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Updated: May 26, 2025
Artaphernes placed at his disposal a fleet of 200 ships under the command of Megabates, a Persian of high rank; but Aristagoras having affronted the Persian admiral, the latter revenged himself by privately informing the Naxians of the object of the expedition, which had hitherto been kept a secret.
Aristagoras first applied to Sparta for aid. When arguments failed, he tried to bribe the king Cleomenes. In the room was the King's little daughter Gorgo. Hearing Aristagoras gradually raise his offer from ten to fifty talents, the child said, "Father, depart, or the stranger will corrupt thee". Aristagoras received a better welcome at Athens.
In a few days after this, he set out, with the rest of Darius's court, for the Persian capital, leaving a nephew, whose name was Aristagoras, as governor of Miletus in his stead. Darius, on the other hand, committed the general charge of the whole coast of Asia Minor to Artaphernes, one of his generals. Artaphernes was to make Sardis his capital.
In the original revolt appear to have been included only the cities of Ionia and AEolis. Aristagoras felt that some further strength was needed, and determined to seek it in European Greece. Repulsed from Sparta, which was disinclined to so distant an expedition, he applied for aid to cities on which he had a special claim.
The Athenians sent forces to aid those of Aristagoras and Histiæus, and, in the course of the war, the combined army took and burned the city of Sardis. When this news reached Darius, he was excited to a perfect phrensy of resentment and indignation against the Athenians for coming thus into his own dominions to assist rebels, and there destroying one of his most important capitals.
Aristagoras now began to despair, and basely deserted his countrymen, whom he had led into peril. Collecting a large body of Milesians, he set sail for the Thracian coast, where he was slain under the walls of a town to which he had laid siege. Soon after his departure, his father-in-law, Histiaeus came down to the coast.
Aristagoras now resolved to cross over to Greece, in order to solicit assistance. The Spartans, to whom he first applied, refused to take any part in the war; but at Athens he met with a very different reception. The Athenians sympathised with the Ionians as their kinsmen and colonists, and were incensed against the satrap Artaphernes, who had recently commanded them to recall Hippias.
The Spartans, always cold to the liberty of other states, were no less indifferent to the glory of barren victories; and when Aristagoras too honestly replied, in answer to a question of the king, that from the Ionian sea to Susa, the Persian capital, was a journey of three months, Cleomenes abruptly exclaimed, "Milesian, depart from Sparta before sunset; a march of three months from the sea! the Spartans will never listen to so frantic a proposal!"
II. This seasonable advice, so accordant with his own views, charmed Aristagoras: he summoned the Milesians, and, to engage their zealous assistance, he divested himself of the tyranny, and established a republic.
Some ten years afterwards this regent of Miletus made an attempt, with Persian aid, to capture the island of Naxos. The effort failed, and Aristagoras, against whom the Persians were incensed by their defeat and their losses, was threatened with ruin. He began to think of a revolt from Persian rule.
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