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Updated: June 28, 2025
The ten generals commanded their army in rotation, each for one day; but they now agreed to surrender to Miltiades their days of command, in order to invest the whole power in a single person. While the Athenians were preparing for battle, they received unexpected assistance from the little town or Plataea, in Boeotia.
The Athenians, in their treatment of Miltiades, were neither ungrateful nor fickle, but acted from a high sense of public morality, and in a stern regard to justice, without which the new constitution would soon have been subverted.
Despite, however, the military renown of the one, and the civil eminence of the other, the opposite and more tame opinion seemed likely to prevail, when Miltiades suddenly thus addressed the Polemarch Callimachus. That magistrate, the third of the nine archons, was held by virtue of his office equal in dignity to the military leaders, and to him was confided the privilege of a casting vote.
And certain Scythians came to the Ionians, and counselled them to destroy the bridge, the sixty days being passed. And this Miltiades, the Athenian despot of the Chersonese, would have had them do, so that Darius might perish with all his army; but Histiæus of Miletus dissuaded them, because the rule of the despots was upheld by Darius.
One of his immediate ancestors had acquired the dominion of the Thracian Chersonese, and thus the family became at the same time Athenian citizens and Thracian princes. This occurred at the time when Pisistratus was tyrant of Athens. Two of the relatives of Miltiades an uncle of the same name, and a brother named Stesagoras had ruled the Chersonese before Miltiades became its prince.
In his eagerness to win distinction and gain a high place in the state, he cared not what enemies he might make so that he won a strong party to his support. So great was his thirst for distinction that the victory of Miltiades at Marathon threw him into a state of great depression, in which he said, "The glory of Miltiades will not let me sleep."
Every leader by his day having the command in chief, when it came to Aristides' turn, he delivered it into the hands of Miltiades, showing his fellow officers, that it is not dishonorable to obey and follow wise and able men, but, on the contrary, noble and prudent.
Grace Darling at her oars, Kane in his open boat, Stephenson testing his safety-lamp in the terrible pit, what were the trophies of Miltiades to these? The ancient Agamemnon faced no danger so memorable as that ocean-storm which beset his modern namesake, bearing across the waters a more priceless treasure than Helen, pride of Greece.
Cimon spoke with the blunt and candid eloquence natural to him, and to which his manly countenance and earnest tone and character for truth gave singular effect. Lysander remained long silent. At length he said, "I neither deny nor assent to thine arguments, son of Miltiades. The Ephors alone can judge of their wisdom."
Thus, as Plato says, instead of stationary soldiers as they were, he made them roving sailors, and gave rise to the contemptuous remark that Themistokles took away from the citizens of Athens the shield and the spear, and reduced them to the oar and the rower's bench. This, we are told by Stesimbrotus, he effected after quelling the opposition of Miltiades, who spoke on the other side.
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