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Updated: May 8, 2025
I must, therefore, not pretend to vie with you in the lustre of military glory; and I will moreover acknowledge that, to govern a people whose spirit and pride were exalted by the wonderful victories of Marathon, Mycale, Salamis, and Plataea, was much more difficult than to rule the Florentines and the Tuscans.
VIII Embassy of Alexander of Macedon to Athens. The Result of his Proposals. Athenians retreat to Salamis. Mardonius occupies Athens. The Athenians send Envoys to Sparta. Pausanias succeeds Cleombrotus as Regent of Sparta. Battle of Plataea. Thebes besieged by the Athenians. Battle of Mycale. Siege of Sestos. Conclusion of the Persian War. I Remarks on the Effects of War. State of Athens.
"Lingering at Sardis," says BULWER, "Xerxes beheld the scanty and exhausted remnants of his mighty force, the fugitives of the fatal days of Mycale and Plataea. The army over which he had wept in the zenith of his power had fulfilled the prediction of his tears; and the armed might of Media and Egypt, of Lydia and Assyria, was now no more!"
He had higher aspirations than mere enjoyment, even of an elevated kind: witness Salamis and Mycale, the Pass of Thermopylæ and the fields of Marathon and Platæa. But when the serious business of life gave time, wine, flowers and lovely women were uppermost in his thoughts.
The Greek took vengeance on the Thebans who had acted with the Persians, of whom a mere remnant reached Asia under the command of Artabazus. The victorious Greek fleet had advanced as far as Delos, commanded by Leotychides, a Spartan of royal blood. To them came an embassy from Samos, urging an attack on the Persians encamped on Mycale.
On the same day at Mycale, the Persian fleet was vanquished in a sharp encounter where a Spartan commanded, but where the Athenians were the most efficient combatants. PAUSANIAS AND THEMISTOCLES. Both of the generals by whom the Persians had been overcome, fell under the displeasure of the states to which they belonged.
Sailing to Asia, they not only liberated from their Persian bondage the islands which lay along the coast, but landing their men on the continent, attacked and defeated an army of 60,000 Persians at Mycale, and destroyed the remnant of the ships that had escaped from Salamis.
It is reported, also, that the news of the battle fought in Italy, near the river Sagra, was conveyed into Peloponnesus the same day, and of that at Mycale against the Medes, to Plataea. When the Romans had defeated the Tarquins, who were combined with the Latins, a little after, there were seen at Rome two tall and comely men, who professed to bring the news from the camp.
But the fire had been terrible. It had burnt Athens at least, down to the very roots. True, while Sophocles was dancing, Xerxes, the great king of the East, foiled at Salamis, as his father Darius had been foiled at Marathon ten years before, was fleeing back to Persia, leaving his innumerable hosts of slaves and mercenaries to be destroyed piecemeal, by land at Platea, by sea at Mycale.
His father, Xanthippus, defeated the Persian generals at Mycale, while his mother, Agariste, was a descendant of Clisthenes, who drove the sons of Pisistratus out of Athens, put an end to their despotic rule, and established a new constitution admirably calculated to reconcile all parties and save the country.
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