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Greece is richly provided with good building stone. At many points there are inexhaustible stores of white marble. The island of Paros, one of the Cyclades, and Mount Pentelicus in Attica to name only the two best and most famous quarries are simply masses of white marble, suitable as well for the builder as the sculptor.
During the summer indeed England is everywhere fishing in the fiords of Norway, sketching on the Kremlin, shooting brigands in Albania, yachting among the Cyclades, lion-hunting in the Atlas, crowding every steamer on the Rhine, annexing Switzerland, lounging through Italian galleries, idling in the gondolas of Venice.
In the spring of B.C. 490 a large army and fleet were assembled in Cilicia, and the command was given to Datis, a Median, and Artaphernes, son of the satrap of Sardis of that name. Warned by the recent disaster of Mardonius in doubling the promontory of Mount Athos, they resolved to sail straight across the AEgean to Euboea, subduing on their way the Cyclades.
Of the Cyclades those beautiful daughters of Crete Delos, sacred to Apollo, and possessed principally by the Ionians, was the most eminent. But Paros boasted not only its marble quarries, but the valour of its inhabitants, and the vehement song of Archilochus.
From the Sporades and Cyclades the advance was easy to the islands of the Northern AEgean, Lemnos, Imbrus, Thasos, and Samothrace. A Phoenician occupation of Lemnos, Imbrus, and Samothrace is indicated by the worship in those islands of the Cabeiri, who were undoubtedly Phoenician deities.
The victory, claimed again by both sides, appears to have been this time gained by the Macedonians; for while the Rhodians retreated to Myndus and thence to Cos, the Macedonians occupied Miletus, and a squadron under Dicaearchus the Aetolian occupied the Cyclades.
Only through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those that we left behind secure, were all the time before us. Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage.
And always I knew it: some faintest secret whisper which whispered me: "You are the Arch-one, the motif of the world, Adam, and the rest of men not much." And they are gone all! all! as no doubt they deserved: and I, as was meet, remain. And there are wines, and opiums, and haschish; and there are oils, and spices, fruits and bivalves, and soft-breathing Cyclades, and scarlet luxurious Orients.
They forced Naxos and the other Cyclades to submission, captured and destroyed Eretria, and sent off its inhabitants as slaves to the interior of Asia. Guided on their path of destruction by the Athenian refugee, Hippias, the Persians landed on the coast of Attica, and encamped on the shore adjacent to the plain of Marathon.
That fleet commanded the Aegean Sea after the withdrawal of the weaker Macedonian squadron: Philip confined his operations by sea to maintaining garrisons on three of the Cyclades, Andros, Cythnos, and Paros, and fitting out privateers.
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