name in their worship.
118. So King Xerxes was deeply grieved at the loss of Artachaees. Meanwhile the Greeks who were hosting his army and giving Xerxes dinner had been brought to utter ruin, to the point of being driven from house and home. Take the Thasians, for example. They hosted Xerxes' army and gave him dinner on behalf of their towns on the mainland, and Antipater son of Orgeus, a citizen as respected as any, who had been appointed to handle it, reported that four hundred talents of silver had been spent on that dinner.
119. In the other cities, too, the men in charge reported the bill to be about the same, or nearly so. For the dinner was ordered a long time in advance, and the cities treated it as a matter of great importance. It was done like this. First of all, as soon as they heard the news from the heralds who went around announcing it, the citizens of each city divided grain among their households, and everyone spent many months grinding wheat and barley flour. Then they fattened cattle, searching out the finest animals and paying high prices for them. They kept birds, both land birds and water birds, in cages and ponds, all to entertain the army. Then they had cups and mixing bowls made of gold and silver, along with everything else that goes on a table. These were made for the king himself and for those who ate with him; for the rest of the army only food was provided. Whenever the army arrived somewhere, a tent stood ready and pitched, and Xerxes himself stayed in it, while the rest of the army camped in the open. When dinnertime came, the hosts had all the work. But the guests, once they had eaten their fill and spent the night there, tore down the tent the next day, took all the furnishings with them, and marched on, leaving nothing behind and carrying everything away.
120. It was then that Megacreon, a man of Abdera, made a well-turned remark. He advised the people of Abdera to go all together, men and women alike, to their temples and sit there as suppliants of the gods, begging them to keep off half of the troubles still to come in the future as well. And he told them to be very thankful to the gods for what had already happened, because King Xerxes had not seen fit to eat twice a day. If they had been ordered to prepare breakfast in the same way as dinner, the people of Abdera would have had two choices: either not wait for Xerxes to come at all, or stay and be ruined worse than anyone else on earth.
121. So, hard pressed as they were, the cities carried out what they had been ordered to do. From Acanthus Xerxes sent the fleet off on its own course, after ordering the commanders to wait for him at Therma. This is the Therma that lies on the Thermaic Gulf, which takes its name from it. He did this because he was told that this was the shortest way. From Doriscus as far as Acanthus the army had marched in this order. Xerxes had divided the whole land army into three divisions. One he had sent along the coast to keep pace with the fleet; its commanders were Mardonius and Masistes. Another third of the army had been assigned the inland route, and its generals were Tritantaechmes and Gergis. Meanwhile the third division, with which Xerxes himself traveled, marched in the middle between the other two, and its commanders were Smerdomenes and Megabyzus.
122. When Xerxes let the fleet go, it sailed straight through the canal that had been cut through Athos. The canal ran across to the gulf on which stand the cities of Assa, Pilorus, Singus and Sarte. After picking up a contingent from these cities as well, the fleet sailed on unhindered for the Thermaic Gulf. Rounding Ampelus, the headland of Torone, it passed by these Greek cities, taking ships and men from them: Torone, Galepsus, Sermyle, Mecyberna and Olynthus. This region is called Sithonia.
123. Then Xerxes' fleet cut straight across from the headland of Ampelus to the headland of Canastraeum, which runs farthest out to sea of all Pallene. There it picked up ships and men from Potidaea, Aphytis, Neapolis, Aege, Therambo, Scione, Mende and Sane, since these are the cities of the region now called Pallene, which used to be called Phlegra. Sailing along this coast too, the fleet held its course for the place I mentioned before, picking up contingents also from the cities that come after Pallene and border on the Thermaic Gulf. Their names are Lipaxus, Combrea, Lisae, Gigonus, Campsa, Smila and Aenea, and the region these cities are in is called Crossaea to this day. Sailing on from Aenea, the name I ended my list of cities with, the fleet went straight into the Thermaic Gulf and to the region of Mygdonia, and so it reached Therma, which I mentioned, and the cities of Sindus and Chalestra on the river Axius. This river is the border between Mygdonia and Bottiaea, a district whose narrow strip of coast is held by the cities of Ichnae and Pella.
124. While the fleet was camped near the river Axius, the city of Therma and the cities in between, waiting for the king to arrive, Xerxes and the land army were on their way from Acanthus, cutting straight across the middle by the shortest route to reach Therma. He went through Paeonia and Crestonia to the river Cheidorus. This river rises in the land of the Crestonians, runs through the region of Mygdonia, and comes out beside the marsh at the river Axius.
125. As he was marching this way, lions attacked the camels carrying his supplies. The lions used to come down regularly every night, leaving their own haunts, but they touched nothing else, neither pack animal nor man. They killed only the camels. I wonder what the cause was, and what it was that drove the lions to leave everything else alone and attack only the camels, animals they had never seen before and knew nothing about.
126. In these parts there are many lions, and also wild oxen, the ones with the enormous horns that are often brought into Greece. The lions are found only within certain limits: the river Nestus, which flows through Abdera, on one side, and on the other the Achelous, which flows through Acarnania. East of the Nestus you would not see a lion anywhere in the whole of Europe in front of it, and none in the rest of the continent west of the Achelous; they live only in the land between these two rivers.
127. When Xerxes reached Therma, he settled his army there. His camp took up no less than this stretch of the coast: beginning at the city of Therma and at Mygdonia, it reached as far as the river Lydias and the Haliacmon, which form the border between Bottiaea and Macedonia, joining their waters in one and the same stream. So the king's army was camped in these parts. Of the rivers I have listed, only the Cheidorus, which flows from the land of the Crestonians, was not enough for the army to drink, and its stream ran dry.
128. From Therma Xerxes could see the mountains of Thessaly, Olympus and Ossa, and how very high they were. He learned that between them there was a narrow gorge through which the Peneus flows, and he heard that this way there was a good road into Thessaly. So he wanted to sail there and look at the mouth of the Peneus. He was planning to march by the upper road, through the land of the Macedonians who live inland, until he reached the Perrhaebians, passing by the city of Gonnus, because he had been told that this was the safest way to go. And as he wished, so he did. He went aboard a Sidonian ship, the one he always used whenever he wanted to do anything of this kind, and he signaled for the others to put out to sea as well, leaving the land army where it was. When Xerxes saw the mouth of the Peneus, he was filled with great wonder. He called his guides and asked them whether it would be possible to turn the river aside and lead it out to the sea some other way.
129. Thessaly, they say, was a lake in ancient times, since it is shut in on every side by very high mountains. On the east it is closed off by the ranges of Pelion and Ossa, whose foothills join one another; on the north by Olympus; on the west by Pindus; and on the south by Othrys. The region in the middle, between these mountains, is Thessaly, a kind of bowl. Many rivers flow into it, five of them especially well known: the Peneus, the Apidanus, the Onochonus, the Enipeus and the Pamisus. These gather their waters from the mountains that ring Thessaly and flow down into this plain, each under its own name. But they flow out to the sea by one channel, and a narrow one, after first all joining together in one and the same stream. As soon as they have joined, from that point on the Peneus' name wins out over the rest and the others lose their own names. In ancient times, they say, before there was this channel and outlet between the mountains, these rivers, and besides them Lake Boebeis, did not have names as they do now, but their waters made all of Thessaly one sea. The Thessalians themselves say that Poseidon made the gorge the Peneus flows through, and that is a reasonable thing for them to say. Anyone who believes that Poseidon is the one who shakes the earth, and that cracks made by earthquakes are this god's work, would say on seeing this gorge that Poseidon had made it. For the splitting of the mountains is the work of an earthquake, as is clear to me.
130. So when Xerxes asked whether the Peneus had any other possible outlet to the sea, the guides, who knew the facts exactly, said: "My king, this river has no other way out to the sea but this one, because all of Thessaly is ringed with mountains like a crown." To this Xerxes is said to have replied: "So the Thessalians are sensible men. This, it seems, is what they were guarding against in good time when they changed their minds. They thought about this above everything else: that they had a country that is easy to conquer and can be taken quickly. All anyone would have to do is let the river flood their land, by building a dam to keep it out of the gorge and so turning it from the channel it flows through now, and all of Thessaly except the mountains would be under water." He said this with the sons of Aleuas in mind, since they were Thessalians and the first of the Greeks to give themselves up to the king; Xerxes thought they were offering him friendship on behalf of their whole nation. After saying this and looking over the place, he sailed back to Therma.
131. He stayed in the region of Pieria for many days, because a third of his army was meanwhile cutting the road over the Macedonian mountains, so that the whole host could cross by that way into the land of the Perrhaebians. And now the heralds who had been sent to Greece to demand earth came back, some empty-handed and some bringing earth and water.
132. Among those who gave what was demanded were these: the Thessalians, the Dolopians, the Enianians, the Perrhaebians, the Locrians, the Magnesians, the Malians, the Achaeans of Phthiotis, and the Thebans, together with the rest of the Boeotians except the Thespians and the Plataeans. Against these the Greeks who took up the war against the invader swore an oath. The oath was this: any Greeks who had surrendered to the Persians without being forced to, they would, once their own affairs turned out well, dedicate as an offering to the god at Delphi.
133. That was the oath the Greeks swore. But Xerxes had not sent heralds to Athens or to Sparta to demand earth, and this was the reason. Once before, when Darius had sent heralds for this very purpose, the Athenians had thrown the men who made the demand into the pit where they cast condemned criminals, and the Spartans had thrown theirs into a well, and told them to get earth and water from there and take it to the king. That is why Xerxes did not send anyone to make this demand. What disaster came on the Athenians for doing this to the heralds, I cannot say, except that their land and their city were laid waste; but I do not think it happened for that reason.
134. On the Spartans, though, fell the wrath of Talthybius, Agamemnon's herald in the war against Troy. There is a temple of Talthybius in Sparta, and there are also descendants of Talthybius called the Talthybiads, who have been given the right to carry out every herald's mission that goes out from Sparta. After this event, whenever the Spartans sacrificed, they could not get favorable omens. This went on with them for a long time. The Spartans were distressed and saw it as a great disaster. They held assembly after assembly and made a proclamation asking whether any Spartan was willing to die for Sparta. At last Sperthias son of Aneristus and Bulis son of Nicolaus, Spartans of noble birth and among the very wealthiest, volunteered to pay the penalty to Xerxes for Darius' heralds who had been killed at Sparta. So the Spartans sent these two to the Persians to be put to death.
135. The courage these men showed then deserves admiration, and so do the things they said as well. On their way to Susa they came to Hydarnes, a Persian by birth and commander of the peoples on the coast of Asia, who offered them hospitality and entertained them. While they were his guests he asked them: "Spartans, why do you run away from becoming the king's friends? You can see that the king knows how to honor good men, when you look at me and my position. So you too, if you gave yourselves to the king, since he already thinks of you as good men, could each of you rule over Greek land as a gift from the king." They answered: "Hydarnes, the advice you give us is lopsided. You advise us having tried one thing but with no experience of the other. You know very well what it is to be a slave, but you have never tried freedom, to find out whether it tastes sweet or not. If you ever did try it, you would advise us to fight for it not just with spears, but with axes too."
136. That was their answer to Hydarnes. Then they went up to Susa and came before the king. First the spearmen of the guard ordered them to bow down to the ground before the king, and tried to force them to do it. They said they would never do such a thing, not even if the guards shoved them down headfirst, because it was not their custom to bow down to a man, and that was not what they had come for. When they had fought this off, they next said these words, or words to this effect: "King of the Medes, the Spartans have sent us in place of the heralds who were killed in Sparta, to pay the penalty for their lives." When they said this, Xerxes, moved by a generous spirit, replied that he would not act like the Spartans. They had broken the law that all men keep by killing heralds, but he would not do himself the very thing he blamed them for, nor would he free the Spartans from their guilt by killing these men in return.
137. So the wrath of Talthybius stopped for the time being, even though the Spartans had done no more than this, and even though Sperthias and Bulis came home to Sparta. But a long time afterward it was stirred up again, during the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, as the Spartans tell it. This, I think, was most plainly the work of heaven. That the wrath of Talthybius fell on messengers and did not stop until it had been fully satisfied was only justice. But that it happened to fall on the sons of the very men who had gone up to the king because of it, on Nicolaus son of Bulis and Aneristus son of Sperthias (the Aneristus who defeated the men of Halieis, settlers from Tiryns, by sailing into its harbor in a merchant ship full of soldiers), makes it clear to me that this came about through the work of heaven, because of that wrath. These two men had been sent by the Spartans as envoys to Asia. They were betrayed by Sitalces son of Teres, king of the Thracians, and by Nymphodorus son of Pythes, a man of Abdera, and were captured at Bisanthe on the Hellespont. They were taken off to Attica and put to death by the Athenians, and with them Aristeas son of Adeimantus, the Corinthian. These things happened many years after the king's expedition. Now I return to my earlier story.
138. In name, the king's expedition was marching against Athens, but in fact it was aimed at the whole of Greece. The Greeks had known this for a long time, but they did not all take it the same way. Those who had given earth and water to the Persian felt confident, supposing that the invader would do them no harm. Those who had not given it were terrified. There were not enough ships in Greece to meet the invader in battle, and most of the cities were unwilling to take up the war and were eager to go over to the Persians.
139. Here I am forced to state an opinion that most people will resent. Even so, I will not hold back from saying what I clearly see to be the truth. If the Athenians had been gripped by fear of the danger coming at them and had abandoned their land, or if they had stayed without leaving it and surrendered to Xerxes, then no one would have tried to oppose the king at sea. And if no one had opposed Xerxes at sea, this is roughly what would have happened on land. The Peloponnesians might have thrown wall after wall across the Isthmus, layer on layer like so many tunics, but the Spartans would still have been deserted by their allies. The allies would not have left them willingly but because they had no choice, since the Persian fleet would have conquered them city by city. So the Spartans would have been left alone, and after doing great deeds of courage, they would have died nobly. Either they would have suffered that fate, or else, seeing the rest of the Greeks also going over to the Persians, they would have come to terms with Xerxes before it came to that. Either way, Greece would have fallen under Persian rule. For I cannot discover what good the walls across the Isthmus would have done, once the king was master of the sea.
As it is, anyone who says that the Athenians were the saviors of Greece would hit the truth exactly. Whichever side they took, the scales were likely to tip that way. They chose that Greece should go on living in freedom, and it was they who roused the whole of Greece that was left, all of it, that is, that had not gone over to the Persians. And it was they who, after the gods at least, drove back the king. Not even the terrifying oracles that came from Delphi and filled them with dread could persuade them to abandon Greece. They stayed where they were and stood their ground to meet the invader of their land.
140. For the Athenians had sent messengers to Delphi and were ready to consult the oracle. When these men had performed the usual rites in the sacred precinct and had gone into the inner shrine and sat down, the Pythia, whose name was Aristonice, gave them this oracle:
Wretched ones, why do you sit here? Run to the ends of the earth, leave your homes and the heights of your city, round as a wheel! For neither the head nor the body is safe any longer, nor the feet below, nor the hands, nor the middle is left you: all is destroyed together. Fire and the fierce god of war, driving his Syrian chariot hard, will hurl them to ruin. Not yours alone: he will bring down many more strongholds, and hand many temples of the gods to the ravening fire, temples that stand even now with the sweat of terror streaming down them, shaking with dread; and look, from the top of the roof to the floor dark blood is trickling, foretelling the evil no one can escape. Out, get out of the shrine, and steep your souls in sorrow!
141. When the men the Athenians had sent to consult the oracle heard this, they were deeply distressed. As they sat there in despair at the disaster that had been foretold for them, Timon son of Androbulus, a man of Delphi as highly respected as anyone there, advised them to take a suppliant's branch and go in a second time to consult the oracle as suppliants. The Athenians did as he advised and said: "Lord Apollo, give us some better oracle about our homeland, out of respect for these suppliant branches we have brought you. Otherwise we will not leave the shrine. We will stay right here, where we are now, until we die." When they said this, the priestess gave them a second oracle, as follows:
Pallas cannot win over great Zeus of Olympus, though she pleads with him in many words and closely woven cunning. But I will tell you this as well, and make it fast as adamant. All else will be taken that the borders of Cecrops hold within them, and the dark glens of holy Cithaeron. At the last Zeus grants to Athena, the Trito-born, a wooden wall alone to stand unsacked, and it will help you and your children. Do not wait there for the horsemen and the foot soldiers without number; do not sit still as the army comes from the mainland, but pull back and turn your back to the enemy: one day you will face him yet. Divine Salamis, you will bring death to the sons of women, whether the grain is being sown or gathered in.
142. This seemed to them to be a milder answer than the first, as in truth it was. So they had it written down and went back to Athens with it. When the messengers had returned and reported it to the people, many different opinions were offered by those trying to work out what the oracle meant. Two of them stood most directly opposed to each other. Some of the older men said they thought the god had prophesied that the Acropolis would survive. In the old days the Acropolis of Athens had been fenced with a hedge of thorns, and so they guessed that the "wooden wall" meant that fence. Others said, on the contrary, that the god meant their ships, and they urged the Athenians to let everything else go and get the ships ready. But those who said the ships were the wooden wall were thrown off by the last two lines the priestess had spoken:
Divine Salamis, you will bring death to the sons of women, whether the grain is being sown or gathered in.
These lines upset the view of those who said the ships were the wooden wall. For the interpreters of oracles took them to mean that if the Athenians prepared for a sea battle, they were fated to be defeated off Salamis.
143. Now there was a man among the Athenians who had lately been making his way into the front rank, whose name was Themistocles; he was called the son of Neocles. This man said that the interpreters of oracles had not worked out the whole of it correctly. If the words really referred to the Athenians, he argued, he did not think the oracle would have put it so gently. It would have said "Cruel Salamis" instead of "Divine Salamis," at least if the people living there were fated to die around it. The truth was that the god had spoken the oracle about the enemy, if one understood it rightly, and not about the Athenians. So he advised them to get ready to fight at sea, since the ships were their wooden wall. When Themistocles had declared his view this way, the Athenians judged that it was better to follow him than the interpreters of oracles. The interpreters told them not to prepare for a sea battle, and in short not to lift a hand against the enemy at all, but to leave the land of Attica and settle somewhere else.
144. Before this, another proposal of Themistocles' had also turned out to be the best one at the critical moment. The Athenians had a great sum of money in the public treasury, which had come in from the mines at Laurium, and they were about to share it out among themselves, ten drachmas to each man. Themistocles persuaded them to give up this plan of dividing it, and to use the money instead to build two hundred ships for the war, meaning the war with the Aeginetans. That war, by breaking out when it did, turned out to be the saving of Greece at that time, because it forced the Athenians to become a sea power. The ships were never used for the purpose they were built for, and so they were there for Greece when she needed them. So the Athenians had these ships already, built beforehand, and they needed to build more besides. After the oracle was given, they took counsel and resolved to obey the god: they would meet the invader of Greece at sea with their whole force, together with any of the other Greeks who were willing to join them.
145. Those were the oracles that had been given to the Athenians. Now the Greeks who had the better attitude toward Greece came together in one place, talked over their situation, and exchanged pledges with one another. In their deliberations they decided that the first thing to do, before anything else, was to put an end to their quarrels and the wars they were fighting among themselves. There were wars going on between various cities, but the biggest was the one between the Athenians and the Aeginetans. Next, when they learned that Xerxes was at Sardis with his army, they decided to send spies to Asia to look over the king's forces. They also resolved to send envoys to Argos to make an alliance against the Persian, to send others to Sicily to Gelon son of Deinomenes and to Corcyra to urge them to come to the help of Greece, and others again to Crete. Their aim was that, if possible, the whole Greek people might be united and might all act together toward the same goal, since the danger threatened all the Greeks alike. And Gelon's power was said to be great, far greater than that of any other Greek.
146. After they had made these decisions, they settled their quarrels and then, first of all, sent three men to Asia as spies. These men reached Sardis and gathered information about the king's army, but they were caught. The generals of the land army questioned them and they were being led away to be executed. Their death had been decided. But when Xerxes heard of it, he found fault with the generals' decision and sent some of his bodyguard of spearmen, with orders to bring the spies before him if they found them still alive. They found them still living and brought them before the king. Then Xerxes, once he had learned what they had come for, ordered the spearmen to take them around and show them the whole army, infantry and cavalry both. When they had looked their fill, the guards were to let them go unharmed to whatever country they wished.
147. That was his order, and he gave his reason for it at the same time. If the spies had been put to death, he said, the Greeks would not have learned in advance how far beyond all description his power was, while killing three men would not do the enemy much harm. But when these men went back to Greece, he thought it likely that the Greeks would hear about his power and hand over their freedom to him of their own accord, before the expedition now being set in motion ever took place, and then there would be no need for the trouble of marching an army against them at all.
This opinion of his is like his way of thinking on other occasions too. When Xerxes was at Abydos, he saw ships carrying grain from the Black Sea sailing out through the Hellespont on their way to Aegina and the Peloponnese. The men sitting beside him, when they learned that the ships belonged to the enemy, were ready to capture them, and kept looking at the king to see when he would give the word. But Xerxes asked where the men were sailing. They answered: "To your enemies, master, carrying grain to them." And he replied: "Aren't we sailing to the same place ourselves, supplied with grain as well as everything else we need? So how are they wronging us, if they're carrying provisions there for our use?"
148. So the spies, after looking at everything in this way and then being sent off, returned to Europe. Meanwhile, after sending out the spies, the Greeks who had sworn alliance against the Persian next sent envoys to Argos.
Now the Argives say that their part in this happened as follows. They learned, they say, at the very beginning about the movement the Persians were setting on foot against Greece. Once they knew of it, and saw that the Greeks would try to win them as allies against the Persians, they sent messengers to Delphi to ask the god what they should do to come off best. For not long before, six thousand of them had been killed by the Spartans and by Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides, and that in fact was why they sent to ask. When they asked, the Pythia answered them this way:
Hated by your neighbors, beloved by the immortal gods, keep your spear drawn in, and sit well guarded behind it. Guard the head, and the head will keep the limbs and the body safe.
This, they say, was the answer the Pythia had given them before. Afterward, when the envoys of the Greeks came to Argos, as I said, they went into the Council chamber and delivered the message they had been given. To this the Council replied that the Argives were ready to do what was asked, on two conditions: that they could make a thirty years' peace with the Spartans, and that they could have half the leadership of the whole alliance. And yet by strict right, they said, the whole leadership belonged to them; even so, half was enough for them.
149. That, they say, is the answer the Council gave, even though the oracle had forbidden them to make the alliance with the Greeks. They were eager to have the thirty-year truce, they say, even though they were afraid of the oracle, so that, as they claim, their sons might grow to manhood in those years. Without a truce, they were afraid that if a second disaster struck them in fighting the Persian, on top of the one that had already befallen them, they might be subject to the Spartans for all time to come.
Those of the envoys who came from Sparta answered what the Council had said. As for the truce, they would refer it to their public assembly. But as for the leadership, they had been given authority to answer themselves, and so they said this: the Spartans had two kings and the Argives had one, and it was not possible to remove either of Sparta's two from the leadership, but nothing prevented the Argive king from having an equal vote with each of their two. At that, the Argives say, they could not stand the greed of the Spartans. They chose to be ruled by the non-Greeks rather than give way at all to the Spartans, and they told the envoys to leave Argive territory before sunset, or else they would be treated as enemies.
150. That is how much the Argives themselves report about these matters. But there is another story told in Greece. According to it, Xerxes sent a herald to Argos before he set out on his expedition against Greece, and when this herald arrived, they say, he spoke as follows: "Men of Argos, King Xerxes says this to you. We believe that Perses, our ancestor, was the son of Perseus son of Danae, and that his mother was Andromeda, daughter of Cepheus. If that is so, it seems we are descended from you. So it would not be right for us to march against our own forefathers, or for you to oppose us by helping others. It would be right for you to keep quiet and stay out of it. For if things go the way I intend, I will hold no people in higher honor than you." The Argives, it is said, thought a great deal of this offer. So at first they offered no help and asked for no share in anything. But later, when the Greeks tried to bring them in, they knew perfectly well that the Spartans would not give them a share of the command, and so they demanded it only to have an excuse for keeping out of the war.
151. Some of the Greeks also report that something happened many years later which agrees with this account. Envoys of the Athenians, they say, happened to be at Susa, the city of Memnon, on some other business: Callias son of Hipponicus and those who had gone up with him. At that same time the Argives had also sent envoys to Susa. These envoys asked Artaxerxes son of Xerxes whether the friendship they had formed with Xerxes still held good, as they wished it to, or whether he now regarded them as enemies. And King Artaxerxes said that it most certainly still held, and that there was no city he considered a better friend than Argos.
152. Now whether Xerxes really did send a herald to Argos with the message that has been reported, and whether envoys of the Argives went up to Susa and asked Artaxerxes about their friendship, I can't say for certain, and I offer no opinion on these matters beyond what the Argives themselves say. But I do know this much. If all the peoples of the world were to bring their own troubles together into one place, wanting to trade them with their neighbors, each of them, after taking a close look at the troubles of the others, would gladly carry back home the ones they had brought. So the Argives are not the ones who acted most shamefully of all. I am obliged to report what is said, but I am not obliged to believe all of it, and let that hold for this whole history. For I must add that this too is said: that it was actually the Argives who invited the Persian to invade Greece, because their war with the Spartans had gone badly for them, and they were willing to suffer anything at all rather than the misery they were in at the time.
153. So much for the Argives. Meanwhile envoys from the allies had come to Sicily to confer with Gelon, and among them, from Sparta, was Syagrus. Now Gelon's ancestor, the first of his family to settle at Gela, came from the island of Telos, which lies off Triopium. When Gela was founded by the Lindians from Rhodes together with Antiphemus, he went along too. In the course of time his descendants became priests of the mysteries of the Earth goddesses, and they kept that office. It had been won by Telines, one of their ancestors, in the following way. Certain men of Gela had been beaten in a struggle between factions and had fled to Mactorium, the town that stands above Gela. Telines brought these men back to Gela from exile, with no force of men at all, only the sacred objects of these goddesses. Where he got them from, or whether he came by them on his own, I cannot say. In any case, trusting in them, he brought the men back from exile on condition that his descendants would be priests of the goddesses' mysteries.
It has also surprised me, given what I am told, that Telines was able to do such a great deed. Deeds like that, I think, do not come from just anyone, but from a man with a brave spirit and manly strength, whereas the people of Sicily say that Telines was just the opposite: a soft, effeminate man with rather a poor spirit.
154. So that was how he won this privilege. Cleander son of Pantares had been tyrant of Gela for seven years when he came to his end, killed by Sabyllus, a man of Gela. Then Hippocrates, Cleander's brother, took over the sole rule. While Hippocrates was tyrant, Gelon, a descendant of Telines the priest of the mysteries, was one of Hippocrates' bodyguard of spearmen, along with many others, among them Aenesidemus son of Pataecus. Not long after, he was made commander of the whole cavalry because of his courage. For when Hippocrates besieged Callipolis, Naxos, Zancle and Leontini one after another, and Syracuse too, and many towns of the non-Greeks, Gelon proved himself a brilliant fighter in those wars. Of the cities I just named, not one except Syracuse escaped being conquered by Hippocrates. The Syracusans were beaten in battle at the river Elorus, but they were rescued by the Corinthians and the Corcyreans. These rescued them and settled the quarrel on the condition that the Syracusans hand over Camarina to Hippocrates. In ancient times Camarina had belonged to Syracuse.
155. Then it was Hippocrates' turn to die, after being tyrant for the same number of years as his brother Cleander. He was killed at the city of Hybla, where he had gone on campaign against the Sicels. When the citizens of Gela refused to obey any longer, Gelon made a show of standing up for Hippocrates' sons, Eucleides and Cleander. But in fact, once he had beaten the men of Gela in battle, he robbed Hippocrates' sons of the power and ruled himself. After this stroke of luck, Gelon brought back the Syracusans called the "landholders," who had been driven into exile by the common people and by their own slaves, the ones called Cyllyrians. He brought them back from the town of Casmene to Syracuse, and so he got hold of that city too. For when Gelon marched against them, the common people of Syracuse handed over their city and themselves to him.
156. Once he had Syracuse in his power, he cared less about Gela, which he also ruled, and he put it in the charge of his brother Hieron while he built up Syracuse. Right away the city shot up and flourished. First he brought all the people of Camarina to Syracuse and made them citizens, and razed the town of Camarina to the ground. Second, he did the same to more than half the citizens of Gela as he had done to the people of Camarina. Then there were the Megarians of Sicily. When they were besieged and surrendered on terms, Gelon brought their wealthy men to Syracuse and made them citizens, even though they had started the war against him and expected to be put to death for it. But the common people of Megara had no part in causing this war and expected no harm. Gelon brought them to Syracuse too, and sold them as slaves to be carried out of Sicily. He did the same to the Euboeans in Sicily, making the same distinction between them. He treated these two cities this way because he thought the common people were the most unpleasant people to have in a state.
157. That is how Gelon had become a powerful tyrant. At this time the envoys of the Greeks arrived at Syracuse, and when they were given a hearing they said: "The Spartans and their allies have sent us to win you to our side against the Persian. You must know, surely, about the man who is about to invade Greece. A Persian means to bridge the Hellespont and lead all the armies of the East out of Asia against Greece. He pretends he is marching on Athens, but in fact he means to bring all Greece under his rule. You have risen to great power, and as ruler of Sicily you hold no small share of Greece. So come and help those who are working to free Greece, and join in making her free. For if all Greece is gathered together as one, it makes a great force, and we are a match in battle for those coming against us. But if some of us go over to the enemy and others refuse to help, and the healthy part of Greece is small, then right away there is a danger that all Greece will fall. Do not hope that if the Persian beats us in battle he will not come on to you. Guard yourself against that in advance. By helping us you are helping yourself. And a plan that is wisely made usually turns out well in the end."
158. That is what the envoys said. Gelon came down on them hard, answering like this: "Men of Greece, this is a selfish speech you have dared to come here with, inviting me to be your ally against the foreigner. Not long ago I asked you to join me in fighting an army of foreigners, when I had a quarrel with the Carthaginians. I urged you to take vengeance on the people of Egesta for the death of Dorieus son of Anaxandrides, and I offered at the same time to help free the trading ports that have brought you such great profit and gain. And you did not come to help me, either for my own sake or to avenge the death of Dorieus. As far as you are concerned, all that country would still be under the rule of foreigners now. But things turned out well for us, and better than that. And now that the war has come around and reached you, you have finally remembered Gelon.
"But though you treated me with contempt, I will not behave the way you did. I am ready to come to your help, with two hundred triremes and 20,000 hoplites, along with 2,000 horsemen, 2,000 archers, 2,000 slingers, and 2,000 light-armed men to run beside the horsemen. What is more, I promise to supply grain for the whole Greek army until we have finished the war. I promise all this on one condition: that I am the commander and leader of the Greeks against the foreigner. On any other condition I will neither come myself nor send anyone else."
159. When Syagrus heard this, he could not contain himself, and he said: "Agamemnon son of Pelops would groan aloud indeed, if he heard that the Spartans had been robbed of the leadership by Gelon and the Syracusans! No, don't mention this condition again, that we should hand the leadership over to you. If you want to come to the help of Greece, understand that you will be under the command of the Spartans. And if you really refuse to take orders, then don't come to help us at all."
160. Gelon saw how hostile Syagrus' speech was, and so he laid out his final offer to them: "My Spartan friend, insults that sink into a man's heart usually stir him to anger in return. But though you have insulted me in what you said, you will not provoke me into answering you in an unseemly way. Since you lay claim to the leadership so hard, it would be fair for me to claim it even more than you, since I lead an army many times larger and far more ships. But since this condition is so distasteful to you, we will give up something of our first proposal. Suppose you lead the land army and I lead the fleet. Or if you would rather lead at sea, I am willing to lead on land. Either you must be content with these terms, or go home without the alliance I have to give."
161. Those were the offers Gelon made, and the Athenian envoy, speaking before the Spartan could, answered him this way: "King of the Syracusans, Greece did not send us to you because she needs a leader, but because she needs an army. But you hold out no hope that you will send an army unless you lead Greece, and what you are really after is becoming commander of the Greek armies. As long as you were demanding to lead the whole Greek army, it was enough for us Athenians to keep quiet, knowing that the Spartan could speak up for both of us. But now, since you have been turned down for the whole and are asking to command the fleet, here is how things stand. Even if the Spartan lets you command it, we will not. The fleet at least is ours, if the Spartans do not want it themselves. If they wish to lead it, we do not oppose them, but we will allow no one else to command the ships. Otherwise it would be pointless for us to own the largest navy of all the Greeks, if we, Athenians, handed the leadership over to Syracusans. We can boast that ours is the most ancient people of all, the only Greeks who have never moved from one land to another. One of our own was the man whom Homer, the epic poet, called the best of all who came to Troy at drawing up an army and setting it in battle order. So no one can fairly blame us for saying these things."
162. Gelon answered: "My Athenian friend, it seems you have plenty of commanders, but you will not have anyone to command. Since you will not give way at all and want to have everything, you had better go home as fast as you can and tell the Greeks that the spring has been taken out of their year." This is what the saying means. The spring is plainly the finest part of the year, and he meant that his army was the finest part of the Greek army. So Greece, deprived of his alliance, was, he said, like a year with the spring taken out of it.
163. After this conference with Gelon, the Greek envoys sailed away. Gelon was afraid for the Greeks, that they would not be able to defeat the invader. On the other hand, he thought it outrageous and not to be endured that he, the tyrant of Sicily, should go to the Peloponnese and take orders from the Spartans. So he gave up on that road and took another. As soon as he heard that the Persian king had crossed the Hellespont, he sent Cadmus son of Scythes, a man of Cos, to Delphi with three fifty-oared galleys, carrying a great deal of money and a friendly message. Cadmus was to wait there and watch how the battle would turn out. If the Persian won, he was to give him the money and offer him earth and water on behalf of the lands Gelon ruled. If the Greeks won, he was to bring the money back.
164. Before all this, Cadmus had inherited from his father the rule of Cos, in a flourishing state. Then, of his own free will, with no danger threatening him, moved only by his own sense of right, he had handed the government over to the people of Cos and gone off to Sicily. There, with the Samians, he took and resettled the city of Zancle, which had changed its name to Messene. This was the Cadmus, who had come to Sicily in the way I have described, that Gelon was now sending, having picked him for the honesty he had seen in him in other dealings. And on top of the other honest things this man had done, he left behind him this one too to be remembered, and it was not the least of them. He had in his hands that great sum of money Gelon had trusted him with, and he could have kept it for himself, but he chose not to. When the Greeks had won the sea battle and Xerxes had marched away and gone, Cadmus too came back to Sicily, bringing the whole sum with him.
165. The people who live in Sicily also tell another story: that Gelon would have come to help the Greeks even though he would have been under Spartan command, except for what happened at that very moment. Terillus son of Crinippus, tyrant of Himera, had been driven out of Himera by Theron son of Aenesidemus, the ruler of Acragas. And just at this time Terillus was bringing in an army of 300,000 Phoenicians, Libyans, Iberians, Ligurians, Elisyci, Sardinians and Corsicans, under the command of Hamilcar son of Hanno, the king of the Carthaginians. Terillus had won Hamilcar over partly through their bond as guest-friends, but above all through the eager help of Anaxilaus son of Cretines, the tyrant of Rhegium. Anaxilaus was married to Terillus' daughter, whose name was Cydippe, and to help his father-in-law he worked to bring Hamilcar into Sicily, and gave him his own sons as hostages. That, they say, is why Gelon could not come to help the Greeks, and why he sent the money to Delphi instead.
166. They also say that, as it happened, Gelon and Theron defeated Hamilcar the Carthaginian on the very same day that the Greeks defeated the Persian at Salamis. This Hamilcar was a Carthaginian on his father's side and a Syracusan on his mother's, and he had become king of the Carthaginians because of his own merit. When the battle was joined and he was losing, he vanished, so I am told. He was never seen again anywhere on earth, alive or dead, though Gelon searched for him with every effort.
167. The Carthaginians themselves tell a story about this too, and what they say is believable enough. The non-Greeks and the Greeks fought in Sicily from early morning until late in the afternoon (that is how long the battle is said to have dragged on). All that time Hamilcar stayed in the camp, offering sacrifices to get good omens, burning the bodies of the victims whole on a great pyre. And when he saw his own army being routed, he happened to be in the act of pouring a libation over the victims, and he threw himself into the fire. So he was burned up and vanished. Whether Hamilcar vanished in this way, as the Phoenicians tell it, or in some other way, the Carthaginians offer sacrifices to him now, and at the time they set up memorials to him in all their colonies, with the greatest one in Carthage itself.
168. So much for the affairs of Sicily. As for the Corcyreans, here is the answer they gave the envoys, and here is what they did afterward, as I will tell. The same men who had gone to Sicily also tried to win their help, saying the same things they had said to Gelon. At the time the Corcyreans promised to send a force and help defend Greece. They declared that they must not let Greece be destroyed without lifting a hand, because if it fell, they themselves would be enslaved from the very first day; no, they must give all the help they could. That was the fine-sounding answer they gave. But when the time came to send help, they had other plans in mind. They manned sixty ships, and after a great deal of delay they put out to sea and reached the Peloponnese. Then they kept their ships at anchor off Pylos and Taenarum in Spartan territory, waiting, as Gelon did, to see how the war would turn out. They did not expect the Greeks to win; they thought the Persian would beat them easily and become master of all Greece. So they were acting on purpose, so that they could say something like this to the Persian: "My king, when the Greeks tried to get our help for this war, we would not oppose you or do anything you would not like, even though our power is not the smallest, and we could have supplied ships, not the fewest in number either, but the most after the Athenians." By saying this they hoped to come off better than the rest, and in my opinion that is just what would have happened. Meanwhile they had an excuse ready for the Greeks, and it is the one they actually used. When the Greeks blamed them for not coming to help, they said they had manned sixty triremes but had not been able to get around Cape Malea because of the Etesian winds. That, they said, was why they had not reached Salamis; it was not from any lack of courage that they had missed the sea battle.
169. That is how the Corcyreans got out of what the Greeks asked of them. The Cretans did this. When the Greeks who had been appointed to deal with them tried to win their help, the Cretans joined together and sent men to ask the god at Delphi whether it would be better for them to help Greece. The Pythia answered: "Fools, do you think the sorrows were too few that Minos sent you in his anger for the help you gave Menelaus? The others did not join you in avenging his death at Camicus, but you joined them in avenging the woman a foreigner carried off from Sparta." When the Cretans heard this answer, they held back from giving any help.
170. The story goes that Minos went to Sicania, which is now called Sicily, in search of Daedalus, the craftsman who had fled from him, and there he died a violent death. Some time later, the Cretans, urged on by a god, all of them except the men of Polichne and Praesus, came to Sicania with a great expedition and besieged the city of Camicus for seven years. In my time Camicus was occupied by the people of Acragas. In the end they could neither take it nor stay on outside it, because they were hard pressed by famine, so they gave up and left. But as they sailed past the coast of Iapygia, a great storm caught them and drove them ashore. Their ships were smashed to pieces, and since they could see no way of getting back to Crete, they founded the city of Hyria there. They stayed there, and they were changed: instead of Cretans they became Messapians of Iapygia, and instead of islanders they became people of the mainland. From Hyria they founded the other settlements that the people of Taras, long afterward, tried to destroy, and suffered a great disaster in the attempt. In fact this turned out to be the greatest slaughter of Greeks that we know of, both of the people of Taras themselves and of the citizens of Rhegium. Micythus son of Choerus had forced these men of Rhegium to go and help the people of Taras, and three thousand of them were killed this way. Of the people of Taras who were killed there, no count was ever made. This Micythus was a servant of Anaxilaus, and Anaxilaus had left him in charge of Rhegium. He is the man who, after he was driven out of Rhegium, settled at Tegea in Arcadia and dedicated all those statues at Olympia.
171. This story of the men of Rhegium and the people of Taras has been a side-story in my account. But in Crete, as the men of Praesus tell it, once the island had been emptied of its people in this way, various other peoples settled there, especially Greeks. In the third generation after the death of Minos came the Trojan War, in which the Cretans proved to be far from the worst of those who came to help Menelaus. Then after this, when they came home from Troy, famine and plague fell on both men and cattle, until Crete was emptied of people a second time. Now a third population of Cretans lives there, together with those who were left of the earlier ones. By reminding them of all this, the Pythia stopped the Cretans from helping the Greeks, though they wanted to.
172. As for the Thessalians, they had at first sided with the Persians against their will, and they showed that they did not like what the Aleuadae were planning. As soon as they heard that the Persian was about to cross into Europe, they sent envoys to the Isthmus. Gathered at the Isthmus were delegates of Greece, chosen by the cities that had the better attitude toward Greece. The Thessalian envoys came before them and said: "Greeks, you must guard the pass by Mount Olympus, so that Thessaly and the whole of Greece may be sheltered from the war. We are ready to guard it with you, but you must send a large force too. If you do not send one, you can be sure we will come to terms with the Persian. It is not right that we, posted so far out in front of the rest of Greece, should die alone in your defense. If you are not willing to come and help us, you have no way to force anything on us, since no force can make the powerless do what they cannot. We will try to find some way of saving ourselves."
173. That is what the Thessalians said. So the Greeks decided to send an army of foot soldiers by sea to Thessaly to guard the pass. When the army had gathered, it sailed through the Euripus and came to Alus in Achaea. There the men landed, left the ships behind at Alus, and marched into Thessaly. They arrived at Tempe, the pass that leads from lower Macedonia into Thessaly along the river Peneus, between Mount Olympus and Mount Ossa. There the Greeks camped, about ten thousand hoplites in all, and the Thessalian cavalry joined them. The commander of the Spartans was Euaenetus son of Carenus, who had been chosen from among the polemarchs, Sparta's senior army officers, and was not of the royal family. The commander of the Athenians was Themistocles son of Neocles. But they stayed there only a few days. Messengers came from Alexander son of Amyntas, the Macedonian, advising them to leave and not stay in the pass to be trampled underfoot by the invading army, and telling them how huge the army was and how many ships there were. When these men gave them this advice, the Greeks took it, because they thought it was good advice and the Macedonian was plainly well disposed toward them. But in my opinion it was fear that persuaded them, once they learned that there was another pass into Thessaly besides this one, through upper Macedonia, through the land of the Perrhaebians and past the town of Gonnus. That is in fact the way Xerxes' army came in. So the Greeks went back down to their ships and made their way back to the Isthmus.
174. That was the expedition to Thessaly, and it took place when the king was about to cross from Asia into Europe and was already at Abydos. So the Thessalians, left without allies, now went over to the Persians wholeheartedly and no longer with any hesitation, so that as events went on they proved very useful to the king.
175. When the Greeks had come back to the Isthmus, they discussed, with what Alexander had told them in mind, where they should make their stand and in what regions they should fight. The view that won was to guard the pass at Thermopylae. They could see it was narrower than the pass into Thessaly, and it was a single pass, and nearer to their own land besides. As for the path by which the Greeks who fell at Thermopylae were caught, they did not even know it existed until they reached Thermopylae and the people of Trachis told them. So they decided to guard this pass and keep the invader from getting through into Greece, and they decided that the fleet should sail to Artemisium in the territory of Histiaea. These places are near each other, so that each part of their forces could find out what was happening to the other. And here is how the places lie.
176. Take Artemisium first. Coming out of the Thracian Sea, the wide water narrows down to the slim channel between the island of Sciathus and the mainland of Magnesia. Right after the strait, on Euboea, comes the beach called Artemisium, where there is a temple of Artemis. Second, the way into Greece through Trachis is, at its narrowest, only fifty feet wide. But that is not where the narrowest part of the whole region lies. It is in front of Thermopylae and also behind it. At Alpeni, which lies behind Thermopylae, there is room for only a single cart track, and again at the river Phoenix, near the town of Anthela, there is room for only a single cart track. To the west of Thermopylae rises a mountain that cannot be climbed, sheer and very high, stretching away toward the range of Oeta. To the east of the road lie the sea and marshes, right up against it. In this pass there are hot springs, which the local people call the "Pots," and an altar of Heracles stands near them. A wall had once been built across this pass, and in the old days there was a gate in it. The Phocians built it, out of fear, when the Thessalians came from the land of the Thesprotians to settle in the Aeolian land, the country they hold now. Since the Thessalians, as the Phocians supposed, were trying to conquer them, the Phocians protected themselves in advance. They let the water of the hot springs run over the pass, to turn the place into a gully, and they tried every means to keep the Thessalians from invading their land. This old wall had been built long before, and by then most of it had fallen into ruin with age. The Greeks decided to build it up again and to hold the invader back from Greece at this spot. Very near the road there is a village called Alpeni, and the Greeks counted on getting their supplies from it.
177. So the Greeks judged that these places suited their purpose. They had thought everything through in advance and worked out that the invaders would not be able to make use of either their greater numbers or their cavalry there, and so they decided to meet the invader of Greece at this place. When they learned that the Persian was in Pieria, they broke camp at the Isthmus and set out on the campaign, some by land to Thermopylae, others by sea to Artemisium.
178. So the Greeks were hurrying to the rescue, each to his assigned post. Meanwhile the people of Delphi, terrified, consulted the oracle of the god on behalf of themselves and of Greece. They were told to pray to the Winds, because the Winds would be powerful allies of Greece in the fighting. When the Delphians received the oracle, they first passed it on to those Greeks who wanted to be free, and by telling them at a time when they were deeply afraid of the invader, they earned their undying gratitude. After this the people of Delphi set up an altar to the Winds at Thyia, where the sacred precinct of Thyia daughter of Cephisus is, the woman this place is named after, and they began offering the Winds sacrifices.
179. To this day the Delphians, following the oracle, offer sacrifices to win the Winds' favor. Meanwhile, Xerxes' fleet had set out from the city of Therma, and ten of its ships, the fastest sailers, crossed straight over toward Sciathus. There three Greek ships, one from Troezen, one from Aegina and one from Athens, were keeping watch as an advance guard. When the crews of these ships caught sight of the enemy ships, they ran for it.
180. The ship from Troezen, commanded by Prexinus, was chased and taken at once by the enemy. The Persians then took the best-looking of the marines on board and cut his throat on the ship's prow, making the first and handsomest Greek they had captured into a good omen for themselves. The name of this man who was sacrificed was Leon, which means "lion," and perhaps his name had something to do with what happened to him.
181. The Aeginetan ship, whose captain was Asonides, gave them some trouble to take, because Pytheas son of Ischenous was serving on board as a marine, and he proved himself a very brave man that day. When the ship was being taken, he kept fighting until he was cut all to pieces. He fell, but he did not die; there was still breath in him. So the Persians serving as marines on the ships did everything they could to save his life, because of his courage. They treated his wounds with ointments of myrrh and bound him up in strips of the finest linen. When they got back to their own main force, they showed him off to the whole army, making a marvel of him and treating him well. But the rest of the men they had taken on this ship they treated as slaves.
182. So two of the three ships were captured in this way. The third, whose captain was Phormus of Athens, ran aground at the mouth of the river Peneus as it fled. The enemy got the ship but not the crew. As soon as the Athenians ran the ship aground they leaped out of her, made their way through Thessaly, and got back to Athens.
183. The Greeks stationed at Artemisium learned of all this from fire signals sent from Sciathus. When they heard, they were frightened, and they moved their anchorage from Artemisium to Chalcis, meaning to guard the Euripus, but they left lookouts on the heights of Euboea by day. Of the ten enemy ships, three sailed up to the reef called Myrmex, which lies between Sciathus and Magnesia, and set up a stone pillar on it, which they had brought along for the purpose. Once the hazards of the passage had been cleared up in this way, the main fleet set out from Therma and sailed there with all its ships, eleven days after the king had set out on his march from Therma. It was Pammon of Scyros who had told them about this reef lying right in the middle of the channel. Sailing all day, the enemy fleet reached Sepias in Magnesia and the beach between the city of Casthanaea and the headland of Sepias.
184. As far as this place, and as far as Thermopylae, the army had suffered no disaster. By my own calculation its numbers at that point were still as follows. There were 1,207 ships from Asia. If you count two hundred men to a ship, I find that the original crews provided by the various nations came to 241,400 men. On board each of these ships, besides the marines from its own nation, there served thirty marines who were Persians, Medes or Sacae, and they come to another 36,210 men. To this and to the first figure I will also add the crews of the fifty-oared galleys, assuming there were about eighty men in each, more or less. There were 3,000 of these vessels gathered together, as I said before, so there would have been 240,000 men in them. That was the naval force that came from Asia, 517,610 men in all. The infantry had been counted at 1,700,000, and the cavalry at 80,000. To these I will add the Arabian camel-drivers and the Libyan chariot-drivers, and I put them at 20,000 men. So the ships' crews and the land army together come to 2,317,610. That is the figure for the army brought out of Asia itself, not counting the servants who came with it, or the grain transports and the men who sailed in them.
185. On top of everything added up so far, there is still the force that was being brought along from Europe to be counted, and of this we must give a likely estimate. The Greeks of Thrace and of the islands off the coast of Thrace supplied one hundred and twenty ships, which makes 24,000 men. As for the land force supplied by the Thracians, Paeonians, Eordians, Bottiaeans, the people who live in Chalcidice, the Brygians, Pierians, Macedonians, Perrhaebians, Enianians, Dolopians, Magnesians, Achaeans, and all who live along the coast of Thrace, I estimate that these various nations came to 300,000 men. Adding these to the men from Asia makes a total of 2,641,610 fighting men.
186. That was the number of fighting men. As for the servants who came with them, and the men in the small grain boats and in the other vessels that sailed along with the army, I suppose that they were not fewer than the fighting men but more. But I will assume that they were exactly equal in number, neither more nor fewer. If they were equal to the fighting force, they make up the same number again. So the number of men Xerxes son of Darius led as far as Sepias and Thermopylae was 5,283,220.
187. That is the number of Xerxes' whole army. But as for the women who baked bread for it, and the concubines and the eunuchs, no one could give an exact number, nor could anyone give the number of the draft animals and other pack animals, or of the Indian hounds that came along, there were so many of them. So it does not surprise me that the water of some rivers ran out. What surprises me more is how there was enough food for so many hundreds of thousands. I find by calculation that if each man got a quart of wheat a day and nothing more, then 110,340 medimni, about 165,000 bushels, were used up every day. And here I am not counting anything for the women, the eunuchs, the pack animals or the dogs. Of all these men, so many hundreds of thousands of them, not one was more worthy than Xerxes himself to hold this power, for his good looks and his height.
188. So the fleet set out and sailed. When it put in on the coast of Magnesia, at the beach between the city of Casthanaea and the headland of Sepias, the first ships to arrive lay moored to the shore and the rest rode at anchor behind them. Since the beach was not long, they lay at anchor eight ships deep, with their prows pointing out to sea. They lay like this that night. But at dawn, after clear skies and a dead calm, the sea began to boil, and a great storm fell on them with a strong east wind, the wind the people who live around there call the Hellespontias. Those who noticed the wind rising, and who were moored in a way that let them do it, hauled their ships up on land before the storm hit, and so they and their ships survived. But of the ships the storm caught out at sea, it threw some onto the place called Ipni on Mount Pelion, and others onto the beach. Some were wrecked on the headland of Sepias itself, others at the city of Meliboea, and others were cast up on shore at Casthanaea. The storm was too violent to withstand.
189. There is a story that the Athenians had called on Boreas, the North Wind, to help them, because of an oracle. Another answer had come to them from the god, telling them to call on their brother-in-law for help. Now according to the Greek story, Boreas has a wife from Attica, Orithyia daughter of Erechtheus. Because of this marriage tie, so the story that has gone around says, the Athenians guessed that their "brother-in-law" was Boreas. So when they saw the wind rising, as they lay with their ships at Chalcis in Euboea, or even before that, they offered sacrifices and called on Boreas and Orithyia to help them and to destroy the invaders' ships, as they had done before around Mount Athos. Whether this was the reason the North Wind fell on the invaders as they lay at anchor, I can't say. But however that may be, the Athenians say that Boreas had helped them before, and that this time too he did what I have described for them. When they got home they built a temple to Boreas by the river Ilissus.
190. In this disaster, according to those who give the lowest figure, no fewer than four hundred ships were lost, with men beyond counting and an enormous amount of treasure. So much so that this shipwreck made a fortune for Ameinocles son of Cretines, a Magnesian who owned land around Sepias. He picked up many gold cups that washed up on the shore afterward, and many silver ones too. He found strongboxes that had belonged to the Persians, and he came by other gold things beyond description. But though he became very rich from what he found, in other ways this man was not lucky. He too had his share of misfortune: he was grieved by the killing of a child.
191. Of the grain transports and other vessels that were lost, no count was made. The loss was so great that the commanders of the fleet were afraid the Thessalians might attack them now that they were in such bad shape, and they threw a high stockade around their camp, built from the wreckage. The storm lasted three days. In the end the Magi, sacrificing victims and chanting spells to calm the wind, and also making offerings to Thetis and the Nereids made it stop on the fourth day; or else it died down on its own for some other reason. They sacrificed to Thetis because the Ionians had told them the story that Peleus carried her off from this place, and that the whole headland of Sepias belonged to her and the other Nereids.
192. So the storm had stopped on the fourth day. Meanwhile, on the day after the storm began, the lookouts had run down from the heights of Euboea and told the Greeks everything about the shipwreck. When the Greeks heard it, they first prayed to Poseidon the Savior and poured libations, and then they hurried back to Artemisium, expecting to find only a very few enemy ships left to face them.
193. So they came back a second time and lay with their ships off Artemisium, and from that day to this they have kept calling Poseidon by the name "Savior." Meanwhile, once the wind had dropped and the swell had calmed, the invaders hauled their ships back into the sea and sailed along the coast of the mainland. They rounded the tip of Magnesia and sailed straight into the gulf that leads to Pagasae. In this Magnesian gulf there is a place where Heracles, they say, was left behind by Jason and his companions. They had sent him from the Argo to fetch water, when they were sailing to Aea in Colchis for the Golden Fleece. They meant to cast off from there into the open sea once they had taken on water, and from this the place has come to be called Aphetae, "the Casting-off." This is where Xerxes' fleet now anchored.
194. It happened that fifteen of these ships put out to sea a good deal later than the rest, and they caught sight of the Greek ships at Artemisium. The crews took them for their own ships, so they sailed toward them and fell right among the enemy. Their commander was Sandoces son of Thamasius, the governor of Cyme in Aeolis. Some time before this, King Darius had arrested this Sandoces, who was one of the Royal Judges, and crucified him, because he had taken money to give an unjust verdict. But after Sandoces had been hung up, Darius worked it out and found that the good services he had done the royal house outweighed his offenses. Having found this, and realizing that he himself had acted more hastily than wisely, Darius let him go. So Sandoces escaped King Darius with his life; he did not die but survived. But this time, when he sailed in toward the Greeks, he was not going to escape a second time. When the Greeks saw these ships sailing toward them, they realized the mistake that was being made, put out against them, and captured them easily.
195. On one of these ships they captured Aridolis, tyrant of Alabanda in Caria. On another they took the commander from Paphos, Penthylus son of Demonous. He had brought twelve ships from Paphos, lost eleven of them in the storm off Sepias, and was now captured sailing in toward Artemisium with the one that had survived. After questioning these men about what they wanted to know of Xerxes' forces, the Greeks sent them off in chains to the Isthmus of Corinth.
196. So the invaders' fleet had arrived at Aphetae, all except the fifteen ships that, as I said, Sandoces commanded. Meanwhile Xerxes and the land army had marched through Thessaly and Achaea, and two days earlier had already entered the land of the Malians. In Thessaly he had held a race for his own horses, also testing the Thessalian cavalry, because he had been told it was the best among the Greeks; and in this contest the Greek horses were left far behind. Of the rivers in Thessaly, only the Onochonus did not have enough water for the army to drink. But of the rivers that flow in Achaea, even the largest of them, the Epidanus, held out only barely.
197. When Xerxes reached Alus in Achaea, his guides, who were showing him the way and wanted to tell him everything, told him a local legend about the temple of Zeus Laphystius. They told how Athamas son of Aeolus plotted the death of Phrixus together with Ino, and how after that, by command of an oracle, the Achaeans impose these trials on his descendants. On whoever is the eldest of this family they lay a ban: he is forbidden to enter the town hall, and they themselves keep watch. The Achaeans call the town hall the "Hall of the People." If he does enter it, he may never come out again except to be sacrificed. They also told him that many of those who were going to be sacrificed had before now run away in fear to another country, and that if later on they came back to their own land and were caught, they were put into the town hall. And they described how the man is sacrificed all covered over with wreaths, and in what kind of procession he is led out to the sacrifice. This is done to the descendants of Cytissorus son of Phrixus. When the Achaeans, on the command of an oracle, were making Athamas son of Aeolus a sacrifice to cleanse the land of its guilt, and were just about to sacrifice him, this Cytissorus came from Aea in Colchis and rescued him, and by doing so he brought the anger of the gods down on his own descendants. When Xerxes heard all this and came to the sacred grove, he kept out of it himself and ordered his whole army to do the same. And he showed reverence both to the house of the descendants of Athamas and to their sacred precinct.
198. That is what happened in Thessaly and in Achaea. From there Xerxes went on into the Malian country, along a gulf of the sea where the tide comes in and goes out every day. Around this gulf there is a stretch of flat ground, broad in some places and very narrow in others. High mountains that cannot be crossed surround this flat ground and shut in the whole Malian land; they are called the Rocks of Trachis. The first city on this gulf as you come from Achaea is Anticyra, where the river Spercheus, flowing from the land of the Enianians, runs out into the sea. About two and a quarter miles from this river there is another, called the Dyras, which is said to have sprung up to help Heracles when he was burning. Then about two and a quarter miles from this there is another river, called the Melas.
199. The city of Trachis is just over half a mile from the river Melas. Here, where Trachis lies, is the widest part of this whole district, from the mountains to the sea, for the plain covers about five thousand acres. In the range of mountains that shuts in the land of Trachis there is a gorge to the south of Trachis itself, and through this gorge the river Asopus flows, running along the foot of the mountain.
200. There is another river, the Phoenix, to the south of the Asopus. It is not a large one; it flows down from these mountains into the Asopus. At the river Phoenix is the narrowest place, for the road built there has room for only a single cart track. From the river Phoenix it is about a mile and two-thirds to Thermopylae. Between the river Phoenix and Thermopylae there is a village called Anthela, past which the Asopus flows on into the sea. Around this village there is a wide open space, where a temple of Demeter of the Amphictyons stands, and there are seats for the members of the Amphictyonic Council and a temple of Amphictyon himself.
201. So King Xerxes was camped in the district of Trachis, in the land of the Malians, and the Greeks were camped inside the pass. Greeks in general call this place Thermopylae, the "Hot Gates," but the people who live there and in the country around it call it simply Pylae, "the Gates." Both sides, then, were camped in this area. The one side held everything beyond Trachis toward the north wind, and the other held everything on this side of the mainland, toward the south wind and the midday sun.
202. These were the Greeks who waited in this place for the Persian attack. From Sparta came three hundred hoplites. From Tegea and Mantinea came a thousand, half from each city; from Orchomenus in Arcadia, a hundred and twenty; and from the rest of Arcadia, a thousand. That was the Arcadian total. From Corinth came four hundred, from Phlius two hundred, and from Mycenae eighty. Those were the men who came from the Peloponnese. From the Boeotians came seven hundred Thespians and four hundred Thebans.
203. Besides these, the Locrians of Opus had been called up to come with their whole force, and the Phocians with a thousand men. The Greeks themselves had sent for them. Their messengers said that they had come ahead as an advance guard for the rest, that the other allies were expected any day, and that the sea was safely guarded, watched over by the Athenians, the Aeginetans and the others assigned to the fleet. There was nothing to fear, they said, because the one coming to attack Greece was not a god but a man. There was no mortal, and never would be one, whose fortune had not had some evil mixed into it from the moment he was born, and the greatest evils fell to the greatest men. So the man marching against them, being mortal, was bound to fall short of what he expected. When the Locrians and Phocians heard this, they came to Trachis to help the others.
204. These troops had other commanders as well, each from his own city, but the man everyone looked up to most, who led the whole army, was the Spartan Leonidas. He was the son of Anaxandrides, son of Leon, son of Eurycratides, son of Anaxander, son of Eurycrates, son of Polydorus, son of Alcamenes, son of Teleclus, son of Archelaus, son of Hegesilaus, son of Doryssus, son of Leobotes, son of Echestratus, son of Agis, son of Eurysthenes, son of Aristodemus, son of Aristomachus, son of Cleodaeus, son of Hyllus, son of Heracles. He had become king of Sparta when no one expected it.
205. He had two brothers older than himself, Cleomenes and Dorieus, so he had been far from any thought of becoming king. But Cleomenes died without a son, and Dorieus was no longer alive either: he too had come to his end, in Sicily. So the kingship came to Leonidas, both because he was older than Cleombrotus (Cleombrotus was the youngest of Anaxandrides' sons) and because he was married to Cleomenes' daughter. At this time, then, he went to Thermopylae with the three hundred men the law assigned to a king, and he chose men who happened to have sons living. On the way there he also picked up the Thebans I counted when I listed the numbers of the troops; their commander was Leontiades son of Eurymachus. Leonidas was eager to bring these men, out of all the Greeks, for one reason: they had been strongly accused of siding with the Persians. So he called them out to the war because he wanted to find out whether they would send troops with him or openly renounce their alliance with the Greeks. They sent men, but all the while they had something else in mind.
206. The Spartans sent Leonidas and his men out first so that the other allies would see them and join the campaign, and so that the allies would not go over to the Persians themselves on hearing that Sparta was holding back. Later, once they had kept their festival (the Carneia, the Spartans' festival of Apollo, stood in their way), they meant to leave a garrison in Sparta and come quickly to help with their whole force. The rest of the allies had planned to do the same, because the Olympic festival happened to fall at the same time as these events. They did not think the fighting at Thermopylae would be decided so soon, so they sent only their advance guards.
207. That was what they intended. Meanwhile the Greeks at Thermopylae, when the Persians came near the pass, were frightened and discussed retreating from their position. The rest of the Peloponnesians thought it best to go back to the Peloponnese and guard the Isthmus. But the Phocians and Locrians were furious at this idea, and Leonidas voted to stay where they were and at the same time to send messengers to the various cities, telling them to come up and help, since they were too few to drive back the army of the Medes.
208. While they were deliberating, Xerxes sent a mounted scout to see how many they were and what they were doing. He had heard while he was still in Thessaly that a small force had gathered at this place, and that its leaders were Spartans, among them Leonidas, a descendant of Heracles. When the horseman rode up toward their camp, he looked them over, though he could not see their whole army. The men posted inside the wall, which they had rebuilt and were guarding, could not be seen. But he did see the ones outside, whose post was in front of the wall, and as it happened, the Spartans were the ones posted outside at that time. He saw some of the men exercising and others combing their long hair. He was amazed at the sight, and at the same time he took note of their numbers. When he had noted everything exactly, he rode back undisturbed. Nobody tried to chase him; they paid him almost no attention at all. When he got back, he told Xerxes everything he had seen.
209. When Xerxes heard this, he could not grasp the truth, which was that the men were getting ready to die and to kill as many of the enemy as they could. It seemed to him that they were behaving in a way that was simply ridiculous. So he sent for Demaratus son of Ariston, who was in his camp. When Demaratus came, Xerxes asked him about each of these things, wanting to understand what the Spartans were doing. Demaratus said, "You heard me speak about these men once before, when we were setting out against Greece. When you heard me, you laughed at me, because I told you how I saw things would turn out. For me, the greatest goal of all is always to tell you the truth, my king. So hear me now as well. These men have come to fight us for the pass, and that is what they are getting ready to do. They have a custom: whenever they are about to risk their lives, they arrange their hair. But you can be sure of this: if you defeat these men and the rest of them who stayed behind in Sparta, there is no other people on earth that will stand and face you, my king, or raise a hand against you. You are now about to fight the finest kingdom and city among the Greeks, and the best men."
What Demaratus said seemed completely unbelievable to Xerxes, and he asked a second time how, being so few, they would fight against his army. Demaratus answered, "My king, treat me as a liar if things do not turn out the way I say."
210. Saying this did not convince Xerxes. He let four days go by, expecting all the time that they would run away. But on the fifth day, when they had not left but were still there, out of sheer impudence and folly, as he thought, he grew angry and sent the Medes and the Cissians against them, with orders to take them alive and bring them before him. The Medes charged and attacked the Greeks, and many of them fell. Others kept coming up in their place, and they were not driven off, though they lost heavily. They made it clear to everyone, and not least to the king himself, that he had many human beings but few men. This fighting went on all day.
211. When the Medes had been badly mauled, they pulled out of the battle. Then the Persians the king called the "Immortals," whose commander was Hydarnes, took their place and came on to the attack, thinking that they at least would beat the enemy easily. But when these too came to grips with the Greeks, they did no better than the Median troops. They did exactly as badly, because they were fighting in a narrow space, with shorter spears than the Greeks, and could not make use of their numbers. The Spartans, meanwhile, fought in a way worth remembering. Among the other skills they showed, as men who knew everything about fighting facing men who knew nothing, they would turn their backs on the enemy and pretend to run away. The enemy, seeing them run, would chase after them with shouting and clashing of weapons. Then, just as they were being caught, the Spartans would turn and face their pursuers, and in turning they killed countless numbers of Persians. A few of the Spartans themselves fell in these clashes too. So, since the Persians could make no headway in trying for the entrance, though they attacked it by divisions and in every way they could think of, they withdrew.
212. During these attacks, it is said, the king, who was watching, leaped up from his seat three times in fear for his army. That was how they fought that day. On the next day the enemy did no better. They went into battle expecting that, since their opponents were so few, they would be crippled by their wounds and unable to lift a hand against them any longer. But the Greeks were drawn up by companies and by nations, and each fought in its turn, except for the Phocians, who had been posted on the mountain to guard the path. So when the Persians found nothing different from what they had seen the day before, they withdrew from the fight.
213. The king was at a loss about what to do next, and then Ephialtes son of Eurydemus, a Malian, came to talk with him, thinking he would get a very large reward from the king. He told him of the path that leads over the mountain to Thermopylae, and so he brought about the destruction of the Greeks who stayed there. Later, out of fear of the Spartans, he fled to Thessaly. While he was in exile, the Amphictyons' delegates, at a meeting of the Amphictyonic assembly at Pylae, put a price on his head. Some time after that he came back to Anticyra and was killed by Athenades, a man of Trachis. This Athenades killed Ephialtes for a different reason, which I will explain later in my history, but the Spartans honored him for it all the same.
214. That is how Ephialtes was killed afterward. But there is another story told: that it was Onetes son of Phanagoras, a man of Carystus, and Corydallus of Anticyra who showed the Persians the way around the mountain. I don't accept this at all. In the first place, we have to judge by this fact: the delegates of the Greeks did not put a price on the heads of Onetes and Corydallus, but on that of Ephialtes of Trachis, and they surely had the most exact information on the matter. In the second place, we know that Ephialtes went into exile to escape this charge. It is true that Onetes could have known about the path, even though he was not a Malian, if he had spent a lot of time in that country. But it was Ephialtes who led them around the mountain by the path, and so it is Ephialtes I write down as the guilty man.
215. Xerxes was delighted with what Ephialtes promised to do, and at once, full of joy, he sent off Hydarnes and the men under Hydarnes' command. They left the camp at about lamp-lighting time. This path had been discovered by the Malians who live in that country, and after discovering it they had used it to lead the Thessalians against the Phocians, back when the Phocians had walled off the pass and were sheltering behind the wall from their attacks. That is how long ago the Malians had shown that the pass was worth nothing.
216. The path runs like this. It begins at the river Asopus, which flows through the gorge. The mountain and the path have the same name, Anopaea. This Anopaea runs along the ridge of the mountain and ends near the town of Alpeni, the first town of the Locrians on the side toward Malis, and near the rock called Black Buttocks and the Seats of the Cercopes. That is where the path is at its very narrowest.
217. Along this path, then, the Persians crossed the Asopus and marched all night, with the mountains of the Oetaeans on their right and those of the Trachinians on their left. At dawn they reached the top of the mountain. On this part of the mountain, as I explained before, a thousand Phocian hoplites were standing guard, to protect their own country and to hold the path. While the pass below was held by the men I have named, the path over the mountain was guarded by the Phocians, who had volunteered to Leonidas for the job.
218. While the Persians were climbing, the Phocians could not see them, because the whole mountain was covered in oak trees. This is how the Phocians found out that they had made the climb. The day was still, and the Persians made a good deal of noise, as you would expect with leaves lying spread over the ground under their feet. At this the Phocians jumped up and began putting on their armor, and by then the enemy was right on top of them. When the Persians saw men arming themselves, they were astonished. They had expected no one to appear against them, and instead they had run into an armed force. Then Hydarnes, afraid that the Phocians might be Spartans, asked Ephialtes what people these troops belonged to. When he had been told exactly, he drew up the Persians for battle. But the Phocians, struck by thick volleys of arrows, fled at once to the highest peak of the mountain, convinced that the enemy had come to attack them in particular, and there they were ready to die. That was what the Phocians had in mind. But the Persians with Ephialtes and Hydarnes paid no attention to the Phocians and went down the mountain as fast as they could.
219. The Greeks at Thermopylae had their first warning from the seer Megistias. He looked into the sacrificed victims and announced the death that would come to them at dawn. After that, deserters brought the news that the Persians were going around. They reported it while it was still night. Third came the lookouts, who ran down from the heights just as day was breaking. Then the Greeks held a council, and their opinions were divided: some urged that they must not abandon their post, while others argued against it. After this they broke up, and some left and scattered, each to his own city, while others were ready to stay there with Leonidas.
220. It is also said, though, that Leonidas himself sent them away, out of concern that they should not be killed, but that he thought it would not be right for himself and the Spartans with him to leave the post they had come to guard in the first place. I lean more toward this second view. I think that Leonidas saw that the allies had lost heart and did not want to face the danger with him to the end, so he ordered them to leave, but he believed it would be dishonorable for him to go. If he stayed, he would leave a great name behind him, and Sparta's prosperity would not be wiped out. For the Pythia had given the Spartans an oracle, when they consulted her about this war just as it was first starting, saying that either Sparta must be destroyed by the invaders or their king must lose his life. She gave them this answer in hexameter verse, and it went like this:
As for you who live in the wide spaces of Sparta: either your glorious city is sacked by the sons of Perses, or, if not, then all within the borders of broad Lacedaemon will mourn for a dead king of the line of Heracles. Neither the strength of bulls nor the fury of lions will stop him, for he has the strength of Zeus; I tell you, he will not be held back until he has torn one or the other of these to pieces.
I believe Leonidas had this in mind, and wanted to win glory for himself above all the other Spartans, and so he sent the allies away. I don't think the ones who left went off in such disorder simply because they disagreed.
221. To my mind, one of the strongest pieces of evidence for this is the following. It is well known that Leonidas tried to send away the seer as well, the one who was with this army, Megistias the Acarnanian, who was said to be descended from Melampus. He did not want him to die with them after he had read in the victims what was going to happen to them. But when Megistias was told to go, he would not leave himself. Instead he sent away his son, who was serving with him in the army and was his only child.
222. So the allies who were dismissed did as Leonidas said and left, and only the Thespians and the Thebans stayed behind with the Spartans. Of these, the Thebans stayed against their will, not because they wanted to: Leonidas kept them, treating them as hostages. But the Thespians stayed very willingly. They said they would not go away and abandon Leonidas and the men with him. So they stayed behind and died with them. Their commander was Demophilus son of Diadromes.
223. Meanwhile Xerxes poured libations at sunrise and then waited for a while, until about the hour when the marketplace fills up, in mid-morning, and then he advanced on them. Ephialtes had told him to do this, since the way down the mountain is shorter, and the distance much less, than the way around and up. So the invaders with Xerxes moved forward to the attack. And the Greeks with Leonidas, knowing they were marching out to their deaths, now went much farther out than at first, into the wider part of the pass. On the earlier days, while the wall was being guarded, they had fought by falling back into the narrow part of the pass. But now they met the enemy outside the narrows, and a great many of the invaders fell. Behind the enemy ranks, the officers of the divisions stood with whips in their hands, lashing every man and driving them on and on toward the front. Many of them were pushed into the sea and drowned, and even more were trampled alive by their own side, and no one counted how many died. For the Greeks knew that death was coming for them from the men who were going around the mountain, and so they threw all the strength they had against the enemy, as hard as they could, with no thought for danger, as if possessed by a reckless frenzy.
224. By now most of them had broken their spears in this fighting, as it happened, and they were killing Persians with their swords. In this fighting Leonidas fell, having proved himself a very brave man, and with him other Spartans of note. I learned their names, as men who had shown themselves worthy, and in fact I learned the names of all three hundred. Many notable Persians fell here too, among them two sons of Darius, Abrocomes and Hyperanthes, whose mother was Phratagune, daughter of Artanes. Artanes was King Darius' brother and the son of Hystaspes son of Arsames. When he gave his daughter to Darius in marriage, he gave her his whole estate along with her, because she was his only child.
225. So two of Xerxes' brothers fell fighting here. Meanwhile a great struggle broke out between the Persians and the Spartans over the body of Leonidas, until the Greeks, by sheer courage, dragged it away from the enemy, after driving them back four times. This struggle went on until the men with Ephialtes arrived. When the Greeks learned that they had come, from that moment the fight changed character. They fell back to the narrow part of the road, went past the wall, and took up a position on the little hill there, all together in a body, except for the Thebans. This hill is at the entrance to the pass, where the stone lion in honor of Leonidas now stands. On this spot they defended themselves with daggers, those who still had them, and with their hands and teeth, until the enemy buried them under a hail of missiles. Some of the enemy had followed straight after them and torn down the wall, and others had come around and surrounded them on every side.
226. That is how the Spartans and Thespians proved their courage. But the Spartan Dieneces, they say, proved himself the bravest man of all. He is the one who, they report, made this remark before they joined battle with the Medes. A man of Trachis told him that when the enemy fired their arrows, they blotted out the sun with the sheer number of arrows, so huge was their army. Dieneces was not shaken by this at all. Thinking nothing of the numbers of the Medes, he said that their friend from Trachis had brought them very good news: if the Medes hid the sun, they would be fighting in the shade instead of in the sun.
227. They say that Dieneces the Spartan left behind this saying and others like it to be remembered by. After him, they say, the bravest of the Spartans were two brothers, Alpheus and Maron, the sons of Orsiphantus. Of the Thespians, the man who won the most honor was named Dithyrambus son of Harmatides.
228. The men were buried where they fell. For them, and for those who had died before Leonidas sent the allies away, there is an inscription that reads:
Here once four thousand men from the Peloponnese stood and fought against three million.
That inscription is for them all. For the Spartans alone there is this one:
Stranger, go tell the Spartans that we lie here in this place, obedient to their laws.
That one is for the Spartans. And for the seer, this:
This is the tomb of the famous Megistias, whom the Medes killed where the Spercheus flows, as they crossed the stream. He was a seer, and he knew clearly the fate that was coming, yet he could not bring himself to leave the leaders of Sparta.
It was the Amphictyons who honored the dead with these inscriptions and memorial pillars, except for the seer's inscription. That one, for the seer Megistias, was inscribed by Simonides son of Leoprepes, because the two were guest-friends.
229. Two of the three hundred, it is said, Eurytus and Aristodemus, could have done either of two things if they had agreed with each other. Leonidas had sent them away from the camp, and they were lying at Alpeni, suffering badly from an eye disease. So they could have come home safe to Sparta together, or, if they did not want to go home, they could have died with the rest. They could have done either one, but they would not agree, and they split. When Eurytus, they say, learned that the Persians had gone around, he asked for his armor, put it on, and ordered his helot to lead him to where the fighting was. When the helot had led him there, he ran away and left, and Eurytus plunged into the thick of the fighting and was killed. But Aristodemus lost his nerve and stayed behind. Now if Aristodemus had been the only one who was ill, and had come home to Sparta, or if both of them had come back together, I don't believe the Spartans would have shown any anger toward them. But as it was, one of them had died, and the other, holding on to the same excuse that the first could also have used, had refused to die. So the Spartans were bound to be furious with Aristodemus.
230. Some say Aristodemus came home safe to Sparta in this way and with the excuse I have described. Others say he had been sent from the camp as a messenger, and though he could have gotten back in time to find the battle still going, he chose not to. He lingered on the road and so saved his life, while the man sent with him as a fellow messenger reached the battle and was killed.
231. When Aristodemus came home to Sparta, he met with disgrace and dishonor. This is the dishonor he suffered: no Spartan would give him a light for his fire or speak to him, and he was disgraced with the name "Aristodemus the Coward."
232. But in the battle at Plataea he made up for all the blame laid on him. It is also reported that another of the three hundred survived, a man named Pantites, who had been sent to Thessaly as a messenger. When he came back to Sparta and found himself in disgrace, they say, he hanged himself.
233. The Thebans, whose commander was Leontiades, stayed with the Greeks and fought against the king's army for a while, because they had no choice. But when they saw the Persian side winning, then, and not before, while the Greeks with Leonidas were hurrying to the little hill, they broke away from them. They held out their hands and went up to the enemy, saying something that was perfectly true: that they were on the Persians' side, that they had been among the first to give earth and water to the king, that they had come to Thermopylae because they had been forced to, and that they were not to blame for the losses the king had suffered. By saying this they saved their lives, since they also had the Thessalians to vouch for what they said. Still, their luck was not good all the way through. Some were killed as they came forward, and when they had come over and the enemy had them in their power, most of them were branded with the royal marks on Xerxes' orders, starting with their commander Leontiades. This was the Leontiades whose son Eurymachus was later killed by the Plataeans, when he led four hundred Thebans and seized the city of Plataea.
234. That is how the Greeks fought at Thermopylae. Then Xerxes sent for Demaratus and questioned him, beginning like this: "Demaratus, you are a good man. I judge that by the truth of what you told me, because everything you said turned out just as you said it would. Now tell me: how many Lacedaemonians are left, and how many of them are like these men in war? Or are they all like this?"
Demaratus said, "My king, there are a great many Lacedaemonians and many cities of them, but you will learn what you want to know. In Lacedaemon there is the city of Sparta, with about eight thousand men. These are all the equals of the men who fought here. The other Lacedaemonians (the free men of the Laconian towns, who are not citizens of Sparta) are not equal to these, but they are good men too."
To this Xerxes said, "Demaratus, how can we beat these men with the least trouble? Come, explain it to us. You know the ways they think and plan, since you were once their king."
235. Demaratus answered, "My king, if you are seriously asking my advice, it is right that I tell you the best course. What if you sent three hundred ships from your fleet to attack the coast of Laconia? There is an island lying near it called Cythera. Chilon, who was a very wise man among us, said that it would be better for the Spartans if that island sank beneath the sea than if it stayed above it. He always expected that something would come from it of exactly the kind I am now describing to you. Not that he knew about your expedition in advance; he feared every expedition of men alike. So let your forces set out from this island and keep the Spartans in fear. While they have a war of their own right on their doorstep, you will have nothing to fear from them; they will not come to the rescue while the rest of Greece is being conquered by your land army. Then once the rest of Greece is subdued, from that moment the Spartan power will be left alone, and so it will be weak. But if you don't do this, I will tell you what you can expect. There is a narrow isthmus leading into the Peloponnese, and in that place you can expect other battles, harder than the ones that have been fought already, because all the Peloponnesians have sworn an alliance against you. But if you do the other thing I spoke of, this isthmus and the cities inside it will come over to you without a battle."
236. After him spoke Achaemenes, Xerxes' brother and the commander of the fleet. He happened to be present for this conversation, and he was afraid Xerxes would be persuaded to do it. "My king," he said, "I see you are listening to the words of a man who envies your good fortune, or is even a traitor to your cause. This is just the sort of temper the Greeks delight in: they envy a man his good luck, and they hate whatever is stronger than they are. Four hundred of our ships have been wrecked, on top of our other misfortunes. If you send away another three hundred from the fleet's station to sail around the Peloponnese, your opponents will be a match for you in a fight. But while the fleet is all together, it is hard for them to deal with, and they will not be a match for you at all. Besides, the whole navy will support the army and be supported by it if they move forward together. But if you split them up, you will be no use to them, and they will be no use to you. My view is rather that you should put your own affairs in good order and not worry about the enemy's: where they will make their stand, what they will do, or how many of them there are. It is enough for them to look out for themselves, and for us to do the same for ourselves. And if the Spartans come out to face the Persians in battle, they certainly will not heal the wound they are suffering from now."
237. Xerxes answered him like this: "Achaemenes, I think you are right, and I will do as you say. But Demaratus says what he believes is best for me, even if his advice loses out to yours. I certainly will not accept what you said, that he is not loyal to my cause. I judge that both by what he said to me before this and by the plain truth. It is true that one citizen envies another for his good fortune and shows his hostility by keeping silent. A citizen whom a fellow citizen consults will not suggest what he really thinks is best, unless he has reached a great height of virtue, and such men are surely few. But a guest-friend is more loyal than anything on earth to a guest-friend who is doing well, and if his friend asks his advice, he will give him the best counsel he can. So, as for this slander against Demaratus, who is my guest-friend, I order everyone to stop it from now on."
238. After saying this, Xerxes went out among the bodies of the dead. When he heard that Leonidas had been the Spartans' king and commander, he ordered his men to cut off his head and crucify him. It has become clear to me from many other pieces of evidence, but from none more strongly than this, that King Xerxes was more furious with Leonidas while he lived than with any other man on earth. Otherwise he would never have committed this outrage against his corpse, because of all the people I know, the Persians are the ones most accustomed to honor men who are brave in war. So the men who were given these orders carried them out.
239. Now I will go back to the point in my story where I left it unfinished. The Spartans had been the first of all to learn that the king was preparing an expedition against Greece. That was how they came to send to the oracle at Delphi, where they were given the answer I reported a little earlier. They learned the news in a strange way. Demaratus son of Ariston, after he had fled to the Persians, was not friendly toward the Spartans, in my opinion, and likelihood supports my opinion. But anyone may guess for himself whether he did what follows out of goodwill or to gloat over them. When Xerxes had decided to march against Greece, Demaratus, who was at Susa and had learned of it, wanted to send word to the Spartans. There was no other way he could get the message to them, since he was in danger of being caught, so he came up with this trick. He took a folding writing tablet and scraped off the wax that covered it. Then he wrote the king's plan on the wood of the tablet, and after that he melted the wax and poured it back over the writing, so that the tablet, carried blank, would not get its bearer into trouble with the guards on the roads. When it reached Sparta, the Spartans could not make anything of it, until finally, as I am told, Gorgo, the daughter of Cleomenes and wife of Leonidas, worked it out herself and suggested a plan: she told them to scrape off the wax, and they would find writing on the wood. They did as she said, found the writing and read it, and then sent word to the rest of the Greeks. This, they say, is how it happened.
1. These were the Greeks who had been assigned to serve in the fleet. The Athenians supplied 127 ships. The Plataeans, moved by courage and eagerness for the cause, joined the Athenians in manning those ships, even though they had no experience of the sea at all. The Corinthians supplied 40 ships and the Megarians 20. The Chalcidians manned 20 ships, which the Athenians provided for them. The Aeginetans supplied 18 ships, the Sicyonians 12, the Spartans 10, the Epidaurians 8, the Eretrians 7, the Troezenians 5, and the Styrians 2. The Ceans supplied 2 ships and 2 fifty-oared galleys. And the Locrians of Opus also came to help the rest with 7 fifty-oared galleys.
2. These were the peoples who joined the expedition to Artemisium, and I have listed them by the number of ships each supplied. So the number of ships gathered at Artemisium, not counting the fifty-oared galleys, was 271. The commander with supreme authority was supplied by the Spartans: Eurybiades son of Eurycleides. This was because the allies said they would not follow the Athenians' lead, and that unless a Spartan was in command they would break up the expedition that was being planned.
3. The reason was that, from the very beginning, even before they sent to Sicily to look for allies, there had been talk that the fleet ought to be put under the Athenians' command. But since the allies opposed this, the Athenians gave way. They cared deeply that Greece should be saved, and they saw that if they quarreled with one another over who should lead, Greece would be lost. And in this they judged rightly: civil strife among people of the same race is worse than a war fought with one mind, by as much as war is worse than peace. Since they understood this, they did not press their claim but gave way, for as long as they badly needed the allies. Their later conduct proved it. For once they had driven the Persians out of their own country and were fighting for the Persians' land rather than their own, they used Pausanias' arrogance as an excuse and took the leadership away from the Spartans. But that happened later.
4. At this point, though, the Greeks who had come to Artemisium saw that a great many ships had put in at Aphetae and that the whole place was full of the enemy's forces. They were struck with fear, because things had turned out for the Persians very differently from what they had expected, and they began to discuss retreating from Artemisium into the interior of Greece. When the Euboeans saw them discussing this, they asked Eurybiades to stay with them for a short while, until they could get their children and their households out of the country. They could not persuade him, so they went elsewhere and persuaded Themistocles, the Athenian commander, with a payment of thirty talents, on condition that the fleet would stay and fight the sea battle in front of Euboea.
5. This is how Themistocles got the Greeks to stay. He gave Eurybiades five talents of the money, pretending that it came from his own pocket. Once Eurybiades had been talked round, Adeimantus son of Ocytus, the Corinthian commander, was the only one of all the rest who still held out. He said he would sail away from Artemisium and would not stay with the others. So Themistocles said to him, with an oath: "You at least will not abandon us. I will give you bigger presents than the king of the Persians would send you for deserting your allies." As he said this, he sent three talents of silver over to Adeimantus' ship. So all of them were won over by gifts and changed their minds; at the same time the Euboeans got what they had asked for, and Themistocles himself made a profit. No one knew that he had kept the rest of the money, and those who got a share of it were fully convinced that it had come from the Athenian state for this purpose.
6. So they stayed at Euboea and fought a sea battle, and this is how it happened. The Persians arrived at Aphetae early in the afternoon. They had already been told before they came that a few Greek ships were stationed around Artemisium, and now they could see them for themselves, so they were eager to attack and see if they could capture them. But they did not think it wise to sail straight at them yet, for fear that the Greeks would see them coming and take to flight, and that darkness would come down on them as they fled. That way, the Persians thought, they would probably get away; whereas by the Persians' reckoning not even the fire-bearer should escape with his life. (The fire-bearer carried the sacred fire for an army's sacrifices and was spared by custom, so "not even the fire-bearer" meant not a single man.)
7. With this in mind they worked out the following plan. From their whole fleet they detached two hundred ships and sent them around Euboea, past Caphereus and around Geraestus to the Euripus. These ships went outside Sciathus so that the enemy would not see them sailing around Euboea. The idea was that this squadron would come up that way and block the Greeks' retreat, while the main fleet advanced on them from the front, and so they would surround them on every side. Having made this plan, they sent off the ships assigned to it. They themselves had no intention of attacking the Greeks that day, or until the ships sailing around showed them the agreed signal that they had arrived. So they were sending these ships around, and meanwhile they were counting the rest of the fleet at Aphetae.
8. While they were counting their ships, this happened. There was in that camp a man from Scione named Scyllias, the best diver of anyone in his time. In the shipwreck off Pelion he had saved a great deal of property for the Persians, and he had also taken a great deal for himself. This Scyllias, it seems, had intended for some time to desert to the Greeks, but until then he had had no chance to do it. How he actually reached the Greeks after this, I can't say for certain, but I am amazed if the story people tell is true. For it is said that he dived into the sea at Aphetae and did not come up until he reached Artemisium, covering a distance of about nine miles underwater. There are several other stories told about this man that look like lies, but some that are true. On this matter, though, let me give it as my opinion that he came to Artemisium in a boat. As soon as he arrived, he told the commanders about the shipwreck and how it had happened, and about the ships that had been sent around Euboea.
9. When the Greeks heard this, they talked it over among themselves. After a good deal of argument, the view that won was that they should stay where they were that day and camp on shore, and then, after midnight had passed, put to sea and go to meet the ships sailing around Euboea. But after this, since no one sailed out to attack them, they waited until late in the afternoon and then sailed out themselves to attack the Persians. They wanted to test the enemy's way of fighting and their maneuver of breaking through the line.
10. When the men in Xerxes' army, and their commanders too, saw the Greeks sailing against them like this with so few ships, they thought they must be out of their minds. They put out to sea themselves, expecting to capture them easily. And it was a reasonable expectation, since they could see that the Greek ships were few, while their own were many times as numerous and sailed better. With this confidence they came around and closed the Greeks in, in the middle. Now some of the Ionians were friendly to the Greeks and were serving in the expedition against their will. When they saw the Greeks being surrounded, they were deeply grieved, convinced that not one of them would get home again, so weak did they think the Greek force was. But those Ionians who were pleased by what was happening competed with one another, each trying to be the first to take an Athenian ship and win gifts from the king. For in the Persian camps there was more talk of the Athenians than of anyone else.
11. When the first signal was given, the Greeks drew up with their prows facing the enemy and their sterns pulled close together in the middle. When the second signal was given, they set to work hard, even though they were penned into a small space and fighting prow to prow. They captured thirty enemy ships, and also Philaon son of Chersis, the brother of Gorgus, king of Salamis in Cyprus, a man of great reputation in the army. The first Greek to capture an enemy ship was an Athenian, Lycomedes son of Aeschraeus, and he received the prize for valor. So they fought this sea battle with neither side winning, until nightfall parted them. The Greeks sailed back to Artemisium and the Persians to Aphetae, after a contest very different from what they had expected. In this sea fight Antidorus of Lemnos was the only one of the Greeks serving with the king who deserted to the Greek side, and for this the Athenians gave him a piece of land on Salamis.
12. When darkness had fallen, even though it was the middle of summer, there came a tremendous downpour of rain that lasted all night, with crashing thunder from Mount Pelion. The bodies of the dead and pieces of wreckage were washed up at Aphetae, where they got tangled around the prows of the ships and knocked against the blades of the oars. The men of the fleet there heard these things and grew afraid. They expected that they were certainly going to die, so many troubles had come upon them. For before they had even had a chance to catch their breath after the shipwreck and the storm off Mount Pelion, they had been hit by a hard sea battle, and after the sea battle by a violent rainstorm, with torrents rushing down to the sea and crashing thunder.
13. That was the kind of night these men had. Meanwhile the ships that had been assigned to sail around Euboea went through that very same night, but it raged much more fiercely against them, because it caught them out on the open sea. And it ended badly for them. The storm and the rain came on them as they sailed, when they were off the "Hollows" of Euboea. They were driven by the wind without knowing where they were being carried, and they were wrecked on the rocks. All this was being done by heaven, so that the Persian force would be brought nearer to the size of the Greek one and would not be so very much larger.
14. So these men were dying around the Hollows of Euboea. Meanwhile, at Aphetae, the Persians were glad to see the day dawn. They kept their ships quiet, content in their sorry state to stay still for the time being. But fifty-three Athenian ships came to reinforce the Greeks. Their arrival put new heart into the Greeks, and at the same time they were encouraged by news that the Persian ships sailing around Euboea had all been destroyed by the storm. So they waited until the same time of day as before, then sailed out and fell on some Cilician ships. After destroying these, they sailed away when darkness came on and went back to Artemisium.
15. On the third day the Persian commanders were furious that such a small number of ships should do them so much damage, and they were afraid of what Xerxes might do. So this time they did not wait for the Greeks to start the battle. They passed the word to one another and put out to sea around midday. Now it so happened that these battles at sea and the battles on land at Thermopylae were fought on the same days. For the men fighting at sea, the whole aim of the struggle was the channel of the Euripus, just as the aim of Leonidas and his men was to guard the pass. So the Greeks urged one another not to let the invaders through into Greece, while the Persians cheered one another on to destroy the Greek fleet and take control of the straits.
16. While Xerxes' fleet was sailing toward them in formation, the Greeks stayed quietly at Artemisium. The Persians arranged their ships in a crescent so as to close them in, and were trying to surround them. Then the Greeks put out to sea and engaged them. In this battle the two sides were about evenly matched. Xerxes' fleet did itself damage because of its sheer size and numbers, since its ships were thrown into confusion and kept running into one another. Even so it held its ground and did not give way, because they were too proud to be put to flight by so few ships. So many Greek ships were destroyed and many men were killed, but many more ships and men on the Persian side. After fighting in this way, they broke off and each went back to its own station.
17. In this sea battle the Egyptians did best of all those fighting for Xerxes. Besides other great feats they performed, they captured five Greek ships together with their crews. On the Greek side, those who did best that day were the Athenians, and of the Athenians Cleinias son of Alcibiades. He was serving with two hundred men and a ship of his own, paying the whole cost out of his own pocket.
18. After they broke off, both sides were glad to hurry back to their anchorages. Once they had separated and come out of the sea battle, the Greeks were in possession of the bodies of the dead and the wrecks of the ships. But they had been badly mauled, and especially the Athenians, half of whose ships were damaged. So they began to discuss retreating into the interior of Greece.
19. Themistocles, however, had come to the conclusion that if the Ionian and Carian peoples could be pried away from the Persian force, the Greeks would be able to beat the rest. The Euboeans were driving their flocks down to the shore at that point, and Themistocles called the generals together. He told them he thought he had a scheme by which he hoped to make the best of the king's allies abandon him. He revealed this much and no more. As for their present situation, he said, this is what they must do. Every one of them should slaughter as many of the Euboeans' sheep and goats as he wanted, since it was better for their own army to have them than the enemy. He also advised each of them to order his men to light a fire. As for the time of their departure, he would see to it that they got back to Greece safely. They were happy to do this, and as soon as they had lit their fires they turned their attention to the flocks.
20. For in fact the Euboeans had ignored the oracle of Bacis as if it meant nothing at all. They had not moved anything out of their country, nor had they laid in any store of food, as people do when they expect a war to come upon them; and so by their own behavior they had brought trouble on themselves. This is how the oracle Bacis gave about these things runs:
"Watch: when a man of foreign speech yokes the sea with papyrus, then make your plans to move the loud-bleating goats out of Euboea."
In the troubles that were on them at this time, or soon to be expected, they had good reason to be sorry that they had paid no attention to these lines.
21. While they were busy with this, the lookout arrived from Trachis. There was a lookout at Artemisium named Polyas, a native of Anticyra, whose job was to report to the men at Thermopylae if the fleet was defeated, and he had a boat fitted out and ready for the purpose. In the same way there was an Athenian with Leonidas, Abronichus son of Lysicles, ready to carry the news to the men at Artemisium in a thirty-oared galley if anything went wrong for the land army. It was this Abronichus who now arrived, and he told them what had happened to Leonidas and his army. When they heard it, they put off their retreat no longer. They set out in the order in which each had been posted, the Corinthians first and the Athenians last.
22. Themistocles, however, picked out the fastest Athenian ships and went around to the places where there was drinking water, cutting messages into the stones there. The Ionians read them when they came to Artemisium the next day. This is what the messages said: "Men of Ionia, you are doing wrong in making war on your forefathers and trying to enslave Greece. The best thing would be for you to come over to our side. But if you cannot do that, then even now stand aside from the fight against us, and ask the Carians to do the same as you. If neither of these is possible, and you are held down by a compulsion too strong to let you revolt, then when we meet in battle hold back on purpose. Remember that you are descended from us, and that our quarrel with the foreigner began in the first place because of you." Themistocles wrote this, I suppose, with two things in mind at once. Either the messages would escape the king's notice and make the Ionians change sides and come over to the Greeks, or, if they were reported to Xerxes and the Ionians accused, they would make him distrust the Ionians, and so he would keep them out of the sea battles.
23. So Themistocles set up these inscriptions. Immediately after this, a man from Histiaea came to the Persians in a boat with the news that the Greeks had pulled out of Artemisium. The Persians did not believe it. They kept the messenger under guard and sent fast ships ahead to look. When these reported that it was true, the whole fleet sailed together to Artemisium, just as daylight was spreading across the sky. They stayed there until midday, and then sailed on to Histiaea. When they arrived, they took the city of Histiaea and overran all the villages along the coast in the district of Ellopia, which is Histiaean territory.
24. While they were there, Xerxes sent a herald to the fleet, after first making arrangements about the bodies of the dead. The arrangements he made beforehand were these. Of all the men of his army who lay dead at Thermopylae, and there were as many as twenty thousand in all, he left about a thousand where they were. The rest he buried in trenches he had dug, covering them with leaves and heaping earth over them, so that the men of the fleet would not see them. When the herald had crossed over to Histiaea, he called an assembly of the whole force and said: "Allies, King Xerxes gives permission to any of you who wish to leave his post and come and see how he fights against those utterly senseless men who expected to defeat the power of the king."
25. When the herald had made this announcement, boats became the scarcest thing of all, so many men wanted to see the sight. They crossed over and walked among the dead bodies, looking at them. Everyone supposed that the men lying there were all Spartans or Thespians, though there were helots too among the bodies they saw. But the men who had crossed over could not fail to see what Xerxes had done, as I mentioned, with the bodies of his own dead. In fact it was enough to make a person laugh: on one side a thousand bodies could be seen lying, while the others lay all gathered together in one place, four thousand of them. They spent that day looking, and the next day they sailed back to the ships at Histiaea, while Xerxes and his army set out on their march.
26. A few deserters from Arcadia had also come over to them, men with no means of living who wanted to be taken into service. The Persians brought these men before the king and asked them about the Greeks and what they were doing; one man asked the questions on behalf of all the rest. The Arcadians told them that the Greeks were holding the Olympic festival and watching contests of athletics and horse racing. The Persian then asked what prize was offered, for which they competed, and they told him about the wreath of olive that is given. At this Tigranes son of Artabanus spoke out a very noble thought, though it got him called a coward by the king. When he heard that the prize was a wreath and not money, he could not keep quiet, but said in front of everyone: "Mardonius, what kind of men are these you have brought us to fight, who compete not for money but for honor!" That is what this man said.
27. Meanwhile, as soon as the disaster at Thermopylae had happened, the Thessalians at once sent a herald to the Phocians. They had always had a grudge against the Phocians, and especially because of the latest defeat they had suffered at their hands. Not many years before the king's expedition, the Thessalians and their allies had invaded Phocis in full force, and the Phocians had beaten them and handled them roughly. The Phocians had been shut up on Mount Parnassus, and with them was a seer, Tellias of Elis. This Tellias came up with a trick for them. He took six hundred men, the best of the Phocians, and whitened them all over with chalk, both the men and their armor. Then he attacked the Thessalians by night, telling the Phocians beforehand to kill every man they saw who was not painted white. The Thessalian sentries saw them first and were terrified, thinking it was some supernatural thing and not what it really was; and after the sentries, the main body of the army panicked too. As a result the Phocians were left in possession of four thousand dead men and their shields. They dedicated half of the shields at Abae and half at Delphi. And from a tenth of the plunder taken in that battle were made the large statues that stand in front of the temple at Delphi, showing the struggle for the tripod; others like them are dedicated as an offering at Abae.
28. That is what the Phocians had done to the Thessalian infantry when it was besieging them. And they had done damage to their cavalry too, past all repair, when it invaded their land. In the pass near Hyampolis they dug a great trench and laid empty wine jars in it. Then they carried earth, spread it on top, and made the place look like the rest of the ground, and waited for the Thessalians to invade. The Thessalians, thinking they would make short work of the Phocians, came charging at full speed and rode straight onto the wine jars, and there their horses' legs were smashed.
29. Since they held a grudge for both of these things, the Thessalians sent a herald with this message: "Phocians, we advise you to start thinking better of it now and to admit that you are not our equals. In the past, among the Greeks, for as long as we chose to be on that side, we were always ranked above you. And now we have so much influence with the Persian that it is in our power to have you stripped of your land and sold into slavery as well. But although we hold all the power, we bear no malice. Pay us fifty talents of silver for it, and we promise to turn aside the dangers that threaten your land."
30. That was the Thessalians' proposal. For the Phocians were the only people in that whole region who were not siding with the Persians, and, as I judge, for no other reason than their feud with the Thessalians. If the Thessalians had supported the Greek cause, it is my opinion that the Phocians would have been on the Persian side. When the Thessalians made this proposal, the Phocians said they would not give the money. They said it was open to them to go over to the Persians just as much as it was to the Thessalians, if they wanted to for other reasons; but they would never of their own free will be traitors to Greece.
31. When this answer was reported, the Thessalians were angry with the Phocians and became guides to the Persian army, showing it the way. From the territory of Trachis they entered Doris. A narrow strip of Dorian land stretches in that direction, a little over three miles wide, lying between Malis and Phocis; in ancient times it was called Dryopis, and this land is the mother country of the Dorians of the Peloponnese. The Persians did not ravage this land of Doris when they entered it, because its people were siding with the Persians, and also because the Thessalians did not want it ravaged.
32. When they passed from Doris into Phocis, though, they did not catch the Phocians themselves. Some of the Phocians had gone up onto the heights of Parnassus. There is a peak of Parnassus, called Tithorea, which stands on its own near the town of Neon and has plenty of room for a great many people, and some of them had carried their goods up there and gone up themselves. But most of them had moved their goods out to the Ozolian Locrians, to the town of Amphissa, which lies above the Crissaean plain. The Persians, however, overran the whole of Phocis, since that is where the Thessalians led the army. Everything they came to on their march they burned or cut down, and they set fire to towns and temples alike.
33. They laid everything waste, advancing this way along the river Cephisus. They burned the town of Drymus, and also these: Charadra, Erochus, Tethronium, Amphicaea, Neon, Pedieis, Triteis, Elatea, Hyampolis, Parapotamii and Abae. At Abae there was a rich temple of Apollo, well stocked with treasuries and offerings, and there was an oracle there then, as there still is now. They plundered this temple and burned it. They also chased down some of the Phocians in the mountains and caught them, and some women died from being raped by many men, one after another.
34. Passing Parapotamii, the Persians came to Panopeus, and from there their army split and went different ways. The largest and strongest part of the army went with Xerxes himself against Athens and entered Boeotia, coming into the territory of Orchomenus. Now the Boeotians as a whole were siding with the Persians, and their towns were being held by Macedonians sent by Alexander, one group assigned to each town. They were holding them with this purpose: to make it plain to Xerxes that the Boeotians were on the Persian side.
35. That was the direction these Persians took. But others, with guides, had set out for the temple at Delphi, keeping Parnassus on their right. All the parts of Phocis they marched through they ravaged; they set fire to the towns of Panopeus, Daulis and Aeolis. The reason they marched that way, split off from the rest of the army, was to plunder the temple at Delphi and hand its treasures over to King Xerxes. Xerxes knew everything of any value that was in it better, I am told, than he knew the things he had left in his own palace at home, since many people kept talking about them, and especially about the offerings of Croesus son of Alyattes.
36. Meanwhile the Delphians had heard of this and were thrown into the utmost fear. In their terror they consulted the oracle about the sacred treasures, whether they should bury them in the ground or carry them away to another country. But the god told them not to touch them, saying that he was able to look after his own property himself. When they heard this, they began to think about themselves. They sent their children and women across the gulf to Achaea, while most of the men climbed up toward the peaks of Parnassus and carried their belongings into the Corycian cave, and others went off for refuge to Amphissa in Locris. In short, all the Delphians had left the town except sixty men and the prophet of the oracle.
37. When the Persians had come close and could see the temple, the prophet, whose name was Aceratus, saw weapons lying in front of the inner shrine. They had been carried out from the sanctuary, and they were sacred arms that no human being was allowed to touch. So he went to announce this omen to the Delphians who were still there. But when the Persians, pressing forward, came level with the temple of Athena Pronaea, still greater omens happened to them than the one before. That one was certainly a marvel, that weapons of war should appear of their own accord, laid out in front of the shrine; but what happened right after it deserves to be marveled at above all other wonders. Just as the Persians came level with the temple of Athena Pronaea, thunderbolts fell on them from the sky, and two crags broke off from Parnassus and came crashing down on them with a tremendous roar, falling on many of them. And from the temple of Pronaea came a shout, and a war cry was raised.
38. All these things together threw the Persians into terror. The Delphians, seeing them in flight, came down after them and killed a great many of them, and the survivors fled straight to Boeotia. Those of the Persians who got back reported, so I am told, that besides what I have described they saw other miraculous things too. Two armed men, they said, taller than any human being, followed them, killing and chasing them.
39. The Delphians say these two were the local heroes Phylacus and Autonous, whose sacred precincts are near the temple: Phylacus' right beside the road above the temple of Pronaea, and Autonous' near the Castalian spring, under the peak called Hyampea. What is more, the rocks that fell from Parnassus were still there in my own time, lying in the precinct of Athena Pronaea, where they came to rest after crashing through the Persian ranks. That is how these men left the temple.
40. Meanwhile the Greek fleet, after leaving Artemisium, put in at Salamis at the request of the Athenians. The Athenians asked them to put in at Salamis for this reason: they wanted to move their children and their wives out of Attica to a place of safety, and also to discuss what they ought to do. In their present situation they meant to make new plans, because their expectations had let them down. They had expected to find the Peloponnesians waiting in full force for the invaders in Boeotia. They found nothing of the kind. Instead they were told that the Peloponnesians were building a wall across the Isthmus of Corinth, because they valued the safety of the Peloponnese above everything else and were keeping guard over that, and that they were ready to let everything else go. When they learned this, the Athenians asked the fleet to put in at Salamis.
41. So the others brought their ships to land at Salamis, but the Athenians crossed over to their own country. When they arrived, they made a proclamation that every Athenian should save his children and his household as best he could. Most of them sent their families to Troezen, but some sent them to Aegina and some to Salamis. They were eager to get them out of danger, partly because they wanted to obey the oracle, and especially for another reason, which was this. The Athenians say that a great serpent lives in the temple and guards the Acropolis. They not only say this; they even set out monthly offerings for it, as if it really were there, and the offering is a honey-cake. This honey-cake had always been eaten up before, but at this time it was left untouched. When the priestess announced this, the Athenians left the city much more readily and eagerly than before, since even the goddess, as they believed, had abandoned the Acropolis. Then, when everything they owned had been moved out of danger, they sailed to join the fleet in its camp.
42. When the ships that came from Artemisium had put in at Salamis, the rest of the Greek navy heard of it and came over from Troezen in groups to join them, for they had been ordered beforehand to gather at Pogon, the harbor of the Troezenians. So many more ships were gathered now than had fought at Artemisium, and from more cities. The admiral in command of the whole was the same man as at Artemisium, Eurybiades son of Eurycleides, a Spartan but not of the royal house. But the Athenians supplied by far the largest number of ships, and the ones that sailed best.
43. These were the peoples who joined the muster. From the Peloponnese: the Spartans, with sixteen ships; the Corinthians, with the same number as at Artemisium; the Sicyonians, with fifteen ships; the Epidaurians, with ten; the Troezenians, with five; and the men of Hermione, with three. All of these except the Hermionians are of Dorian and Macednian stock, and they made their last migration from Erineus and Pindus and the land of Dryopis. But the people of Hermione are Dryopians, who were driven out by Heracles and the Malians from the land now called Doris.
44. Those were the Peloponnesians in the fleet. From the mainland outside the Peloponnese came the following. The Athenians supplied more ships than all the rest, one hundred and eighty, and they served alone. The Plataeans did not fight beside the Athenians in the sea battle at Salamis, because when the Greeks were leaving Artemisium and had come near Chalcis, the Plataeans landed on the opposite shore of Boeotia and set about moving their households to safety. So, being busy rescuing their families, they had been left behind. As for the Athenians: in the days when the Pelasgians held what is now called Greece, the Athenians were Pelasgians and were named Cranai. In the time of King Cecrops they came to be called Cecropidae. Then, when Erechtheus took over the power, their name was changed to Athenians; and after Ion son of Xuthus became the Athenians' commander, they were called Ionians after him.
45. The Megarians supplied the same number of ships as at Artemisium. The Ambraciots came to help the rest with seven ships, and the Leucadians with three; these two peoples are Dorians by descent, from Corinth.
46. Of the islanders, the Aeginetans supplied thirty ships. They had other ships manned as well, but they were using those to guard their own land, and they fought in the sea battle at Salamis with the thirty that sailed best. The Aeginetans are Dorians from Epidaurus, and their island used to be called Oenone. After the Aeginetans came the Chalcidians, with the twenty ships they had had at Artemisium, and the Eretrians with their seven; these are Ionians. Next came the Ceans, with the same number as before; they are Ionians by descent, from Athens. The Naxians supplied four ships. Their fellow citizens had sent them out to join the Persians, as the other islanders had done; but they ignored these orders and came over to the Greeks, urged on by Democritus, a man of good standing among the citizens and at that time the captain of a trireme. The Naxians are Ionians, originally from Athens. The Styrians supplied the same ships as at Artemisium, and the men of Cythnus one ship and one fifty-oared galley; both of these peoples are Dryopians. The Seriphians, the Siphnians and the Melians also served with the rest, for they were the only islanders who had not given earth and water to the Persian king.
47. All the peoples named so far lived on the near side of the land of the Thesprotians and the river Acheron. The Thesprotians border on the land of the Ambraciots and the Leucadians, and those two were the ones who came from farthest away to serve. Of all the people who live beyond these limits, the men of Croton were the only ones who came to help Greece in her danger. They sent one ship, and its captain was Phayllus, a man who had won three victories at the Pythian games. The men of Croton are Achaeans by descent.
48. All the others in the fleet supplied triremes, but the Melians, Siphnians and Seriphians supplied fifty-oared galleys. The Melians, who are descended from the Spartans, supplied two; the Siphnians and Seriphians, who are Ionians from Athens, one each. The total number of ships, not counting the fifty-oared galleys, was 378.
49. When the commanders from the cities I have named had gathered at Salamis, they began their discussion. Eurybiades proposed that anyone who wished should give his opinion on where, in the territory the Greeks still controlled, he thought it best to fight a sea battle. Attica had already been given up, and so it was the remaining territory that he was asking about. Most of the speakers agreed on one view: that they should sail to the Isthmus and fight a sea battle there in defense of the Peloponnese. Their reasoning was that if they were beaten in a sea battle at Salamis, they would be trapped and besieged on an island where no help could reach them, but at the Isthmus they could get ashore among their own people.
50. While the commanders from the Peloponnese were arguing this way, an Athenian arrived with news that the invaders had reached Attica and that the whole country was being laid waste with fire. The army that had marched with Xerxes through Boeotia had burned the city of the Thespians, whose people had left it and gone to the Peloponnese, and the city of the Plataeans as well. Now it had come to Athens and was laying waste everything in that region. Xerxes had burned Thespiae and Plataea because the Thebans told him that these cities were not on the Persian side.
51. So the invaders reached Attica three months after crossing the Hellespont, where their march began, counting the one month they spent there while they crossed over into Europe. It was the year when Calliades was archon at Athens, the magistrate who gave the year its name. They took the lower city, which was deserted. Then they found that there were still a few Athenians left in the temple on the Acropolis, either temple stewards or poor men. These men had barricaded the entrance to the Acropolis with doors and a fence of timber and were trying to defend themselves against the enemy's attacks. They had not gone over to Salamis, partly because of their poverty, and also because they thought that they alone had worked out the meaning of the oracle the Pythia had given the Athenians: that the "wooden bulwark" would never be taken. This, they believed, was the safe refuge the oracle meant, and not the ships.
52. So the Persians took up a position on the hill facing the Acropolis, which the Athenians call the Hill of Ares, and besieged them in this way: they wrapped tow, a coarse flax fiber, around their arrows, set it alight, and shot them at the fence. Even so, the Athenians under siege kept on defending themselves, although they had reached the last extremity of distress and their fence had failed them. They would not listen to terms of surrender when the sons of Pisistratus brought them forward. Instead they went on defending themselves and came up with all sorts of devices against the enemy. Among other things, they rolled down great boulders whenever the invaders came near the gates. So for a long time Xerxes was at a loss, unable to take them.
53. In the end, however, a way in appeared for the invaders out of their difficulties, since according to the oracle the whole mainland of Attica was fated to come under the Persians. This is how it happened. On the front side of the Acropolis, but behind the gates and the road leading up to the entrance, there was a spot where no one was on guard, and where no one would have thought any man could climb up. Here, by the shrine of Aglaurus the daughter of Cecrops, some men climbed up, even though the place is a sheer cliff. When the Athenians saw that they had climbed up onto the Acropolis, some of them threw themselves down from the wall and died, while others took refuge in the inner chamber of the temple. The Persians who had climbed up went first to the gates and opened them, and then they killed the suppliants. When they had killed them all, they plundered the temple and set fire to the whole Acropolis.
54. Then Xerxes, now in complete possession of Athens, sent a messenger on horseback to Susa to report his success to Artabanus. On the day after he sent the herald, he called together the Athenian exiles who were traveling with him and told them to go up to the Acropolis and offer sacrifices in their own way. Perhaps he had seen some vision in a dream that made him give this order, or perhaps he had misgivings because he had set fire to the temple. The Athenian exiles did as they were told.
55. Now I will explain why I have mentioned this. On this Acropolis there is a temple of Erechtheus, who is said to have been born from the Earth, and in it there is an olive tree and a pool of salt water. According to the story the Athenians tell, Poseidon and Athena set these there as tokens of their claims when they were competing for the land. It so happened that this olive tree was burned by the invaders along with the rest of the temple. But on the day after the fire, when the Athenians whom the king had ordered to sacrifice went up to the temple, they saw that a shoot about a foot and a half long had sprung up from the stump. They reported this.
56. Meanwhile the Greeks at Salamis, when they heard what had happened to the Acropolis of the Athenians, were so badly shaken that some of the commanders did not even wait for a vote on the question that had been put. They rushed to their ships and began hoisting their sails, meaning to get away fast. Those who stayed behind finally decided to fight at sea in defense of the Isthmus. Night came on, and they broke up from the council and went to their ships.
57. When Themistocles reached his ship, an Athenian named Mnesiphilus asked him what they had decided. When Themistocles told him that they had resolved to take the ships to the Isthmus and fight a sea battle in defense of the Peloponnese, Mnesiphilus said: "Then if they sail away from Salamis with the ships, you won't fight any more sea battles for your country at all. They will all head off to their own cities, and neither Eurybiades nor anyone else will be able to hold them back or stop the fleet from breaking up. Greece will be ruined by bad decisions. If there is any way at all, go and try to undo what has been decided. Perhaps you can persuade Eurybiades to change his plans and stay here."
58. Themistocles liked this advice very much. Without a word in reply, he went to Eurybiades' ship. When he got there, he said that he wanted to discuss a matter of common concern with him, and Eurybiades told him to come aboard and say whatever he wished. Then Themistocles sat down beside him and repeated everything he had heard Mnesiphilus say, passing it off as his own thinking and adding a good deal more. At last, by pressing hard, he persuaded Eurybiades to come off his ship and call the commanders together in council.
59. When they had gathered, before Eurybiades could even put forward the business he had called the commanders together for, Themistocles began to speak at length and with great force, since he was very eager to get his way. While he was speaking, the Corinthian commander, Adeimantus son of Ocytus, said: "Themistocles, at the games, those who start before the signal are beaten with rods." Themistocles defended himself: "Yes, but those who are left behind at the start never win the crown."
60. This time he answered the Corinthian mildly. And to Eurybiades he did not now say any of what he had said before, that if they sailed from Salamis they would scatter in all directions, because it would not be proper for him to accuse the allies to their faces. Instead he took a different line of argument. "It is in your power now to save Greece," he said, "if you will take my advice and stay here and fight a sea battle here, and not take the advice of those among these men who tell you to move the ships to the Isthmus. Listen to both plans and compare them. If you fight at the Isthmus, you will be fighting in the open sea, and that is the last place it suits us to fight, since our ships are heavier and fewer than the enemy's. Second, you will lose Salamis and Megara and Aegina, even if we succeed in everything else. For their army will come along with their fleet, and so you will lead them to the Peloponnese yourself and put all of Greece at risk.
"But if you do what I say, you will find these advantages in it. First, if we fight in narrow waters with few ships against many, and the battle goes the way we can reasonably expect, we will have much the better of it. Fighting at sea in a narrow space works in our favor; fighting in a wide-open space works in theirs. Then again, Salamis will be saved, where our children and wives have been taken for safety. And there is this to be gained as well, which is what you all care about most: by staying here you will be fighting for the Peloponnese just as much as if the battle were at the Isthmus, and, if you are wise, you will not lead the enemy to the Peloponnese. And if what I expect comes true and we win with our ships, the invaders will not come to you at the Isthmus or advance any farther than Attica. They will retreat in disorder, and we will gain by saving Megara and Aegina and Salamis, where an oracle actually tells us we will defeat our enemies. When men make reasonable plans, reasonable results generally follow. But when they do not, heaven does not usually choose to go along with human plans."
61. When Themistocles said this, Adeimantus the Corinthian attacked him a second time. He told him to be quiet, since he had no country, and urged Eurybiades not to put to the vote the proposal of a man who was a citizen of no city. Themistocles, he said, could offer opinions to the council if he could show that he had a city, but not otherwise. He made this objection because Athens had been taken and was held by the enemy. At that Themistocles said many harsh things about him and about the Corinthians as well. He declared that he and his people really did have a city and a country greater than the Corinthians', as long as they had two hundred ships fully manned, for none of the Greeks could beat off the Athenians if they came to attack them.
62. Having made this point, he turned to Eurybiades and spoke still more urgently: "If you stay here, and by staying here prove yourself a brave man, all is well. If not, you will bring about the ruin of Greece, for all our strength in this war depends on the ships. No, do as I advise. But if you will not, we will pick up our households at once and sail to Siris in Italy, which has been ours since ancient times, and the oracles say we are destined to settle it. And you, when you are left alone, robbed of allies like us, will remember what I said."
63. When Themistocles said this, Eurybiades was persuaded to change his mind. In my opinion, he changed it mainly because he was afraid the Athenians would leave them if he took the ships to the Isthmus; for if the Athenians abandoned them and left, the rest would no longer be strong enough to fight the enemy. So he chose this plan: to stay where they were and decide the matter there with a sea battle.
64. So the men at Salamis, after their skirmish of words, began preparing for a sea battle there, since Eurybiades had decided on it. As day came on, just as the sun rose, an earthquake was felt both on land and at sea. They resolved to pray to the gods and to call on the sons of Aeacus to come and help them. And as they had resolved, so they did. They prayed to all the gods, and then they called Ajax and Telamon to their aid from Salamis itself, where the fleet was, and they sent a ship to Aegina to bring Aeacus himself and the other sons of Aeacus.
65. Dicaeus son of Theocydes, an Athenian who was an exile and had won a high reputation among the Persians at this time, told the following story. At the time when the land of Attica, deserted by the Athenians, was being ravaged by Xerxes' army, he happened to be with Demaratus the Spartan in the Thriasian plain. He saw a cloud of dust rising from Eleusis, as if raised by a crowd of about 30,000 men, and the two of them wondered what men could be raising it. Then all at once they heard the sound of voices, and Dicaeus recognized the sound as the mystic cry "Iacchus!" But Demaratus, who knew nothing of the sacred rites held at Eleusis, asked him what it was that was making the sound. Dicaeus said: "Demaratus, some great disaster is surely about to strike the king's army. It is perfectly plain, since Attica is deserted, that whatever is making this sound comes from the gods, and that it is going from Eleusis to help the Athenians and their allies. If it comes down on the Peloponnese, then the king himself and his army on the mainland are in danger. But if it turns toward the ships at Salamis, the king is in danger of losing his fleet. The Athenians celebrate this festival every year for the Mother and the Daughter, and any of them who wishes, and any of the other Greeks too, is initiated into the mysteries. The sound of voices you hear is the cry 'Iacchus!' that they raise at this festival." To this Demaratus said: "Keep quiet, and don't tell this story to anyone else. If these words of yours are reported to the king, you will lose your head, and neither I nor any other man on earth will be able to save you. So keep quiet, and the gods will take care of this expedition." That was Demaratus' advice. After the cloud of dust and the sound of voices, a mist rose into the air and was carried toward Salamis, to the camp of the Greeks. And so, Dicaeus said, they understood that Xerxes' fleet was doomed to be destroyed. That was the account Dicaeus son of Theocydes gave, calling on Demaratus and others as witnesses.
66. Meanwhile the men assigned to Xerxes' fleet, after viewing the disaster of the Spartans at Trachis, crossed over from there to Histiaea. They waited three days, then sailed through the Euripus, and in another three days they had reached Phalerum. In my judgment they were no fewer in number, by land and by sea, when they attacked Athens than when they had arrived at Sepias and Thermopylae. For against those of them who died in the storm, and those killed at Thermopylae and in the sea battles at Artemisium, I set those who had not yet joined the king at that time: the Malians, Dorians, Locrians and Boeotians (who joined him in full force, except the Thespians and Plataeans), and also the people of Carystus, Andros and Tenos, along with all the other islanders except the five cities whose names I mentioned before. For the farther the Persian king advanced into the heart of Greece, the more peoples went along with him.
67. So all these came to Athens except the Parians, who had stayed behind at Cythnus to wait and see how the war would turn out. When all the rest had come to Phalerum, Xerxes himself came down to the ships, wanting to visit them and to hear the views of the men who sailed in them. When he had arrived and taken his seat in a prominent place, the tyrants of the various nations and the commanders of the squadrons were summoned from their ships and came before him. They took their seats in the order of rank the king had given each of them: first the king of Sidon, then the king of Tyre, and after them the rest. When they were seated in order, Xerxes sent Mardonius to test each one by asking whether he should fight a sea battle.
68. So Mardonius went around asking them, beginning with the king of Sidon. All the others gave the same opinion, advising him to fight at sea. But Artemisia said this: "Mardonius, please tell the king this from me, from one who has proved herself not the worst in the sea battles fought off Euboea and has done deeds as good as anyone's. Master, it is right for me to tell you the opinion I really hold, and to say what I happen to think is best for your cause. And this is what I say: spare your ships and do not fight a sea battle. Their men are as much stronger than your men at sea as men are stronger than women. Why must you take the risk of a sea battle at all? Don't you hold Athens, the city you set out on this campaign to take? And don't you hold the rest of Greece? No one stands in your way. Those who did stand against you got what they deserved.
"Now I will tell you how I think things will turn out for your enemies. If you do not rush into a sea battle, but keep your ships here close to land, and either stay here yourself or even advance into the Peloponnese, then what you came to do, Master, will easily be done. The Greeks cannot hold out against you for long. You will soon scatter them, and they will run off to their own cities. For they have no food with them on this island, as I hear, and if you march your army against the Peloponnese, it is not likely that the men who came from there will stay put. They will have no wish to fight a battle in defense of Athens.
"But if you rush to fight at once, I am afraid that damage to the fleet may bring ruin on the army as well. And consider this too, my king: good men tend to have bad servants, and bad men good ones. You are the best of all men, and you have bad servants, the ones who are counted as your allies: the Egyptians, the Cyprians, the Cilicians and the Pamphylians, who are no use at all."
69. When she said this to Mardonius, those who were friendly to Artemisia were upset at her words, thinking she would be punished by the king for urging him not to fight at sea. But those who envied and resented her, because she had been honored above all the allies, were delighted by her opposition, thinking that now she was finished. But when the opinions were reported to Xerxes, he was very pleased with Artemisia's. He had thought highly of her even before, and now he praised her still more. Even so, he gave orders to follow the advice of the majority. He thought that off Euboea his men had held back deliberately because he was not there himself, whereas now he had arranged to watch them as they fought the sea battle.
70. So when the order was passed to put out to sea, they took their ships out toward Salamis and quietly drew them up in their stations along the shore. There was not enough daylight left for them to fight, since night had come on, but they made their preparations to fight the next day. The Greeks, meanwhile, were gripped by fear and dismay, especially the ones from the Peloponnese. They were dismayed because they were staying at Salamis to fight for the land of the Athenians, and if they were beaten they would be cut off and trapped on an island, leaving their own land unguarded. And in fact the invaders' army was marching toward the Peloponnese that very night.
71. Yet every possible step had been taken to keep the invaders from getting into the Peloponnese by land. As soon as the Peloponnesians heard that Leonidas and his men had died at Thermopylae, they hurried together from their cities and took up a position at the Isthmus. Their commander was Cleombrotus son of Anaxandrides, the brother of Leonidas. Once in position at the Isthmus, they destroyed the Scironian Road, and after that, having agreed on it among themselves, they began to build a wall across the Isthmus. There were tens of thousands of them, and every man joined in the work, so it went forward fast. Stones and bricks and timbers and baskets full of sand were carried to it without a break, and the men who had come to help never stopped working, night or day.
72. These were the Greeks who came in full force to the Isthmus to defend their country: the Spartans, the Arcadians of every district, the Eleans, the Corinthians, Sicyonians, Epidaurians, Phliasians, Troezenians and Hermionians. These were the ones who came to help Greece in her danger and who were anxious for her. The rest of the Peloponnesians did not care. And by this time the Olympic and Carnean festivals were already over.
73. Seven peoples live in the Peloponnese. Two of them are native to the soil and are settled now where they lived in ancient times: the Arcadians and the Cynurians. One people, the Achaeans, never left the Peloponnese, but long ago they did leave their own land, and they now live in land that was not theirs. The remaining four peoples came in from outside: the Dorians, the Aetolians, the Dryopians and the Lemnians. The Dorians have many famous cities; the Aetolians have Elis alone; the Dryopians have Hermione and Asine, which is opposite Cardamyle in Laconia; and the Lemnians have all the Paroreatae. The Cynurians, who are native to the soil, seem to be the only Ionians among them, but they have become Dorians completely, through being ruled by the Argives and through the passing of time. They are the people of Orneae and the countryside around it. Of these seven peoples, all the cities except the ones I listed just now stood aside and did nothing. And if I may speak freely, by standing aside they were in fact taking the Persians' side.
74. So the men at the Isthmus were throwing themselves into the work I have described, since they were now running a race with their very survival at stake, and they did not expect the fleet to win any brilliant success. The men at Salamis, though they heard about this work, were dismayed all the same, fearing not so much for themselves as for the Peloponnese. For a while they talked about it privately, one man muttering to the next, and they wondered at Eurybiades' folly. But in the end it broke out into the open. So a meeting was held, and much was said on the same points as before. Some said they ought to sail away to the Peloponnese and risk everything in its defense, rather than stay and fight for a land the enemy had already captured. But the Athenians, Aeginetans and Megarians urged that they should stay where they were and defend themselves.
75. Then, when Themistocles saw that the Peloponnesians were about to outvote him, he slipped out of the meeting unnoticed. Once outside, he sent a man in a boat to the Persian camp, with instructions on what to say. This man's name was Sicinnus. He was a servant of Themistocles and tutor to his children. After these events Themistocles had him enrolled as a citizen of Thespiae, when the Thespians were admitting new citizens, and made him a rich man. At this time Sicinnus came in the boat and said this to the commanders of the invaders: "The commander of the Athenians has sent me secretly, without the knowledge of the other Greeks. As it happens, he favors the king's cause and would rather see your side win than the Greeks. He sent me to tell you that the Greeks are panic-stricken and are planning to run away. Now you have the chance to do a splendid deed, if you do not let them escape. They are not of one mind with one another, and they will not stand up to you. Instead you will see them fighting a sea battle against each other, those on your side against those who are not."
76. Having delivered this message, Sicinnus went away. The commanders believed the message, and first they landed a large force of Persians on the little island of Psyttalea, which lies between Salamis and the mainland. Then, at midnight, they moved the western wing of their fleet out to sea and around toward Salamis, and the ships stationed around Ceos and Cynosura also put out, and they filled the whole strait with their ships as far as Munychia. They put their ships out for this reason: so that the Greeks could not even escape, but would be trapped at Salamis and pay the price for the battles at Artemisium. And they landed Persians on the little island called Psyttalea for this reason: when the battle came, they could save the men of one side and kill those of the other, since that was where the men and the wrecks were most likely to be washed ashore, for the island lay right in the path of the coming battle. They did all this in silence, so that the enemy would not find out.
77. So they made these preparations in the night, without getting any sleep at all. As for oracles, I cannot argue that they are not true. I have no wish to try to discredit them when they speak clearly, when I look at things like the one that follows:
"But when they bridge with their ships the sacred shore of the goddess, Artemis of the golden sword, and you, sea-washed Cynosura, driven by a frenzied hope, after plundering shining Athens, then divine Justice will quench Excess, the firstborn of Insolence, raging to overturn all things and panting fiercely for bloodshed. Bronze will clash with bronze, and Ares will redden the sea, staining its waves with blood. Then a day of freedom for Greece comes from far-seeing Zeus and from Victory, lady and mother."
When I look at things like this, and when Bacis speaks so clearly, I do not dare to raise objections about oracles myself, and I will not accept them from others.
78. Meanwhile there was fierce argument among the commanders at Salamis. They did not yet know that the invaders were surrounding them with their ships, but thought they were still in the positions they had seen them in by day.
79. While the commanders were quarreling, Aristides son of Lysimachus crossed over from Aegina. He was an Athenian who had been ostracized by the people, that is, banished by their vote. From what I hear of his character, I believe he was the best and most honorable man in Athens. This man came to the council and called Themistocles out. Themistocles was not his friend; he was his bitterest enemy. But because of the size of the present danger, Aristides put all that out of his mind and called him out, because he wanted to talk with him. He had already heard that the Peloponnesians were pressing to take the ships away to the Isthmus. So when Themistocles came out to him, Aristides said this: "At any other time when the chance arises, and especially at this moment, we ought to compete with each other over which of us can do more for our country. I tell you that it makes no difference now whether the Peloponnesians say much or little about sailing away from here. I have seen it with my own eyes, and I tell you that now, even if the Corinthians and Eurybiades himself want to sail out, they won't be able to. We are surrounded by the enemy. So go in and tell them this."
80. Themistocles answered: "That is very good advice, and the news you bring is good too, since you have come and seen with your own eyes what I wanted to happen. You should know that what the Persians are doing was done at my suggestion. When the Greeks would not come to a battle of their own free will, they had to be brought to it against their will. But since you have come with good news, report it to them yourself. If I tell them, they will think I have made it up, and I won't convince them; they will think the enemy is doing no such thing. So come forward and speak yourself, and tell them how things stand. When you have told them, if they believe you, that will be best. But if they don't believe it, it will make no difference to us, since they won't be able to run away any longer if we are surrounded on all sides, as you say."
81. So Aristides came forward and told them. He said that he had come from Aegina and had barely slipped past the blockading ships without being seen, since the whole Greek camp was surrounded by Xerxes' ships, and he advised them to get ready to defend themselves. After saying this he withdrew. And again an argument broke out among them, because most of the commanders did not believe the report.
82. While they were still doubting, a trireme manned by men of Tenos arrived, deserting from the enemy. Its captain was Panaetius son of Sosimenes, and it brought them the whole truth. For this deed the Tenians were inscribed at Delphi on the tripod, among those who had defeated the invaders. With this ship that deserted at Salamis, and the Lemnian ship that had deserted earlier and come over at Artemisium, the Greek fleet was brought up to a full 380 ships. Before this it had been two ships short of that number.
83. So the Greeks, believing what the Tenians had told them, got ready for a sea battle. As dawn broke they called an assembly of the men who fought on board the ships, and speeches were made. Themistocles' speech was the finest of all. The heart of it was a setting-out of everything that is better against everything that is worse, among all the things that arise in human nature and the human condition. He urged them to choose the better, and with that he wound up his speech and ordered them to board their ships. So they began to board. Meanwhile the trireme arrived from Aegina, the one that had gone off to bring the sons of Aeacus.
84. Then the Greeks put out with all their ships, and while they were still putting out from shore the enemy attacked them at once. Most of the Greeks began backing water and were about to run their ships aground. But Ameinias of Pallene, an Athenian, put out with his ship and rammed one of the enemy's. His ship got locked together with it and the men could not break free, so the others joined the fight to help Ameinias. That is how the Athenians say the battle began. But the Aeginetans say that the ship that had gone to Aegina to bring the sons of Aeacus was the one that started the fight. There is also a story that a phantom woman appeared to them and urged them to fight, so loudly that the whole Greek force heard her. But first she scolded them: "Madmen, how much farther are you going to back water?"
85. Facing the Athenians were the Phoenicians, who held the wing toward Eleusis and the west. Facing the Spartans were the Ionians, who held the wing that stretched east toward Piraeus. A few of the Ionians fought badly on purpose, as Themistocles had urged them to, but most did not. I could give the names of many ship captains who destroyed Greek ships, but I will use none of them except Theomestor son of Androdamas and Phylacus son of Histiaeus, both of them Samians. I mention these two and not the rest for this reason: because of this deed the Persians made Theomestor tyrant of Samos, and Phylacus was entered on the list of the king's benefactors and given a great deal of land as a reward. In the Persian language the king's benefactors are called orosangae.
86. So it went with these two. But most of the king's ships at Salamis were disabled, destroyed some by the Athenians and some by the Aeginetans. For the Greeks fought in good order, each ship in its place, while the enemy had lost all order and did nothing with any plan, so it was likely that things would turn out much as in fact they did. And yet on this day the king's men were far braver than they had been in the fighting off Euboea. Every one of them fought hard out of fear of Xerxes, each man thinking that the king was watching him in particular.
87. As for the rest, I cannot speak of each one separately or say exactly how each man fought, whether foreigner or Greek. But in Artemisia's case, this is what happened, and it raised her even higher in the king's esteem than before. When the king's side had fallen into great confusion, at that moment Artemisia's ship was being chased by an Athenian ship. She could not escape, because ahead of her were other ships of her own side, and her ship, as it happened, was the one nearest the enemy. So she decided what to do, and it turned out very much to her advantage that she did it. With the Athenian ship hard after her, she charged at full speed into a ship of her own side, crewed by Calyndians and carrying Damasithymus, the king of the Calyndians himself. Now it may be true that she had quarreled with him earlier, while they were still at the Hellespont. Even so, I cannot say whether she did this on purpose, or whether the Calyndian ship just happened to fall in her path. But she rammed it and sank it, and her luck brought her a double gain. First, the captain of the Athenian ship, seeing her ram a ship of the king's fleet, turned away and went after others. He supposed that Artemisia's ship was either Greek or had deserted from the enemy and was fighting for the Greeks.
88. That, then, was her first piece of luck: she escaped and was not destroyed. The second was that, though she had done harm to her own side, the very same act won her a great reputation with Xerxes. For it is said that the king, watching the battle, noticed her ship ramming the other one, and one of the men beside him said: "Master, do you see how well Artemisia is fighting? She has just sunk an enemy ship!" He asked whether it was really Artemisia who had done it, and they said it was, since they knew her ship's ensign very well. And they were sure that the ship she had destroyed was one of the enemy's. Among the other things that went her way, as I have said, there was this too: not one man of the Calyndian ship's crew survived to accuse her. And Xerxes, they say, answered what had been said to him with these words: "My men have become women, and my women men." That, they say, is what Xerxes said.
89. Meanwhile, in this struggle, the commander Ariabignes was killed, the son of Darius and brother of Xerxes, and many other notable men of the Persians and Medes and of the allies were killed too. Of the Greeks only a few died. Since the Greeks knew how to swim, those whose ships were destroyed and who were not killed in hand-to-hand fighting swam across to Salamis. But most of the king's men could not swim, and they died in the sea. The greatest number died when the front ships turned to run. The ships stationed behind were trying to push through to the front so that they too could do some brave deed for the king to see, and they ran into their own side's ships as those fled.
90. It also happened, in all this confusion, that some of the Phoenicians whose ships had been destroyed came to the king and accused the Ionians. They said their ships had been lost because of the Ionians, who had betrayed the cause. But as it turned out, not only did the Ionian commanders not lose their lives, but the Phoenicians who accused them got the reward I will now tell. While they were still speaking, a Samothracian ship rammed an Athenian ship. As the Athenian ship was sinking, an Aeginetan ship came at the Samothracian and ran it down. Then the Samothracians, who were skilled javelin-throwers, hurled their javelins and cleared the fighting men off the ship that had wrecked theirs, then boarded it and took it over. This saved the Ionians from punishment. For when Xerxes saw them do so great a deed, he turned on the Phoenicians, since he was bitterly upset and ready to find fault with everyone, and ordered their heads cut off, so that men who had been cowards themselves would not accuse their betters. Xerxes was sitting at the foot of the mountain opposite Salamis called Aegaleos, and whenever he saw any man of his own side do a brave deed in the battle, he asked who had done it, and his scribes wrote down the captain's name, with his father's name and his city. Besides this, Ariaramnes, a Persian who was there and a friend of the Phoenicians, shared their fate. So they went off to deal with the Phoenicians.
91. Meanwhile, as the king's ships turned to run and were sailing out toward Phalerum, the Aeginetans lay in wait for them in the strait and did deeds worth remembering. While the Athenians, in the confusion and uproar, were disabling both the ships that fought back and the ones that fled, the Aeginetans were destroying the ones trying to sail away. Whenever any ship escaped the Athenians, it ran at full speed straight into the Aeginetans.
92. Then two ships met: Themistocles' ship, which was chasing an enemy ship, and that of Polycritus son of Crius, the Aeginetan. Polycritus had just rammed a ship of Sidon. It was the same ship that had captured the Aeginetan guard ship stationed ahead at Sciathus, the one that carried Pytheas son of Ischenous. The Persians had kept Pytheas on board their ship, all cut to pieces as he was, because they marveled at his courage. So now the Sidonian ship was captured with Pytheas on it, along with the Persians I mentioned, and that is how Pytheas came home safe to Aegina. When Polycritus looked at the Athenian ship, he recognized the ensign of the admiral's ship. He shouted across at Themistocles, mocking him about the charge that the Aeginetans had gone over to the Persians, and taunting him with it. Polycritus flung this taunt at Themistocles right after he had rammed the Sidonian ship. Meanwhile the enemy ships that had escaped destruction fled to Phalerum, to be under the protection of the land army.
93. In this sea battle, of all the Greeks the Aeginetans won the highest praise, and after them the Athenians. Of the individual men, the most praised were the Aeginetan Polycritus and two Athenians, Eumenes of Anagyrus and Ameinias of Pallene, the one who had chased Artemisia. If Ameinias had known that Artemisia was sailing in that ship, he would not have stopped until he had either taken her or been taken himself. For the Athenian captains had been given orders about her, and a prize of 10,000 drachmas was offered besides to whoever took her alive, since they thought it an outrage that a woman should make war on Athens. But she, as I said before, had escaped. And the others whose ships had escaped destruction were at Phalerum too.
94. As for Adeimantus, the Corinthian commander, the Athenians say that right at the start, when the ships were closing for battle, he was seized with panic and terror, hoisted his sails and ran away. When the Corinthians saw their admiral's ship running away, they left too. After this, as the story goes, when they had fled as far as the temple of Athena Sciras on Salamis, a light boat met them, sent by the hand of heaven. No one was ever found who had sent it, and it came up to the Corinthians at a time when they knew nothing of how things stood with the fleet. This is why people guess the hand of heaven was in it. For when the boat came near the ships, the men in it said: "Adeimantus, you have turned your ships around and taken to flight, deserting the Greeks. But they are winning, and getting the better of their enemies just as they hoped." When they said this, Adeimantus did not believe it, so they spoke a second time and said that he could take them as hostages and kill them if the Greeks turned out not to be winning. So he turned his ship back, he and the others with him, and they reached the fleet when the work was already done. That is the story the Athenians spread about them. The Corinthians, however, do not accept it. They hold that they were among the first in the fighting, and the rest of Greece backs them up.
95. Aristides son of Lysimachus, the Athenian, whom I mentioned a little earlier as a very good man, did this in the uproar around Salamis. He took a number of the Athenian-born hoplites who had been posted along the shore of Salamis, landed with them on the island of Psyttalea, and they killed all the Persians on that islet.
96. When the sea battle was over, the Greeks towed back to Salamis all the wrecks that happened to be still in the area, and held themselves ready for another sea battle, since they expected the king to use the ships he had left that were undamaged. But the west wind caught many of the wrecks and carried them to the beach in Attica called Colias. So it fulfilled not only all the rest of the oracle spoken about this sea battle by Bacis and Musaeus, but also, and especially as to the wrecks washed up there, a line spoken many years before in an oracle by Lysistratus, an Athenian prophet, which none of the Greeks had understood:
The women of Colias will roast their barley over fires of oars.
This was to come true after the king had marched away.
97. When Xerxes understood the disaster that had happened to him, he was afraid that one of the Ionians might suggest to the Greeks, or that they might think of it themselves, to sail to the Hellespont and break up the bridges. Then he would be cut off in Europe and in danger of being destroyed completely. So he began to think about running away. But he did not want his plan to be noticed by the Greeks or by his own side. So he tried to build a causeway across to Salamis, and he lashed together Phoenician merchant ships to serve him as both a bridge and a wall, and he made preparations for war as if he meant to fight another battle at sea. Everyone else who saw him doing this was sure he was in earnest and meant to stay and fight. But Mardonius was not fooled: he saw what all this really meant, since long experience had taught him exactly how the king thought.
98. While Xerxes was doing this, he sent a messenger to Persia to announce the disaster that had come on them. Nothing mortal travels faster than these messengers, so cleverly have the Persians devised the system. For they say that however many days the whole journey takes, that many horses and men are posted at intervals along the road, one man and one horse for each day's journey. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor the dark of night keeps them from finishing their appointed stage at top speed. The first rider delivers the message he carries to the second, and the second to the third, and from there it passes from hand to hand down the line, like the torch race the Greeks run in honor of Hephaestus. The Persians call this relay of horses angareion.
99. The first message that reached Susa, announcing that Xerxes had taken Athens, delighted the Persians who had been left at home so much that they strewed all the roads with myrtle branches, kept burning incense without end, and gave themselves up to sacrifices and feasting. But the second message, which came after it, upset them so badly that they all tore their clothes and gave themselves up to endless weeping and wailing, laying the blame on Mardonius. And the Persians did this not so much out of grief for the ships as out of fear for Xerxes himself.
100. This went on among the Persians the whole time until Xerxes himself came home and put a stop to it. Meanwhile Mardonius saw that Xerxes was badly shaken by the sea battle, and he suspected that the king meant to run away from Athens. He thought about his own position. He would be punished for having persuaded the king to march against Greece, and it was better for him to take the risk of either conquering Greece or dying with honor, staking his life on a great goal. Even so, he leaned toward thinking that he would conquer Greece. He weighed all this, and then he made the king this speech: "Master, don't grieve and don't be so troubled over what has happened. Our whole fate does not hang on a contest of planks and timbers, but on men and horses. None of these Greeks who now think they have finished the job will get off their ships and try to stand against you, and neither will anyone here on the mainland. The ones who did stand against us have paid for it. So if you think it best, let us attack the Peloponnese at once; or if you think it best to wait, we can do that. But don't lose heart. There is no way for the Greeks to escape being your slaves, once they have first paid the price for what they have done to you, now and in the past. That would be the best course. But if you have really decided to go back yourself and take your army with you, I have other advice for that case too. My king, do not let the Persians become a laughingstock to the Greeks. None of your affairs has suffered because of the Persians, and you cannot name a single place where we acted like cowards. If Phoenicians or Egyptians or Cyprians or Cilicians acted like cowards, the disaster that followed has nothing to do with the Persians. So now, since it is not the Persians who have wronged you, take my advice. If you have decided not to stay here, then go back to your own home and take the main body of the army with you. And it will be my job to hand Greece over to you, conquered, if I can choose 300,000 men from the army to do it."
101. When Xerxes heard this he was glad and pleased, as far as he could be after his misfortunes, and he told Mardonius that he would think it over and then answer him and say which of the two courses he would take. So when he was consulting with the Persians who had been called to advise him, he decided to send for Artemisia to advise him as well, because before the battle she alone had shown that she saw what ought to be done. When Artemisia came, Xerxes sent everyone else away, both his Persian counselors and his spearmen of the guard, and said to her: "Mardonius urges me to stay here and attack the Peloponnese. He says the Persians and the land army have had no share in my disaster, and that they would gladly prove it to me. So he urges me either to do this, or else he wants to choose 300,000 men from the army himself and hand Greece over to me, conquered, while I go back home with the rest of the army. Now, you gave me good advice about the sea battle that has been fought, when you urged me not to fight it. So advise me now too, which of these things I should do, so that I may decide well."
102. That was his question, and she answered: "My king, it is hard to hit on the best answer when someone asks for advice. But in the present situation I think you should go back home and leave Mardonius here, if he wants to and promises to do this, with the men he wants to have. For on the one hand, if he conquers the people he says he wants to conquer, and the plans he has in mind when he talks this way succeed, then the deed is yours after all, Master, since it was your slaves who did it. On the other hand, if things turn out the opposite of what Mardonius intends, it will be no great misfortune, since you yourself will be safe, and so will the power of your house in that part of the world. For as long as you and your house are safe, the Greeks will have to fight many battles, many times over, for their own survival. As for Mardonius, if anything bad happens to him, no one will care much. And if the Greeks win, it is a victory that is no victory, since they will only have destroyed one of your slaves. And you will go home having done what you made your march to do: you will have burned Athens to the ground."
103. Xerxes was delighted with this advice, since she had managed to say exactly what he himself meant to do. In my opinion, not even if every man and every woman in the world had been advising him to stay would he have stayed, he was so terrified. So he praised Artemisia and sent her off to take his sons to Ephesus, for some of his illegitimate sons had come along with him.
104. To look after these sons he sent with them Hermotimus, a native of Pedasa, who in the king's eyes was second to none of his eunuchs. The Pedasians live inland from Halicarnassus, and at Pedasa something like this happens. Whenever some trouble is about to come, within a certain time, on all the people who live around this city, the priestess of Athena there grows a long beard. This has already happened to them twice.
105. Hermotimus was one of these Pedasians. And of all the men we know of up to now, he took the greatest revenge for a wrong done to him. He had been captured by enemies and was being sold as a slave, and he was bought by Panionius, a man of Chios, who had set himself to make his living by the most unholy trade there is. Whenever he got hold of boys who had any good looks, he castrated them and took them to Sardis or Ephesus and sold them for large sums of money. For among non-Greeks, eunuchs are thought more valuable than men who are not eunuchs for every kind of position of trust. Panionius castrated many boys, since that was how he made his living, and among them was this man I am speaking of. But Hermotimus was not unlucky in everything. He was sent from Sardis to the king along with other gifts, and as time went on he came to be honored by Xerxes above all his other eunuchs.
106. When the king was at Sardis, setting the Persian army in motion to march against Athens, Hermotimus went down on some business to the part of Mysia called Atarneus, which the Chians occupy, and there he found Panionius. He recognized him and spoke to him in a very friendly way. First he went over all the good things he had because of him, and then he promised to do him many good things in return, if Panionius would bring his household and come to live there. So Panionius gladly accepted the offer and brought his children and his wife. Then, when Hermotimus had caught him with his whole household, he said: "You have made your living by the most unholy deeds of any man who ever lived. What harm did I, or any of my ancestors, ever do to you or to anyone of yours, that you made me nothing instead of a man? Did you think the gods would never notice the things you did then? But the gods, following the law of justice, have delivered you into my hands for your unholy deeds, so you will have no cause to complain about the punishment I am going to give you." When he had finished reproaching him, he had Panionius' sons brought in, four of them, and Panionius was forced to castrate his own sons. He was forced, and he did it. And when he had done it, the sons were forced to do the same to him. So vengeance, by the hand of Hermotimus, caught up with Panionius.
107. When Xerxes had entrusted his sons to Artemisia to take back to Ephesus, he called Mardonius and told him to choose whatever men he wanted from the army, and to make his deeds match his words, if he could. That is as far as things went that day. Then in the night, on the king's orders, the commanders of the fleet began withdrawing their ships from Phalerum toward the Hellespont, each one as fast as he could, to guard the bridges for the king to cross. When the king's ships were near Zoster on their voyage, they saw the little points of rock that jut out into the sea from that part of the mainland, took them for ships, and fled a good distance. In time, though, they realized these were not ships but rocks, gathered together again, and went on with their voyage.
108. When day came, the Greeks saw that the land army was still in its place, and they supposed that the ships were still around Phalerum too. They expected another sea battle and got ready to fight it off. But when they learned that the ships had gone, they decided at once to chase them. So they chased them as far as Andros, but never caught sight of Xerxes' fleet. When they reached Andros, they held a council about what to do. Themistocles' view was that they should make their way through the islands chasing the ships, and then sail straight to the Hellespont and break up the bridges. But Eurybiades argued the opposite. He said that if they broke up the floating bridges, they would be doing Greece the greatest harm possible. For if the Persian king were cut off and forced to stay in Europe, he would try not to sit still. If he sat still, none of his affairs could move forward, no way home would open up for him, and his army would starve to death. But if he took action and kept at it, all Europe might come over to him, city by city and nation by nation, either conquered or surrendering on terms before they could be conquered. And they would have the Greeks' harvest, year after year, to live on. But Eurybiades thought that, beaten at sea as he was, the Persian would not stay in Europe. So they should let him run away until his flight brought him home to his own country. After that, he said, they could start fighting for the Persian king's land. The commanders of the other Peloponnesians also held to this view.
109. When Themistocles saw that he could not persuade them, or at least most of them, to sail to the Hellespont, he changed his tune and turned to the Athenians. They were the angriest at the enemy's escape, and were eager to sail to the Hellespont even on their own if the others would not. To them he said: "I have been there myself many times before now, and I have heard of many more cases, when something like this has happened: men driven into a tight corner have fought again after a defeat and made good their earlier disaster. As for us, we have had the luck to save ourselves and Greece by driving off so huge a cloud of men. So let us not chase enemies who are running from us. For we are not the ones who did this, but the gods and heroes. They grudged that one man should be king of both Asia and Europe, and a man at that who was wicked and arrogant, who made no difference between things sacred and things profane, who burned and threw down the statues of the gods, and who even had the sea whipped and lowered chains into it. But as things stand now, it is best for us to stay in Greece and take care of ourselves and our families. Let each man rebuild his house and see to the sowing of his fields, now that he has driven the invader out completely. Then at the start of spring let us sail for the Hellespont and Ionia." He said this to build up a store of gratitude with the Persian king, so that if any trouble ever came to him at the hands of the Athenians, he would have somewhere to take refuge. And that is in fact what happened.
110. So Themistocles said this to deceive them, and the Athenians did as he said. He had long had a reputation as a clever man, and now he had shown that he really was both clever and wise, so they were ready to follow his advice in everything. Once they were persuaded, Themistocles at once sent off some men in a boat, men he could trust to keep silent no matter what test they were put to, with a message he ordered them to give the king. One of them, again, was his servant Sicinnus. When they reached Attica, the others stayed behind in the boat while Sicinnus went up to Xerxes and said: "Themistocles son of Neocles, the commander of the Athenians and the best and ablest man of all the allies, has sent me to tell you this. Themistocles the Athenian, wanting to do you a service, has held back the Greeks when they were eager to chase your ships and break up the bridges on the Hellespont. So now you can go home in peace." When they had delivered this message, they sailed back.
111. The Greeks, meanwhile, having decided not to chase the king's ships any farther or sail to the Hellespont to break up the crossing, were besieging Andros, meaning to take it. For the Andrians were the first of the islanders to refuse when Themistocles asked them for money. Themistocles put it to them that the Athenians had come with two great gods on their side, Persuasion and Compulsion, so the Andrians absolutely had to give them money. The Andrians answered that it was no wonder, then, that Athens was great and prosperous, since the Athenians were so well supplied with useful gods. But the Andrians, they said, were poor, as poor as anyone could be, and they had two useless gods who never left their island but always stayed fondly there, namely Poverty and Helplessness. Since the Andrians had these gods, they would not give money; for the power of the Athenians could never be stronger than their inability.
112. So, having given this answer and refused the money, the Andrians were under siege. And Themistocles, who never stopped wanting money, sent threatening messages to the other islands asking them for money, using the same messengers he had sent to the king. He said that if they did not give what was asked of them, he would bring the Greek fleet against them and besiege them and take them. By saying this he collected great sums of money from the Carystians and the Parians. They heard that Andros was under siege because it had gone over to the Persians, and that Themistocles was more highly regarded than any of the other commanders, and out of fear of this they sent money. Whether any other islanders also gave money I can't say for certain, but I think some others did, and not these alone. Even so, the Carystians at least got no relief from trouble because of it; but the Parians escaped attack, because they won Themistocles over with money. So Themistocles, with Andros as his base, was collecting money for himself from the islanders without the other commanders knowing.
113. Xerxes and his army, meanwhile, stayed on for a few days after the sea battle, and then they all began to march away toward Boeotia, by the same road they had come. Mardonius thought it was a good idea to escort the king on his way, and he also thought it was now too late in the year to carry on the war. It would be better, he thought, to spend the winter in Thessaly and then, at the start of spring, to make his attempt on the Peloponnese. When they reached Thessaly, Mardonius chose his men. First he took all the Persians called the "Immortals," except only their commander Hydarnes, because Hydarnes said he would not be left behind by the king. After them he took, from the other Persians, those who wore breastplates, and the corps of a thousand cavalry; also the Medes, the Sacae, the Bactrians and the Indians, both infantry and cavalry. These peoples he took whole. From the other allies he picked out a few men at a time, choosing those who looked fine and those he knew had done good service. He chose more Persians than men of any other single nation, and these wore collars of twisted metal and bracelets. After them came the Medes, who in fact were not fewer in number than the Persians, only weaker in body. The result was that there were 300,000 men in all, counting the cavalry.
114. During this time, while Mardonius was choosing his army and Xerxes was in Thessaly, an oracle had come from Delphi to the Spartans. It told them to demand satisfaction from Xerxes for the killing of Leonidas, and to accept whatever he gave them. So the Spartans sent a herald as fast as they could. He found the whole army still in Thessaly, came before Xerxes, and spoke these words: "King of the Medes, the Spartans and the sons of Heracles of Sparta demand satisfaction from you for a killing, because you killed their king while he was fighting to defend Greece." Xerxes laughed and then said nothing for some time. After that he pointed to Mardonius, who happened to be standing beside him, and said: "Then Mardonius here will give them satisfaction, the kind they deserve to have."
115. The herald accepted this answer and left. Xerxes left Mardonius in Thessaly and went on himself in a hurry to the Hellespont. He reached the place where the crossing was in thirty-five days, bringing back next to nothing of his army, you might say. Wherever they came on the march, whatever people they came to, they seized that people's crops and ate them. If they found no crops, they ate the grass growing out of the ground, and they stripped the bark off the trees and pulled down the leaves and devoured them, from cultivated trees and wild ones alike. They left nothing behind them; that is what hunger drove them to. Then plague broke out in the army too, and dysentery, which killed men along the way. Some of the sick the king left behind, ordering the cities he happened to be passing through at the time to take care of them and feed them. He left some in Thessaly, some at Siris in Paeonia, and some in Macedonia. In these parts he had also left behind the sacred chariot of Zeus when he was marching against Greece, but on his way back he did not get it back. The Paeonians had given it to the Thracians, and when Xerxes asked for it again, they said the mares had been carried off while they were out at pasture by the Thracians of the upper country, who live around the source of the Strymon.
116. It was here, too, that a Thracian, the king of the Bisaltians and of the Crestonian country, did a deed of extraordinary horror. He had said that he would never of his own free will be a subject of Xerxes, and he had gone off up into Mount Rhodope; and he had also forbidden his sons to march against Greece. But they, either because they did not care about his orders or because they had a sudden longing to see the war, marched with the Persian. When they came home, all six of them unhurt, their father gouged out their eyes for it.
117. That was the reward they got. As for the Persians, when they had passed on out of Thrace and come to the crossing, they hurried over the Hellespont to Abydos in the ships, because they found the floating bridges no longer stretched across: a storm had broken them up. While they stayed there for a time, they were given more food than they had had on the way. From eating without restraint to satisfy their hunger, and from the change of water as well, many of the men in the army who had survived until then died. The rest reached Sardis with Xerxes.
118. There is also another story told, which goes like this. When Xerxes, marching away from Athens, came to Eion on the Strymon, he went no farther by road from there. He handed his army over to Hydarnes to lead back to the Hellespont, while he himself boarded a Phoenician ship and set out for Asia. As he sailed, a wind from the Strymon caught him, violent and raising great waves. The storm tossed him more and more, and the ship was heavily loaded, because there were a great many Persians on deck, the ones traveling with Xerxes. At that the king grew frightened. He shouted to the pilot and asked whether there was any way for them to be saved. The pilot said: "Master, there is none, unless we find some way to get rid of all these extra passengers." Then, they say, when Xerxes heard this, he said: "Persians, now let each of you show how much he cares for the king. My safety, it seems, depends on you." That, they say, is what he said, and the Persians bowed down before him and leaped into the sea. So the ship was lightened and came safely to Asia. As soon as they had landed, they say, Xerxes did two things. First he gave the pilot a gold wreath, for saving the king's life; then he cut off his head, for causing the deaths of so many Persians.
119. That is the other story told about Xerxes' return, but I for my part cannot believe it at all, either in other respects or in this matter of what happened to the Persians. If the pilot had really said this to Xerxes, I don't believe one person in ten thousand would disagree with me about what the king would have done. He would have sent the men on deck down below into the hold, since they were Persians, and Persians of the highest rank. Then, from the rowers, who were Phoenicians, he would have thrown into the sea the same number of men. In fact, as I said before, he made his way back to Asia by road, together with the rest of the army.
120. Here is strong evidence that this is so. Xerxes is known to have come to Abdera on his way back, and to have made a pact of guest-friendship with its people and presented them with a Persian sword of gold and a tiara spangled with gold. And as the people of Abdera themselves say (though I for my part cannot believe it at all), it was there that he loosened his belt for the first time on his flight back from Athens, because he thought himself safe. Now, Abdera lies farther toward the Hellespont than the river Strymon and Eion, where the story says he boarded the ship.
121. The Greeks, meanwhile, when it turned out that they could not take Andros, turned toward Carystus. They laid waste the land of the Carystians and then left and went to Salamis. First of all they set apart the first fruits of the spoils for the gods. Among these were three Persian triremes. One was to be dedicated at the Isthmus, and it was still there in my time; another at Sunium; and the third to Ajax, there at Salamis where they were. After this they divided the spoils among themselves and sent the first fruits to Delphi. From these a statue was made, eighteen feet tall, holding the beak of a ship in its hand. This statue stands in the same place as the golden statue of Alexander the Macedonian.
122. When the Greeks had sent the first fruits to Delphi, they asked the god, on behalf of all of them, whether the first fruits he had received were full and acceptable to him. He said that from the Greeks in general he had received enough, but not from the Aeginetans, and he demanded from them the prize for bravery they had won in the sea battle at Salamis. When the Aeginetans heard this, they dedicated three golden stars set on a bronze ship's mast, which stand in the corner close to Croesus' mixing bowl.
123. After the spoils were divided, the Greeks sailed to the Isthmus to give the prize for bravery to the Greek who had proved himself most deserving of it in this war. When they got there, the commanders cast their votes at the altar of Poseidon, choosing out of them all who was first in merit and who was second. Every one of them voted for himself for first place, each man thinking that he himself had been the best. But for second place most of the votes agreed, and they gave it to Themistocles. So for first place each of them had only his own vote, while for second place Themistocles was far ahead of the rest.
124. The Greeks would not make a decision on this out of envy, and they sailed away each to his own city without deciding. Even so, Themistocles was talked about and admired all over Greece as by far the cleverest man of all the Greeks. And since the men who had fought at Salamis had not honored him for his victory, even though he had come first in the voting, he went straight to Sparta after this, wanting to be honored there. The Spartans gave him a fine welcome and great honors. They gave Eurybiades a wreath of olive as the prize for bravery, and to Themistocles too they gave a wreath of olive, for his wisdom and skill. They also presented him with the finest chariot in Sparta. After praising him highly, they escorted him on his way home with three hundred picked Spartans, the ones called the "Horsemen," as far as the border of Tegea. He is the only man we know of to whom the Spartans ever gave an escort on his way.
125. But when he came back to Athens from Sparta, Timodemus of Aphidnae attacked him. This Timodemus was one of Themistocles' enemies, though not otherwise a man of any importance, and he was mad with envy. He threw Themistocles' trip to Sparta in his face, saying that it was because of Athens that he had received those honors from the Spartans, not because of himself. Timodemus kept on saying this over and over, until Themistocles said: "Here is how it is. If I had been a native of Belbina, that little island, I would never have been honored like this by the Spartans. But neither would you, my friend, even though you are an Athenian." So much for those matters.
126. Artabazus son of Pharnaces, meanwhile, a man already well thought of among the Persians and even more so after the events at Plataea, was escorting the king as far as the crossing with 60,000 men of the army Mardonius had chosen for himself. When the king was in Asia and Artabazus, on his march back, came near Pallene, he found that Mardonius was wintering in Thessaly and Macedonia and was in no hurry for him to come and join the rest of the army. So he thought it would not be right to pass by without enslaving the people of Potidaea, whom he found in revolt. For when the king had marched past them and the Persian fleet had fled from Salamis, the people of Potidaea had openly revolted from the Persians, and so had the others who live in Pallene.
127. So Artabazus began to besiege Potidaea. He also suspected that the people of Olynthus were planning to revolt from the king, so he began to besiege that city too. It was held by Bottiaeans who had been driven out of the area around the Thermaic Gulf by the Macedonians. When he had taken the city by siege, he led these men out to a lake and slaughtered them there. He handed the city over to Critobulus of Torone to govern, and to the people of Chalcidice; and that is how the Chalcidians came to possess Olynthus.
128. After taking this city, Artabazus attacked Potidaea in earnest. While he was hard at work at this, Timoxenus, the commander of the troops from Scione, came to an agreement with him to betray the town. How he managed it at first I cannot say, because that is not reported. In the end, though, it went like this. Whenever Timoxenus wrote a note he wanted to send to Artabazus, or Artabazus one he wanted to send to Timoxenus, they wound it around the notched end of an arrow, put the feathers over the paper, and shot it to a place they had agreed on. But it came out that Timoxenus was trying to betray Potidaea. Artabazus shot an arrow at the agreed spot, missed it, and hit a man of Potidaea in the shoulder. When he was hit, a crowd gathered around him, as usually happens in wartime. They took the arrow at once, found the paper, and carried it to the commanders. Troops from the rest of Pallene were there as allies too. When the commanders had read the paper and discovered who the traitor was, they decided not to convict Timoxenus of treason in public, for the sake of the city of Scione, so that the people of Scione would not be thought traitors for all time to come.
129. That is how Timoxenus was found out. When Artabazus had been besieging the town for three months, the sea drew back in a great ebb that lasted a long time. The Persians, seeing that the water had become shallow, tried to get through into the Pallene peninsula. But when they had gone two-fifths of the way, with three-fifths still to go before they would be in Pallene, a great flood tide came in on them, higher than ever before, so the local people say, though high tides there are frequent. Those of them who could not swim drowned, and those who could were killed by the men of Potidaea, who came out at them in boats. The cause of the high tide and the flood, and of what happened to the Persians, was this, according to the Potidaeans: these same Persians who were destroyed by the sea had committed sacrilege against the temple of Poseidon and his statue in the suburb of their town. And in saying that this was the cause, I think they are right. Artabazus led the survivors of his army away to Thessaly to join Mardonius. That is how things went for the men who escorted the king on his way.
130. What was left of Xerxes' fleet, after it reached Asia in its flight from Salamis and had ferried the king and his army across from the Chersonese to Abydos, spent the winter at Cyme. When spring came, it gathered early at Samos, where some of the ships had even spent the winter. Most of the fighting men on board were still Persians and Medes. Mardontes son of Bagaeus and Artayntes son of Artachaees came to command them, and sharing the command with them was Ithamitres, Artayntes' nephew, whom Artayntes himself had chosen. Since they had taken a heavy blow, they did not go any farther west, and no one forced them to. They stayed at Samos and kept watch over Ionia so that it would not revolt, with three hundred ships, counting the Ionians'. They did not expect the Greeks to come to Ionia; they thought the Greeks would be content to guard their own land, judging from the fact that they had not chased them as they fled from Salamis but had been happy then to go home. So at sea the Persians had lost heart, but on land they thought Mardonius would have much the better of it. They stayed at Samos, then, making plans to do their enemies some harm if they could, and at the same time listening for news of how things would turn out for Mardonius.
131. The Greeks were stirred into action both by the coming of spring and by Mardonius' presence in Thessaly. Their land army had not yet begun to gather when the fleet arrived at Aegina, one hundred and ten ships. Its commander and admiral was Leotychides son of Menares, son of Hegesilaus, son of Hippocratides, son of Leotychides, son of Anaxilaus, son of Archidemus, son of Anaxandrides, son of Theopompus, son of Nicander, son of Charilaus, son of Eunomus, son of Polydectes, son of Prytanis, son of Euryphon, son of Procles, son of Aristodemus, son of Aristomachus, son of Cleodaeus, son of Hyllus, son of Heracles. He was of the other of Sparta's two royal houses. All of these men had been kings of Sparta except the two named first after Leotychides. The commander of the Athenians was Xanthippus son of Ariphron.
132. When all the ships had arrived at Aegina, envoys from Ionia came to the Greek camp. A little before this they had also gone to Sparta and asked the Spartans to set Ionia free. One of them was Herodotus son of Basilides. These men had banded together and plotted to kill Strattis, the tyrant of Chios. There had been seven of them at first, but when one of the plotters informed on them and their plot against him was discovered, the other six escaped from Chios. They went to Sparta, and now to Aegina, asking the Greeks to sail across to Ionia. But it was all they could do to bring the Greeks as far as Delos. Everything beyond that frightened the Greeks. They had no experience of those parts, everything there seemed to them to be full of soldiers, and they were convinced that it was as far to Samos as to the Pillars of Heracles. So it happened that at the same time the Persians, struck with fear, did not dare sail any farther west than Samos, and the Greeks, though the Chians begged them, did not dare go any farther east than Delos. So fear kept guard over the space between them.
133. The Greeks, then, sailed to Delos. Mardonius, meanwhile, had been wintering in Thessaly. From there he sent a man named Mys, a native of Europus, around to the various oracles, with orders to go and consult every one of them that he could be allowed to try. What he wanted to find out from the oracles when he gave these orders I cannot say, because that is not reported. My own guess is that he sent to ask about his present situation and nothing else.
134. This Mys is known to have gone to Lebadea and to have paid one of the local men to go down into the cave of Trophonius. He also went to the oracle of the Phocians at Abae. And when he first came to Thebes, he not only consulted Ismenian Apollo (there you can consult the god through sacrificed victims, just as at Olympia) but also paid a foreigner, a man who was not a Theban, to lie down and sleep in the temple of Amphiaraus. No Theban is allowed to seek a prophecy in that temple, and here is why. Amphiaraus, through his oracles, told the Thebans to choose which of two things they wanted: to have him as their prophet or as their ally in war, and to do without the other. They chose to have him as their ally in war. That is why no Theban is allowed to sleep in that temple.
135. After this, the Thebans say, something happened that seems to me a very great marvel. It seems that this Mys of Europus, on his round of all the oracles, came also to the sacred precinct of Ptoan Apollo. This temple is called the Ptoum. It belongs to the Thebans and lies above Lake Copais, at the foot of the mountains, very near the town of Acraephia. When the man called Mys came to this temple, three men went with him, chosen from the citizens and sent by the state to write down whatever the god would say in his prophecy. At once, it is said, the god's prophet began to prophesy in a foreign language. The Thebans who had come with Mys were amazed to hear a foreign language instead of Greek, and they did not know what to make of it. Then, it is said, Mys, the man from Europus, snatched the tablet they had brought from them and wrote on it what the prophet was saying; and he said that the prophet was answering in the Carian language. When he had written it down, he left and went back to Thessaly.
136. Mardonius read what the oracles had said, whatever that was. After this he sent Alexander son of Amyntas, the Macedonian, to Athens as his envoy. He sent him partly because the Persians were related to Alexander by marriage. Alexander's sister Gygaea, the daughter of Amyntas, had married a Persian, Bubares, and had borne him that Amyntas who lived in Asia, named after his mother's father, to whom the king gave Alabanda, a great city of Phrygia, to hold. Mardonius was also sending him because he had learned that Alexander was the official guest-friend and a benefactor of the Athenians. That way, he thought, he would have the best chance of winning the Athenians over to his side. He had heard that they were a numerous people and brave in war, and he knew besides that they more than anyone else had brought about the disasters the Persians had suffered at sea. If they joined him, he thought, he would easily be master of the sea (and that would in fact have been the case), while on land he believed he was already much stronger. So he reckoned that his power would be far greater than that of the Greeks. Perhaps, too, the oracles had told him this in advance, advising him to make the Athenians his allies, and he was sending in obedience to their advice.
137. Now, this Alexander's ancestor seven generations back was that Perdiccas who first became tyrant of the Macedonians, and he won the throne in the following way. Three brothers, descendants of Temenus, fled from Argos to the Illyrians: Gauanes, Aeropus and Perdiccas. From the Illyrians they crossed over into upper Macedonia and came to the town of Lebaea. There they worked for wages as farm hands in the king's household. One looked after the horses, the second the cattle, and the youngest, Perdiccas, the sheep and goats. In the old days even the people who ruled over men were poor in money, not just the common people, and the king's wife cooked their food for them herself. Whenever she baked bread, the loaf of the boy, their servant Perdiccas, rose to twice its natural size. When this kept happening, again and again, she told her husband. As soon as he heard it, he concluded that it was an omen and pointed to something great. So he called in the farm hands and told them to leave his land. They said that it was only right that they should be paid the wages they were owed before they went. Now, it happened that the sun was shining down into the house through the smoke hole in the roof. When the king heard them talk about wages, heaven had taken away his wits, and he said: "This is the pay I give you, and it is what you deserve," and he pointed to the sunlight. Gauanes and Aeropus, the older brothers, stood there stunned when they heard this. But the boy happened to have a knife in his hand, and he said: "We accept what you give, my king." He traced a line with his knife around the patch of sunlight on the floor of the house. When he had traced the line around it, he three times scooped up the sunlight into the fold of his robe. Then he left, and his brothers with him.
138. So they went away. Then one of the men sitting near the king told him what the boy had done, and how the youngest of them had accepted what was given with some purpose in mind. When the king heard this he was angry, and he sent horsemen after them to kill them. Now, there is a river in this country to which the descendants of these men from Argos sacrifice as their savior. As soon as the sons of Temenus had crossed it, this river rose in such a flood that the horsemen could not get across. So the brothers came to another part of Macedonia and settled near the place called the gardens of Midas son of Gordias, where roses grow wild, each with sixty petals and a scent sweeter than any others. It was in these gardens, too, that Silenus was caught, as the Macedonians tell it. Above the gardens rises a mountain called Bermius, which no one can climb because of the cold. When they had taken possession of that region, they used it as their base and went on to conquer the rest of Macedonia as well.
139. Alexander was descended from this Perdiccas as follows. Alexander was the son of Amyntas, Amyntas was the son of Alcetes, Alcetes' father was Aeropus, Aeropus' father was Philip, Philip's father was Argaeus, and Argaeus' father was Perdiccas, the one who first won the kingdom.
140. That, then, was Alexander son of Amyntas' descent. When he came to Athens on Mardonius' errand, he said this: "Athenians, Mardonius has this to say. 'A message has come to me from the king, and this is what it says: "I forgive the Athenians all the wrongs they have done me. Now, Mardonius, do this. First, give them back their land. Then let them choose another land besides, whichever they want, and live under their own laws. And rebuild all their temples, which I burned, if they are willing to make a treaty with me." Since this message has come to me, I must do it, unless you stop me. And so I say this to you now. Why are you so mad as to wage war against the king? You will never defeat him, and you cannot hold out against him forever. You have seen the great size of Xerxes' army and what it did, and you have heard about the force I have with me now. So even if you get the better of us and win (and if you have any sense you can have no hope of that), another army many times as large will come. So do not try to match yourselves against the king, only to lose your land and be forever running for your lives. Make peace with him instead. You have the most honorable chance to make peace you could have, since the king himself has taken this road. Make an alliance with us, then, honestly and without deceit, and stay free.'
"That is what Mardonius told me to say to you, Athenians. As for me, I will say nothing about my own goodwill toward you, since this would not be the first time you have learned of it. But I ask you to do as Mardonius says, because I can see that you will not be able to fight Xerxes forever. If I saw that you had the strength for it, I would never have come to you with this message. The king's power is more than human, and his arm is very long. So if you do not come to terms at once, when they are offering you such great terms for a treaty, I am afraid for you. Of all your allies, you live the most squarely on the road the armies travel, and you are always the ones destroyed, alone, because the land you hold lies out by itself, between the armies that are fighting each other. No, be persuaded. It is a great thing for you that, of all the Greeks, you are the only ones whose wrongs the Great King forgives and whose friend he wants to be."
141. That is what Alexander said. The Spartans had heard that Alexander had come to Athens to bring the Athenians to make a treaty with the Persians. They remembered the oracles which said that they and the other Dorians were destined to be driven out of the Peloponnese by the Medes and the Athenians together, and they had been very much afraid that the Athenians would make a treaty with the Persians. So they had at once decided to send envoys. It happened that the Spartan envoys were brought in to speak at the same time as Alexander, because the Athenians had waited for them, dragging out the time. They were quite sure that the Spartans would hear that an envoy had come from the Persians to make a treaty, and that when they heard it, they would send envoys of their own as fast as they could. So the Athenians did it on purpose, to let the Spartans see where they stood.
142. So when Alexander had finished speaking, the envoys from Sparta spoke right after him and said: "The Spartans have sent us to ask you not to do anything new that would harm Greece, and not to accept the foreigner's proposals. That would not be just in any way, or honorable, for any of the Greeks to do, and least of all for you, for many reasons. It was you who stirred up this war, when we wanted nothing of the kind. The fight began over your territory, but now it involves all of Greece. Besides, it is not to be endured that you Athenians, who started all of this, should turn out to be the cause of slavery for the Greeks, when you have always, from ancient times, been known as the liberators of many. We do feel for you in your sufferings, because you have lost two harvests and your property has been in ruins for a long time now. To make up for this, the Spartans and their allies offer to feed your wives and all the members of your households who cannot fight, for as long as this war lasts. But do not let Alexander the Macedonian win you over by making Mardonius' words sound smooth. It suits him to do it, since he is a tyrant himself and is working with a tyrant. But it does not suit you, if you have any sense, because you know that there is no faith or truth in barbarians."
That was what the envoys said.
143. The Athenians answered Alexander like this: "We know well enough ourselves that the Persians' forces are many times greater than ours, so there is no need for you to throw that in our faces. All the same, because we long for freedom, we will defend ourselves as best we can. Do not try to persuade us to make a treaty with the foreigner, because we will not be persuaded. Now take this message back to Mardonius from the Athenians: As long as the sun keeps the course it keeps now, we will never come to terms with Xerxes. We will go out to defend ourselves against him, trusting in the gods and the heroes as our allies, the ones he had no respect for when he burned their houses and their sacred images. And from now on, do not come before the Athenians with any proposals like these, and do not think you are doing them a service by urging them to do what is wrong. We do not want anything unpleasant to happen to you at the hands of the Athenians, since you are their official guest-friend and their friend."
144. That was their answer to Alexander. To the envoys from Sparta they said this: "It was natural enough, no doubt, for the Spartans to be afraid that we would make a treaty with the foreigner. But it seems an unworthy fear for men who know the spirit of the Athenians so well. There is not so much gold anywhere on earth, nor any land so far beyond all others in beauty and richness, that we would take it as our price for going over to the Persians and enslaving Greece. There are many great reasons that would stop us from doing this, even if we wanted to. First and greatest, the statues and houses of the gods that have been burned or thrown down in ruins. We are bound to avenge them to the utmost, rather than come to terms with the man who did these things. Second, there is our Greekness: we are of one blood and one language, we share the temples of the gods and the sacrifices, and our ways of life are the same. It would not be right for the Athenians to betray all this. And know this, if you did not know it before: as long as a single Athenian is left alive, we will never come to terms with Xerxes. Still, we admire the care you have shown for us, in thinking of us now that our property has been destroyed and in being willing to feed our households. As far as you are concerned, the kindness has been done in full. But we will go on holding out as best we can and will not be a burden to you in any way. Now, things being as they are, send out an army as quickly as you can. As we judge it, the foreigner will be here invading our land before long, as soon as he hears our answer, that we will do none of the things he asked of us. So before he gets here into Attica, the right thing is for you to come to our help quickly in Boeotia." That was the Athenians' answer, and with it the envoys went away back to Sparta.
1. After Alexander came back and reported to Mardonius what the Athenians had said, Mardonius set out from Thessaly and led his army toward Athens with all speed, and in every country he came to he took the people of that land along with him. The leaders of Thessaly, meanwhile, felt no regret at all for what they had already done. On the contrary, they urged the Persian on even more. Thorax of Larissa, who had helped escort Xerxes on his flight, now openly offered Mardonius a way through to invade Greece.
2. When the army on its march reached Boeotia, the Thebans tried to keep Mardonius there. They advised him that there was no better place for him to make his camp than this one. They urged him not to go any farther, but to settle there and try to bring the whole of Greece under his power without a fight. To beat the Greeks by open force while they were united, as they had been of one mind before, would be hard, they said, even for the whole world put together. "But," they went on, "if you do what we advise, you will have all their plans for resistance in your hands with very little trouble. Send money to the men who hold power in their cities. By sending it you will split Greece into two parties, and after that, with the help of your own party, you will easily bring down those who are not on your side."
3. That was their advice, but he did not take it. A great desire had taken hold of him to capture Athens a second time, partly out of stubbornness, and partly because he meant to signal to the king in Sardis, by beacon fires across the islands, that he held Athens. Yet even this time, when he came to Attica, he did not find the Athenians there. He learned that most of them were either on Salamis or on the ships, and he took the city empty. The king's capture of the city had taken place ten months before this later expedition of Mardonius against it.
4. When Mardonius reached Athens, he sent Morychides, a man from the Hellespont, over to Salamis with the same proposals that Alexander the Macedonian had carried to the Athenians. He sent them this second time knowing already that the Athenians were not friendly to him. But he hoped they would give way and drop their stubbornness, now that the land of Attica had been captured and was in his hands.
5. That is why he sent Morychides to Salamis. Morychides came before the Council and reported Mardonius' message. Then one of the councillors, Lycidas, gave his opinion that it would be better to accept the proposal Morychides had brought and to put it before the assembly of the people. He gave this opinion either because he had taken money from Mardonius or because it was what he really thought. But the Athenians, both the members of the Council and those outside it, were furious the moment they heard it. They surrounded Lycidas and stoned him to death, though they sent Morychides the Hellespontine away unharmed. With all the uproar there was on Salamis about Lycidas, the Athenian women heard what was happening. One woman passed the word to the next, and each brought another along with her, and on their own they went to Lycidas' house and stoned his wife and his children to death.
6. This is how the Athenians had come to cross over to Salamis. As long as they expected an army to come from the Peloponnese to help them, they stayed in Attica. But the Peloponnesians were very slow and kept delaying, and the invader was already said to be in Boeotia, so they moved everything out of harm's way and crossed over to Salamis themselves. At the same time they sent envoys to Sparta. The envoys were to reproach the Spartans for letting the invader into Attica instead of going with the Athenians to meet him in Boeotia, and to remind them how much the Persian had promised to give the Athenians if they changed sides. And they were told to warn the Spartans that if they did not help the Athenians, the Athenians would find some protection for themselves.
7. The Spartans, in fact, were holding a festival at this time, the Hyacinthia, their feast in honor of Apollo and his beloved Hyacinthus, and they thought nothing more important than doing what they owed the god. At the same time, the wall they had been building across the Isthmus was just then being finished with its battlements. When the envoys from Athens arrived at Sparta, bringing envoys from Megara and Plataea with them, they went before the ephors and said: "The Athenians have sent us to tell you this. The king of the Medes offers to give us back our land. He also wants to make us his allies on fair and equal terms, without trickery or treachery, and he is willing to give us another country besides our own, whichever we choose. But we respect Zeus, the god of all the Greeks, and we would not stoop to betray Greece. So we did not agree; we refused. We refused even though the other Greeks have treated us unjustly and left us to be destroyed, and even though we knew it would pay us better to make a treaty with the Persian than to go on fighting. Nor will we make a treaty in the future, if we have any say in it. That is how honestly we have done our duty by the Greeks. But you? Back then you were terrified that we would make a treaty with the Persian. Then you learned for certain what our spirit was, that we would never betray Greece, and your wall across the Isthmus is all but finished. So now you think nothing of the Athenians. You agreed with us to go to Boeotia and face the Persian there, and you have deserted us, and you let the invader into Attica besides. For now, then, the Athenians are angry with you, because you did not do what you ought to have done. And now they ask you to send out an army with us as fast as you can, so that we can meet the invader in Attica. Since we have missed our chance in Boeotia, the best place to fight in our own country is the Thriasian plain, the plain around Eleusis."
8. When the ephors heard this, they put off their answer to the next day, and then on the next day to the day after that. They kept this up for as many as ten days, putting the matter off from one day to the next, while all the Peloponnesians were working hard on the wall across the Isthmus and had it nearly finished. I can't say why, when Alexander the Macedonian came to Athens, they were so very anxious that the Athenians might go over to the Persians, and now they did not care at all. The only reason I can see is that their wall across the Isthmus was now built and they thought they had no more need of the Athenians, whereas when Alexander came to Attica the wall was not yet finished, and they were working on it in great fear of the Persians.
9. In the end, though, the answer was given and the Spartans marched out, and it happened like this. On the day before the envoys' last hearing was due, Chileus, a man of Tegea who had more influence at Sparta than any other foreigner, heard from the ephors everything the Athenians were saying. And he, it seems, said this to them: "This is how things stand, ephors. If the Athenians are not our friends but allies of the invader, then however strong a wall has been built across the Isthmus, a wide door has been opened for the Persian into the Peloponnese. So listen to them, before the Athenians decide on something else that will bring Greece down."
10. That was his advice, and they took his words to heart at once. Without saying anything to the envoys who had come from the cities, they sent out five thousand Spartans while it was still night, with no fewer than seven helots assigned to attend each man, and they appointed Pausanias son of Cleombrotus to lead them out. The command properly belonged to Pleistarchus son of Leonidas, but he was still a boy, and Pausanias was his guardian and his cousin. For Cleombrotus, Pausanias' father and the son of Anaxandrides, was no longer alive: after leading home from the Isthmus the army that had built the wall, he died not long afterward. The reason Cleombrotus led the army home from the Isthmus was this: while he was offering sacrifice for a battle against the Persian, the sun went dark in the sky. Pausanias chose as his fellow commander Euryanax son of Dorieus, a man of the same royal house.
11. So Pausanias and his army had left Sparta. When day came, the envoys, who knew nothing about the march, went before the ephors meaning to go home themselves, each to his own city. When they came in they said: "You Spartans are staying here celebrating this Hyacinthia of yours and enjoying yourselves, and you have left your allies to be destroyed. The Athenians, wronged by you and with no allies, will make peace with the Persians on whatever terms they can get. And once we have made peace, we will plainly become the king's allies, and so we will march with him against any land the Persians lead us to. Then you will find out what comes of all this for you." When the envoys said this, the ephors told them, and swore an oath to it, that by now they supposed the men were at Orestheum on their way against the strangers. ("Strangers" was what they used to call the non-Greeks.) The envoys did not understand and asked what this meant, and by asking they learned the whole truth. They were astonished, and they set off after the army as fast as they could. And five thousand picked hoplites of the Lacedaemonian "dwellers around," who were not Spartan citizens, did the same and went with them.
12. So they were hurrying toward the Isthmus. As soon as the Argives heard that Pausanias and his army had marched out of Sparta, they sent a herald to Attica, the best long-distance runner they could find. They did this because they had earlier promised Mardonius, of their own accord, that they would stop the Spartans from marching out. When the herald reached Athens, he said: "Mardonius, the Argives have sent me to tell you that the young men have marched out of Lacedaemon, and the Argives are not able to stop them. So, with this in mind, may you have the good fortune to plan well."
13. After saying this, the herald left and went back. Once Mardonius had heard the message, he had no wish at all to stay in Attica any longer. Before he heard it, he had been waiting there because he wanted to find out what the Athenians were going to do. He had not been damaging or ravaging the land of Attica, because he kept hoping they would make a treaty with him. But since he could not persuade them, and now knew the whole situation, he began to withdraw from the country before Pausanias' force reached the Isthmus. First, though, he set fire to Athens, and he knocked down and destroyed whatever was still standing of the walls, the houses and the temples. He marched away for these reasons. First, Attica was not country where cavalry could operate freely. And second, if he were beaten in a battle in Attica, the only way out was through a narrow pass, where a few men could stop his army. So he meant to fall back to Thebes and fight near a friendly city, in country where cavalry could move freely.
14. So Mardonius was withdrawing, and he was already on the road when a message reached him that another force, an advance guard of a thousand Lacedaemonians, had come to Megara. On hearing this he thought it over, wanting, if he could, to capture these men first. So he turned back and led his army toward Megara, and his cavalry, riding ahead of the rest, overran the land of Megara. That was the farthest point in Europe toward the setting sun that this Persian army ever reached.
15. After this a message reached Mardonius that the Greeks were gathered at the Isthmus. So he marched back by way of Decelea. The chiefs of Boeotia had sent for the Asopians who lived near his line of march, and these men guided him along the road to Sphendaleis and from there to Tanagra. He camped for the night at Tanagra, and the next day he turned toward Scolus, and so he was in Theban territory. There he began cutting down the trees on the Thebans' lands, even though they were on the Persian side. He did not do it out of any hostility toward them. He was driven by urgent need: he wanted to build a defense for his camp, and he was also making it a place of refuge in case the battle, when it came, did not go the way he wished. His army's camp stretched from Erythrae past Hysiae and reached down to the river Asopus. But he did not make the wall run as far as that; each side of it measured something like 6,000 feet, a little over a mile.
16. While the invaders were busy with this work, Attaginus son of Phyrnon, a Theban, made lavish preparations and invited Mardonius himself and fifty of the most important Persians to a banquet. They accepted, and the dinner was held at Thebes. What follows I heard from Thersander, a man of Orchomenus who was very highly respected there. Thersander said that he too was invited to this dinner by Attaginus, and that fifty Thebans were invited as well. Their host did not seat them nation by nation, each on separate couches, but put a Persian and a Theban on every couch. When dinner was over and they were drinking toasts to one another, the Persian who shared his couch asked him in Greek where he was from, and he answered that he was from Orchomenus. The Persian said: "Since you have now shared my table and my drink offering, I want to leave you something to remember my opinion by, so that you yourself may know ahead of time and be able to make whatever plans are best for you. Do you see these Persians feasting here, and the army we left camped by the river? A little while from now, of all these you will see only a very few still alive." As the Persian said this, he wept freely, so Thersander reported. Thersander was amazed at his words and said to him: "Surely, then, you ought to tell this to Mardonius, and to the Persians who rank next after him." To this the Persian said: "My friend, what is fated to come from heaven no man can turn aside. No one is willing to listen to advice, even when what he hears is sensible. Many of us Persians know well what I am telling you, and yet we go along, bound by necessity. The bitterest pain a man can have is this: to understand much and have power over nothing." This I heard from Thersander of Orchomenus, and this as well: that he told it to various people right away, before the battle at Plataea took place.
17. While Mardonius was camped in Boeotia, all the other Greeks living in those parts who had sided with the Persians were supplying troops, and they had joined in the invasion of Attica. Only the Phocians had not joined in the invasion. The Phocians too, I should explain, were now actively on the Persian side, though not willingly, but under compulsion. Not many days after Mardonius arrived at Thebes, however, a thousand of their hoplites came, led by Harmocydes, the most respected man among their citizens. When these too had come to Thebes, Mardonius sent horsemen and ordered the Phocians to take up a position by themselves on the plain. As soon as they had done so, the whole cavalry appeared. At that a rumor ran through the army of Greeks who were with the Persians that the cavalry was going to shoot the Phocians down with javelins, and the same report spread among the Phocians themselves. Then their commander Harmocydes encouraged them with these words: "Phocians, it is plain that these men mean to hand us over to a death we can clearly see coming, because the Thessalians have slandered us, I suspect. So now every one of you must prove himself a brave man. It is better to end our lives doing brave deeds and defending ourselves than to be destroyed by a shameful death, offering ourselves up to be slaughtered. Let each of them learn that they are barbarians, and that we, the men they have plotted to murder, are Greeks."
18. While he was encouraging them this way, the horsemen surrounded them and rode at them as if to destroy them. They were already aiming their missiles as if about to throw them, and some perhaps actually did throw. Meanwhile the Phocians stood facing them, gathered together and with their ranks closed up as tight as they could on every side. Then the horsemen turned and rode back. I can't say for certain which it was. Perhaps they came to destroy the Phocians at the Thessalians' request, and then, when they saw them turning to defend themselves, were afraid of taking losses themselves, and so rode away, because those were Mardonius' orders. Or perhaps he wanted to test them and see whether they had any fighting spirit in them. When the horsemen had ridden back, Mardonius sent a herald with this message: "Take heart, Phocians. You have shown yourselves to be brave men, and not what I was told you were. Now carry on with this war eagerly, and you will not outdo either me or the king in good turns." So much for the Phocians.
19. When the Lacedaemonians reached the Isthmus, they camped there. Hearing of this, the rest of the Peloponnesians, those who favored the better cause, and some also because they saw the Spartans marching out, did not think it right to be left behind by the Lacedaemonians in taking the field. So when the sacrifices turned out favorable, they marched out from the Isthmus all together and came to Eleusis. There they sacrificed again, and when the signs were favorable they marched on, and the Athenians with them, who had crossed over from Salamis and joined them at Eleusis. When they reached Erythrae in Boeotia, they learned that the invaders were camped on the Asopus. Seeing this, they drew themselves up facing them on the lower slopes of Cithaeron.
20. Then, since the Greeks would not come down into the plain, Mardonius sent all his cavalry against them. Their commander was Masistius (the Greeks call him Macistius), a man of reputation among the Persians, who rode a Nesaean horse with a golden bridle and fine trappings everywhere else too. When the horsemen rode up to the Greeks, they attacked them squadron by squadron, and with their attacks they did them a great deal of damage, and they jeered at them besides, calling them women.
21. It happened that the Megarians had been posted in the most exposed part of the whole position, where the cavalry could most easily get at them. So as the cavalry kept attacking, the Megarians, hard pressed, sent a herald to the Greek commanders. The herald came and said: "The Megarians say this: 'Allies, we cannot hold off the Persian cavalry by ourselves in the position where we were posted at the start. Even up to now we have held out against them only by endurance and courage, hard pressed as we are. And now, unless you send some others to take over our position from us, understand that we are going to leave it.'" That was the herald's report. At this Pausanias tested the Greeks, to see whether any others would volunteer to go to that place and take over the post from the Megarians. The rest did not want to go, but the Athenians took the job on: of the Athenians, the three hundred picked men whose captain was Olympidorus son of Lampon.
22. These were the men who took on the task and were posted at Erythrae, out in front of all the other Greeks who were there, and they chose to take the archers along with them. They fought for some time, and in the end the fighting finished like this. While the cavalry were attacking squadron by squadron, Masistius' horse, riding out ahead of the rest, was hit in the side by an arrow. In pain, it reared straight up and threw Masistius off. When he was down, the Athenians rushed at him at once. They took his horse, and they killed him as he fought back, though at first they could not manage it, because of the armor he wore. He had on a breastplate of golden scales underneath, and over the breastplate he had put on a crimson tunic. So their blows on the breastplate did nothing, until somebody saw what the trouble was and stabbed him in the eye. Then at last he fell and died. Somehow the other horsemen had not seen this happen. They had not seen him fall from his horse or seen him killed, because it happened while they were pulling back and wheeling round, and they did not notice what was going on. But when they halted their horses, they missed him at once, because there was no one giving them orders. When they realized what had happened, they called to one another and all rode in together, to try to recover the body.
23. When the Athenians saw that the cavalry were no longer coming at them squadron by squadron but all together, they shouted to the rest of the army to help them. While the whole body of the infantry was coming to their help, a fierce fight broke out over the body. As long as the three hundred were on their own, they had much the worse of it and were about to abandon the body. But when the main army came to help them, the horsemen could hold out no longer, and they did not manage to recover the body; and besides him they lost others of their own men as well. Then they pulled back about a quarter of a mile and talked over what to do. Since they had no commander, they decided to ride back to Mardonius.
24. When the cavalry reached the camp, Mardonius and the whole army mourned Masistius deeply. They cut off their own hair and the manes of their horses and pack animals, and they wailed without restraint, so that the sound of it filled all Boeotia, because a man had died who, after Mardonius, counted for most with the Persians and with the king.
25. So the invaders were honoring the dead Masistius in their own way. The Greeks, though, having stood up to the cavalry's attack and, after standing up to it, driven them back, took much greater heart. First they put the body in a cart and carried it along their lines. The body was well worth seeing for its size and its beauty, and that is why the men kept leaving their places in the ranks and coming one after another to look at Masistius. After this they decided to move down farther toward Plataea. The country around Plataea looked much better for a camp than the country around Erythrae, for other reasons and because it had better water. So they decided they must go to this country and to the spring of Gargaphia, which is there, and make camp in their separate positions. They took up their arms and went along the lower slopes of Cithaeron, past Hysiae, into the territory of Plataea. When they got there, they took up their positions nation by nation near the spring of Gargaphia and the sacred precinct of the hero Androcrates, on low hills and level ground.
26. Then, while the positions were being assigned, a long argument broke out between the Tegeans and the Athenians. Each claimed the right to hold the other wing of the army themselves, and each pointed to deeds both recent and ancient. The Tegeans said: "All the allies have always judged us worthy of this post, in every joint campaign the Peloponnesians have made before now, whether long ago or lately. It has been so ever since the sons of Heracles tried to return to the Peloponnese, which they claimed as their father's inheritance, after the death of Eurystheus, the king who had driven them out. We won this honor at that time through the following event. Together with the Achaeans and the Ionians, who were living in the Peloponnese then, we had gone out to the Isthmus to defend it, and we were camped facing the men who wanted to return. Then, it is said, Hyllus, the son of Heracles who led them, made a speech. He said it was not right for the two armies to risk everything by fighting a battle against each other, and he urged that the Peloponnesians choose whichever man of their army they judged the best, to fight him in single combat on terms agreed between them. The Peloponnesians decided that this should be done, and they swore an oath with one another on this condition: if Hyllus defeated the Peloponnesians' champion, the sons of Heracles would return to their father's inheritance; but if he was defeated, the sons of Heracles would go away and lead off their army, and not try to return to the Peloponnese for a hundred years. Out of all the allies, the man chosen, at his own offer, was Echemus son of Aeropus son of Phegeus, who was our commander and our king. He fought the single combat and killed Hyllus. Because of this deed we won from the Peloponnesians of that time many other great privileges, which we still have, and this one too: that we always lead the other wing of the army whenever a joint campaign is made. We do not oppose you, Spartans. We give you your free choice, and you may command whichever wing you want. But we say that the other wing is ours to lead, as it was in the past. And apart from the deed we have just told, we are more worthy of this post than the Athenians. We have fought many glorious contests against you, Spartans, and many against others as well. So it is right that we should have the other wing rather than the Athenians, because they have not done deeds like ours, either recent or ancient."
27. That is what they said, and the Athenians answered: "We know this gathering was assembled to fight the invader, not to make speeches. But since the man from Tegea has set us the task of speaking of things old and new, of the brave deeds each of our two peoples has done in all time, we must show you how it comes about that the first place belongs to us, who have always been brave men, as our inheritance, rather than to the Arcadians. First, the sons of Heracles, whose leader they say they killed at the Isthmus. Back then, they were fleeing slavery under the Mycenaeans and were driven away by every Greek people they came to, and we alone took them in. Together with them we broke the arrogance of Eurystheus, defeating in battle the people who lived in the Peloponnese at that time. Then again, when the Argives who marched against Thebes with Polynices had been killed and were lying unburied, we say that we led an army against the Cadmeans of Thebes, recovered the bodies and buried them in our own land, at Eleusis. We have another glorious deed to our name as well, against the Amazons, who once came from the river Thermodon and invaded Attica. And in the hard struggle at Troy we were second to none. But there is no use in bringing these things up. Men who were brave in those days might have become worthless now, and men who were worthless then might be better now. So enough about ancient deeds. Even if we had shown no other deed (and we have shown many, and glorious ones, as many as any Greek people), still, for what we did at Marathon alone we deserve this privilege and others besides. We alone of all the Greeks fought the Persian single-handed, and having taken on so great a task, we overcame him and defeated forty-six nations. Do we not deserve this post for that deed alone? But at a time like this it is not right to quarrel over positions. We are ready to do as you say, Spartans, and to stand wherever you think best, and opposite whomever you think best. Wherever we are posted, we will try to be brave men. Give us your orders, and we will obey." That was their answer. And the whole Lacedaemonian army shouted out that the Athenians were more worthy than the Arcadians to hold the wing. So the Athenians got the wing, and they won out over the Tegeans.
28. After this the Greeks were drawn up as follows, both those who kept arriving later and those who had come at the start. The right wing was held by 10,000 Lacedaemonians. Of these, the 5,000 who were Spartans were attended by 35,000 helots serving as light-armed troops, seven assigned to each man. Next to themselves the Spartans chose to place the Tegeans, both to honor them and because of their courage; there were 1,500 of these hoplites. After them stood 5,000 Corinthians, who had got permission from Pausanias to have the 300 men present from Potidaea in Pallene stand beside them. Next to these stood 600 Arcadians from Orchomenus, and next to them 3,000 Sicyonians. After these came 800 Epidaurians, and beside them 1,000 Troezenians. Next to the Troezenians were 200 Lepreans, next to these 400 men of Mycenae and Tiryns, and then 1,000 Phliasians. Beside these stood 300 Hermionians, and next to the Hermionians 600 Eretrians and Styrians. Next to these were 400 Chalcidians, and next to them 500 men of Ambracia. After these stood 800 Leucadians and Anactorians, and next to them 200 from Pale in Cephallenia. After these were 500 Aeginetans, beside them 3,000 Megarians, and next to these 600 Plataeans. Last, or first if you like, came the Athenians, holding the left wing, 8,000 strong, and their commander was Aristides son of Lysimachus.
29. All of these, except the men assigned to attend the Spartans, seven to each man, were hoplites, 38,700 in all. That was the whole number of hoplites gathered against the invader. The light-armed troops numbered as follows: in the Spartan division, 35,000 men, at the rate of seven for each Spartan, and every one of them was equipped for fighting; and the light-armed troops of the other Lacedaemonians and of the other Greeks, about one for each man, came to 34,500.
30. So the whole number of light-armed fighting men was 69,500, and the whole Greek force gathered at Plataea, counting both the hoplites and the light-armed fighting men, was 110,000 less 1,800. With the Thespians who were there, the full 110,000 was made up. For the Thespians who had survived were also present in the army, about 1,800 of them, and these too had no heavy armor. These, then, were drawn up in order and camped on the river Asopus.
31. Meanwhile, when the invaders with Mardonius had mourned Masistius enough, they learned that the Greeks were at Plataea, and they too came to the stretch of the Asopus that flows past there. When they arrived, Mardonius drew them up against the enemy as follows. Against the Lacedaemonians he posted the Persians. Since the Persians far outnumbered them, they were drawn up in deeper ranks, and even so their line stretched out in front of the Tegeans as well. He arranged them like this: he picked out all the strongest part of that force and posted it opposite the Lacedaemonians, and he set the weaker part beside it, opposite the Tegeans. He did this on the information and advice of the Thebans. Next to the Persians he posted the Medes, and these faced the Corinthians, Potidaeans, Orchomenians and Sicyonians. Next to the Medes he posted the Bactrians, and these faced the Epidaurians, Troezenians, Lepreans, Tirynthians, Mycenaeans and Phliasians. After the Bactrians he placed the Indians, and these faced the Hermionians, Eretrians, Styrians and Chalcidians. Next to the Indians he posted the Sacae, who faced the men of Ambracia, the Anactorians, Leucadians, Palians and Aeginetans. Next to the Sacae, opposite the Athenians, Plataeans and Megarians, he posted the Boeotians, Locrians, Malians, Thessalians, and the thousand Phocians. For not all the Phocians had gone over to the Persians. Some of them were even supporting the Greek cause, shut up on Parnassus, and from there they made raids and plundered Mardonius' army and the Greeks who were with him. He also posted the Macedonians and the peoples living around the borders of Thessaly opposite the Athenians.
32. These I have named were the greatest of the nations Mardonius drew up, by which I mean the most famous and important ones. But there were also men of several other nations mixed in among them in his army: Phrygians, Thracians, Mysians, Paeonians and the rest, and among them also some Ethiopians, and the Egyptians called Hermotybians and Calasirians, carrying knives, who are the only warriors among the Egyptians. These he had taken off the ships while he was still at Phalerum, where they had been serving as fighting men on board; for the Egyptians had not been assigned to the land army that came to Athens with Xerxes. Of the non-Greeks, then, there were 300,000, as I said before. But no one knows how many Greek allies Mardonius had, because they were never counted. As a guess, I judge that about 50,000 of them were gathered there. All these drawn up side by side were infantry; the cavalry was posted apart, in a separate body.
33. When everyone had been drawn up by nations and by divisions, both sides offered sacrifice on the next day. For the Greeks the man who sacrificed was Tisamenus son of Antiochus, since he was the seer who went with this army. He was an Elean by birth, of the family of the Iamids, a line of prophets, but the Spartans had made him one of their own people. This is how it happened. When Tisamenus went to Delphi to ask the oracle about having children, the Pythia answered that he would win five of the greatest contests. He missed the meaning of the oracle and took up athletics, thinking he was going to win athletic contests. He trained for the pentathlon, the "five contests," and came within one wrestling fall of winning at the Olympic games, where he was matched against Hieronymus of Andros. The Spartans, however, saw that the oracle given to Tisamenus was not about athletic contests but about contests of war. So they tried to hire him with money, to make him a leader in their wars alongside their kings, who were descended from Heracles. But he saw that the Spartans set great store on winning him over as a friend, and once he saw that, he raised his price. He let them know that he would do what they wanted if they made him a citizen of their state with full rights, but for no other payment. When the Spartans first heard this they were indignant and dropped their request altogether. But in the end, when great terror of this Persian army was hanging over them, they gave way and agreed. Then he, seeing that they had changed their minds, said that even this was no longer enough for him, not on these terms alone. His brother Hegias must also be made a Spartan citizen, on the same terms as he was.
34. In saying this he was following the example of Melampus, if one may compare a king's power with mere citizenship. For Melampus too made a demand. When the women of Argos had been seized by madness and the Argives tried to hire him to come from Pylos and cure their women of the disease, he asked as his payment for half of the royal power. The Argives would not allow this and went away. But later, when more of their women went mad, they finally accepted what Melampus had asked for and went to offer it to him. Then he, seeing that they had changed their minds, raised his demand. He said he would not do what they wanted unless they also gave his brother Bias a third share of the royal power. And the Argives, driven into a corner, agreed to this too.
35. In just the same way the Spartans, who needed Tisamenus very badly, agreed to everything he asked. And when they had agreed to this demand too, Tisamenus the Elean, now a Spartan, served them as their seer and helped them win five of the greatest contests. These two were the only men ever made fellow citizens of the Spartans. The five contests were these. The first was this one at Plataea. After it came the contest at Tegea, fought against the Tegeans and the Argives; then the one at Dipaea against all the Arcadians except the Mantineans; after that the contest with the Messenians at Ithome; and last of all the one at Tanagra against the Athenians and Argives. That was the last of the five contests to be won.
36. This Tisamenus, then, brought by the Spartans, was now acting as seer for the Greeks in the land of Plataea. For the Greeks the sacrifices were favorable if they only defended themselves, but not if they crossed the Asopus and started a battle.
37. Mardonius too was eager to start a battle, but he found the sacrifices unfavorable to that plan; for him too they were favorable only if he defended himself. He also sacrificed in the Greek manner, and his seer was Hegesistratus, an Elean and the most famous of the Telliads, another family of prophets. Some time before these events the Spartans had captured him and put him in chains, intending to put him to death, because he had done them a great deal of harm. In this desperate situation, knowing that he was running a race for his life and was likely to suffer a great deal of torture before he died, he did something that can hardly be believed. He was held fast in wooden stocks bound with iron. Somehow an iron blade had been smuggled in, and he got hold of it and at once carried out the bravest deed of any we know. First he worked out how much of his foot he would have to lose to get the rest of it out of the stocks, and then he cut off the front part of his own foot. After that, since he was still watched by guards, he broke through the wall and escaped to Tegea. He traveled by night, and by day he went into the woods and rested there. So although the Spartans searched for him with their whole force, he reached Tegea on the third night. The Spartans were filled with amazement, both at his courage, when they saw the piece of foot that he had cut off lying there, and at the fact that they could not find him. So he escaped them at that time and took refuge at Tegea, which was then on bad terms with the Spartans. When he was healed and had got himself a wooden foot, he became the Spartans' open enemy. In the end, however, his hatred of the Spartans did him no good. They caught him while he was working as a seer on Zacynthus, and put him to death.
38. But the death of Hegesistratus came later than the events at Plataea. Now he was at the Asopus, hired by Mardonius for no small sum, sacrificing and working hard for him, both because of his hatred of the Spartans and because of the money he was making. But the sacrifices were not favorable for a battle, either for the Persians themselves or for the Greeks on their side (these had a seer of their own, Hippomachus of Leucas). Meanwhile men kept streaming into the Greek camp, and the Greeks were growing in number. So Timagenides son of Herpys, a Theban, advised Mardonius to put a guard on the pass over Cithaeron. The Greeks, he said, were streaming in every day, and this way he would cut off large numbers of them.
39. By the time he gave Mardonius this advice, the two armies had been sitting facing each other for eight days. Mardonius saw that the advice was good, and when night came he sent the cavalry to the pass over Cithaeron that leads toward Plataea, which the Boeotians call the "Three Heads" and the Athenians the "Oak Heads." The cavalry did not go for nothing. They caught five hundred pack animals coming down into the plain, carrying provisions from the Peloponnese to the army, along with the men who were driving the carts. Having taken this prize, the Persians slaughtered them, sparing neither animal nor man. When they had had their fill of killing, they rounded up the rest and drove them into the camp to Mardonius.
40. After this they waited two more days, and neither side wanted to start a battle. The Persian army came forward as far as the Asopus to test the Greeks, but neither side would cross the river. Mardonius' cavalry, though, kept attacking and doing the Greeks harm. The Thebans, who were very strongly on the Persians' side, pushed the war hard and kept leading the cavalry on, right up to the point of fighting; from there the Persians and Medes took over and were the ones who showed their courage.
41. For ten days, then, nothing more happened than this. But on the eleventh day, with the two armies still facing each other at Plataea, the Greeks had by now grown much more numerous, and Mardonius was greatly annoyed at the delay. Then Mardonius son of Gobryas and Artabazus son of Pharnaces, whom Xerxes valued as he valued few other Persians, met to talk. As they discussed it, these were the opinions they gave. Artabazus thought they should move the whole army as quickly as possible and go to the walled city of Thebes, where great stores of grain had been brought in for them, and fodder for their animals. They should settle down there quietly and get the job done this way. They had, he said, great quantities of gold, both coined and uncoined, and of silver and of drinking cups. He advised them to send these around to the Greeks without holding back, especially to the leading men in each city. Those men, he said, would quickly hand over their freedom. And he advised them not to risk a battle. His opinion, then, was the same as the Thebans', since he too had some real foresight. But Mardonius' opinion was fiercer and more stubborn, and he was not at all inclined to give way. He said he thought their army was far stronger than the Greeks', and his advice was to fight as quickly as possible and not let the Greeks gather in still greater numbers than had gathered already. As for Hegesistratus' sacrifices, they should let them be and not try to force a good omen, but follow the Persian custom and fight.
42. When he gave his judgment this way, no one opposed him, and so his opinion carried the day, because it was he, not Artabazus, to whom the king had given command of the army. So he summoned the commanders of the divisions and the generals of the Greeks who were on his side, and asked whether they knew of any oracle about the Persians which said they would be destroyed in Greece. Those he had summoned said nothing, some because they did not know the oracles, others because they knew them but did not think it safe to speak. So Mardonius himself said, "Since you either know nothing or don't dare to speak, I will tell you, because I know very well. There is an oracle that says the Persians are destined to come to Greece, plunder the temple at Delphi, and after plundering it, die to the last man. Well, since we know this, we will not go to that temple and we will not try to plunder it, and for that reason we will not die. So all of you who wish the Persians well can be glad, as far as this goes, and rest assured that we will beat the Greeks." After he had spoken to them this way, he gave orders to prepare everything and put it all in order, because at dawn the next day there would be a battle.
43. Now this oracle that Mardonius said referred to the Persians was, as I know for my part, made about the Illyrians and the army of the Enchelians, and not about the Persians at all. But there is the oracle that Bacis made about this battle:
When the Greeks gather together, and foreign voices cry out, where the Thermodon flows, by the banks of the grassy Asopus, there very many shall fall, before their fated time, the bow-carrying Medes, when the day of their doom comes near.
These sayings, and others like them composed by Musaeus, I know referred to the Persians. The river Thermodon flows between Tanagra and Glisas.
44. After the questions about the oracles and Mardonius' speech of encouragement, night came on and the guards were posted. Late in the night, when all seemed quiet throughout the camps and the men were in their deepest sleep, Alexander son of Amyntas, the commander and king of the Macedonians, rode his horse up to the Athenians' guard posts and asked to speak with their generals. Most of the guards stayed at their posts, but some ran to the generals. When they reached them, they said that a man had come riding on a horse out of the Persian camp. He would reveal nothing else, they said; he only named the generals and said he wanted to speak with them.
45. When the generals heard this, they went with the men to the guard posts at once. When they got there, Alexander spoke to them. "Athenians," he said, "I am leaving these words with you as a trust. I charge you to keep them secret and tell no one but Pausanias, or you will be my ruin. I would not be saying them if I did not care so much for the safety of all Greece, since I am a Greek myself by ancient descent and I would not want to see Greece enslaved instead of free. I tell you, then, that Mardonius and his army cannot get the sacrifices to come out the way they want; otherwise you would have fought long ago. But now he has decided to let the sacrifices be and to start a battle at dawn, because, I suspect, he is afraid you will gather in greater numbers. So get ready. And if after all Mardonius puts off the battle and does not start it, stay where you are and hold out patiently, because they have provisions for only a few more days. And if this war ends the way you hope, then every one of you ought to remember me too, and my own freedom, since for the sake of the Greeks I have done so dangerous a thing out of goodwill toward you, wanting to show you what Mardonius intends, so that the enemy will not fall on you before you are expecting them. I am Alexander the Macedonian." Having said this, he rode back to the camp and to his own position.
46. Then the Athenian generals went to the right wing and told Pausanias what they had heard from Alexander. At this news Pausanias was struck with fear of the Persians, and he said, "Since the battle is coming at dawn, it is right that you Athenians should take your stand facing the Persians, and we facing the Boeotians and the Greeks who are now posted opposite you. Here is why: you know the Medes and their way of fighting, since you fought them at Marathon, while we have had no experience of these men and know nothing about them. Not one of the Spartans has ever tried his strength against the Medes in battle, but we do have experience of the Boeotians and Thessalians. So it is right that you should take up your arms and come over to this wing of the army, and that we should go to the left wing." To this the Athenians answered, "From the very beginning, as soon as we saw the Persians being drawn up opposite you, it occurred to us to say the very thing you have now suggested before we could say it. But we were afraid our words might not please you. Since you have brought it up yourselves, know that your words have pleased us, and we are ready to do as you say."
47. Both sides were content with this, and as dawn broke they began to change places with each other. But the Boeotians noticed what was happening and reported it to Mardonius. When he heard it, he at once tried to change positions himself, moving the Persians over so that they would face the Spartans. When Pausanias learned that this was happening, he realized that his move had been seen, and he led the Spartans back again to the right wing. And Mardonius did the same on his left.
48. When they had been brought back to their original positions this way, Mardonius sent a herald to the Spartans, who said, "Spartans, the people here say you are very brave men. They admire you because you do not run away in war or leave your post, but stand your ground and either destroy your enemies or die yourselves. But none of this, it now seems, is true. Before we even joined battle and came to hand-to-hand fighting, we saw you running away already and leaving your post, wanting the Athenians to try us first, while you lined up against our slaves. These are not the actions of brave men at all. We were very much deceived in you. Because of your reputation we expected you to send us a herald, challenging us and wanting to fight the Persians alone. We were ready to do that, but we found you saying nothing of the kind; instead, you were cowering in fear. So since you did not make the offer first, we make it first. Why don't we fight right now, you for the Greeks, since you have the reputation of being the best of them, and we for the non-Greeks, with equal numbers on each side? If we decide that the others should fight too, let them fight afterward. If on the other hand we decide they should not, and that it is enough for us alone to fight, then let us fight it out to the end, and whichever of us wins, let that side be counted the winner for its whole army."
49. When the herald had said this, he waited for some time, and then, since no one gave him any answer, he left and went back. When he got back he reported to Mardonius what had happened to him. Mardonius was overjoyed and puffed up by this empty victory, and he sent the cavalry to attack the Greeks. The horsemen rode out against them and did harm to the whole Greek army, hurling javelins and shooting arrows at them, since they were mounted archers and therefore hard to come to grips with. They also churned up and choked the spring of Gargaphia, from which the whole Greek army drew its water. Only the Spartans were posted near this spring, and it was some distance from the rest of the Greeks, depending on where each happened to be posted, while the Asopus was close at hand. But when they were kept away from the Asopus, they would go back and forth to this spring, since the horsemen and archers would not let them fetch water from the river.
50. This, then, was the state of things. With the army cut off from its water and harassed by the cavalry, the Greek generals met to consult about this and other matters, coming to Pausanias on the right wing. For other things troubled them even more than what I have described. They had no more provisions, and their servants, who had been sent to the Peloponnese to get them, had been cut off by the cavalry and could not reach the camp.
51. The generals, conferring together, decided that if the Persians put off the battle for that day, they would move to the Island. This is about a mile from the Asopus and the spring of Gargaphia, where they were then camped, and it lies in front of the city of Plataea. If anyone asks how there can be an island on the mainland, this is how it is. Higher up, as the river flows down from Cithaeron to the plain, it splits into two, with about a third of a mile between its two channels, and then it joins up again into one stream. Its name is Oeroe, and the people who live there say she is the daughter of Asopus. That was the place they decided to move to, so that they could have plenty of water and the cavalry could not harm them as it did now, when they were right opposite it. They planned to move when the second watch of the night had come, so that the Persians would not see them setting out and send the cavalry after them to harass them. They also planned, once they had reached this place, around which, as I said, Oeroe the daughter of Asopus flows, splitting into two streams as she runs down from Cithaeron, to send half the army to Cithaeron that same night, to bring in their servants who had gone to fetch the provisions, since these were cut off up in Cithaeron.
52. After they had made this decision, they had endless trouble all that day, with the cavalry pressing on them. But when the day was ending and the cavalry's attacks had stopped, as night was falling and the agreed time for leaving their position had come, most of them set out and began to move off. They did not, however, have any intention of going to the place they had agreed on. On the contrary, once they had started moving, they gladly seized the chance to escape from the cavalry toward the city of Plataea, and in their flight they got as far as the temple of Hera. This temple stands in front of the city of Plataea, about two and a quarter miles from the spring of Gargaphia. When they arrived there, they halted in front of the temple.
53. So these were camping around the temple of Hera. Pausanias, seeing them leaving the camp, gave the word to the Spartans too to take up their arms and follow the others who had gone ahead, supposing that these were going to the place they had agreed to go to. Then, when all the other commanders were ready to obey Pausanias, Amompharetus son of Poliades, the commander of the Pitane division, said that he would not run from the foreigners, and that he would not, of his own free will, bring disgrace on Sparta. He was amazed at what he saw being done, since he had not been present at the earlier meeting. Pausanias and Euryanax were very upset that he would not obey them, and still more that, since he refused, they would be forced to leave the Pitane division behind. They were afraid that if they left it behind to carry out what they had agreed with the other Greeks, Amompharetus himself and the men with him would be left behind and destroyed. With this in mind they kept the Spartan army from moving, and meanwhile they tried to persuade him that he was wrong to act this way.
54. So they were urging Amompharetus, who alone of the Spartans and Tegeans had been left behind. Meanwhile the Athenians stayed quietly where they had been posted, because they knew the Spartan way of thinking, and that the Spartans tended to say one thing and mean another. When the army began to move, they sent one of their own horsemen to see whether the Spartans were trying to set out, or whether in fact they had no intention at all of pulling back, and they told him to ask Pausanias what they should do.
55. When the messenger came to the Spartans, he saw that they were still in their position and that their leaders had fallen into a quarrel. Euryanax and Pausanias had both been urging Amompharetus not to put himself and his men at risk by staying behind, alone of all the Spartans. They could not persuade him at all, and in the end they had come to an outright quarrel, just as the Athenian messenger arrived and stood beside them. In the heat of the argument Amompharetus picked up a rock in both hands and set it down at Pausanias' feet. With this pebble, he said, he was casting his vote not to run from the foreigners, by which he meant the Persian army. Pausanias called him a madman who was out of his mind. Then he told the Athenian messenger, who was asking what he had been sent to ask, to report how things stood with them. At the same time he asked the Athenians to come over toward the Spartans and to do as the Spartans did about the retreat.
56. So the messenger went back to the Athenians. When dawn found the Spartans still arguing with one another, Pausanias, who had stayed where he was all this time, gave the signal and led all the rest away over the low hills. He supposed that Amompharetus would not stay behind once the other Spartans had left, and in this he was in fact right. The Tegeans went with them too. Meanwhile the Athenians, following their orders, were moving in the opposite direction from the Spartans. The Spartans were keeping to the hills and the lower slopes of Cithaeron for fear of the cavalry, while the Athenians were marching below, toward the plain.
57. As for Amompharetus, at first he did not believe that Pausanias would ever dare to leave him and his men behind, and he insisted that they stay there and not abandon their post. But when Pausanias and his troops were well on their way, he saw that they really had left him behind. So he had his division take up their arms and led them at a walking pace toward the main body. The main body, after going about a mile, waited for Amompharetus' division, halting at the river Moloeis, at a place called Argiopium, where there is also a temple of Demeter of Eleusis. It waited there so that if Amompharetus and his division did not leave the place where they had been posted but stayed on, it could come back and help them. So Amompharetus and his men were coming up to join them, and at the same moment the enemy's cavalry began to attack in full force. For the horsemen did on this day what they had been in the habit of doing every day. Seeing the place empty where the Greeks had been posted on the days before, they kept riding farther and farther forward, and as soon as they caught up with the Greeks they began to attack them.
58. When Mardonius learned that the Greeks had pulled out during the night, and saw their position empty, he called in Thorax of Larissa and his brothers Eurypylus and Thrasydeius. "Sons of Aleuas," he said, "what will you say now, when you see this place deserted? You live near these people, and you kept telling me that the Spartans never run from a battle, that they are the best fighters in the world. But first you saw these same men shifting from their post, and now we can all see that they ran away last night. They have shown plainly that when the time came to fight men who really are the best in the world, they were worth nothing after all. They had only been showing off their courage among Greeks, who are worthless themselves. As for you, you had no experience of the Persians, and since you praised these men because you knew some good of them, I for one was quite ready to excuse you. What amazed me far more was Artabazus. He was afraid of the Spartans, and in his fear he gave us that most cowardly advice: that we should break camp and go to the city of the Thebans, to be besieged there. The king will hear about that advice from me. But we will talk of these things another time. Right now we must not let them get away with this. We must chase them until we catch them, and make them pay us for everything they have done to the Persians in the past."
59. With these words he crossed the Asopus and led the Persians at a run on the track of the Greeks, believing that they were running away from him. He aimed his attack at the Spartans and the Tegeans alone, because the Athenians had marched off toward the plain, and the hills hid them from his sight. When the commanders of the other divisions of the king's army saw that the Persians had set off after the Greeks, they all at once raised the signals for battle and joined the chase, each as fast as he could, with no order and no ranks kept.
60. So they came on with shouting, in a disorderly crowd, expecting to make short work of the Greeks. And Pausanias, when the cavalry began its attack, sent a horseman to the Athenians with this message: "Athenians, the greatest contest of all lies before us. Its prize is the freedom or the slavery of Greece. And we have been deserted by our allies, we Spartans and you Athenians, because they ran away last night. So our course is decided: we must defend ourselves and protect one another as best we can. If the cavalry had attacked you first, we and the Tegeans, who stand with us and refuse to betray Greece, would have been bound to come to your help. But as it is, their whole force has come against us, so it is right for you to come and help the part of the army that is hardest pressed. If something has happened to you that makes it impossible to come to our help, then do us the favor of sending us your archers. We know that in this war you have been by far the most eager of all, so we know you will listen to us in this too."
61. When the Athenians heard this, they were eager to come to the rescue and give all the help they could. But they were already on their way when they were attacked by the Greeks on the king's side, who had been posted opposite them, and so they could no longer go to help the Spartans: the force attacking them gave them too much trouble. So the Spartans and the Tegeans were left alone. Counting their light-armed men, the Spartans numbered fifty thousand and the Tegeans three thousand, for the Tegeans never once separated from the Spartans. They began to sacrifice, meaning to give battle to Mardonius and the force that had come against them. But the sacrifices would not turn out favorable, and in the meantime many of them were being killed and many more wounded. For the Persians had made a barricade of their wicker shields and were shooting arrows in great numbers, without stinting. Pausanias saw that the Spartans were hard pressed and that the sacrifices still would not come out favorable. So he turned his eyes toward the temple of Hera at Plataea and called on the goddess for help, praying that they might not be cheated of their hope.
62. While he was still calling on her, the Tegeans rose up before the others and advanced against the enemy. And right after Pausanias' prayer, the sacrifices came out favorable for the Spartans. When this at last happened, they too advanced against the Persians, and the Persians put down their bows and came to meet them. The first fighting was around the wicker shields. When these had been knocked down, there was a fierce fight beside the temple of Demeter, and it went on for a long time, until at last it came to pushing and shoving, for the Persians would grab hold of the Greeks' spears and snap them off. In courage and in strength the Persians were not inferior. But they had no armor, and besides, they were untrained and no match for their opponents in skill. They would dash out one at a time, or in bunches of about ten, some more and some fewer, and throw themselves on the Spartans and die.
63. Mardonius himself was riding a white horse, with the thousand best men of the Persians, picked out from all the rest, around him. Where he was, they pressed their opponents hardest of all. As long as Mardonius was alive, they held their ground, and in defending themselves they brought down many of the Spartans. But when Mardonius was killed, and the men posted around him, who were the strongest part of the whole army, had fallen, then the rest also turned and gave way before the Spartans. What hurt them most was their dress, with no armor: in truth they were light-armed men fighting against hoplites.
64. So Mardonius paid the Spartans the price for the killing of Leonidas, as the oracle given to the Spartans had said he would, and Pausanias son of Cleombrotus son of Anaxandrides won the most glorious victory of any we know of. I have given the names of his earlier ancestors in the list for Leonidas, since as it happens they are the same for both. Mardonius was killed by Arimnestus, a man of standing in Sparta. Later, after the Persian Wars were over, this Arimnestus fought a battle at Stenyclerus with three hundred men against the whole army of the Messenians, who were then at war with the Spartans, and both he and the three hundred were killed.
65. When the Spartans had put the Persians to flight at Plataea, the Persians fled in disorder to their own camp and to the wooden fort they had built in Theban territory. And it amazes me that, although the fighting was beside the sacred grove of Demeter, not a single Persian was found to have gone into the sanctuary or to have died inside it. Most of the dead fell around the temple, on unconsecrated ground. My own guess, if one ought to guess at all about things divine, is that the goddess herself would not let them in, because they had burned her temple, the "palace," as it is called, at Eleusis.
66. That is how far the battle had gone. Now Artabazus son of Pharnaces had been unhappy from the start that Mardonius stayed behind after the king left. Afterward he kept raising objections and getting nothing done, always urging them not to fight a battle. And since he did not like what Mardonius was doing, this is what he did on his own account. He commanded no small force: it numbered as many as forty thousand men. When the fighting began, he knew well how the battle would end, and he led his men carefully. First he gave orders that they should all go wherever he led them, and at the same pace they saw him set. With these orders given, he led his troops out as if he were taking them into battle. But when he was well on his way, he saw the Persians already in flight. Then he no longer led his men in the same order as before. He set off at a run and fled by the quickest road, not to the wooden fort, nor to the walls of Thebes, but toward Phocis, wanting to reach the Hellespont as fast as he could.
67. That was the way they were heading. Meanwhile, the other Greeks on the king's side were deliberately slack in the fight, but the Boeotians fought the Athenians for a long time. The Thebans who had gone over to the Persians were very much in earnest. They fought hard and did not hold back, so that three hundred of them, their first and best, fell there at the hands of the Athenians. When these too were routed, they fled to Thebes, not to the same place as the Persians. And the great mass of the other allies fled without having fought anyone to the end or done anything brave.
68. This is further proof to me that everything on the king's side depended on the Persians: these men ran before they had even come to grips with the enemy, simply because they saw the Persians running. So everyone was in flight except the cavalry, the Boeotian cavalry included. The cavalry did good service to the men fleeing: they kept close to the enemy the whole time and screened their own fugitives off from the Greeks.
69. The victors followed hard after Xerxes' troops, chasing them and cutting them down. While this rout was going on, word reached the other Greeks, who had taken up a position around the temple of Hera and had missed the battle, that a battle had been fought and that Pausanias' men were winning. When they heard this, they set out without forming any ranks. The Corinthians and those near them went along the foot of the mountain and through the low hills, by the road that led straight up to the temple of Demeter. The Megarians and the Phliasians and those near them went by the plain, along the smoothest road. But when the Megarians and Phliasians came near the enemy, the Theban cavalry saw them from a distance, hurrying along in no order at all, and rode out to attack them. The cavalry's commander was Asopodorus son of Timander. They fell on them, killed six hundred, and chased the rest and drove them onto Cithaeron.
70. So these men died without glory. Meanwhile the Persians and the rest of the crowd had taken refuge in the wooden fort and managed to get up onto the towers before the Spartans arrived. Once up, they strengthened the wall as best they could. Then the Spartans came up and attacked it, and a hard fight for the wall began. As long as the Athenians were not there, the defenders held them off and had much the better of the Spartans, because the Spartans did not understand how to fight against walls. But when the Athenians came up to help, the fight for the wall grew fierce and went on for a long time. At last, through courage and endurance, the Athenians climbed the wall and broke a gap in it, and the Greeks poured in through it. The Tegeans were the first inside the wall, and it was they who plundered Mardonius' tent. Besides everything else in it, they took the manger of his horse, which was solid bronze and well worth seeing. The Tegeans dedicated this manger of Mardonius in the temple of Athena Alea, but everything else they took they brought into the common pool of the Greeks. Once the wall had fallen, the enemy no longer formed up in any close body, and not one of them thought of fighting back. They were utterly helpless, as you would expect of men in a panic, with tens of thousands of them penned together in a small space. And the Greeks were able to slaughter them, so that out of an army of 300,000, leaving aside the 40,000 Artabazus took with him in his flight, not even three thousand of the rest survived. Of the Spartan citizens, the Lacedaemonians from Sparta itself, ninety-one were killed in the battle in all; of the Tegeans, sixteen; and of the Athenians, fifty-two.
71. On the king's side, the men who proved best were the Persians among the infantry and the Sacae among the cavalry, and of single men, they say, Mardonius. Among the Greeks, both the Tegeans and the Athenians proved good men, but the Spartans outdid them in courage. I have no other proof of this, since all of them beat the enemy facing them, except this: the Spartans fought against the strongest part of the enemy's force and beat it. In my opinion the man who proved by far the best was Aristodemus, the one who had come back alive from Thermopylae, the only one of the three hundred, and had been living under reproach and disgrace ever since. After him the best were Posidonius, Philocyon and Amompharetus the Spartan. However, when it came to be argued which of them had proved himself best, the Spartans who were there gave this verdict. Aristodemus, they said, had plainly wanted to be killed because of the charge hanging over him, and so he had left his place in the ranks like a man gone berserk and done great deeds. Posidonius, on the other hand, had proved a brave man without wanting to die, and in that he was the better man of the two. But perhaps they said this out of envy. All the men I have named among those who fell in this battle were given special honors, except Aristodemus. Aristodemus, because he wanted to die on account of the charge I mentioned before, was not honored.
72. These were the men who won the most fame of all who fought at Plataea. As for Callicrates, the most handsome man who came to the camp, not only among the Spartans but among all the Greeks of his time, he was not killed in the battle itself. While Pausanias was offering sacrifice, Callicrates was sitting in his place in the ranks when an arrow struck him in the side. While the others were fighting, he was carried out of the ranks, and he died a slow death. He said to Arimnestus, a man of Plataea, that he did not mind dying for Greece. What grieved him was only that he had not used his hands in the fight, and had done no deed worthy of the spirit he had in him to do great things.
73. Of the Athenians, the man who won the most glory is said to have been Sophanes son of Eutychides, of the deme of Decelea. The men of that deme once did a deed that has served them well for all time, as the Athenians themselves tell it. Long ago, the sons of Tyndareus invaded Attica with a great army to bring Helen home, and they were ravaging the demes, not knowing where she had been hidden away. Then, they say, the men of Decelea, or as some say Decelus himself, angered by the arrogance of Theseus, who had carried her off, and afraid for the whole land of the Athenians, told them the whole story and led them to Aphidnae, which Titacus, one of the men born of the soil, betrayed to the sons of Tyndareus. Because of this deed the Deceleans have always had freedom from taxes at Sparta and front seats at the festivals, privileges they still hold to this day. Indeed, in the war that broke out many years after these events between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians, when the Spartans ravaged the rest of Attica, they left Decelea unharmed.
74. That was the deme Sophanes came from, the man who proved himself the best of all the Athenians in this battle. Two different stories are told about him. One is that he carried an iron anchor, fastened by a bronze chain to the belt of his breastplate. Whenever he came up against the enemy, he would throw it down, so that, they say, when the enemy charged out of their ranks they could not move him from his place. And when the men facing him ran, his plan was to pick up the anchor first and then go after them. That is one story. But the other, which disputes the first, goes like this: he carried an anchor as the emblem on his shield, which was always on the move and never still, and not an iron one fastened to his breastplate.
75. Sophanes did another famous deed as well. When the Athenians were besieging Aegina, he challenged Eurybates the Argive, a winner of the pentathlon, to single combat and killed him. As for Sophanes himself, it happened later that while he was general of the Athenians together with Leagrus son of Glaucon, he was killed by the Edonians at Daton, after proving himself a brave man, fighting for the gold mines.
76. When the Greeks had laid the enemy low at Plataea, a woman came over to them of her own free will from the other side. She was the concubine of Pharandates son of Teaspis, a Persian. When she saw that the Persians were destroyed and the Greeks were the victors, she got down from her carriage and came up to the Spartans while they were still at the slaughter. She had decked herself and her attendants with many gold ornaments, and had put on the finest dress she owned. When she saw that Pausanias was directing everything there, she recognized him, for she knew his name and his family well, having heard them often. She took hold of his knees, as a suppliant does, and said: "King of Sparta, save me, your suppliant, from being made a slave as a captive. You have already done me a service by destroying these men, who have no respect for the heroes or for the gods. I am from Cos by birth, the daughter of Hegetorides son of Antagoras. The Persian took me by force on Cos and has kept me prisoner." He answered her: "Woman, take heart, first because you are a suppliant, and also if it turns out that you are telling the truth and are the daughter of Hegetorides of Cos, who is bound to me as a guest-friend more closely than any other man in that part of the world." With these words he put her in the care of the ephors who were present, for the time being, and later he sent her away to Aegina, where she herself wished to go.
77. Right after the woman came, the Mantineans arrived, when it was all over. When they learned that they had come too late for the battle, they were bitterly upset and said they deserved to be punished. Then they heard that the Persians with Artabazus were in flight, and they chased them as far as Thessaly, though the Spartans tried to stop them from pursuing men who were running away. When they got back to their own country, they banished the leaders of their army. After the Mantineans came the Eleans. They too were bitterly upset, like the Mantineans, and went home, and when they got back they too banished their leaders. So much for the Mantineans and the Eleans.
78. At Plataea, among the troops of Aegina, was Lampon son of Pytheas, one of the leading men of Aegina. He hurried to Pausanias with a most unholy proposal, and when he got there he said: "Son of Cleombrotus, you have done a deed of wonderful greatness and glory. Heaven has granted that by rescuing Greece you have won the greatest fame of any Greek we know of. Now finish what remains to be done, so that your fame may be greater still, and so that in the future every foreigner will think twice before starting any outrage against the Greeks. When Leonidas was killed at Thermopylae, Mardonius and Xerxes cut off his head and put it on a stake. Pay him back the same way, and you will have praise first from all the Spartans and then from the rest of the Greeks as well. For if you impale Mardonius' body, you will have taken vengeance for Leonidas, your father's brother."
79. He said this thinking it would please. But Pausanias answered him: "My friend from Aegina, I admire your goodwill and your concern for me, but your judgment has failed you all the same. You raised me up high, me and my country and my deed, and then you threw me down to nothing by advising me to mutilate a dead body and telling me that if I do it, people will think better of me. Such things are more fitting for barbarians than for Greeks, and we blame even them for it. As far as that goes, I have no wish to please the Aeginetans, or anyone else who likes such things, in any such way. It is enough for me to please the Spartans by doing nothing unholy, and saying nothing unholy either. As for Leonidas, whom you tell me to avenge, I say he has been avenged in full already. He has been honored by the countless lives taken here, he and the rest who died at Thermopylae. As for you, never come to me again with a proposal like this, and never give me such advice. And be thankful that you are leaving unpunished."
80. Lampon heard this and went away. Pausanias then had it proclaimed that no one was to lay hands on the plunder, and he ordered the helots to gather everything together. So they spread out through the camp and found tents fitted out with gold and silver, couches plated with gold and plated with silver, golden mixing bowls, and bowls and other drinking cups. They also found sacks loaded on wagons, which turned out to hold cauldrons of gold and of silver. From the bodies lying there they stripped bracelets and collars, and their daggers if they were gold; embroidered clothing they did not even bother to count. The helots stole a great deal and sold it to the Aeginetans, though they also handed over a great deal, as much as they could not hide. And this is where the great wealth of the Aeginetans first came from: they bought the gold from the helots as if it were brass.
81. Then they brought everything together and set aside a tenth for the god at Delphi, and with it they dedicated the golden tripod that stands on the three-headed bronze serpent, close beside the altar. They set aside a tenth for the god at Olympia too, and with it they dedicated a bronze statue of Zeus fifteen feet high; and for the god at the Isthmus, from which a bronze statue of Poseidon ten and a half feet high was made. When they had set these aside, they divided the rest, and each took his rightful share: the Persians' concubines, the gold and the silver and the other goods, and the pack animals too. How much was set aside and given to those who had proved themselves the best men at Plataea, no one reports, though for my part I suppose they were given gifts as well. But Pausanias had ten of everything set aside and given to him: women, horses, talents, camels, and the same of everything else.
82. They also tell this story. When Xerxes fled from Greece, he left his own tent and its furnishings to Mardonius. When Pausanias saw Mardonius' furnishings, worked with gold and silver and hung with tapestries of many colors, he ordered the bakers and the cooks to prepare a dinner just as they used to for Mardonius. They did as they were told. Then, the story goes, when Pausanias saw the couches of gold and silver with their rich coverings, and the tables of gold and silver, and the magnificent spread of the feast, he was amazed at the fine things set before him. As a joke, he ordered his own servants to prepare a Spartan dinner. When both meals were served, the difference between them was enormous. Pausanias laughed and sent for the Greek commanders. When they had gathered, he pointed to the two dinners, one after the other, and said: "Men of Greece, I called you together because I wanted to show you how foolish this leader of the Medes was. He lived like this, and he came to us, who live as poorly as you see here, to take it away from us." That, they say, is what Pausanias said to the Greek commanders.
83. Some time after these events, many of the Plataeans also found chests of gold and silver and other treasures. And later still, something else came to light among the dead here, after the flesh had fallen away from the bones, for the Plataeans gathered all the bones together in one place. A skull was found with no seams in it, all one bone. There was also a jaw, the upper jaw, whose teeth were all joined together in one bone, front teeth and back teeth alike. And the bones of a man seven and a half feet tall were seen as well.
84. Mardonius' body, however, disappeared the day after the battle. Who took it I can't say for certain. I have heard the names of many men from various cities who are said to have buried Mardonius, and I know that many were given gifts by Artontes son of Mardonius for doing it. But who it was that took up Mardonius' body and buried it I cannot find out for certain. Dionysophanes of Ephesus is reported, with some show of reason, to have been the one who buried Mardonius.
85. So Mardonius was buried in some such way. And the Greeks, when they had divided the spoils at Plataea, buried their dead, each people separately. The Spartans made three separate graves. In one they buried the younger Spartans, among them Posidonius, Amompharetus, Philocyon and Callicrates. So in one grave lay the younger men, in the second the rest of the Spartans, and in the third the helots. That was how the Spartans buried their dead. The Tegeans buried theirs all together in a place apart from these, the Athenians buried theirs together, and the Megarians and Phliasians buried those who had been killed by the cavalry. All these graves had bodies in them. But the other graves to be seen at Plataea, as I am told, are all just empty mounds of earth, heaped up by the various peoples for the sake of later generations, because they were ashamed of having missed the fight. Among others, there is one there called the grave of the Aeginetans, which I hear was raised at the Aeginetans' request by Cleades son of Autodicus, a man of Plataea who was their official guest-friend, fully ten years after these events.
86. When the Greeks had buried their dead at Plataea, they decided at once in a common council to march on Thebes and demand that the Thebans hand over the men who had gone over to the Persians, first among them Timagenides and Attaginus, who were leaders among the very foremost. If the Thebans would not hand them over, they resolved not to leave the city until they had taken it. With this decided, they arrived on the eleventh day after the battle and laid siege to the Thebans, demanding the men. When the Thebans refused, the Greeks began to ravage their land and to attack their wall.
87. They did not let up on their ravaging, and on the twentieth day Timagenides spoke to the Thebans: "Thebans, the Greeks have resolved not to give up the siege until either they take Thebes or you hand us over to them. So do not let the land of Boeotia suffer any more for our sake. If what they really want is money, and they are demanding our surrender as an excuse, let us give them money from the public treasury, since we went over to the Persians together with the whole state, not on our own. But if they are really besieging the city to get their hands on us, then we will give ourselves up to stand trial." People thought he had spoken very well and to the point, and the Thebans at once sent a herald to Pausanias offering to hand over the men.
88. They came to an agreement on these terms, but Attaginus slipped out of the city. His sons were handed over to Pausanias, but he cleared them of the charge, saying that the sons had no share in the guilt of going over to the Persians. As for the other men the Thebans handed over, they believed they would get a trial, and they were confident that they could buy their way out of danger. But Pausanias suspected exactly this, and when he got them, he first dismissed the whole allied army, and then took the men to Corinth and put them to death there. That is what happened at Plataea and at Thebes.
89. Meanwhile Artabazus son of Pharnaces, fleeing from Plataea, was by now well along on his way. When he came to the Thessalians, they offered him hospitality and asked about the rest of the army, knowing nothing of what had happened at Plataea. Artabazus knew that if he told them the whole truth about the fighting, he would run the risk of being destroyed, he and the whole army with him, for he believed that everyone would turn on him once they knew what had happened. With this in mind he had told the Phocians nothing, and now he said to the Thessalians: "Thessalians, as you see, I am pressing on by the shortest road to Thrace, and I am in a great hurry, because I have been sent from the army with these men on a certain mission. Mardonius himself and his army will be here soon, marching close behind me. Entertain him and do him good service. You will not regret it in the end." With these words he hurried his army on through Thessaly and Macedonia straight for Thrace, truly in a hurry and taking the shortest road through the country. So he came to Byzantium, having lost great numbers of his army along the way, some cut down by the Thracians, others overcome by hunger and exhaustion. From Byzantium he crossed over by ship. And that is how he made his way back to Asia.
90. Now on the same day that the Persians were defeated at Plataea, as luck would have it, another defeat took place at Mycale in Ionia. This is how it came about. The Greeks who had come with the fleet under Leotychides the Spartan were lying at Delos, and envoys came to them there from Samos: Lampon son of Thrasycles, Athenagoras son of Archestratides and Hegesistratus son of Aristagoras. The people of Samos had sent them without the knowledge of the Persians or of the tyrant Theomestor son of Androdamas, whom the Persians had set up as tyrant of Samos. When they had been brought before the commanders, Hegesistratus spoke at great length and used every kind of argument. He said that as soon as the Ionians saw the Greeks they would revolt from the Persians at once, and that the Persians would not stay to meet their attack; and if after all they did stay, the Greeks would take a prize such as they would never find again. He appealed to the gods the two peoples worshiped in common and urged them to rescue men who were Greeks from slavery and to drive the foreigner away. This, he said, would be easy for them to do, because the enemy's ships sailed badly and were no match for theirs in a fight. And if the Greeks suspected that the envoys were trying to lead them on by a trick, the envoys were ready to be carried off in the Greek ships as hostages.
91. As the man from Samos pressed his request so hard, Leotychides asked him a question, either because he wanted to hear the answer for the sake of the omen, or perhaps by some chance that heaven brought about. "My friend from Samos," he said, "what is your name?" He said, "Hegesistratus," which means "Leader of the Army." Leotychides cut short the rest of his speech and stopped everything Hegesistratus meant to say next. "I accept the omen in your name, Hegesistratus, my friend from Samos," he said. "Now, for your part, see that you give us a pledge, you and the men with you, that the Samians will be our eager allies without fail. Then sail away home."
92. So he spoke, and he followed the words with the deed. The Samians at once gave their pledge and swore oaths of alliance with the Greeks. When this was done the other envoys sailed away home, but Leotychides told Hegesistratus to sail with the Greeks, since he took the man's name as a sign of success. The Greeks waited where they were that day, and on the next they made sacrifices to see whether the signs were good. Their diviner was Deiphonus son of Evenius, a man of Apollonia, the Apollonia that lies on the Ionian Gulf.
93. Here is what happened to this man's father, Evenius. At this Apollonia there are sheep sacred to the Sun. By day they graze along a river that runs from Mount Lacmon through the land of Apollonia down to the sea by the harbor of Oricus. By night they are guarded by men chosen for the job, the citizens most highly regarded for wealth and noble birth, each man taking charge of them for a year, because the people of Apollonia set great store by these sheep on account of an oracle. They are penned at night in a cave some distance from the city. At the time I am speaking of, this Evenius had been chosen and was keeping watch over them. One night he fell asleep on watch, and wolves got into the cave and killed about sixty of the sheep. When he saw what had happened he kept it secret and told no one, meaning to buy other sheep and put them in place of the ones that had been killed. But the people of Apollonia found out what had happened. When they learned of it they brought him to trial and sentenced him to be blinded for falling asleep on watch. But as soon as they had blinded Evenius, their flocks stopped bearing young and their land stopped yielding crops as it had before. They asked the oracles at Dodona and at Delphi the cause of the trouble they were suffering, and the prophets at both places told them that they had done wrong in blinding Evenius, the guardian of the sacred sheep. The gods they were asking had sent the wolves against the sheep themselves, the prophets said, and the gods would not stop taking vengeance for him until the people of Apollonia had paid Evenius whatever compensation he himself chose and thought was enough. Once that was done, the gods would give Evenius a gift of a kind that would make many people call him happy to have it.
94. These were the oracles the people of Apollonia received. They kept them secret and gave some of their citizens the job of handling the matter, and this is how those men handled it. Once when Evenius was sitting on a bench in public, they came and sat down beside him and talked about other things. At last they came around to sympathizing with him over his misfortune, and leading him on in this way, they asked what compensation he would choose if the people of Apollonia were willing to make up to him for what they had done. He had not heard the oracle, so he made his choice. He named certain citizens whom he knew to own the two best farms in Apollonia, and said that if he were given their land, and with it a house he knew to be the finest in the city, if he became the owner of these, he would bear the people no grudge from then on, and that compensation would be enough for him if he got it. While he was saying this, the men sitting beside him broke in: "Evenius, the people of Apollonia pay you this compensation for your blinding, in obedience to the oracles they have been given." At this he was angry, since now he learned the whole story and saw that he had been tricked. But they bought the property from its owners and gave him what he had chosen. And immediately after this he had the gift of prophecy born in him, so that he became very famous.
95. This Evenius, then, was the father of Deiphonus, who had been brought by the Corinthians and was serving as diviner for the army. But I have also heard that Deiphonus made false use of Evenius' name and took work of this kind all over Greece when he was not really Evenius' son at all.
96. When the sacrifices came out favorable for the Greeks, they put to sea from Delos and headed for Samos. They arrived off Calamisa in Samian territory, anchored there opposite the temple of Hera that stands at that place, and got ready for a sea battle. But the Persians, learning that the Greeks were sailing against them, put to sea as well and crossed over to the mainland with the ships they had left, since the Phoenician ships had already been sent home. They had talked the matter over and decided not to fight at sea, because they did not think they were a match for the enemy. They sailed to the mainland so as to be under the protection of their army at Mycale. This army had stayed behind from the rest of the forces on Xerxes' orders and was keeping watch over Ionia. It numbered 60,000 men, and its commander was Tigranes, who was the handsomest and tallest of all the Persians. The commanders of the fleet, then, had decided to take refuge under the protection of this army, to haul their ships up on shore, and to build a wall around them that would protect the ships and give themselves a place of refuge.
97. Having decided this, they put to sea. They sailed along past the temple of the Revered Goddesses to Gaeson and Scolopoeis in Mycale, where there is a temple of Eleusinian Demeter, built by Philistus son of Pasicles when he went with Neleus son of Codrus to found Miletus. There they hauled their ships up on shore and built a wall of stones and timber around them, cutting down orchard trees for the purpose. They drove stakes in around the wall and got ready either to stand a siege or to win a victory, since in their preparations they planned for both outcomes.
98. When the Greeks learned that the Persians had gone off to the mainland, they were annoyed, because they thought the enemy had escaped them, and they were at a loss what to do: whether to go back home or to sail down toward the Hellespont. In the end they decided to do neither, but to sail on to the mainland. So they got ready the boarding-bridges and everything else needed for a sea battle and sailed toward Mycale. When they came near the camp, no one put out to meet them. Instead they saw ships hauled up inside the wall and a large army drawn up along the shore. Then Leotychides first sailed along the coast in his ship, coming as close to the shore as he could, and had a herald make this proclamation to the Ionians: "Ionians, those of you who happen to be within hearing, listen to what I say, because the Persians will not understand a word of my instructions to you. When we join battle, each of you must remember first the freedom of everyone, and then the watchword 'Hebe.' And anyone who has not heard this, let him learn it from someone who has." The idea behind this was the same as Themistocles' at Artemisium: either the words would get past the Persians and persuade the Ionians, or they would be reported to the Persians and make them distrust the Greeks.
99. After Leotychides had made this suggestion, the Greeks next brought their ships in to land and went ashore on the beach, and there they began forming up for battle. When the Persians saw the Greeks preparing to fight, and saw too that they had appealed to the Ionians, they first took away the Samians' weapons, because they suspected them of leaning to the Greek side. This is why. Some Athenian prisoners, men whom Xerxes' army had found left behind in Attica, had been brought over in the Persian ships, and the Samians had ransomed them all and sent them back to Athens, providing them with what they needed for the journey. This was the chief reason they were under suspicion: they had ransomed five hundred of Xerxes' enemies. Second, the Persians assigned the Milesians to guard the paths that lead up to the peaks of Mycale, on the pretext that they knew the country best, but in fact to get them out of the camp. In this way the Persians protected themselves against those of the Ionians who, they suspected, would turn against them if they got the chance. Then they set up their wicker shields side by side to make a barricade for themselves.
100. When the Greeks had finished all their preparations, they advanced against the Persians. As they went, a rumor suddenly spread through the whole army, and at the same moment a herald's staff was found lying on the beach. The rumor that went through the army was this: that the Greeks were fighting in Boeotia and beating Mardonius' army. There are many signs that the divine has a hand in human affairs, and this is one of them. On the day when the defeat at Plataea and the one about to take place at Mycale happened to fall together, a rumor reached the Greeks at Mycale, so that the army took far more heart and was far more eager to face the danger.
101. And there was another coincidence too: next to both battlefields there was a sacred precinct of Eleusinian Demeter. At Plataea, as I said before, the fighting took place right beside the temple of Demeter, and at Mycale it was going to be the same. And the rumor that reached them, that the Greeks under Pausanias had already won a victory, turned out to be true. The battle at Plataea was fought while it was still early in the morning, and the fighting at Mycale took place in the afternoon. That the two happened on the same day of the same month became clear to them not long afterward, when they looked into it. Before the rumor arrived they had been afraid, not so much for themselves as for the Greeks in general, that Greece might stumble and fall over Mardonius. But when this news came to them so suddenly, they went at the enemy much more boldly and swiftly than before. So the Greeks and the Persians were both going eagerly into battle, since the islands and the Hellespont were set before them as the prizes of the fight.
102. For the Athenians and those posted next to them, who made up perhaps half the army, the way lay along the beach and over level ground. But the Spartans and those posted with them had to go around by a ravine and along the mountainside. So while the Spartans were still on their way around, the men on the other wing were already starting the fight. As long as the Persians' wicker shields were still standing, the Persians held their ground and even had rather the better of it. But then the Athenians and those next to them, wanting the victory to be theirs and not the Spartans', urged each other on and threw themselves into the work harder, and from that moment the fortunes of the battle changed. They pushed through the wicker shields and charged the Persians all together in one body. The Persians held off their first attack and went on fighting for a long time, but at last they fled to the wall. The Athenians, Corinthians, Sicyonians and Troezenians, which was the order they were drawn up in, followed close on their heels and burst in with them into the space inside the wall. Once the wall had been taken too, the rest of the king's army gave up resisting and turned at once to flight, all except the Persians themselves. They formed into small groups and kept on fighting the Greeks as they poured in through the wall. Of the Persian commanders, two escaped and two were killed. Artayntes and Ithamitres, the commanders of the fleet, escaped; Mardontes and the commander of the land army, Tigranes, were killed.
103. While the Persians were still fighting, the Spartans and those with them arrived and helped finish off the rest of the work. Many of the Greeks themselves fell there, and especially many of the Sicyonians, together with their commander Perilaus. As for the Samians who were serving with the enemy in the Persian camp and had been disarmed, when they saw that the battle was in doubt from the very start, they did all they could to help the Greeks. And when the other Ionians saw that the Samians had shown the way, they too revolted from the Persians and attacked the enemy.
104. The Milesians, too, had been assigned to guard the paths for the Persians in order to keep them safe: if what actually happened should happen after all, the Persians would have guides and could get away safely to the peaks of Mycale. The Milesians had been given this job for that reason, and also for fear that, if they stayed in the camp, they might turn against the Persians. But they did the exact opposite of what they had been assigned to do. They led the fleeing Persians down the wrong paths, paths that actually led toward the enemy, and in the end they themselves became the Persians' worst enemies and began killing them. And so, for the second time, Ionia revolted from the Persians.
105. In this battle the Athenians were the best of the Greeks, and the best of the Athenians was Hermolycus son of Euthoenus, a man who had trained for the pancration, the all-in contest of boxing and wrestling. Later, after these events, when the Athenians were at war with the Carystians, this Hermolycus was killed in battle at Cyrnus, in Carystian territory near Geraestus, and was buried there. After the Athenians, the Corinthians, Troezenians and Sicyonians fought best.
106. When the Greeks had killed most of the enemy, some in the battle and others as they fled, they first carried the plunder out onto the beach and then set fire to the ships and the whole wall. Among the rest they found some chests of money. After burning the wall and the ships they sailed away. When they reached Samos, the Greeks discussed moving the people of Ionia out. They considered where in the parts of Greece under their control they ought to settle them, leaving Ionia to the Persians. It was clear to them that they could not stand guard over the Ionians forever, and that if they did not, they had no hope that the Ionians would get off unpunished by the Persians. So the Peloponnesians in command decided that they should clear out the trading towns belonging to those Greek peoples who had gone over to the Persians, and give that land to the Ionians to live in. But the Athenians did not think the Ionians should be moved at all, and they did not think it was for the Peloponnesians to make decisions about Athenian colonies. Since the Athenians opposed the plan so strongly, the Peloponnesians gave way. So in the end they took into their alliance the Samians, Chians and Lesbians, and the other islanders who happened to be serving with the Greeks, binding them by pledges and oaths to stay loyal and never desert the alliance. After binding them by oath, they sailed off to break up the bridges, since they supposed they would find them still stretched across the strait.
So they were sailing for the Hellespont.
107. Meanwhile those of the enemy who had escaped and been driven up to the heights of Mycale, not many in number, were making their way to Sardis. On the road, Masistes son of Darius, who had been there for the disaster, kept insulting the commander Artayntes. Among other things, he said that the way Artayntes had led the army made him worse than a woman, and that he deserved every kind of punishment for bringing such harm on the king's house. Now among the Persians there is no worse insult than to be called worse than a woman. After Artayntes had taken a great deal of abuse, he finally lost his temper and drew his sword on Masistes, meaning to kill him. But as he was rushing at him, Xenagoras son of Prexilaus, a man of Halicarnassus, who was standing just behind Artayntes, saw what was happening. He grabbed Artayntes around the waist, lifted him up and threw him to the ground, and in the meantime Masistes' spearmen stepped in front of their master to protect him. That is what Xenagoras did, and by it he earned the gratitude of Masistes and also of Xerxes, for saving his brother's life. For this deed the king gave Xenagoras the rule of all Cilicia. Nothing else happened on the road beyond this, and they reached Sardis.
As it happened, King Xerxes had been at Sardis ever since he came there in flight from Athens, after his defeat in the sea battle.
108. While he was at Sardis this time, it seems, he fell passionately in love with the wife of Masistes, who was also there. But she would not give in to the messages he sent her, and he did not want to use force, out of respect for his brother Masistes. The same thing kept the woman firm, since she knew very well that force would not be used on her. So Xerxes gave up every other approach and arranged a marriage between his own son Darius and the daughter of this woman and Masistes, supposing that by doing this he would get the mother more easily. He made the betrothal, carried out all the customary ceremonies and then went off to Susa. But when he had arrived there and brought the girl into his own household as Darius' wife, he stopped pursuing Masistes' wife. His desire turned instead to Darius' wife, the daughter of Masistes, and he got her. This woman's name was Artaynte.
109. As time went on, though, the affair came to light, and this is how. Xerxes' wife Amestris had woven a large cloak, richly embroidered and well worth seeing, and she gave it to Xerxes. He was delighted with it, put it on and went to Artaynte. He was delighted with her too, and he told her to ask for anything she wanted in return for the favors she had given him, because whatever she asked for, he said, she would get. And she, since she and her whole house were fated to come to a miserable end, said to Xerxes: "Will you give me whatever I ask you for?" He supposed she would ask for anything but what she did ask for, so he promised and swore to it. Once he had sworn, she boldly asked for the cloak. Xerxes tried every way he could to talk her out of it, because he did not want to give it to her, for no other reason than that he was afraid of Amestris: she already had some suspicion of what was going on, and this would give him away to her. He offered Artaynte cities instead, and as much gold as she liked, and an army that no one but she would command. An army, by the way, is a thoroughly Persian gift. But since he could not persuade her, he gave her the cloak. She was overjoyed with the gift, and she wore it and showed it off.
110. Amestris was told that Artaynte had the cloak. When she learned what was going on, she was not angry with the girl. Instead she supposed that the mother was to blame and was behind the whole thing, and she plotted the destruction of Masistes' wife. She waited until her husband Xerxes was holding the royal banquet. This banquet is served once a year, on the king's birthday, and its name in Persian is tycta, which in Greek means "complete." On this occasion alone the king washes his head, and he gives gifts to the Persians. Amestris waited for this day and then asked Xerxes to give her Masistes' wife. Xerxes thought it a strange and terrible thing to hand his brother's wife over to her, especially since the woman was innocent in this business; for he understood why Amestris was asking.
111. But she kept pleading, and he was bound by the custom that at the royal banquet no one who makes a request of the king may be refused. So at last, very much against his will, he agreed. He handed the woman over and told Amestris to do as she liked. Meanwhile he sent for his brother and said: "Masistes, you are the son of Darius and my brother, and besides that you are a good man. I tell you, do not live any longer with the wife you live with now. I will give you my own daughter in her place. Live with her as your wife, and do not keep the wife you have now, because I do not think it right that you should keep her." Masistes was astonished at this, and said: "Master, what a useless thing you are saying to me! You tell me to send away a wife by whom I have sons who are grown young men, and daughters, one of whom you yourself took as a wife for your son; and she herself, as it happens, is very dear to me. You tell me to send her away and marry your daughter! My king, I count it a very great honor to be thought worthy of your daughter, but all the same I will do neither of these things. Do not force me to do such a thing. Another husband will be found for your daughter who is every bit as good as I am. Let me, I beg you, go on living with my own wife." That was more or less his answer, and Xerxes, stirred to anger, said: "Then this is how things stand for you, Masistes. I will not give you my daughter as your wife, and you will not live any longer with that one either, so that you may learn to take what you are offered." When Masistes heard this he went out, saying only: "Master, you have not destroyed me, surely?"
112. All this time, while Xerxes was talking with his brother, Amestris had sent for Xerxes' spearmen to bring Masistes' wife, and she was mutilating her horribly. She cut off her breasts and threw them to the dogs, and she cut off her nose and ears and lips and tongue, and sent her home in that condition.
113. Masistes had not yet heard any of this, but he suspected that some disaster had fallen on him, and he came running to his house. When he saw his wife mutilated like this, he at once talked it over with his sons and set out for Bactria with them, and no doubt with some others too, meaning to make the province of Bactria revolt and do the king all the harm he could. And this, I imagine, is what would have happened, if he had reached the country of the Bactrians and the Sacae before he was caught; for they were very devoted to him, and he was governor of the Bactrians. But Xerxes learned what he was doing and sent an army after him while he was on the road, and it killed him, and his sons, and his troops. So much for the story of Xerxes' passion and the death of Masistes.
114. Meanwhile the Greeks who had set out from Mycale for the Hellespont first anchored off Lectum, held up on their voyage by the winds. From there they came to Abydos and found that the bridges had been broken up. They had expected to find them still stretched across, and that was the main reason they had come to the Hellespont. So the Peloponnesians under Leotychides decided to sail back to Greece, while the Athenians and their commander Xanthippus decided to stay there and make an attempt on the Chersonese. So the Peloponnesians sailed away, and the Athenians crossed over from Abydos to the Chersonese and laid siege to Sestos.
115. Sestos was the strongest fortress in that region, so when the people of the surrounding towns heard that the Greeks had arrived at the Hellespont, they gathered there. In particular there came from the city of Cardia a Persian named Oeobazus, who had brought the cables of the bridges to Sestos. The people of the town were Aeolians, natives of the country, but a large number of Persians and of their allies were living with them.
116. The tyrant of the province, ruling as governor under Xerxes, was Artayctes, a Persian but a desperate and reckless man. On the king's march against Athens he had also played a trick on him, by carrying off from Elaeus the treasures belonging to Protesilaus son of Iphiclus. At Elaeus in the Chersonese there is the tomb of Protesilaus, with a sacred precinct around it. There were many treasures there, gold and silver cups, bronze, clothing and other offerings, and Artayctes carried them off as plunder, with the king's permission. He tricked Xerxes by saying something like this to him: "Master, there is a house here belonging to a Greek who made war on your land, got what he deserved and was killed. Give me this man's house, so that everyone may learn not to make war on your land." By saying this he could expect to persuade Xerxes easily enough to give him a man's house, since Xerxes had no suspicion of what he had in mind. When he said that Protesilaus had made war on the king's land, you have to understand that the Persians consider all Asia to be theirs and to belong to whichever king is reigning. So when the treasures had been given to him, he brought them from Elaeus to Sestos, and he planted the sacred precinct with crops and farmed it as his own. And whenever he came to Elaeus, he himself had sex with women in the inner shrine of the temple. Now he was being besieged by the Athenians, though he had made no preparations for a siege and had never expected the Greeks to come; they fell on him, you might say, with no way for him to escape.
117. But when autumn came and the siege was still going on, the Athenians grew restless at being away from their own country and at not being able to take the fortress. They asked their commanders to lead them home. The commanders said they would not, until either they had taken the town or the Athenian people officially recalled them. So the men put up with things as they were.
118. Inside the walls, meanwhile, the people had come to the depths of misery, so that they boiled the leather straps of their beds and ate them. When they no longer had even these, the Persians, and with them Artayctes and Oeobazus, ran away in the night. They climbed down at the back of the wall, where the enemy had left the place least guarded. When day came, the people of the Chersonese signaled to the Athenians from the towers what had happened and opened the gates to them. Most of the Athenians went in pursuit, and the rest took over the town.
119. Oeobazus escaped into Thrace, but there the Apsinthian Thracians caught him and sacrificed him to their local god Pleistorus with their own rites. The men who were with him they killed in another way. Artayctes and his companions had set out later in their flight, and they were overtaken a little above Aegospotami. They defended themselves for a good while, and some of them were killed and others taken alive. The Greeks tied them up and were bringing them to Sestos, and among them, in chains, were Artayctes and his son.
120. Then, the people of the Chersonese say, one of the guards was frying dried fish, and a portent happened. The dried fish, as they lay on the fire, began to jump and flop about just like fish freshly caught. The others gathered around and stared in amazement at the portent. But when Artayctes saw it, he called to the man who was frying the fish and said: "My Athenian friend, don't be afraid of this portent at all, because it has not appeared for you, but for me. Protesilaus of Elaeus is telling me by it that even though he is dead and dried up like these fish, he has power from the gods to take vengeance on the man who wrongs him. So now I am willing to pay this penalty to him: in place of the treasures I took from the temple, I will pay a hundred talents to the god, and as ransom for myself and my son I will pay two hundred talents to the Athenians, if my life is spared." That was his offer, but he did not win over the commander, Xanthippus. The people of Elaeus wanted vengeance for Protesilaus and asked for Artayctes to be put to death, and the commander himself leaned the same way. So they took him to the headland where Xerxes had made his crossing, or, as some say, to the hill above the town of Madytus, and there they nailed him to planks and hung him up. And they stoned his son to death before the eyes of Artayctes himself.
121. After doing this they sailed away to Greece, taking with them, among other things, the cables of the bridges, to dedicate them as offerings in the temples. And nothing more happened that year.
122. Now one of the ancestors of this Artayctes who was hung up was that Artembares who put a proposal to the Persians, which they took up and brought before Cyrus. It went like this: "Since Zeus has given the Persians the leadership, and you above all men, Cyrus, by overthrowing Astyages, come: since the land we hold is small, and rugged too, let us move out of it and settle in another that is better. There are many close at hand, and many farther off. If we take one of them, we shall be held in greater awe, and by more people. And it is only natural for men who rule to do this; for when will there ever be a better chance than now, when we rule many nations and the whole of Asia?" Cyrus heard this and was not surprised by the proposal. He told them to go ahead if they wanted, but he warned them that if they did, they had better be ready to stop being rulers and become subjects instead. "Soft lands breed soft men," he said. "The same soil does not grow both wonderful crops and men who are good at war." So the Persians admitted that he was right and went away, beaten by Cyrus' judgment. They chose to live in a poor land and rule, rather than to sow crops on a level plain and be slaves to others.