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"Mardonius charges the Greeks with a want of sagacity, efficiency, and valor, and speaks contemptuously of them, as soldiers, in every respect. I do not think that such imputations are just to the people against whom they are directed, or honorable to him who makes them.
“I repeat what I said before. The Hellenes showed how they could fight at Thermopylæ. Let us retire to Thebes.” “Bravely said, valiant general,” sneered Mardonius, none too civilly. “It is mine to speak, yours to follow my opinion as you list. I say we can conquer these Hellenes with folded hands. Retreat to Thebes; money is plentiful with us; we can melt our gold cups into coin.
XIII. But the design of Mardonius was not only directed against the Athenians and the state of Eretria, it extended also to the rest of Greece: preparations so vast were not meant to be wasted upon foes apparently insignificant, but rather to consolidate the Persian conquests on the Asiatic coasts, and to impress on the neighbouring continent of Europe adequate conceptions of the power of the great king.
Rather I will praise also the rose valleys of Persia and Bactria, whither Mardonius took me after my dear father died.” “Are they very beautiful also?” “Beautiful as the Egyptian’s House of the Blessed, for those who have passed the dread bar of Osiris; beautiful as Airyana-Væya, the home land of the Aryans, whence Ahura-Mazda sent them forth. The winters are short, the summers bright and long.
A land expedition, led by the Persian general Mardonius, crossed the Hellespont in the year 493 B.C., proposing to march to Athens along the coast, and with orders to bring all that were left alive of its inhabitants as captives to the great king. On marched the great host, nothing doubting that Greece would fall an easy prey to their arms.
Daily a courier pricked into Sardis with despatches from the Great King to his trusted general. Mardonius left the great levees and public spectacles to Artaphernes, but his hand was everywhere. His decisions were prompt. He was in constant communication with the Medizing party in Hellas.
Mardonius went from his tent, all his eunuchs bowing their foreheads to the earth and chorussing, “Victory to our Lord, to Persia, and to the King.” They brought Mardonius his favourite horse, a white steed of the sacred breed of Nisæa. The Prince had bound around his turban the gemmed tiara Xerxes had given him on his wedding-day.
Glaucon learned how futile was Themistocles’s hope of succour to Athens from the Sicilian Greeks, for,—thanks to Mardonius’s indefatigable diplomacy,—it was arranged that the Phœnicians of Carthage should launch a powerful armament against the Sicilians, the same moment Xerxes descended on Sparta and Athens. With calm satisfaction Mardonius watched the completion of his efforts.
"Do not tempt me too far, Cleonice," said the Spartan, with a faint smile. "Nay, I will be merciful henceforth, and you, Pausanias, come here no more. Awake to the true sense of what is due to your divine ancestry your great name. Is it not told of you that, after the fall of Mardonius, you nobly dismissed to her country, unscathed and honoured, the captive Coan lady?
It is difficult, indeed, to recognize in this luxurious satrap, who affects the dress, the manners, the very insolence of the Barbarian, that Pausanias who, after the glorious day of Plataea, ordered the slaves to prepare in the tent of Mardonius such a banquet as would have been served to the Persian, while his own Spartan broth and bread were set beside it, in order that he might utter to the chiefs of Greece that noble pleasantry, 'Behold the folly of the Persians, who forsook such splendour to plunder such poverty."
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