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Updated: June 3, 2025
Some of the crews reached the shores, but of these many died of cold, and others were slain and devoured by wild beasts, which roamed in numbers on that uninhabited point of land. The land army, too, lost heavily from the hurricane; and Mardonius, fearing to advance farther after this disaster, ingloriously made his way back to the Hellespont. So ended the first invasion of Greece.
He may even test the fates and set foot in Attica. I am cumbered with as many cares as Zeus, but this commission I give to you. You are my most trusted lieutenant; I can risk no other. Keep watch, hire spies, scatter bribe-money. Rest not day nor night to find if Mardonius the Persian enters Athens. Once in our clutches—and you have done Hellas as fair a turn as Miltiades at Marathon.
The Athenians, distressed, sent envoys to Sparta to remonstrate against her slackness and selfishness, not without effect, for, at last, a large Spartan force was collected under Pausanias. Meanwhile Mardonius ravaged Attica and Bœotia, and then fortified his camp near Platæa, ten furlongs square.
The harbour towns were in black ruins, for Mardonius had wasted everything before retiring to Bœotia for his last battle. In Athens, as they entered it, the houses were roofless, the streets scattered with rubbish. But Hermione did not think of these things.
The army is safe; and it can not be possible that the Greeks can hereafter bring any force into the field by which it can be seriously endangered." By these and similar sentiments, Mardonius endeavored to revive and restore the failing courage and resolution of the king. He found, however, that he met with very partial success.
Bravely said, but when the Athenians looked to Sparta for the great army to hasten north and give Mardonius his death-stroke, it was the old wearisome tale of excuses and delay. At the conference in Corinth Aristeides and Democrates had passed from arguments to all but threats, even such as Themistocles had used at Salamis.
As he stood on the steps of the throne, he gave the glittering monarch the same familiar bow he might have awarded a friend he met in the Agora. Mardonius was troubled. The supreme usher was horrified. The master-of-punishments, ever near his chief, gazed eagerly to see if Xerxes would not touch the audacious Hellene’s girdle—a sign for prompt decapitation.
Xerxes no sooner heard this, but, being very much terrified, he proceeded to retreat out of Greece with all speed. The prudence of Themistocles and Aristides in this was afterwards more fully understood at the battle of Plataea, where Mardonius, with a very small fraction of the forces of Xerxes, put the Greeks in danger of losing all.
In that great battle of Plataea, that the Greeks under the command of Pausanias gained against Mardonius and the Persians, the conquerors, according to their custom, coming to divide amongst them the glory of the exploit, attributed to the Spartan nation the pre-eminence of valour in the engagement.
At his elbow, as he sat on the throne cased with lapis lazuli and onyx, waited the one man who came nearest to being a friend and not a slave,—Mardonius, son of Gobryas, the bow-bearer,—and therefore more entitled than any other prince of the Persians to stand on terms of intimacy with his lord.
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