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Updated: May 7, 2025
The Naxians had, ten years before, successfully stood a siege against a Persian armament, but they now were too terrified to offer any resistance, and fled to the mountain-tops, while the enemy burnt their town and laid waste their lands. Thence Datis, compelling the Greek islanders to join him with their ships and men, sailed onward to the coast of Euboea.
“At Marathon.” “A drop of rain before the tempest! If Datis, the Persian general, had only been more prudent!” “Clearly, noblest Lycon,” said Democrates, with a satirical smile, “for a taciturn Laconian to become thus eloquent for tyranny must have taken a bribe of ten thousand gold darics.” “But answer my arguments.”
Datis, the so-called "eye of the king," who held the office filled in modern days by a minister of police, hurried from the room, returning in a few minutes with the desired officer. These moments Phanes made use of for putting various questions on important points to the nobles who were present. "What news can you bring of the prisoners?" asked the king, as the man lay prostrate before him.
We have no details of the conduct of the Phoenicians on either occasion, beyond a casual notice that in the expedition of Datis and Artaphernes one of their vessels plundered the temple of Delium on the Boeotian coast opposite Chalcis, carrying off from it an image of Apollo plated with gold.
Flushed with success, and with half his mission thus accomplished, Datis reimbarked his troops, and crossing the little channel that separates Euboea from the mainland, he encamped his troops on the Attic coast at Marathon, drawing up his galleys on the shelving beach, as was the custom with the navies of antiquity.
"Gongylus," said Pausanias, "the captive Barbarians, Ariamanes and Datis, were placed by me especially under thy vigilance and guard. They have escaped. The captains of Greece demand of thee, as I demanded by what means by what connivance? Speak the truth, and deem that in falsehood as well as in treachery, detection is easy, and death certain."
The failure of Datis had proved that such an expedition as could be conveyed by sea across the Egean would be insufficient to secure the object sought, and that the only safe road for a conqueror whose land force constituted his real strength was along the shores of the European continent.
Datis, the so-called "eye of the king," who held the office filled in modern days by a minister of police, hurried from the room, returning in a few minutes with the desired officer. These moments Phanes made use of for putting various questions on important points to the nobles who were present. "What news can you bring of the prisoners?" asked the king, as the man lay prostrate before him.
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