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Updated: May 8, 2025
Nemesis—Nemesis, the implacable goddess, had come for her own at last. Democrates took the cup. The day that disloyal Thebes surrendered came the tidings of the crowning of the Hellenes’ victories. At Mycale by Samos the Greek fleets had disembarked their crews and defeated the Persians almost at the doors of the Great King in Sardis. Artabazus had escaped through Thrace to Asia in caitiff flight.
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. The dawning spring and the formidable appearance of Mardonius, who, with his Persian forces, diminished indeed, but still mighty, lowered on their confines, aroused the Greeks to a sense of their danger.
Never could those four sister victories, the fairest the sun ever be held, of Salamis, Plataea, Mycale, and Sicily, venture to oppose all their united glories, to the single glory of the discomfiture of King Leonidas and his men, at the pass of Thermopylae.
Pericles, the greatest statesman of ancient Greece, was born of distinguished parentage in the early part of the fifth century B.C. His father was that Xanthippus who won the victory over the Persians at Mycale, 479 B.C.; and by his mother, Agariste, the niece of the great Athenian reformer, Cleisthenes, he was connected with the princely line of Sicyon and the great house of the Alcmæonidæ.
Born of one of the loftiest families of Athens, distinguished by the fame as the fortunes of his father, who had been linked with Aristides in command of the Athenian fleet, and in whose name had been achieved the victory of Mycale, the young Pericles found betimes an easy opening to his brilliant genius and his high ambition. He had nothing to contend against but his own advantages.
That reverence for the military abilities of Asiatic generals, so profoundly impressed on the Greeks by such engineering exploits as the bridging of the Hellespont, and the cutting of the isthmus at Mount Athos by Xerxes, had been obliterated at Salamis, Platea, Mycale. To plunder rich Persian provinces had become an irresistible temptation.
This attack was successful, partly in consequence of the revolt of the Ionians in the Persian camp, although the Persians fought with great bravery. The battle of Mycale was as complete as that of Platæa and Marathon, and the remnants of the Persian army retired to Sardis.
When the Persian army had been again defeated at Platæa and Mycale in B.C. 479, and when the Athenians had rebuilt their private dwellings, it was also resolved, on the advice of Themistocles, to restore the fortifications of Athens, but on a larger scale than they had been before, and more in accordance with the proud position which the city now occupied in Greece.
The Persians were defeated, as they had been at Marathon, and this time they left for good. By a strange coincidence, the same day that the Greek armies won their victory near Plataea, the Athenian ships destroyed the enemy's fleet near Cape Mycale in Asia Minor. Thus did the first encounter between Asia and Europe end. Athens had covered herself with glory and Sparta had fought bravely and well.
Arrived at Mycale, they drew their ships to land, fortifying them with strong intrenchments and barricades, and then sanguinely awaited the result. The Greeks, after a short consultation, resolved upon pursuit. Approaching the enemy's station, they beheld the sea deserted, the ships secured by intrenchments, and long ranks of infantry ranged along the shore.
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