Herodotus: The Histories
The Plainspoken Classics - Scriptorium Press (First Edition, 2026)
An original AI translation made directly from the source language.
https://openscriptorium.com


======== Histories — Book 1 (Clio) ========

Herodotus of Halicarnassus, this is the display of his inquiry, so that neither what has happened among men may fade with time, nor great and marvelous deeds, some accomplished by the Greeks, some by barbarians, may become without fame — including, in particular, the reason why they waged war against each other. Now the learned men among the Persians say that the Phoenicians were the cause of the dispute. For these, having come from the sea called the Red Sea
to this sea, and having settled in this region which they still now inhabit, immediately took up long voyages, and carrying Egyptian and Assyrian cargo, arrived at various other places and in particular at Argos. Now Argos at that time surpassed all the peoples of the land now called Greece. And when the Phoenicians arrived
at this Argos, they set out their cargo for sale. On the fifth or sixth day from their arrival, when nearly everything had been sold, many women came down to the sea, among them the daughter of the king; her name, as the Greeks also say, was Io, daughter of Inachus. These women, standing by the stern of the ship, were buying
those of the goods for which they had the greatest desire. And the Phoenicians, urging one another on, rushed at them. Most of the women escaped, but Io, along with others, was seized. They put them into the ship and sailed away toward Egypt. Thus the Persians say Io came to Egypt, not as the Greeks say, and this was the first of the wrongs. After
this, they say that some Greeks (for they cannot give the name) put in at Tyre in Phoenicia and seized the king's daughter Europa. These would have been Cretans. So far these things were equal to equal, but after this the Greeks became the cause of the second wrongdoing: for sailing in a long ship to Aea in Colchis and to the river Phasis,
from that place, once they had finished the other business that had brought them there, Medea, the king's daughter, was seized and taken away by them. The king of the Colchians then sent a herald to Greece demanding compensation for the abduction and asking for his daughter's return. The Greeks replied that since the Colchians had never paid compensation for the abduction of Io of Argos, they in turn owed the Colchians nothing. They say that two generations later
Alexander, son of Priam, upon hearing this story, decided he wanted a wife carried off from Greece, being quite certain he would face no punishment for it, since no one else ever had. So once he had carried off Helen, the Greeks resolved to first send envoys demanding her return and compensation for the abduction. The Trojans, faced with this demand, threw back at them the abduction of Medea, arguing that the Greeks
themselves, having neither given satisfaction nor given her back when she was demanded, wished to receive satisfaction from others. Up to this point there had been only seizures on both sides; but from this point on the Greeks became greatly to blame, for they were the first to begin marching an army into Asia, before the Persians marched into Europe. Now to seize women is held to be the act of unjust men, but
to make a great effort to avenge women once seized is the act of foolish men, while to pay no heed at all to women who have been seized is the act of sensible men; for it is clear that if they themselves had not wished it, they would not have been seized. The Persians say that they, the people of Asia, made no account at all when their women were seized, but that the Greeks, for the sake of a Lacedaemonian woman, gathered a great expedition and then, coming into Asia, destroyed the power of Priam.
From that time on they have always regarded the Greek people as their enemy. For the Persians claim Asia and the barbarian peoples living in it as their own, but they consider Europe and the Greek people to be separate. This is how the Persians say it happened, and it is in the capture of Troy that they find the origin of their hostility toward the Greeks. But concerning Io, the Phoenicians do not agree
with the Persians in this way; for they say that it was not by seizure that they brought her to Egypt, but that while in Argos she had intercourse with the ship's captain, and when she realized she was pregnant, out of shame before her parents, she sailed away willingly with the Phoenicians, so that it would not become known. These, then, are the accounts given by the Persians and the Phoenicians; but I myself, concerning
on these matters I am not setting out to claim that events unfolded one way rather than another. Instead I will name the man I myself know to have been the first to commit injustice against the Greeks, and having pointed him out, move ahead with my narrative, covering the cities of men both small and great without distinction. Cities that were once great have mostly shrunk down small, while cities great in my own day were once
insignificant. Since I recognize that human fortune never stays fixed in one place, I will treat both kinds equally. Croesus was Lydian by descent, son of Alyattes, and lord over the peoples living within the river Halys, a river that flows from the south between the lands of the Syrians and the Paphlagonians and empties northward into the sea called the Euxine. This Croesus was the very first foreign ruler known to us
who forced part of the Greeks into paying tribute and won others over as allies. He forced the Ionians, Aeolians, and the Dorians settled in Asia into submission, and made allies of the Lacedaemonians. Before Croesus took power all Greeks were free, since the Cimmerian force that had earlier struck Ionia, arriving before Croesus's time, was not a conquest of cities at all but merely a raid conducted
an incursion. The rule passed in this way — belonging by descent to the Heraclids — into the family of Croesus, called the Mermnadae. There was Candaules, whom the Greeks call Myrsilus, ruler of Sardis, descendant of Alcaeus son of Heracles. For Agron, son of Ninus, son of Belus, son of Alcaeus, was the first of the Heraclids to become king of Sardis, and Candaules, son of Myrsus, was the last. Those who ruled this land before Agron
of this land were descended from Lydus son of Atys, the man from whom the entire people took the name Lydian, having earlier been called Meionian. From these people the Heraclids, given rule through an oracle, took power — sprung from a slave woman belonging to Iardanus together with Heracles — and they held power across twenty-two generations of men for five hundred and five years, each son inheriting from his
in the rule, down to Candaules son of Myrsus. This Candaules, then, fell in love with his own wife, and being in love he believed her to be by far the most beautiful of all women. Holding this belief — for among his spearmen Gyges son of Dascylus was the one who pleased him most — to this Gyges Candaules used to entrust his more serious business, and indeed he also praised excessively the beauty of
his wife. Not much time had passed (for it was fated that things should go badly for Candaules) when he said the following to Gyges: 'Gyges, since I do not think you believe me when I speak of my wife's beauty — for men's ears happen to be less trustworthy than their eyes — arrange to see her naked.' But he cried out and said, 'Master, what unsound thing are you saying, ordering me to look upon my mistress
naked? A woman, when she takes off her tunic, sheds her modesty along with it. Long ago fine things were discovered by men, from which one must learn; among these is this one: let each look to his own. I myself believe that she is the most beautiful of all women, and I beg you not to ask for what is unlawful.' Speaking thus he resisted, fearing that some
harm should come to him because of them. Candaules replied to him in these words: 'Have courage, Gyges, and do not be afraid, either of me — I only say this to test you — or of my wife, that some harm might befall you on her account. Right from the outset I will arrange matters so that she never even realizes you have looked at her. I will station you inside the chamber where we sleep, just behind
the open door. Once I have entered, my wife will come in as well to go to bed. Near the entrance stands a chair; she will remove her clothing piece by piece and set each garment on it, giving you ample opportunity to observe her at leisure. Then, once she leaves the chair and moves toward the bed with her back turned toward you, make certain
from that spot onward that she never spots you slipping out through the doorway.' Since escape was impossible, Gyges made himself ready. And when Candaules judged the hour for sleep had arrived, he brought Gyges into the chamber, and shortly afterward his wife came in too. Gyges watched her enter and set down her garments one by one. And once her back was turned as she moved
toward the bed, he crept out unseen, though the woman spotted him leaving. Realizing what her husband had done, she neither cried out from shame nor let on that she had noticed, already resolved to punish Candaules for it. Among the Lydians, and nearly all other non-Greek peoples besides, a man being seen naked counts as a source of deep disgrace. So at that moment
she gave no sign of it and kept quiet. But as soon as day came, she made ready those of her servants whom she saw to be most loyal to her, and summoned Gyges. He, thinking she knew nothing of what had happened, came when called, as he had been accustomed before, whenever the queen summoned him, to attend her. When Gyges arrived, the woman said the following: 'Now, Gyges, of two paths
that lie open to you I give you the choice, whichever you wish to take. Either kill Candaules and have me and the kingdom of Lydia, or you yourself must die right now, so that in the future, obeying Candaules in everything, you may not see what you should not. For either that man who devised this must perish, or you, who have seen me naked, and
"having done things not customary." Gyges for a time was amazed at what was said, but then he begged her not to compel him by necessity to decide on such a choice. He did not persuade her, but he saw that a real necessity lay before him: either to destroy his master or to be destroyed himself by others. He chose to survive himself, and asked her this: "Since you compel me to kill my master against my will, come,"
"let me hear by what means we shall attack him." She took this up and said, "The attack will be launched from the very place where he showed me naked, and it will come while he is asleep." When they had prepared the plot, and night had come — for Gyges was not released, nor was there any escape for him, but it was necessary either that he himself perish or Candaules — he followed
the woman into the bedroom, and she gave him a dagger and hid him behind that same door. Afterward, while Candaules was resting, Gyges slipped out, killed him, and took both the woman and the kingship — this Gyges whom Archilochus of Paros, who lived at the same time, mentioned in iambic trimeter. He took the kingship and had it confirmed by
the oracle at Delphi. Once the Lydians took Candaules's death hard and rose up in arms, an agreement was struck between Gyges's supporters and the remaining Lydians: if the oracle named him king of Lydia, he would rule; but if not, power would revert to the Heraclids. The oracle did name him king,
and so Gyges became king. Yet the Pythia said this much besides: that vengeance for the Heraclids would come in the fifth generation after Gyges. Of this pronouncement the Lydians and their kings took no notice until it was fulfilled. In this way the Mermnadae took the tyranny away from the Heraclids and held it. Gyges, once tyrant, sent no small number of offerings to Delphi — as many
silver offerings as he sent, they are the most numerous at Delphi belonging to any one man; and besides the silver he dedicated a vast quantity of gold, among other things one especially worth remembering: six golden mixing-bowls are dedicated there. These stand in the treasury of the Corinthians, weighing thirty talents; though, to speak the truth, the treasury does not belong to the Corinthian state but to Cypselus son of
Eetion. Of all the non-Greeks known to us, this Gyges was the earliest to send dedications to Delphi — after Midas son of Gordias, king of Phrygia. For Midas too dedicated the royal throne on which he used to sit and give judgment, a thing worth seeing; this throne stands in the same place as the mixing-bowls of Gyges. This gold and silver that Gyges
dedicated is called by the Delphians "Gygian," after the name of the man who gave it. Once he became king, he too led an army into Milesian and Smyrnaean territory, and took the city of Colophon; but no other great deed was accomplished by him in his thirty-eight-year reign, so we will pass over him having mentioned this much, and I will make mention of Ardys son of Gyges, who reigned after Gyges.
This man took Priene and invaded Miletus; and it was during his tyranny over Sardis that the Cimmerians, driven from their homelands by the nomadic Scythians, came into Asia and took Sardis except for the acropolis. Ardys reigned forty-nine years and was succeeded by Sadyattes son of Ardys, who reigned twelve years; Sadyattes was succeeded by Alyattes. This man made war on Cyaxares,
the descendant of Deioces, and on the Medes; he drove the Cimmerians out of Asia, took Smyrna, which had been founded as a colony from Colophon, and invaded Clazomenae. From these campaigns he did not come off as he wished, but suffered a great defeat; but other deeds he accomplished in his reign are most worth relating, as follows. He waged war against the Milesians, having inherited the war from his father. Advancing against them, he laid siege to
Miletus by this method: whenever the crops in the land had ripened, he would launch his invasion, marching his army to music from pipes, harps, and flutes played by both women and men. Once he reached Milesian land, he left the farmhouses standing untouched, neither tearing them down nor burning them nor ripping off their doors, letting them remain in place; yet
whenever he had destroyed the trees and the crop in the land, he withdrew again. For the sea was in the Milesians' control, so that a blockade by his army was pointless. The Lydian did not tear down the houses, for this reason: so that the Milesians, using them as a base, could go on sowing and working the land, and he, while they worked it, might have something to
damage each time he invaded. Doing this, he waged war for eleven years, in which two great defeats befell the Milesians, once when they fought at Limeneion in their own territory, and once on the Maeander plain. During six of those eleven years the Lydians were still under Sadyattes son of Ardys, and it was he who was then leading the army into Milesian land; for it was this Sadyattes who had
begun the war. The following five years after the six were fought by Alyattes son of Sadyattes, who, having inherited the war from his father, as I have already shown, pursued it intensely. None of the Ionians eased this war for the Milesians except the Chians alone. These repaid like with like in giving aid, for earlier the Milesians had joined with the Chians
in their war against the Erythraeans. In the twelfth year, when the standing grain was being burned by the army, it happened that the following thing occurred: as soon as the grain caught fire, driven by the wind it caught the temple of Athena called the Assesian, and the temple, having caught fire, burned down. At the time no notice was taken of it, but afterward, when the army had returned to Sardis, Alyattes fell ill. As
his illness dragged on longer, he sent envoys to Delphi to consult the oracle, whether on someone's advice or because he himself decided to send and ask the god about the illness. When they arrived at Delphi, the Pythia refused to give an oracle until they should rebuild the temple of Athena which they had burned at Assesos in Milesian territory. I know that this is how it happened, as I have heard it from the Delphians; but the Milesians
add the following to this account: that Periander son of Cypselus, being on the closest terms of guest-friendship with Thrasybulus, then tyrant of Miletus, learned of the oracle given to Alyattes and sent a messenger to tell him, so that, knowing it in advance, he might plan for the situation accordingly. So the Milesians say it happened. Alyattes, when this news was reported to him, immediately sent a herald to Miletus wishing to make a truce with Thrasybulus
and the Milesians for as long as he was building the temple. So the mission went to Miletus; but Thrasybulus, having already learned the whole story clearly and knowing what Alyattes intended to do, devised the following scheme: whatever grain there was in the city, both his own and privately owned, he had it all gathered into the marketplace, and he told the Milesians that when he gave the signal, they should all drink
and hold revelry with one another. Thrasybulus did this and proclaimed it for the following reason: so that the herald from Sardis, seeing a great heap of grain piled up and the people in a state of enjoyment, would report it to Alyattes — which is indeed what happened. For when the herald had seen those things and had told Thrasybulus the Lydian king's
instructions, and had gone back to Sardis, as I learn, nothing else brought about the reconciliation. For Alyattes, expecting there to be a severe grain shortage in Miletus and the people worn down to the utmost extremity of misery, heard from the herald returning from Miletus the opposite report from what he himself had supposed. After this the reconciliation between them came about on
the terms that they should be guest-friends and allies with one another, and Alyattes built two temples for Athena at Assesos instead of one, and he himself recovered from his illness. So it went with Alyattes concerning the war against the Milesians and Thrasybulus. Periander, who revealed the oracle to Thrasybulus, was the son of Cypselus, and this Periander was tyrant
of Corinth. To him, the Corinthians say (and the Lesbians agree with them), the greatest wonder of his life happened: Arion of Methymna was carried to Taenarum on a dolphin — a man who was second to none of the lyre-singers of his time, and who was the first man we know of to compose, name, and teach the dithyramb at Corinth. This Arion, they say, who spent much of his time with
Periander, desired to sail to Italy and Sicily, and having made great wealth there, wished to return to Corinth. Setting out from Tarentum, and trusting no one more than Corinthians, he hired a ship crewed by Corinthian men. But once at sea, they plotted to throw Arion overboard and keep his money. Realizing this, he pleaded with them, offering them the money, and
begging only for his life. But this plea did not move them; the sailors ordered him to choose: do away with himself, so as to get burial on land, or leap into the sea without delay. Driven to this extremity, Arion begged them, since this was their decision, to let him stand in full costume on the deck and sing; and once he had sung, he promised he would make an end of himself. And
the sailors, delighted at the prospect of hearing the finest singer alive, moved back from the stern toward the ship's middle. Arion then dressed himself in his full performance costume, picked up his lyre, stood on the deck, and sang the Orthian melody all the way through; and when the song ended, he flung himself into the sea exactly as he stood, costume and all. And the
sailed on to Corinth, but the dolphin, they say, took him up and carried him to Taenarum. He disembarked and made his way to Corinth with his gear, and on arriving related everything that had happened. Periander, disbelieving the story, kept Arion under guard and let him go nowhere, while keeping close watch on the sailors. When they duly arrived, they were summoned and asked whether they had anything to report about Arion.
The sailors said Arion was safe in Italy, doing well, and that they had left him behind at Tarentum — whereupon Arion himself stepped forward, dressed just as he had been when he dove overboard, and the astonished men, caught out, could no longer deny the truth. This account comes from the Corinthians and the Lesbians alike, and there stands a small bronze monument to Arion at Taenarum, showing a man mounted on a dolphin. Alyattes,
Lydian, after finishing the war against the Milesians, later died, having reigned fifty-seven years. Having recovered from his illness, he dedicated at Delphi, the second of this house to do so, a great silver mixing-bowl and an iron stand welded together, a sight worth seeing among all the offerings at Delphi, the work of Glaucus of Chios, who alone of all men discovered the welding of iron. On the death of
son of Alyattes, Croesus took over the throne at thirty-five years old. Among the Greeks, he attacked the Ephesians first. Under siege from him, the Ephesians dedicated their city to Artemis by running a rope from her temple all the way to the city wall. Seven stadia separate the old city under siege from the temple. Against these people first
then Croesus made his attack, and afterward, in turn, against each of the Ionians and Aeolians, bringing different charges against different ones—against those where he could find a greater charge, alleging something greater, and against others even bringing trivial accusations. When the Greeks in Asia had been subdued to the payment of tribute, from then on he conceived the plan of building ships and attacking the islanders. But when everything
was ready for the shipbuilding, some say that Bias of Priene came to Sardis, others that it was Pittacus of Mytilene, and when Croesus asked if there was any news from Greece, he said the following and made him stop the shipbuilding: "O king, the islanders are buying up countless horses, intending to march against Sardis and against you." Croesus, hoping he was speaking the truth,
said, "Would that the gods put this into the minds of the islanders, to come against the sons of the Lydians with horses!" And the man replied, "O king, you seem to me to be praying eagerly to catch the islanders on horseback on land, and reasonably so you hope. But what do you think the islanders are praying for, other than that, as soon as they learned you were planning to build ships against them, they prayed to catch the Lydians at sea, so that they might
take vengeance on you for the Greeks living on the mainland, whom you hold enslaved?" Croesus was greatly pleased with this conclusion, for it seemed to him aptly spoken, and, persuaded, he stopped the shipbuilding. And so he made a bond of friendship with the Ionians who lived on the islands. As time went on and nearly all the peoples living within the Halys river had been subdued—except for the Cilicians and the Lycians—
Croesus held everyone else under his own authority, having conquered them. They were: Lydians, Phrygians, Mysians, Mariandynians, Chalybes, Paphlagonians, Thracians (both Thynians and Bithynians), Carians, Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians, and Pamphylians. With these peoples brought under Lydian control and added to Croesus's domain, Sardis, then flourishing with wealth, was visited by every notable thinker from Greece then living, each
arriving there in his own time, among them the Athenian Solon, who, having drafted laws for the Athenians at their own request, then left home for ten years, sailing off under the guise of sightseeing so he would not be forced to repeal any law he had established. The Athenians themselves could not do this, since they were bound by weighty oaths to follow whatever laws Solon set for ten years. It was for
these reasons and for the sake of sightseeing that Solon left home and came to Egypt, to the court of Amasis, and also to Sardis, to Croesus. On his arrival he was entertained in the royal palace by Croesus, and then, on the third or fourth day, at Croesus's command, servants led Solon around the treasuries and showed him everything, all of it great and splendid. When he had
he had inspected everything as time allowed, Croesus put this question to him: 'My Athenian guest, plenty of talk about you has reached us here, concerning both your wisdom and your travels — how, driven by a love of learning, you have journeyed across much of the world just to see it. So now a longing has taken hold of me to ask whether you have yet come across anyone who is the happiest of all men.' He asked this expecting that he
the most fortunate of men. But Solon, without flattering him at all but speaking the truth, said, "O king, Tellus the Athenian." Astonished at what was said, Croesus asked sharply, "On what grounds do you judge Tellus to be the most fortunate?" He said that Tellus, in the first place, lived in a city that was prospering, and had sons who were fine and good, and he saw children born to all of them and all of them surviving; and also,
having lived well by the standards we have, he met a most glorious end to his life: for when the Athenians fought a battle against their neighbors at Eleusis, he came to the rescue, routed the enemy, and died most nobly, and the Athenians buried him at public expense on the very spot where he fell and honored him greatly." When Solon had thus provoked Croesus by telling him at length
of the many good things concerning Tellus, Croesus asked whom he had seen as second after him, expecting that he would surely win second place. But Solon said, "Cleobis and Biton. These were Argive by birth, and had a sufficient livelihood, and besides this such strength of body as follows: both alike were prize-winning athletes, and this story too is told of them. When there was a festival of Hera for the Argives,
it was absolutely necessary that their mother be conveyed to the temple by a yoked cart, but their oxen did not come in from the field in time. Since they were running out of time, the young men themselves put themselves under the yoke and pulled the wagon, with their mother riding upon it; and having drawn it forty-five stadia, they arrived at the temple. After they
had done this and been seen by the assembled festival crowd, the best end of life came upon them, and in this the god showed that it is better for a man to be dead than to live. For the Argive men, standing around, blessed the strength of the young men, and the Argive women blessed their mother for having such children; and the mother, overjoyed both at the deed and at the fame,
stood facing the statue and prayed that the goddess grant Cleobis and Bito, her own sons, who had honored her so richly, whatever is finest for a human being to receive. Once the sacrifice was made and the feast enjoyed following this prayer, the young men fell asleep inside the temple itself and never woke again, meeting their end there. The Argives had statues made of them and set them up at
Delphi, as of men who had proven themselves the best." Solon thus assigned second place in happiness to these men, but Croesus, angered, said, "My Athenian guest, has our happiness been so utterly cast aside by you as nothing, that you do not even count us worthy of ordinary men?" Solon said, "Croesus, you ask me about human affairs, though I know that the divine is entirely jealous and prone to trouble. For
in the long span of time there is much to see that one would not wish to see, and much to suffer as well. I set the limit of a man's life at seventy years. These seventy years provide twenty-five thousand two hundred days, not counting an intercalary month. But if one wishes to make every other year longer by a month, so that the seasons
may come round as they should, then over the seventy years there will be thirty-five intercalary months, and from these months a thousand and fifty additional days. Of all these days making up the seventy years—twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty in all—not one brings with it anything exactly like another. So you see, Croesus,
man is entirely a creature of chance. As for you, you seem to me to be very wealthy and to be king of many men, but as to what you asked me, I cannot yet call you that, until I learn that you have ended your life well. For the very rich man is no more fortunate than the man who has enough for his day, unless fortune attends him so that he ends his life well, having kept all good things to the end of his
life. For many very wealthy men are unfortunate, while many with moderate means are fortunate. The man who is very rich but unfortunate surpasses the fortunate man in only two respects, while the fortunate man surpasses the rich and unfortunate one in many. The rich man is more able to satisfy his desire and to bear a great disaster that befalls him, but the other has this advantage over him: he is not so able to bear disaster and desire as the rich man is,
but good fortune wards these things off from him, and he is free of deformity, free of disease, untouched by misfortune, blessed with fine children, good-looking. And if besides all this he also ends his life well, then this is the man you are seeking, the one worthy to be called fortunate. But before he dies, hold back and do not yet call him fortunate, but only lucky. Now it is impossible for a human being to possess all these things together
just as no single country is self-sufficient in providing everything for itself, but has one thing while lacking another—the one which has the most is the best; so too no single human body is self-sufficient: it has one thing but lacks another. Whoever continues to possess the most of these advantages, and then ends his life graciously, that man, O king,
"It is right for me, king, to bear that name. One must look to the end of every matter, to see how it will turn out; for the god shows a hint of prosperity to many, and then destroys them root and branch." By saying this to Croesus he gave him no pleasure at all, and Croesus sent him away without a further thought, considering him a great fool, since he disregarded the good things at hand and told him to look to the end of every matter.
But after Solon had gone, a great retribution from the god seized Croesus, presumably because he supposed himself to be the most fortunate of all men. At once, as he slept, a dream stood over him which revealed to him the truth of the evils about to happen concerning his son. Croesus had two sons, one of whom was ruined, being deaf and mute, while the other,
in every respect, was by far the first among those of his age; his name was Atys. It was this Atys whom the dream signified to Croesus, showing that he would lose him, struck by a spear of iron. When Croesus awoke and considered the matter with himself, in dread of the dream, he brought a wife for his son, and though the young man had been accustomed to lead the Lydians in war, he no longer sent him out on any such undertaking.
Every javelin, spear, and similar weapon that men use in warfare he had carried out of the men's quarters and stacked away in storage rooms, worried that something hung up might fall on his son. Now while he had his son's wedding under arrangement, a man arrived at Sardis burdened by misfortune and with blood-stained hands, Phrygian by birth, and from the royal
family. This man came to Croesus's house and asked, according to the customs of the country, to obtain purification, and Croesus purified him. The purification among the Lydians is much the same as among the Greeks. When Croesus had performed the customary rites, he asked where the man was from and who he was, saying, "Fellow, who are you, and from what part of Phrygia have you come to be my suppliant at the hearth?
And what man or woman did you kill?" He answered, "King, I am the son of Gordias son of Midas, and my name is Adrastus. I killed my own brother unintentionally, and I am here, banished by my father and deprived of everything." Croesus answered him thus: "You happen to be the offspring of men who are my friends, and you have come to friends, where you will lack for nothing, so long as you stay
in my house, and by bearing this misfortune as lightly as possible you will gain the most." So he lived in Croesus's household. Now at this same time, on Mysian Olympus, there arose a great boar, which, setting out from that mountain, kept destroying the crops of the Mysians. Often the Mysians went out against it, but did it no harm,
while suffering harm from it themselves. At last messengers from the Mysians came to Croesus and said this: "King, a huge boar has appeared in our land, which is destroying our crops. Eager as we are to catch it, we cannot. Now therefore we ask you to send your son along with us, together with picked young men and dogs, so that we may drive it out of our land." They
asked this of him, but Croesus, remembering the words of the dream, said this to them: "Do not mention my son again, for I would not send him with you; he is newly married, and that is his concern now. But I will send picked men of the Lydians and the whole hunting pack, and I will urge those who go to be as eager as possible in helping you to destroy the beast from
your country." That was his reply. Though the Mysians were satisfied with this answer, Croesus's son came forward, having overheard what the Mysians were requesting. When Croesus refused to send his son along with them, the young man addressed him thus: 'Father, once upon a time the noblest and finest pursuits open to us were earning distinction through campaigns and hunting expeditions; but now'
you keep me shut out of both of these, though you have not seen in me any cowardice or lack of spirit. With what face must I now show myself, going to and from the marketplace? What sort of man will I seem to the citizens, and what sort to my newly wedded wife? What kind of man will she think she lives with? So you must either allow me to set out for the hunt, or
persuade me by argument that it is better for me that these things be done this way." Croesus answered him thus: "My son, it is not because I have seen cowardice in you, or anything else unpleasing, that I do this, but a dream-vision came to me while I slept and warned that your life would be cut short, for you would perish by a spear of iron. On account of this vision I hastened this marriage of yours, and
I do not send you out on undertakings, but keep watch, in hopes that I might somehow steal you away from death during my own lifetime. For you happen to be my only son; the other, being ruined in hearing, I do not count as mine." The young man answered him thus: "Father, you may be forgiven, having seen such a vision, for keeping watch over me; but what you do not understand, what has escaped you about
the dream, it is right for me to point out. You say the dream told you I would die by a spear of iron. But what hands does a boar have, what iron spear that you fear? If it had told you I would die by a tusk, or by anything else resembling one, you would be right to do as you do; but as it is,
it said by a spear. Since then our battle is not against men, let me go." Croesus answered, "My son, in this you win me over, by revealing your judgment about the dream. So then, being defeated by you, I change my mind and allow you to go to the hunt." Having said this, Croesus sent for Adrastus the Phrygian, and when he arrived, said to him: "Adrastus,
when you were struck by grievous misfortune, for which I do not reproach you, I purified you and took you into my house, providing for all your expenses. Now then, since you owe it to me for the good I did you first, to repay me with good, I ask you to become the guardian of my son as he sets out for the hunt, in case some wicked robbers appear on the road to do you harm. Besides this, it is also right for
you to go where you may distinguish yourself, for this is your ancestral pursuit, and moreover you have the strength for it." Adrastus answered, "King, otherwise I would not have gone to such a contest; for it is not fitting that one afflicted by such misfortune should go among companions faring well, nor is there any wish in me for it, and in many ways I would have restrained myself. But now, since you are pressing me,
and I must gratify you (for I owe it to you to repay your kindness), I am ready to do this, and as for your son, whom you bid me guard, expect him to return to you unharmed, so far as his guardian is concerned." When he had answered Croesus thus, they set out afterward equipped with picked young men and dogs. On arriving at Mount Olympus they searched for the beast, and having found it and surrounded it
they hurled javelins at it in a circle. Then the stranger, this man who had been purified of bloodshed, called Adrastus, throwing his javelin at the boar, missed it and instead struck the son of Croesus. He, struck by the spear, fulfilled the word of the dream, and someone ran to bring word to Croesus of what had happened, and arriving at Sardis reported to him
the fight and the fate of his son. Croesus, thrown into turmoil by his son's death, lamented all the more bitterly that the one who had killed him was the very man he himself had purified of murder. Overwhelmed with grief at the misfortune, he called terribly upon Zeus of Purification, calling him to witness what he had suffered from the stranger, and he also called upon Zeus of the Hearth and Zeus of Comradeship, naming the same god by these titles, calling him god of the hearth because
he had unknowingly taken into his house and fed the murderer of his son, and god of comradeship because, having sent him as a guard, he had found him to be his greatest enemy. After this the Lydians arrived carrying the body, with the killer walking behind it. He stood before the corpse and gave himself up to Croesus, holding out his hands and telling him to slay him over the body, recounting his former
misfortune, and how on top of that he had destroyed the man who had purified him, and that life was not worth living for him. Croesus, hearing this, took pity on Adrastus, even though he himself was in so great a private grief, and said to him, "I have from you, stranger, the full penalty, since you condemn yourself to death. But you are not the cause of this evil for me, except
insofar as you brought it about unwillingly, but rather some god, one who long ago foretold to me what was going to happen." Croesus then buried his own son as was fitting; but Adrastus son of Gordias son of Midas, this man who had become the killer of his own brother and the killer of the one who had purified him, when the people had left the tomb in quiet, aware that he was of all men he knew
the most heavily burdened by misfortune, killed himself over the tomb. Croesus sat in great mourning for two years, deprived of his son. But afterward the rule of Astyages son of Cyaxares, overthrown by Cyrus son of Cambyses, and the growing power of the Persians, put an end to Croesus's mourning, and turned his thoughts to whether he might, if possible, catch the growing power of the Persians before they became great,
before their strength grew further. With this plan in mind, he at once set about testing the oracles, both those in Greece and the one in Libya, sending different men to different places, some to go to Delphi, others to Abae in Phocis; a further group he directed to Dodona, while yet others he dispatched to Amphiaraus, to Trophonius, and to the Branchidae in Milesian territory.
These, then, were the Greek oracles to which Croesus sent to inquire. And to Libya he sent others to consult the oracle of Ammon. He dispatched them around to make trial of what the oracles knew, intending, if any were found to speak the truth, to send again with a second question — whether he should march against the Persians. He gave the Lydians these instructions when he sent them out to test the oracles: that from whatever
day they set out from Sardis, counting the days from that one, on the hundredth day they were to consult the oracles, asking what King Croesus of Lydia, son of Alyattes, happened to be doing at that moment; and whatever answer each oracle gave, they were to write it down and bring it back to him. As for what the remaining oracles pronounced, no source reports it; but at Delphi, as soon as
the Lydians entered the hall to consult the god and asked the question they had been charged with, the Pythia spoke these words in hexameter verse: 'I know the number of the grains of sand and the measure of the sea, I understand the mute and hear the one who does not speak. The smell has come to my senses of a hard-shelled tortoise being boiled in bronze together with lamb's meat, with bronze laid beneath it and bronze
laid over it.' When the Pythia had given this oracle, the Lydians wrote it down and went off back to Sardis. And when the others who had been sent around also arrived bringing their oracles, Croesus then unrolled each of the writings and examined them; none of the others satisfied him, but when he heard the one from Delphi, at once he offered prayer and accepted it, believing that the only true oracle was the one at
Delphi, because it had discovered what he himself had done. Once he had dispatched the envoys to the oracles and was watching for the appointed day, this is the scheme he devised: having thought of something impossible to discover or guess at, he chopped up a tortoise together with a lamb and boiled them with his own hands in a cauldron of bronze, setting a lid of bronze on top. This, then, was the answer given from Delphi to Croesus. As for
the response of the oracle of Amphiaraus, I cannot say what it gave to the Lydians when they performed the customary rites at the shrine (for that is not reported either), except that he too believed he had acquired this as an oracle that spoke no falsehood. After this he sought to win the favor of the god at Delphi with great sacrifices: he sacrificed three thousand head of every kind of sacrificial animal, and he burned
on a great pyre couches overlaid with gold and silver, golden bowls, purple garments and tunics, hoping thereby the more to win over the god; and he ordered all the Lydians to sacrifice to the god whatever each of them had. When the sacrifice was over, he had a huge quantity of gold poured and cast into ingots, the longer ones six palms in length, the
shorter ones three palms, and a palm's breadth in height. Of these there were a hundred and seventeen, and of them four were of refined gold, each weighing two and a half talents; the other ingots were of white gold, weighing two talents each. He also had a figure of a lion made of refined gold, weighing ten talents. This lion, when the temple at Delphi burned down, fell from the ingots (for it had
been set upon them), and now it lies in the treasury of the Corinthians, where its weight comes to six and a half talents, for a half-talent of it melted away. When Croesus had finished all this, he sent it to Delphi, along with these other things besides: two very large mixing bowls, one gold and the other silver; the gold one stood on the right as you entered the temple, the silver one on the left. These too were
moved when the temple burned; and the golden one now lies in the treasury of the Clazomenians, its weight eight and a half talents plus twelve minae, while the silver one stands in the corner of the forecourt, holding six hundred amphorae; for the Delphians mix wine in it at the Theophania festival. The Delphians say it is the work of Theodorus of Samos, and I think so too, for it does not seem to me
an ordinary piece of work. He also sent four silver jars, still standing today in the treasury kept by the Corinthians, and he dedicated two sprinkling vessels, one of gold and one of silver, on the golden one of which is inscribed the claim that it is a dedication of the Lacedaemonians — wrongly, for this too is Croesus's; one of the Delphians inscribed it so, wishing to please the Lacedaemonians, though I know his name and will not mention it.
But the boy figure from whose hand water pours really was a Lacedaemonian gift, though neither of the sprinkling vessels was. Along with these Croesus also sent many other unremarkable offerings, including round silver basins, and a golden statue three cubits tall depicting a woman, said by the Delphians to be a likeness of Croesus's baking-woman. Besides this, Croesus also dedicated the necklaces and belts of his own
wife. These, then, he sent to Delphi; and to Amphiaraus, having learned of his virtue and his suffering, he dedicated a shield entirely of gold and a spear all of solid gold, both the shaft and the point alike golden. Both of these still lay, in my own time, in Thebes,
and Thebes, in the temple of Apollo Ismenius. To the Lydians who were about to carry these gifts to the shrines, Croesus gave instructions to ask the oracles whether he should campaign against the Persians, and whether he should add any allied army as a friend. Once they reached the destinations to which they had been dispatched, the Lydians dedicated the offerings and consulted the oracles, saying, 'Croesus,
ruler of the Lydians and of other nations, believing that these alone among all oracles known to men speak truly, has given you gifts worthy of your discoveries, and now he asks you whether he should campaign against the Persians, and whether he should add any army of men as an ally.' This is what they asked, and the judgments of both oracles agreed on the same answer, foretelling to Croesus that if he campaigned against the Persians, he would destroy a great
empire; and their counsel was that he should discover who among the Greeks were strongest and attach them to himself as friends. When Croesus heard the oracles reported back to him, he was overjoyed at the responses, and fully expecting to bring down the kingdom of Cyrus, he once more sent to Delphi and, having learned the number of its citizens, gave gifts to them, two gold staters to each man.
In return for this the Delphians gave Croesus and the Lydians the right to consult the oracle before others, exemption from taxes, front seats at the games, and the right for any of them who wished to become a citizen of Delphi for all time. Having given gifts to the Delphians, Croesus consulted the oracle a third time; for once he had accepted the oracle's truthfulness, he made full use of it. This time he asked whether his monarchy would be long-lasting. The Pythia gave him this answer:
'But whenever a mule becomes king of the Medes, then, tender-footed Lydian, flee beside the pebbly Hermus and do not stay, and do not be ashamed to be a coward.' When these words came to him, Croesus was pleased by them more than by anything else, expecting that a mule would never rule the Medes in place of a man, and that therefore neither he nor his descendants would ever cease from power. After this he turned his thought to inquiring who were the most powerful of the Greeks, so that he might win them
as friends. In his inquiry he found that the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians stood out above the rest, the former of Dorian stock, the latter of Ionian. These were indeed the peoples marked out from of old, one being the Pelasgian nation and the other the Hellenic. The one never migrated anywhere, while the other wandered a great deal. For in the time of King Deucalion it inhabited the land of Phthiotis, and in the time of Dorus, son of
Hellen, the country beneath Ossa and Olympus, called Histiaeotis; and when it was driven out of Histiaeotis by the Cadmeans, it dwelt in Pindus, being called Macedonian; from there it moved again to Dryopis, and from Dryopis it came at last into the Peloponnese, where it was called Dorian. As for what language the Pelasgians spoke, I cannot say for certain. But if
one must judge by conjecture from those Pelasgians still existing today, who live above the Tyrrhenians in the city of Crestona — who were once neighbors to those now called Dorians (they dwelt then in the land now called Thessaliotis) — and from the Pelasgians who settled Placia and Scylace on the Hellespont, who became fellow-inhabitants with the Athenians, and all the other Pelasgian towns that changed their name: if
one must judge by these, the Pelasgians spoke a barbarian tongue. If then the whole Pelasgian people was of this kind, the Attic nation, being Pelasgian, must have changed its language too when it changed over to become Greek. For indeed the people of Crestona are not of the same speech as any of those now living around them, nor are the Placians, but they are of the same speech as each other — which shows that
they still preserve the form of language they brought with them when they resettled in those regions. As for the Hellenic people, it seems clear to me that it has always used the same language since it first came into being; but being weak when it split off from the Pelasgians, starting from small beginnings it grew into a multitude of nations, chiefly because many Pelasgians joined themselves to it, along with many other
barbarian peoples besides. Before that, it seems to me, the Pelasgian nation, being a barbarian one, never grew to any great size. Of these nations, then, Croesus learned that the Attic one was held down and divided, at that time being under the tyranny of Pisistratus, son of Hippocrates, over the Athenians. For Hippocrates, while he was still a private citizen watching the Olympic games, had a great portent occur to him: when he had performed the sacrifices,
the cauldrons standing there, full of meat and water, boiled and boiled over without any fire beneath them. Chilon the Lacedaemonian, who happened to be present and witnessed the portent, counseled Hippocrates that he should first refrain from bringing a child-bearing wife into his home, and if he already had one, to send her away, and if he happened to have a son, to disown him. Hippocrates, however, did not
Hippocrates was willing to be persuaded by Chilon. From him afterward was born this Peisistratus, who, when the Athenians of the coast and the Athenians of the plain were in factional strife—the former led by Megacles son of Alcmeon, the latter by Lycurgus son of Aristolaides—conceived a contempt for tyranny and raised up a third faction. Gathering partisans and posing in speech as champion of the men beyond the hills, he contrived the following scheme. Having wounded himself
and his mules, he drove his team into the marketplace as though fleeing from enemies who, by his own account, had tried to murder him on his way out to his fields, and he asked the people to grant him some guard for his person, having earlier won good repute in his generalship against the Megarians, having taken Nisaea and performed other great deeds. The Athenian people, deceived, gave him
men chosen from the citizens, who did not become spearmen for Peisistratus but club-bearers—for they carried wooden clubs and followed behind him. These men rose up together with Peisistratus and seized the acropolis. There Peisistratus ruled the Athenians, disturbing neither the existing offices nor changing the laws, but administering the city on the basis of the established order, governing it well and fairly. But after
not much time had passed, the partisans of Megacles and those of Lycurgus came to the same mind and drove him out. Thus Peisistratus held Athens the first time, and, his tyranny not yet firmly rooted, he lost it. Those who had driven out Peisistratus then fell again into strife with one another. Hard pressed by the factional struggle, Megacles sent word to Peisistratus asking whether he wished to have his daughter
as wife on condition of the tyranny. Peisistratus accepted the proposal and agreed to these terms, and then they contrived, for his return, a scheme most simple-minded, as I find it, by far—since the Greek people had long since been set apart from the barbarian race as being both cleverer and more free of foolish simplicity—if indeed these men, among the Athenians who were said to be foremost of the Greeks
in wisdom, contrived a plot of this sort. In the deme of Paeania there was a woman named Phya, lacking three fingers' breadth of four cubits in height, and otherwise well formed. This woman they equipped in full armor, mounted on a chariot, and having arranged for her a posture such as would appear most fitting, they drove her into the city, sending heralds ahead of them, who, on arriving in the
city, proclaimed as they had been instructed, saying: "Athenians, receive Peisistratus with good will—him whom Athena herself, having honored above all men, is bringing back to her own acropolis." So they went about saying this; and at once a report reached the demes that Athena was bringing Peisistratus back, and the people in the city, believing the woman to be the goddess herself, prayed to the human being
and received Peisistratus. Having recovered the tyranny in the manner described, Peisistratus, in accordance with the agreement made with Megacles, married Megacles' daughter. But since he already had grown sons and the Alcmeonidae were said to be under a curse, not wishing children to be born to him from his newly-wed wife, he had intercourse with her not in the customary manner. At first
the woman kept this hidden, but afterward, whether she was questioned or not, she told her own mother, and the mother told her husband. In his anger as it was, he reconciled his quarrel with his fellow partisans. When Peisistratus learned what was being done against him, he departed from the country altogether, and arriving at Eretria he took counsel together with his sons. The opinion of Hippias prevailing, that they should recover
the tyranny back again, they then set about gathering gifts from the cities, whichever of them owed them some favor. Many gave large sums, but the Thebans surpassed all in the amount of money given. After that, not to speak at length, time passed and everything was prepared for their return; for Argive mercenaries came from the Peloponnese, and a Naxian man had arrived as a volunteer, whose name
was Lygdamis, who showed the greatest zeal, bringing both money and men. Setting out from Eretria, they returned in the eleventh year, and first took Marathon in Attica. While they were encamped in that place, their partisans from the city arrived, and others streamed in from the demes, men for whom tyranny was more welcome than freedom. These then
gathered together; but the Athenians from the city, so long as Peisistratus was collecting money, and afterward when he took Marathon, paid no attention; but when they learned that he was marching from Marathon against the city, then indeed they went out to help against him. Both this force marched out in full strength against the returning men, and Peisistratus' party, once they had set out from Marathon and were marching toward
the city, coming together to the same point, arrived at the shrine of Athena of Pallene, and set their arms opposite each other. There, by divine guidance, there came to Peisistratus a soothsayer named Amphilytus of Acarnania, who, approaching him, prophesied in hexameter verse, saying as follows: "The cast is thrown, the net is spread wide, the tunnies will dart through the moonlit night." This he prophesied to him
in a state of divine possession; and Peisistratus, grasping the oracle and declaring that he accepted what was prophesied, led on his army. The Athenians from the city had by that time turned to their midday meal, and after the meal some of them turned to dice, others to sleep. Peisistratus' men, falling upon the Athenians, routed them. As they fled, Peisistratus then devised a most clever plan,
so that the Athenians might not gather together again but remain scattered: he had his sons mount on horses and sent them ahead, and they, overtaking the fugitives, spoke the words Peisistratus had instructed them to say, telling them to take courage and to go each to his own home. The Athenians obeyed, and thus Peisistratus, holding Athens for the third time, rooted his tyranny firmly, with many mercenaries and with revenues of money,
some gathered locally, others coming in from the river Strymon; and taking as hostages the sons of the Athenians who had remained and had not fled at once, he settled them in Naxos (for this island too Peisistratus had subdued by war and entrusted to Lygdamis); and in addition to these things, he purified the island of Delos according to the oracles, purifying it in this manner: as far as the view of the sanctuary extended, from
that entire area he dug up the dead and carried them to another part of Delos. And so Peisistratus was tyrant of Athens, while of the Athenians, part had died in the fighting, and the rest, together with the Alcmeonidae, went into exile from their own land. Such, then, was the condition in which Croesus learned that the Athenians were, at that time, being held; but the Lacedaemonians, having escaped great troubles
and being now superior in war to the Tegeans—for under the kingship of Leon and Hegesicles in Sparta, while succeeding in their other wars, the Lacedaemonians met with failure only against the Tegeans. Still earlier than this they had been about the worst-governed of almost all the Greeks, both among themselves and in dealings with strangers, with whom they had no contact; but they changed to good order in this way. When Lycurgus, a man of repute among the Spartiates, went to
Delphi to consult the oracle, as soon as he entered the temple, the Pythia at once said this: "You come, Lycurgus, to my rich temple, dear to Zeus and to all who hold Olympian homes. I am in doubt whether to declare you a god or a man in my prophecy. But I am inclined rather still to believe you a god, Lycurgus." Beyond this, certain accounts also hold that the Pythia went on to tell him
the order of government now established for the Spartiates. But as the Lacedaemonians themselves say, Lycurgus, when he was guardian of Leobotes, his own nephew and king of the Spartiates, brought these things from Crete. His very first act as guardian was to overhaul all the established customs, and he made sure these were not transgressed; and afterward he established the arrangements pertaining to war—the enomotiai, the triacads, and the common messes—and in addition to these he set up the ephors and the elders,
did Lycurgus. Thus, by this change, they attained good order, and when Lycurgus died they built him a shrine and honor him greatly. And since they were in a good land and had no small number of men, they quickly flourished and prospered, and were no longer content to remain at peace, but, holding the Arcadians in contempt as inferior to themselves, they consulted the oracle at Delphi concerning the whole land of the Arcadians. The Pythia gave them
this response: "You ask me for Arcadia: you ask for much; I will not grant it. There are many acorn-eating men in Arcadia who will prevent you. Yet I do not begrudge you everything: Tegea I will grant you — a floor to beat with dancing feet — and her lovely plain to portion out by the measuring cord." When the Lacedaemonians heard this reported to them, they kept away from the rest of the Arcadians, but carrying fetters, they marched against the Tegeans, relying on the deceptive oracle, as
expecting to enslave the Tegeans. But they were defeated in the encounter, and as many of them as were taken alive worked the plain of the Tegeans wearing the very fetters they had brought with them, and measured it out with a line. These fetters in which they had been bound were still, even to my own time, preserved safe at Tegea, hanging around the temple of Athena Alea. In the earlier war, then, they had continually
fared badly against the Tegeans, but by the time of Croesus and the reign of Anaxandrides and Ariston in Lacedaemon, the Spartiates had by then become superior in the war, having come to this by the following means. Since they were continually being defeated in the war by the Tegeans, they sent sacred envoys to Delphi to ask which god they should propitiate to become superior to the Tegeans in the war. The Pythia told them
to bring back the bones of Orestes son of Agamemnon. But since Orestes' resting place proved impossible for them to find, they sent to the god a second time to inquire where Orestes lay buried. When the sacred envoys asked this, the Pythia said the following: "There is a Tegea in a level place of Arcadia, where two winds blow under strong compulsion, and blow answers blow, and there is a form
"counter-blow, and woe is laid upon woe. There the earth that gives life holds the son of Agamemnon; bring him home and you will be Tegea's master." When the Lacedaemonians heard this too, they were no closer to the discovery, search as they might, until at last Lichas, one of the so-called "benefactors" among the Spartiates, found it out. The benefactors are citizens who, being the eldest to retire each year from the cavalry, are dispatched by the Spartan state, five
each year: for that year, when they retire from the cavalry, they are sent about on public business and must not sit idle in one place. It was one of these men, Lichas, who made the discovery in Tegea, by a stroke of luck and cleverness together. At that time there was free intercourse between Sparta and Tegea, and he went into a smithy and watched iron being forged, marveling at what he saw being done.
The smith noticed him marveling and said, stopping his work, "Well, Spartan stranger, if you had seen what I have seen, you would be marveling in earnest, since you make such a wonder now of the working of iron. I wanted to dig a well in this courtyard here, and digging I came upon a coffin seven cubits long. Since I could not believe that men were ever
bigger than they are now, I opened it and saw the corpse lying there, equal in length to the coffin. I measured it and then covered it over again." So the smith told him what he had seen, and Lichas, turning the words over, reckoned that this must be Orestes, in keeping with the oracle, reasoning it out thus: seeing the smith's two bellows, he took them for the winds, and the anvil and
the hammer for the blow and the counter-blow, and the iron being forged for the woe laid upon woe — guessing at it this way, that iron had been discovered to men's harm. Having worked this out, he went back to Sparta and told the Lacedaemonians the whole matter. They, framing a false charge against him, drove him out. He, arriving in Tegea and telling
his misfortune to the smith, tried to rent the courtyard from him, but the man would not give it up. In time he persuaded him, and moved in; he dug up the grave, gathered the bones, and went off carrying them to Sparta. And from that time on, whenever the two sides put each other to the test, the Lacedaemonians got much the better of it in war; and by then most of the Peloponnese had already been subdued by them. All this
Croesus learned, and he sent messengers to Sparta bearing gifts and asking for an alliance, having instructed them what they must say. On arriving, they declared, "We come sent by Croesus, who rules as king over the Lydians and other peoples, with this message: Lacedaemonians, since the god has decreed that I make the Greek my friend — for I learn that you stand at the head of Greece —
I now call upon you, in accordance with the oracle, wishing to become your friend and ally, without deceit or trickery." Thus Croesus made his overture through messengers, and the Lacedaemonians, who had themselves already heard of the oracle given to Croesus, welcomed the arrival of the Lydians and swore oaths of friendship and alliance; for indeed they were bound to Croesus by certain kindnesses done to them earlier.
For the Lacedaemonians had sent to Sardis to buy gold, wishing to use it for a statue — the one of Apollo that now stands at Thornax in Laconia — and Croesus, when they came to buy it, gave it to them as a gift. For these reasons, then, the Lacedaemonians accepted the alliance — and also because, judging them above every other Greek people, he had singled them out to be his friends. And they were ready, for their part, to answer his call; and further, they made
a bronze mixing-bowl, covered on the outside around the rim with figures, and holding, in size, three hundred amphorae, and they brought it, wishing to give it to Croesus in return. This bowl never reached Sardis, for two reasons that are given: the Lacedaemonians say that when the bowl, being carried to Sardis, came near Samos, the Samians, learning of it, sailed out with warships and seized it; but the Samians
themselves say that when the Lacedaemonians carrying the bowl were delayed, and learned that Sardis and Croesus had been taken, they sold the bowl in Samos, and private men bought it and dedicated it in the Heraion. It may be that the sellers, on returning to Sparta, would say that they had been robbed of it by the Samians. So much, then, for the bowl. Croesus,
for his part, having misread the oracle, made an expedition against Cappadocia, hoping to bring down Cyrus and the power of the Persians. As Croesus made ready to take the field against the Persians, a certain Lydian already reputed wise, whose opinion had earned him no small renown among the Lydians, offered Croesus this counsel — his name was Sandanis: "O king, you are preparing to march against men of such a kind
who wear leather trousers and all their other clothing of leather, and who eat not what they wish but what they have, since they hold a rugged country. Moreover they do not indulge in wine but drink water, and have no figs to eat, nor any other good thing. So then, if you win, what will you take from men who have nothing at all? But if you are defeated,
consider all the good things that will slip from your grasp: let them once taste what we enjoy, and they will cling to it and never be driven off. For my part, I am grateful to the gods for not putting it into the Persians' heads to march against the Lydians." With these words he did not persuade Croesus. For before they subdued the Lydians, the Persians had nothing of luxury or good. Now the Cappadocians are called Syrians by the Greeks; and these
Syrians, before the Persians ruled, had been subject to the Medes, and then to Cyrus. For the river Halys formed the frontier between the Median empire and the Lydian; rising in the mountains of Armenia, it runs through Cilicia, and then keeps the Matieni on its right as it flows, and on the other side the Phrygians; and passing these and flowing on northward
it forms the boundary on one side between the Syrians of Cappadocia and, on the left, the Paphlagonians. In this way the river Halys marks off nearly the whole lower part of Asia, from the sea opposite Cyprus to the Euxine Sea. This is the neck of all that land; its length, for a man traveling light, takes five days to cross. Croesus made his expedition against Cappadocia for these reasons: because
of a desire for land, wishing to add it to his own portion, and above all because he trusted the oracle and wished to avenge Astyages on Cyrus. For Cyrus son of Cambyses had conquered and held Astyages son of Cyaxares, who was Croesus's brother-in-law and king of the Medes, and had become Croesus's brother-in-law in this way: a band of nomadic Scythians, in revolt, had withdrawn into Median territory. At that time
the ruler of the Medes was Cyaxares son of Phraortes son of Deioces, who at first treated these Scythians well, as being suppliants; and holding them in high regard, he handed over boys to them to learn their language and the art of the bow. In time, as the Scythians kept going out constantly to hunt and always brought something back, it happened once that they caught
nothing at all; and when they came back empty-handed, Cyaxares — for he was, as he showed, sharp-tempered — treated them very harshly and with insult. The Scythians, having suffered this from Cyaxares, since they had been treated in a way they did not deserve, resolved to cut up one of the boys being taught among them, and to prepare him just as they were accustomed to prepare game, and to bring him to Cyaxares as if it were a catch from the hunt; and having given it,
they resolved to reach Sardis and Alyattes son of Sadyattes with all possible speed. This is indeed what happened: Cyaxares and the guests present with him tasted of this meat, and the Scythians, having done this, became suppliants of Alyattes. After this, since Alyattes refused to surrender the Scythians even though Cyaxares demanded it, war broke out between the Lydians and the Medes and continued for five years, in
the course of which the Medes often defeated the Lydians, and often the Lydians defeated the Medes; and among these there was also a kind of night battle. As they carried on the war on equal terms, it happened, in the sixth year, when a battle had been joined, that during the fighting the day suddenly became night. This change of the day Thales of Miletus had foretold to the Ionians,
having set as its limit the very year in which the change actually occurred. When the Lydians and the Medes saw day turned into night, they stopped fighting, and both sides were the more eager that peace should be made between them. Those who brought about their reconciliation were these: Syennesis the Cilician and Labynetus the Babylonian. It was they who were eager that the
oath be made, and they also brought about an exchange of marriages: for they resolved that Astyages son of Cyaxares would receive Aryenis, Alyattes' daughter, in marriage. For without a strong compulsion, strong agreements are not apt to hold firm. These nations make their oaths in the same manner as the Greeks, and in addition to this, when they cut their arms to the same depth, they lick up each other's blood. This
Astyages, then, was the one whom Cyrus, though he was his own mother's father, conquered and deposed, for a reason I shall explain in a later part of my account. Croesus, holding this against Cyrus, sent to the oracles to ask about marching against the Persians, and once a misleading response arrived, believing it favorable to himself, he marched into Persian territory. When Croesus
reached the river Halys, from that point on, as I say, he brought his army across by the bridges that existed there; but according to the common account of the Greeks, Thales of Miletus brought the army across for him. For Croesus could not work out how to get his army over the river — since these bridges, it is said, did not yet exist at that time — it is said that Thales, being present in the camp
He had the river made to flow on the left hand of his army and on the right as well, and he did it this way: beginning above the camp he had a deep canal dug, carrying it in a crescent shape, so that it would come around behind the camp as it stood, and there, turned aside along the canal from its old bed, it would pass by the camp and again discharge into the old channel. So that as soon as
the river was split, it became fordable on both sides. Some say too that the old channel was completely dried up, but this I do not accept, for how then did they cross it on their way back? Croesus, once he had crossed with his army and arrived in Cappadocia at the place called Pteria (Pteria is the strongest part of that country, lying roughly opposite the city of Sinope
on the Euxine Sea), encamped there and ravaged the farms of the Syrians. He took the city of the Pterians, enslaving its people, and he took all the towns around it as well, driving the Syrians from their homes though they had done him no wrong. Cyrus meanwhile gathered his own army, and taking along all the peoples who lived between them, marched to meet Croesus. But before
setting his army in motion, he sent heralds to the Ionians, trying to detach them from Croesus's side. The Ionians, however, would not be persuaded. When Cyrus arrived and encamped opposite Croesus, there in the land of Pteria the two put each other to the test with all their strength. A fierce battle was fought, and many fell on both sides, but in the end neither side won, and they parted when night came on. Thus did the two armies contend. Croesus,
finding fault with the size of his own force (for the army that had met Cyrus was far smaller than Cyrus's), and blaming this, and since Cyrus did not attempt to attack the next day, marched back to Sardis, intending to call on the Egyptians in accordance with their sworn alliance (his pact with Amasis, Egypt's king, having in fact been made before the one with the Lacedaemonians),
and to summon the Babylonians too (an alliance existed with them as well, and at that time Labynetus was king of the Babylonians), and to send word to the Lacedaemonians to be present by a set time. Having gathered these together and assembled his own army, he had resolved to let the winter pass and then, with the coming of spring, march against the Persians. With this in mind, once he had arrived at
Sardis, he sent heralds to his allies proclaiming that they should gather at Sardis within five months. But the army he had with him, the one that had fought the Persians, which was made up of foreign mercenaries, he dismissed entirely and disbanded, never expecting that Cyrus, after fighting so evenly matched a battle, would then march on Sardis. While Croesus was thinking this over, the whole area around the city filled up with snakes,
and when they appeared, the horses left off grazing in their pastures and went out of their way to eat them up. Seeing this, Croesus judged it to be, as indeed it was, a portent, and at once sent envoys to the interpreters at Telmessus. The envoys arrived, and the Telmessians explained to them what the omen portended; but they had no chance to report it to Croesus, for before they could sail back to Sardis, Croesus had already been captured. The Telmessians, however, concluded
that a foreign army was to be expected against Croesus's land, and that when it arrived it would subdue the native people, saying that the snake is a child of the earth, while the horse is an enemy and an invader. This is the answer the Telmessians gave concerning Croesus, though he was already captured, knowing nothing yet of what had happened to Sardis or to Croesus himself. As for Cyrus, as soon as Croesus had marched away after the battle fought at
Pteria, learning that Croesus intended, once he had withdrawn, to disband his army, he considered it in his interest to march on Sardis as fast as he could, before the Lydian forces could be gathered a second time. Once he had decided this, he acted on it swiftly: he marched his army into Lydia and so arrived himself as the messenger of his own coming to Croesus. At this Croesus, thrown into
great perplexity, since matters had turned out contrary to what he had expected, nevertheless led the Lydians out to battle. At that time there was no people in Asia more courageous or more valiant than the Lydians. Their way of fighting was on horseback; they carried great spears and were skilled riders. They came together on the plain
that lies before the city of Sardis, a great and open plain, through which flow the river Hyllus and others, all joining the greatest of them, called the Hermus, which flows down from the sacred mountain of the Mother Dindymene and empties into the sea near the city of Phocaea. There Cyrus, when he saw the Lydians drawn up for battle, fearing their
cavalry, did as the Median Harpagus suggested: he gathered together all the camels that followed his army carrying food and baggage, took off their loads, and mounted men dressed in cavalry gear upon them. Having equipped them this way, he ordered them to advance ahead of the rest of the army against Croesus's cavalry, and he commanded the infantry to follow the camels, while behind
the infantry he stationed the whole of his cavalry. When all were arranged in this order, he instructed them that as for the rest of the Lydians, they should kill without mercy anyone who stood in their way, but they were not to kill Croesus himself, even if he resisted when seized. This is what he instructed, and he set the camels facing the enemy cavalry for this reason: a horse is afraid of a camel and cannot bear either the sight of it
or the smell of it. This was the very reason for his stratagem, so that Croesus's cavalry, on which he had placed some hope of shining, would be useless to him. And when they joined battle, as soon as the horses caught scent and sight of the camels, they turned back, and Croesus's hope was destroyed. Yet the Lydians for their part were not
cowards for all that, but when they saw what was happening, they leapt down from their horses and fought the Persians on foot. In time, with heavy losses on both sides, the Lydians were routed, and driven back within the wall, they were besieged by the Persians. So the siege was set in place. Croesus, thinking the siege would last a long time, sent out from the wall further messengers
to his allies. For the earlier ones had gone out proclaiming that they should gather at Sardis within five months, but these he now sent out with all speed, begging for help, since Croesus was under siege. So he sent to all his allies, and in particular to Lacedaemon. At that very time it happened that the Spartans themselves were engaged in a dispute with the Argives over
a place called Thyreae; for the Lacedaemonians had cut off this district of Thyreae, which belonged to the territory of the Argives, and held it. The Argive territory also extended, to the west, as far as Malea, both on the mainland and including the island of Cythera and the rest of the islands. When the Argives came to defend their territory being cut off, the two sides met and came to an agreement that three hundred from each side should fight,
and whichever side prevailed, to them the land should belong; but the main body of each army was to withdraw to its own country and not remain to watch the contest, for fear that, with the armies present, one side, seeing its own men getting the worse of it, would come to their aid. Having agreed on this, they withdrew, and picked men from each side, left behind, joined battle. As they fought, matched evenly, out of six hundred men there remained three: of the Argives
Alcenor and Chromius, and of the Lacedaemonians, Othryades; these were the ones left when night came on. The two surviving Argives, believing they had won, ran off to Argos, but the Lacedaemonian Othryades stripped the armor from the Argive dead, carried it to his own camp, and kept his post in the line. On the second day both sides arrived to learn the outcome. For a time
each side claimed the victory for itself, the one side saying that more of their own men survived, the other pointing out that the enemy's men had fled while their own man had stayed at his post and stripped the enemy dead. In the end, out of this dispute, they fell to fighting again, and with heavy losses on both sides, the Lacedaemonians won. From that time the Argives cut their hair short, though before this they had been required by law to grow it long; the Lacedaemonians, by contrast, made
a law and a curse that no Argive should grow his hair long, nor should their women wear gold ornaments, until they should recover Thyreae. The Lacedaemonians for their part made the opposite law: whereas before this they had not worn their hair long, from that time they did. As for the one man of the three hundred left alive, Othryades, they say that, ashamed to return to Sparta when all his comrades in arms had been killed, he
took his own life there at Thyreae. With affairs standing thus among the Spartans, the herald from Sardis arrived begging them to help Croesus, who was under siege. They, nonetheless, once they had heard the herald, set about preparing to help. And just as they were ready, with their ships prepared, another message arrived, that the wall of the Lydians had fallen and Croesus had been taken alive. So then, counting this a great misfortune, they gave up the undertaking. Sardis
fell in this way. When it was the fourteenth day of Croesus's siege, Cyrus sent horsemen through his army proclaiming that he would give gifts to the first man to mount the wall. After this, when the army made an attempt and it did not succeed, and the rest gave up, a man of the Mardians named Hyroeades kept trying to climb up at a point of the acropolis where no guard had been stationed, for it
was not thought dangerous there that the place should ever be taken. For the acropolis is sheer and unassailable at that point; there not even Meles, the former king of Sardis, had carried around the lion that his concubine bore him, though the Telmessians had judged that if the lion were carried around the wall, Sardis would be unconquerable. Meles had carried it around the rest of the wall, at the point that was vulnerable
the site of the acropolis, he disregarded it as being unassailable and sheer; it faces the Tmolus side of the city. This Hyroeades the Mardian, seeing on the previous day one of the Lydians come down there from the acropolis after a helmet had rolled down from above and he had picked it up, took note of it and laid it to heart. And now he himself climbed up,
and after him other Persians climbed up as well; and once a good number had mounted in this way, Sardis was captured and the whole city was sacked. As for Croesus himself, this is what happened. He had a son, whom I mentioned before, in other respects a fine young man, but mute. In his former prosperity Croesus had done everything he could for him, devising various measures, and in particular
he had sent to Delphi to ask an oracle about him. The Pythia told him this: "Lydian by birth, king of many, o very foolish Croesus, do not wish to hear in your halls the long-prayed-for sound of your son's voice. It is far better for you that it remain absent, for he will speak for the first time on a day of misfortune." Now when the wall was being taken, one of the Persians, not recognizing Croesus, was coming at him meaning to kill him,
and Croesus, seeing him approach, in his present calamity paid him no heed, nor did it matter to him whether he died from the blow. But this mute son of his, seeing the Persian coming toward them, from fear and distress burst into speech, and said, "Man, do not kill Croesus." This was the first thing he ever uttered, and after this he continued to speak for the rest of his
life. So the Persians took Sardis and captured Croesus himself alive, after he had ruled fourteen years and been besieged fourteen days, and, in accordance with the oracle, had put an end to his own great empire. The Persians took him and brought him before Cyrus. Cyrus had a great pyre built and set upon it Croesus, bound in fetters, and twice seven Lydian
boys along with him, intending either to burn these as first-fruits to some god, or wishing to fulfill a vow, or perhaps because he had heard that Croesus was god-fearing and for this reason set him up on the pyre, wanting to know whether some divine power would save him from being burned alive. He did this; and to Croesus, standing on the pyre,
there came, even in such dire trouble, the memory of Solon's words, spoken as if by some god's prompting, that no one among the living is fortunate. As this thought came over him, they say, he heaved a deep sigh and groaned, breaking a long silence, and spoke the name "Solon" three times. When Cyrus heard this, he ordered the interpreters to ask Croesus whom he was invoking, and they came up and asked him.
Croesus at first kept silent when questioned, but afterward, when he was pressed, he said, "One whom I would have paid a great sum of money to have converse with, before all the rulers of the earth." Since this answer was obscure to them, they asked again what he meant. As they pressed him and grew insistent, he told them how Solon, an Athenian, had once come, and after surveying the whole of his wealth had dismissed it as nothing, saying such-and-such,
and how everything had turned out for him just as Solon had said, though Solon's words applied not so much to him in particular as to all mankind in general, and especially to those who seem to themselves to be prosperous. While Croesus was relating all this, the pyre had already been lit and the outer edges were burning. And when Cyrus heard from the interpreters what Croesus had said, he had a change of heart,
reflecting that he too was a man, and was delivering another man, who had been no less fortunate than himself, alive to the fire; and besides this, fearing retribution, and considering that nothing among human affairs is secure, he ordered the burning fire to be put out as quickly as possible, and Croesus and those with him brought down. But those attempting this were no longer able
to master the fire. At this point, so the Lydians say, Croesus, learning of Cyrus's change of heart, when he saw everyone trying to put out the fire but no longer able to check it, cried out, calling upon Apollo, that if any gift of his had ever been pleasing to the god, he should stand by him and rescue him from the present evil. Weeping, he called upon the god, and then, out of a clear and windless sky,
clouds suddenly gathered and a storm broke, and it rained with the heaviest of downpours, and the pyre was put out. So Cyrus, learning thereby that Croesus was beloved of the gods and a good man, had him taken down off the pyre and put this question to him. "Croesus, who among men persuaded you to march against my land and become my enemy instead of my friend?" And he said, "O
king, I did this for your good fortune and my own misfortune, and the one responsible for it was the god of the Greeks, who spurred me on to make war. No one, after all, is foolish enough to prefer war to peace; in peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons. But I suppose it was pleasing to the gods that this should
come about so." So he spoke. Cyrus then had him unbound and seated him near himself, and treated him with great consideration, and both he and all those around him looked on him with wonder. Croesus, sunk in thought, was silent; but then, turning and watching the Persians sack the Lydians' city, he said, "O king, should I say to
you what I happen to be thinking, or must I keep silent for now?" Cyrus told him to take courage and say whatever he wished. So he asked him, saying, "This great crowd, what is it doing with such energy?" And Cyrus said, "It is plundering your city and carrying off your wealth." But Croesus replied, "It is not my city
nor my wealth that it is plundering; none of this belongs to me any longer; it is your property they are carrying and taking away." Cyrus was troubled by what Croesus said, and having sent the others away, he asked Croesus what he saw in what was being done. Croesus said, "Since the gods have given me to you as your slave, I think it right, if I see anything further, to point it out to you. The Persians, being by nature
"they are violent men without money. If you allow them to plunder and hold on to great wealth, expect this to follow from it: whoever of them holds the most, expect that man to rise up against you. Now do as follows, if what I say pleases you: station guards from your spearmen at every gate, and let them tell those carrying out the goods, taking it from them, that
it is necessary for these to be tithed to Zeus. In this way you yourself will not become hateful to them by seizing the goods by force, and they, recognizing that you are acting justly, will give it up willingly." Hearing this, Cyrus was overjoyed, since it seemed to him good advice; and praising it greatly, and instructing his spearmen to carry out what Croesus had suggested, he said to Croesus: "Croesus, since you, a man who was king, are resolved to do and say
good things, ask for whatever gift you wish to be granted to you at once." And he said, "Master, the greatest favor you could do me is to let me send these fetters to that god of the Greeks — the one I honored beyond every other god — and to ask him whether it is his custom to deceive those who do good to him." Cyrus then asked what he was reproaching him for that he made this request. And Croesus recounted to him
his whole intent, and the responses of the oracles, and above all the offerings, and how, elated by the oracle, he had made war on the Persians; and as he told this he came back again to asking to be allowed to reproach the god with this. Cyrus laughed and said, "You shall have this from me, Croesus, and anything else you may need at any time." When Croesus
heard this, he sent some of the Lydians to Delphi, instructing them to lay the fetters on the threshold of the temple and ask whether the god was not ashamed to have urged Croesus with his oracles to make war on the Persians, as though he would put an end to Cyrus's power, from which such firstfruits as these fetters had come to him -- showing the fetters -- and to ask this too, whether it was the custom of the Greek gods to be ungrateful. When the
Lydians arrived and said what they had been instructed, the Pythia is said to have spoken as follows: "Not even a god can escape what fate has ordained. Croesus has paid for the offense of his ancestor five generations back, who, being a bodyguard of the Heraclids, followed a woman's treachery and killed his master, and took for himself that man's honor, which belonged to him not at all. Though Loxias was eager that the fall of Sardis should come in the time of Croesus's sons
and not upon Croesus himself, turning the Fates aside proved impossible. But so far as they yielded, he accomplished it and did Croesus a favor: for he put off the capture of Sardis for three years, and let Croesus know this, that he was captured three years later than was fated. And second, the god came to his aid when he was being burned. As for the oracle that was given, Croesus
is wrong to complain. For Loxias had told him beforehand that a campaign against the Persians would mean the destruction of a mighty empire. In the face of that, if he had wished to deliberate well, he ought to have sent and asked whether the empire meant was his own or Cyrus's; but he neither grasped what was said nor asked further, so let him consider himself responsible. Nor, the last time he consulted the oracle, did he grasp what Loxias told him about a mule. For
that Cyrus was indeed the mule: for he was born of two people not of the same nation, of a better mother and a lesser father. For she was a Mede, and daughter of Astyages the king of the Medes, while he was a Persian and subject to them, and though inferior in every way, he was married to his own mistress." This is what the Pythia answered to the Lydians, and they carried it back
to Sardis and reported it to Croesus. And he, hearing it, acknowledged that the fault lay with himself, not with the god. So this is how matters stood regarding Croesus's reign and the first subjugation of Ionia. Croesus has many other offerings in Greece besides those already mentioned. For at Thebes in Boeotia there is a golden tripod, which he dedicated
to Ismenian Apollo; and at Ephesus stand the cows of gold and the greater number of the columns; and at the temple of Athena Pronaia at Delphi there is a great golden shield. These things were still surviving even down to my own time, while others of the offerings have perished; but the offerings at Branchidae among the Milesians, dedicated by Croesus, are, as I learn, equal in weight and similar
to those at Delphi. Those at Delphi and at the shrine of Amphiaraus he dedicated as his own property and from the firstfruits of his father's wealth; but the other offerings came from the property of a man who was his enemy, who before he became king had been his political rival, striving to secure the kingship of Lydia for Pantaleon. Pantaleon was a son of Alyattes, but Croesus's brother, not
by the same mother: Croesus's mother was a Carian woman married to Alyattes, while Pantaleon's was an Ionian. And when Croesus, given the throne by his father, took control of the kingdom, he had the man who had opposed him dragged over a carding-comb and put to death, and having beforehand consecrated his property to a god, he then dedicated it in the manner described to the places named. So much let be said about the offerings. As for marvels, the land
of Lydia does not have very much to write about, such as another land might have, except for the gold dust that comes down from Mount Tmolus. But it does offer one work by far the greatest, apart from the works of the Egyptians and the Babylonians: there is there the tomb of Alyattes, the father of Croesus, whose base is of great stones, and the rest of the tomb is a mound of earth. It was built
by the market people and the craftsmen and the working girls. Five boundary markers were still standing on top of the tomb even in my time, and inscriptions had been carved on them showing what each group had done, and when measured, the work done by the girls proved to be the greatest. For the daughters of the Lydian people all prostitute themselves, gathering dowries for themselves, until
they marry, doing this; and they give themselves away in marriage. As for the tomb, its circuit measures six stadia and two plethra, and its width comes to thirteen plethra. There is a large lake adjoining the tomb, which the Lydians say never runs dry: it is called the Gygaean lake. So much for that. The Lydians follow customs very similar to those of the Greeks,
except that they prostitute their female children. So far as our knowledge goes, they were the earliest to strike gold and silver coinage and put it to use, and the earliest to turn retail traders. The Lydians themselves say that the games now established among both themselves and the Greeks were their own invention: and they say that the games were devised there right around the time they sent out the colony to Tyrrhenia, telling the story
as follows. In the reign of Atys son of Manes there was a severe famine throughout all Lydia, and for a while the Lydians endured it patiently, but afterward, when it did not stop, they sought remedies, and different people devised different things. It was then that the forms of dice, knucklebones, the ball, and every other kind of game were invented, except for draughts,
for the invention of that the Lydians do not claim as their own. What they did against the famine, having made these inventions, was this: on one of the two days they would play games all day, so as not to seek food, and on the next day they would stop playing and eat. In this way they carried on for eighteen years. But when the trouble did not let up but pressed on even more, the
king of the Lydians then divided all the Lydians into two groups and cast lots between them, one to remain and the other to leave the country; and over the group whose lot fell to remain he set himself, the king, in charge, and over the group that was to depart he set his own son, whose name was Tyrrhenus. Those of them to whom the lot fell went down to Smyrna
and built ships, in which they loaded all the goods they had that were useful, and sailed off in search of a livelihood and a land, until, after passing by many peoples, they came to the Ombrici, where they founded cities and have lived to this day. Instead of Lydians they were renamed after the king's son who had led them out, taking their
name from him and being called Tyrrhenians. So the Lydians were enslaved by the Persians. From this point our account seeks out both who this Cyrus was who destroyed the empire of Croesus, and by what means the Persians came to lead Asia. As some of the Persians tell it -- those who do not wish to glorify the story of Cyrus but to tell it as it really was -- I shall write it accordingly, though I know of
three other paths of the story about Cyrus that could be told. When the Assyrians had ruled upper Asia for five hundred and twenty years, the first to begin to revolt from them were the Medes, and somehow these, fighting the Assyrians for their freedom, proved themselves brave men, and having thrown off servitude, they became free. Following their lead, the other nations did the same thing. With everyone now self-governing
throughout the continent, they came round again to monarchy in the following way. There was among the Medes a clever man whose name was Deioces, son of Phraortes. This Deioces, desiring tyranny, did as follows. The Medes being settled in villages, he, being already a man of standing in his own village, applied himself even more eagerly and zealously to the practice of justice; and he did this though there was much lawlessness
throughout all Media, knowing that injustice is hostile to justice. And the Medes of his own village, seeing his ways, chose him as their judge. And he, since indeed he was aiming at rule, was straight and just, and doing this he won no small praise from his fellow citizens, so much so that when those in other
in the other villages, that Deioces was a man who alone judged rightly, then, since they had previously suffered from unjust verdicts, when they heard this they came gladly, going to Deioces themselves to have their cases judged, and in the end they entrusted themselves to no one else. As the number of people coming to him kept growing, since they learned that the verdicts turned out in accordance with the facts, Deioces, realizing that everything now depended on him, was no longer willing to sit
where he had previously sat and given judgment, and he said he would judge no longer; for it did not profit him, he said, to neglect his own affairs and spend the whole day judging those of his neighbors. Since robbery and lawlessness were now far more rampant throughout the villages than before, the Medes gathered together in one place and took counsel with one another about the present state of affairs. As I suppose,
it was above all Deioces' friends who said, "Since we cannot go on living in this land under the present conditions, come, let us set up a king for ourselves; that way the country can be properly governed and we can return to our own work, instead of being driven from our homes by lawlessness." Speaking in some such way, they persuaded themselves to be ruled by a king. At once, when they put forward candidates for whom they should set up as king, Deioces was proposed and praised
by everyone by a wide margin, until at last they settled on him as king. He then ordered them to build him a house worthy of his kingship and to strengthen him with a bodyguard of spearmen. And the Medes did so. They built him a great and strong house wherever in the land he indicated, and they allowed him to select bodyguards for himself from among all the Medes. And he,
once he had gained power, compelled the Medes to build a single city and to devote their attention to fortifying and adorning this one, giving less care to the others. Since the Medes obeyed him in this too, he built great and strong walls, the ones now called Ecbatana, one circle standing within another. This wall has been so contrived that each successive circle rises above the one before it only by the height of its battlements alone
and nothing more. The nature of the site, being a hill, contributes something to making it so, but more than that it was deliberately designed this way. There are seven circles in all, and within the innermost one lie the royal palace and the treasuries. The largest of these walls is about the size of the wall around Athens. Of the first circle
the first circle's battlements are white, the second's black, the third circle's crimson, the fourth's dark blue, the fifth's orange. Thus the battlements of five circles are colored with dyes; but the last two have their battlements plated, one with silver and the other with gold. All these fortifications Deioces built for himself and around his own dwelling, and he
ordered the rest of the people to live around the outer wall. When all the building was complete, Deioces was the first to establish the following order: that no one should be admitted to the king's presence, but that everything should be done through messengers, and that no one was to lay eyes on the king, and further, that it should be shameful for anyone to laugh or spit in his presence. He surrounded himself with this solemnity for the following reason,
so that his agemates, who had been raised with him and were of no lesser family, nor inferior to him in manly virtue, should not, by seeing him, feel resentment and plot against him, but instead, by not seeing him, should think him a different sort of being altogether. When he had arranged all this and secured himself in his tyranny, he was strict in guarding justice: people wrote out their cases and sent them in to him, and he, after deciding on the cases
submitted to him, sent them back out. This is what he did concerning legal cases; but he had also arranged other matters as follows: if he learned that anyone was committing an outrage, he would summon that person and punish him according to the seriousness of each offense, and he had spies and eavesdroppers throughout the whole land he ruled. Deioces, then, united only the Median nation and ruled over it. Now the tribes of the Medes are these: the Busae,
the Paretaceni, the Struchates, the Arizanti, the Budii, and the Magi. These, then, are the tribes of the Medes. Deioces had a son, Phraortes, who, when Deioces died after ruling for fifty-three years, succeeded to the rule. Having taken it over, he was not content to rule the Medes alone, but campaigned against the Persians and attacked them first of all, making them the first people subject to the Medes. Then, having these two nations, both of them
strong, he brought Asia under his control, moving from nation to nation, until he campaigned against the Assyrians, that is, those Assyrians who held Nineveh and had formerly ruled over all, but who at that time were left isolated by their allies, who had revolted from them, though otherwise their own affairs were in good order. Against these Phraortes campaigned, and he himself was destroyed, having ruled twenty-two years, and
so was the greater part of his army. When Phraortes died, he was succeeded by Cyaxares, son of Phraortes, son of Deioces. This man is said to have been far more warlike than his ancestors, and he was the first to organize the peoples of Asia into companies, and the first to arrange separately each group, the spearmen, the archers, and the cavalry; before this all had been mixed together indiscriminately
in confusion. This is the man who fought against the Lydians when day turned to night for them during the battle, and who brought together under himself all of Asia beyond the Halys river. Having gathered together all those under his rule, he marched against Nineveh, both to avenge his father and wishing to take that city. And when, having joined battle, he defeated the Assyrians, while he was besieging Nineveh
a great army of Scythians came upon him, led by their king Madyes, son of Protothyes. These had invaded Asia after driving the Cimmerians out of Europe, and pursuing them in their flight, they thus arrived in the land of the Medes. A traveler going light needs thirty days to pass from Lake Maeotis to the river Phasis and the land of the Colchians, and from Colchis
it is not far to cross over into Media—only one nation lies between them, the Saspires, and once past this one, one is already in Media. However, the Scythians did not invade by this route, but turned aside onto the upper road, much longer, keeping the Caucasus mountains on their right. There the Medes met the Scythians in battle, and having been defeated in the battle, they
were deprived of their empire. The Scythians occupied all of Asia. From there they marched on Egypt. And when they had reached Palestinian Syria, Psammetichus, king of Egypt, met them with gifts and entreaties and turned them back from advancing further. And when, on their way back, they reached the Syrian city of Ascalon, the bulk of the Scythian force passed through causing no harm, but a few stragglers left behind plundered
the temple of the heavenly Aphrodite. This temple, as I have learned by inquiry, is the oldest of all the temples of this goddess; for the one in Cyprus originated from it, as the Cyprians themselves say, and the one in Cythera was founded by Phoenicians who came from this same land of Syria. On those Scythians who plundered the temple at
Ascalon, and on their descendants forever after, the goddess inflicted a female sickness; so that the Scythians say they suffer from this affliction for that reason, and that visitors to the land of Scythia can see for themselves how those whom the Scythians call the Enarees are afflicted. Now the Scythians ruled Asia for twenty-eight years, and everything was thrown into disorder by their
violence and negligence; for besides exacting tribute from each people, which they imposed on each, they also plundered, riding about and seizing whatever each people had. Most of these Scythians Cyaxares and the Medes invited to a feast, made drunk, and slaughtered, and thus the Medes recovered their empire and gained mastery over the same peoples as before, and they
took Nineveh (how they took it I will explain in another account) and made the Assyrians subject to them, except for the portion belonging to Babylon. After this Cyaxares died, having ruled forty years including the years the Scythians ruled, and Astyages, son of Cyaxares, succeeded to the kingship. A daughter was born to him, and he gave her the name Mandane; Astyages dreamed that she urinated so much that
it filled his own city and flooded all of Asia besides. He related this dream to those of the Magi who interpreted dreams, and he was frightened when he learned the details from them. Later, when this Mandane was of age for marriage, he gave her to no Mede of rank equal to his own, fearing the vision, but gave her instead to a Persian called Cambyses, a man he judged
to be of good family but of a quiet disposition, ranking him far below a Mede of middle rank. While Mandane was living with Cambyses, in that first year, Astyages had a second vision: he dreamed that from his daughter's genitals grew a vine, and that this vine covered the whole of Asia. Having seen this and related it to the dream-interpreters, he sent for
his daughter from the Persians, she being pregnant, and when she arrived he kept her under guard, wishing to destroy whatever should be born of her; for the dream-interpreters of the Magi had indicated to him from his vision that his daughter's offspring was destined to become king in his place. Guarding against this, Astyages, when Cyrus was born, summoned Harpagus, a man of his household, most trusted among the Medes and overseer
of all his affairs, and said to him the following: "Harpagus, do not mishandle in any way the matter I am about to lay before you, nor betray me by choosing others afterward and thereby falling into trouble yourself: take the child that Mandane bore, carry it to your own house, and kill it, then bury it in whatever manner you yourself wish." He answered, "O king, never before have you found this man to be lacking in obedience"
"nothing wrong, and we are on guard not to commit any offense against you, now or in time to come. But if this is truly what you wish to happen, then it is my duty to serve you properly in the matter." Having answered in these terms, Harpagus, once the child had been handed over to him dressed for death, went off weeping toward his house; and when he arrived he told his wife the whole speech Astyages had spoken.
She said to him, "So now what do you intend to do?" He answered, "Not what Astyages ordered — not even if he goes out of his mind and rages worse than he rages now will I fall in with his purpose or serve him in a murder of this kind. There are many reasons I will not kill him: first, that the boy is my own kinsman,
and also that Astyages is old and has no male offspring. If, after he dies, the throne should pass to this daughter of his — whose son he is now having me kill — what is left for me afterward but the greatest of dangers? No, for my own safety this child must die, but it must be one of Astyages' own men
who becomes his murderer, and not one of mine." So he said, and at once sent a messenger to one of Astyages' herdsmen whom he knew to pasture his flocks in ground most suitable for the purpose, in the wildest of the mountains. The man was called Mitradates, and sharing his home was a fellow slave, a woman known in the Greek tongue as Cyno, and in the Median as Spako; for "dog"
the Medes call spaka. The foothills where this herdsman kept his cattle-pastures lie to the north of Agbatana, toward the Euxine Sea; for in that direction the Median territory borders on that of the Saspires and is very mountainous, high, and thickly wooded, while the rest of Media is entirely
flat. When the herdsman arrived, summoned in great haste, Harpagus spoke to him thus: "Astyages orders you to take this child and leave it in the loneliest region of the mountains, there to die as swiftly as possible. He further ordered me to tell you this: if you do not kill it but preserve it by some means, you will be put to the worst of deaths. I myself am appointed to see that it is exposed." Hearing this,
the herdsman took up the child and went back the same way he had come, arriving at his steading. Now it happened that his own wife, who had been due to give birth any day, that very day, by some divine chance, gave birth while the herdsman was gone to the city. Both of them were anxious about the other: he fearing for his wife's delivery, and she wondering
why Harpagus, so unusually, had sent for her husband. When he returned and stood before her, she, seeing him unexpectedly, asked first what had made Harpagus send for him so urgently. He said, "Wife, I saw and heard, when I went to the city, what I wish I had neither seen nor ever happened to our masters. The whole house of Harpagus
was overcome with weeping, and I, astonished, went inside. As soon as I entered, I saw an infant lying there, kicking and crying, adorned with gold and embroidered clothing. When Harpagus saw me, he ordered me to take up the child at once and carry it off and set it where the mountains are most infested with wild beasts, saying it was Astyages who had laid this task on me, and threatening many things if I did not
do it. And I took it up and carried it, thinking it belonged to one of the household servants; for I could never have guessed where it really came from. But I was astonished to see it decked out in gold and fine clothes, and moreover the plain weeping going on in Harpagus' house. Then presently, on the road, I learned the whole story from a servant who had escorted me out of the city and put the infant into my hands: that
it was the child of Mandane, daughter of Astyages, and of Cambyses son of Cyrus, and that Astyages ordered it killed. And now here it is." While speaking these words the herdsman drew back the covering and showed her the child; noticing at once how large and well-formed the boy was, she burst into tears, and clasping her husband's knees, begged him by no means to expose it. But he
said he could not do otherwise; for spies would come from Harpagus to check on it, and he would die a most terrible death if he did not do as ordered. Since she could not persuade her husband, the woman then said this: "Since I cannot persuade you not to expose it, then do this — since it is altogether necessary that a child be seen exposed. I too have given birth, and I have given birth
to a dead child. Take this one and expose it, and let us raise the daughter of Astyages' son as if it were our own. In this way you will not be caught wronging our masters, nor will we have planned badly for ourselves; for the dead child will receive a royal burial, and the living one will not lose his life." The herdsman thought his wife spoke very well for their present circumstance, and
he did just as she said: he handed over to his wife the child he had been carrying to kill, and taking his own dead child, he laid it in the receptacle in which he had carried the other, and, dressing it in all the finery of the other child, carried it out and set it in the most desolate part of the mountains. On the third day after the infant had been exposed, the herdsman went
to the city, leaving one of his herdsmen to watch over it, and going to Harpagus' house he said he was ready to show the body of the child. Harpagus sent the most trusted of his own bodyguard, and through them he both viewed and buried the herdsman's child. That one was buried, but the other, who was afterward named Cyrus, was taken and raised by the
herdsman's wife, who gave him some other name, not Cyrus. By the time the boy had reached his tenth year, an incident revealed who he truly was. He was playing in that village where these herdsmen's steadings were, playing alongside other children his age out on the road. In their game the children picked this very boy to be their king—the one who passed as the
herdsman's son. He then assigned some of them to build houses, others to be bodyguards, one of them, I suppose, to be the King's Eye, and to another he gave the honor of carrying messages, assigning each a task. Now one of these boys taking part in the game, the son of Artembares, a man of standing among the Medes, since he did not do as
Cyrus ordered, Cyrus told the other boys to seize him, and when the boys obeyed, Cyrus handled the boy very roughly, flogging him severely. As soon as he was released, feeling he had suffered indignities unworthy of himself, he was all the more resentful, and going down to the city he complained to his father of what he had suffered at Cyrus' hands — though he did not yet call him Cyrus, since that
was not yet his name — but called him the son of Astyages' herdsman. Artembares, in the anger he felt, went to Astyages, bringing his son with him, and said he had suffered outrageous treatment, saying, "O King, we have been so grossly insulted by your slave, the herdsman's son," showing the boy's shoulders. Hearing and seeing this, Astyages, wishing to avenge the boy for the sake of
Artembares' rank, sent for the herdsman and the boy. When both had arrived, Astyages, looking at Cyrus, said, "You, the son of such a man as this, dared to treat so outrageously this man's son, who ranks first with me?" He answered thus: "Master, I did this to him justly. For the boys of the village,
among whom he too was one, in their play made me their king; for they thought me the most fit for it. Now the other boys did what was assigned to them, but this one refused to listen and paid no heed, until he got his punishment. If for this I deserve any harm, here I am, ready." While the boy was speaking,
a recognition of him came over Astyages, and it seemed to him that the features of the boy's face resembled his own, and that his manner of answering was too free for a slave, and that the time of the exposure seemed to match the boy's age. Struck by these things, he was speechless for a while; and with difficulty, when he had recovered himself, he said, wishing to send Artembares away so that he might question the herdsman alone,
"Artembares, I will see to it that you and your son have no cause for complaint." So he sent Artembares away, and the attendants led Cyrus inside at Astyages' command. When the herdsman was left alone by himself, Astyages asked him this: where he had gotten the boy, and who had given him to him. He said the boy
had been born of himself, and that the woman who bore him was still with him. Astyages said he was not planning well in wishing to bring himself to such extremities, and as he said this he signaled to his bodyguards to seize him. And as he was led away to torture, the herdsman then revealed the true account: beginning from the start he went through it faithfully, and ended by falling to entreaty
and begging Astyages to forgive him. Astyages, once the herdsman had revealed the truth, now made little of the matter regarding him, but blaming Harpagus greatly, he ordered his bodyguards to summon him. When Harpagus came before him, Astyages asked him, "Harpagus, by what death did you dispose of the child I gave over to you, born of my daughter?" He
When Harpagus saw that the herdsman was there, he did not turn to a false account, so as not to be caught out if tested, but said this: "O king, once the child was in my hands, I thought over how I might do as you wished and yet, in dealing with you, be free of blame and not be the one who killed either your daughter's child or you yourself. I did as follows: I called the herdsman
and handed over the child to this man, telling him that it was you who ordered it killed. And in saying that I did not lie, for you had indeed commanded it. But I gave it to him with these instructions: to expose it on a deserted mountain, remaining there to keep watch until it died, threatening him with every punishment if he did not carry this out. And when he had done as ordered and the child
had died, I sent the most trustworthy of the eunuchs and through them saw and buried it. So it stands, O king, concerning this matter, and such was the fate the boy met." Harpagus, then, told the straightforward account; but Astyages, hiding the anger he held against him for what had happened, first, just as he had heard the matter from the herdsman himself,
repeated it back to Harpagus, and afterward, once it had been gone over again, he came around to saying that the boy was alive and that things had turned out well. "For over what was done to this child," he said, "I suffered greatly, and being at odds with my own daughter was no light thing for me. Now that fortune has turned out well, first send your own son to
the newly arrived boy, and second — for I intend to sacrifice thank-offerings for the child's survival to the gods, to whom this honor is due — come to me for dinner." When Harpagus heard this, he bowed low and, thinking it a great thing both that his error had turned out for the best and that he had been invited to dinner on so happy an occasion, went to his house. And entering as quickly as he could, since
he had one only son, about thirteen years old, he sent him off, telling him to go to Astyages and do whatever he might order; and he himself, overjoyed, told his wife what had happened. But Astyages, when Harpagus's son arrived, slaughtered him and cut him limb from limb, roasting some of the meat and boiling
the rest, and having it prepared, kept it ready. When the hour of dinner came and the other guests were present along with Harpagus, tables laden with mutton were set before the others and before Astyages himself, but before Harpagus was set everything of his own son except the head and the extremities of the hands and feet — these lay apart on
a covered basket. And when Harpagus seemed to have had enough of the food, Astyages asked him whether he had enjoyed the feast. Harpagus replied that the meal had pleased him greatly, and then those whose task it was brought forward the covered head of the boy, and his hands and feet, and told Harpagus to step up, uncover them, and take whichever of them he wished. Harpagus obeyed, and
uncovering it, he saw the remains of his son; seeing them, he was not overcome, but kept himself in hand. Astyages asked him whether he recognized what animal's meat he had eaten. He said that he did recognize it, and that whatever the king did was pleasing to him. Having answered thus, he collected the leftover meat and made his way home, intending, I suppose,
to gather it all together and bury it. Such was the punishment Astyages inflicted on Harpagus. But concerning Cyrus, in deliberating about him, he called the same Magi who had interpreted the dream for him in that way. When they arrived, Astyages asked them how they had interpreted the vision. They said the same as before, that the boy was fated to become king, if he had lived and not died earlier.
He answered them thus: "The boy exists and is alive, and the village boys set him up as their king while he was living out in the country. And he carried out all the things that true kings actually do: he appointed spear-bearers and door-keepers and message-bearers and all the rest, and ruled with these arrangements in place. Now, what do you think this points to?"
The Magi said, "If the boy is alive and has become king without any design behind it, then take courage on that account and keep a good heart, for he will not rule a second time. Even some of our prophecies come to fulfillment in trivial ways, and matters concerning dreams especially tend to come to nothing significant." Astyages answered them thus: "I myself, O Magi,
am very much of that same opinion — that once the boy was named king the dream was fulfilled, and that he is no longer in any way dangerous to me. Nevertheless, consider carefully and advise me what will be safest for my household and for you." To this the Magi said, "O king, it matters greatly to us as well that your rule
stand secure. For otherwise it passes away over to this boy—a Persian—and becomes foreign to us, and we, being Medes, would be enslaved and counted for nothing by the Persians, as foreigners; but while you remain established as king, being one of our own people, we too rule our share and receive great honors from you. So in every way we must look out for you and for your rule. And now
if we saw anything to fear in this, we would have told you everything beforehand. But since the dream has come to nothing significant, we ourselves take courage, and we urge the same courage on you. Send this boy out of your sight, off to the Persians and to those who bore him." Hearing this, Astyages was glad, and calling Cyrus, said to him: "My boy, I wronged you because of
a dream-vision that came to nothing, but by your own destiny you survive. Now go, then, rejoicing, to the Persians, and I will send an escort with you. When you get there you will find a father and mother quite different from Mitradates the herdsman and his wife." Having said this, Astyages sent Cyrus away. When he returned to Cambyses's house, he was received by
his parents, and having received him, once they learned who he was, they welcomed him warmly, since they knew that he had died at that time long before, and they asked him by what means he had survived. He explained to them that until then he had been ignorant and greatly mistaken about it, and that on the road he had learned the whole story of his own fate: that he knew he was said to be the son of Astyages's herdsman, but that on the journey from there he had
learned the whole account from those escorting him. He said he had been raised by the herdsman's wife, and he praised her constantly throughout his account, and in his telling everything centered on Cyno. His parents took up this name, so that it might seem to the Persians all the more marked by divine favor that their son had survived, and they put about the story that Cyrus, when exposed, had been suckled by a dog. From there this
story has spread. As Cyrus grew to manhood and became the most manly and best-liked of his peers, Harpagus attached himself to him, sending him gifts, desiring to take vengeance on Astyages; for he himself, being a private man, saw no way that vengeance could come upon Astyages, but seeing Cyrus growing up, he made him his ally, likening Cyrus's own sufferings to his. And even before this he had accomplished the following: since Astyages
was harsh toward the Medes, Harpagus, meeting with each of the leading Medes individually, persuaded them that they must put Cyrus forward and stop Astyages from ruling. When this had been accomplished by him and all was ready, then, since Cyrus was living among the Persians, Harpagus, wishing to reveal his own intent to him, had no other way of doing so, since the roads were guarded, and so he contrived the following: preparing a hare,
and slitting open its belly without plucking out any of the fur, just as it was he inserted a written scroll, having written on it what seemed best to him; then, sewing up the hare's belly again, and giving nets to the most trustworthy of his servants as though he were a huntsman, he sent him off to the Persians, instructing him by word of mouth, in handing over the hare to Cyrus, to tell him that he must open it himself, with his own hands, allowing nobody to be with him while he did it.
This, then, was carried out, and Cyrus, taking the hare, cut it open; and finding the scroll inside it, he took it and read it through. The writing said this: "Son of Cambyses, the gods watch over you — for otherwise you would never have come to such good fortune — now take vengeance on Astyages, your murderer. For as far as his intent went,
you are dead, but as far as the gods and I are concerned, you live. This I think you have long since learned in full — both what was done concerning you, and what I suffered at the hands of Astyages because I did not kill you but gave you to the herdsman. Now, if you are willing to listen to me, you shall rule over all the land which Astyages now rules. Persuade the Persians to revolt, and lead an army
against the Medes. And whether I am appointed by Astyages as general against you, or some other of the notable Medes is, the outcome will be what you wish, for these men will be the first to revolt from him and come over to your side and try to bring Astyages down. Since matters here are ready, do this, and do it quickly." Hearing this, Cyrus considered
by what cleverest means he might persuade the Persians to revolt, and upon consideration he found the following to be most fitting; and this is what he did. Writing on a scroll what he wished, he called an assembly of the Persians, and then, unrolling the scroll and reading from it, he said that Astyages was appointing him general of the Persians. "And now," he said, "O Persians, I proclaim to you that each of you must present himself equipped with a sickle." Thus Cyrus made his proclamation. There is
...many tribes of Persians, and Cyrus brought some of these together and won them over to rebel against the Medes. These are the tribes from which all the other Persians are descended: the Pasargadae, the Maraphii, and the Maspii. Of these the Pasargadae are the noblest; among them is also the clan of the Achaemenids, from which the Perseid kings are descended. Other Persians are these: the Panthialaei, the Derusiaei, the Germanii. All these are farmers,
while the rest are nomads: the Daans, the Mardi, the Dropici, the Sagartii. When all had arrived bringing what had been ordered, then Cyrus—there was a certain place in Persia covered with thorn-bushes, about eighteen or twenty stadia in every direction—told them to clear this place in a single day. When the Persians had accomplished the task set before them, he told them a second time to be present on the following day
having bathed. Meanwhile Cyrus gathered together all his father's goats, sheep, and cattle in one place and sacrificed them, and made preparations to receive the Persian army, together with wine and food of the finest quality. When the Persians arrived the next day, he had them recline on the meadow and feasted them well. Once dinner was over, Cyrus put a question to them
whether they preferred what they had had the day before or what they had now. They said there was a great difference between the two: the previous day had held nothing but hardship for them, while the present day held nothing but good things. Taking up this remark, Cyrus laid bare the whole matter, saying, "Men of Persia, this is how things stand for you. If you are willing
to obey me, you will have this and countless other good things, with no toil that befits a slave; but if you are unwilling to obey me, you will have toils numberless, like the one of yesterday. So now, obey me and become free. For I believe I was born by divine fortune to bring these things about, and I consider you men no lesser than the Medes, either in other respects or in matters of war.
Since this is how things stand, revolt from Astyages as quickly as possible." The Persians, having found a champion, gladly threw off their bondage, since they had long resented being ruled by the Medes. When Astyages learned that Cyrus was doing this, he sent a messenger and summoned him. Cyrus told the messenger to report that he would come to Astyages sooner than Astyages himself would wish. Hearing this, Astyages
armed all the Medes, and, since he was struck with madness by the gods, he appointed Harpagus as their general, forgetting what he had done to him. When the Medes marched out and engaged the Persians, some of them fought—those who had had no part in the plot—while others deserted to the Persians, and most of them shirked their duty deliberately and fled. When the Median army was disgracefully dispersed, as
As soon as Astyages learned of this, he said, threatening Cyrus, "But even so, Cyrus will not rejoice." Having said this, he first impaled the dream-interpreters among the Magi who had convinced him to spare Cyrus's life, and then he armed those remaining in the city of the Medes, both young men and old. Leading these out and engaging the Persians, he was defeated, and he himself
was taken alive, and he lost the Medes he had brought out with him. When Astyages was a captive, Harpagus came up to him and gloated over him and mocked him, and among other painful words he spoke to him, he also asked him, referring to the dinner at which Astyages had feasted him on the flesh of his own son, what his own slavery felt like now in place of kingship. And Astyages
looked at him and asked in turn whether he claimed Cyrus's deed as his own. Harpagus replied that, having written the letter himself, the affair was indeed rightly his. Astyages then declared him to be, by that logic, the most foolish and most unjust of all men—most foolish, because if it was through his own doing that these things had come about, he could have become king himself, yet instead he set the power on another; and most unjust,
since it was that very dinner which led him to enslave the Medes. For if it was truly necessary to hand over the kingship to someone else and not keep it himself, it would have been more just to bestow this good fortune on one of the Medes rather than on the Persians. But as things stood, the Medes, who bore no responsibility for this, had become slaves instead of masters, while the Persians, who had once been enslaved to the Medes, had now become their masters instead. Astyages, then,
having reigned thirty-five years, was thus deposed from his kingship, and the Medes submitted to the Persians because of his harshness, after having ruled over Asia beyond the Halys river for one hundred and twenty-eight years, apart from the time during which the Scythians ruled. Later, however, they came to regret having done this and revolted from Darius, but having revolted they were again subdued, defeated in battle.
At that time, then, under Astyages, the Persians together with Cyrus revolted and overthrew Median rule, taking control of Asia from then on. Cyrus did Astyages no further harm but kept him with him until he died. Thus Cyrus, born and raised as he was, became king, and later subdued Croesus, who had begun the wrongdoing, as I have said before, and having subdued him he ruled
over the whole of Asia in this way. I know that the Persians observe customs such as these: it is not their custom to set up statues, temples, or altars; indeed they consider those who do so to be fools, because, as I think, they do not believe the gods to have human form as the Greeks do. They have a custom of going up to the highest peaks of the mountains and offering sacrifices to Zeus,
calling the whole circle of the sky Zeus. They also offer sacrifice to the sun and the moon, to earth, fire, water, and the winds; from ancient times these alone have received their sacrifices, but they have since learned also to sacrifice to Heavenly Aphrodite, having learned this from the Assyrians and the Arabians. The Assyrians call Aphrodite Mylitta, the Arabians call her Alilat, and the Persians call her Mithra. As for sacrifice,
the practice among the Persians regarding the gods I have mentioned is as follows: they build no altars and kindle no fire when they intend to sacrifice; they use no libation, no flute, no wreaths, no barley-groats. When a man wishes to sacrifice to one of these gods, he leads the animal to a clean spot and calls upon the god, wearing his tiara wreathed most often with myrtle. It is not permitted for the one sacrificing to pray for good things for himself alone,
but he prays for good things to come to all the Persians and to the king; for he himself is included among all the Persians. When he has cut the sacrificial victim limb from limb and boiled the meat, he spreads out the softest grass he can find, especially clover, and lays all the meat upon it. Once he has arranged it, a Magus stands by and chants over it a theogony, for such
is what they say the incantation is; for it is not their custom to make sacrifices without a Magus present. After waiting a short while, the one who has sacrificed carries away the meat and uses it as he sees fit. They consider the day on which each of them was born to be the one most worthy of honor of all days. On this day custom calls for laying out a feast more generous than usual: on it the wealthy among them
set out an ox, a horse, a camel, and a donkey roasted whole in ovens, while the poor among them set out the smaller kinds of livestock. They eat little in the way of solid food but much in the way of dessert courses, and not all at once; which is why the Persians claim that Greeks leave the table still hungry, since nothing worth mentioning follows their dinner; whereas if something more were served, they say, the Greeks
would not stop eating. They are very devoted to wine, and it is not permitted for them to vomit or to urinate in front of another person. These customs, then, are observed strictly. It is their habit to deliberate on the most important matters while drunk; and whatever decision they reach in their deliberations, whoever heads the household where the discussion took place lays it before them again the next day while they are sober, and if the decision still pleases them sober, they act on it; but if
it does not please them, they abandon it instead. And whatever they have deliberated first while sober, they reconsider while drunk. When they meet one another in the streets, one can tell whether those meeting are of equal rank by this: instead of greeting each other verbally, they kiss each other on the mouth; but if one is of somewhat lower rank, they kiss each other on the cheeks; and if one is much lower in rank, he falls down and prostrates himself before the other. They honor most
of all, after themselves, those who live nearest to them, and next those who live second nearest, and so on, honoring people in due proportion as they go further away; and they hold in least honor those who live farthest away from themselves, believing that they themselves are by far the best of all people in every respect, that other peoples partake of excellence in proportion to their nearness, and that those living farthest away are the worst. Under the rule of the Medes
the various nations also ruled over one another in this pattern: the Medes ruled over those nearest to them and those people in turn over their neighbors, and those neighbors over the ones next to them—and by this same reasoning the Persians too give honor, for the nation kept advancing as it ruled and governed. The Persians adopt foreign customs more than any other people.
For example, having decided that Median dress is more beautiful than their own, they wear it, and in war they wear Egyptian breastplates. They also take up all sorts of pleasures as soon as they learn of them, and indeed, having learned it from the Greeks, they have relations with boys. Each of them marries many lawful wives, and acquires even more concubines besides. Manliness is reckoned, after prowess in battle,
to consist chiefly in this: whoever can show the most sons. Each year the king sends gifts to the man who has the most to show. They believe that numbers make for strength. They educate their boys, beginning at five years old and continuing to twenty, in three things only: riding, archery, and telling the truth. Until a son turns five, he is kept away from his father's presence entirely and spends his days among the women. This is done for this reason
they do this so that, if the child dies while being raised, it will cause the father no grief. Now I praise this custom, and I praise this one too: that not for a single offense will the king himself put anyone to death, nor will any other Persian inflict irreparable harm on any of his own servants for a single offense; but only after reckoning up, if he finds the wrongs to be more numerous and greater
than the services rendered, does he then give way to his anger. They say that no one has ever yet killed his own father or mother, but that whenever such a thing has happened, it has always, upon investigation, been found without exception that the child was either a supposititious child or born of adultery; for they say it is not plausible that a true parent should die at the hands of his own child. Whatever their customs forbid them from doing,
it is also not lawful for them to speak of. The most shameful thing among them, by their reckoning, is lying, and second to that is owing a debt, for many reasons, but chiefly because they say it is necessary for a debtor to tell lies as well. Any citizen who has leprosy or a white skin disease does not come down into the city and does not mix with the other Persians; they say he has this
because he has sinned in some way against the sun. Many drive out of the country any foreigner who contracts these diseases, and they do the same with white doves, giving the same reason. They neither urinate nor spit into a river, nor wash their hands in one, nor do they allow anyone else to do so, but they hold rivers in the greatest reverence. And here is another thing that has happened to them, which has escaped the Persians themselves, but not us:
their names, which correspond to their bodily forms and to their grandeur, all end in the same letter, the one the Dorians call san and the Ionians call sigma. If you search for it you will find that the names of the Persians all end in this letter, without exception, not some but not others. This much I can say with certainty, knowing it for a fact about them; but the following is told as a secret
and not clearly, concerning the dead: that the corpse of a Persian is left unburied until a bird or dog has dragged it off. That the Magi do this I know for certain, for they do it openly. But the Persians coat the body in wax before laying it in the ground. The Magi are set apart greatly from other men, and also from the priests in Egypt. For the Egyptian priests
hold it a point of purity to avoid killing any living thing except what they sacrifice; but the Magi kill with their own hands everything except a dog and a man, and they make it a great point of competition, killing ants and snakes alike, and other creeping and flying things. Well, let this custom be as it was originally established, and let me return to my earlier account. Now the Ionians
and Aeolians, as soon as the Lydians had fallen to the Persians, dispatched envoys to Sardis to see Cyrus, wanting to be subject to him under the same terms on which they had been subject to Croesus. He, having heard what they proposed, told them a story: he said that a flute player, seeing fish in the sea, played his flute, expecting that they would come out onto the land; but when his hope was disappointed, he took
a casting net and gathered up a great multitude of fish within it and drew them out; and seeing them leaping about, he said to the fish, "Stop dancing for me now, since when I was playing you were not willing to come out and dance." Cyrus told this story to the Ionians and Aeolians for this reason: earlier, when Cyrus himself had asked them through messengers to revolt from
Croesus, they had not been persuaded, but now that matters had been settled, they were ready to obey Cyrus. He, in his anger, said this to them. When the Ionians heard this report carried back to their cities, they each built walls around their own cities, and the rest gathered at the Panionion, except for the Milesians; for with them alone did Cyrus make a treaty on the same terms the Lydian had made. As for the
remaining Ionians, they decided by common resolution to dispatch envoys to Sparta asking the Spartans for aid on behalf of the Ionians. Now these Ionians, to whom the Panionion belongs, happened to have founded their cities in the finest part of the sky and climate of all the peoples known to us; the districts lying above Ionia are not its equal, nor are those beneath it, nor the parts toward the
east nor those toward the west, are like it, some being oppressed by cold and wet, others by heat and drought. They do not all use the same language, but four different varieties of speech. Miletus lies first among their cities toward the south, and after it Myus and Priene. These are settled in Caria and speak
the same dialect to one another; the following are in Lydia: Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedos, Teos, Clazomenae, Phocaea. These cities share no common speech with those mentioned earlier, but speak the same as one another. There remain three more Ionian cities, of which two are situated on islands, Samos and Chios, and one, Erythrae, is settled on the mainland. The Chians
and the Erythraeans speak the same dialect, while the Samians alone speak their own. These make four distinct varieties of speech. Now of these Ionians, the Milesians were sheltered from fear, having made a treaty, and none of the islanders among them had anything to fear either; for the Phoenicians were not yet subjects of the Persians, nor were the Persians themselves seafarers. They had separated from the other Ionians
for no other reason than this: at that time, when the whole Greek race was weak, the Ionian people was by far the weakest of its branches and of least account; for apart from Athens there was no other city of note. So the other Ionians, and the Athenians too, shunned the label, preferring not to be called Ionians, and even now most of them seem to me
to be ashamed of the name; but those twelve cities gloried in the name and founded a sanctuary for themselves alone, to which they gave the name Panionion, and they resolved to share it with none of the other Ionians (nor did any others ask to take part except the Smyrnaeans): just as the Dorians of what is now the Pentapolis, though formerly called the Hexapolis, take care
to admit none of their Dorian neighbors into the Triopian sanctuary, and indeed excluded from participation even some of their own number who had transgressed against the sanctuary. For in the contest of Triopian Apollo they used to set out bronze tripods as prizes for the winners in ancient times, and those who won them were required not to carry them away from the sanctuary but to dedicate them there to the god. Now a man of Halicarnassus,
whose name was Agasicles, having won, disregarded this custom, and carrying the tripod off to his own house, nailed it up there. For this reason the five cities, Lindos, Ialysos, and Cameiros, along with Cos and Cnidos, shut the sixth city, Halicarnassus, out of the association. This is the penalty they imposed on the Halicarnassians. Now it seems to me that
the Ionians made twelve cities and were unwilling to admit more for this reason: that when they lived in the Peloponnese, they too were divided into twelve parts, just as now the Achaeans who drove the Ionians out are divided into twelve parts: first Pellene, next to Sicyon, then Aegira and Aegae, where the river Crathis flows perennially, from which the river in Italy took its name,
and Bura and Helice, to which the Ionians fled when they were defeated in battle by the Achaeans, and Aegium, Rhypes, Patrae, Pharae, and Olenus, where the great river Peirus is, and Dyme and Tritaeae, the only ones of these that lie inland. These are now the twelve parts of the Achaeans, and were then the parts of the Ionians. For this reason the Ionians too made
twelve cities: since to say that these Ionians are any more Ionian, or any nobler in origin, than the other Ionians would be great foolishness; for the Abantes from Euboea are no small part of them, though they have no share at all in the name of Ionia, and Minyans from Orchomenus have been mixed in among them, and Cadmeans, and Dryopians, and a scattered group of Phocians, and Molossians, and Arcadian Pelasgians, and Dorian
men from Epidaurus, and many other peoples besides have been mixed in; and those of them who set out from the Athenian prytaneum and consider themselves the noblest-born of the Ionians did not bring wives with them to the colony, but took Carian women, whose parents they had murdered. Because of this murder, these women established a custom among themselves and bound each other by oaths, which they handed down to their daughters, never
to eat at the same table as their husbands, nor ever to call their own husband by name, because the men had murdered their fathers, husbands, and children, and then, having done these things, took them as wives. This took place in Miletus. As kings, some of them set up men descended from Glaucus son of Hippolochus, of Lycian stock, others men of Caucon Pylian descent from Codrus son of Melanthus, and others
both together. But because they cling to the name more strongly than other Ionians do, let those who are of pure Ionian descent be called Ionians too. All are Ionians who trace their origin from Athens and who celebrate the festival of the Apaturia. All of them celebrate it except the Ephesians and the Colophonians; these alone of the Ionians do not celebrate the Apaturia, and that on account of some charge of murder. The Panionion is a sacred place belonging to
Mycale, facing north, set apart in common by the Ionians for Poseidon Heliconius. Mycale is a headland of the mainland facing west toward Samos, where the Ionians would gather from their cities and hold the festival to which they gave the name Panionia. It is not only the festivals of the Ionians that are affected this way, but likewise all the festivals of all the Greeks end in the same letter
end in the same way as the Persian names do. These, then, are the Ionian cities. The Aeolian cities are these: Cyme, which is called Phriconis; Larisae; Neonteichos; Temnos and Cilla; Notion and Aegiroessa; Pitane and Aegaeae; Myrina and Grynea. Eleven ancient Aeolian cities stand on this list, for one of their number, Smyrna, was taken from them by the Ionians; there had originally been twelve of them on the mainland as well. These
Aeolians happened to have settled a better land than the Ionians, but their climate does not compare as favorably. This is how the Aeolians lost Smyrna. They had taken in some men of Colophon who had been defeated in civil strife and driven out of their homeland. Afterward, these Colophonian exiles waited until the Smyrnaeans were celebrating a festival of Dionysus beyond the city walls, then barred the gates behind them and took possession of the city. When all the Aeolians came to help, terms were agreed upon:
the Ionians would give back the movable property, and the Aeolians would abandon Smyrna. When the people of Smyrna had done this, the eleven cities divided them among themselves and made them citizens of their own communities. These, then, are the mainland Aeolian cities, apart from those settled on Ida, for those are counted separately. Of the island cities, five share Lesbos between them (for the sixth city on Lesbos,
Arisba, was enslaved by the people of Methymna, though its people were their own kin); on Tenedos one city is settled, and on the islands called the Hundred Isles another. For the people of Lesbos and Tenedos, as for the Ionians who hold the islands, there was no danger at all; but the remaining cities agreed together to follow wherever the Ionians should lead. When the envoys of the Ionians
and Aeolians arrived at Sparta—for this business was being conducted with great speed—they chose to speak before all the others the man of Phocaea whose name was Pythermus. He wrapped himself in a purple cloak, so that as many Spartans as possible would hear of it and gather to listen, and standing before them he spoke at length, asking for aid on their behalf. But the Lacedaemonians would not listen at all; they decided against helping the Ionians. So the envoys departed,
but the Lacedaemonians, though they had turned away the Ionian envoys, nonetheless sent men in a fifty-oared ship, to spy out, as it seems to me, the affairs of Cyrus and of Ionia. When these men arrived at Phocaea, they sent to Sardis the most respected of their number, whose name was Lacrines, to declare to Cyrus the message of the Lacedaemonians: that he should do no harm to any city of Greek land, since they would not overlook it. When
the herald had said this, it is said that Cyrus asked those Greeks present with him who these Lacedaemonians were and what their numbers came to, that they should proclaim such a thing to him; and on learning the answer, he said to the herald, "Never yet have I feared the sort of men who keep a space marked out in the middle of their city where they gather to swear oaths and cheat one another. If I remain in good health, it will not be the sufferings of the Ionians
that they will have to talk about, but their own troubles." Cyrus flung these words at the Greeks generally, because they set up marketplaces and conduct business by buying and selling; for the Persians themselves are not accustomed to use marketplaces at all, nor do they have any marketplace whatsoever. After this, he entrusted Sardis to Tabalus, a Persian, and charged Pactyes, a Lydian, with bringing away the gold that had belonged to Croesus and to the other Lydians,
and he himself marched off to Ecbatana, taking Croesus with him and giving no thought at all to the Ionians for the present. Babylon stood in his way, as did the Bactrian nation, the Sacae, and the Egyptians; against these he intended to lead an army himself, and to send some other general against the Ionians. But when Cyrus had marched away
from Sardis, Pactyes caused the Lydians to revolt from Tabalus and from Cyrus. Going down to the coast, since he had all the gold from Sardis, he hired mercenaries and persuaded the people of the coast to join him on campaign. Marching then against Sardis, he laid siege to Tabalus, who had been penned inside the acropolis. When Cyrus learned of this on the road,
he said the following to Croesus: "Croesus, what will be the end of these things happening to me? It seems the Lydians will not stop giving trouble, both to themselves and to me. I am wondering whether it would be best to enslave them outright. For it now appears to me that I have acted just as if a man, having killed the father, had spared the children—so it is with me: I have taken you, who were more than a father
to the Lydians, and led you away captive, yet handed the city over to the Lydians themselves; and now I am surprised that they have revolted from me." So he spoke what he had in mind, and Croesus answered him thus, fearing that Cyrus might destroy Sardis utterly: "O king, what you have said is reasonable, but do not give way entirely to anger, nor destroy an ancient city that is innocent both of the former wrong and
of what is happening now. For the former wrong I committed myself, and I bear the consequences on my own head; and as for what is happening now, it is Pactyes who is doing the wrong, the man to whom you entrusted Sardis—let him pay the penalty for it. But show mercy to the Lydians, and lay upon them this command, so that they neither revolt nor become dangerous to you: send word barring them from owning any weapons of war, and command
them to wear tunics under their cloaks and to put on soft boots, and bid them teach their sons to strum the lyre and pluck the harp, and to take up shopkeeping. And quickly, O king, you will see them turn into women rather than men, so that you need fear no revolt from them." Croesus suggested this to him, finding it more acceptable for the Lydians than being sold into slavery, knowing that
unless he offered a sufficiently weighty reason, Cyrus would not be talked into changing his mind, and fearing also that the Lydians, if they should escape the present danger, might later revolt from the Persians and be destroyed. Cyrus was pleased with the suggestion, and relenting from his anger, said he would follow it. Calling Mazares, a Mede, he ordered him to proclaim to the Lydians what Croesus had proposed, and further
to enslave all the others who had joined the Lydians in the campaign against Sardis, but to bring Pactyes himself to him alive at all costs. Having given these orders on the road, he marched on toward the land of the Persians, but Pactyes, learning that an army was approaching against him, took fright and fled to Cyme. Mazares the Mede, marching against Sardis with
whatever portion of Cyrus's army he had with him, and finding that Pactyes and his followers were no longer in Sardis, first compelled the Lydians to carry out Cyrus's orders, and from that command the Lydians changed their entire way of life. After this Mazares sent messengers to Cyme demanding that Pactyes be handed over. The people of Cyme decided to refer the matter for advice to
the god at Branchidae, for there was an oracle established there from ancient times, which all the Ionians and Aeolians were accustomed to consult. This place is in the territory of Miletus, above the harbor of Panormus. The people of Cyme, then, sent sacred envoys to the Branchidae and asked what they should do concerning Pactyes to please the gods. When they asked this, the oracle's answer was to hand Pactyes over
to the Persians. When the people of Cyme heard this report brought back, they set about doing so; but while the majority were inclined this way, Aristodicus son of Heracleides, a man of standing among the citizens, prevented the Cymaeans from doing this, distrusting the oracle and thinking that the sacred envoys had not reported truly, until other envoys went a second time to inquire about Pactyes, among whom Aristodicus himself was included. When they arrived
at Branchidae, Aristodicus consulted the oracle on behalf of all, asking as follows: "Lord, Pactyes the Lydian has come to us as a suppliant, fleeing a violent death that the Persians intend for him; and they demand his surrender, ordering the Cymaeans to give him up. We, though fearing the power of the Persians, have not yet dared to hand over the suppliant, until it be made clear to us plainly by you which of the two we should do." So he asked,
but the god again gave them the same oracle, ordering them to hand Pactyes over to the Persians. In response to this Aristodicus did the following deliberately: going around the temple in a circle, he removed the sparrows and all the other kinds of birds that had made their nests in the temple. As he carried this out, a voice reportedly came from the inner sanctuary directed at Aristodicus, saying
"Most impious of men, how dare you do this? Do you tear my suppliants out of the temple?" And Aristodicus, not at a loss for an answer, replied, "Lord, do you yourself come to the aid of your suppliants in this way, yet command the Cymaeans to hand over their suppliant?" And the god answered him again, saying, "Yes, I command it, so that by committing this impiety you may perish all the sooner, and not come again to the
oracle in the future concerning the surrender of suppliants." When the people of Cyme heard this report brought back, unwilling either to perish by surrendering him or to endure a siege while he stayed among them, they packed him off to Mytilene. But when Mazares sent messages demanding that they hand over Pactyes, the Mytilenaeans prepared to give him up in exchange for a certain payment—I cannot say exactly how much, for the matter was never completed. For when the Cymaeans learned that this was being carried out by the Mytilenaeans,
they sent a boat to Lesbos and brought Pactyes away to Chios. From there he was dragged out of the temple of Athena Polias by the Chians and handed over; the Chians gave him up in exchange for Atarneus, a district of Mysia opposite Lesbos. The Persians, once they had received Pactyes, kept him under guard, intending to present him to Cyrus. And for a long time afterward,
no Chian would offer barley grains as a first-offering to any god from that district of Atarneus, nor bake sacrificial cakes from its produce, and everything grown in that land was excluded from all religious offerings. So the Chians handed over Pactyes. After this Mazares campaigned against those who had joined in besieging Tabalus, and he enslaved the people of Priene, and overran the whole plain of the Maeander,
he overran the whole country, plundering with his army, and did the same to Magnesia. After this he died shortly of illness. When he had died, Harpagus came down as his successor in command, a man who was himself Median by birth, the same Harpagus whom Astyages the king of the Medes had feasted at that unlawful banquet, and who had helped Cyrus win the kingship. This man, now appointed general by Cyrus, when he arrived in Ionia began taking
the cities by means of earthworks: whenever he had shut the defenders up behind their walls, he would then pile up mounds of earth against the walls and so storm them. The first city of Ionia he attacked was Phocaea. These Phocaeans were the first of the Greeks to make long sea voyages, and it was they who opened up the Adriatic, Tyrsenia, Iberia, and Tartessus; they sailed not in round ships but in fifty-oared galleys. When they arrived
at Tartessus they won the friendship of the Tartessian king, a man named Arganthonius; he had ruled Tartessus for eighty years and lived a hundred and twenty years in all. This man became so fond of the Phocaeans that at first he urged them to leave Ionia and settle wherever they wished in his own country; but afterward, when he
could not persuade the Phocaeans to do this, and learning from them how the Mede was growing in power, he supplied funds so they could raise a wall around their city, giving without stint: for the circuit of the wall is not a few stadia, and all of it is built of great stones well fitted together. In this way the wall was completed for the Phocaeans. Harpagus, when he
brought up his army, laid siege to them, but offered terms, saying it would satisfy him if the Phocaeans were willing to tear down just one bastion of the wall and consecrate just one house. The Phocaeans, indignant at the prospect of slavery, said they wished to deliberate for one day and would then give their answer; but while they deliberated, they urged him to pull his forces back away from the city wall. Harpagus said he knew well
what they intended to do, but nonetheless he would allow them to deliberate. So while Harpagus withdrew his army from the wall, the Phocaeans in that time launched their fifty-oared ships, put aboard their children, wives, and all their movable goods, and besides these the statues from their temples and the other dedications, except for whatever was of bronze
or stone or painting; loading everything else aboard and embarking themselves, they sailed for Chios. The Persians took possession of Phocaea now emptied of its men. But when the Chians would not sell the Phocaeans the islands called the Oenussae, even for payment, fearing that they might become a trading port and that their own island might thereby be shut out from trade, the Phocaeans for this reason set sail
for Cyrnus (Corsica): for on Cyrnus, twenty years before this, they had founded a city in accordance with an oracle, whose name was Alalia. Arganthonius by this time was already dead. As they set out for Cyrnus, they first sailed back to Phocaea and slaughtered the Persian garrison that had taken over the city from Harpagus and was guarding it. After they had accomplished this, they laid strong curses upon
on any of their own number who might be left behind by the fleet, and beyond these curses they also sank a lump of iron into the sea, swearing they would not come back to Phocaea until that lump of iron floated up again. Yet as they made for Cyrnus, more than half the citizens were overcome by longing and sorrow for their city and the customs of their homeland; breaking their oath, they turned their ships around and sailed back to Phocaea. The rest,
who kept the oath, weighed anchor from the Oenussae and sailed on. When they arrived at Cyrnus, they lived together with those who had come there earlier for five years, and they built temples. But since they were raiding and plundering all their neighbors, the Tyrsenians and Carthaginians made common cause and campaigned against them, each side with sixty ships. The Phocaeans, manning
sixty ships of their own, meeting them out in the sea men call the Sardonian. Once the fighting began, the Phocaeans came away with something like a Cadmean victory: forty of their vessels were wrecked, and the twenty ships left over were unfit for use, since their rams had been twisted out of true. Putting in at Alalia, they gathered up their children, their wives, and as much of their other belongings
their ships were able to carry, and then, abandoning Cyrnus, sailed for Rhegium. As for the men of the destroyed ships, the Carthaginians and Tyrsenians divided them by lot, and among the Tyrsenians the people of Agylla drew by far the largest share of them, and these they led out and stoned to death. Afterward, everything that passed by that place belonging to the Agyllaeans, where the stoned Phocaeans
lay, became distorted, crippled, and paralyzed—sheep, pack animals, and men alike. The Agyllaeans sent to Delphi, wishing to atone for their wrongdoing, and the Pythia bade them do what the Agyllaeans still perform to this day: they hold great funeral rites in their honor and establish athletic and equestrian contests. Such was the fate that befell these Phocaeans;
but others of them fled to Rhegium, and setting out from there they took possession of a city in the land of Oenotria which is now called Hyele; they founded this city after learning from a man of Poseidonia that the Pythia's oracle had meant Cyrnus the hero, not the island, when she told them to found a colony there. So it went for the Phocaea in Ionia. The people of Teos did much the same as these.
Once Harpagus had brought down their wall with a mound, they went aboard their vessels, every one of them, and sailed off toward Thrace. There they built the city of Abdera, a site that Timesius of Clazomenae had settled earlier without success — he was chased off by the Thracians, though nowadays the Teians of Abdera honor him as a hero. Of all the Ionians, these people alone refused to accept slavery and left
their homelands; the rest of the Ionians, except the Milesians, met Harpagus in battle just as those who left had done, and each fought bravely for his own city, but being defeated and captured they remained each in their own place and carried out what was commanded of them. The Milesians, as I have said before, having made a treaty with Cyrus himself, kept quiet. Thus for a second time
Ionia had been enslaved. When Harpagus had subdued the Ionians on the mainland, the Ionians who held the islands, in fear of this, gave themselves up to Cyrus. Now that the Ionians had been ill-treated but were nonetheless gathering at the Panionium, I am told that Bias, a man of Priene, put forward an opinion most useful to the Ionians, one which, had they followed it, would have allowed them to be the most prosperous of the Greeks: he urged that the Ionians should set out together with a common fleet
and sail to Sardinia, where they would found one single city for every Ionian, and by doing so escape their servitude and flourish, since they would be settling the largest of all islands and ruling over the rest; whereas if they remained in Ionia, he said, he could see no lasting freedom in store for them. That was the advice Bias of Priene gave, though only after the Ionians had already met ruin; a sound proposal, though, had likewise been offered before Ionia's fall, by Thales, a man from
Miletus, whose family was originally Phoenician; he urged that the Ionians should have a single council chamber, and that it should be at Teos, since Teos is the center of Ionia, and that the other cities, while still inhabited, should be regarded no differently than if they were mere districts of it. These, then, were the opinions these men put forward. Harpagus, having subdued Ionia, made an expedition against the Carians, the Caunians, and the Lycians,
bringing Ionians and Aeolians along with him. Among these peoples, the Carians had crossed over to the mainland from the islands. Long ago, as subjects of Minos, going by the name Leleges, they occupied the islands and paid no tribute at all, as far as I can trace the matter back by report; yet whenever Minos had need of them, they crewed his ships. Because Minos
had subdued much land and was successful in war, the Carian people were by far the most renowned of all peoples at that time. And three inventions came from them, which the Greeks adopted: it was the Carians who first taught the fastening of crests onto helmets and the putting of devices onto shields, and they were the first
to make handgrips for shields; before this, all who were accustomed to use shields carried them without handgrips, guiding them by means of leather straps slung around the neck and left shoulder. Long after the Carians, the Dorians and Ionians were driven out from the islands, and thus came to the mainland. Concerning the Carians, this is the account the Cretans
claim this happened; yet the Carians themselves tell a different story, holding that they are native to the mainland and have always gone by the very name they carry today. As proof they point to an old temple of Carian Zeus at Mylasa, where the Mysians and Lydians also take part, as being kin to the Carians, since, they say, Lydus and Mysus were brothers
with Car. So these groups share in the temple, but any people who, though foreign in origin, came to speak the Carian tongue, have no part in it. As for the Caunians, to my mind they are native to the land, though they themselves claim descent from Crete. Their language has drawn close to Carian — or Carian has drawn close to theirs (I cannot say for certain which); but their customs stand apart
from those of other peoples, and from the Carians as well. For among them it is considered most admirable to gather in drinking companies according to age and friendship, men, women, and children together. And when foreign cults had been established among them, afterward, when they came to disapprove of these and resolved to keep only their ancestral gods, all the Caunians of military age put on their armor and, striking the air with their spears, drove out the foreign gods all the way to the borders
of Calynda joined them and claimed they were driving out the foreign gods. Such are the customs these people follow. As for the Lycians, they came originally out of Crete (in those early days non-Greeks held the whole of Crete). A dispute arose in Crete over the throne between Europa's two sons, Sarpedon and Minos; Minos won out in the struggle and forced Sarpedon and his followers into exile
and the exiles made their way to the land of Milyas in Asia. The country the Lycians inhabit today was in old times Milyas, and the Milyans were then called Solymi. As long as Sarpedon ruled them, they went by the name they had brought with them — the name their neighbors still use for the Lycians today — Termilae. But when Lycus
son of Pandion, himself driven out of Athens by his brother Aegeus, came to the Termilae and joined Sarpedon, then in time they came to be called Lycians after Lycus. Their customs are partly Cretan, partly Carian. But they have one practice all their own, found among no other people in the world: they name themselves after their mothers, not their
fathers. Ask a Lycian who he is, and he will recite his descent on his mother's side, reckoning back through his mother's mothers. If a citizen woman lives with a slave, the children are considered legitimate; but if a citizen man — even the foremost man among them — takes a foreign wife or concubine, the children have no standing. The Carians, then, were enslaved
by Harpagus without a single notable deed to their credit — neither the Carians themselves nor any of the Greeks who live in that country. Among these are the Cnidians, colonists from Sparta. Their territory faces the sea and is called Triopium; it begins at the Bybassian peninsula, and all of Cnidian land except a small strip is surrounded by water (on
the north the Ceramic Gulf bounds it, on the south the sea off Syme and Rhodes). That small strip, about five stades across, the Cnidians set about digging through while Harpagus was subduing Ionia, wanting to turn their country into an island. The whole of it would then have lain inside; for where Cnidian territory ends at the mainland
is exactly the isthmus they were cutting. The Cnidians were working with a large force, but the workmen seemed to be getting injured more often, and more uncannily, than was natural — on other parts of the body but especially around the eyes as the rock splintered — so they sent envoys to Delphi to ask what was opposing them. The Pythia, as the Cnidians themselves tell it, gave them this answer
in iambic trimeter: Do not fortify the isthmus, do not dig; Zeus would have made an island, had he wished. When the Pythia delivered this, the Cnidians stopped their digging, and when Harpagus arrived with his army they surrendered themselves without a fight. There were also the Pedasians, who lived inland above Halicarnassus. Whenever anything unwelcome was about to happen to them or to their
neighbors, the priestess of Athena grew a long beard. This happened to them three times. These were the only people around Caria who held out against Harpagus for any length of time, and they gave him the most trouble, fortifying a mountain called Lide. In time the Pedasians were taken. As for the Lycians, when Harpagus marched his army into the plain of Xanthus, they came out to fight, few against many,
and performed feats of valor; but when they were beaten and penned into their city, they gathered their wives, children, property, and household slaves into the acropolis and set the whole acropolis on fire. Having done that, and having sworn terrible oaths, the men of Xanthus went out and died fighting, every one of them. Of the people who call themselves Xanthian Lycians today, most — all but
eighty households — are newcomers; those eighty households happened to be away from home at the time and so survived. That is how Harpagus took Xanthus, and he took Caunus in much the same way, for the Caunians for the most part copied the example of the Lycians. So Harpagus was laying waste to lower Asia, while Cyrus himself dealt with the upper country, subduing every nation
subduing it, sparing nothing. Most of what he did in this I will leave aside; but I will mention what cost him the greatest trouble and deserves telling above all. Once Cyrus had brought the whole mainland under his hand, he turned against the Assyrians. Assyria does have a number of other large towns, but the one most renowned and mightiest, the place where the royal residence stood once Nineveh had fallen —
the royal residence, was Babylon — a city of roughly this description. It stands on a broad plain, a square in shape, each side one hundred and twenty stades in length, so that the full circuit around the city comes to four hundred and eighty stades altogether. Such was the extent of the Babylonian city, and it was adorned unlike any other town known to us. First there was a ditch,
deep and wide and full of water, runs around it; then comes a wall fifty royal cubits thick and two hundred cubits high — the royal cubit being three fingers longer than the common cubit. I should explain, in addition, where the earth from the moat was used and how the wall
had been completed. While digging out the ditch, they shaped bricks from the soil brought up out of the trench, and once enough bricks had been fired in kilns, they set to building: using hot bitumen for mortar and laying woven reed mats between every thirtieth course, they first raised the banks of the trench, then the wall itself, in that same manner. Along the top of the wall, on
its edges, they built single-room chambers facing one another, leaving between the chambers room enough to drive a four-horse chariot around. Set in the circuit of the wall are a hundred gates, all of bronze, with bronze posts and lintels likewise. There is another city eight days' journey from Babylon; its name is Is. There is a river there, not a large one — the river too is called Is —
and its current empties into the river Euphrates. This river Is, together with its waters, also throws up a great many clumps of bitumen, and it was from there that the bitumen used on Babylon's wall was fetched. In this fashion, then, Babylon had been fortified. The city falls into two sections, split down the center by a river called the Euphrates, which runs
out of Armenia, a great, deep, swift river, and it empties into the Erythraean Sea. Each of the two walls has its arms carried down to the river, and from there a breastwork of baked brick runs bending along either bank of the river. The city itself, full of houses three and four stories high, is cut through with straight streets,
both the others and the cross-streets that run down to the river. At each of these streets there were wicket-gates in the breastwork along the river, as many in number as the lanes, and these too were of bronze, and they too opened onto the river itself. This outer wall is the city's armor, but a second wall runs around inside it,
not much weaker than the other wall, though narrower. In the middle of each of the two districts of the city a stronghold was built: in one, the royal palace within a great strong enclosure; in the other, the sanctuary of Zeus Belus with its bronze gates, still standing in my time, a square two stades on every side. In the middle of the sanctuary is built a solid tower,
a stade in length and breadth, and on that tower stands another tower, and yet another upon that, up to eight towers in all. The way up runs in a spiral outside, around all the towers. About halfway up the ascent there is a landing with seats for resting, where those making the climb sit down and take a rest. In
at the top of the final tower stands a great shrine, and inside it rests a large couch, handsomely made up, with a golden table set beside it. No statue stands there at all, nor does any person spend the night inside except for a single native woman, whichever one the god selects out of all of them — or so the Chaldaeans claim, they being priests of this god. These
same men also claim — though I find it hard to credit — that the god himself comes into the shrine and takes his rest on the couch, exactly as happens, they say, at Egyptian Thebes, according to the Egyptians: there too a woman sleeps in the shrine of the Theban Zeus, and in both cases the women are said to have no
intercourse with any man. The same is true of the prophetess of the god at Patara in Lycia, when there is one — for the oracle is not always active there — but when there is one, she is shut in with the god at night inside the temple. In the sanctuary at Babylon there is also another temple below, where there is a great seated image of Zeus, made of gold, and beside it
a great golden table; the pedestal and the throne are also gold. As the Chaldaeans told it, these things were made from eight hundred talents of gold. Outside the temple is a golden altar, and there is also another great altar, on which the full-grown sheep are sacrificed; for on the golden altar only unweaned animals may be offered, and on
of the greater altar, and every year the Chaldeans burn a thousand talents of frankincense on it, at the time when they hold the festival for this god. In that sacred precinct there was still standing, at that time, a solid gold statue twelve cubits high. I myself did not see it; I report what is said by the Chaldeans. Darius son of
Hystaspes plotted against this statue but did not dare to take it, though Xerxes son of Darius did take it, and killed the priest who forbade him to move the statue. This is how that temple is adorned, and there are also many private dedications. Of this Babylon there were, of course, many other kings as well, whom I will mention in my account of Assyrian affairs, kings who added to the walls
and the temples, and among them also two women. The first to rule, who lived five generations before the later one, was named Semiramis; she it was who left behind the embankments across the plain, a sight worth seeing—before that the river used to flood the whole plain. The second of these queens, named Nitocris, was even
more shrewd than the woman who had ruled before her. She left behind, for one thing, the monuments I shall describe, and for another, seeing that the empire of the Medes was great and restless, and that among other cities they had already taken Nineveh, she took every precaution she could. First, the Euphrates river, which used to flow straight and runs through the middle of the city, this
she made so crooked by digging channels above the city that it now reaches, in its course, one of the villages in Assyria three times over; the village which the Euphrates reaches is called Arderikka. And even now those who travel from this sea to Babylon, sailing down the Euphrates, arrive at this same village three times
and after three days. This is one thing she did; and she also built up an embankment along each bank of the river, remarkable for its size and height. Far above Babylon she dug out a basin for a lake, running a short distance out from the river, digging it always to the depth of the water table, and making its circumference twenty and
four hundred stadia. The earth dug out from this excavation she used, heaping it up along the banks of the river. When it had been dug out, she brought stones and built a coping around it all the way round. She did both of these things—made the river crooked and the whole excavation a marsh—so that the river would be slower as it broke around many bends, and so that the routes
to Babylon would be crooked, and after these winding routes there would follow a long circuit around the lake. She carried out this work on that side of the country where the entrances lay and the shortest routes from Media, so that the Medes, by mingling with her people, might not learn about her affairs. These defenses she built up from the depths of the ground, and she also added the following work to them. Since the city
was in two sections, with the river running between them, under the earlier kings, whenever anyone wished to cross from one section to the other, he had to cross by boat, which was, I suppose, a nuisance. But she foresaw this as well. For when she dug the basin for the lake, she left behind another monument from this same work: she had very long stones cut, and
once the stones lay ready and the basin had been dug out, she turned the whole current of the river aside into the hollow she had excavated; while that filled, the old riverbed dried up in the meantime, and during that time she rebuilt the river's banks along the city with fired brick, along with the stairways running down from the small gates to the river, matching
same plan as the wall, and then, roughly in the middle of the city, with the stones she had quarried, she built a bridge, binding the stones together with iron and lead. Across it she used to lay, whenever day came, squared timbers, on which the Babylonians made their crossing; but at night these timbers were removed, for this reason, so that people would not go back and forth in the
night stealing from one another. When the excavated basin had become a full lake fed by the river, and the work on the bridge had been finished, she brought the Euphrates back from the lake into its old channel, and so the marsh that had been dug turned out, as she had planned, to be useful, and the citizens had a bridge built for them. This same queen also devised
the following kind of trick: above the busiest of the city's gates she had a tomb built for herself, raised high above the gates themselves, and she had inscribed on the tomb letters saying this: 'If any king of Babylon after me is short of money, let him open this tomb and take as much money as he wishes; but let him not open it otherwise, unless he is in want—it will not be for the better.' This
tomb remained undisturbed until the kingship passed to Darius. To Darius it seemed a terrible thing to make no use of these gates, and, though money lay there and the inscription itself invited him, not to take it; he made no use of these gates for this reason, that the corpse would be over his head as he drove through. When he opened the tomb, he found
not money, but the body itself, together with an inscription reading: 'Had you not been greedy for wealth and shameless in your grasping, you would never have broken open the tombs of the dead.' Such, it is told, was the character of this queen. Now it was against the son of this very woman that Cyrus led his army — a son bearing his own father's name, Labynetus, along with the rule over the Assyrians.
When the Great King takes the field, he does so amply supplied from home with food and livestock, and along with these he carries water drawn from the river Choaspes, the stream that runs by Susa — the king drinks from no river but that one. This Choaspes water, once boiled, is hauled behind him by a great number of four-wheeled mule wagons bearing it in silver jars, following wherever
he happens to march at any time. Now when Cyrus, marching against Babylon, came to the river Gyndes—whose sources are in the Matienian mountains, and which flows through the country of the Dardanians and empties into another river, the Tigris, which in turn flows past the city of Opis and empties into the Red Sea—when Cyrus tried to cross this river Gyndes, since it was navigable by boats, then
one of the sacred white horses, in his wantonness, plunged into the river and tried to cross it, but the river swept him under and carried him off. Cyrus was furious with the river for this act of insolence, and threatened to make it so weak that in the future even women would cross it easily without wetting their knees. After this
threat, he set aside his campaign against Babylon and divided his army in two; having divided it, he marked out with cords and laid out a hundred and eighty straight channels running in every direction from each bank of the Gyndes, and having arranged his army along them he ordered them to dig. Since a great multitude was at work, the task was completed, yet even so they spent that entire summer working there. When
he had exacted his revenge on the river Gyndes by cutting it up into three hundred and sixty channels, and with the second spring now coming on, he then marched on Babylon. The Babylonians came out and took up positions, awaiting him. When his advance brought him near the city, the Babylonians engaged him in battle, but, beaten in the encounter, they were driven back and penned inside the town. Since they had long since realized that Cyrus was not
content to stay still, but saw him attacking every nation alike, they had stored up provisions for very many years. So they took no account whatsoever of the siege, while Cyrus was caught in perplexity, since a great deal of time was passing and his affairs were making no further progress. Whether someone else suggested it to him in his perplexity, or he himself understood what he had to do, he did the following. He stationed
his whole army at the point where the river enters the city, and behind the city he stationed others, at the point where the river flows out of it, and he told his troops that as soon as they saw the channel become passable, they should enter the city there. Having arranged his forces and given these instructions, he himself marched off with the useless part of his army.
Once he reached the lake, Cyrus carried out the very works the Babylonian queen had made along the river and around the lake: he cut a channel and led the river into the lake, at that time a marsh, so that the old bed became fordable as the water level fell. With this accomplished, the Persians stationed there for just this purpose,
at that very point, along the channel of the Euphrates, now that it had dropped to about the middle of a man's thigh, entered Babylon by this route. Now if the Babylonians had learned beforehand, or had found out, what Cyrus was doing, they would have let the Persians enter and then destroyed them most miserably; for by shutting all the little gates leading to the river and
climbing up onto the embankments raised along the riverbanks by the little gates, would have trapped the enemy as though in a net. As matters turned out, though, the Persians caught them off guard entirely. And owing to the sheer size of the city, so those who dwell there report, once the outer districts had already fallen, the Babylonians living at the center had no idea
learn that the city had been taken, but because they happened to be holding a festival at that very time, they went on dancing and enjoying themselves until they learned the full truth. And that is how Babylon was captured on that first occasion. As for the resources of the Babylonians, I will show how great they are by many other proofs, and also by this one: for the Great King himself and his army, the whole land under his rule is divided up for their support, apart from the tribute.
Now since there are twelve months in the year, the land of Babylon feeds him for four of those months, and the rest of Asia for the other eight. So the Assyrian land is a third as strong, in resources, as the whole of the rest of Asia. And the governorship of this land, which the Persians call a satrapy, is by far the strongest of all the governorships, seeing that Tritantaechmes son of Artabazus, who held this province from the King, received every single day a full artaba of silver. Now the artaba is a Persian measure, and holds three Attic choenixes more than an Attic medimnos. He also kept horses of his own, apart from the war-horses,
eight hundred stallions and sixteen thousand mares, since each stallion serviced twenty mares. And so vast a pack of Indian hounds was maintained that four large villages on the plain, freed from every other tax, were charged solely with feeding the dogs. Such were the resources available to the governor of Babylon. Now Assyria receives little rainfall, and it is that scant rain which feeds the grain's root;
but it is by being irrigated from the river that the crop is brought to fullness and the grain comes to maturity — not as in Egypt, where the river itself rises over the fields, but here it is watered by hand and by swing-beam devices. For the whole land of Babylon, like that of Egypt, is cut through by canals, and the largest of these canals
is navigable by ships; it runs toward the winter sunrise, and connects with another river, from the Euphrates to the Tigris, on whose banks the city of Nineveh once stood. This is, of all the lands we know, by far the best for producing the fruit of Demeter — indeed it does not even attempt to bear other trees at all, neither fig, nor vine, nor olive — but for producing the fruit
of Demeter it is so good that it regularly yields two hundredfold, and when it bears at its very best, it yields three hundredfold. There the blades of the wheat and barley plants grow easily four fingers broad. As for how tall a plant millet and sesame grow to, though I know well, I will not record it, being well aware that
to those who have not visited the land of Babylon, even what has already been said about its crops has met with a great deal of disbelief. They use no oil at all except what they make from sesame. They have date palms growing throughout the whole plain, most of them fruit-bearing, from which they make food, wine, and honey; they tend these
in the same way as figs, and in particular, as regards the palms the Greeks call male, they tie the fruit of these onto the fruit-bearing palms, so that the gall-insect may enter the fruit and ripen it, and so that the fruit of the palm does not fall off; for the male palms carry the gall-insect in their fruit just as wild figs do. But the greatest wonder of all among the things there, next to
concerning the city, I will now turn to describe: their boats, those that come down the river to Babylon, are round in shape and made entirely of hide. Cutting willow ribs among the Armenians settled farther upstream than the Assyrians, they stretch skins over the frame as an outer covering, forming something like a floor, without shaping a distinct stern or bow, but making the whole thing round like a shield; then, after loading it up,
the whole boat with straw, they let it drift down the river, loaded with cargo — most often with palm-wood jars full of wine. It is steered by two paddles and two men standing upright, one pulling his paddle inward and the other pushing his outward. These boats are made both very large and smaller; the largest of them
they set the whole boat loose to drift downriver, filled with cargo — mostly jars of palm wine brought down for sale. Two steering oars guide it, worked by two men standing upright, one pulling his oar inward while the other pushes his outward. These boats are made in sizes both very large and smaller; the biggest of them
can hold a cargo of five thousand talents. Each boat carries a live donkey aboard, and the larger ones carry several. So once they have sailed down and reached Babylon and sold off their cargo, they put the boat's ribs and all its straw up for sale, load the hides onto the donkeys, and drive back to the Armenians, since heading upriver is simply not
possible in any way, given how swift the current runs — which is exactly why the boats are built from hides rather than timber. Once they get back to Armenian country, driving their donkeys ahead of them, they build fresh boats the same way. Such, then, is the design of their boats. As for clothing, this is what they wear: a linen tunic that reaches down to the feet, and over
for anyone to carry a staff without an emblem. Such then is their arrangement as regards the body. As for their customs, they are established as follows. The wisest of them, in my judgment, is this one — which I understand the Eneti of Illyria also practice: in each village, once a year, they used to do the following. Whenever the girls reached marriageable age, they would gather all of them together and bring them to one place,
assembling them in a group; and around them stood a crowd of men, and a herald would stand each girl up in turn and put her up for sale — first the most beautiful of all of them; then, once she had been sold for a large sum of gold, he would announce another, the one who was next most beautiful, and they would be sold for marriage. As many of the wealthy Babylonians as were eligible for marriage would outbid one another
for the most beautiful girls; but as many as were of the common people and eligible for marriage had no need of good looks, since these men would take money along with plainer girls. For once the herald had gone through selling off the most beautiful of the girls, he would then stand up the ugliest one, or one who was crippled, if there were any, and put her up for sale as well, offering her to whoever was willing to take the least amount of gold and live with her, until
she went to whoever undertook to accept the least. And the gold for this came from the beautiful girls, so that in this way the good-looking girls provided dowries for the ugly and the crippled ones. But a man was not permitted to give his own daughter to whomever he wished, nor could the purchaser take the girl away without a guarantor; instead the buyer had to provide guarantors that he would indeed live with her, and only then take her away. And if the two did not get along, the law required
that the money be given back. It was also permitted for anyone who wished, coming from another village, to buy a wife in this way. Now this was the finest of their customs, but it does not continue to exist today; instead they have recently devised something else, so as to prevent the men from mistreating the women or taking them off to another city — for since they were conquered and reduced to hardship and their households ruined, everyone among the common people who is short of livelihood
now prostitutes his female children. Second in wisdom is this other custom established among them: they carry the sick out into the marketplace, since they have no physicians at all. People passing by approach the sick man and offer advice about his illness, if they themselves have ever suffered anything like what the sick man has, or have seen another person suffer it; approaching him in this way, they advise him and urge upon him whatever remedies they themselves used
sell their daughters into prostitution. A second custom they hold in high regard is this: they carry the sick out into the marketplace, since they have no use for physicians. Passersby then approach the sick person and offer advice about the illness, whether from having suffered something similar themselves or from having watched another go through it; they come forward with such counsel, urging whatever course they themselves followed
both of them bathe, for they will touch no vessel before they have bathed. The Arabians do this same thing as well. But the most shameful of the customs among the Babylonians is this one: every native woman is required, once in her life, to sit in the sanctuary of Aphrodite and have intercourse with a strange man. Many women, disdaining to mingle with the others because they are proud of their wealth, ride out to the sanctuary in covered carriages drawn by teams of horses
and stand there; a large retinue of attendants follows behind them. But most of the women do as follows: they sit in the precinct of Aphrodite wearing a wreath of cord around their heads — many women — for some are arriving while others are leaving. Rope-stretched passageways run in every direction through the midst of the women, along which the strangers pass and make their choice; and once a woman has taken her seat there,
she may not return home until one of the strangers has thrown silver into her lap and had intercourse with her outside the sanctuary. And as he throws the money he must say these words: "I call upon the goddess Mylitta on your behalf." The Assyrians call Aphrodite Mylitta. The amount of the silver may be whatever it happens to be, for she will certainly not refuse it — it is not lawful for her to do so, since this silver becomes sacred
once thrown. She follows the first man who throws it and rejects no one. But once she has had intercourse, having thus discharged her obligation to the goddess, she returns home, and from that point on you could not give her anything so large as to win her again. Now as many of the women as are endowed with good looks and stature are released quickly, but as many as are unshapely among them wait a long time,
unable to...
to fulfill the custom - for some remain apart for three or four years. There is a similar custom in parts of Cyprus as well. These, then, are the customs established among the Babylonians. There are also three of their tribes who eat nothing but fish, which they catch and dry in the sun, and then do as follows: they throw them into a mortar, pound them fine with pestles, and strain the pulp
through a linen cloth, and whoever wishes then has it as dough to knead, or bakes it in the manner of bread. Now when Cyrus had subdued this nation as well, he conceived a desire to bring the Massagetae under his rule. This people is said to be great and warlike, dwelling toward the east and the rising sun, beyond the river Araxes, opposite
the Issedones. Some say that this nation, too, is Scythian. The Araxes is said to be both larger and smaller than the Ister; in it there are said to be many islands about the size of Lesbos, and on them men who dig up all sorts of roots in summer for food, and who store away fruits found on trees, gathered in season, for provisions,
and eat these in winter. They have also discovered other trees bearing a certain kind of fruit, which, whenever the people gather together in companies and light a fire, they sit around in a circle and throw onto the fire; and as they smell the fruit burning as it is thrown on, they become intoxicated by the fumes just as the Greeks do by wine, and the more fruit is thrown on, the more intoxicated they become, until
get up and dance, breaking into song. Such, it is said, is how they live. As for the Araxes, its waters flow out of Matienian territory, the very source from which the Gyndes flows too — the same river Cyrus once split apart into three hundred sixty separate channels — and it pours out through forty mouths, all but one of which drain into marshland and shallow pools; in these
men are said to dwell who eat raw fish and are accustomed to wear the skins of seals as clothing. The one remaining mouth of the Araxes flows through open country into the Caspian Sea. The Caspian Sea stands by itself, not mingling with the other sea. For the sea the Greeks sail upon, the sea beyond the Pillars called Atlantic, and the Red Sea,
all happen to be one and the same sea. But the Caspian is a separate sea by itself, being, in length, a fifteen days' voyage for a ship under oars, and in width, at its widest point, eight days' voyage. Along the western side of this sea stretches the Caucasus, the largest of all mountain ranges in extent and the highest in height. Many and various peoples of men it holds
keeps to itself, the Caucasus, most of its people surviving entirely off the wild woods. Among them, trees are said to bear leaves of a particular kind that, when crushed and mixed with water, let people paint animal figures on their garments; these figures never wash away but age right along with the rest of the wool as if woven in from the beginning. Sexual union among these people, it is said, happens openly, just
as with sheep and cattle. So on the western side, this sea called the Caspian is bounded by the Caucasus, but on the eastern side, toward the rising sun, an endless plain stretches out as far as the eye can see. Of this great plain the Massagetae hold no small share, and it was against them that Cyrus had set his heart on making war. For many
there were also great things driving him forward and spurring him on: first, his lineage, the sense that he was more than merely human; second, the run of success he had enjoyed in war, for whatever nation Cyrus set his mind on attacking had no way of escaping him. At that time the Massagetae were ruled by a woman, her husband having died; Tomyris was her name. Cyrus sent envoys to court her,
claiming he wanted her as his wife. Tomyris, however, saw that it was not herself he sought but the throne of the Massagetae, and refused to let him approach. After that, once his trickery failed to work, Cyrus marched openly to the Araxes and launched his campaign against the Massagetae in plain sight, joining bridges across the river so his army could cross, and raising towers on boats
that were used to ferry across the river. While he was occupied with this labor, Tomyris sent a herald and said the following: "King of the Medes, stop pressing so hard at what you are pressing at, for you cannot know whether this, once completed, will turn out well for you. Stop, and be king over your own people, and endure watching us rule over those we rule. Since you will not be willing to take this advice,
but prefer anything to being at peace - well then, if you are so eager to test yourself against the Massagetae, abandon the labor you now have in bridging the river, and withdraw three days' journey from the river while we do the same, and then cross into our land. Or if you would rather receive us into yours, then you do the same." Hearing this, Cyrus called together the leading
men of Persia, and gathering them, laid the matter before them, asking their advice on which course to take. Their opinions all fell in agreement, urging that Tomyris and her army be received into the country. But Croesus the Lydian, who was present, disagreed with this opinion and declared one contrary to the one proposed, speaking as follows: "O king, I told you before
that since Zeus has given me to you, I would, to the best of my power, turn aside whatever misfortune I saw threatening your house; and my own sufferings, bitter as they were, have become lessons for me. If you believe yourself immortal, and that you command an army of immortals as well, there would be no point in my declaring my opinion to you; but if you recognize that you are a man, and that you rule over other men like yourself,
then learn this first: that human affairs turn in a circle, and its turning does not allow the same men always to prosper. Now then, I hold an opinion about the matter before us opposite to theirs. For if we agree to receive the enemy into our country, this is the danger it carries: if you are defeated, you lose your whole empire besides. For it is clear that if they win,
the Massagetae will not turn and run, but will push straight into your own territory. And if you win, the victory falls short of what it would be if you crossed into their land, defeated the Massagetae there, and then chased them down as they fled. Against that plan I set this counter: once you have beaten those who oppose you, you can drive straight ahead into Tomyris's realm. Beyond all this, it would be shameful, something no one could tolerate, for Cyrus son of Cambyses to give way to a woman and pull back
from the land. My advice now is that we cross over and advance as far as they retreat, and then, doing as follows, try to get the better of them. For as I understand it, the Massagetae have no experience of Persian luxuries and no acquaintance with fine and great things. For men such as these, then, we should slaughter freely a great number of our flocks, prepare them, and set out in our camp a banquet, along with bowls
generous portions of strong, undiluted wine, along with food of every sort; once this is done, we should leave the weakest men of the army behind and have the rest fall back to the river again. If my judgment does not fail me, when they catch sight of such abundance they will turn toward it, and from there we will have our proof of a great achievement." These were the plans laid against one another; Cyrus, however, abandoned his own first idea and instead adopted
that of Croesus, and announced to Tomyris that she should withdraw, since he himself would cross over to her side. She then withdrew, just as she had first promised; but Cyrus placed Croesus in the hands of his own son Cambyses, to whom he was giving the kingship, charging him earnestly to honor Croesus and treat him well if the crossing against the Massagetae should not turn out well, and having given these instructions and sent
these men back toward Persia while he himself, together with his army, crossed the river. Once he had made it across the Araxes, night fell, and while asleep in Massagetae territory he had a vision of this kind: in his sleep Cyrus seemed to see Hystaspes' eldest son bearing wings on his shoulders, one wing casting its shadow over Asia and the other over Europe.
Hystaspes son of Arsames, an Achaemenid, had as his eldest child Darius, who was roughly twenty years old at that time and had stayed behind in Persia, since he was not yet old enough for military service. When Cyrus woke up, he turned the vision over in his mind. Because it struck him as a weighty vision, he summoned Hystaspes, and drawing him apart
alone, said: "Hystaspes, your son has been caught plotting against me and against my rule. And I will tell you how I know this for certain: the gods watch over me and reveal to me in advance all that is coming upon me. Now, as I slept last night, I saw the eldest of your sons with wings upon his shoulders, and with one wing he overshadowed Asia, and with the other
Europe. There is, then, no way, from this vision, that he is not plotting against me. Now you must go back to Persia as quickly as possible, and see to it that when I come there after subduing this people, you bring your son before me for questioning." Cyrus said this believing that Darius was plotting against him; but the divine power was showing him in advance that he himself
was destined to die there in that land, and that his kingship would pass around to Darius. Hystaspes then answered him as follows: "O king, may there never be born a Persian man who would plot against you; and if there is such a one, may he perish as swiftly as possible - you who have made the Persians free instead of slaves, and rulers of all instead of being ruled by others. But if any vision tells you
"that my son is plotting new schemes against you, I hand him over to you to deal with him however you wish." Hystaspes, having answered in this way and crossed the Araxes, went off to Persia to keep watch over Darius, Cyrus's son, on Cyrus's behalf, while Cyrus, advancing a day's journey from the Araxes, did as Croesus had advised. After this, when Cyrus and the uncontaminated part
of the Persian army had withdrawn back to the Araxes, leaving behind the worthless part, a third of the Massagetae army came up and slaughtered those of Cyrus's troops who had been left, though they defended themselves, and when they saw the feast laid out, once they had overpowered their opponents, they lay down and feasted, and once filled with food and wine, they fell asleep. Then the Persians came upon them, killed many of them, and took many more still alive as captives, including
others, and also the son of Queen Tomyris, who was the general of the Massagetae, whose name was Spargapises. When she learned what had happened to the army and to her son, she sent a herald to Cyrus and said this: "Cyrus, insatiable for blood, do not be puffed up over this deed that has happened, if it was the vine's fruit that did it—that fruit on which you fill yourselves and rave so wildly that as the wine goes down
into your body, evil words float up on top of it—that with such a drug you deceitfully overcame my son, and not by force in fair battle. Now then, take up my advice, given in good faith: give me back my son and leave this land unpunished, even though you have insolently treated a third of the army of the Massagetae. But if you will not do this, I swear to you by the sun, the lord of the Massagetae,
that I will glut you with blood, insatiable as you are." Cyrus paid no heed at all to these words when they were reported to him. But Spargapises, the son of Queen Tomyris, once the wine had released him and he learned what trouble he was in, begged Cyrus to be freed from his bonds, and got his wish; but the moment he was released and his hands were free, he did away with himself. And so this man
met his end this way. Tomyris, once Cyrus refused to heed her warning, mustered her entire force and engaged him in battle. Of all the wars ever fought between non-Greek peoples, this one, I judge, was the most savage, and this is how I understand it to have unfolded. First, they say, the two sides stood at a distance and exchanged arrow-fire; then, once their arrows ran out, they crashed together and fought hand to hand with
spears and short blades, grappling in close combat. They remained locked together fighting for a great while, and neither army would give ground. At last the Massagetae came out on top; most of the Persian force was wiped out right there, and Cyrus himself lost his life, having ruled altogether for twenty-nine years. Tomyris then filled a wineskin with human blood and hunted through the fallen Persians
for the body of Cyrus; once she located it, she pushed his severed head into the skin, and mocking the corpse she spoke these words: "Even though I remain alive and beat you in battle, you ruined me by seizing my son through deceit; now, exactly as I warned you, I will drench you in blood." Such are the many differing reports concerning how Cyrus met his death,
this is the one that seems to me most credible. The Massagetae wear clothing similar to the Scythians and follow a similar way of life. They fight both on horseback and on foot—for they take part in both—and they are archers and spearmen, and it is their custom to carry battle-axes. They use gold and bronze for everything: for all their spearheads, arrowheads, and battle-axes they use bronze throughout, and for whatever
goes around the head, belts, and shoulder-straps, they adorn themselves with gold. Likewise for their horses, they put bronze breastplates around the chest, while the bits and bridles and cheek-pieces they fit with gold. They use neither iron nor silver at all, for indeed neither is found in their country, but gold and bronze are boundless there. As for customs, they observe
the following. Each man marries a wife, but they hold the wives in common: for what the Greeks say the Scythians do is not done by the Scythians but by the Massagetae. When a Massagetan man desires a woman, he hangs his quiver in front of her wagon and lies with her without shame. There is no other limit set for them on age; but when a man becomes very old, all his relatives gather together and sacrifice
him, together with other animals slaughtered alongside him, and once they have boiled the flesh they hold a feast on it. This they regard as the happiest possible fate; but whoever dies of illness they refuse to eat, burying him in the earth instead, treating it as a misfortune that he never reached the point of being offered up. They plant no crops at all, living instead off their flocks and off fish, which come to them in great supply from the Araxes river; and milk forms a staple of their diet.
The sun is the only god they worship, and to it they offer horses in sacrifice. The reasoning behind this sacrifice is this: to the swiftest of all the gods they allot the swiftest of all mortal things.

======== Histories — Book 2 (Euterpe) ========

Upon Cyrus's death, Cambyses took over the kingship, being Cyrus's son by Cassandane, daughter of Pharnaspes; her death, which occurred earlier, had caused Cyrus himself deep grief, and he had commanded every one of his subjects to observe mourning for her too. So Cambyses, son of this woman and of Cyrus, treated the Ionians and Aeolians as slaves inherited from his father and launched a military expedition against Egypt,
taking along others of his subjects, and in particular the Greeks he ruled. Now the Egyptians, before Psammetichus became their king, believed that they themselves were the first of all people to come into being. But when Psammetichus, having become king, wished to know who had been first, from that time on they believed the Phrygians had come into being before themselves, and all other peoples after themselves. Psammetichus, since he was unable by inquiry to find any way
to discover who the first people had been, devised the following scheme. He gave two newborn children of ordinary parents to a herdsman to raise among his flocks, with instructions of a certain kind: no one was to utter any word in their presence; they were to be left lying by themselves in a lonely hut; at the proper time he was to bring goats to them, and having satisfied them with milk, tend to the rest of his business. Psammetichus did and ordered these things
because he wanted to hear, once the children were past their meaningless babbling, what word they would burst out with first. And this is exactly what happened. For after a span of two years had passed with the herdsman doing this, one day as he opened the door and went in, both children fell before him and said 'bekos,' stretching out their hands. The first time he heard this, the herdsman kept quiet about it, but since it kept happening again and again as he came and tended to them,
and this word was repeated so much, at last he reported it to his master and, at his command, brought the children into his presence. Psammetichus himself, having heard it, inquired who called anything 'bekos,' and inquiring further he discovered that the Phrygians call bread by that name. On these grounds the Egyptians conceded, having judged the matter by such evidence, that the Phrygians were older than themselves. That this is how it happened I heard from the priests of
Hephaestus in Memphis. The Greeks, however, tell many other foolish stories, among them that Psammetichus had the tongues of certain women cut out and had the children raised in that manner in the company of these women. So much did they tell me concerning the rearing of the children; but I heard other things too when I went to Memphis and spoke with the priests of Hephaestus. Indeed,
I turned aside to Thebes and to the City of the Sun for this same purpose, hoping to learn whether their reports would match what I had heard at Memphis; for the people of the City of the Sun have a reputation as the best-informed of all Egyptians. As for what they told me concerning divine matters, I have little wish to lay it all out, apart from just naming the gods, since I take it that everyone understands such things equally well; but as for
I do bring up any of it, I will only do so because my narrative leaves me no choice. When it comes to human affairs, though, this is what they said, and here their stories matched: the Egyptians were the very first people anywhere to work out the year, splitting it into twelve segments corresponding to the seasons. They claimed to have worked this out from observing the stars; and to my mind their method beats the Greek one, in that the Greeks add an extra month every third year to keep pace with the seasons, whereas the Egyptians
count the twelve months at thirty days apiece, then tack on five extra days each year beyond that total, so that for them the cycle of seasons returns to its starting point exactly. They also said the Egyptians were the very first to fix names for the twelve gods, which the Greeks then borrowed from them; that the Egyptians were the first to dedicate altars, statues, and temples to the gods, and the first to carve animal figures into stone. And regarding these matters,
most, in fact, they showed had really happened that way. They said that the first man to become king of Egypt was Min, and that in his time all of Egypt except the Thebaic district was marsh, and none of the land now lying below Lake Moeris existed above water, the voyage up the river to that place from the sea being seven days. And what they told me about the
land struck me, too, as sound; for it is obvious even without hearing it beforehand, to anyone with sense who simply looks — that the Egypt the Greeks sail to is territory the Egyptians gained and a present from the river, and this applies also to the region beyond this lake as far as a three-day sail, about which the priests told me nothing more of this sort, though the same holds true. For the character of the
land is this. First: while you are still approaching by ship, a full day's sail from shore, drop a sounding-line and you will pull up mud, finding yourself in eleven fathoms. This alone reveals just how far the silt deposits of the land extend outward. Next, the length of Egypt itself along the coastline runs sixty schoinoi, by our reckoning of Egypt stretching from the Plinthinete Gulf to Lake Serbonis, beside
which Mount Casius stretches; from this point, then, the sixty schoinoi are reckoned. Those peoples who are short of land measure their country in fathoms, those who have somewhat less shortage in stadia, those who have much land in parasangs, and those who have land to excess in schoinoi. A parasang is equal to thirty stadia, and the schoinos, an Egyptian measure, is equal to sixty stadia. So the coastline of Egypt
would be three thousand six hundred stadia. From there inland as far as Heliopolis, Egypt is wide, all of it flat, waterlogged, and muddy. The road from the sea up to Heliopolis is about the same length as the road from Athens, from the altar of the twelve gods, leading to Pisa
and to the temple of Olympian Zeus. One who calculated it would find the difference between these two roads to be small, not more than fifteen stadia in length; for the road from Athens to Pisa falls short of one thousand five hundred stadia by fifteen, while the road from the sea to Heliopolis comes to that exact number.
From Heliopolis upward, Egypt is narrow. On one side the mountain range of Arabia stretches, running from north to south and always further, up toward the sea called the Red Sea; in this range are the stone quarries from which the pyramids at Memphis were cut. There the range ends and bends back to where I have said; on the other side,
where it is at its very longest, as I learned by inquiry, it takes two months to travel from east to west, and its eastern extremities produce frankincense. Such, then, is this mountain range. On the Libyan side of Egypt another mountain range stretches, a rocky one, in which the pyramids are, covered over with sand, running in the same
manner as the part of the Arabian range that runs toward the south. Now from Heliopolis the land is no longer wide as Egypt goes, but for about fourteen days' sail up the river Egypt is narrow, the land between the mountain ranges mentioned being flat; and the stadia seemed to me to be, where it is narrowest, not more than two hundred, from the
Arabian mountains to the one called the Libyan. Beyond that, again, Egypt is wide. Such, then, is the nature of this land. From Heliopolis to Thebes is a voyage upstream of nine days, the distance being four thousand eight hundred sixty stadia, there being eighty-one schoinoi. Adding up these stadia of Egypt, the coastal part I have
already stated above at three thousand six hundred stades; and I will now note the distance from the sea inland as far as Thebes: it comes to six thousand one hundred twenty stades. From Thebes to the city called Elephantine measures one thousand eight hundred stades. Of this territory just described, the greater part, according to what the priests told me,
seemed to me too to be land acquired by the Egyptians. For the region between the mountain ranges mentioned, which lie above the city of Memphis, appeared to me once to have been a gulf of the sea, just as, to compare small things with great, the region around Ilium and Teuthrania and Ephesus and the plain of the Maeander are. For of the rivers that have silted up those regions,
the Nile, having five mouths, none of them can be matched in volume to even a single one of them. There are also other rivers, smaller than the Nile, that have nonetheless produced great effects: among them I can name several, not least the Achelous, which runs through Acarnania and, emptying into the sea, has already converted half the Echinades islands into dry land. There is,
also, within Arabian territory, a short distance from Egypt, an arm of the sea that reaches inland from what is called the Red Sea, remarkably long and narrow, as I shall describe: its length, measured from the innermost point out to the open sea, takes forty days by oar; its width, at the gulf's broadest point, spans half a day's sail. And within it the tide rises and falls
every single day. I think that Egypt too was once a gulf of just this kind, the one running in from the northern sea toward Ethiopia, and the other, the Arabian one which I am about to describe, running in from the southern sea toward Syria — their inner ends nearly boring through to meet each other, differing only slightly in position. If, then, the Nile
should wish to divert its course into this Arabian gulf, what is there to prevent it from being silted up by this river's flow within, say, twenty thousand years? For my part, I expect it could be silted up even within ten thousand years. If that is so, then in the time that has already elapsed before I was born, could not a gulf even much larger than this one have been silted up by so great and so hard-working a river?
Regarding Egypt, then, I am convinced those who make this claim are correct, and I myself am strongly of the same opinion, having observed that Egypt projects out beyond the surrounding land, that shells turn up on the mountains, and that a crust of salt forms on the surface strong enough to corrode even the pyramids, and that the only mountain in Egypt bearing sand is the one above Memphis; moreover, that its soil bears no resemblance to neighboring Arabia,
and Egypt bears no resemblance to Libya, nor to Syria either (since the coastal stretch of Arabia is settled by Syrians), but rather its earth is dark and fissured, being in fact mud and silt carried down from Ethiopia by the river. We know, by contrast, that Libyan soil runs redder and sandier, while Arabian and Syrian soil is more clay-like and stony.
This, too, the priests told me as a great proof concerning this land: that in the reign of King Moeris, whenever the river rose as little as eight cubits, it would irrigate the Egypt that lies below Memphis; and Moeris had not yet been dead nine hundred years when I heard this from the priests. But now, if the river does not rise at least sixteen or fifteen cubits,
it does not overflow onto the land. And it seems to me that the Egyptians who live below Lake Moeris, in the other regions and especially in the area called the Delta, if this land continues in due proportion to increase in height and grows correspondingly in extent, then, once the Nile no longer floods it, they will for all the rest of time suffer the very thing which they themselves once said the Greeks
would suffer. For having learned that the whole land of the Greeks is watered by rain and not by rivers as their own is, they said that the Greeks would one day be disappointed of a great hope and suffer badly from hunger. What this saying means to convey is that, if the god is unwilling to send them rain but instead afflicts them with drought, the Greeks will be overtaken by famine; for indeed
for them there is no other source of water apart from Zeus alone. This much has been fairly said by the Egyptians regarding the Greeks; but let me now lay out how things stand for the Egyptians themselves: if, as I noted earlier, the land below Memphis (which is the part still expanding) should continue to rise in elevation at the same rate as in the time gone by,
surely nothing else could happen but that the Egyptians who live there would go hungry, if their land gets no rain and the river is unable to overflow onto the fields. As it is now, certainly, these people harvest crops from the earth with less toil than anyone else in the world, including the rest of the Egyptians: they have no toil breaking open furrows with a plow, nor hoeing,
performing none of the labor other peoples put into raising a crop; instead, once the river rises on its own, floods the fields, and then withdraws again, each farmer sows his own plot and drives swine over it, and once the swine have trampled the seed into the soil, he simply waits for the harvest; then, after threshing the grain with the same swine, he brings it in.
Now if we wish to adopt the opinion of the Ionians about Egypt, who say that only the Delta is Egypt, reckoning its seaward part from the so-called Watchtower of Perseus all the way to the Salting-houses of Pelusium, a stretch of forty schoinoi, and saying that from the sea it extends inland as far as the city of Cercasorus, where the Nile splits and flows toward Pelusium
flowing on toward Canopus, and claiming that the remainder of what makes up Egypt belongs partly to Libya and partly to Arabia — by this reasoning we would be showing that the Egyptians once had no land of their own. Their Delta, as the Egyptians themselves claim and as I too believe, is ground built up by river deposit and has appeared, one might say, only in recent times. If, then, they had
no land of their own to begin with, why did they bother imagining themselves the first people ever to exist? Nor would they have needed to run their experiment on the infants, to discover which language the children would speak first. But I do not think the Egyptians came into existence at the same moment as the Delta the Ionians describe, nor that they have been around since humanity itself began; rather, as the land kept extending, some of them stayed put where they already were while others kept moving further down.
At any rate, in ancient times Thebes was called Egypt, and its circuit is six thousand one hundred and twenty stadia. If then we judge rightly about these matters, the Ionians are not thinking correctly about Egypt; but if the Ionians' opinion is correct, I demonstrate that the Greeks, the Ionians themselves included, do not know how to calculate, since they say the whole earth consists of three parts, Europe
and Asia and Libya. They would need to count a fourth region as well, the Delta of Egypt, if it belongs to neither Asia nor Libya; for by this reasoning the Nile can hardly be the river marking the border between Asia and Libya, since the Nile forks around the tip of this Delta, leaving the Delta positioned between Asia
and Libya. As for the Ionians' view, we set it aside, and instead we hold the following position: all the territory inhabited by Egyptians counts as Egypt, just as Cilicia is what the Cilicians inhabit and Assyria what the Assyrians inhabit, and we recognize no genuine boundary between Asia and Libya other than the frontiers of Egypt. But if
we adopt the usage current among the Greeks, we will treat all of Egypt as split in two starting from the Cataracts and the city of Elephantine, with each half claiming both names; part belongs to Libya, part to Asia. For the Nile, starting at the Cataracts, runs down through the center of Egypt, dividing it, all the way to the sea. Up to the city of Cercasorus it flows as one single channel,
but from that city it splits into three channels. One turns toward the east, and this is called the Pelusiac mouth; the second of the channels runs toward the west, and this is called the Canopic mouth. But the straight course of the Nile among these channels is this one: coming down from above, it reaches the point of the Delta, and from
from there splitting the Delta down the middle, it empties into the sea, carrying a share of water that is neither smallest nor least famous; this branch is called the Sebennytic mouth. Two further mouths branch off from the Sebennytic and also reach the sea; they bear the names Saitic for one and Mendesian for the other. The Bolbitine and Bucolic mouths are not natural
mouths but dug channels. Supporting my opinion that Egypt is as large as I show it to be by my account is also the oracle of Ammon, which I learned of after forming my own opinion about Egypt. For the people from the city of Marea and from Apis, who inhabit the parts of Egypt bordering on Libya, believing themselves to be Libyans and not Egyptians
and, resenting the religious restrictions on sacrifice, not wanting to be forbidden from eating female cattle, they sent word to Ammon claiming they had nothing whatsoever in common with the Egyptians; for they lived outside the Delta and shared no customs with them, and wished to be free to eat anything at all. The god, however, would not permit them to do this, declaring that this land was Egypt, the very land the Nile
waters as it comes over it, and that those were Egyptians who lived below the city of Elephantine and drank from this river. Thus was this oracle given to them. And when it is in flood, the Nile overflows not only the Delta but also, in places, parts of what is called the Libyan region and the Arabian, for a distance of two days' journey on each side, and sometimes more than this and sometimes less. As for the nature of the river,
I was unable to learn anything either from the priests or from anyone else. But I was eager to learn this much from them, why the Nile comes down in flood, beginning at the summer solstice, for a hundred days, and then, drawing near to the end of that number of days, recedes again, falling short in its stream, so that it remains low throughout the whole winter until
the summer solstice comes around once more. On none of these points was I able to get any answer from the Egyptians when I asked them what makes the Nile behave contrary to every other river; and hoping to understand what I have just described, I also asked why it alone among rivers gives off no breezes. Yet certain Greeks, eager to appear clever,
have put forward three different accounts concerning this water; two of these accounts I hardly think deserve mention, except to point them out in passing: one holds that the etesian winds cause the river to swell by blocking the Nile from draining into the sea. Yet the etesian winds have often failed to blow at all, and still the Nile behaves the same way. Furthermore,
if the etesian winds were the cause, then the other rivers too, all those that flow against the etesian winds, ought to be affected in the same way and to the same degree as the Nile, and all the more so as, being smaller, they have weaker currents. But there are many rivers in Syria and many in Libya which are affected by nothing of the sort that affects the Nile.
The second explanation is less scientific than the one just mentioned, though more remarkable to tell: it holds that the Nile's behavior comes from its flowing out of the Ocean, a stream that circles the whole earth. The third of the explanations, though by far the most plausible, is nonetheless the most mistaken of all; for it too says nothing true, claiming that the Nile flows from melting snow — a river which flows from
through the middle of Libya, through the Ethiopians, and comes out into Egypt. How then could it flow from snow, given that its course runs mostly from the hottest regions toward cooler ones? For a man capable of reasoning about such things, it is not even plausible that it flows from snow, and the winds provide the first and greatest proof of this, blowing hot as they do from these regions; second,
that the country continues rainless and without frost, and after snow falls it is absolutely necessary that rain fall within five days, meaning that snowfall in those regions would necessarily bring rain there as well; and third, the people are black from the heat. Kites and swallows remain there the whole year and do not leave, while cranes, fleeing the winter that occurs in Scythia,
migrate to these regions to winter there. If then it snowed at all in this country through which the Nile flows and from which it begins its course, none of these things would happen, as necessity proves. As for the man who spoke of Ocean, having carried his account back into the realm of the unseen, he offers no proof: for I myself know of
no river called Ocean existing, but I think Homer, or one of the poets who came earlier, coined the name himself and worked it into his verse. If, having found fault with the opinions put forward, I must myself declare an opinion about these obscure matters, I will explain why I think the Nile rises in summer: in the winter season the sun, driven from its former course by the
storms, travels over the upper parts of Libya. To put it as briefly as possible, that is the whole matter: for whatever country this god is nearest to and directly over, it stands to reason that that country is most thirsty for water, and the local streams of its rivers shrink. But to explain it at greater length, this is how it is. As the sun passes over the upper parts of Libya,
it does this: since the air in those regions is clear at all times and the country is warm and the winds are cold, in passing over it does what it is accustomed to do in summer when passing through the middle of the sky: it draws the water to itself, and having drawn it, it pushes it away into the upper regions, and the
winds take it up and scatter it and it dissolves; and it makes sense that the winds blowing from that region, the south wind and the southwest wind, are by far the rainiest of all winds. And it seems to me that the sun does not send away all of the Nile's water year by year, but retains some of it as well. When the winter grows mild, the sun departs back to the middle of the sky,
and from then on it draws equally from all rivers alike. Meanwhile the other rivers, having much rainwater mixed in with them, since the land is rained upon and cut with ravines, flow in flood; but in summer, when the rains fail them and they are drawn upon by the sun, they run weak. The Nile, however, having no rain and being drawn upon by the sun,
alone of rivers at that time, naturally flows itself much lower than in summer: for then it shares its draw evenly among all the waters, yet in winter it bears the strain alone. Thus I have come to believe the sun is the cause of these things. This same sun, in my opinion, is also the cause of the air there being dry, since it scorches its own path; and so
summer holds the upper parts of Libya continually. But if the position of the seasons had been reversed, and where the north wind and winter now stand in the sky, there the south wind and the midday position had stood instead, and where the south wind now stands, there the north wind stood — if this were so, the sun, driven
from the middle of the sky by the winter storm and the north wind, would travel over the upper parts of Europe just as it now travels over Libya, and passing through the whole of Europe I expect it would do to the Danube what it now does to the Nile. As for the breeze, why it does not blow off the river, I hold this opinion: it is not plausible that any breeze
should blow off very hot regions at all; a breeze tends to blow from something cold. So let these matters stand as they are and as they were from the beginning. As for the sources of the Nile, no one — neither Egyptian, nor Libyan, nor any Greek that I have talked with — has claimed to know them, except in Egypt, in the city of Sais, the scribe in charge of the sacred treasures of
Athena. He, it seemed to me, was joking when he claimed to know for certain. This is what he said: there are two mountains with peaks rising to a sharp point, one lying near the city of Syene in the Thebaid, the other near Elephantine, and the mountains are named Crophi and Mophi; the sources of the Nile, being bottomless, flow from between these mountains,
and half the water flows toward Egypt and the north wind, while the other half flows toward Ethiopia and the south. As proof that the springs are bottomless, he said that Psammetichus, king of Egypt, once made trial of this: for he had a rope woven of many thousand fathoms and let it down there, and it did not reach bottom. So said the scribe,
if indeed he was describing things that actually occur — showing me, as far as I could understand, that there are certain strong eddies there and a backflow, so that, since the water strikes against the mountains, the sounding-line let down cannot reach bottom. From no one else was I able to learn anything at all. But this much further, the farthest extent, I learned: as far as the city of Elephantine I went myself and saw with my own eyes, and beyond that I inquired only
by hearsay. Going upward from the city of Elephantine the land rises steeply: there one must tie ropes to the boat on both sides and proceed as with an ox; and if the boat breaks loose, it is carried off by the force of the current. This region is a four days' voyage, and the Nile there winds like the Maeander; there are twelve schoinoi
which one must sail through in this manner. And then you will arrive at a smooth plain, in which the Nile flows around an island; its name is Tachompso. The land above Elephantine is now inhabited by Ethiopians, and half of the island as well, the other half by Egyptians. Adjoining the island is a great lake, around which nomadic Ethiopians graze their herds; sail on through it and you will reach the Nile's
channel, which flows into this lake. And then, disembarking, you will make a journey along the river of forty days: for sharp rocks project in the Nile and there are many reefs, through which it is not possible to sail. Having passed through this stretch in the forty days, you board another boat and sail for twelve days,
and then you will reach a large city named Meroe: people say this city serves as the capital of all the other Ethiopian peoples. The people there worship only Zeus and Dionysus among the gods, and honor these greatly, and Zeus has an oracle set up among them there; they go to war whenever this god commands them through oracles, and wherever he commands, there they go.
From this city, sailing on for an equal span of time again, you will arrive at the deserters, in the same time it took you to travel starting at Elephantine and ending at the Ethiopian capital. These deserters are called Asmach, which word, in the Greek tongue, means those who stand at the left hand of the king. These, twenty-four myriads of the fighting men of the Egyptians, deserted
to these Ethiopians for the following reason. In the reign of King Psammetichus, garrisons were stationed at Elephantine against the Ethiopians, another at Daphnae in the Pelusiac region against the Arabians and Assyrians, and another at Marea against Libya. The Persian garrisons still hold those same posts down to my own day, just as they did under Psammetichus: for indeed at
Elephantine the Persians keep guard, and at Daphnae as well. Now these Egyptians, having stood guard for three years, were relieved by no one from their duty; so they took counsel together, and by common agreement all revolted from Psammetichus and went off to Ethiopia. Psammetichus, on learning of it, pursued them; and when he overtook them, he begged them at length, urging them not to abandon their ancestral gods and their children and wives. To this
one of them is said to have pointed to his genitals and said that wherever that was, there they would have children and wives. These, when they arrived in Ethiopia, gave themselves over to the Ethiopian king, who repaid them in this way: there were certain men among the Ethiopians who had become disaffected toward him; these he bade the Egyptians drive out and settle in their land. Once these men had been settled among the Ethiopians, the Ethiopians became gentler,
having learned Egyptian customs. Now as far as a four months' voyage and journey the Nile is known, apart from the stretch of it within Egypt: for that many months are found, on reckoning, to be spent traveling from Elephantine to these deserters. It flows from the west and the setting sun. Beyond that point no one can say for certain: for that country is desolate
because of the heat. But I heard the following from men of Cyrene, who said that they had visited the shrine of Ammon and struck up conversation with Etearchus, king of the Ammonians, and that somehow, from other topics, they came to talk about the Nile, how no one knows its sources, and that Etearchus said that once some Nasamonian men had come to him. This tribe is
...to the Libyan sea, and they inhabit the Syrtis and the land east of the Syrtis for not a great distance. When the Nasamonians came and were asked whether they had anything further to report about the deserts of Libya, they said that among them there had once been sons of powerful men, insolent youths, who among other extravagant schemes, when they had grown to manhood, cast lots to choose five of their own number to go and see
the desert parts of Libya, and to see if they could learn anything beyond what those who had already gone farthest had witnessed. For as to Libya, the parts along the northern sea, beginning from Egypt and running all the way to the promontory of Soloeis, the point where Libya ends, are inhabited throughout by Libyans and many tribes of Libyans, except where Greeks and Phoenicians hold territory; but the parts above the sea and above the peoples who dwell along the sea,
the region further inland, is full of wild beasts; and beyond the beast-infested land there is sand, terribly waterless, and desert of everything. So the young men, sent off by their peers, well provisioned with water and food, went first through the inhabited country, and having passed through that they came to the beast-infested land, and from there they made their way through the desert,
directing their course toward the west wind. After passing through a great stretch of sandy country, after many days they saw trees growing in a plain, and when they approached and were picking the fruit that was on the trees, small men came upon them, smaller than men of ordinary stature, and seized them and led them away. The Nasamonians understood nothing of their language, nor
did the men leading them understand anything of the Nasamonians'. They led them through vast marshes, and once they had made their way across, they reached a city whose inhabitants all matched their captors in height and were black in complexion. Past the city flowed a great river, flowing from west to east, and crocodiles could be seen in it. So much, then, for the account of Etearchus of the Ammonians,
which I will leave off here, except to add that he said the Nasamonians returned home, as the Cyrenaeans told me, and that the people they had reached during their journey were, every one of them, sorcerers. As for this river flowing past the city, Etearchus supposed it to be the Nile, and indeed reason leads to that conclusion. For the Nile flows out of Libya and cuts through the middle of Libya, and,
as I conjecture, inferring the unknown from what is evident, it takes its rise at distances corresponding to those of the Ister. For the Ister river, beginning among the Celts and the city of Pyrene, flows through the middle of Europe, dividing it; the Celts live beyond the Pillars of Heracles, bordering on the Cynesians, who dwell furthest west of all the peoples settled in Europe; and the Ister ends
flowing into the sea at the Euxine Pontus, at the place where the Milesians' colonists inhabit Istria. Now the Ister, since it flows through inhabited country, is known to many; yet nobody is able to say anything about where the Nile begins, for the region of Libya that it crosses lies empty and uninhabited. Concerning its course, as far as
inquiry could take me, I have spoken; and it issues into Egypt. Egypt lies more or less opposite the mountainous part of Cilicia; from there to Sinope on the Euxine Pontus is a five days' journey in a straight line for a man traveling light; and Sinope lies opposite the Ister where it flows into the sea. So I think that the Nile, running through the whole of Libya, corresponds in length to the Ister.
Let this much, then, be said about the Nile. I now proceed to speak at length about Egypt, because it has more marvels than any other land and displays works beyond description compared with any other country; for these reasons more will be said about it. The Egyptians, along with having a climate peculiar to themselves and a river with a nature different from other rivers,
have established in most respects customs and practices the opposite of other men. Among them the women buy and sell in the marketplace, while the men stay at home and weave; and whereas other peoples weave pushing the woof upward, the Egyptians push it downward. Men carry burdens on their heads, women on their shoulders. Women
urinate standing up, men sitting down. They relieve themselves indoors, but eat outside in the streets, explaining that what is shameful but necessary should be done in private, while what is not shameful should be done openly. No woman serves as priest to any god, male or female, but men serve all gods, both male and female. There is no compulsion on sons
to support their parents if they do not wish to, but daughters are under every compulsion to do so whether they wish it or not. Elsewhere priests of the gods wear their hair long, but in Egypt they shave it. Among other peoples the custom in mourning for those most closely affected is to cut the hair short, but the Egyptians, upon a death, let their hair grow long, both on the head and on the chin,
having previously kept it shaved. Among other peoples the way of life is kept separate from that of animals, but among the Egyptians their way of life is shared with animals. Other peoples live on wheat and barley, but for an Egyptian to make his living from these is the greatest disgrace; instead they make their bread from emmer wheat, which some call spelt. They knead dough with their feet, but clay with their hands,
and pick up dung with their hands as well. Other peoples, except those who have learned it from the Egyptians, leave their private parts as they were born, but the Egyptians circumcise. Each man has two garments, each woman one. Other peoples fasten the rings and ropes of their sails on the outside, but the Egyptians on the inside. In writing letters and reckoning with pebbles, the Greeks move the hand from
left to right, but the Egyptians from right to left; and doing this they themselves say they write to the right, and that the Greeks write to the left. They use two kinds of script, one called sacred, the other common. Being exceedingly religious beyond all other men, they observe practices such as these: they drink from bronze cups,
scouring them fresh every single day, not some but all of them. They wear linen garments always freshly washed, taking special care of this; they circumcise themselves for cleanliness' sake, valuing purity over a more attractive appearance. The priests shave their whole body every third day, so that no louse or any other foul thing may come upon them while they attend upon the gods. The priests
wear only linen clothing and sandals of papyrus; no other clothing or other sandals are permitted them. They bathe in cold water twice each day and twice each night, and they perform countless other rites, so to speak. Yet they also enjoy no small benefits: they spend nothing of their own property and are put to no expense, but sacred food
is baked for them, and a great quantity of beef and goose is given to each of them every day, and wine of the grape is given them as well; but they are not permitted to taste fish. Beans the Egyptians do not sow at all in their land, and those that grow wild they neither eat nor cook and eat; indeed the priests cannot even bear to look at them, considering the legume
unclean. Each god is served not by one priest but by many, of whom one is chief priest; and when one dies, his son succeeds him. They believe the male oxen belong to Epaphus, and for that reason they test them in this way: if the examiner finds even a single black hair on the animal, he judges it unclean. One of the priests appointed
to this task examines the animal both standing and lying on its back, pulling out its tongue to check whether it is clean of the prescribed marks, which I will describe in another account; he also examines the hairs of the tail to see whether they grow according to nature. If it is found clean in all these respects, he marks it by winding papyrus around its horns, then applying sealing clay
and pressing a signet ring into it, and so they lead it away. For sacrificing an unmarked animal the penalty is death. This, then, is how the animal is tested; here is how they carry out the sacrifice itself. Bringing the marked animal to the altar where they intend to sacrifice, they kindle a fire; then, pouring wine over the victim upon the altar and calling upon the god, they slaughter it, and having slaughtered it they cut off
the head. The body of the animal they flay, but upon the head they lay many curses and then carry it away: those who have a market and resident Greek merchants carry it to the market and sell it, while those who have no Greeks among them throw it into the river. They pronounce these curses upon the heads, saying that if any evil is about to befall
either those performing the sacrifice or Egypt as a whole, let it turn upon this head. Now regarding the heads of the sacrificed animals and the pouring of the wine, all Egyptians alike follow the same customs for all their sacrifices, and because of this custom no Egyptian will taste the head of any living creature. But the manner of removing
the entrails and burning them differs from temple to temple, according to each one's practice; but I will now speak of the one they hold to be the greatest deity, to whom they hold the greatest festival. When they have flayed the ox, having first prayed, they remove the whole belly, leaving the entrails in the body along with the fat, and they cut off the legs and the loin
the tip of it, and the shoulders and the neck. Having done this, they stuff the ox's remaining carcass with pure loaves, honey, raisins, figs, frankincense, myrrh, and other aromatic substances, and having filled it with these they burn it, pouring on abundant oil. Having fasted beforehand, they sacrifice, and while the offerings are burning, all of them beat their breasts; and when they have finished the beating, they set out as a feast the parts
that were left over from the offerings. Now all Egyptians sacrifice the male oxen and the calves that are pure, but they are not permitted to sacrifice the females, since these are sacred to Isis; for Isis's cult image shows a woman bearing cow horns, just as the Greeks depict Io, and the Egyptians all alike revere cows far more than any other cattle.
For this reason no Egyptian man or woman would kiss a Greek man on the mouth, nor use a Greek man's knife, spits, or cauldron, nor taste the meat of a pure ox that has been cut up with a Greek knife. Here is how they dispose of oxen that die: the females get thrown into the river, while each community buries its males in its own suburbs, with the
one horn, or both, sticking up as a marker. And when it has rotted and the appointed time has come round, a barge arrives at each city from the island called Prosopitis. This island lies in the Delta, and its circumference is nine schoinoi. On this island of Prosopitis there are also many other cities, and it is from the one
from which the barges come to collect the bones of the oxen, called Atarbekhis, in which a holy shrine of Aphrodite is established. From this city many others set out for other cities, and having dug up the bones they carry them off and bury them all together in a single place. In the same way as they do with oxen, they also bury the other livestock when they die; for concerning these too they have
laid down the same law: they do not kill these either. As for those who have established a shrine of Zeus of Thebes, or belong to the Theban district, all these abstain from sheep and sacrifice goats instead. For not all Egyptians alike revere the same gods, except Isis and Osiris, who they say is Dionysus; these two all alike revere. But those who possess
a shrine of Mendes, or come from the district around that city, abstain from goats and sacrifice sheep instead. Now the Thebans, and those who abstain from sheep on their account, say that this law was established for them for the following reason: Heracles wished at all costs to see Zeus, and Zeus was unwilling to be seen by him; finally, when Heracles kept pressing him, Zeus contrived this device: he
flayed a ram, cut off its head, and holding the head in front of himself, put on the fleece, and thus showed himself to Heracles. From this the Egyptians make the image of Zeus with a ram's face, and from the Egyptians the Ammonians do likewise, being colonists of both the Egyptians and the Ethiopians and using a language that is a mixture of both. And it seems to me that the Ammonians took their very name from this: for the Egyptians call
Zeus Amoun. The Thebans hold rams sacred rather than sacrificing them, and that is the reason. Yet on one day of the year, at the festival of Zeus, they cut up a single ram, flay it, and dress the image of Zeus in its skin in the same way as before, and then they bring up another image, of Heracles, close to it. Having done this, all those about the shrine beat themselves in mourning for the ram, and
afterward they bury it in a sacred coffin. Concerning Heracles I have heard this account, that he is one of the twelve gods; as for the second Heracles, the one familiar to the Greeks, I could nowhere find anyone in Egypt able to tell me of him. And indeed that the Egyptians did not borrow the name Heracles from the Greeks — rather it was the Greeks who took it from the Egyptians, specifically those Greeks who gave Amphitryon's son the name Heracles —
of this I have many other proofs as well, and among them this one: that the parents of this Heracles, both Amphitryon and Alcmene, were, as it happens, descended originally from Egypt; and also that the Egyptians say they do not know the names of either Poseidon or the Dioscuri, nor are these gods reckoned among their other gods. And yet
if indeed they had taken the name of some deity from the Greeks, it is these above all others that they would have been likely to remember, if in fact they were then already using ships and if some of the Greeks were seafarers, as I both suppose and my own judgment inclines me to believe; so that the Egyptians would have come to know the names of these gods even more readily than that of Heracles. No, Heracles is an ancient god among the Egyptians:
as they themselves say, it is seventeen thousand years to the reign of Amasis, counting from when the twelve gods came into being out of the eight gods, of whom they reckon Heracles to be one. And wishing to know something certain about this matter, so far as it was possible, I sailed also to Tyre in Phoenicia, having learned that there was a holy shrine of Heracles there. And I saw it richly furnished with
many other offerings, and in it were two pillars, one of pure gold, the other of emerald stone that shone at night with great brilliance. I fell into conversation with the god's priests and asked them how long a time it had been since their shrine was founded. I found that they too did not agree with the Greeks; for they said that the shrine of the god was founded at the same time that Tyre
was founded, and that it is two thousand three hundred years since they have inhabited Tyre. I also saw in Tyre another shrine of Heracles, with the epithet Thasian; and I went as well to Thasos, where I found a shrine of Heracles established by the Phoenicians, who had sailed out in search of Europa and founded Thasos; and this too is five generations of men earlier than
Heracles the son of Amphitryon came to be in Greece. Now these researches of mine clearly show that Heracles is an ancient god, and it seems to me that those Greeks act most correctly who have established and maintain two cults of Heracles, sacrificing to the one as to an immortal, under the title Olympian, and offering rites to the other as to a hero. The Greeks say many other things carelessly, and
this tale too that they tell about Heracles is naive: that on his arrival in Egypt the Egyptians crowned him and led him out in procession as though about to sacrifice him to Zeus; and that he for a while kept still, but when they began the preliminary rites on him at the altar, he turned to force and slaughtered them all. To me it seems that in saying this the Greeks show themselves
utterly ignorant of how the Egyptians live and what they hold sacred; for these people, for whom it is not even lawful to sacrifice cattle except swine, and male oxen and calves that are pure, and geese, how could they sacrifice human beings? Moreover, Heracles being one person and, as they say, still a man, how could it be in his nature to slaughter many tens of thousands? Concerning these matters, may we have said thus much
and still find favor with both the gods and the heroes. Now the reason the Egyptians named do not sacrifice she-goats and he-goats is this: the Mendesians count Pan among the eight gods, and they claim these eight came before the twelve gods did. And the painters and sculptors
depict and carve the image of Pan just as the Greeks do, with the face of a goat and the legs of a goat, not because they think he is actually like this, but as being similar to the other gods; but for what reason they depict him thus, I would rather not say. The Mendesians hold every goat sacred, giving the males more honor than the females, and among these the goatherds hold greater honor; but of them one especially,
whichever one dies, has great mourning proclaimed for it throughout the whole Mendesian district. Both the he-goat and Pan are called Mendes in the Egyptian tongue. In this district, in my own time, this marvel occurred: a he-goat coupled with a woman, openly. This came to public notice. Now the Egyptians consider the pig a foul animal, and in this regard, if anyone in passing touches
a pig with his very clothes, he goes and dips himself, clothes and all, in the river. And swineherds, though native-born Egyptians, are the only people who enter no shrine anywhere in Egypt; nor will anyone give a daughter in marriage to them, nor take a wife from among them, but swineherds give and take wives only among themselves. As for other gods, the Egyptians consider it wrong to offer them pigs at all,
but to the Moon and Dionysus alone, and at the same time, at the same full moon, they sacrifice the pigs and eat of the meat. As for why they detest pigs at the other festivals but sacrifice them at this one, there is an account told about it by the Egyptians, which, though I know it, is not more fitting for me to tell. The sacrifice of pigs to the Moon is performed as follows:
when one has sacrificed, he puts together the tip of the tail, along with the spleen and caul, wrapping them together in fat taken from around the animal's belly, and then burns them in the fire; the rest of the meat they eat at the full moon on which they perform the sacrifices, but on any other day they would no longer taste it. The poor among them,
owing to scant means, mold pigs out of dough, bake them, and sacrifice these instead. For Dionysus, on the evening of his festival, each person slaughters a piglet before his doors and gives it to be carried off by the very swineherd from whom he bought it. The rest of the festival of Dionysus the Egyptians celebrate in almost the same way as the Greeks do, except for the dances; but instead of phalluses they have other
Now such devices have been invented as cubit-high puppets worked with strings, which women carry around through the villages, the phallus nodding and not much smaller than the rest of the body. A flute leads the way, and the women follow singing of Dionysus. As for why the phallus is oversized and it alone of the body moves, there is a sacred story told about it. Now it seems to me that Melampus son of
Amytheon was not unacquainted with this rite but well versed in it. For it is Melampus who introduced to the Greeks the name of Dionysus, the sacrifice, and the phallic procession. He did not, strictly speaking, grasp the whole matter and set it forth, but the wise men who came after him set it forth more fully. Still, it is Melampus who was the
one who introduced the phallus carried in procession for Dionysus, and it is from him that the Greeks learned to do what they do. I say, then, that Melampus, having become a wise man, acquired the art of divination for himself and, having learned from Egypt, introduced to the Greeks many other things as well as the matters concerning Dionysus, changing only a few details of them. For I will not say that what is done in Egypt for the god and what is done among the
Greeks happened to coincide by chance; for then they would be in keeping with Greek custom and not newly introduced. Nor indeed will I say that the Egyptians took this or any other custom from the Greeks. It seems to me most likely that Melampus learned about the matters of Dionysus from Cadmus of Tyre and those who came with him from Phoenicia to the land now called Boeotia.
And indeed the names of nearly all the gods have come to Greece from Egypt. That they have come from foreign lands I find to be so upon inquiry, and I think they have come chiefly from Egypt. For apart from Poseidon and the Dioscuri, as I have said before, and Hera and Hestia and Themis and the Graces and the Nereids,
the names of the rest of the gods have always existed in Egypt in that land. I say only what the Egyptians themselves say. As for the gods whose names they say they do not know, these, it seems to me, were named by the Pelasgians, except Poseidon: this god they learned of from the Libyans. For no one from the beginning has had the name of Poseidon except the Libyans, and they have always honored this
god. The Egyptians, then, do not worship heroes at all. These practices, then, and others besides, which I shall describe, the Greeks have adopted from the Egyptians; but making images of Hermes with an erect phallus was learned not from Egypt but rather from the Pelasgians — the Athenians were the first of all the Greeks to adopt it, and from them the rest. For at that time
Pelasgians had already become settlers among the Athenians, who by then were being reckoned as Greeks, and it is from that point that the Greeks began to be so reckoned. Whoever has been initiated into the rites of the Cabeiri, which the Samothracians carry out, taking them over from the Pelasgians — such a person understands what I am referring to; for the Pelasgians who once dwelt with the Athenians formerly inhabited Samothrace, and it is from them that the Samothracians received the rites. So then, having the
phallus of the images of Hermes erect, the Athenians were the first of the Greeks to learn this from the Pelasgians and to make it so; and the Pelasgians told a certain sacred story about it, one that the Samothracian mysteries reveal. Now the Pelasgians formerly, as I know from what I heard at Dodona, made all their offerings while praying to "the gods," but they gave none of them a title or a name, for they had not yet heard of such things. They called them
gods from the fact that, having set all things in order, they held all the divisions of the world in due arrangement. Then, after a great length of time had passed, they learned from Egypt the names of the other gods that had come from there, and much later still they learned the name of Dionysus. And after a time they put a question to the oracle at Dodona regarding these names, since that oracle is reckoned the oldest among the oracles found in Greece,
and it was then the only one in existence. So when the Pelasgians put to the Dodona oracle the question of whether they ought to accept the names that had reached them from foreign peoples, the oracle answered that they should use them. From that time on they employed the gods' names in their sacrifices, and it was from the Pelasgians that the Greeks later took them over. As to whence each of the gods arose, or whether they all existed
forever, and what they looked like in form, they did not know until, so to speak, only the day before yesterday. For I reckon that Hesiod and Homer lived some four centuries earlier than my own time, no more; and it is these who composed a theogony for the Greeks, giving the gods their titles, distributing honors and skills among them, and describing their forms. The
poets said to have lived before these men came, in my opinion, after them. Of these matters the first part is told by the priestesses of Dodona, and the later part, concerning Hesiod and Homer, I tell myself. Concerning the oracles, the one in Greece and the one in Libya, the Egyptians tell the following account. The priests of Zeus of Thebes said that two women,
priestesses, were carried off from Thebes by Phoenicians, and that they learned one of them was sold into Libya and the other to the Greeks; and these women, they said, were the ones who established the first oracles among the peoples named. When I asked how they knew this so precisely to tell it, they replied that they themselves had conducted an extensive search on the matter and had been unable to find
to find them, but that they later learned these things about them just as they had told them. This, then, is what I heard from the priests at Thebes; but the following is what the prophetesses of Dodona say: that two black doves flew up from Thebes in Egypt, and one of them came to Libya and the other to them, and that the one which came to them settled on an oak tree and spoke with a human voice, saying that
it was necessary that an oracle of Zeus be established there, and that they understood this to be a divine command laid upon them, and so they did it accordingly. As for the dove that went off to the Libyans, they say it told the Libyans to establish the oracle of Ammon — and this too is an oracle of Zeus. The priestesses of Dodona, the eldest of whom was named Promeneia, the next Timarete, and the
youngest Nicandra, told these things, and the rest of the Dodonaeans about the shrine agreed with them. Now I hold this opinion about these matters: if the Phoenicians really did carry off the sacred women, selling one into Libya and disposing of the other in Greece, then it seems to me that this woman was sold to the people of what is now Greece, formerly called Pelasgia, this
same land, sold to the Thesprotians; and there, while serving as a slave, she founded a shrine of Zeus beneath an oak tree growing on the spot, as was natural since she had been in service at the shrine of Zeus at Thebes, and there where she came she kept a memory of it; and from this she established the oracle, once she had learned the Greek tongue. And she said her sister had been sold off in Libya by those very same Phoenicians who had sold her. The women
seem to me to have been given the name of doves by the Dodonaeans for this reason: because they were foreigners and seemed to them to speak like birds. Then after a time they say the dove began speaking with a human voice, once the woman spoke intelligibly to them; but while she still spoke a foreign tongue, she seemed to them to speak like a bird — for how could a dove speak with a human voice? And in saying she was black,
they mean to indicate that the woman was Egyptian. And the manner of divination at Thebes in Egypt and at Dodona are in fact very similar to one another. Divination by means of sacrificial victims also has come from Egypt. Festivals, processions, and public assemblies were first established among men by the Egyptians, and from them the Greeks have learned. My
evidence of this is the following: the Egyptian festivals appear to have been held from a very long time back, while the Greek ones were established only recently. The Egyptians hold festivals not once a year but many times, most importantly and with the greatest devotion at the city of Bubastis in honor of Artemis, and second at the city of Busiris in honor of Isis — for in this city there is the greatest temple of Isis, and this
city is situated at the center of Egypt's Delta. Isis is, in the Greek tongue, Demeter. Third, they hold festival at the city of Sais in honor of Athena, fourth at the city of Heliopolis in honor of the Sun, fifth at the city of Buto in honor of Leto, and sixth at the city of Papremis in honor of Ares. Now when they travel to the city of Bubastis, they do the following.
Men and women sail together, and a great crowd of each in every boat: some of the women hold rattles and rattle them, some of the men play the flute the whole way, while the rest of the women and the men sing and clap their hands. Whenever, sailing along, they come near some other city, they bring the boat close to the shore and do the following:
some of the women do as I have described, while others shout out mocking taunts at the women of that city, some dance, and others stand up and lift their skirts. This they do at every city along the river; and when they arrive at Bubastis, they hold festival, offering great sacrifices, and more wine of the grape is consumed at this festival
than in the whole of the remaining year. And they gather there, men and women together apart from children, to the number of seven hundred thousand, as the local people say. This, then, is what is done there; and how they conduct the festival of Isis at the city of Busiris I have said before. There, after the sacrifice, all the men and women, very many tens of thousands of people, beat themselves in mourning; but the
they beat themselves, it is not right for me to say. But as for the Carians who live in Egypt, they do even more than this, in that they gash their foreheads with knives, and by this they show themselves to be foreigners and not Egyptians. When they have gathered at the city of Sais for the sacrifice, on the night of it they all burn many lamps in the open air around their houses
in a circle. The lamps are shallow bowls filled with salt and oil, and the wick floats on top; this burns all night, and the festival is called the Lamp-lighting. Those Egyptians who do not come to this gathering still keep the night of the sacrifice and all of them likewise light lamps, so that the lighting takes place not only at Sais
but throughout all Egypt. As for why this night has been given light and honor, there is a sacred story told about it. At Heliopolis and Buto they perform only the sacrifices, going there for that purpose. But at Papremis they perform sacrifices and rites just as elsewhere; but when the sun begins to go down, a few
of the priests busy themselves about the image, while most of them stand at the entrance of the temple holding wooden clubs, and others, performing vows, more than a thousand men, each likewise holding wooden clubs, stand massed on the other side. The image, which is in a small wooden gilded shrine, gets carried out one day earlier to a different sacred building. The few
who are left around the image drag a four-wheeled wagon carrying the shrine together with the statue housed within it; the others, standing in the forecourt, do not allow them to enter, and the men under vow, defending the god, strike them as they try to fend it off. There a fierce battle with clubs takes place, and heads are broken, and as I suppose many even die of their wounds, though
the Egyptians said that no one dies. The local people say the origin of this festival is as follows: Ares's mother dwells in this temple, and Ares, having been raised elsewhere, came, now grown to manhood, wishing to be with his mother; and the attendants of the mother, since they had never seen him before, did not allow him to pass but kept him off, and he,
having brought men from another city, roughly handled the attendants and went in to his mother. Because of this they say this blow-giving became customary for Ares at the festival. And the practice of not having intercourse with women in temples, and not entering temples unwashed after intercourse with a woman, these people were the first to observe as a religious rule. For nearly all other people, except the Egyptians and
the Greeks, have intercourse in temples and enter a temple unwashed after rising from a woman, holding that men are no different from the other animals; for they see that other animals, and the various kinds of birds, mate both in the temples of the gods and in their sacred precincts, and reason that the god could not be displeased by it, or the animals would not do it either. This is
the reasoning by which they justify what they do, but it does not please me. The Egyptians, however, are excessively scrupulous in matters of religion, in this as in other things. Egypt, though it borders on Libya, is not very rich in wild animals; but all the animals it does have are held sacred, some raised together with the people themselves, others not. As for the reasons
why these animals are dedicated as sacred, if I were to tell them, I would descend in my account into matters divine, which I most avoid recounting; what I have said of them I said only touching lightly on the subject, compelled by necessity. The custom concerning the animals is as follows: keepers have been appointed for the feeding of each kind separately, both men and women among the Egyptians, and the office passes from father to son.
Those in the cities each fulfill the following vows: praying to the god whose animal it is, they shave the heads of their children, either the whole head or half or a third part of it, and weigh the hair against silver; whatever it weighs in silver, they give this to the woman who tends the animals, and she in return cuts up fish and gives it as food
to the animals. Such is the food that has been assigned to them. Whoever kills one of these animals, if deliberately, the penalty is death; if unintentionally, he pays whatever penalty the priests set. But whoever kills an ibis or a hawk, whether deliberately or unintentionally, must die. Although there are many animals that live together with people, they would
become far more numerous still, were it not for what happens to the cats: when the females give birth, they no longer go to the males, and the males, wanting to mate with them, cannot. So against this they devise the following scheme: they snatch the kittens away from the females and steal them and kill them, yet they refrain from eating them once killed; and the females, robbed of their young and hungry for more, thus come
to the males; for the animal is fond of its young. And when a fire breaks out, wondrous things happen to the cats: the Egyptians stand apart in a line, keeping watch over the cats, and, caring nothing about putting out the fire, the cats slip through or leap over the people and jump into the flames. When this happens, great grief seizes the Egyptians. In whatever house a cat dies
of its own accord, all who live there shave only their eyebrows, but where a dog dies, they shave the whole body and head. Dead cats are carried off to sacred buildings, where, after being embalmed, they are buried at the city of Bubastis; dogs are buried by each people in sacred coffins in their own city. Likewise the ichneumons are buried along with the dogs. The
shrew-mice and hawks they carry off to Buto, delivering the ibises instead to the city of Hermes. Bears, which are scarce, and wolves, which are not much larger than foxes, they bury wherever they are found lying. The nature of crocodiles is as follows: for the four coldest months it eats nothing at all, though it is a four-footed creature that lives both on land and in the marshes. It lays
its eggs on land and hatches them there, and spends most of the day on dry ground, but the whole night in the river, for the water is warmer than the open air and the dew. Of all mortal creatures that we know, this grows from the smallest beginning to the greatest size; for its eggs are not much larger than those of a goose,
and the hatchling is proportionate to the egg, but as it grows it reaches seventeen cubits and even more. It has eyes like a pig's, and large teeth and tusks in proportion to its body. Alone among animals it has no tongue, and it does not move its lower jaw, but, again alone among animals, brings its upper jaw down to meet the lower. It has
strong claws, and a scaly hide on its back that cannot be pierced. It is blind in the water, but extremely sharp-sighted in the open air. Since it makes its life in the water, its mouth inside is always full of leeches. All the other birds and animals flee from it, but the plover lives at peace with it, since it benefits from it: for when
the crocodile comes out of the water onto land and then opens its mouth wide (which it habitually does, generally facing the west wind), then the plover, slipping into its mouth, swallows the leeches; and the crocodile, benefiting from this, is pleased and does the plover no harm. To some of the Egyptians crocodiles are sacred, to others not, but rather
they treat them as enemies. Those who live around Thebes and Lake Moeris hold them to be very sacred indeed; each of the two groups raises one crocodile out of all, trained to be tame, putting ornaments of cast stone and gold in its ears and bands around its front feet, giving it appointed food and offerings, and treating it as well as possible while it lives;
and when it dies they embalm it and bury it in sacred coffins. Those settled near Elephantine, however, actually eat them, since they do not regard the creature as sacred there. They are not called crocodiles but champsae; the Ionians gave them the name crocodile, likening their appearance to the crocodiles that occur among them in their stone walls. There are many and various ways of hunting them; but the one that
seems to me most worth describing, I write down. When the hunter has baited a hook with the chine of a pig, he releases it out toward the river's center, and meanwhile stands on the bank beating a live piglet. Hearing its cry, the crocodile rushes toward the sound, and coming upon the chine, swallows it; then they haul it in. When it has been hauled out onto land, the first thing the hunter does
is plaster its eyes over with mud; having done this, he masters the rest of it quite easily, but if he does not do this, it is done only with difficulty. The river-horses are sacred in the Papremite district, but not sacred to the other Egyptians. Their nature and appearance are as follows: four legs, hooves split like a cow's, a snub nose, a horse-like mane, visible tusks, a tail
and voice like a horse's, and in size as large as the biggest ox; its hide is so thick that when it is dried, spear-shafts are made from it. There are also otters in the river, which they hold to be sacred. And they consider sacred also the fish called the scaly one, and the eel, holding these to be sacred to the Nile
...they say there is, and among the birds, the fox-geese. There is also another sacred bird, whose name is the phoenix. I myself have not seen it except in a painting, for indeed it visits them only rarely, every five hundred years, as the people of Heliopolis say; and they say it visits only when its father has died. If it resembles the painting, it is of this size and
kind: part of its plumage is gold, the rest a deep red; in outline and size it is most like an eagle. They say it contrives the following, though to me it is not credible: setting out from Arabia, it carries its father encased in myrrh to the temple of the Sun and there lays him to rest, carrying him in this manner. First,
it molds an egg of myrrh as large as it is able to carry, then tests itself by carrying it; and once it has proven able, it hollows out the egg and places its father inside, then plasters over with more myrrh the spot where it hollowed out the egg to insert its father. With the father lying inside, the weight remains the same. Having plastered it over, it carries it to Egypt, to the
temple of the Sun. This, they say, is what this bird does. Around Thebes there are sacred serpents, entirely harmless to human beings, which, though small in size, bear a pair of horns sprouting from the crown of the head; when these creatures die, they are buried in the temple of Zeus, for they say they are sacred to this god. There is a place in Arabia, situated
very close to the city of Buto, and I went to this place to inquire about the winged serpents. On arriving I saw bones of serpents and ribs in a quantity impossible to describe—there were heaps of ribs, some large, some smaller, and others smaller still, and these were numerous. This place, where the ribs lie piled up, is of the following sort: it is a pass from
narrow mountains into a great plain, and this plain adjoins the plain of Egypt. The story goes that at the start of spring winged serpents fly from Arabia toward Egypt, but the ibis birds, meeting them at the entrance to this land, do not let the serpents pass but kill them. And it is because of this deed, they say, that the ibis is honored
greatly by the Arabians as well as by the Egyptians; and the Egyptians too agree that this is why they honor these birds. The appearance of the ibis is as follows: it is entirely deep black, it has the legs of a crane, its face is extremely hooked, and its size is that of a corncrake. Such is the appearance of the black ibis that fights the serpents; but of those that move about more among people's feet, there are two kinds (
There are indeed ibises (with the head bare, and the whole neck, and white in feathers except for the head and neck and the tips of the wings and the tip of the rump—these parts I mentioned are all terribly black—while the legs and face resemble those of the other kind. The form of the snake it kills is like that of water-snakes, and it carries flying-membranes that are not feathered but
most closely resemble the wings of a bat. So much, then, let be said about the sacred animals. As for the Egyptians themselves, those who live around the sown land of Egypt, since they practice the preservation of memory more than any people, are by far the most learned of all with whom I have had experience, and they follow this manner of life: they purge themselves for three days running each month, hunting after health by means of vomits and enemas, believing
that all diseases come to men from the foods that nourish them. For indeed the Egyptians are, apart from this, the healthiest of all people after the Libyans, and it seems to me this owes to their climate, since the seasons there stay constant; it is precisely when things change that men are most struck by illness, whether in general or above all in the shifting of the seasons. They eat bread made from
emmer wheat, which they call kyllestis. They make use of wine made from barley, for they have no vines in their country. As for fish, they dry some in the sun and eat them raw, while others are cured in brine before eating. As for birds, quails, ducks, and the smaller species are eaten raw once they have first been salted. As for the other things
that belong to them, whether of birds or of fish, apart from those that have been set apart as sacred, the rest they eat roasted or boiled. At the banquets of those among them who are prosperous, when they have finished dining, a man carries around a corpse in a coffin made of wood, imitated as closely as possible both in painting and in workmanship, of a size about a cubit or two cubits, and showing it to each of the
drinking companions he says, 'Look upon this as you drink and enjoy yourself; for such you will be when you are dead.' This is what they do at their banquets. Following their ancestral customs, they adopt no others besides; among their other worthy customs there is one song in particular, called Linus, which is sung in Phoenicia too and in Cyprus and elsewhere, though it has a different name according to the nation,
but it turns out to be the very same song that the Greeks name and sing as Linus, so that among the many other things about Egypt that make me marvel, I marvel too at where they got this Linus song; for they clearly have been singing it from time immemorial. In the Egyptian tongue this Linus is called Maneros. The Egyptians said that he was the only son of the first king of Egypt,
and that he died young, and was honored by the Egyptians with these laments, and that this became their first and only song. The Egyptians also agree in this other custom with the Greeks, but only with the Lacedaemonians: their younger men, when they meet their elders, yield the road and step aside, and rise from their seats when the elders approach. But in this next custom they agree with no other Greeks at all: instead of greeting one another on the
roads with words, they bow down, lowering the hand to the knee. They wear linen tunics fringed about the legs, which they call kalasiris; over these they wear white woolen garments thrown over like a cloak. Wool, however, never gets carried into a temple, and it is likewise kept out of burials, for that is not sanctioned. In this they agree with the rites called Orphic and Bacchic, which are actually Egyptian, and with the Pythagoreans; for
it is not sanctioned either for one who partakes in these rites to be buried in woolen garments. There is a sacred account told concerning them. The Egyptians have also worked out other things besides: which deity presides over each month and over every single day, plus what fate a person born on a given day will run into, how he will die, and what sort of person he will be. The Greeks who have occupied themselves with poetry have made use of these discoveries.
More omens have been discovered among them than among all other peoples put together; whenever an omen occurs, they keep watch, writing down what results from it, and if at some later time something similar happens again, they expect the same outcome to follow. Their system of divination works like this: no human being holds the skill, only certain of the gods do; for an oracle of Heracles is found there, as well as one of Apollo, one of Athena, one of Artemis, and
of Ares, and of Zeus, and the one held in the greatest honor of all the oracles is that of Leto in the city of Buto. Their oracles, however, are not all conducted in the same way, but differ from one another. Their medicine is divided up as follows: each physician treats one disease and no more. The whole country is full of physicians: some are physicians
some for the eyes, some for the head, some for the teeth, some for ailments of the belly, and some for diseases that cannot be seen. Their mourning and burial customs run as follows: whenever a man of any standing dies in a household, every woman of that household smears mud on her head and on her face too,
after which they leave the body in the house and wander through the town striking themselves, robes girded up, breasts bared, joined by all the female kin; on the other side the men, girded in the same fashion, strike themselves too. Once this is finished, they carry the corpse off to be embalmed. Certain men are stationed there for that very purpose and make it their trade. When
a body is delivered to them, these men show whoever brought it painted wooden models of corpses, and they claim the finest of these represents someone whose name I regard it as improper to speak in such a context; they show a second model, lesser and cheaper than the first, and a third, cheapest of all; then, having described each, they ask which method the family wants used to prepare the body. The family,
having settled on a price, then depart, while the embalmers stay behind in their workshops and treat the finest grade of body this way: first, using a bent iron implement, they pull the brain out through the nostrils, removing part of it that way and dissolving the rest with drugs poured in; next, using a sharp Ethiopian stone, they slit the flank and remove everything inside the belly; after clearing it out and rinsing it with palm
wine, they rinse it again with ground spices; then, having filled the cavity with pure ground myrrh and cassia and other spices, except frankincense, they sew it back up again. Having done this, they embalm the body, covering it in natron for seventy days; more than this it is not allowed to embalm it. When the seventy days have passed, they wash the corpse and wrap the whole of its body in bandages cut from linen of fine byssus, smearing them with
gum, which the Egyptians generally use in place of glue. After this, the relatives take it back and have made a wooden case shaped like a human figure; having had it made, they enclose the corpse within it, and having sealed it up, they store it in a burial chamber, standing it upright against the wall. This is how they prepare the corpses of those who choose the most costly method; those who want the middle way, avoiding excessive expense, they prepare like this: when
they have filled their syringes with the oil made from cedar, they fill the belly of the corpse with it without cutting it open or removing the intestines, injecting it through the rectum and stopping up the fluid from flowing back out, and they embalm it for the prescribed number of days, and on the last day they let out from the belly the cedar oil that they had put in before. It has such power that
it pulls the belly and the now-dissolved internal organs out along with itself; natron dissolves the flesh as well, leaving in the end nothing of the corpse but skin and bone. Once this is finished, they hand the body back in that condition, without further treatment. There is a third method of embalming, used for those with less money to spend: they flush the belly with a purgative and preserve it
for the seventy days, and then give it back to be carried away. The wives of prominent men, when they die, are not given over for embalming right away, nor are those women who are especially beautiful and much spoken of; rather, only when they have been dead three or four days are they handed over to the embalmers. They do this for this reason, so that the embalmers may not have intercourse with the women:
for it is said that one was caught having intercourse with the fresh corpse of a woman, and his fellow craftsman informed on him. Whoever, whether an Egyptian himself or a foreigner, is seized by a crocodile or appears to have died by the river itself, the people of whatever city he is washed up near are under every obligation to embalm him and, having laid him out as beautifully as possible, to bury him in a sacred tomb; nor is anyone else allowed to touch him,
neither relative nor friend, but the priests of the Nile themselves, treating him with their own hands as something more than a human corpse, bury him. They avoid using Greek customs, and to put it altogether, the customs of any other people whatsoever. Now the rest of the Egyptians observe this so strictly, but there is a great city called Chemmis, in the Thebaic district, near New
City. In this city stands a square shrine of Perseus, son of Danae, ringed by palm trees. The temple's gateways are stone, and enormous; two great stone statues stand upon them. Inside this enclosure sits a shrine, and within it stands a statue of Perseus. The people of Chemmis claim that Perseus is often seen
walking about their land, and often within the shrine as well, and that a worn sandal of his turns up from time to time, two cubits in length, and whenever it appears, all of Egypt prospers. So they claim; and here is what they do in Perseus' honor, in Greek style: they hold a gymnastic contest covering every event, awarding livestock, cloaks, and hides as prizes. When I asked them why
Perseus is accustomed to appear only to them, and as a mark distinguishing them from the rest of the Egyptians, they hold gymnastic contests, and they said that Perseus was born from their own city. For Danaus and Lynceus, they said, being men of Chemmis, sailed off to Greece, and tracing their genealogy down from them they arrived at Perseus. And when he came to Egypt for the reason the Greeks too give, to fetch
the Gorgon's head from Libya, they said he came to them as well and recognized all his kinsmen; and that he had learned the name of Chemmis before he arrived in Egypt, having heard it from his mother. And it was at his own bidding that the gymnastic contest is held for him. All this is what the Egyptians who live above the marshes believe. But those settled in the marshes themselves follow
the same customs as the rest of the Egyptians, and in particular each of them lives with one wife, as the Greeks do; but for economy in food they have devised the following additional means. When the river becomes full and floods the plains like a sea, great numbers of lilies grow in the water, which the Egyptians call lotus; when they have plucked these they dry them in the sun, and
next, they take the part from the center of the lotus flower, which looks like a poppy head, pound it, and bake loaves from it over a fire. The root of this same lotus can also be eaten and has a fairly sweet taste; it is round, roughly apple-sized. Other lily-like blooms also grow in the river, resembling roses, and their fruit forms in a separate seed-pod that grows up
springing up from the root, most like in appearance to a wasps' nest; in this there are many edible seeds, about the size of an olive stone, and these are eaten both fresh and dried. As for the papyrus that grows each year, when they pull it up out of the marshes, they cut off the upper part and put it to other use, while the lower part that is left, about a cubit long, they eat and sell;
and those wanting the very best papyrus stalks steam them in a hot, glowing oven before eating them that way. Some among them live on nothing but fish, which they gut once caught, dry out in the sun, and then eat once dried. Schooling fish are not common in the rivers themselves, but raised in
the lakes they behave as follows. When the urge to spawn comes upon them, they swim out in schools to the sea; the males lead, scattering their milt, and the females, following behind, gulp it in and are thereby impregnated. When they have become full in the sea, they swim back up again, each to their own haunts, but no longer are the same fish in the lead; instead the females take over the leadership. Leading
the school, they do just what the males did before: they scatter a few of their eggs, the grains, at a time, and the males, following, swallow them. These grains are fish. From the grains that survive and are not swallowed, the fish that grow up are produced. Those of them caught swimming out to sea are found to be worn on the left side of the head, while those
those caught on the return swim show wear on the right instead. The reason is this: swimming down toward the sea they hug the land on their left, and coming back upstream they cling to that same side, pressing and brushing against it as closely as they can, so as not to lose their way against the current. Once the Nile starts to rise, the low-lying stretches of ground and the marshy hollows
along the river begin to fill first, as the water seeps through from the river; and at once these become full, and immediately they are all filled with small fish. From where it is likely that these come to be, I think I can work out: the previous year, when the Nile recedes, the fish, having laid their eggs in the mud, depart along with the last of the water; and when
once the season comes back around and the water returns, these fish hatch instantly from those eggs. That is how matters stand with the fish. As for oil, the Egyptians who dwell around the marshes make theirs from the fruit of the sillikuprion plant, which Egyptians call kiki, and they produce it this way. Along the edges of the rivers and lakes
they sow these sillikuprion plants, which in Greece grow wild of their own accord; sown in Egypt they bear fruit in abundance, but foul-smelling; when they have gathered it, some pound it and press it out, others roast it first and then boil it down, and they collect what flows off from it. It is oily, and no less suited than olive oil for the lamp, but it gives off a heavy smell. Against
the mosquitoes, which are countless, this is what they have devised. Those who live above the marshes are helped by towers, into which they climb to sleep, for the mosquitoes are unable to fly high because of the winds. But for those living around the marshes other means have been devised instead of towers: every man of them has acquired a casting-net, with which by
day he catches fish, and at night he uses it as follows: around the bed on which he rests, he sets up the net, and then, crawling in beneath it, sleeps there. The mosquitoes, if he sleeps wrapped in a cloak or a sheet, bite through these, but they do not even try to get through the net at all. Their cargo boats are made of the
acacia tree, whose shape is very much like that of the Cyrenean lotus, and its gum is resin. From this acacia, then, they cut lengths of wood about two cubits long and lay them together like bricks, building the hull in the following manner: they thread the two-cubit lengths of wood around close-set, long dowels; and when they have built the hull in this way, they stretch cross-beams over the top of it; they use no ribs; on the inside
they seal the joints where the papyrus planking meets. They fit a single rudder, run through the keel itself. The mast is acacia wood, the sails papyrus. Boats of this kind cannot travel upriver unless a strong wind is blowing, and instead get towed from the bank; going downstream, though, they move like this: a raft built of tamarisk wood, stitched together
with a mat of reeds, and a stone bored through, about two talents in weight; of these, the raft, tied by a rope, is let go to float ahead of the boat, and the stone by another rope behind. The raft, as the current catches it, moves quickly and pulls along the baris (for that is the name given to these boats), while the stone, dragging behind and resting on
with a mat of reed, keeps the vessel's course steady. There are great numbers of these craft, and some haul cargo worth many thousands of talents. Once the Nile has spread across the countryside, only the cities show above the water, looking rather like the islands scattered in the Aegean Sea; everything else in Egypt turns to open water, with just the cities rising clear of it. So people travel by boat
this happens, people are ferried no longer along the channels of the river but across the middle of the plain. To Memphis, sailing up from Naucratis, the route runs right past the pyramids themselves; yet even this is not the direct way, but goes past the point of the Delta and by the city of Cercasorus; and sailing to Naucratis from the sea and Canobus across the plain, you will come by way of Anthylla
and the town called after Archandrus. Of these, Anthylla, a town of some note, is set aside specifically to provide sandals for the wife of whichever king rules Egypt at the time (a practice dating from when Egypt fell under Persian rule); the second town, it seems to me, takes its name from Archandrus, son-in-law of Danaus, himself son of Phthius, son of Achaeus — hence it is called the town of Archandrus.
There could be some other Archandrus too, but the name at any rate is not Egyptian. Up to this point it is my own sight and judgment and inquiry that speak in what has been said; from here on I set out to tell the accounts of the Egyptians according to what I heard, though something of my own sight will be added to them as well. Min, the first man to rule as king of Egypt, the priests said, first
walled off Memphis with a dam. For the whole river, they said, used to flow along the sandy mountain toward Libya, but Min, by damming up the bend to the south, about a hundred stadia above Memphis, dried up the old channel and diverted the river to flow through the middle of the mountains. And still even now this bend of the Nile, held
back as it is, is kept under close guard by the Persians, who shore it up every year; for if the river should choose to break through and overrun it at this point, there would be danger of all Memphis being flooded. And when the land shut off by this same Min, first to become king, had become dry, on it he founded the city that is now called Memphis; for Memphis too lies in the
narrow part of Egypt; and outside it he dug round a lake from the river to the north and to the west (for on the east side the Nile itself shuts it in), and he also established in it the temple of Hephaestus, which is great and most worthy of description. After him the priests recited from a papyrus roll the names of three hundred and thirty other kings. In
so many generations of men there were eighteen Ethiopians, one woman a native, and the rest men, Egyptians. The woman's name, the one who reigned, was, as it was also for the Babylonian woman, Nitocris; her they said avenged her brother, whom the Egyptians, while he was reigning over them, killed, and having killed him gave the kingship over to her in this way; and to avenge him she destroyed many of the Egyptians by a trick. For having had a chamber built
a long underground chamber—invented for the sake of the story, but in fact she had contrived something else. She knew, they said, that she would invite to a feast many of the Egyptians most responsible for the murder, and while they were dining she let the river burst in upon them through a great hidden channel. That is as much as they told me about her, except that when she had accomplished this she threw herself into a chamber full of ashes, so that she might escape retribution. Of the other kings
they told me of no achievement of works, and said there was nothing splendid about them, except for one, the last of them, Moeris. He, they said, left as memorials the gateway of the temple of Hephaestus that faces north, and dug a lake whose circumference in stadia I will state later, and built pyramids in it, of whose size I will speak together with the lake itself. This man's achievements were
achieved that much, while none of the rest accomplished anything at all. Setting these aside, then, I will turn to the king who ruled after them, named Sesostris. The priests told me that he first launched long ships from the Arabian gulf and conquered the peoples settled along the Red Sea coast, sailing onward until he reached waters no longer navigable on account of shallows. From there,
when he came back to Egypt, according to the priests' account, he took a great army of his men and marched through the mainland, subduing every nation that lay in his path. Whenever he encountered people who were valiant and fought fiercely for their freedom, he set up pillars in their lands with writing on them declaring his own name and that of his homeland, and how by his power
he had subdued them; but wherever he took the cities without a fight and easily, he inscribed on the pillars the same as for the nations that had shown themselves brave, and in addition he inscribed a woman's genitals, wishing to make plain that they were cowards. Doing this he passed through the mainland, until crossing from Asia into Europe he subdued
the Scythians and the Thracians as well. It seems to me that this is the farthest point the Egyptian army ever reached, since the pillars are still visible standing in their territory, but none appear beyond it. From there he turned around and headed back, and once he reached the river Phasis, I cannot state with certainty what took place next — whether King Sesostris himself broke off part of
a portion of his own army, left some of them behind as settlers of that land, or whether some of his soldiers, weary of his wandering, remained by the river Phasis. For it is plain that the Colchians are Egyptians—this I concluded myself before hearing it from others. But since it had become a matter of concern to me, I asked both peoples, and the Colchians remembered the Egyptians better than the Egyptians
remembered the Colchians. The Egyptians said they supposed the Colchians were descended from the army of Sesostris, and I myself guessed as much for this reason too, that they are dark-skinned and woolly-haired. That in itself proves nothing, since there are others like that too; but I rely more on the fact that alone of all people the Colchians and the Egyptians and the Ethiopians circumcise their genitals, and have done so from the beginning. The Phoenicians and
the Syrians of Palestine themselves admit that they learned it from the Egyptians, while the Syrians who live around the river Thermodon and the Parthenius, and the Macrones who are their neighbors, say they learned it recently from the Colchians. These are the only peoples who practice circumcision, and they are seen to do it in the same way as the Egyptians. As for the Egyptians and the Ethiopians themselves, I cannot say which of the two
learned it from the other, since it is clearly a very ancient custom. That it was through contact with Egypt that the others learned it seems to me strongly confirmed by this: those Phoenicians who have dealings with Greece no longer imitate the Egyptians in this matter, but no longer circumcise their children. Let me now say one more thing about the Colchians, showing how closely they resemble the Egyptians: they alone, they and the Egyptians,
work linen in the same way, and their whole manner of life and their language are alike. The Colchian linen is called by the Greeks Sardonian, while that which comes from Egypt is called Egyptian. As for the pillars that Sesostris, king of Egypt, set up in the various lands, most of them are no longer to be seen standing, but in Palestinian Syria I myself saw
still standing there, bearing the inscription mentioned earlier together with the figure of a woman's genitals. Near Ionia, too, are two carvings of this same man cut into rock faces, one on the road running from Ephesus to Phocaea, the other along the route linking Sardis and Smyrna. At each spot a man is carved, roughly seven feet tall, gripping a spear in his right hand and a bow in his left, and
the rest of his equipment likewise, for it is both Egyptian and Ethiopian in style; and across his chest, from one shoulder to the other, run sacred Egyptian characters carved in relief, reading: 'I won this land for myself with my own shoulders.' Who he is and where he is from he does not make clear there, though he has shown it elsewhere. Some who have seen these figures have guessed that they are images of Memnon,
they take it to represent him, though this is far from accurate. This same Egyptian, Sesostris, was said by the priests to have been returning home with a great number of captives from the nations whose territory he had conquered when, arriving at Daphnae near Pelusium on the way back, his own brother — the one Sesostris had left in charge of Egypt — invited him to a banquet along with his sons, and stacked wood
around the house from the outside, and having piled it up, set it on fire. When Sesostris learned of this, he at once took counsel with his wife—for he had his wife with him—and she advised him that of their six sons he should lay two of them across the fire to make a bridge over the burning, and that they themselves should walk across on them to escape. Sesostris did this, and two of his
sons were burned to death in this way, but the rest escaped safely along with their father. When Sesostris returned to Egypt and had taken revenge on his brother, he put to use the multitude of people he had brought back from the lands he had subdued in the following way: it was they who dragged the huge stones brought to the temple of Hephaestus in this king's reign, stones enormous in size, and it was they
who, forced into the work, dug out every one of the canals now found across Egypt, and against their will turned Egypt — once entirely open to horses and wagons — into land unsuited for either. From that point on, Egypt, flat as it is throughout, has been impossible to cross by horse or wagon; the canals, numerous and running every which way, are to blame for this. The king carved up
the land for this reason: those of the Egyptians whose cities did not lie on the river but inland found themselves short of water when the river withdrew, and had to make do with brackish water drawn from wells. For this reason Egypt was cut up with canals. This king, they said, also divided the land among all the Egyptians, giving each an equal square plot,
and from this he derived his revenues, having imposed a tax to be paid annually. If the river took away part of anyone's plot, the man would come to him and report what had happened; the king would send men to inspect and measure how much smaller the land had become, so that in future the man would pay in proportion to the tax originally assessed. It seems to me that it was from this that geometry was discovered and came back to
Greece; for the sundial and the gnomon and the twelve divisions of the day the Greeks learned from the Babylonians. This king alone of the Egyptians ruled Ethiopia as well, and he left as memorials before the temple of Hephaestus stone statues, two of thirty cubits each, of himself and his wife, and of his four sons, each twenty cubits: for these
the priest of Hephaestus, quite some time later, refused to let Darius the Persian set up a statue in front of these, claiming Darius's deeds did not measure up to those of Sesostris the Egyptian: Sesostris, he said, had conquered just as many peoples as Darius, the Scythians included, whereas Darius had failed to subdue the Scythians. It would not be right, then, to place a statue before that man's dedications without first outdoing
him in deeds. Darius, they say, accepted this. When Sesostris died, they said, his son Pheros succeeded to the kingship. He undertook no military campaign, and it happened that he became blind, for the following reason. The river had risen to its greatest height ever, to eighteen cubits, and when it overflowed the fields, a wind arose and the river grew stormy with waves; and this
king, so the story goes, acted with reckless disregard, seizing a spear and hurling it into the swirling middle of the river, and shortly after, stricken in his eyes, he went blind. He remained blind for ten years, and in the eleventh an oracle reached him from the city of Buto declaring that his term of punishment had ended, and that his sight would return once he rinsed his eyes using the urine of a woman who had slept with
no man but her own husband and had never known another. He tested his own wife's urine first, and when his sight did not return, he went through every woman one after another; once his sight came back, he gathered together all the women he had tested, except the one whose urine had cured him, into a single town now called Red Clod, and having herded them there he burned every one of them along with the town itself;
but the woman whose urine had restored his sight he took himself as wife. Having escaped his affliction of the eyes, he dedicated offerings in all the notable temples, and among them, most worthy of mention, he dedicated remarkable works in the temple of the Sun: two stone obelisks, each made of a single block of stone, each in length
a hundred cubits, eight cubits across. This king, they said, was followed on the throne by a man from Memphis whose name, rendered in Greek, was Proteus. His sacred precinct still stands at Memphis today, a very handsome and well-kept one, situated south of the temple of Hephaestus. Tyrian Phoenicians live around this precinct, and the whole area together is called the Camp of the Tyrians.
Within the precinct of Proteus there is a shrine called that of the Foreign Aphrodite. I infer that this shrine belongs to Helen daughter of Tyndareus, both because I have heard the story that Helen dwelt with Proteus, and because it is named after the Foreign Aphrodite; for none of the other shrines of Aphrodite anywhere is called by the name 'Foreign.' The priests told me, when I inquired about
Helen came about as follows. Alexander, having snatched Helen away from Sparta, set sail for his own country; and once he reached the Aegean, contrary winds pushed him off his path into the Egyptian sea, and from there, since the gales never let up, he made his way to Egypt, arriving at what is now called the Canobic mouth of the Nile and then at the Salting-houses. On the shore stood
and there stands, to this day, a temple of Heracles; if a slave belonging to anyone at all takes refuge there and has the sacred brands placed on him, dedicating himself to the god, no one is allowed to touch him. This custom has held unchanged, from its founding right up to my own day; and so, when Alexander's servants learned of the rule governing the temple, they abandoned him and, sitting as suppliants of the god, brought charges against
Alexander, wishing to do him harm, telling the whole story of how things stood concerning Helen and the wrong done to Menelaus. They brought these charges before the priests and before the warden of this mouth of the river, whose name was Thonis. Hearing this, Thonis sent a message with all speed to Memphis, to Proteus, saying: 'A stranger has come, a Teucrian by birth, who has done
committed an unholy act in Greece: he tricked the wife of his own host, and now arrives bringing her along with an enormous amount of wealth, having been blown to this land by the winds. Should we let him sail off unpunished, then, or should we seize what he brought with him?' In response, Proteus sent back this message: 'As for this man, whoever he actually is, who has behaved so impiously toward his own
host — seize him and bring him to me, that I may know what he has to say.' Hearing this, Thonis seized Alexander and held his ships in port, and then brought him up to Memphis, along with Helen and the wealth, and also the suppliants. When all had been brought there, Proteus asked Alexander who he was
and from where he was sailing. Alexander told him his lineage and named his fatherland, and related the voyage, from where he was sailing. Then Proteus asked him where he had gotten Helen; and as Alexander wandered in his account and did not tell the truth, those who had become suppliants refuted him, recounting the whole story of the wrongdoing.
At last Proteus declared this judgment to them, saying: 'If I did not hold it a matter of great importance never to kill any stranger who has been driven by winds into my country, I would have taken vengeance on you on behalf of the Greek, since you, basest of men, having received hospitality, committed a most unholy deed: you went to the wife of your own host. And not only
did that not satisfy you, but you carried her off, stealing her away after unsettling her mind. And even that alone was not enough for you, but you have come here having also plundered your host's house. Now, then, since I hold it of great importance not to kill guests, I will not allow you to take away this woman and the wealth, but I will keep them for the Greek, your host, until such time as he himself comes and wishes
wishes. But you yourself, along with your fellow crewmen, I order to clear out of my land within three days and make for somewhere else; otherwise you will be dealt with as enemies.' This, the priests said, was how Helen came to Proteus. And it strikes me that Homer had also come across this account; but since it did not fit as gracefully into his epic as the other
version he used, he deliberately set it aside, while showing that he knew this story as well. This is clear from the way he composed, in the Iliad (and nowhere else did he retract himself), the wandering of Alexander — how he was carried off course bringing Helen, wandering to various places and how he came to Sidon in Phoenicia. He mentions this in the Prowess of Diomedes; the verses run thus:
'There were the robes, richly embroidered, the work of Sidonian women, whom godlike Alexander himself brought from Sidon, sailing over the wide sea, on that voyage on which he brought back high-born Helen.' (Homer, Iliad 6.289-292) He mentions it also in the Odyssey, in these verses: 'Such cunning drugs did the daughter of Zeus possess, good ones, which Polydamna gave her, wife of Thon, an Egyptian woman, for whom the grain-giving earth bears very many drugs,
many good mixed together, and many baneful.' (Homer, Odyssey 4.227-230) And these other lines Menelaus speaks to Telemachus: 'The gods still held me there, eager as I was to return to Egypt, since I had not offered them full hecatombs.' (Homer, Odyssey 4.351-352) In these verses he shows that he knew of Alexander's wandering to Egypt; for Syria borders on Egypt, and the Phoenicians, to whom
Sidon belongs, dwell in Syria. From these verses, and from this passage especially, it is made clear, not least but above all, that the Cypria is not the work of Homer but of someone else. For in the Cypria it is said that Alexander arrived at Ilion from Sparta on the third day, bringing Helen, having enjoyed a favorable wind and a smooth sea; whereas in
the Iliad he says that he wandered while bringing her. Let us leave Homer and the Cypria aside then. When I asked the priests whether the Greeks tell an idle tale about what happened at Ilion or not, they answered as follows, saying they knew it from inquiries made with Menelaus himself. They said that after the abduction of Helen a great army of Greeks
arrived in force to aid Menelaus, and once the army had landed and made camp, they sent envoys to Ilion, Menelaus himself going along with them; and when these men entered within the walls, they demanded the return of Helen and the wealth Alexander had made off with, and sought redress for the wrongs committed. The Trojans gave this same reply then and
later on as well, swearing it and stating it plainly without oath alike: that they did not have Helen nor the wealth being claimed, but that all of it was in Egypt, and that it would be unjust for them to answer for what Proteus, the Egyptian king, was holding. The Greeks, feeling mocked by this claim, laid siege until they captured the city; but once the wall had fallen and Helen was nowhere to be found, instead
they learned the same account as before, then indeed, believing the first account, the Greeks sent Menelaus himself to Proteus. Menelaus, having come to Egypt and sailed up the river to Memphis, gave a truthful account of what had happened, and was met with great hospitality, and received Helen back unharmed, and all his own wealth besides. Yet even after receiving
these things, Menelaus turned out to be an unjust man toward the Egyptians. For when he set out to sail away, contrary winds held him back; and when this went on for a long time, he devised an unholy scheme: taking two children of local men, he sacrificed them. Afterward, when it became known that he had done this, he was hated and pursued, and fled with his ships toward Libya; from there where
he went next the Egyptians could not say. Some of this, they said, they knew by inquiry, but what happened in their own country they said they knew for certain and could speak of accurately. This is what the Egyptian priests told me. And I myself agree with the account given about Helen, reasoning as follows: had Helen actually been inside Ilion, the Trojans would surely have handed her over to the Greeks, whether Alexander consented or not.
For Priam was not so mad, nor were the others close to him, that they were willing to risk their own persons, their children, and their city, so that Alexander might live with Helen. Even if they had thought this way in the earliest times, still, since many of the other Trojans were dying whenever they clashed with the Greeks, and of Priam's own
sons there was hardly a battle in which two or three or even more did not die, if one may say anything relying on the epic poets, given that such things were happening, I for my part believe that even if Priam himself had been living with Helen, he would still have surrendered her to the Achaeans, if by doing so he were to be freed from the troubles at hand. Nor indeed did the kingship devolve upon Alexander,
so that, Priam being an old man, affairs rested in his hands; rather Hector, who outranked him both in years and in manly standing, was to succeed to it upon Priam's death, and it was not fitting for him to indulge his brother in wrongdoing, especially when great troubles were befalling both himself personally and all the other Trojans on his account. But the truth was that they did not have Helen to give back, and though they spoke
the truth, the Greeks did not believe them — because, as I declare my own opinion, the divine was arranging things so that, by their utter destruction, they might make this plain to mankind: that for great wrongs there are also great punishments from the gods. This is what I think about the matter, and it is said. Proteus, they said, was succeeded in the kingship by Rhampsinitus, who left as memorials the propylaea toward the west
facing the temple of Hephaestus, and opposite the forecourt he set up two statues, twenty-five cubits tall, of which the Egyptians call the one standing toward the north Summer, and the one toward the south Winter; the one they call Summer they worship and treat well, but the one called Winter they treat in the opposite way. After this they told me
that this king went down alive into the place the Greeks believe to be Hades, and there played dice with Demeter, sometimes winning and sometimes being beaten by her, and that he came back up again bearing as a gift from her a golden napkin. From Rhampsinitus's descent, they said, when he came back up, the Egyptians instituted a festival, which I myself know
they still celebrate even to my own day, though I cannot say whether it is really on account of this that they hold the festival. On the very day of the festival the priests weave a cloak, and then bind the eyes of one of their own number with a fillet; leading him, with the cloak on, to a road leading to the sanctuary of Demeter, they themselves turn back. This priest, with his eyes bound, is said to be led by two wolves
to the sanctuary of Demeter, twenty stadia distant from the city, and afterward the wolves guide him back from the sanctuary to that very same spot. Let anyone to whom such things seem credible make use of what is told by the Egyptians; for my part, throughout this whole account my rule is that I write down what is said by each people as I have heard it. The Egyptians say that Demeter and Dionysus rule
over the world below. The Egyptians were also the first to advance the idea that a man's soul cannot die, and that once the body wastes away, it slips into whatever creature happens to be coming to birth at that moment; and once it has passed through every creature of land, sea, and air, it enters once more into the body of a man coming to birth; and this cycle takes it three thousand years to complete.
Some of the Greeks have adopted this doctrine, some earlier and some later, as though it were their own; I know their names, but I do not write them down. Up to the reign of King Rhampsinitus, they said, Egypt was under thoroughly good governance and prospered greatly, but after him Cheops, who became king over them, drove the country into every kind of misery. For he shut up all the temples,
and first stopped the Egyptians from performing their sacrifices, and then ordered them all to work for him. Some were assigned to haul stones from the quarries in the Arabian mountain range down to the Nile; a separate crew was posted on the far bank to take charge of the stones once boats had ferried them across the river, and to haul them on to what is called the Libyan mountain range. They worked in gangs of one hundred
thousand men, each gang for three months at a time. Ten years were spent by the people in this toil, wearing themselves out, on the road along which they hauled the stones — a work, in my opinion, not much less in magnitude than the pyramid itself. For its length is five stadia, its width ten fathoms, and its height, at its highest point, eight fathoms,
and it is made of polished stone with figures carved on it. This road took ten years, as did the underground chambers on the hill on which the pyramids stand, which he made as burial chambers for himself on an island, having brought in a channel from the Nile. The pyramid itself took twenty years to build; it is square, each face measuring eight
plethra, and the height is equal, and the stone is polished and fitted together as closely as possible; none of the stones is less than thirty feet long. This pyramid was built in the manner of steps, which some call tiers and others altars; when they had first made it in this stepped form, they raised the remaining stones by means of machines made of short timbers, lifting them from the ground onto the first tier of steps;
and when the stone had risen onto this, it was placed on another machine standing on the first tier, and from there hauled up to the second tier by another machine; for there were as many machines as there were tiers of steps — or else it was the same machine, being a single one and easy to move, which they shifted from tier to tier each time they
took out the stone; for I record it both ways, just as it is told. The topmost parts of it were finished first, and then they went on to finish the parts next below these, and last of all they finished the parts on the ground and lowest down. It is recorded in Egyptian writing on the pyramid how much was spent on radishes, onions, and garlic for the workmen; and as I recall well,
the interpreter who read me the inscription said it came to sixteen hundred talents of silver. If this is indeed so, how much more must have been spent besides on the iron tools they worked with, and on food and clothing for the workmen, given that the time spent building the works was as stated, and there was, I think, additional time spent in cutting and
hauling the stones and constructing the underground excavation — no small amount of time. Cheops sank to such depths of wickedness that, when he was in need of money, he set his own daughter in a brothel and ordered her to charge a certain sum — how much, they did not tell me. She collected the sum set by her father, but also conceived a plan of her own, to leave behind a memorial for herself, and
asked of each man who came in to her that he give her one stone toward the works. From these stones, they said, the pyramid was built that stands in the middle of the three, in front of the great pyramid, each side of which measures a plethron and a half. The Egyptians said this Cheops was on the throne for fifty years, and when he died
his brother Chephren succeeded to the kingship. He too followed the same practice as the other in all respects, and built a pyramid too, though it does not reach the dimensions of his brother's — this we ourselves measured. It has no underground chambers, nor does any channel come from the Nile to it flowing in as into the other one; instead
through a built channel water flows around an island inside, on which they say Cheops himself lies. Chephren built the base course of red variegated Ethiopian stone, and, setting it back forty feet from the size of the other, built it adjoining the great pyramid. Both stand on the same hill, about a hundred feet high. Chephren, they said, reigned fifty-six years. This makes a total of one hundred and
six years reckoned, during which time the Egyptians suffered every kind of misery, and the temples, shut up for so long, were not opened. Out of hatred the Egyptians are very unwilling to name these kings, and instead they call the pyramids after the shepherd Philitis, who at that time grazed his flocks in that region. After him, they said, Mycerinus, son of Cheops, became king of Egypt; he
disapproved of his father's works, and he opened the temples and let the people, worn down to the last degree of misery, return to their work and their sacrifices, and he gave the most just judgments of all the kings in their disputes. In this respect he is praised more than any other king the Egyptians have ever had, for in general he judged well, and also
when someone was dissatisfied with a verdict, he would give them other gifts from his own purse to satisfy their feelings. Though Mycerinus was so mild toward his citizens and practiced these things, the first of his misfortunes was the death of his daughter, his only child in his household. Overwhelmed with grief at what had befallen him, and wishing to bury his daughter
in a manner more extraordinary than others, he had a hollow wooden cow made, and then, having gilded it, buried inside it this daughter of his who had died. This cow was not hidden in the ground, but was still visible even in my own time, standing in the city of Sais, kept in the palace in a richly furnished chamber; incense of all kinds is burned beside it every day,
and every night a lamp burns beside it all night long. In another chamber close by the cow stand statues of Mycerinus's concubines, according to the priests at Sais; there stand wooden colossal figures, about twenty in number, made naked. As to who they really are, I cannot say, except what is told. But some tell another story about
this cow and the colossal figures, saying that Mycerinus fell in love with his own daughter and then had intercourse with her against her will; afterward, they say, the girl hanged herself out of grief, and the cow became her burial place, while the hands of the attendants who had helped betray her to her own father were cut off by the girl's mother, and now
their images have suffered the same fate the living women suffered. But this, I think, is nonsense they tell, especially the part about the hands of the colossal figures; for we ourselves saw that they had lost their hands through age, which were still visible lying at their feet even in my own time. As for the cow, in most respects
it is covered over with a crimson cloth, but the neck and head are shown gilded with very thick gold; between the horns is a representation of the sun's disk, in gold. The cow is not standing upright but lying on its knees, and its size is that of a real full-grown cow. It is carried out of its chamber every year, at the time when the Egyptians beat themselves for the
— a god I will not name in connection with such a matter — and that at that time they bring the cow out into the light; for they say she asked her father Mycerinus, as she was dying, that once a year she might look upon the sun. After the misfortune of his daughter, the following happened next to this king: a message reached him from an oracle at Buto, warning that he had only six years left to live
and would die in the seventh. Taking this hard, he responded by sending the oracle a message of complaint against the god, protesting that his father and his uncle, though they had shut up the temples and paid no heed to the gods, but even destroyed men, had lived a long time, while he, who was pious, was going to die so soon. But a second message came to him from the oracle
saying that it was for this very reason that his life was being cut short: for he had not done what he ought to have done; Egypt was fated to suffer for a span of one hundred fifty years, and the two kings who ruled before him had grasped this, but he had not. When Mycerinus heard this, taking it that his fate was now sealed, he had many lamps made, and whenever night came,
he would light them and drink and enjoy himself, never letting up by day or by night, wandering through the marshes and the groves and wherever he learned the most pleasant places for revelry might be. He contrived all this because he wished to prove the oracle false, so that by turning the nights into days he might make twelve years out of the six. He left behind a pyramid much smaller than his father's, twenty feet
short of each side measuring three plethra, foursquare, and built halfway up of Ethiopian stone. Some of the Greeks say this pyramid belongs to the courtesan Rhodopis, but they are mistaken. Indeed, they seem to me not even to know who Rhodopis was when they say this — for otherwise they would never have credited her with building such a pyramid, on which countless thousands of talents were spent, so to speak. Besides,
Rhodopis flourished in the reign of Amasis, not this king. For it was very many years after these kings who left these pyramids that Rhodopis lived; she was Thracian by birth, and was a slave of Iadmon son of Hephaestopolis, a Samian, and a fellow-slave of Aesop the storyteller. For Aesop too belonged to Iadmon, as is shown by this above all: when
the Delphians, obeying an oracle, repeatedly proclaimed that whoever wished might claim compensation for the life of Aesop, no one else came forward, but a grandson of that Iadmon, another Iadmon, claimed it. So Aesop too belonged to Iadmon. Rhodopis reached Egypt in the company of Xanthes of Samos, who brought her there, and once there, to practice her trade, she was freed for a great sum of money by a man of Mytilene, Charaxus son of Scamandronymus, brother of Sappho
the poetess. Thus Rhodopis was freed, and she remained in Egypt, and being very charming she acquired great wealth — great, that is, for a Rhodopis, but not enough to reach the scale of such a pyramid. For a tenth of her wealth can still be seen today by anyone who wishes, so there is no need to attribute to her any great fortune. For Rhodopis desired
to leave a memorial of herself in Greece, by having made something that no one else had thought of and dedicated in a temple, and to set this up at Delphi as a remembrance of herself. So with a tenth of her wealth she had made many iron ox-roasting spits, as much as the tithe allowed, and sent them to Delphi; and even now they still lie stacked behind the altar the Chians set up there, opposite
the temple itself. Courtesans at Naucratis do somehow tend to become quite charming. This woman, of whom this story is told, grew so renowned that every Greek learned the name Rhodopis; and later, another woman, named Archidice, became celebrated throughout Greece, though less
talked about than the first. Charaxus, after he had ransomed Rhodopis, returned to Mytilene, and Sappho mocked him severely in a poem. So much for Rhodopis. After Mycerinus, the priests said, the king of Egypt was Asychis, who built for Hephaestus the propylaea facing the sunrise, which are by far the finest and largest; for while all the propylaea have carved figures
and other manifold architectural ornament, these surpass the rest by far. In this king's reign, they said, since money was in very short supply, a law was made among the Egyptians that a man could pledge his father's corpse as security and thereby borrow money; and to this law was added a further provision, that the lender should also gain power over the entire tomb of the borrower, and that
whoever offered this pledge and was unwilling to repay the debt should suffer this penalty: he himself, when he died, should not be entitled to burial, either in that ancestral tomb or in any other, nor should any of his own kin who died be allowed burial either. This king, wishing to surpass the earlier kings of Egypt before him, left as his memorial a pyramid built of bricks, on which is carved in
stone an inscription reading as follows: 'Do not think less of me next to these stone pyramids: I surpass them as much as Zeus surpasses the other gods. For men thrust a pole into a lake, and whatever mud clung to the pole they gathered up, and made bricks of it, and thus built me.' Such were this king's achievements. After him there reigned a blind man from the city of Anysis,
whose name was Anysis. During his reign, Ethiopians together with Sabacos, king of the Ethiopians, invaded Egypt with a great force. This blind man fled away into the marshes, and the Ethiopian ruled Egypt for fifty years, during which he did the following: whenever any Egyptian committed some offense, he was unwilling to put any of them to death; instead
he judged each according to the magnitude of the wrongdoing, sentencing the offender to build up mounds of earth near his own city, wherever he was from. And this is how the cities came to be raised even higher than before: they had first been raised by those who dug the canals in the reign of King Sesostris, and were raised a second time under the Ethiopian, becoming very high indeed. And among the other cities of
Egypt that were raised high, the one raised most, in my opinion, was the city of Bubastis, where there is also a temple of Bubastis most worthy of description. There are larger and more costly temples, but none more delightful to look at than this one. Bubastis, in the Greek tongue, is Artemis. Her temple is arranged like this: except for the entrance, the rest is an island; for from the
Nile two canals run in, not mixing with one another, but each reaching up to the temple entrance, curving around one side, then the other, each a hundred feet wide, shaded over with trees. The propylaea are ten fathoms high, adorned with figures six cubits tall, worthy of note. As the temple lies in the middle of the city, it is visible from every side to one walking around it; for since
the city has been raised up high while the temple stayed put where it was originally built, it can be seen clearly from without. Around it runs a wall carved with figures, and within is a grove of very tall trees planted around a great shrine, in which the statue itself stands; the width and length of the temple precinct are each a stade. Along the entrance runs a road paved with stone, extending
about three stades, running through the marketplace toward the east, about four plethra wide; and on either side of the road grow trees reaching to the sky. It leads to the temple of Hermes. So much for this temple. As for how the Ethiopian's departure came about, they said it happened like this: he had a vision in his sleep of the following sort, and thereafter fled away,
leaving. It seemed to him that a man stood over him and advised him to gather together all the priests in Egypt and cut them in half. Having seen this vision, he said that he took it as a sign that the gods were showing him this so that, by committing impiety concerning sacred matters, he might suffer some harm from gods or men; he would not do this, but rather, since the time had now run out
during which it had been foretold he would rule Egypt, he would withdraw. For while he had been in Ethiopia, oracles consulted by the Ethiopians themselves had declared that he must reign over Egypt for fifty years. As that span drew to a close and the vision from his dream began to disturb him, Sabacos withdrew from Egypt of his own accord. And when the Ethiopian had left Egypt, the blind man again ruled, coming from the
marshes, where for fifty years he had lived on an island he had built up with ash and earth. For whenever the Egyptians came bringing him food, as had been assigned to each of them, without the Ethiopian's knowledge, he would order them also to bring ash as part of the gift. This island no one before Amyrtaeus was able to discover, but for more than seven hundred years the earlier
kings before Amyrtaeus were unable to find it. This island goes by the name Elbo, and measures ten stades all the way around. After him, they said, there reigned the priest of Hephaestus, whose name was Sethos: he held in contempt and mistreated the warrior class of the Egyptians, acting as if he'd never need them again, and among other dishonors he did them, he took away their farmland; for under the earlier
kings each of them had been granted, as a special allotment, twelve arouras. After this, Sennacherib, king of the Arabians and Assyrians, marched a great army against Egypt; and the Egyptian warriors refused to come to the aid. The priest, driven into a helpless position, went into the inner sanctuary before the statue and lamented over what he was in danger of suffering. Overcome by his lament, he drifted into sleep, and a vision appeared to him
the god stood over him and told him to take courage, that he would suffer no harm in meeting the Arabian army, for he himself would send him helpers. Relying on this dream, he took with him the Egyptians who were willing to follow, and encamped at Pelusium, for that is where the entrance routes are, and none of the men who followed him were fighters, but shopkeepers and craftsmen and market people. When they arrived there,
field mice poured in upon their enemies by night and ate through their quivers and their bows, and besides these the handles of their shields, so that the next day, fleeing unarmed, many of them fell. And to this day this king stands in the temple of Hephaestus, made of stone, holding a mouse in his hand, and saying through an inscription, "Let whoever looks upon me be reverent."
So far the Egyptians and the priests told the story, showing that between the first king and this final priest-king of Hephaestus, three hundred forty-one human generations had passed, and in these there had been that many high priests and that many kings, each in their own right. Yet three hundred generations of men amount to ten thousand years, for three
generations of men make a hundred years; and the remaining forty-one generations, which came after the three hundred, make one thousand three hundred and forty years. So across a span of eleven thousand three hundred forty years, they said, no god had taken human form; nor indeed did they say anything of this sort had happened either earlier or later among the remaining kings of Egypt who arose.
In that time, then, they said the sun had four times risen out of its usual place: twice it rose where it now sets, and twice it set where it now rises. And nothing in Egypt was changed on account of this, neither what comes from the earth nor what comes from the river for them, nor anything concerning diseases or
deaths. Earlier, when Hecataeus the storyteller was in Thebes and traced his lineage, attaching his family line to a god in the sixteenth generation, the priests of Zeus did to him just what they also did to me, though I had not traced my own lineage. They led him into the great inner chamber and counted out, showing him, as many wooden colossal statues as they had said there were; for each high priest sets up there, during his own lifetime, an image
of himself. Counting and showing them, the priests demonstrated to me that each one was the son of his own father, going through them all starting from the statue of whichever had died most recently, until they had shown me the whole line. And to Hecataeus, when he traced his own lineage and attached it to a god in the sixteenth generation, they gave a counter-genealogy based on their reckoning, not accepting from him that a man could be born from a god; they gave this counter-genealogy in the following way, saying that each of the
statues was a piromis born from a piromis, until they had shown that all three hundred and forty-five statues were, each one, a piromis named after piromis, and they did not attach them to a god or a hero at all. Piromis, in the Greek tongue, means a good and noble man. Of those whose images these were, then, they showed that all of them were of this sort, quite removed from gods. But before the time of these men, they said, those ruling
in Egypt were gods, not existing alongside men, and of these always one held power; and the last of them to reign was Horus, son of Osiris, whom the Greeks call Apollo; he put an end to the rule of Typhon and reigned last over Egypt. Osiris, in the Greek tongue, is Dionysus. Among the Greeks, the youngest of the gods are held to be Heracles and Dionysus
and Pan, but among the Egyptians Pan is the most ancient, one of the first eight gods, as they are called, while Heracles belongs to the second group, the twelve so-called gods, and Dionysus to the third group, who were born from the twelve gods. As for Heracles, how many years the Egyptians themselves say there are down to king Amasis, I have already stated; and Pan is said to be still more ancient than these,
while Dionysus is the most recent of them, and even he is reckoned to be fifteen thousand years before king Amasis. And the Egyptians say they know this exactly, always reckoning and always recording the years. Now as for the Dionysus said to have been born from Semele, daughter of Cadmus, it is about one thousand six hundred years down to my own time; as for Heracles, born of Alcmene, it comes to roughly nine hundred years; and as for Pan,
son of Penelope (for by the Greeks it is said that Pan was born of her and Hermes), the years are fewer than those since the Trojan war, about eight hundred years down to my time. Anyone is free to make use of whichever of these two accounts seems more persuasive; as for me, I have already declared my own judgment about them. For if these figures too had become well known and had grown old in
Greece, just as Heracles born of Amphitryon did, and likewise Dionysus born of Semele and Pan born of Penelope, one might say that these were other men who had come to bear the names of those gods born earlier. But as it is, the Greeks say that Dionysus, as soon as he was born, was sewn into Zeus's thigh and carried off to Nysa,
which lies above Egypt in Ethiopia; and concerning Pan they cannot say where he went once he was born. It is clear to me that the Greeks learned the names of these two later than the names of the other gods; and from the time they learned of them, from that time they reckon their birth. This much, then, is what the Egyptians themselves say; but what the rest of
mankind, and the Egyptians in agreement with them, say happened in this land, this I will now relate; and something of my own observation will be added to it as well. The Egyptians, once freed after the reign of the priest of Hephaestus—for they were not able to live any length of time without a king—set up twelve kings, dividing the whole of Egypt into twelve portions. These men, having made marriage alliances with one another, ruled under the following customs,
neither to overthrow one another nor to seek to have more than one's fellow, but to be the very greatest of friends. They made these rules and kept to them strictly for the following reason: it had been prophesied to them at the very outset, when they first took up their rule, that whichever of them poured a libation from a bronze bowl in the temple of Hephaestus would rule all of Egypt; for indeed they used to gather together for all the sacred rites.
And they resolved to leave behind some common memorial, and having so resolved they built a labyrinth, situated a little above Lake Moeris, near the city called Crocodiles' City—which I myself have now seen, and it is beyond description. For if one were to reckon up the walls and the display of works made by the Greeks, they would appear to be of less labor and expense than this labyrinth.
And yet the temple at Ephesus is certainly remarkable, and so is the one at Samos. The pyramids too were beyond description, and each of them was a match for many great works of the Greeks; yet the labyrinth surpasses even the pyramids. For it has twelve covered courts, with gates facing one another, six facing north and six facing south,
all adjoining one another, with the same outer wall surrounding them all. The chambers within are double, some underground and others above ground upon them, three thousand in number, fifteen hundred of each kind. The chambers above ground we ourselves saw, going through them, and speak of them from our own viewing; the underground ones we learned of only by report, for the Egyptians in charge were entirely unwilling
to show them, saying that there were burial places there belonging both to the kings who first built this labyrinth and to the sacred crocodiles. So concerning the lower chambers we speak from what we heard by report, while the upper ones, greater than any human works, we ourselves saw; for the passageways through the covered halls and the winding paths through the courts, being most intricate, provided endless wonder as one passed from a court
into the chambers, and from the chambers into columned halls, and from the columned halls into other chambers, and into other courts from the chambers. The roof over all of these is of stone, just as the walls are, and the walls are full of carved figures, and each court is surrounded by columns of white stone fitted together most precisely. At the corner where the labyrinth ends there stands
a pyramid forty fathoms high, on which great figures are carved; and the way into it has been made underground. Such being this labyrinth, an even greater wonder is provided by the lake called Moeris, alongside which this labyrinth is built; its circumference measures three thousand six hundred stadia, sixty schoinoi, equal to the length of Egypt itself along the sea. It lies
long from north to south, and its depth, at its deepest point, is fifty fathoms. That it is man-made and dug out is shown by the lake itself; for two pyramids stand roughly at its center, rising fifty fathoms above the water, each, and an equal amount built below the water, and on top of both sits a stone colossus seated upon
a throne. Thus the pyramids stand a hundred fathoms high, and a hundred fathoms, measured out correctly, come to a stadion of six plethra, the fathom being reckoned at six feet and four cubits, with each foot equal to four palms and each cubit to six palms. The water in the lake is not native to it—the region there is terribly short of water—instead it has been channeled in from the Nile by
a canal, and for six months it flows into the lake, then reverses for six months, running back out to the Nile; and whenever it flows out, then during those six months the lake yields a talent of silver a day to the royal treasury from the fish, and whenever the water flows into it, twenty minas. The local people said
and that this lake drains underground into the Syrtis that lies toward Libya, turned toward the west into the interior, alongside the mountain range above Memphis. Since I could not see the spoil from this digging lying anywhere—for I was quite curious about it—I asked those who lived nearest the lake where the excavated earth had gone.
They told me where it had been carried off, and I found it easy to believe, since I knew by report that something similar had happened at Nineveh, the city of the Assyrians. The great wealth of Sardanapalus, king of Nineveh, was kept guarded in underground treasuries, and thieves plotted to carry it off. Starting from their own houses, the thieves tunneled underground, working their way toward the royal palace,
and the earth removed from the digging they carried off, whenever night fell, to the Tigris River flowing past Nineveh, until they had accomplished what they wanted. I heard that something similar happened also with the digging of the lake in Egypt, only there the work went on during daylight hours rather than at night: as the Egyptians dug, they carried the earth to the Nile,
and the river, receiving it, would disperse it. That, then, is how this lake is said to have been dug. Now the twelve kings, who dealt justly with one another, on one occasion, when they had made sacrifice in the temple of Hephaestus, on the last day of the festival, were about to pour libations, and the high priest brought out for them the golden bowls from which they were accustomed to pour, but miscounted, bringing out eleven for the twelve of them. Then, since he had no bowl,
Psammetichus, who stood last of them, took off his helmet, which was of bronze, held it out, and poured his libation with it. All the other kings likewise wore helmets, and happened to have them on at that moment. Psammetichus held out his helmet with no treacherous intent, but the others, taking note of what Psammetichus had done, and recalling the oracle that had been given them—that whichever of them poured a libation
from a bronze bowl would become sole king of Egypt—recalling this oracle, they did not see fit to kill Psammetichus, since on questioning him under torture they found he had acted with no forethought at all; but they resolved to drive him out into the marshes, stripped of most of his power, and that from the marshes he should have no dealings with the rest of Egypt. This Psammetichus had previously fled from the Ethiopian Sabacos, who
had killed his father Necho; he had then fled to Syria, and when the Ethiopian departed as a result of the vision seen in the dream, the Egyptians of the Saite district brought him back. Afterward, when he was king a second time, it was through the helmet that the eleven kings caused him to flee again into the marshes. Aware now that these men had treated him with such contempt, he set about taking revenge
on those who had driven him out. He sent to the city of Buto, to the oracle of Leto, where the Egyptians have their most truthful place of divination, and the oracle came back that vengeance would arrive from the sea, when men of bronze appeared. He found this very hard to believe—that men of bronze should come to his aid. But not much time passed before necessity drove Ionian and Carian men, out raiding,
to be carried off course to Egypt; and when they disembarked and, armed in bronze, one of the Egyptians who had come to the marshes reported to Psammetichus—since he had never before seen men armed in bronze—that men of bronze had arrived from the sea and were ravaging the countryside. Psammetichus, realizing that the oracle was being fulfilled, made friends with the Ionians and Carians, and by promising them great rewards persuaded them
to join him. Once he had persuaded them, backed by the Egyptians who wanted his cause to succeed as well as by these allies, he overthrew the kings. Having gained control of all Egypt, Psammetichus built for Hephaestus the forecourt at Memphis that faces the south wind, and a courtyard for Apis, in which Apis is kept whenever he appears, building it opposite the forecourt, the whole surrounded by columns
and filled with reliefs; in place of columns there stand colossal statues twelve cubits high supporting the courtyard. Apis, in the Greek tongue, is Epaphus. To the Ionians and Carians who had helped him accomplish this, Psammetichus gave lands to dwell in, opposite one another, with the Nile flowing between them; these were given the name Encampments. He gave them these lands and everything else
that he had promised, all of it. He also placed Egyptian boys with them to learn the Greek language, and from these, once they had learned the language, the interpreters now found in Egypt are descended. The Ionians and Carians dwelt in these lands for a long time; these lands lie by the coast a short way below Bubastis, on the mouth of the Nile called Pelusiac.
These men king Amasis later removed from there and resettled at Memphis, making them his own guard against the Egyptians. Since these people were settled in Egypt, the Greeks, by mingling with them, have come to know accurately everything that has happened concerning Egypt from the reign of king Psammetichus onward, including later events; for these were the first people of a foreign tongue to be settled in Egypt. From the places
from which they were removed, the beached hulls of their ships and the ruins of their dwellings remained down to my own time. This, then, is how Psammetichus gained control of Egypt. Of the oracle in Egypt I have already made mention many times, and I shall now give an account of it, since it deserves one. This oracle in Egypt is a sanctuary of Leto, situated in
a great city by the mouth of the Nile called the Sebennytic, as one sails up from the sea. This city, where the oracle stands, bears the name Buto, as I have already called it before. In this Buto there is a sanctuary of Apollo and Artemis, and the temple of Leto, in which the oracle is housed, is itself
quite large and has a forecourt ten fathoms high. But of the visible things there, I shall tell you what struck me as the greatest marvel: in this precinct there is a temple of Leto made from a single stone, equal in height and length, each wall of it forty cubits, each measurement the same; and as a roof-covering another stone is set on top,
with a cornice four cubits deep. This temple, then, is the most marvelous of the visible things around this sanctuary that I know of; and second is the island called Chemmis. It lies in a deep, wide lake beside the sanctuary at Buto, and the Egyptians say this island is a floating one. I myself
never saw it floating or moving, and I am amazed to hear it, if it is really a floating island. On it there stands a great temple of Apollo, and three altars are set up, and there grow on it many palm trees and other trees, both fruit-bearing and barren, in abundance. The Egyptians tell the following story to explain why it is a floating island: that on this island, which was not floating before,
Leto, one of the eight gods born at the very beginning, dwelling in the city of Buto, where indeed this oracle of hers is, received Apollo in trust from Isis and preserved him by hiding him on the island now called floating, at the time when Typhon came searching everywhere, wishing to find the child of Osiris. Apollo and Artemis, they say, are children
of Dionysus and Isis, and Leto became their nurse and savior. In the Egyptian tongue, Apollo is Horus, Demeter is Isis, and Artemis is Bubastis. It was from this story, and no other, that Aeschylus son of Euphorion took the idea I shall now mention—alone among the poets who came before—for he made Artemis the daughter of Demeter. And this, they say, is why the island became a floating one. This is
what they say. Psammetichus ruled Egypt for fifty-four years, twenty-nine of which he spent besieging the great Syrian city of Azotus, until he took it. This Azotus held out under siege longer than any other city we know of. Necho, son of Psammetichus, became king of Egypt after him, and he was the first to attempt the canal leading to the Red Sea,
which Darius the Persian later dug a second time. Its length is a four days' voyage, and it was dug wide enough for two triremes to be rowed abreast. The water for it is brought from the Nile, drawn from a point a little above the city of Bubastis, past Patumus, the Arabian city, and it empties into the Red Sea. It was dug first through the part of the Egyptian plain
that lies toward Arabia; and above this plain runs the mountain range extending toward Memphis, in which the stone quarries are; along the base of this mountain the canal was brought, running long from west to east, and then it extends into the gorges, running from the mountain toward the south and the south wind, down to the
Arabian Gulf. Now the shortest and most direct route to cross from the northern sea to the southern, which is also called the Red Sea, is from Mount Casius, which marks the boundary between Egypt and Syria: from there it is exactly a thousand stadia to the Arabian Gulf. That is the most direct route, but the canal is much longer, inasmuch as it is more winding;
in the digging of it under king Necho, one hundred twenty thousand Egyptians perished. Necho stopped digging partway through when an oracle intervened forbidding it, on the grounds that he was laboring in advance for the foreigner. The Egyptians call all people who do not share their language foreigners. Having ceased work on the canal, Necho turned to military campaigns, and triremes were built, some for the northern sea, others in the
the Arabian Gulf on the Red Sea, and the slipways for them are still visible today. Necho used these ships when he needed them, and he also fought the Syrians on land, defeating them at Magdolus, and after the battle he took Cadytis, a great city of Syria. The clothing he happened to be wearing when he accomplished these things he dedicated to Apollo, sending it to the Branchidae, the sanctuary of the Milesians. After this,
having ruled sixteen years in all, he died, handing over the kingdom to his son Psammis. It was during the reign of this Psammis over Egypt that messengers from Elis arrived, boasting that they administered the contest at Olympia more justly and more nobly than anyone else in the world, and supposing that not even the Egyptians, wise as they were reputed to be, could devise anything better in this matter. When the Eleans arrived in Egypt and explained the reason
for which they had come, the king summoned together those of the Egyptians said to be the wisest. The Egyptians, once assembled, questioned the Eleans, who told them everything that fell to them to do concerning the contest. Having recounted it all, they said they had come to learn whether the Egyptians could devise anything more just than this. The Egyptians deliberated and then asked the Eleans whether their own citizens competed in it. They
answered that both they themselves and the other Greeks alike were permitted to compete, whoever wished. The Egyptians said that in arranging things this way they had missed the mark of justice entirely, for there was no way they would fail to favor their own citizen when he competed, thereby wronging the foreigner. But if they truly wished to arrange it justly, and this was the reason they had come to Egypt, the Egyptians urged them instead to open the contest to foreign competitors only, and let no Elean
to be allowed to compete. This is the advice the Egyptians gave the Eleans. Psammis, after ruling Egypt only six years and campaigning against Ethiopia, died soon after, and Apries, son of Psammis, succeeded him. He, after his ancestor Psammetichus, was the most fortunate of the earlier kings, ruling twenty-five years, during which he sent an army against Sidon and fought a naval battle against the Tyrian.
But since it was fated that he come to a bad end, this happened from a cause which I will relate at greater length in my account of Libya, and more briefly here for now. Apries sent out an army against the Cyrenaeans and suffered a great defeat. The Egyptians blamed him for this and revolted against him, believing that Apries had deliberately sent them out to an obvious disaster, so that they would be destroyed and he
could rule the rest of the Egyptians more securely. Those who returned from the campaign, along with the friends of those who had perished, took this so hard that they revolted openly. When Apries learned of this, he sent Amasis to them to put a stop to it by persuasion. When Amasis arrived and found the Egyptians refusing to be dissuaded, one of the Egyptians, standing behind him as he spoke, placed a helmet on his head, and in doing so
declared that he was crowning him king. And this act was not at all unwelcome to Amasis, as he showed. For once those who had revolted had set him up as king of the Egyptians, he prepared to march against Apries. When Apries learned of this, he sent a man of standing among the Egyptians around him, named Patarbemis, ordering him to bring Amasis to him alive. When
Patarbemis arrived and summoned Amasis, Amasis, who happened to be sitting on his horse, raised himself up and broke wind, and told him to carry that back to Apries. Nevertheless Patarbemis insisted that he come to the king, since the king had sent for him. Amasis replied that he had long been preparing to do just that, and that Apries would have no complaint against him, for he himself would come, and would bring others with him too.
Patarbemis, from what was said, did not fail to grasp his intention, and seeing him making preparations, hurried away, wishing to inform the king as quickly as possible of what was happening. But when he came to Apries without bringing Amasis, the king, giving him no chance to speak, in his fury ordered that his ears and nose be cut off. The rest of the Egyptians, seeing
a man still loyal to the king so shamefully mutilated and disfigured, without any hesitation went over to the other side and gave themselves up to Amasis. When Apries learned of this too, he armed his mercenaries and marched against the Egyptians. He had around him thirty thousand Carian and Ionian mercenaries. His
palace was in the city of Sais, great and remarkable to behold. Those with Apries advanced against the Egyptians, and those with Amasis against the foreigners, and both sides came together at the city of Momemphis, where they were about to test each other. There are seven classes of Egyptians, and of these some are called priests, some warriors, some cowherds, some
swineherds, some merchants, some interpreters, and some pilots. That is the number of Egyptian classes, and their names are derived from their occupations. The warriors among them are called Calasiries and Hermotybies, and they come from the following districts, for all Egypt is divided into districts. These are the districts of the Hermotybies: Busiris, Sais, Chemmis, Papremis, and the island
called Prosopitis, and half of Natho. From these districts come the Hermotybies, who at their most numerous numbered a hundred and sixty thousand. None of these has learned any manual trade, but they are devoted entirely to the profession of arms. The following are the other districts of the Calasiries: Thebes, Bubastis, Aphthis, Tanis, Mendes, Sebennytus, Athribis, Pharbaethus, Thmuis, Onuphis, Anysis, and Myecphoris; this district lies on an island
opposite the city of Bubastis. The Calasiries occupy these districts, and at their most numerous they numbered two hundred and fifty thousand men. Nor are these permitted to practice any trade, but they practice only the arts of war, son succeeding father. Whether the Greeks have picked up this custom from the Egyptians too, I cannot say with confidence, seeing that the Thracians, Scythians,
Persians, Lydians, and nearly all barbarians hold those citizens who learn trades, and their descendants, in lower esteem than the rest, while those who have no dealings with manual crafts are considered noble, especially those devoted to war. All the Greeks have learned this practice, and the Lacedaemonians most of all. The Corinthians least of all despise craftsmen. Their privileges
were the following, granted to these Egyptians alone apart from the priests: twelve exempt arouras allotted to each man. The aroura is a hundred Egyptian cubits square in every direction, and the Egyptian cubit happens to be equal to the Samian cubit. These privileges were granted to all of them, but the following they enjoyed by rotation, never the same men twice: a thousand of the Calasiries and a thousand of the Hermotybies served each year as the king's bodyguard. These men
received, apart from their arouras, the following provisions each day: five minas' weight of baked grain, two minas of beef, and four aryballoi of wine each. This was given to those on guard duty at any given time. When Apries, leading his mercenaries, and Amasis, with all the Egyptians, came together at the city of Momemphis, they joined battle, and the foreigners fought well, but being
far fewer in number, they were defeated for that reason. It is said that Apries held the belief that not even a god could remove him from his kingship, so securely did he think himself established. And indeed, when he then joined battle he was defeated, and taken alive, he was led away to the city of Sais, to what had once been his own palace, but was now the palace of Amasis. There for a time he was kept
in the palace, and Amasis treated him well. But in the end, when the Egyptians complained that he was not acting justly in keeping alive a man who was an enemy to both them and himself, he handed Apries over to the Egyptians. They strangled him and then buried him in the tombs of his fathers, which are in the sanctuary of Athena, very near the shrine, on the left as one enters. The Saites
buried all the kings who came from this district within the sanctuary. For the tomb of Amasis, though it is farther from the shrine than that of Apries and his ancestors, is nevertheless also within the courtyard of the sanctuary, a great stone colonnade, adorned with columns carved in the likeness of palm trees, and with other lavish work.
Within the colonnade stand double doors, and within the doors is the burial chamber. There are also, in Sais, in the sanctuary of Athena, behind the temple, adjoining the whole wall of the temple, the burial place of one whose name I consider it not right to utter in connection with such a matter. And in the sacred precinct stand great stone obelisks, and there is a lake
nearby, bordered with a stone rim, well made and circular, and in size, as it seemed to me, about as large as the one in Delos called the Round Lake. There, on that lake, at night, they stage the events of his suffering in a rite the Egyptians call the mysteries. Concerning these things, though I know more precisely how each of them is done, let my lips be sealed. And concerning
the rite of Demeter, which the Greeks call the Thesmophoria, on this too let my lips be sealed, except so far as it is permitted to speak of it. It was the daughters of Danaus who carried this rite forth from Egypt and passed it on to the Pelasgian women; then, once the whole Peloponnese had been uprooted by the Dorians, the rite died out there, except that the Arcadians, the only Peloponnesians left behind and not driven out,
preserved it alone. With Apries thus overthrown, Amasis became king, being from the district of Sais, and from the city called Siuph. At first the Egyptians looked down on Amasis and gave him little respect, since he had previously been a commoner from an undistinguished family, but afterward Amasis won them over by cleverness, not by arrogance. There was
he had countless other fine things, and among them a golden footbath in which Amasis himself and all his dinner guests used to wash their feet on every occasion. This he broke up and had made into the statue of a god, and he set it up at the most suitable spot in the city; and the Egyptians kept coming to the statue and worshipping it devoutly. When Amasis learned what
the townspeople were doing, he called the Egyptians together and revealed the truth: the statue, he said, had been made from the footbath into which the Egyptians had once vomited and urinated and washed their feet, yet now they worshipped it devoutly. And so, he went on, the same thing had happened to him as to the footbath: he might once have been a commoner, but at present he was their king; and he ordered them to honor and respect
him. In this way he won the Egyptians over to accepting that it was right to serve him. As for how he ordered his affairs, it was like this: in the early morning, until the hour when the marketplace fills, he diligently transacted the business brought before him; but from then on he drank and cracked jokes at his drinking companions and was frivolous and playful. His friends, annoyed at this, admonished him, saying: "O
king, you do not conduct yourself rightly, dragging yourself down to such utter frivolity. You ought to sit in state on a stately throne and transact business all day long; then the Egyptians would know they are ruled by a great man, and you would have a better reputation. As it is, what you are doing is not at all kingly." But he answered them thus: "Those who own bows string them
when they need to use them; for if they were kept strung all the time, they would snap, and then their owners could not use them at need. So it is with a man's constitution: if he chose to be serious always and never gave himself his share of play, he would go mad or fall into a stupor before he knew it. Knowing this, I give each side its portion." That was
his answer to his friends. It is said of Amasis that even when he was a private man he was fond of drinking and joking and not at all a serious person; and whenever the means for drinking and good living ran out on him, he would go around stealing. Those who claimed he had their property, when he denied it, would haul him off to whatever oracle was in their district. Many times he was convicted
by the oracles, and many times he got off. When he became king, then, he did as follows: all the gods who had acquitted him of being a thief he took no care of, and gave nothing for the upkeep of their temples, nor did he visit them to sacrifice, since they were worth nothing and possessed lying oracles; but all who had convicted him of being a thief, these he cared for most of all, on the grounds that they were true gods
who delivered oracles that did not lie. First, at Sais he built for Athena a gateway that is a marvel, far surpassing everyone in its height and size and in the size and quality of its stones; then he dedicated great colossi and enormous man-sphinxes, and brought other stones of prodigious size for repairs. He brought
some of these from the quarries near Memphis, but the very largest from the city of Elephantine, a voyage of as much as twenty days from Sais. But what I marvel at not least but most of all is this: he brought a chamber of a single stone from the city of Elephantine, and the transport of it took three years, with two thousand men assigned to haul it, all of them
pilots. The outside length of this chamber is twenty-one cubits, its width fourteen, its height eight. Those are the outside measurements of the single-stone chamber; but inside, the length is eighteen cubits and a pygon, and the height is five cubits. It lies beside the entrance of the temple; for they say
it was not dragged inside the temple for this reason: while the chamber was being hauled, the master builder groaned aloud, worn out by the work and by how much time had passed, and Amasis took this to heart and would not let it be dragged any farther. Some, however, say that a man was crushed by it, one of those levering it along, and that for this reason it was not dragged inside. Amasis also dedicated
in all the other notable temples works remarkable for their size, and among them, at Memphis, the colossus lying flat before the entrance to the temple of Hephaestus, which is seventy-five feet long; and on the same base stand two colossi of the same stone, each twenty feet in size, one on this side
and one on that side of the great one. There is another stone figure of the same size at Sais, lying in the same fashion as the one at Memphis. And it was Amasis who built for Isis the temple at Memphis, which is large and very well worth seeing. Under king Amasis, it is said, Egypt enjoyed its greatest prosperity, both in what the river gave the land
and in what the land gave its people, and the inhabited cities in it then numbered in all twenty thousand. And it was Amasis who established for the Egyptians this law: that every Egyptian must declare to the governor of his district, every year, the source of his livelihood; and anyone who failed to do so, or could not show an honest living, was to be punished with death. Solon the Athenian took this
law from Egypt and enacted it for the Athenians; they observe it to this day, for it is a law beyond reproach. Amasis became a friend of the Greeks, and among other favors he showed to certain of them, he gave those who came to Egypt the city of Naucratis to live in; and to those who did not wish to settle but came there as traders by sea, he gave sites to set up altars and precincts for the gods. The greatest of these precincts,
and the most famous and most frequented, is called the Hellenium; these are the cities that founded it jointly: of the Ionians, Chios, Teos, Phocaea, and Clazomenae; of the Dorians, Rhodes, Cnidus, Halicarnassus, and Phaselis; and of the Aeolians, Mytilene alone. The precinct belongs to these cities, and it is they who supply the officers of the trading port; whatever
other cities claim a share in it claim what does not belong to them. Apart from these, the Aeginetans founded a precinct of Zeus on their own, the Samians another of Hera, and the Milesians one of Apollo. In old times Naucratis was the only trading port in Egypt and there was no other; if anyone arrived at any other mouth of the Nile, he had to swear he had not come there on purpose, and after so swearing sail with his ship
itself to the Canopic mouth; or, if contrary winds made that impossible, he had to carry his cargo in barges around the Delta until he reached Naucratis. Such was the honor Naucratis enjoyed. When the Amphictyons contracted for three hundred talents to build the temple that now stands at Delphi (for the one previously there had burned down of itself), it fell to the
Delphians to provide a quarter of the price. So the Delphians went about from city to city collecting gifts, and in doing this they brought back not the least from Egypt: Amasis gave them a thousand talents of alum, and the Greeks living in Egypt twenty minae. With the people of Cyrene Amasis concluded a pact of friendship and alliance, and he also decided to take a wife from there, whether from desire for a Greek
woman or otherwise out of friendship for the Cyrenaeans. He married, at any rate, a daughter, some say of Battus, others of Arcesilaus, others of Critobulus, a man of standing among the townspeople; her name was Ladice. Now whenever Amasis lay with her he was unable to have intercourse, though he could with his other women. When this had gone on a long while, Amasis said to this Ladice,
as she is called: "Woman, you have bewitched me, and there is no way you will escape dying the most miserable death of any woman alive." Ladice, when her denials did nothing to soften Amasis, made a vow in her heart to Aphrodite: if Amasis lay with her that very night — for that was the cure for her trouble — she would send a statue to the goddess in Cyrene.
Immediately after the vow, Amasis lay with her. And from then on, each time Amasis visited her, they came together again, and afterward his affection for her grew strong. Ladice paid her vow to the goddess: she had a statue made and sent it to Cyrene, and it was still safe in my own time, standing facing outward from the city of the Cyrenaeans. This Ladice, when
Cambyses conquered Egypt and learned from her who she was, he sent back unharmed to Cyrene. Amasis also dedicated offerings in Greece: first, at Cyrene, a gilded statue of Athena and a portrait of himself done in painting; then, to Athena at Lindus, two stone statues and a linen corselet well worth seeing; and to Hera at Samos, two
wooden images of himself, which stood in the great temple even to my own day, behind the doors. His dedication at Samos was made on account of the bond of hospitality he shared with Polycrates son of Aeaces; the one at Lindus owed nothing to any such tie, but rather to the fact that the temple of Athena at Lindus is said to have been established by the daughters of Danaus, who put in there when
they were fleeing the sons of Aegyptus. These were the dedications of Amasis. He was also the first of men to capture Cyprus and subject it to the payment of tribute.

======== Histories — Book 3 (Thaleia) ========

It was against this Amasis that Cambyses, son of Cyrus, marched, bringing with him the other peoples he ruled, including the Ionian and Aeolian Greeks, for the following reason. Cambyses sent a herald to Egypt asking Amasis for his daughter, and he did this on the advice of an Egyptian man who bore a grudge against Amasis, because Amasis had taken him away from his wife and
children and sent him off to the Persians when Cyrus had sent to Amasis asking for the best eye-doctor in Egypt. It was this grievance that drove the Egyptian to give his advice, urging Cambyses to ask Amasis for his daughter, so that either Amasis would give her and be grieved, or refuse and become hateful to Cambyses. Amasis, distressed and afraid of the power of the Persians, could neither
give her nor refuse her, for he knew perfectly well that Cambyses did not intend to make her his wife but rather his concubine. Turning this over, he did the following. Apries, the former king, had a daughter, quite tall and lovely, the sole survivor of that household, and her name was Nitetis. Amasis dressed this girl in fine clothing and gold and sent her off to
the Persians as though she were his own daughter. Some time later, when Cambyses greeted her by her patronymic, the girl told him, "King, you have been tricked by Amasis, though you do not know it. He dressed me up and sent me to you claiming I was his own daughter, but Apries was truly my father, and that man, who had been Apries's own master, murdered him by rising up against him with the help of the Egyptians." These words, and this grievance,
arose and led Cambyses, son of Cyrus, greatly enraged, against Egypt. This is how the Persians tell it. The Egyptians, however, claim Cambyses as their own, saying that he was born from this same daughter of Apries; for they say it was Cyrus who sent to Amasis for the daughter, not Cambyses. But in saying this they are not speaking correctly. Nor are they unaware (for if any others know the customs of the Persians, so do the Egyptians) that
in the first place it is not their custom for a bastard son to become king when a legitimate one is present, and further, that Cambyses was the son of Cassandane, daughter of Pharnaspes, an Achaemenid, not of the Egyptian woman. But they twist the story, wishing to claim kinship with the house of Cyrus. So much for that. There is also another story told,
does not strike me as convincing: that one of the Persian women, coming in among Cyrus's wives, noticed the tall, handsome children standing next to Cassandane and lavished praise on them in wonder, and Cassandane, who was Cyrus's wife, answered, "Even though I am the mother of children like these, Cyrus keeps me in disgrace, while he prizes the woman he brought back from Egypt."
So she said this out of resentment toward Nitetis, and her eldest son, Cambyses, replied, "Then, mother, once I am grown, I will turn Egypt upside down." He said this at about ten years old, and the women marveled at it; and remembering it, once he reached manhood
and took the kingship, made the campaign against Egypt. Another thing also happened, contributing to this expedition. Among the mercenaries of Amasis was a man of Halicarnassian birth named Phanes, sound in judgment and valiant in war. This Phanes, bearing some grievance against Amasis, fled from Egypt by ship, wishing to go and speak with Cambyses.
Because he held no small standing among the mercenaries and knew the affairs of Egypt with great precision, Amasis went after him eagerly, wanting to seize him, and dispatched the most trusted of his eunuchs after him in a trireme, who overtook him in Lycia; but though he caught him, he could not manage to return him to Egypt, for Phanes outwitted him: he got the guards drunk and slipped away
to Persia. As Cambyses was preparing his campaign against Egypt and puzzling over how to cross the waterless stretch, Phanes came forward and revealed not only Amasis's other affairs but also laid out the route, urging him to send word to the Arabian king asking that he be granted safe passage across his territory. This is the sole place where routes into Egypt lie open. From Phoenicia as far as
the city of Cadytis lies on the border and belongs to the Syrians called Palestinian; from Cadytis, a city, as I judge it, not much smaller than Sardis, the trading posts along the coast up to the city of Ienysus belong to the Arabian, and from Ienysus onward, they belong again to the Syrians as far as Lake Serbonis, beside which Mount Casius runs down to the sea; and from Lake Serbonis,
where it is said Typhon lies hidden, from there onward is Egypt. Now the region between the city of Ienysus and Mount Casius and Lake Serbonis, which is no small stretch of land but about a three days' journey, is terribly waterless. I will now tell something that few of those who sail to Egypt have noticed. Into Egypt from all of Greece
and also from Phoenicia, jars full of wine are brought in twice each year, and there is not a single empty wine-jar to be seen anywhere, so to speak. Where then, one might ask, do these go? I will explain this too: each district officer must gather up all the jars from his own city and carry them to Memphis, and those from
Memphis must fill them with water and carry them to those waterless parts of Syria. So the jars that arrive and are unloaded in Egypt are carried on to the old ones already in Syria. This, then, is how the Persians prepared this entry into Egypt, packing it with water according to what has been said, as soon as they had taken Egypt. But at that time, since there was no water ready yet, Cambyses,
having learned of it from his Halicarnassian guest-friend, sent word to the Arabian and, requesting safe conduct, secured it, exchanging pledges with him. The Arabians honor pledges between men as much as any people, and they form them in this manner: when men wish to seal such a pledge, a third party stands between them and cuts, with a sharp stone, the palms near the base
of the fingers of those exchanging the pledge, and then, taking a tuft of wool from each man's cloak, smears it with the blood on seven stones set between them; and while doing this he invokes Dionysus and Urania. Once he has finished, whoever made the pledge entrusts the guest—or the fellow citizen, if the pledge is made with one—to his own friends, and
the friends too consider themselves bound to honor the pledges. They regard Dionysus and Urania as the only gods there are, and they say that the cut of their hair is like the cut of Dionysus's own hair: they cut it round, shaving off the hair at the temples. They call Dionysus Orotalt, and Urania Alilat. So when the Arabian had made the pledge with the messengers sent by Cambyses,
reached the Arabian, he worked out this scheme: he loaded skins full of water onto every one of his living camels and, having done so, drove them into the waterless land, where he waited there for Cambyses's army to arrive. This is the more believable of the two accounts, but since the less believable one is also told, it must be given too. In Arabia there flows a great river called
the Corys, which empties into the sea called the Red Sea. From this river, it is said, the king of the Arabians sewed together a pipe of ox-hides and other hides reaching in length all the way to the waterless land, and through this brought the water, and in the waterless land dug great cisterns to receive and preserve the water. The journey is
twelve days' journey from the river to this waterless stretch. The water, it is said, was carried through three channels to three separate places. At the mouth of the Nile called Pelusian, Psammenitus, son of Amasis, lay encamped, waiting for Cambyses to arrive. Cambyses had not found Amasis still alive when he marched on Egypt; Amasis had ruled forty-four years and then died, and in all that time nothing
great misfortune had befallen him; and having died and been embalmed, he was buried in the tomb in the temple which he himself had built. During the reign of Psammenitus, son of Amasis, over Egypt, the greatest portent yet occurred for the Egyptians: for it rained upon Thebes in Egypt, a thing that had never happened before nor has happened since, down to my own time, as the Thebans themselves say; for it never rains at all in the upper part of
Egypt. But even then Thebes was rained upon, with a light drizzle. When the Persians, having crossed the waterless land, encamped near the Egyptians so as to give battle, then the mercenaries of the Egyptian, being Greeks and Carians, angry with Phanes for having led a foreign army against Egypt, devised the following against him. Phanes had children left behind in Egypt;
left behind: these the mercenaries led into the camp and, before their father's eyes, set a mixing bowl between the two armies, then brought the children forward one at a time and cut their throats over it; once they had gone through all the children, they poured in wine and water, and every one of the mercenaries drank of the blood before at last joining battle. The fight
the fighting grew fierce, and once many men had fallen on both sides, the Egyptians broke and fled. There I witnessed something remarkable, which I learned about by questioning the local inhabitants: the bones of the men killed in that battle lay scattered on the field in two distinct groups, kept apart from each other (the Persian bones lay on one side, just as they had been separated right after the fight, and the Egyptian bones lay on the other), and if you look at the Persian skulls, they are
so weak that if you want to strike with just a single pebble you would pierce right through, whereas the Egyptians' skulls are so strong that you would struggle to crack them even by hitting them with a stone. This was the reason they gave, and readily persuaded me too: that the Egyptians, beginning right from childhood, shave their heads, and the bone thickens in the sun. This same thing is also the reason they do not
go bald: you would see very few Egyptians bald, fewer than any other people. This, then, is the reason they carry such strong skulls; and for the Persians, the reason they carry weak skulls is this: from the start they have been raised in the shade, wearing felt caps as tiaras. So much for that. I also saw other things like these at Papremis, among the men of Achaemenes son of Darius
who had been destroyed by Inaros the Libyan. When the Egyptians were routed from the battle, they fled in no order; and when they had been penned up in Memphis, Cambyses sent a Mytilenean ship up the river carrying a herald, a Persian man, to invite the Egyptians to come to terms. But when they saw the ship entering Memphis, they poured out together from the wall, destroyed the ship, and tore
the men apart limb from limb like butchered meat and carried them into the wall. After this the Egyptians, under siege, in time surrendered, while the neighboring Libyans, frightened by what had happened concerning Egypt, gave themselves up without a fight, imposed tribute on themselves, and sent gifts. In the same way the Cyrenaeans and Barcaeans, frightened just as the Libyans were, did likewise. Cambyses received
the gifts that came from the Libyans graciously, but he found fault with those that came from the Cyrenaeans, because, it seems to me, they were meager: for the Cyrenaeans had sent five hundred minas of silver, and this Cambyses grabbed with his own hand and scattered among his army. On the tenth day after he took the wall at Memphis, Cambyses set up the king of the Egyptians, Psammenitus, who had reigned six months,
in the suburb for public humiliation, seating him there together with other Egyptians, and tested his spirit by doing the following. He dressed the king's daughter in a slave's clothing and sent her out for water, carrying a water jar, and sent with her other maidens chosen from the leading men, dressed in the same manner as the king's daughter. When the maidens passed, crying out and weeping, before their fathers, all the other fathers cried out and
cried out likewise on seeing their own children abused, yet Psammenitus, who had already noticed and understood what was coming, only lowered his eyes to the ground. Once the water-carriers had gone past, Cambyses next sent the king's son forward, along with two thousand other Egyptian youths of the same age, all with ropes tied around their necks and bits fastened in their mouths; they were being marched off to answer for the Mytilenean crew who had died at Memphis together with their vessel. This was because
the royal judges had ruled that ten leading Egyptians must die for every one of those men. Psammenitus, watching them go by and realizing his own son was being marched toward death while the other Egyptians seated around him wailed and carried on in horror, reacted just as he had when he saw his daughter. Once this group too had gone past, it so happened that one of his old drinking companions, a man well past his prime, who had lost everything he owned
and had nothing left except what a beggar has, and was begging from the soldiers, came past — Psammenitus son of Amasis and the Egyptians sitting in the suburb. When Psammenitus saw him, he cried out loudly, called his companion by name, and struck himself on the head. Now he had guards stationed there, who reported everything he did on each occasion of these processions to Cambyses. Marveling
at what he was doing, Cambyses sent a messenger and questioned him, saying this: 'Your master Cambyses asks you, Psammenitus, why, seeing your daughter mistreated and your son marching to his death, you neither cried out nor wept, and yet you honored the beggar, who, as he learns from others, is nothing to you.' So he asked these things, and the other answered as follows: 'O
son of Cyrus, my own household's misfortunes were too great for weeping, but my companion's grief deserved tears — a man who, fallen from great wealth and prosperity, has come to beggary on the very threshold of old age.' When this was reported back, it seemed to Cambyses and his men that it had been well said; and as the Egyptians tell it, Croesus wept — for he too happened to be present, having accompanied
Cambyses' expedition into Egypt, and the Persians standing nearby wept along with him; Cambyses himself felt a pang of pity, and at once gave orders that the boy be spared from among the condemned, and that Psammenitus be brought in from the outlying district and led into his presence. Yet when the men sent to fetch the son arrived, they discovered he had already died, having been the very first one cut down; Psammenitus, however, they did bring forward and lead before Cambyses, and it was there
from then on he lived, treated with no violence. And if he had also known how not to meddle further, he would have gotten Egypt back to govern as its overseer, since the Persians are accustomed to honor the sons of kings: even when their fathers revolt against them, they still restore the rule to the sons. There is much evidence one could draw on elsewhere to show that this is indeed their established custom, and among it also
the case of Thannyras, son of Inaros, who got back the rule his father had held, and that of Pausiris, son of Amyrtaeus, for he too got back his father's rule — and yet none had done the Persians more harm than Inaros and Amyrtaeus. But as it turned out, Psammenitus, scheming further evil, got his due reward: for he was caught inciting the Egyptians to revolt, and when Cambyses found this out, Psammenitus drank bull's blood
and died on the spot. So this man met his end. Cambyses went on from Memphis to the city of Sais, intending to do what in fact he did. For when he entered the house of Amasis, he immediately ordered Amasis's corpse carried out of its tomb; and when this had been done, he ordered it whipped, and its hair plucked out, and pierced with goads, and
mistreating it in every remaining way. But once they tired of this treatment (since the corpse, being embalmed, resisted and would not break apart), Cambyses commanded that it be burned instead, an order that violated sacred custom: for the Persians regard fire as divine. Burning the dead is a practice neither people accepts as lawful — not the Persians, for the reason already given, since in their view it is wrong to feed a god
any share of a dead man; nor of the Egyptians, who hold it as their belief that fire is a living creature, that it devours everything it seizes, and that once it is glutted with its food, it dies along with what it has eaten. Now it is by no means their custom, either, to give a corpse to wild animals, and it is for this reason that they embalm it, so that it will not lie there and be eaten by worms. Thus Cambyses ordered done what ran contrary to the customs of both peoples. However, as
the Egyptians say, it was not Amasis who suffered this, but some other Egyptian of the same age as Amasis, whom the Persians, in abusing him, thought they were abusing Amasis. For they say that Amasis, having learned from an oracle what was going to happen to him after his death, and so guarding in advance against what was coming, had this man, once he had died from the whipping, buried at the doorway, inside
his own tomb, and instructed his son to place his own body as far as possible in the innermost recess of the tomb. Now these instructions of Amasis, concerning the burial and the substitute man, do not seem to me to have happened at all as claimed; I think the Egyptians simply dress them up with this air of solemnity. After this Cambyses planned three expeditions, against the Carthaginians, and
toward the Ammonians and toward the long-lived Ethiopians, who dwell along Libya's southern shore. Once he had weighed his options, he settled on sending his fleet against Carthage, splitting off part of his infantry to strike the Ammonians, and dispatching scouts ahead of the main force toward the Ethiopians, to find out whether the fabled sun-table said to exist among that people was in fact real, and, beyond that, to
look over everything else there, while pretending the purpose was to deliver gifts to their ruler. As for the table of the sun, the story goes something like this: in the outskirts there lies a meadow heaped with boiled meat from every kind of four-legged animal, and by custom the city magistrates then in office lay the meat out there each night, while by day anyone who wants to may approach and eat his fill. The locals claim
that the earth itself produces this each time. Such, then, is what is said of the so-called table of the sun. When Cambyses decided to send the spies, he immediately sent for men from the city of Elephantine, from among the Fish-eaters, who knew the Ethiopian language. While these were being fetched, in the meantime he ordered the naval force to sail against Carthage. But the Phoenicians said
they would refuse to comply: they were held by weighty oaths and it would be wrong of them to march against their own offspring. With the Phoenicians unwilling, the remaining ships were not strong enough to fight alone. In this way the Carthaginians avoided falling under Persian rule: Cambyses judged it unjust to compel the Phoenicians by force, since they had submitted to Persia willingly, and the entire fleet relied on Phoenician ships.
The Cypriots, too, had given themselves over to the Persians and joined the campaign against Egypt. When the Fish-eaters arrived from Elephantine before Cambyses, he sent them to the Ethiopians, instructing them what they were to say and having them carry gifts: a purple robe, a twisted gold necklace, bracelets, an alabaster jar of myrrh, and a jar of palm wine. These Ethiopians, to whom
sent by Cambyses are reputed to be the tallest and handsomest people anywhere. Their customs, in various respects, set them apart from other nations, and this is especially true of how they choose a king: whichever citizen they judge tallest, and strongest in proportion to his height, that man they deem worthy to rule. So it was among these very people that the Fish-eaters arrived,
Handing over the gifts, they said the following to their king: "The Persian king Cambyses, wishing to become your friend and guest-friend, sent us to come and speak with you, and gives you these gifts, which he himself takes the greatest pleasure in using." The Ethiopian, realizing that they had come as spies, said the following to them: "The Persian king did not send you
who bring gifts because he prizes so highly the chance to make me his friend — neither are you telling the truth (since you have really come to spy on my kingdom), nor is that man honest. Had he been honest, he would never have craved territory beyond his own, nor would he drag off into bondage people who had wronged him not at all. Now hand him this bow and deliver this message: 'The king of the Ethiopians recommends'
to the king of the Persians that once the Persians can draw bows of this very size with such ease, only then should he march with an overwhelming force against the long-lived Ethiopians; but until that day comes, let him thank the gods for not putting into the Ethiopians' minds any wish to seize land beyond what is already theirs.' After saying this and unstringing the bow, he handed it over to the visitors. Then, picking up the purple cloak,
asked what it was and how it was produced. Once the Fish-eaters explained truthfully how the purple dye was made, he replied that the men themselves were deceitful, and so were their garments. Next he inquired about the twisted gold neck-chain and the bracelets; and as the Fish-eaters described these ornaments to him, the king laughed, assuming they were
fetters, said that among his own people they had stronger fetters than these. Third, he asked about the perfume, and when they told him about its making and its use, he gave the same answer he had given about the cloak. When he came to the wine and learned how it was made, he was delighted with the drink and asked what the king ate and what the
greatest lifespan a Persian could reach. They answered that Persians ate bread, and after describing what wheat was, said eighty years marked the furthest limit of a man's life. Hearing this, the Ethiopian remarked that he found it unsurprising men who fed on dung died after so few years; in fact, he added, they could not survive even that long were it not for the drink that revived them, and he pointed out the wine to the Fish-eaters; for by means of it
this, he said, they themselves were surpassed by the Persians. When the Fish-eaters in turn asked the king about life span and diet, he said that most of them reached a hundred and twenty years, and some even exceeded that; their food was boiled meat, and their drink milk. When the spies expressed wonder at the number of years, he led them to a spring from which, when they bathed,
they became more sleek, as if it were oil; and a scent like violets rose from it. The spies said the water of this spring was so weak that nothing at all could float on it, neither wood nor anything lighter than wood, but everything sank to the bottom. If this water
is truly what report makes it out to be, that alone would explain why, relying on it for all their needs, they live so long. Leaving the spring behind, the visitors were led to a prison holding men, all of whom were shackled there in golden chains. Among these Ethiopians, bronze is the scarcest and most costly metal of all. Having taken in the prison as well, they went on to view the so-called Table
of the Sun. Following that, last of all, they examined the coffins, said to be crafted from glass in this fashion: once the body has been dried out, whether by the Egyptian method or some other means, it is coated entirely in gypsum and painted over, made to look as much like the living person as possible, and then a hollow pillar of glass — quarried there in great quantity and easily shaped — is set around it.
Right at the center of the pillar the body can be seen through the glass, giving off no foul odor and showing nothing else offensive, with every detail as clear as the body itself would be. For a full year the closest relatives keep the pillar inside their home, presenting it with the first portion of everything and offering sacrifices before it; afterward they bring it out and set it up somewhere around the city. Having examined all
this, the spies made their way back. When they reported it, Cambyses, in a fit of anger, immediately marched against the Ethiopians, without ordering any provision of food and without considering that he was about to march to the ends of the earth; but being, as it were, mad and out of his senses, as soon as he heard the account of the Fish-eaters he set out on campaign, ordering the Greeks who were with him to remain behind, while
he brought the entire infantry force along with him. Once his march brought him to Thebes, he split off roughly fifty thousand men from the army and instructed them to enslave the Ammonians and set fire to the oracle of Zeus, while he himself pressed on with the remaining troops toward the Ethiopians. But before the army had traveled even a fifth of the distance, every scrap of food they carried
had already run dry, and once the food ran out, the pack animals were eaten as well until none remained. Had Cambyses recognized this and turned the army back, he would still have counted as wise despite the mistake he made at the start; instead, he gave the matter no thought whatsoever and pushed steadily onward. For as long as the men could find anything edible in the ground itself, they kept themselves alive on grass,
but when they reached the sand, some of them did a terrible thing: choosing one man in ten by lot, they ate him. When Cambyses learned of this, fearing that they would turn to eating one another, he abandoned the expedition against the Ethiopians and turned back, reaching Thebes with the loss of a great part of his army; from Thebes he went down to Memphis and let the Greeks sail away. Such
was the outcome of the expedition against the Ethiopians. As for those who had been sent to make war on the Ammonians, when they set out from Thebes and marched on with their guides, they are known to have reached the city of Oasis, held by people said to be Samians of the Aeschrionian tribe, seven days' journey from Thebes through the sand; this place is called, in the Greek tongue, the Isle of the Blessed.
the army is reported to have reached this spot; but concerning what happened afterward, only the Ammonians and those who heard the tale from them can say anything at all, since the soldiers never arrived among the Ammonians nor made their way back. The Ammonians themselves tell it this way: once the men left this Oasis and pushed on across the sand toward them,
and had reached a point roughly halfway between the Ammonians and themselves, just as they sat down for their midday meal, a fierce and violent southern gale swept over them, piling up sand dunes that buried the men where they sat, and that was how they disappeared. Such is the Ammonian account of what became of this army. Once Cambyses reached Memphis, Apis appeared before the Egyptians — the god the Greeks know as Epaphus. When
this appeared, the Egyptians at once put on their finest clothes and held festivities. Seeing the Egyptians doing this, Cambyses, quite convinced that they were holding this rejoicing because of his own misfortune, summoned the officials of Memphis, and when they came before him he asked why the Egyptians had done nothing of the kind before, when he had previously been in Memphis, but did so now, when
he himself was present, having lost a considerable part of his army. They explained that a god had appeared to them, one accustomed to appear only after a long interval, and that whenever he appeared, all the Egyptians rejoiced and held festival. Hearing this, Cambyses said they were lying, and as liars he punished them with death. Having killed these men, he next summoned the priests before him; and when they said the same things
as their officials had, he declared that nothing would get past him if some docile god had truly come among the Egyptians. With that said, he ordered the priests to fetch Apis before him. Off they went to bring him. This creature, Apis or Epaphus, is born from a cow that afterward becomes unable to carry any further calf. According to the Egyptians, a beam of light falls onto the cow from
the sky, and that from this she gives birth to Apis. This calf called Apis has the following markings: it is black, with a white triangle on its forehead, the likeness of an eagle on its back, doubled hairs on its tail, and a beetle under its tongue. When the priests brought Apis, Cambyses,
being somewhat unhinged, drew his dagger, and meaning to strike Apis in the belly, struck him in the thigh instead; and laughing, he said to the priests, "You wretched fools, is this what gods become — creatures of blood and flesh, sensitive to iron? This is indeed a god worthy of the Egyptians; but you, at least, will not enjoy having made me a laughingstock over it." Having said this, he ordered those
whose task it was to whip the priests, and to kill any other Egyptians they found celebrating the festival. So the festival came to an end for the Egyptians, the priests were punished, and Apis, struck in the thigh, lay wasting away in the temple. And when he died of the wound, the priests buried him without Cambyses' knowledge. Cambyses, as the Egyptians say, immediately after
committing that offense he lost his mind, having never been entirely sound to begin with. The very first of his crimes was ridding himself of his own brother Smerdis, born of the same father and mother, whom he had already sent home to Persia out of jealousy while both were still in Egypt — jealous because Smerdis alone among the Persians had drawn the bow the Fish-eaters brought back from the Ethiopian, pulling it some two finger-widths, a feat no other Persian could manage.
Once Smerdis had departed for Persia, Cambyses had this dream while asleep: a messenger, it seemed, arrived from Persia announcing that Smerdis had taken his seat on the royal throne with his head brushing the sky. Alarmed for his own safety, fearing his brother might kill him and seize the throne, he dispatched Prexaspes to Persia — the Persian he trusted above all others,
to kill him. Prexaspes went up to Susa and killed Smerdis, some say by leading him out on a hunt, others that he led him to the Red Sea and drowned him there. This, they say, was the first of the evils Cambyses began; the second thing he brought about was against his sister, who had followed him to Egypt, and with whom he lived as husband, and who was his sister by both parents. He had married her in this way:
since up to that point the Persians had never once made a habit of marrying their own sisters. Cambyses grew infatuated with one of his sisters, and, intending to marry her despite knowing this broke with tradition, he summoned the royal judges and asked them whether any law permitted a man to take his sister as wife. These royal judges are Persians selected for the post, serving until death or until some misconduct is discovered in them, and no further;
such men settle disputes among the Persians and serve as keepers of ancestral custom, with every matter brought before them for judgment. Faced with Cambyses' question, they gave a response both fair and safe: they could locate no statute permitting a brother to wed his sister, yet they had turned up a separate rule stating that the king of Persia may act however he pleases. In this way they avoided breaking the law, out of fear of
Cambyses, and, so that they themselves might not perish by upholding the law, they found another law alongside it, one that supported anyone wishing to marry his sisters. At that time, then, Cambyses married the woman he loved, but not long afterward he took another sister as well. It was the younger of these two whom he killed when she had followed him to Egypt. About her death, as about that of Smerdis, a double account is given. The Greeks say
that Cambyses set a lion cub against a puppy, and that this wife of his was watching too; and when the puppy was losing, another puppy, its brother, broke its leash and came to help it, and the two puppies together got the better of the lion cub. Cambyses was delighted watching this, but the woman sitting by wept. When Cambyses noticed this, he asked why she was weeping,
and she said that seeing the puppy come to its brother's aid had made her weep, remembering Smerdis and realizing that he had no one to avenge him. The Greeks say it was because of this remark that she was put to death by Cambyses; the Egyptians say that as they sat at table the woman took a head of lettuce and stripped it bare, then asked her husband whether the lettuce looked better
stripped bare or full-leaved, and he said full-leaved, and she said, "Yet you have made yourself like this lettuce, having stripped bare the house of Cyrus." At this he flew into a rage and leapt upon her, though she was pregnant, and she miscarried and died. Such were the mad acts Cambyses committed against his own household, whether because of the Apis affair or for some other reason, as many misfortunes are apt to befall men; for indeed
it is said that Cambyses had a great sickness from birth, which some call the sacred disease. It would not be strange, then, if with so great a sickness of body his mind too were not sound. Here is how his madness broke out against the rest of the Persians. It is said that he said to Prexaspes, whom he honored most and who carried his messages, and whose son
was Cambyses' cupbearer, an honor not small in itself: he is said to have spoken as follows. "Prexaspes, what sort of man do the Persians think me, and what do they say about me?" And Prexaspes said, "Master, in all else they praise you greatly, but they say you are given over too much to wine." So he reported what the Persians said, and Cambyses,
furious, he answered in this manner: "So the Persians now claim that wine has driven me out of my senses — that I have lost my judgment. Then their earlier words to me must have been false as well." It seems that earlier, while the Persians sat in council together with Croesus, Cambyses had asked how they rated him next to his father Cyrus, and they replied that he surpassed his father, seeing that
he retained everything his father once held, and had beyond that added Egypt along with mastery of the sea. Such was the Persians' verdict; Croesus, however, who stood there and found their judgment unsatisfying, said to Cambyses: "To my eyes, son of Cyrus, you do not measure up to your father, since you have yet to produce a son to match the one he left in you." Cambyses took delight
to hear this, and praised Croesus's judgment. Remembering this now, he said angrily to Prexaspes, "Now you learn whether the Persians speak the truth, or whether they themselves are out of their minds in saying this: if I shoot your son there standing in the porch and hit him right through the heart, it will be plain that the Persians say nothing true; but if I miss, then say that the Persians
tell the truth, and that my mind has not left me." Having said this he drew the bow and let the arrow fly at the boy; when the boy dropped, he ordered the body opened and the wound examined, and once the arrow was found lodged in the heart, he turned to the boy's father, laughing with evident satisfaction, and said: "Prexaspes, this proves plainly enough that I am not mad, and that it is the Persians"
are out of their minds. Now tell me, have you ever seen anyone else among all men shoot so accurately?" And Prexaspes, seeing that the man was out of his mind and fearing for himself, said, "Master, I do not think even the god himself could have shot so well." That was one thing he did; another time he seized twelve Persians of the first rank, on no adequate charge whatsoever,
and buried them alive head-down. When he did this, Croesus the Lydian thought it right to admonish him with these words: "O king, do not surrender everything to youth and passion, but restrain and control yourself. It is good to look ahead, and forethought is wise. You are killing men who are your own countrymen on no adequate charge, and you are killing children too. If
you do many such things, take care that the Persians do not revolt from you. Your father Cyrus charged me earnestly to advise and counsel you toward whatever good I could find." Thus he counseled him, showing good will; but Cambyses answered as follows. "You dare to counsel even me, you who governed your own country so well and gave such good counsel to my
father, telling him to cross the river Araxes and march against the Massagetae, when they were willing to cross into our land — you destroyed yourself by mismanaging your own country, and you destroyed Cyrus, who trusted you, though not to your own joy, since I have long wanted some pretext to lay hold of you." With these words he took up his bow to shoot him, but Croesus
sprang up and bolted outside. Unable to loose an arrow at him, Cambyses ordered his attendants to catch and kill him. His attendants, however, aware of his moods, hid Croesus away instead, reasoning as follows: should Cambyses have a change of heart and wish for Croesus back, they would produce him and be rewarded for having spared his life; but should Cambyses feel no regret and show no longing for him,
they would kill him then. Not long afterward, Cambyses did indeed long for Croesus, and the servants, learning of this, announced to him that Croesus was alive. Cambyses said he was glad Croesus survived, but that those who had preserved him would not go unpunished — he would put them to death; and he did so. Such were the many mad acts he committed against the Persians and their allies, while he remained in
Memphis, opening ancient tombs and examining the corpses. So too he went into the temple of Hephaestus and mocked the image there a great deal. For the image of Hephaestus closely resembles the Phoenician Pataikoi, which the Phoenicians carry on the prows of their triremes. Anyone who has not seen these, I will describe them: it is the likeness of a pygmy man. He also went
into the temple of the Cabeiri, which it is forbidden for anyone to enter except the priest; these images too he burned, after mocking them a great deal. These images are also like those of Hephaestus, and the Cabeiri are said to be his sons. In every way, then, it is clear to me that Cambyses was thoroughly mad; otherwise he would not have set about mocking
sacred things and customs. For if one were to propose to all mankind that they choose out the best customs from all the customs there are, each people, after examining them, would choose its own; so strongly does each think its own customs by far the best. It is not likely, then, that anyone but a madman would make a mockery of such things. That all people hold this belief about their own customs
can be established by many other evidences, and by this one in particular. Darius, in the course of his reign, summoned the Greeks who were present and asked for what price they would be willing to eat their dead fathers; they said they would not do that for any price. Darius then summoned some Indians called the Callatiae, who eat their parents, and asked them,
in the presence of the Greeks, who understood what was said through an interpreter, for what price they would agree to burn their dead fathers with fire; and they cried out loudly, bidding him say nothing so ill-omened. So firmly are such things established by custom, and Pindar seems to me right in calling custom king of all. While Cambyses was campaigning against Egypt, the Lacedaemonians also made an expedition against Samos and
Polycrates son of Aeaces, who rose to power and took control of Samos, splitting the city at first into three parts and granting shares to his brothers Pantagnotus and Syloson, only to later put one to death and banish the younger brother, Syloson, so that he alone controlled all of Samos; once in full command he struck up a friendly alliance with Amasis, king of Egypt, exchanging gifts with him in both directions. Before long,
the power of Polycrates grew rapidly and became famous throughout Ionia and the rest of Greece; for wherever he turned to make war, everything went well for him. He had acquired a hundred fifty-oared ships and a thousand archers, and he plundered and carried off everyone's goods without distinction; for he said he would please a friend more by giving back what he had taken than by never having taken it at all. He had captured
many of the islands, and many cities on the mainland as well; and among others, when the Lesbians came out in full force to help the Milesians, he defeated them in a sea battle and took them captive, and it was they, bound in chains, who dug the whole ditch around the wall on Samos. Somehow Amasis did not fail to notice how greatly Polycrates was prospering, and it was a matter of concern to him. And when Polycrates' good fortune grew even greater still,
Amasis wrote the following on a sheet and sent it to Samos. "Amasis says this to Polycrates: it is pleasant to learn that a friend and guest-friend is doing well; but your great good fortune does not please me, since I know how jealous the divine is. I wish, both for myself and for those I care about, that in our affairs we should prosper in part and stumble in part, and so pass
our lives alternating between the two rather than having good fortune in everything. For I have never yet heard tell of anyone who, having good fortune in everything, did not in the end come to a bad end and be utterly destroyed. So now, listen to me and do this in response to your good fortunes: think of whatever you find to be most valuable to you, the thing whose loss would grieve your soul the most, and throw that away in such a way that it will never
come again among men. And if from now on your good fortunes do not begin to alternate with misfortunes, then go on curing yourself in the manner I have prescribed." When Polycrates read this and took to heart how well Amasis was advising him, he searched for which of his treasures, if lost, would grieve his soul the most, and in searching he found this: he had a signet ring that he wore, set in gold,
made of emerald, the work of Theodorus son of Telecles of Samos. Since he decided to throw this away, he did as follows: he manned a fifty-oared ship with men and boarded it himself, then ordered it to be put out to sea; and when he was far from the island, he took off the ring, in full view of all his fellow sailors, and threw it into the sea. Having done this he sailed back, and when he arrived
at his house he grieved over what had befallen him. Then, on the fifth or sixth day afterward, this is what happened to him. A fisherman, having caught a fish that was both large and handsome, judged it fit to present as a gift to Polycrates. So he brought it to the palace doors and said he wanted to be admitted into Polycrates' sight; and once he was let in, he spoke as he handed over the fish: "O king, when I took hold of this fish I did not".
think it right to bring it to market, though I live by the work of my hands, but it seemed to me worthy of you and your rule; so I bring it to you and give it to you." Polycrates, pleased with these words, answered thus: "You have done very well, and I owe you double thanks, both for the words and for the gift, and I invite you to dinner." So the fisherman, thinking this a great honor,
went back to his house; but as the servants were cutting the fish open, they discovered inside its stomach the very signet ring belonging to Polycrates. The moment they spotted it and picked it up, they hurried to Polycrates in great delight, and handing him the ring, they explained how it had turned up. It struck him that this was something divine at work, so he wrote down on a scroll every deed he had done and what
had befallen him, and having written it he sent it to Egypt. When Amasis read the letter that had come from Polycrates, he understood that it is impossible for one man to save another from what is destined to happen, and that Polycrates, prospering in everything, even finding again what he threw away, was not destined to end well. So he sent a herald to Samos and said he was dissolving the
guest-friendship. He did this for the following reason: so that when some terrible and great misfortune befell Polycrates, he himself would not have to grieve in his soul as over a guest-friend. It was against this Polycrates, prospering in everything, that the Lacedaemonians made an expedition, called upon by those Samians who later founded Cydonia in Crete. Polycrates, sending a herald secretly, without the knowledge of the Samians, to Cambyses son of Cyrus, who was gathering
an army against Egypt, asked that Cambyses send to him and request troops from Samos as well. When Cambyses heard this he sent eagerly to Samos, asking Polycrates to send a naval force along with him against Egypt. Polycrates picked out those of the citizens he most suspected of wanting to revolt and sent them off with forty triremes, instructing Cambyses not to send them back. Some say that the
Samians sent away by Polycrates never reached Egypt at all, but that when they got as far as Carpathus in their voyage, they took counsel among themselves, and it seemed good to them to sail no further; others say that they did reach Egypt, and being kept under guard there, escaped from it. As they sailed back to Samos, Polycrates met them with ships and gave battle; the returning men won and landed on the island,
but once they fought there on land they were beaten, and thus they sailed back toward Lacedaemon. Some claim instead that the Egyptian forces got the better of Polycrates, though to my mind that account is mistaken: there would have been no reason for them to summon the Spartans if they themselves had been capable of subduing Polycrates. Beyond that, it makes no sense that a man commanding so many paid soldiers and so great a number of native bowmen
would be overcome by the returning Samian exiles, few as they were. Polycrates had rounded up the wives and children of the citizens under his rule and locked them inside the boat-sheds, prepared, should those citizens go over to the returning exiles, to set fire to them together with the sheds. Once the Samians whom Polycrates had banished reached Sparta, they stood before the magistrates and spoke at great length, in the manner of men
in great need would. The magistrates, at that first hearing, answered that they had forgotten what was said at the beginning and did not understand what was said at the end. Afterward, coming before them a second time, the Samians said nothing else, but brought a sack and said that the sack needed meal. The magistrates answered that the word "sack" was superfluous; but they decided to help them nonetheless. And so, after making their preparations, the Lacedaemonians made an expedition against Samos,
as the Samians tell it, out of gratitude, because the Samians had once been the first to send them naval help against the Messenians; the Lacedaemonians, however, tell it differently, claiming they marched not so much to aid the pleading Samians as to punish them for stealing the mixing-bowl meant for Croesus, along with the corselet that Amasis, king of Egypt, had sent them as a present. In fact the Samians had seized the corselet a year before the bowl
they took the bowl. It was made of linen, worked with many woven figures of animals, and adorned with gold and cotton fibers from wood; and what makes it worthy of wonder is that each single thread of the breastplate, though fine, contains within itself three hundred sixty threads, all of them visible. There is another one like it that Amasis dedicated at Lindus to Athena. The Corinthians too eagerly joined in contributing to the expedition against
Samos, and the Corinthians joined in eagerly as well; for they too had been wronged by the Samians a generation earlier, an outrage that happened around the same time as the theft of the mixing-bowl. Periander, son of Cypselus, had shipped three hundred boys, sons of Corcyra's leading families, off to Sardis to Alyattes to be made eunuchs; but when those escorting the boys put in at Samos
the Samians, on hearing why the boys were bound for Sardis, first showed the boys how to cling to the temple of Artemis as suppliants; afterward, refusing to let the Corinthians drag the suppliants from the sanctuary, and with the Corinthians trying to starve the boys into leaving, the Samians set up a festival that they still keep in the same fashion today. For once night fell, for however long the boys stayed as suppliants,
they set up dances of maidens and young men, and in setting up these dances they made it a custom to bring cakes of sesame and honey, so that the Corcyraean boys could snatch them and have food. This went on until the Corinthian guards of the boys gave up and went away; and the Samians led the boys away to Corcyra. Now if, after Periander's death,
the Corinthians had kept friendly relations with the Corcyraeans, and would not have taken part in the campaign against Samos for that reason. As things stand, though, ever since the island was settled the two peoples have never gotten along, and it is for this that the Corinthians held their grudge against the Samians. Periander had sent off the sons of Corcyra's foremost men to Sardis to be made eunuchs, as a means of getting even;
for the Corcyraeans had been the first to begin against him, doing him a reckless wrong. For after Periander killed his own wife Melissa, another misfortune of the following kind happened to befall him in addition to the one already suffered. He had two sons by Melissa, one seventeen and the other eighteen years old. Their maternal grandfather Procles, who was tyrant of Epidaurus, sent for them and treated them kindly, as was natural,
since they were sons of his own daughter. As he sent them off he said to them in parting, "Boys, do you know the one responsible for your mother's death?" The older brother took this remark lightly; but the younger one, named Lycophron, was struck so hard by hearing it that once he reached Corinth he treated his father as his mother's killer and refused
addressed him, and when the old man spoke to him he did not answer, and gave no account of anything he asked. Finally Periander, out of temper with him, drove him out of the house. Having driven him out, he questioned the elder son as to what their grandfather had discussed with them. He told him how kindly he had received them, but of that saying which Procles had spoken as they were leaving, since he had not taken it to heart, he made no mention.
Periander said there was no way that the old man had not given them some counsel, and he pressed him with questions; then, recollecting, he told this too. Periander, taking note of this as well, and wishing to show no softness at all, sent word to those in whose house the son he had driven out was living, forbidding them to receive him in their homes. So whenever, being driven away, he came to
another house, he was driven from that one too, since Periander threatened those who took him in and ordered them to shut him out; and being driven away he would go to another of his companions, and they, since he was Periander's son, though afraid, nevertheless received him. At last Periander made a proclamation that whoever took him into his house or spoke with him would owe a sacred fine to Apollo, of an amount
as he had specified. Because of this proclamation, no one would speak with him or take him under their roof; and he himself judged it wrong to try what had been forbidden, so he stuck it out and lay about under the porticoes. On the fourth day, when Periander saw him worn down from going unwashed and unfed, he felt pity for him; his anger easing, he stepped closer and said, "My boy, which of these two"
is preferable — to go on doing what you are doing now, or to receive the tyranny and the good things I now have, which it is fitting for you, my son and heir of prosperous Corinth, to take up — you who have chosen a wandering life, resisting and giving way to anger against the one man you least ought to? For if some misfortune has occurred among us, from which
you now suspect me of, that same thing befell me too, and I bear a greater share of the blame in it, since I myself brought it to pass. But you, once you understand how much better it is to be envied than pitied, and what it means to rage against one's parents and one's betters alike, should go back home." With such words Periander tried to bring him around; but the son gave no other answer
to his father, except to say that he owed the god a sacred fine for having come into conversation with him. Periander, realizing that his son's affliction was hopeless and beyond remedy, sent him away out of his sight, fitting out a ship to Corcyra; for he ruled over that place as well. Having sent him off, Periander made war on his father-in-law Procles, as being
chiefly to blame for this, and he seized Epidaurus, and captured Procles himself alive. But as time passed, Periander grew old and came to realize he could no longer watch over and run affairs himself, so he sent word to Corcyra recalling Lycophron to take the tyranny; for in his older son he saw no promise at all, but
he appeared to him rather dull-witted. Lycophron did not even think the messenger worth an answer. Periander, clinging to the young man, sent a second envoy after him — his own daughter, the young man's sister — thinking that he would surely be persuaded by her most of all. When she arrived and said, "My son, do you want the tyranny to fall to others and our father's house to be torn apart rather than
to go and possess it yourself? Come home, stop punishing yourself. Pride is a poor possession. Do not cure one evil with another. Many prefer the more reasonable course to the strictly just one, and many, in seeking their mother's inheritance, have lost their father's. Tyranny is a precarious thing, and it has many lovers, and our father is already old and past his prime; do not give away your own good fortune
to any other than these." She, coached by her father in the most persuasive words, repeated them to him; but he replied that he would never set foot in Corinth so long as he learned his father was still living. Once she reported this back, Periander sent a herald a third time, intending to go to Corcyra himself, while bidding Lycophron come to Corinth and take over the tyranny in his place. When the son agreed to
these terms, Periander set out for Corcyra, and his son for Corinth. But when the Corcyraeans learned all this, in order that Periander should not come to their land, they killed the young man. In revenge for this, Periander took vengeance upon the Corcyraeans. The Lacedaemonians, when they arrived with a great fleet, laid siege to Samos; attacking the wall, at the
tower standing near the sea by the suburb of the city, they mounted it, but then, when Polycrates came to its defense with a large force, they were driven back. At the upper tower on the ridge of the mountain, both the mercenaries and a good number of the Samians themselves came out against them; they received the Lacedaemonians and for a short time fled back, and the Lacedaemonians, pursuing, killed them. Now if the
the Lacedaemonians present had matched Archias and Lycopas that day, Samos would have fallen; for Archias and Lycopas, the only two who charged in among the fleeing Samians toward the wall, got cut off from retreat and died there inside the Samian city. In the third generation after this Archias, I myself came to know another man named Archias, son of Samius, son of that Archias, at Pitane (for that was his deme),
and he honored the Samians more than any other guest-friends, and told me that his father had been named Samius because his father Archias had died fighting bravely at Samos; and he said he honored the Samians because his grandfather had been buried at public expense by the Samians. The Lacedaemonians, when forty days had passed while they were besieging Samos and their affairs made no further progress,
withdrew to the Peloponnese. As the more fanciful account has it, it is said that Polycrates struck local coinage, gilding over a great deal of lead, and gave it to them, and that they, having accepted it, departed on that account. This was the first expedition into Asia made by the Dorian Lacedaemonians. Those Samians who had campaigned against Polycrates, when the Lacedaemonians were about to abandon them, themselves also sailed away, to Siphnos, since they were in need of money,
and the affairs of the Siphnians were at their height at that time, and they were the wealthiest of the islanders, since they had gold and silver mines on their island, so much so that from a tenth of the revenue produced there a treasury was dedicated at Delphi to match the wealthiest ones; and they themselves distributed among themselves the money produced each year. Now when they were building the treasury, they consulted
the oracle whether their current good fortune was destined to last a long while; and the Pythia gave them this answer: "But whenever the council-hall in Siphnos turns white, along with the white-browed marketplace, then a shrewd man is needed to watch out for a wooden ambush and a red herald." At that time the marketplace and council-hall of the Siphnians were in fact faced with Parian marble. This
prophecy they were unable to grasp, neither right away nor once the Samians had actually arrived. For as soon as the Samians touched at Siphnos, they sent one of their ships bearing envoys into the city. In earlier days every ship was coated in red ochre, and this was exactly what the Pythia had warned the Siphnians of, telling them to guard against the wooden ambush and a red
herald. So the envoys, on arrival, requested that the Siphnians lend them ten talents; and when the Siphnians declined, the Samians set about pillaging their territory. Hearing of this, the Siphnians rushed out at once to defend themselves, and after joining battle with them they were routed, with many of them shut out of the city by the Samians, who afterward squeezed a hundred talents out of them. From the Hermionians,
in exchange for money, they took the island of Hydrea off the Peloponnese, and deposited it in trust with the Troezenians; and they themselves founded Cydonia in Crete, though they were not sailing there for that purpose but to drive the Zacynthians from the island. They remained there and prospered for five years, so that the temples now standing in Cydonia are the work of these men, as is the temple of Dictyna.
But in the sixth year the Aeginetans, together with the Cretans, defeated them in a sea-battle and enslaved them, and cut off the boars' heads from the prows of their ships and dedicated them in the temple of Athena in Aegina. This the Aeginetans did out of a grudge against the Samians; for earlier the Samians, in the reign of Amphicrates over Samos, had campaigned against Aegina and had done the Aeginetans great harm, and had suffered likewise at their hands. This
was the reason for it. I have dwelt at greater length on the Samians because they have accomplished three of the greatest works of all the Greeks: a mountain a hundred and fifty fathoms high, with a tunnel dug beneath it, open at both ends. The length of this tunnel is seven stadia, and its height and width are each eight feet. Throughout its whole length another channel has been dug, twenty cubits deep and three feet
in width, through which water flows by way of pipes and reaches the city, drawn from a great spring. The engineer behind this tunnel was Eupalinus of Megara, son of Naustrophus. That is one of the three great works; the second is a breakwater around the harbor, set in the sea to a depth of twenty fathoms, running more than two stadia in length. The third piece of work they have
completed is the biggest temple of any we know of; its earliest builder was Rhoecus, son of Philes, a local man. For these reasons I have spent somewhat more space discussing the Samians. Now while Cambyses son of Cyrus was delayed in Egypt and had lost his sanity, two Magian brothers revolted against him; Cambyses had left one of them behind to look after his household. It was this man who rose against him once he learned of Smerdis's death
how he came to be hidden, and how few of the Persians knew of him, while most believed him still alive. Having considered this, he set about the following scheme against the royal house. He had a brother, whom I have said rose up with him, who resembled in appearance Smerdis the son of Cyrus, the very man whom Cambyses had put to death, though he was his own brother. This man was like Smerdis not only in appearance but
carried the same name, Smerdis. The Magus Patizeithes convinced this man that he himself would handle everything, then installed him upon the royal throne. Having done this, he dispatched heralds far and wide, including to Egypt, to announce to the army that from then on they owed obedience to Smerdis son of Cyrus, not Cambyses. The rest of the heralds
made the same announcement, and so did the one assigned to Egypt: finding Cambyses and his army in Syria at Agbatana, he stood before them and delivered the message ordered by the Magus. Cambyses, hearing this from the herald and believing it true — and thinking himself betrayed by Prexaspes, since he had sent that man to kill Smerdis and Prexaspes had not carried it out —
looked at Prexaspes and said, "Prexaspes, is this how you carried out the task I entrusted to you?" And he said, "Master, this is not true, that Smerdis your brother has risen against you, nor that any quarrel, great or small, will come to you from that man. For I myself, doing what you commanded me, buried him with my own hands.
of my own doing. If the dead can indeed rise, then you may as well expect Astyages the Mede to rise up against you too; but if matters stand as before, nothing newer will ever spring from that quarter against you. So it seems best to me now that we chase down the herald and press him, asking on whose authority he came here proclaiming that we must obey King Smerdis." This satisfied Cambyses, and the herald was chased down and brought back at once.
the herald arrived; and once he had come, Prexaspes put this question to him: "Fellow, you claim to have come as messenger from Smerdis son of Cyrus. Tell me the truth now, and you may go free afterward: did Smerdis himself appear before you and give these orders in person, or was it one of his attendants?" He answered, "I have laid eyes on no Smerdis son of Cyrus
since king Cambyses set out for Egypt; it was the Magus whom Cambyses put in charge of his household who gave me these orders, claiming that Smerdis son of Cyrus was the one instructing me to tell you this." He told them the plain truth without any deceit, and Cambyses replied, "Prexaspes, since you acted as a loyal man ought and carried out what was asked of you, you are cleared of blame. But which Persian could this be who has revolted and seized
the name of Smerdis?" And he said, "I think I understand, O king, what has happened. The Magi are the ones who have risen against you—the one you left as caretaker of your household, Patizeithes, and his brother Smerdis." Then, when Cambyses heard the name of Smerdis, the truth of the words struck him, and of the dream too, in which it had seemed to him that someone reported to
him that Smerdis, sitting upon the royal throne, touched the sky with his head. Realizing then that he had killed his brother for nothing, he wept for Smerdis; and having wept and being greatly distressed at the whole misfortune, he leapt onto his horse, intending to march to Susa as quickly as possible against the Magus. And as he leapt onto his horse, the cap of his sword's scabbard
fell off, and the sword, being bared, struck his thigh. Wounded in that same spot where he himself had once struck the Egyptians' god Apis, and since it seemed to him that the blow had struck a vital spot, Cambyses asked what the name of the city was; and they said, "Agbatana." But even before this, it had been prophesied to him from the city of Buto that he would end his life at Agbatana.
He had supposed that he would die an old man at the Median Ecbatana, where all his affairs lay; but the oracle, it turned out, had meant the Ecbatana in Syria. And now, when he inquired and learned the name of the town, struck by the disaster of the Magus and by his wound he came to his senses, and grasping the meaning of the prophecy he said,
"It is fated that Cambyses son of Cyrus will meet his end right here." That was all he said at that time. About twenty days later, he called together the most distinguished Persians in his company and told them the following: "Persians, I find myself forced to disclose to you the matter I have kept most carefully hidden of all. While I was in Egypt I had a dream in my sleep, one I wish I had never had: it seemed to me a messenger
came from home and reported that Smerdis, seated upon the royal throne, touched the sky with his head. Fearing that I would be robbed of my rule by my brother, I acted more hastily than wisely: for it seems that in human nature there is no power to turn aside what is destined to happen. And I, in my folly, sent Prexaspes to Susa to kill Smerdis. When so great a crime had been carried out,
I lived without fear, never once considering that, once Smerdis was removed, someone else might rise up against me. But in failing utterly to foresee what was to come, I have become a needless fratricide, and I am no less deprived of my kingship: for it was Smerdis the Magus whom the god was showing me in my vision would rise up against me. That deed, then, I have already done, and you must reckon that Smerdis son of Cyrus
is gone from among you now. Your royal house is instead controlled by the Magi — the man I left as steward of my household, together with his brother Smerdis — the one man most bound to avenge the shameful wrong the Magi did to me has met an unholy death at the hands of his own closest kin; and now that he too is gone, the next urgent task remaining for you, Persians,
is to charge you with what I wish to happen after my life ends. And so I lay this charge upon you, calling upon the royal gods, upon all of you, and especially upon those of the Achaemenidae who are present: do not allow the rule to pass back again to the Medes. Rather, if they have taken possession of it by trickery, take it back from them by trickery; or if they have seized it by force, recover it by force in return.
And if you do this, may the earth bring forth its fruit for you, and your wives and your flocks bear young, and may you remain free for all time. But if you do not recover the rule, or if you do not even attempt to recover it, then I pray the opposite of all this may befall you, and moreover that each and every Persian may meet the same end that has befallen me." As he said these words Cambyses wept over the whole
his own doing. When the Persians saw the king in tears, they all grabbed hold of whatever clothing they wore and tore it, giving themselves over to boundless wailing. After this, once the bone turned gangrenous and the thigh rotted through in short order, it took the life of Cambyses son of Cyrus, who had reigned in total seven years and five months, leaving behind no offspring at all, male or
female. Among the Persians present there was strong disbelief that the Magi held power, and they supposed that Cambyses had spoken as he did about the death of Smerdis out of malice, so that all Persia would be roused to war against him. So they believed that Smerdis son of Cyrus was established as king; for Prexaspes too strongly denied that he had killed Smerdis, since it was
not safe for him, now that Cambyses was dead, to say that he had destroyed the son of Cyrus with his own hands. The Magus, then, after the death of Cambyses reigned without fear, passing himself off as Smerdis, the namesake son of Cyrus, for the remaining seven months needed to complete Cambyses' eighth year. During this time he conferred great benefits on all his subjects, so that when he died all the peoples of Asia missed him, except
of the Persians themselves. For the Magus sent word to every nation under his rule announcing freedom from military levy and tribute for three years. He issued this announcement right at the start of his reign, but in the eighth month he was found out, in the following way. Otanes was son of Pharnaspes, and in lineage and wealth ranked with the leading men among the Persians. This Otanes was the first to grow suspicious of the
Magus, that he was not Smerdis son of Cyrus but someone else, reasoning it out from the fact that he never went out from the citadel and that he never summoned into his presence any of the eminent Persians. Suspecting this, he did as follows. Cambyses had taken as wife a daughter of his, whose name was Phaedyme; this same woman the Magus now had, and lived with
with her as with all the other wives of Cambyses. So Otanes sent word to this daughter of his, asking whom she was sleeping beside — Smerdis son of Cyrus, or someone else. She sent back an answer saying she could not tell: she had never once set eyes on Smerdis son of Cyrus, nor did she know the identity of the man sharing her bed. Otanes sent a further message,
Otanes said, "If you cannot recognize Smerdis son of Cyrus yourself, then go ask Atossa who this man is that both she and you share a bed with; surely she at least would know her own brother." The daughter sent back this reply: "I am unable to speak with Atossa, nor to catch sight of any other woman kept here alongside us. For as soon as this man"
whoever he really is, took hold of the kingship, he scattered us, assigning each to a separate place." Hearing this, Otanes saw the matter still more clearly. He sent a third message to her, saying this: "Daughter, being well born as you are, you must take on the risk that your father bids you undertake. For if this is not truly Smerdis son of Cyrus but the man I suspect,
he must be stopped from rejoicing, from sleeping at your side while holding mastery over the Persians; he must pay for it. So do as I say: the next time he lies beside you and you can tell he is deep in sleep, feel for his ears. If he turns out to have ears, you may believe you are wedded to Smerdis son of Cyrus; but if he has none, then know your husband is Smerdis the Magus." In answer to this,
Phaedyme replied that she would be taking a great risk in doing this: for if he actually lacked ears and she were caught in the act of feeling for them, she was certain he would put an end to her. All the same, she agreed to try. So she promised her father she would carry it out. As for this Magus, this false Smerdis, Cyrus son of Cambyses, during his reign, had cut off his ears for some serious crime.
So then this Phaedyme, the daughter of Otanes, carrying out everything she had promised her father, when her turn came around to go to the Magus (for the women take turns visiting the Persian king), came to him and lay with him, and when the Magus was sleeping soundly she felt for his ears. Discovering, without difficulty but quite readily, that the man had no
ears, as soon as day came she sent word and informed her father of what had happened. Otanes then took Aspathines and Gobryas, who were among the foremost of the Persians and most trustworthy to himself, and told them the whole matter. They too, it turned out, had themselves suspected that this was so, and when Otanes brought forward his account they accepted it, and it was resolved that each of them should take on as a partner
the Persian each trusted above all others. Otanes accordingly brought Intaphrenes in, Gobryas brought Megabyzus, and Aspathines brought Hydarnes. Once these six were joined, Darius son of Hystaspes reached Susa, having just come from Persia, where his father held the governorship. As soon as he arrived, the six decided to bring Darius into their number as well. Together now numbering seven, they exchanged with one another
pledges and exchanged words. And when it came Darius's turn to declare his opinion, he said to them: "I had supposed that I alone knew this — that it is the Magus who is reigning and that Smerdis son of Cyrus is dead — and it is for this very reason that I have come in haste, so as to bring about the Magus's death. But since it has turned out that you too know it, and not I alone,
it seems to me that we should act at once and not delay; for delay is not better." To this Otanes replied: "Son of Hystaspes, you are the son of a noble father, and you seem to be showing yourself in no way inferior to him. Do not, however, rush this undertaking so recklessly; take it up rather with more prudence. For we must become more numerous before making the attempt." To this Darius said,
"Men here present, if you follow the course Otanes proposes, know that you will perish most wretchedly: for someone will carry word to the Magus, seeking gain for himself alone. You ought, above all, to have done this relying on yourselves alone; but since you saw fit to bring more people into it and you have put it to me as well, either let us act today, or know this: if the present
day passes by, then no one else will accuse me before anyone else can, but I myself will go and denounce you all to the Magus." To this Otanes replied, seeing Darius so pressing, "Since you force us to act in haste and will not allow delay, come, explain yourself by what means we shall enter the palace and make our attempt upon them. You know as well as I do that there are guards posted throughout, even if you know it not by sight
but by report: how shall we get past them?" Darius answered him thus: "Otanes, there are many things that cannot be shown in words but can be in deeds; and there are others that can be told in words, yet from which no brilliant deed results. You should know that the guards now posted are in no way difficult to get past. For, being the men we are,
He will not refuse, partly out of respect for us, partly perhaps out of fear. And I myself have the most fitting pretext by which to gain entry, claiming that I have just arrived from Persia and wish to convey some message from my father to the king. Where a lie is needed, let it be told. For we who lie and those who deal in truth are both after the same thing.
Some lie when they expect to profit by persuading with falsehoods, others speak the truth in order to draw profit by truth and so be trusted the more. Thus though we practice opposite things we aim at the same end. If neither stood to gain anything, the truth-teller would be just as ready to lie as the liar to tell the truth. Now whichever of the gatekeepers lets us pass willingly,
it will go better for him in time to come; but whoever tries to resist, let him then be shown to be our enemy, and after that let us thrust our way in and get to work." After this Gobryas said, "Friends, when will we have a finer occasion to win back our rule, or, if we prove unable to recover it, to die, than now — now that we, Persians, are ruled by a Median man, a Magus, and one who
has no ears at that. Those of you who were present when Cambyses lay dying surely remember what he charged upon the Persians as he ended his life, that they should try to win back the rule: at the time we did not accept it, but thought Cambyses spoke out of malice. Now, then, I cast my vote that we obey Darius and not disband from this gathering, but go straight against the Magus." So spoke
Gobryas, and every one of them agreed with this plan. While they were still working out these details, the following happened by pure coincidence. The Magi, in their own council, decided to draw Prexaspes to their side as a friend, both because he had been wronged terribly by Cambyses (who had shot his son with an arrow and killed him) and because he alone knew the manner of Smerdis son of Cyrus's death, having slain him with his own two hands, and further because Prexaspes stood in the highest regard
among the Persians. It was for these reasons that they called on him, sought his friendship, and bound him with pledges and oaths that he would guard the secret and tell no one of the fraud they had worked upon the Persians, promising in exchange to shower him with every kind of gift. Once Prexaspes agreed to this, and the Magi had won him over, they came to him with a second request: they would gather all the Persians
beneath the palace wall, and they told him to climb a tower and announce to the crowd that Smerdis son of Cyrus, and no other, ruled over them. They gave him this task precisely because he was regarded as the most trustworthy man in Persia, and had many times stated his belief that Smerdis son of Cyrus still lived, denying any part in his murder. When Prexaspes agreed that he was willing to do this as well,
the Magi called the Persians together, brought him up onto the tower, and bade him speak. But of the things they wanted from him, he willingly forgot all of that; instead, beginning from Achaemenes, he traced the lineage of Cyrus's line, and when at last he came down to Cyrus himself, he told all the good things Cyrus had done for the Persians; and having gone through these, he revealed the truth, saying that before he had hidden it (for
it would not be safe for him to reveal the truth), but under his present circumstances he found himself forced to speak plainly. So he declared that he himself, under compulsion from Cambyses, had slain Smerdis son of Cyrus, and that the ones now ruling were the Magi. Then, after invoking many curses upon the Persians should they fail to reclaim their rule and punish the Magi, he let himself fall headlong from the top of the tower.
Prexaspes, then, a man of good repute all his life, ended his life in this way. As for the seven Persians, once they had resolved to attack the Magi at once without delay, they set out after praying to the gods, knowing nothing of what had happened concerning Prexaspes. They were in the middle of their journey when they learned what had befallen Prexaspes. At this they stepped aside from the road and began to confer
among themselves once more: those siding with Otanes insisted firmly that they wait and not strike while things were still unsettled, while those siding with Darius pressed to act right away and carry out their plan without further delay. In the middle of this dispute, seven pairs of hawks appeared, chasing two pairs of vultures and tearing at their feathers. When the seven men saw this, they all
Darius's judgment, and then went on toward the palace, emboldened by the omen of the birds. When they came to the gates, it happened just as Darius's judgment had foretold: the guards, out of respect for these men, who were the foremost among the Persians, and suspecting nothing of the kind from them, let them pass by, as if under divine escort, and no one questioned them at all. When they had passed into the courtyard, they encountered the eunuchs who
carry in messages. These men asked them what they wanted, and while questioning them also threatened the gatekeepers for letting them through, and tried to hold back the seven, who wished to go further in. But the seven, urging one another on and drawing their daggers, cut down on the spot those who were holding them back, and themselves ran at a sprint into the men's hall. The two Magi happened at that moment
to be both inside, taking counsel about what had happened concerning Prexaspes. When they saw the eunuchs in an uproar and shouting, both of them ran back and, once they understood what was happening, turned to defend themselves. One of them managed to snatch up his bow, the other turned to his spear. Then they clashed with one another.
since he had grabbed his bow while the enemy stood close and pressing, it proved worthless to him; but the other man fought back with his spear, striking Aspathines in the thigh and Intaphrenes in the eye. Intaphrenes lost the eye from that wound, though it did not kill him. So it was one of the two Magi who wounded these men;
but the other, when his bow proved of no use to him, since there was a chamber opening off the men's hall, fled into it, wishing to shut the doors against them, and two of the seven burst in with him, Darius and Gobryas. As Gobryas grappled with the Magus, Darius stood over them at a loss, as one would be in the dark, being careful not to strike Gobryas instead.
Gobryas, seeing him stand there doing nothing, asked why he did not use his weapon. Darius replied, "I am watching out for you, so I don't strike you by mistake." Gobryas answered, "Push the blade through us both if you have to." Darius did as told, drove in his dagger, and happened to strike the Magus. After killing the Magi and cutting off their heads, the wounded among the seven were left behind
both from injury and to keep watch over the citadel, while the remaining five carried the heads of the Magi and ran through the streets shouting and raising a clamor, calling out to the rest of the Persians, telling them what had happened and holding up the heads, killing every Magus they came across as they went. Once the Persians understood from the seven what had taken place
and learned of the Magi's deceit, they too judged it right to act the same way, drawing their daggers and killing every Magus they could find; had night not fallen and put a stop to it, not a single Magus would have survived. To this day the Persians hold this date above all others in shared observance, and mark it with a great festival they call the Magophonia [Slaying of the Magi], during which no Magus
is permitted to appear in public, but the Magi keep themselves at home within doors that whole day. When the uproar had settled down, and five days had passed, those who had risen against the Magi took counsel about the whole state of affairs, and speeches were made that are disbelieved by some of the Greeks, but they were made nonetheless. Otanes urged that the government be laid open in common to the Persians, speaking as follows: "It seems to me
that we should no longer have any one man as sole ruler; for that is neither pleasant nor good. You saw how far the insolence of Cambyses went, and you had your share too of the insolence of the Magus. How could monarchy be a well-ordered thing, when it allows a man to do whatever he wishes without being held to account? Even the best of all men, set in that position, would be driven
out of his accustomed way of thinking. For insolence is bred in him by the good things he has at hand, while envy is inborn in man from the beginning. Possessing these two things, he possesses all wickedness: for he does many reckless things, some out of surfeit bred by insolence, others out of envy. And yet a tyrant, of all men, ought to be free of envy, having every good thing. But he is naturally the opposite of this toward his citizens: he envies
the finest citizens who remain and are still living, while favoring the worst sort among the people, and is quick to welcome slander. Nothing about him is more contradictory: show him modest respect and he resents not being flattered enough; lavish praise on him instead and he resents that too, calling it mere flattery. But now I turn to the gravest charge of all: he upends the customs of the ancestors, violates women, and executes men without a trial.
But rule by the many has, first of all, the fairest name of all, equality under the law [isonomia]; and second, it does none of the things a monarch does: offices are assigned by lot, the officeholder is accountable for his conduct, and all deliberations are referred to the common body. I therefore cast my vote that we do away with monarchy and increase the power of the people; for in the many is everything." Such was the opinion Otanes put forward;
but Megabyzus urged that they entrust power to an oligarchy, speaking as follows: "What Otanes said in doing away with tyranny, let it stand as said by me too; but in urging that we hand power over to the many, he has missed the best judgment: for there is nothing so senseless and so insolent as a useless mob. And yet, for men fleeing the insolence of a tyrant to fall into the insolence of an unrestrained populace is in no way to be endured. For if the one, whenever he does anything,
he acts, he acts knowing what he does, but the mob has not even the capacity to know—for how could one know anything, who has neither been taught nor seen for himself anything noble and fitting? It rushes into affairs and pushes them along without judgment, like a river in flood. Let those who wish the Persians harm make use of the people's rule, then; but let us, choosing out a group of the best men, invest these with power—for among them we ourselves will also be. And it stands to reason that the best men produce the best counsels."
we would fall into. It stands to reason that the finest men would produce the finest decisions." This was the view Megabyzus advanced. Darius spoke third, offering his own opinion: "What Megabyzus said about mass rule strikes me as correct, but what he said about oligarchy does not. Of the three systems on the table, granting that each is excellent in its own way—rule by the best of the people, rule by the few, and rule by one—
I say that monarchy far surpasses the rest. For nothing could show itself better than the rule of one man who is the best: exercising judgment of that sort, he would govern the mass of people without fault, and plans against enemies would best be kept secret under such a rule. In an oligarchy, however, among the many who cultivate excellence for the common good, strong private feuds tend to arise: for each man, wanting to be foremost and to have his own counsels prevail,
comes into violent enmity with the others; from which factions arise, and from factions, killing; and from killing the outcome is monarchy, and in this it is shown how much better monarchy is than the rest. Again, when the people rule, it is impossible that corruption not arise; and once corruption arises in public affairs, no enmities arise among the wrongdoers, but rather strong friendships; for those who do wrong to
the common good act in collusion with one another. And this goes on until someone comes forward as champion of the people and puts a stop to such men. As a result of this he is admired by the people, and being admired he is shown to be a monarch; and in this too it is proved that monarchy is the strongest form. To sum up everything in one word: from where did our freedom come,
and who gave it to us? From the people, or from oligarchy, or from a monarch? I hold, then, that we who have been freed through one man ought to preserve such a form of rule, and besides this, not to abolish our ancestral customs when they are good—for that would not be better." These, then, were the three opinions set forth, and four of the seven men sided with this one. When Otanes, who had been urging that the Persians establish equality of rights,
was defeated in his opinion, he said this to them in the midst of the group: "Fellow conspirators, it is clear that one of us must become king, whether chosen by lot, or by entrusting the choice to the mass of the Persians and letting them pick whom they will, or by some other means. I myself will not compete with you for it, for I wish neither to rule nor to be ruled; but I withdraw
of the throne, provided that none of you rules over me, neither I myself nor any descendant of mine, ever." Once he had said this and the six others agreed to his terms, he took no further part in the contest but stepped away from it, and even now his household alone remains free among the Persians, obeying only such laws as it chooses, so long as it does not break
the laws of the Persians. The remaining six of the seven then deliberated how they might most justly set up a king; and it was decided, in the case of Otanes and his descendants forever, that if the kingship should pass to any other of the seven, Otanes and his line should receive as a special privilege a Median robe each year, and every gift that is held in highest honor among the Persians. This privilege they resolved to grant him
these terms, since he had been the one to first devise the plan and bring the group together. Such were Otanes's special privileges; but for the common good they further decided that any of the seven could enter the royal quarters unannounced, except when the king was found asleep beside a wife, and that the king could take a wife only from among the families of the conspirators. As for the kingship itself, they resolved
as follows: that whichever man's horse should neigh first at sunrise, when they were mounted in the suburb, he should have the kingship. Now Darius had a groom, a clever man, whose name was Oebares. To this man, after they had parted, Darius said the following: "Oebares, we have decided to settle the kingship in this way: whoever's horse neighs first at the same moment as the
sun rises, while we are mounted, he is to have the kingship. Now then, if you have any cleverness, contrive some way that we may win this prize, and not someone else." Oebares answered him thus: "Master, if indeed it is on this that it depends whether you become king or not, take courage on this account and keep a good heart, for no other man will be king before
you—I have such devices at my command." Darius said, "If then you have some such trick, it is time to contrive it and not to delay, since tomorrow is the day of our contest." Having heard this, Oebares did as follows: when night came, he took one of the mares, the one which Darius's horse loved most, led her to the suburb and tethered her there, and then brought
Darius's horse up, and led him around near the mare many times, letting him come close to her, and at last let him mount her. At the break of day the six, as they had agreed, appeared on their horses; and as they rode out through the suburb, when they came to the spot where the mare had been tethered the night before, there Darius's horse ran forward
and let out a neigh. At the very instant the horse did this, lightning flashed from a clear sky and thunder rolled. These signs, coming right after what had already happened to Darius, sealed his kingship as though arranged in advance; and the other riders sprang down from their horses and bowed before Darius. Some claim Oebares engineered this trick, while others tell a different story (for the Persians report it both ways): that he had touched
this mare's genitals with his hand and kept it hidden in his trousers; and that when, at sunrise, the horses were about to be released, this Oebares drew out his hand and brought it up to the nostrils of Darius's horse, and the horse, perceiving the scent, snorted and neighed. So Darius, son of Hystaspes, was declared king, and all the peoples of Asia were subject to him,
except the Arabians, since Cyrus had subdued them and later Cambyses again. The Arabians never submitted to slavery under the Persians, but became friends by allowing Cambyses passage against Egypt; for the Persians could not have invaded Egypt against the will of the Arabians. Darius married the foremost marriages among the Persians: two daughters of Cyrus, Atossa and Artystone—Atossa, who had previously been married to Cambyses
first to his brother, and then again to the Magus, while Artystone remained unmarried; he also wed another daughter of Cyrus, this one Smerdis's sister, named Parmys; and he took as well the daughter of Otanes, the woman who had exposed the Magus, so that every form of power was now his in full measure. First he had a stone relief carved and set up, showing the figure of a mounted horseman, and he had letters engraved on it
reading: "Darius son of Hystaspes won the kingship of the Persians through the courage of his horse"—naming the horse—"and of Oebares his groom." After doing this he set up twenty administrative districts across Persia, what the Persians themselves term satrapies; having established these districts and placed governors over them, he fixed the tribute payments owed to him by nation, attaching neighboring peoples to each district,
passing over the nearer ones and assigning peoples that lay farther off to different provinces. He divided the provinces and the yearly income of tribute as follows: those of them who brought silver were ordered to bring it by the Babylonian standard of weight, those who brought gold, by the Euboic standard. The Babylonian talent is equal to seventy-eight Euboic minas. For under the rule of Cyrus and again of Cambyses there had been no fixed
any tribute at all, offering gifts instead. Because of this system of imposed tribute, and other similar practices, the Persians have a saying that likens Darius to a shopkeeper, Cambyses to a master, and Cyrus to a father—the first because he reduced everything to buying and selling, the second because he was harsh and careless, and the third because he was kind and arranged only good things for them.
From the Ionians, the Magnesians of Asia, the Aeolians, the Carians, the Lycians, the Milyans, and the Pamphylians (since a single tribute was assessed across all of them) came four hundred silver talents. This formed the first tax district. From the Mysians, Lydians, Lasonians, Cabalians, and Hytennians came five hundred talents: this was the second district.
From the Hellespontines on the right side going in, the Phrygians, the Thracians of Asia, the Paphlagonians, the Mariandynians, and the Syrians, the tribute amounted to three hundred sixty talents: this was the third district. From the Cilicians came three hundred sixty white horses—one for every day of the year—plus five hundred talents of silver, of which one hundred forty went toward the cavalry
that guarded the land of Cilicia, and the remaining three hundred and sixty went to Darius: this was the fourth province. From the city of Posideium, which Amphilochus son of Amphiaraus founded on the border between the Cilicians and the Syrians, beginning from that city as far as Egypt, excluding the portion belonging to the Arabians (which was exempt from tribute), the tribute was three hundred and fifty talents. In this province is included
all Phoenicia and the part of Syria called Palestine, and Cyprus: this was the fifth province. From Egypt and the Libyans bordering on Egypt, and from Cyrene and Barca (for these were reckoned into the Egyptian province), seven hundred talents came in, apart from the silver that comes from the fishing of Lake Moeris. Apart from this silver,
and grain measured out in addition brought in seven hundred talents; for grain is portioned out to the Persian garrison of two hundred thousand men stationed at the White Fortress in Memphis, along with their auxiliaries. This was the sixth district. The Sattagydae, Gandarians, Dadicae, and Aparytae, taxed together as one, contributed a hundred seventy talents: this was the seventh district.
along with the rest of Cissian territory, three hundred talents: this made the eighth district. From Babylon and the remainder of Assyria came a thousand silver talents plus five hundred boy eunuchs: this was the ninth district. From Ecbatana and the rest of Media, along with the Paricanians and Orthocorybantians, came four hundred fifty talents: this was the tenth district. The Caspians, Pausicae, Pantimathi, and
the Daritae, combining their payments, brought in two hundred talents: this was the eleventh district. From the Bactrians up to the Aeglae the tribute stood at three hundred sixty talents: this was the twelfth district. From Pactyice, the Armenians, and their neighbors as far as the Euxine Sea came four hundred talents: this was the thirteenth district. From the Sagartians, Sarangians, Thamanaeans, Utians, and
the Mycians, together with those living on the islands in the Red Sea where the king resettles the people known as deportees—from all of these combined the tribute amounted to six hundred talents: this was the fourteenth district. The Sacae and Caspians contributed two hundred fifty talents: this was the fifteenth district. The Parthians, Chorasmians, Sogdians, and Arians brought in three hundred
talents; this was the sixteenth province. The Paricanians and the Ethiopians from Asia brought in four hundred talents; this was the seventeenth province. On the Matieni, the Saspires, and the Alarodians two hundred talents were imposed; this was the eighteenth province. On the Moschi, the Tibareni, the Macrones, the Mossynoeci, and the Mares three hundred talents were laid down; this was the nineteenth province. Of the Indians
is by far the largest population of any people known to us, and paid, on top of all others, a tribute of three hundred sixty talents in gold dust: this was the twentieth district. Converting the Babylonian silver talent into Euboic measure gives nine thousand eight hundred eighty talents; and reckoning gold as worth thirteen times as much as silver, the gold dust works out to four thousand six hundred eighty
plus six hundred talents, four thousand in all. Adding together the total of all these sums in Euboic talents, the yearly tribute gathered for Darius came to fourteen thousand five hundred sixty; I leave out anything smaller than this and do not bother listing it. This was the tribute reaching Darius from Asia and a small portion of Libya. As time passed, however, additional tribute began arriving from the islands
and from the peoples settled in Europe up to Thessaly. The king stores this tribute away in the following fashion: he melts the metal and pours it into clay jars, and once a jar is full he breaks away the clay shell around it; then, whenever money is needed, he chips off however much the occasion calls for. Such, then, were the administrative districts and their assigned tributes. Persia itself is the one land I have not listed among the tribute-payers; for the
Persians occupy their land tax-free. The following peoples were assigned to bring no tribute at all, but gifts instead: the Ethiopians bordering on Egypt, whom Cambyses subdued when he marched against the long-lived Ethiopians, and those who dwell around sacred Nysa and hold festivals in honor of Dionysus. These Ethiopians and their neighbors use the same seed as the
Indians of Callantia, who instead live in dwellings dug into the ground. Both these groups together used to bring their gifts every third year, and continue doing so even now, in my own day: two choenixes of unrefined gold, two hundred blocks of ebony, and twenty large elephant tusks, along with five Ethiopian boys. The Colchians fixed their own gift amount, as did their neighbors up to the Caucasus mountains (for Persian rule extends only as far as this mountain
empire extends, but the peoples to the north of the Caucasus pay no further heed to the Persians). These peoples, then, still bring even to my time the gifts they set for themselves, every four years: a hundred boys and a hundred girls. The Arabians brought in a thousand talents of frankincense each year. Such were the gifts these peoples brought the king apart from the tribute. As for this great quantity of gold which the
Indians bring in, from which they carry to the king the gold dust I have mentioned, they acquire it in the following manner. There is in the part of India toward the rising sun a region of sand; for of all the peoples we know, and of whom anything reliable is reported, the Indians dwell farthest toward the dawn and the sunrise among the peoples of Asia; for to the east of the Indians the land is desert because of the
sand. India has many tribes speaking different languages from one another; some are nomadic and some are not, and some live in the marshlands of the river, eating raw fish that they catch from boats built out of reeds—each boat fashioned from a single length of reed. These Indians dress in clothing made of rush fiber; whenever they
harvest reeds from the river and cut them down, they weave the fibers together in the style of a basket and slip it on like body armor. Other Indians, living further east than these, are nomadic and eat their meat raw; these people are called the Padaei, and their customs are reportedly of this sort: when a townsperson falls sick, whether female or male, if it is a man, the men closest to him kill him, claiming that
his flesh would be spoiled by the wasting sickness if he wastes away; he himself denies that he is sick, but they, not believing him, kill him anyway and feast on him. And if a woman falls ill, the women closest to her do likewise, just as the men do. For as for one who reaches old age, they sacrifice him and feast on him; but very few of them reach that point, for before that
they kill anyone who falls into sickness. Other Indians follow yet another custom: they kill no living thing, nor do they sow anything, nor do they think it right to have houses, and they live on plants; and they have a grain the size of millet growing in a husk, which springs up from the earth of its own accord, and which they gather, husk and all, and boil and eat. And whoever among them falls
into sickness goes off into the desert and lies there; no one pays any heed to him, whether he dies or is merely ill. The intercourse of all these Indians whom I have described is open to view, like that of cattle, and they all have skin of the same color, resembling that of the Ethiopians. Their seed, moreover, which they emit into the women, is not white like that of other men, but black,
just as their skin is. Such is the seed which the Ethiopians also emit. These Indians dwell farther from the Persians and to the south, and never came under the rule of King Darius. Other Indians border on the city of Caspatyrus and the land of Pactyice, dwelling to the north of the other Indians, and they follow a way of life similar to that of the Bactrians.
These are also the most warlike of the Indians, and it is they who set out after the gold; for it is in this region that there is desert because of the sand. Now in this desert and in the sand there live ants, smaller in size than dogs but larger than foxes; some of them are kept even at the court of the Persian king, having been caught there. These ants, in making
their dwelling underground, throw up the sand just as the ants among the Greeks do, in the very same manner, and they are also very similar to them in form; and the sand that is thrown up is rich in gold. It is after this sand that the Indians set out into the desert, each yoking together three camels, with a male camel harnessed on either side by a trace, and a female in the middle;
the man himself mounts on this one, taking care to have yoked her after pulling her away from her young while they were as young as possible. For their camels are no slower than horses in speed, and besides are far more capable of carrying loads. As for the appearance of the camel, since the Greeks already know it, I will not describe it; but what they do not know about it I will tell: a camel has
in its hind legs four thighs and four knees, and its genitals, between the hind legs, turned toward the tail. The Indians, then, using this method and this kind of yoking, drive out after the gold, calculating so as to be engaged in the seizure while the heat is at its fiercest; for in the heat the ants become invisible, going underground. Now the sun is hottest
for these people in the morning, not at midday as for others, but from sunrise until the time the marketplace empties. During this time it burns much more fiercely than at midday in Greece, so much so that it is said men soak themselves in water at that hour. At midday the sun burns the Indians about as much as it burns other men. But as
midday declines, the sun becomes for them like the morning sun is for others, and from that point onward, as it departs, it grows ever cooler, until at sunset it is very cold indeed. So when the Indians arrive at the place carrying sacks, they fill these with the sand and drive back as fast as they can; for at once the ants, catching the scent, as indeed it is said
by the Persians, notice and give chase. And their speed, it is said, is unmatched by anything else, so that if the Indians did not get a head start on the road while the ants were gathering, not one of them would escape alive. Now the male camels, since they are slower in running than the females, are said to fall behind, being pulled along, not both together; but the females, remembering the young they left behind, hold back nothing in their effort.
This, then, is how the Indians get most of their gold, according to the Persians. But another kind, scarcer, is dug up in their country. It seems that the outermost regions of the inhabited world happen to have received the finest things, just as Greece has received by far the finest and best-tempered climate. For to the east, the last of the inhabited lands is India, as I said a little earlier.
India's living creatures—both four-footed animals and birds—grow to a far greater size there than anywhere else, with the exception of horses (which are surpassed by the Median breed, known as Nesaean horses); additionally, gold exists there in vast quantity, some dug from mines, some washed down by rivers, and some snatched away by ants, as I already described.
Wild trees growing there produce a fruit resembling wool, finer in appearance and quality than sheep's wool, and the Indians make their garments from this tree-fiber. Moving further south, Arabia marks the edge of the inhabited world, and it alone among all lands produces frankincense, along with myrrh, cassia, cinnamon, and ledanon.
Everything on this list besides myrrh is hard for the Arabians to acquire. They gather frankincense specifically by burning storax—the very storax the Phoenicians ship out to Greek markets; burning it is how they capture the frankincense resin. This is because the trees that bear frankincense are watched over by winged snakes, small in size and dappled in color, clustered in large numbers around every single tree—these are the same creatures that invade Egypt in swarms—and smoke from the burning storax is the only thing that will drive them away from the trees.
The Arabians also say this: that the whole land would be filled with these snakes, if it were not that something happens to them of the sort I understand happens to vipers. And somehow the foresight of the divine, being wise as indeed is fitting, has made all creatures that are cowardly and edible prolific in offspring, so that
they may not be wiped out by being devoured, while creatures that are savage and troublesome it has made to bear few young. For instance, the hare is hunted by every kind of beast, bird, and man, and so it is extremely prolific: alone among all animals it can conceive while already pregnant, and one of the young in the womb is already furred while another is bald, another is just being shaped in the womb, and another is only just conceived. So much for that.
The lioness, though the strongest and boldest of creatures, bears only one cub in her whole life, giving birth once and for all; for in giving birth she expels her womb along with the cub. The reason for this is as follows: when the cub, still in the mother, begins to stir, it has claws far sharper than those of any other animal, and it scratches the womb; and as it grows it tears
deeper still, scoring the womb, and by the time birth is near, nothing whole is left of it. In just the same way, if the vipers and the winged snakes of Arabia were born as their nature intends, life would not be livable for men. But as it is, when they mate in pairs and the male is in the very act of ejaculating,
the female seizes him by the throat, and having clamped on she does not let go until she has bitten right through. So the male dies in the manner described, but the female pays this penalty in turn to the male: in vengeance for the father, the young, while still in the womb, gnaw through their mother, and having eaten through her belly, thus make their way out. The other
snakes, which do no harm to men, lay eggs and hatch a great quantity of young. Now vipers are found over the whole earth, but the winged snakes are found gathered together only in Arabia and nowhere else; that is why they seem to be so numerous. This, then, is how the Arabians obtain their frankincense, and this is how they get their cassia. When they have bound
covering their whole body and face, except for the eyes themselves, in hides and other skins, they set out after the cassia. It grows in a lake that is not deep, and around and within it live winged beasts closely resembling bats, which screech horribly and fight fiercely when threatened; the harvesters must fend these off away from their eyes as they cut the cassia.
The cinnamon they gather in a still more remarkable way. Where it grows and what land nurtures it, they cannot say, except that some, reasoning plausibly, say it grows in the very regions where Dionysus was raised. They say that large birds carry these sticks—the ones we, having learned the word from the Phoenicians, call cinnamon—
and that the birds carry them to nests built of clay and stuck onto sheer cliff faces, where no man can climb. So against this the Arabians have devised the following trick: they cut up the limbs of dead oxen and donkeys and other pack animals into the largest pieces they can, carry them to these places, and having set them down near the nests they withdraw far off; and
the birds, flying down, carry the limbs of the pack animals up to their nests, which cannot bear the weight and break and fall to the ground, and the men then come and gather it up. In this way the cinnamon collected from these places reaches the other countries. As for ledanon, which the Arabians call ladanon, it comes about in a way even more remarkable than this: for it forms in the foulest-smelling place and yet is itself the sweetest-smelling of things. For it is found
forming on the beards of he-goats, like a kind of gum from the brush. It is useful for many kinds of perfume, and the Arabians burn it above all as incense. Let this much be said about spices; and the whole land of Arabia gives off a scent wondrously sweet. They also have two kinds of sheep worthy of wonder, found nowhere else. One of these
these sheep have tails so long—no less than three cubits—that if left to drag along, sores would form where the tails scraped against the ground; but nowadays every shepherd has learned enough woodworking skill to solve this: they build small carts and strap them beneath the tails, binding each animal's tail to its own individual cart. As for the second breed of sheep
has tails that are broad, as much as a cubit wide. As one turns south, toward the setting sun lies Ethiopia, the last of the inhabited countries. This land produces much gold, abundant elephants, every kind of wild tree, ebony, and men who are the tallest, most handsome, and longest-lived. These, then, are the outermost regions of Asia and of
Libya. About the outermost regions of Europe, toward the west, I cannot speak with certainty; for I myself do not accept that there is a river called by the barbarians the Eridanus, flowing out into the sea toward the north wind, from which amber is said to come, nor do I know of any islands called the Cassiterides, from which our tin comes. For in the first place the name Eridanus
itself proclaims that it is Greek and not barbarian, and was coined by some poet; and in the second place, though I have taken pains to inquire, I have never been able to hear from anyone who had actually seen it that there is a sea beyond Europe. In any case, it is from the farthest regions that our tin and amber come to us. To the north of Europe there evidently is a very great quantity of gold; but how
it is produced, I cannot say for certain either. It is said that one-eyed men called Arimaspians steal it from griffins. But I do not believe this either—that there exist one-eyed men who in every other respect have the same nature as other men. In any case, it does seem that the outermost lands, encircling the rest of the world and enclosing it within, possess the things that seem to us the finest and the rarest. There is a plain
in Asia enclosed on every side by a mountain, with five gaps cutting through the mountain. This plain once belonged to the Chorasmians, lying on the border of the Chorasmians themselves, the Hyrcanians, the Parthians, the Sarangians, and the Thamanaeans; but since the Persians have held power, it belongs to the King. From this encircling mountain flows a great river, called
the Akes. This river formerly, divided in five channels, watered the lands of these peoples just named, being led through a gap to each of them separately; but since they have come under the Persian, the following has happened to them: the King, having built gates at each gap in the mountains where it is breached, closed off the water's outlet, so that the plain inside the mountains becomes a sea, since the river
flows in but has no outlet anywhere. So those who formerly were accustomed to use the water, being unable to use it now, suffer a great hardship. In winter, god sends them rain just as he does other men, but in summer, when they sow millet and sesame, they need the water. So whenever none of the water is given over to them, they go to the Persians,
both the men and their wives, and standing at the King's gates they cry out howling; and the King orders the gates that lead to their land opened for whichever of them are most in need. Then, when their land has drunk its fill of water and is sated, these gates are closed again, and he orders other gates opened for whichever of the rest are most in need. As I
gathered from what I have heard, he charges enormous sums for opening them, beyond the standard tribute. So that is how matters stand there. Among the seven men who revolted against the Magus, one of them, Intaphrenes, brought about his own death right after the revolt through an act of arrogance. He wanted to go into the palace and speak with the king on business, since the custom at the time allowed those who had joined the revolt against the Magus to walk in unannounced ahead of
the king without an announcer, unless the king happens to be with a woman. Intaphrenes did not think it right that anyone should announce him, but since he was one of the seven, he wanted to go in. The doorkeeper and the message-bearer would not allow it, saying that the king was with a woman. Intaphrenes, thinking they were lying to him, did the following: drawing his short sword, he cut off their ears and
nose, and looping them onto his horse's bridle, fastened them around their necks, then released the men. They presented themselves before the king and explained why they had been treated this way. Darius, worried the six had acted together in agreement, summoned each one individually and probed his thinking, asking whether he endorsed what had happened. Once he discovered that
Intaphrenes had not done this together with them, he seized the man himself, and his children, and all his household, having strong suspicions that he was plotting rebellion against him together with his kinsmen; and having arrested them he bound them for execution. But the wife of Intaphrenes, coming continually to the king's doors, wept and lamented; and by doing this same thing over and over
she moved Darius to feel pity for her. He dispatched a messenger who delivered this message: "Woman, King Darius offers to free one of your imprisoned relatives, whichever you choose among them all." After thinking it over, she gave this reply: "If indeed the king is offering me one life, out of all of them I choose my brother." Darius, hearing this and struck with wonder at her reasoning, sent word back,
"Woman, the king asks you what thought you had in mind that, abandoning your husband and your children, you chose to save your brother's life instead—a man who is less close to you than your children and less dear to you than your husband." She answered with these words: "O king, I could get another husband, if a god should so wish, and other children too, if I should lose these; but since
my father and mother are no longer living, there is no way I could ever get another brother. It was with this thought in mind that I said what I said." Darius thought the woman had spoken well, and he released for her both the man she had asked for and the eldest of her sons, being pleased with her, but he put all the others to death. So one of the seven perished immediately in the manner described. Now
it was about the time of Cambyses' illness that the following happened. Oroetes, a Persian man, had been established by Cyrus as governor of Sardis. This man conceived a desire for an unholy deed: for though he had suffered no wrong, nor heard any rash word from Polycrates of Samos, nor even seen him before, he desired to seize and destroy him—according to most accounts, for the following reason. As Oroetes was sitting at the king's doors
together with another Persian named Mitrobates, governor of the province at Dascyleium, the two fell from conversation into a quarrel; and as they were disputing about their merits, Mitrobates said to Oroetes, taunting him, "You call yourself a man, when you have not added to the king's realm the island of Samos, which lies right next to your own province—so easy a thing to conquer that one
one of the local men rose up with fifteen armed soldiers, took control, and now governs it as tyrant?" Some claim that on hearing this, stung by the insult, Oroetes became determined not merely to punish the speaker but to destroy Polycrates altogether, since it was because of him that Oroetes had earned such disgrace. Others, a smaller group, report instead that Oroetes dispatched a messenger to Samos requesting some item (exactly what is not
said), and that Polycrates happened to be lying in the men's hall, with Anacreon of Teos present with him; and somehow, whether by design he was disregarding Oroetes' business, or whether it happened by such a chance, the herald of Oroetes came forward and spoke, and Polycrates (who happened to be turned toward the wall) neither turned around nor gave any answer. These are the two
accounts given of the cause of Polycrates' death, and it is open to anyone to believe whichever of the two he wishes. Now Oroetes, settled in Magnesia, which lies above the river Maeander, sent Myrsus son of Gyges, a Lydian man, to Samos bearing a message, having learned Polycrates' intention. For Polycrates was the first of the Greeks we know of who set his mind on ruling the sea, apart
going back to Minos of Cnossus, and to anyone else who may have held mastery of the sea before him; but among what is called the human race, Polycrates was the first, and he harbored great ambitions of ruling over Ionia and the islands. Once Oroetes realized what Polycrates had in mind, he dispatched a message reading: "Oroetes speaks thus to Polycrates: I have learned that you are scheming toward great enterprises, yet your funds do not match
your ambitions. If you do as follows, you will both raise yourself up and save me as well: for King Cambyses is plotting my death, and this has been reported to me clearly. Now if you get me and my money out of here, take some of it yourself and let me keep the rest; for the sake of the money you will rule all of Greece. If you distrust me about the
money, send whoever happens to be most trusted by you, and I will show it to him." Hearing this, Polycrates was delighted and willing; and since he desired money greatly, he first sent Maeandrius son of Maeandrius, one of his citizens, who was his secretary, to look into it; this man not long afterward dedicated all the remarkable furnishings from Polycrates' men's hall to the
temple of Hera. Oroetes, learning that the spy was expected, did as follows: he filled eight chests with stones, except for a very small space near the very rims, and on top of the stones he laid gold, then tied up the chests and kept them ready. Maeandrius came and, having seen them, reported back to Polycrates. And though many of the seers forbade it and many of his friends tried to dissuade him, he set out
there anyway, and moreover, his daughter had seen a dream-vision of this sort: it seemed to her that her father hung suspended in the air, washed clean by Zeus's rain and gleaming under the sun's rays. After this vision, she tried every possible means to stop Polycrates from making the journey to Oroetes, and as he boarded the fifty-oared ship, she continued shouting out bad omens. He warned her that
if he returned safely, she would remain unmarried for a long time. She prayed that this would indeed come to pass, for she said she would rather remain unmarried longer than be deprived of her father. Polycrates, disregarding all advice, sailed to Oroetes, taking with him many of his companions, and among them Democedes son of Calliphon, a man of Croton, a physician who practiced his art better
beyond anyone else of his generation. On reaching Magnesia, Polycrates met a wretched end, one matching neither his own character nor his lofty ambitions: setting aside the tyrants of Syracuse, not a single other Greek tyrant deserves comparison to Polycrates for sheer splendor. Oroetes put him to death in a manner too shameful to recount and had his body impaled; those among his followers who were Samians, Oroetes set free, instructing
them to remember they owed their freedom to him, while the foreigners and slaves among his followers he retained, treating them as captives. Meanwhile Polycrates, hanging there, brought every detail of his daughter's vision to pass: Zeus bathed him whenever rain fell, and the sun anointed him as moisture rose from his own body. Thus did the many strokes of fortune enjoyed by Polycrates come to
such a close, exactly as Amasis, the Egyptian king, had once predicted for him. Some time later, though not much time, retribution for Polycrates caught up with Oroetes too. After Cambyses died and the Magi held the throne, Oroetes stayed put in Sardis and offered the Persians no assistance whatsoever when their rule was stripped away by the Medes; instead, amid that disorder, he killed Mitrobates,
the governor from Dascyleium, who had reproached him over the matter concerning Polycrates, and he also killed Mitrobates' son Cranaspes, both men held in high regard among the Persians; and he committed all sorts of other outrages, and when a messenger came to him from Darius bearing a message that was not to his liking, he killed the man as he was traveling back, setting men to ambush him along the road, and after killing him he made him disappear, horse and all. Darius,
once he had secured the throne, wished to punish Oroetes for all his crimes, and especially for those against Mitrobates and his son. He did not think it wise to send an army against him directly, since affairs were still unsettled, and since he had only recently gained the throne, and since he learned that Oroetes had great power: for a thousand Persians served as his bodyguard, and he held
the province of Phrygia and Lydia and Ionia. To deal with this, then, Darius devised the following scheme. He called together the most eminent of the Persians and said to them: "Persians, which of you would undertake to accomplish this for me by cunning rather than by force and numbers? For where cunning is needed, there is no work for force. Which of you, then, would either bring me Oroetes alive
or put him to death? He has never once benefited the Persians, yet he has committed terrible wrongs: for one, he wiped out two of our own, Mitrobates and his son; for another, he murders the men I send to summon him, displaying insolence beyond what can be endured. Before he inflicts some even worse harm on the Persians, we must see him put to death." Such was Darius's question, and to it
thirty men volunteered, each one willing to do this himself. As they were quarreling among themselves, Darius stopped them and told them to draw lots; and when they drew lots, it fell to Bagaeus son of Artontes out of all of them. Having won the lot, Bagaeus did the following: he wrote up many documents concerning many matters and affixed Darius's seal to them, and then went with these to Sardis. When he arrived and came into Oroetes' presence
When he arrived, he took the letters one by one and gave each to the royal scribe to read aloud — every governor has royal scribes attached to him. Bagaeus, testing the spearmen to see whether they would accept revolt from Oroetes, gave them the letters. Seeing that they showed great reverence for the letters themselves, and still greater reverence for what was read out of them, he handed over another letter, in which was written
the following: "Persians, King Darius forbids you to serve as bodyguard to Oroetes." When they heard this they lowered their spears to him. Seeing that they obeyed the letter, Bagaeus, now emboldened, handed the last of the letters to the scribe, in which was written: "King Darius commands the Persians at Sardis to kill Oroetes." When the spearmen heard this,
they drew their short swords and struck him down right there, and in this way retribution for Polycrates of Samos finally caught up with Oroetes the Persian. Once the wealth of Oroetes had been gathered up and transported to Susa, it happened a short while afterward that King Darius, out hunting game, jumped down from his horse and wrenched his foot. The injury turned out fairly severe, since the anklebone had slipped out of its socket. Believing
he had long kept about him those Egyptians reputed to be foremost in the art of medicine, he made use of them. But by wrenching and forcing the foot they only made the injury worse. For seven days and seven nights Darius was kept sleepless by the pain that afflicted him. On the eighth day, when he was faring badly, someone who had earlier heard, still at Sardis,
of the skill of Democedes of Croton reported it to Darius. He ordered that the man be brought to him as quickly as possible. When they found him, neglected somewhere among the slaves of Oroetes, they led him into the king's presence dragging fetters and clothed in rags. Set before them, Darius asked him whether he understood the art. He would not admit it, fearing that if he
revealed himself he would be cut off entirely from Greece. It was clear to Darius that he was practicing deception though he knew the art, and he ordered those who had brought him to bring out whips and goads before him. At that point he did reveal himself, saying that he did not know it exactly, but that from association with a physician he had a poor grasp of the art. After that, once Darius entrusted himself to him, using Greek remedies and applying gentle treatments after
the harsh ones, he brought it about that Darius could get sleep, and in a short time restored him to health, though Darius had no longer expected to have the use of his foot again. After this Darius gave him two pairs of golden fetters as a gift. Democedes asked him whether he was deliberately doubling his suffering as a reward for having healed him. Darius, pleased with this remark, sent him
to his own wives. The eunuchs, leading him in, told the women that this was the man who had given the king back his life. Each of them, dipping a bowl into a chest of gold, gave Democedes so generous a gift that the servant following him, whose name was Sciton, gathered up the staters that fell from the bowls, and a great quantity of
gold was collected for him. Now this Democedes, having come from Croton, had come to be associated with Polycrates in the following way. In Croton he was afflicted by a harsh-tempered father; unable to bear him, he left and went off to Aegina. Settling there, in his first year he surpassed the other physicians, even though he was without equipment and had none of the instruments that belong to the art. In his second year
for a talent the Aeginetans employed him at public expense, the following year the Athenians paid a hundred minae, and the year after that Polycrates paid two talents. This is how he ended up in Samos, and thanks largely to this man the physicians of Croton built their fame. This took place during the period when Crotonian doctors were said to rank first throughout Greece, with those of Cyrene ranking second. Around this same period
the Argives, too, had a reputation as the leading musicians among the Greeks. It was at this point that Democedes, after curing Darius at Susa, acquired an enormous household and became a dinner companion of the king; apart from a single restriction — leaving for Greece — he had access to everything else. On one occasion he pleaded on behalf of the Egyptian physicians, who had previously treated the king and now faced impalement for having been outperformed by a Greek doctor;
he saved them. In another instance he saved an Elean seer who had accompanied Polycrates and had been left neglected among the slaves. Democedes was a man of the very greatest importance at the king's court. A short time after this, the following also happened. Atossa, daughter of Cyrus and wife of Darius, developed a growth on her breast, which then burst and spread further. As long as it was small,
she concealed it out of shame and told no one; but once her condition worsened, she summoned Democedes and showed it to him. Promising to cure her, he made her swear an oath that she would repay him with whatever favor he might later request of her — provided he would ask nothing that would bring her shame. Once he had subsequently treated her and restored her health, she was then instructed
by Democedes, and Atossa raised this matter with Darius while they lay together at night: "My king, despite holding such great power, you remain seated, neither annexing any nation nor expanding Persian strength. It would suit a man who is young and lord of such wealth to demonstrate some visible achievement, so the Persians themselves may recognize they are governed by a real man. Doing this benefits you in two ways:
so the Persians come to know that their leader is truly a man, and so they stay occupied by warfare rather than having free time to conspire against you. Right now, while you are still young in years, is when you could achieve something notable — for as the body matures, the mind matures alongside it, but as it grows old, the mind grows old along with it and becomes dulled to all affairs." She delivered this speech as she had been coached, and he responded with the following.
"Wife, you have described exactly what I myself already plan to carry out: I have decided to build a bridge spanning from this continent to the other and march against the Scythians, and this will be brought about before long." Atossa answered: "Consider this, though — let the campaign against the Scythians wait for later, since they will be available to you whenever you wish; instead, for my sake march against
against Greece. For I desire, hearing of them by report, to have Spartan handmaidens, and Argive, and Attic, and Corinthian. And you have the man best suited of all men to inform you of everything about Greece and to guide you there — this man who healed your foot." Darius answered, "Wife, since it seems best to you that we make trial of Greece first, it seems to me better first to send
Persian scouts along with the man you speak of, to Greece, who will learn and see and report each thing back to us; and then, once I am fully informed, I will turn against them." He said this and at once matched word with deed. For as soon as day dawned, he called fifteen distinguished Persian men and instructed them to travel with Democedes along the coastal parts of Greece, taking care that
Democedes should not escape from them, but that they should by all means bring him back. Having given them these instructions, he next called Democedes himself and asked him, once he had guided the Persians through the whole of Greece and shown it to them, to return. He ordered him to take all his father's household goods and give them to his father and brothers, saying he would give him back many times as much in return; and further, for the gifts, he said he would contribute a merchant ship
he promised to load it with goods of every kind for him, to travel alongside him. Darius, as far as I can tell, offered all this without any deceptive motive. But Democedes, worried that Darius might be testing him, refrained from eagerly grabbing everything that was offered; instead he said he would leave his belongings behind in place, so he could retrieve them upon returning, but that he would take the merchant vessel Darius had promised
as a gift for his brothers. Having given the same instructions to him as well, Darius sent them off to the sea. Going down to Phoenicia, and from Phoenicia to the city of Sidon, they at once manned two triremes, and along with them a great cargo ship full of all sorts of goods. Having made every preparation, they sailed for Greece, and putting in along its coasts they observed and
made records, until, having viewed most of its notable places, they arrived at Tarentum in Italy. There, out of kindness toward Democedes, Aristophilides, king of the Tarentines, removed the rudders from the Median ships, and moreover detained the Persians themselves as being, supposedly, spies. While they were suffering this, Democedes made his way to Croton.
Only after Democedes had already reached his own city did Aristophilides release the Persians, and give back what he had taken from the ships. Sailing on from there, the Persians pursued Democedes and arrived at Croton, and finding him in the marketplace, they laid hold of him. Some of the Crotoniates, fearing Persian power, were ready to give him up, but others held on to him and struck the Persians with their staffs,
as the Persians pleaded these words: "Men of Croton, see what you are doing: you are taking away a man who is a runaway from the king. How can this fail to be seen as an outrage against King Darius? How can what you are doing turn out well for you, if you take him from us? Against which city shall we march first because of this? Which shall we choose first to enslave?" Saying this they did not persuade the Crotoniates, but
having had Democedes taken from them, and the merchant ship they were bringing with him taken away as well, they sailed back to Asia, and did not even try to learn more of Greece further inland, now that they were deprived of their guide. Democedes, however, as they were setting out, gave them this one instruction: to tell Darius that Democedes had betrothed himself to the daughter of Milo. For the name of Milo the wrestler carried great weight with the king; and it is for this reason, it seems to me,
It appears that Democedes rushed to complete this marriage at enormous cost, so that even back in his homeland he would be seen as a man of standing because of his ties to Darius. After setting sail from Croton, the Persians were shipwrecked on the shores of Iapygia, and while enslaved there, Gillus, an exiled Tarentine, rescued and escorted them back to King Darius. In exchange, Darius stood ready to grant him anything he desired.
Gillus chose to have his return to Tarentum arranged, first explaining his misfortune. But so as not to throw Greece into turmoil, in case a great expedition should sail against Italy on his account, he said it would be enough for the Cnidians alone to bring him back, since they were friends of the Tarentines and he supposed his restoration would come about most readily through them. Darius agreed to this and set about fulfilling it, for he sent a messenger to
Cnidus ordering them to restore Gillus to Tarentum. The Cnidians obeyed Darius but could not persuade the Tarentines, and they were unable to use force. So this affair turned out as it did. These Persians were the first to come from Asia to Greece, and it was for this reason that they became spies. After this, King Darius took Samos, the first of all cities, Greek or barbarian, that he captured,
for the following reason. When Cambyses son of Cyrus was campaigning against Egypt, many Greeks went to Egypt too — some, naturally enough, on campaign for trade, and others simply to see the country itself. Among these was Syloson son of Aeaces, brother of Polycrates and an exile from Samos. This Syloson met with a stroke of good fortune of the following kind. He had put on
a cloak, wrapped himself in a crimson one, and went about selling goods in the marketplace at Memphis. Darius spotted him — at that time merely a bodyguard of Cambyses and not yet a man of much reputation — and, wanting the cloak, approached and offered to purchase it. Syloson, noticing how badly Darius wanted the cloak, and acting under some divine prompting, told him, "I won't sell this garment for any sum, but I'll give it to you at no cost, since it apparently must
be so, entirely for your sake." Darius, praising this, accepted the garment. Syloson supposed he had simply lost it through his own foolishness. But as time went on, and Cambyses died, and the seven rose up against the Magus, and of the seven Darius obtained the kingship, Syloson learned that the kingship had come round to that very man to whom he
he himself had given the garment to a man who requested it in Egypt. So he traveled to Susa, took a seat at the entrance of the royal residence, and declared himself a benefactor of Darius. The gatekeeper heard this and relayed it to the king, who responded in astonishment, "And which Greek benefactor could this be, to whom I owe such gratitude, given how newly I hold the throne? Barely a single one of them has
come to see us until now, and I cannot recall owing any debt to a Greek. Still, escort him inside so I can find out what he means by this claim." The gatekeeper led Syloson in, and once he stood before them, the interpreters questioned him about his identity and what deed made him claim to be a benefactor of the king. Syloson then recounted the whole episode involving the cloak,
and said that he himself was the one who had given it. Darius answered, "Noblest of men, you are the one who, when I had as yet no power at all, gave me something, even if it was small — yet the gratitude is equally great as if I should now receive something great from anyone. In return I give you gold and silver without measure, so that you will never regret having done good to Darius
son of Hystaspes." To this Syloson replied, "Give me neither gold nor silver, O king, but recover for me and give me my homeland, Samos, which our slave Oroetes now holds since my brother Polycrates was killed by him; give it to me without bloodshed or enslavement." Hearing this, Darius sent an army and as its general Otanes, one of the
totaling seven, directing that whatever Syloson had requested be carried out completely. Otanes then made his way down to the coast and prepared the army for departure. Meanwhile Maeandrius, son of Maeandrius, held authority over Samos, having taken up rule as a trustee under Polycrates; though he wished to be counted the most just of men, he failed to achieve it. For as soon as news reached him of Polycrates's death, he took the following steps: first he built an altar to Zeus
the Liberator and marked out around it a precinct, which is now in the suburb of the city. Then, when this had been done, he gathered an assembly of all the citizens and said this: "To me, as you also know, the scepter and all the power of Polycrates has been entrusted, and it is now in my power to rule over you. But as for what I reproach in my neighbor, I myself will not do it as far as I can help;
for I never approved of Polycrates lording it over men who were his equals, nor of anyone else who does such things. Polycrates fulfilled his own destiny, and I now place the rule in the common hands and proclaim equality before the law for you. But I do claim these privileges for myself: that six talents be set aside for me out of the property of Polycrates, and besides this I choose for myself the priesthood
of Zeus the Liberator, for myself and for those who are ever descended from me — for whom I myself established the shrine, and to whom I now grant your freedom." This is what he proclaimed to the Samians. But one of them stood up and said, "But you are not even worthy to rule over us, being base-born and a ruin of a man — rather you should give an account of the money you have handled."
This was said by a man of standing among the citizens named Telesarchus. But Maeandrius, reflecting that if he let go of power, someone else would set himself up as tyrant in his place, no longer had any intention of giving it up. Instead, once he had withdrawn to the acropolis, he summoned each man one by one, ostensibly to render an account of the money, and seized and bound them.
So they were kept in bonds, but afterward sickness overtook Maeandrius. His brother, whose name was Lycaretus, expecting him to die, in order that he might more easily seize control of affairs in Samos, put all the prisoners to death, for it seems they did not wish to remain free. When the Persians arrived at Samos bringing back Syloson, not a single hand was lifted against them, and the partisans of Maeandrius said they were
ready, under truce, to leave the island, and Maeandrius himself also. Otanes agreed to these terms and made a truce, and the most eminent of the Persians set their thrones opposite the acropolis and sat down. Now Maeandrius the tyrant had a brother somewhat weak in mind, named Charilaus; this man, having committed some offense, was bound in the dungeon, and just then, hearing
what was happening and peering out through the dungeon, when he saw the Persians sitting there peacefully, he shouted out and said he wished to come to speech with Maeandrius. Maeandrius, hearing this, ordered him released and brought to him; and as soon as he was brought, reviling and reproaching him, he tried to persuade him to attack the Persians, saying this: "Me, most base of men, though I am
your own brother and have done nothing deserving of bonds, you saw fit to bind in the dungeon; yet seeing the Persians casting you out and making you homeless, you dare not take vengeance, though they are so very easy to overpower. But if you are afraid of them, give me the mercenaries, and I will punish them for coming here; as for you yourself, I am ready to send you out of the island."
This is what Charilaus said. And Maeandrius took up the suggestion — not because, in my view, he was foolish enough to imagine his own power could outmatch the king's, but rather out of envy toward Syloson, that he should recover the city intact without effort. So, by provoking the Persians, he wanted to make the affairs of Samos as weak as possible before handing it over, well knowing that
the Persians, having suffered harm, would then grow still more embittered against the Samians, and knowing that he himself had a secure means of getting off the island whenever he chose; for a secret tunnel had been made for him, leading from the acropolis to the sea. Maeandrius himself sailed out from Samos, but Charilaus armed all the mercenaries, and, throwing open the gates, launched them against
the Persians, who expected nothing of the sort and thought that everything had been settled. The mercenaries fell upon those of the Persians who were carried in litters and were of the highest repute, and killed them. While they were doing this, the rest of the Persian army came to the rescue; the mercenaries, hard pressed, were driven back into the acropolis. Otanes the general, seeing the great disaster the Persians had suffered,
deliberately forgot the instructions Darius had given him when sending him out — neither to kill nor enslave any of the Samians, but to hand the island back to Syloson unharmed — and instead ordered the army to kill everyone they took, man and child alike. At this some of the army besieged the acropolis, while others killed everyone they came across,
alike within the temple and outside it. Maeandrius, having fled from Samos, sailed off to Lacedaemon; and having arrived there and brought up what he had, he did the following: whenever he set out silver and gold cups for display, his servants would polish them, while he, for that time, would be in conversation with Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides, king of Sparta,
and would lead him into the house; and whenever Cleomenes saw the cups, he would be amazed and astonished, and Maeandrius would urge him to take away as many of them as he wished. When Maeandrius had said this two or three times, Cleomenes proved himself the most just of men, for he did not think it right to take what was offered; but realizing that if Maeandrius offered them to other citizens he would find help there, he went to the ephors
it would be better for Sparta if the Samian stranger left the Peloponnese, so that he might not persuade either himself or some other Spartan to come to harm. They took his advice and had Maeandrius proclaimed banished. As for Samos, the Persians dragged the island with a net and handed it over to Syloson stripped of its men. Later, however, the general Otanes helped resettle it, prompted by a dream vision and by an illness that
had afflicted his private parts. While the naval expedition against Samos was under way, the Babylonians revolted, having prepared themselves very thoroughly indeed. For during the whole time that the Magus ruled and the seven rose up against him, throughout all that time and turmoil they had been making ready for the siege. Somehow they managed to do this without being noticed. When they finally revolted openly, they did the following: they picked out their mothers,
and each man selected in addition one wife from his own household, whichever he wished, and gathered together all the rest of the women and strangled them. The one wife each man kept as a baker of bread. They strangled the others so that they would not use up the food supply. When Darius learned of this, he gathered his whole force and marched against them; he advanced on Babylon and laid siege to it, though the Babylonians cared nothing for the siege.
For the Babylonians would climb up onto the battlements of the wall and dance and jeer at Darius and his army, and one of them called out this taunt: "Why are you sitting there, Persians? Why don't you leave? You'll take this city when mules give birth." A Babylonian spoke these words never expecting a mule to bear young. But when a year and seven months had passed,
Darius was by now vexed, and his whole army was unable to take the Babylonians. Yet Darius had tried every trick and every device against them; nothing worked, even though among other stratagems he had also tried the one by which Cyrus had taken the city before. But the Babylonians kept guard with tremendous vigilance, and he was
unable to capture them. Then, in the twentieth month, a portent occurred for Zopyrus son of Megabyzus—this Megabyzus being one of the seven men who had brought down the Magus. To this Zopyrus, son of Megabyzus, this marvel occurred: one of his baggage-carrying mules gave birth. When it was reported to him and, in disbelief, Zopyrus himself saw the newborn, he forbade those who had seen it to tell anyone what had happened, and he pondered the matter.
Recalling the words of that Babylonian, who at the start had said that when mules gave birth the wall would then be taken, in light of this saying it seemed to Zopyrus that Babylon was capturable. For it seemed that it was by divine will both that the man had spoken those words and that his own mule had given birth. Once he had concluded that it was now fated for Babylon to be captured, he went to Darius and asked whether
he set very great store on taking Babylon. Learning that Darius valued it highly indeed, he considered further how he himself might be the one to capture it, so that the achievement would be his own; for among the Persians, great deeds of service are honored in proportion to their magnitude. He could think of no other way by which he could be capable of subduing the city, except by maiming himself and deserting to the enemy.
So, thinking nothing of it, he inflicted upon himself an irreparable mutilation: he cut off his own nose and ears, cropped his hair disgracefully, had himself whipped, and came before Darius. Darius took it very hard indeed when he saw a man of the highest standing so mutilated; leaping up from his throne he cried out and asked him who had done this to him and for what reason. Zopyrus
said, "There is no man who could do this to me except you, to whom belongs such power. No stranger did this deed, O king, but I myself did it to myself, thinking it a terrible thing that Assyrians should mock Persians." Darius answered, "Wretchedest of men, you have given the most beautiful name to the most shameful deed, claiming that on account of the besieged you have ruined yourself beyond repair. What,
you fool, will make the enemy surrender any sooner because you are mutilated? How did you not lose your senses in destroying yourself?" Zopyrus said, "If I had told you beforehand what I intended to do, you would not have allowed it. As it is, I acted on my own account. Now, then, if you play your part, we will take Babylon. I will desert as I am to the wall and say
to them that I suffered this at your hands. I think that once I have persuaded them this is so, I will be given command of troops. Then you, from whatever day I enter the wall, on the tenth day from that day, take a thousand men of your army—men whose loss you will not mind at all—and station them at the gate called after Semiramis. Then again, from the tenth day to
the seventh day after, station for me another two thousand at the gate called after Ninus. Then, from that seventh day, let twenty days pass, and after that lead and station four thousand more at the gate called after the Chaldeans. Let neither the first group nor these have any weapons of defense with them except daggers—let them keep those. Then, after the twentieth day, immediately order the rest of the army
to attack the wall on all sides, and station the Persians for me at the gates called Belid and Cissian. For as I reckon it, once I have displayed great deeds, the Babylonians will entrust everything to me, and in particular the bolts of the gates. From then on it will be my concern and the Persians' to do what needs to be done." Having given these instructions, he went toward the gates,
looking back repeatedly, as if he were truly a deserter. Those stationed to watch from the towers, seeing him, ran down and, opening one of the gates a little, asked who he was and what he wanted. He told them he was Zopyrus and was deserting to their side. The gatekeepers, hearing this, led him before the
public assembly of the Babylonians. Standing before them, he lamented, saying that he had suffered at the hands of Darius what he had in fact done to himself, and that this was the price of having urged Darius to withdraw the army, since no way of capturing the city appeared. "And now," he said, "Babylonians, I have come to you as the greatest good, and to Darius and his army and the Persians as the greatest evil. He will not
get away with mutilating me like this. I know all the ways through his plans." Such were his words. The Babylonians, seeing a man of the highest standing among the Persians deprived of his nose and ears, smeared with blood from the whips, fully believed his story was genuine and that he had arrived to fight on their side, and were ready to entrust to him whatever he asked of them; and what he asked for was troops. Once he had
received this from them, he did as he had agreed with Darius: leading out the Babylonian army on the tenth day, and surrounding the thousand men whom he had instructed Darius to station first, he slaughtered them. The Babylonians, seeing that his deeds matched his words, were overjoyed and altogether ready to serve him in anything. He let the agreed number of days pass, then again choosing men from the
Babylonians, led them out and slaughtered the two thousand of Darius's soldiers. Seeing this deed too, all the Babylonians had Zopyrus's praises on their lips. Again letting the agreed days pass, he led the army out to the appointed place, and surrounding the four thousand, he slaughtered them. When this too had been accomplished, Zopyrus was everything to the Babylonians, and he was appointed their
commander-in-chief and guardian of the wall. When Darius, according to their agreement, made his assault all around the wall, Zopyrus then revealed the whole plot. The Babylonians climbed up onto the wall and defended against Darius's attacking army, but Zopyrus opened the gates called Cissian and Belid and let the Persians into the wall. Of the Babylonians,
those who saw what had been done fled to the temple of Zeus Belus; those who did not see it remained each at his post, until they too learned that they had been betrayed. Thus Babylon was taken for the second time. When Darius had mastered the Babylonians, he tore down their wall and ripped out all the gates
—for when Cyrus had taken Babylon before, he had done neither of these things—and he impaled about three thousand of the ringleaders among the men, and gave back the city to the remaining Babylonians to inhabit. So that the Babylonians might have wives to bear offspring for them, since, as has been shown earlier, they had strangled their own women out of concern for the food supply, Darius, foreseeing this, did the following:
he ordered the neighboring peoples to send women to Babylon, assigning to each a certain number, so that the total tally of women that came together amounted to fifty thousand. It is from these women that the present-day Babylonians are descended. As for Zopyrus, in the judgment of Darius no Persian ever surpassed his service, either of those who came later or of those before him, except Cyrus alone; for with Cyrus
no Persian ever claimed to be worthy of comparison. It is said that Darius often expressed the opinion that he would rather have Zopyrus unharmed by his mutilation than gain twenty more Babylons in addition to the one he had. He honored him greatly: each year he gave him gifts of those things most prized among the Persians, and he gave him Babylon to hold free of tribute for
the rest of his life, and bestowed many other things upon him besides. From this Zopyrus was born Megabyzus, who as general commanded the forces in Egypt that fought the Athenians together with their allies; and from this Megabyzus was born Zopyrus, who deserted to Athens from the Persians.

======== Histories — Book 4 (Melpomene) ========

After the capture of Babylon, Darius himself led a campaign against the Scythians. Since Asia was flourishing with men and great wealth was being amassed, Darius desired to punish the Scythians, because they had been the first to invade Median territory and, defeating those who opposed them in battle, had begun the wrongdoing. For the Scythians had ruled upper Asia for twenty-eight years, as I have said before.
They had invaded Asia in pursuit of the Cimmerians, and had put an end to the rule of the Medes; for the Medes had ruled Asia before the Scythians arrived. But the Scythians, after being away twenty-eight years and returning to their own land after so long a time, found awaiting them a task no less than the one against the Medes: they discovered an army opposing them that was not small. For the wives of the Scythians,
since their men had been away for so long, had been consorting with the slaves. The Scythians blind all their slaves, on account of the milk which they drink, doing it in this way: taking bone pipes very much like flutes, they insert these into the genitals of the mares and blow with their mouths, while others milk as the others blow. They say they do this for the following reason: the veins of the mare
become filled by the blowing and her udder is drawn down. When they have milked the milk, they pour it into hollow wooden vessels, and stationing the blind men around the vessels they stir the milk, and the part of it that rises to the top they skim off and consider more valuable, while what settles below is thought inferior to the other. For these reasons the Scythians blind every slave they take; for they are not
farmers but nomads. From these slaves, then, and the women, a generation of young men was raised; and when these learned of their own origin, they took up arms against the returning Scythians as they came back from the Medes. First they cut off the land, digging a wide trench running from the Tauric mountains to Lake Maeotis, which is very large; and afterward, when the Scythians tried to force their way in,
they camped opposite them and fought. Battle occurred many times, and since the Scythians could gain no advantage in the fighting, one man among them spoke up: "What are we doing, men of Scythia? By fighting our own slaves, we ourselves become fewer as we are killed, and by killing them we will rule over fewer in the future. Now it seems best to me that we set aside spears and bows, and each man take the
whip of his horse and go closer to them. For as long as they saw us bearing weapons, they thought themselves equal to us and born of equals; but when they see us carrying whips instead of weapons, they will realize that they are our slaves, and acknowledging this, they will not stand their ground." Hearing this, the Scythians did as he said; and the slaves, astonished at what was happening, forgot the fighting and fled.
Thus the Scythians ruled Asia, and, driven out again by the Medes, returned to their own land in this manner. It was for these reasons that Darius, wishing to punish them, gathered an army against them. Now as the Scythians tell it, theirs is the youngest of all nations, and it came about in this way. The first man to exist in this land, which was then a wasteland, was named Targitaus;
and the parents of this Targitaus, they say — though I do not find this credible, yet they say it — were Zeus and a daughter of the river Borysthenes. From such a lineage Targitaus was born, and to him were born three sons, Lipoxaïs, Arpoxaïs, and the youngest, Colaxaïs. While these were ruling, golden objects fell from the sky into Scythian territory: a plow, a yoke,
an axe, and a cup. The eldest, seeing them first, wished to approach and take them, but as he came near the gold began to burn. When he withdrew, the second approached, and the same thing happened to him again. So the burning gold repelled these two, but when the third, the youngest, approached, the fire went out, and he carried the gold objects to his own home; and
the elder brothers, acknowledging this, handed over the entire kingship to the youngest. From Lipoxaïs, they say, are descended those Scythians called the Auchatae; from the middle brother, Arpoxaïs, come the Catiari together with the Traspians; and the youngest of the three, the king, fathered those called the Paralatae. All together they are called Scoloti, after the name of the king; the Greeks
called them Scythians. This, then, is how the Scythians say they came to be; and as for the years since they came into being, they say the total from the first king, Targitaus, to Darius's crossing against them is no more than a thousand years, but exactly that many. This sacred gold the kings guard most carefully, and with great sacrifices they propitiate it and visit it every
year. Whoever, having charge of the sacred gold in the festival, falls asleep in the open air, that man, the Scythians say, does not live out the year; and for this reason he is given as much land as he can ride around on horseback in a single day. Since the land was vast, Colaxaïs established three kingdoms for his own sons, and made one of these the greatest, in which the
gold is kept safe. As for the regions further up toward the north wind, they say it is not possible for the neighboring peoples of that land to see or pass through any farther, on account of feathers that have been scattered about; for both the earth and the air there are full of feathers, and these are what block the view. This is what the Scythians say about themselves and the land to the north
of them. But the Greeks who dwell on the Black Sea tell it this way. Heracles, driving the cattle of Geryon, came to this land, which was then a wasteland, the very land the Scythians now inhabit. Geryon lived outside the Black Sea, dwelling on what the Greeks call the island of Erytheia, near Gadeira, beyond the Pillars of Heracles on the Ocean. As for the Ocean, they say in tradition that it begins from the rising of the sun
and flows around the whole earth, but they do not prove this by any deed. From there it was that Heracles reached the land now known as Scythia, and being overtaken by winter and frost, he wrapped himself in his lion skin and fell asleep, and in that time his horses, which were grazing free from the chariot, vanished by some divine chance. When Heracles awoke, he searched for them, and going over the whole
land, at last came to the land called Hylaea; there he found in a cave a creature that was half woman, a two-formed viper, whose upper parts from the buttocks were those of a woman, and whose lower parts were those of a snake. Seeing her and marveling, he asked her if she had anywhere seen wandering mares; her reply was that she had them in her own keeping and would return them to him only after
he lay with her; and Heracles agreed to the union for this payment. She, however, kept postponing the return of the horses, wishing to remain as long as possible with Heracles, while he wished to recover them and depart; at last, giving them back, she said: "These mares that came here I have kept safe for you, and you have paid the price of their safekeeping; for I have from you three sons. Tell me
what I should do with these when they grow to manhood — whether I should settle them here myself (since I hold power over this land) or send them to you." So she asked him this, and he, they say, replied to this: "When you see the boys grown to manhood, you would not go wrong doing as follows: whichever of them you see drawing this bow in this manner and
girding himself with this belt in this way, make him the inhabitant of this land; but whichever fails to accomplish these tasks that I command, send him out of the land. Doing this, you yourself will be pleased, and you will carry out what I have instructed." So saying, he loosed one of his bows (up to that time Heracles had carried two) and displayed the belt to her, then handed over
the bow and the belt — a small golden cup hung at the tip of its clasp — and once he gave them to her, he went on his way. She, when the sons born to her had grown to manhood, first gave them names — to one of them Agathyrsus, to the one following Gelonus, and to the youngest Scythes — and then, remembering the instructions, she did as she had been told. And indeed two of
her sons, Agathyrsus and Gelonus, proved unable to accomplish the appointed task and were driven out of the land by their mother, and departed; but the youngest of them, Scythes, accomplished it and remained in the land. And from Scythes, son of Heracles, are descended all the kings who have ever been of the Scythians, and from the cup, even to this
day the Scythians wear cups hanging from their belts; this alone the mother contrived for Scythes. This is what the Greeks who dwell on the Black Sea say. But there is also another story, to which I myself am most inclined: that the nomadic Scythians who dwelt in Asia, pressed hard in war by the Massagetae, departed, crossing the river Araxes for the land of the Cimmerians (for the land the Scythians
now inhabit is said in old times to have belonged to the Cimmerians), and that the Cimmerians, as the Scythians advanced, took counsel, since a great army was coming against them; and their opinions were divided, both sides being firm, but that of the kings was the better. For the opinion of the common people was that it was best to withdraw and not risk danger for the sake of dust, while that of the kings was to fight to the death for
the land against those advancing. Neither the common people were willing to be persuaded by the kings, nor the kings by the common people: the people resolved to withdraw and hand over the land to the invaders without a fight, while the kings decided to lie dead in their own land rather than flee together with the people, considering how many good things they had enjoyed and how many evils they might expect from fleeing their fatherland.
to overtake them. When this seemed best to them, they split into two equal groups and fought each other. All those who died at their own hands were buried by the people of the Cimmerians beside the river Tyras (and their tomb is still visible there), and having buried them, they made their way out of the country; and the Scythians, coming upon it, took the land, now empty of people. And to this day there are
in Scythia Cimmerian walls, and Cimmerian ferries, and there is also a place named Cimmeria, and there is a Cimmerian Bosporus, so called. It is clear that the Cimmerians, fleeing the Scythians into Asia, also founded the peninsula on which the Greek city of Sinope now stands. It is also clear that the Scythians, pursuing them, invaded the land
of Media, having missed the way; for the Cimmerians always fled along the coast, while the Scythians pursued keeping the Caucasus on their right, until they invaded the land of Media, having turned inland from their route. This is another account, told in common by Greeks and non-Greeks alike. Aristeas son of Caystrobius, a man of Proconnesus, said in the verses he composed that he came
to the Issedones, having been seized by Apollo's inspiration, and that above the Issedones dwell the one-eyed Arimaspians, and beyond them the gold-guarding griffins, and beyond these the Hyperboreans, who reach down to the sea. All these peoples, except the Hyperboreans, starting with the Arimaspians, are constantly attacking their neighbors, and it was the Arimaspians who drove the Issedones from their homeland, while the Issedones in turn drove out the Scythians, and the Cimmerians, who dwelt by the southern sea, were pressed by the
Scythians and abandoned their land. So even this man does not agree with the Scythians about this land. As for where Aristeas, the man who said these things, was from, I have told; but the account I heard about him in Proconnesus and Cyzicus, I will now tell. They say that Aristeas, a citizen of standing equal to any other, went into a fuller's shop in Proconnesus and died there, and that the fuller, locking up his workshop,
went off to inform those close to the dead man. And when the report had already spread through the city that Aristeas had died, a man from Cyzicus arrived from the town of Artace and disputed with those who said this, claiming that he had met him going toward Cyzicus and had spoken with him. And while this man argued the point vehemently, those related to the deceased showed up at the fuller's premises
bringing what was needed to carry away the body; but when the room was opened, Aristeas appeared neither dead nor alive. Then, seven years later, he appeared in Proconnesus and composed the verses which the Greeks now call the Arimaspea, and having composed them, he vanished a second time. This is what these cities say; but I know what happened among the people of Metapontum in Italy after this
second disappearance of Aristeas, two hundred and forty years later, as I reckoned by comparing accounts in Proconnesus and Metapontum. The Metapontines say that Aristeas himself appeared to them in their land and commanded them to set up an altar to Apollo, and beside it to place a statue inscribed with the name Aristeas of Proconnesus; for he said that Apollo had come to their land alone among the Italiotes, and that he himself had accompanied him
as the Aristeas who is now here; but at that time, when he accompanied the god, he was a crow. And having said this, he vanished; and according to the Metapontines, they dispatched envoys to Delphi to ask the god what this apparition of a man signified. The Pythia told them to obey the apparition, and that if they obeyed, it would go better for them. They accepted this and carried it out. And now
there stands a statue bearing the name of Aristeas beside the very image of Apollo, and around it laurel trees stand; the image is set up in the marketplace. Let this much be said about Aristeas. As for the land about which this account has set out to speak, no one knows accurately what lies beyond it; for I am unable to learn anything from anyone who claims to have seen it with his own eyes,
for not even Aristeas, whom I mentioned a little before this, not even he claimed in his own verses to have gone beyond the Issedones, but spoke of what lay beyond by hearsay, saying that the Issedones were the ones who told him these things. But as far as we ourselves have been able to reach accurately by hearsay, to the furthest extent, all of it shall be told. From the trading post of the Borysthenites (for this is the
most central of all the coastal places of Scythia), from this point the first to dwell are the Callippidae, who are Greek Scythians, and above them another people who are called the Alazones. These, and the Callippidae, follow the same way of life as the Scythians in other respects, yet they also sow and eat grain, and onions and garlic and lentils and millet. Above the Alazones dwell the Scythian farmers, who do not
sow grain for their own food but for sale. Above these dwell the Neuri. North of the Neuri the land is empty of people, as far as we know. These are the peoples situated by the Hypanis river, west of the Borysthenes; but once one crosses the Borysthenes, starting from the sea the first region is Hylaea, and going up from there dwell the Scythian farmers, whom
the Greeks who live on the river Hypanis call Borysthenites, though they call themselves Olbiopolitans. These farming Scythians occupy the land toward the east for a three days' journey, reaching to the river called the Panticapes, and toward the north a voyage of eleven days up the Borysthenes. Beyond these there is already a great expanse of empty land.
After the empty land dwell the Man-eaters, a people distinct in themselves and in no way Scythian. Beyond these the land is already truly empty, and there is no people at all, as far as we know. To the east of these farming Scythians, on crossing the river Panticapes, dwell the nomad Scythians, who neither sow anything at all nor plow; treeless, this entire territory has
except for Hylaea. These nomads occupy, toward the east, a fourteen days' journey of land stretching to the river Gerrhus. Beyond the Gerrhus lie the so-called royal lands, and the Scythians there are the best and most numerous, and they consider the other Scythians their slaves; they extend southward to
the Tauric land, and eastward to the trench which those born from the blind men dug, and to the trading post on the Maeotic lake called Cremni; some of them extend as far as the river Tanais. North of the royal Scythians dwell the Black-cloaks, another people, not Scythian. Beyond the Black-cloaks
there are lakes and it is empty of people, as far as we know. Crossing the river Tanais, it is no longer Scythia, but the first district belongs to the Sauromatae, who, starting from the recess of the Maeotic lake, occupy toward the north a journey of fifteen days, the whole land being bare of both wild and cultivated trees. Above them, holding the second district, dwell the Budini, a land
occupying all of it thickly wooded with every kind of tree. North of the Budini there is first an empty stretch of a seven days' journey, and after the empty land, turning more toward the east, dwell the Thyssagetae, a numerous and distinct people; they live by hunting. Adjoining them, settled in the same region, are those called the Iyrcae, and these too live by hunting,
in the following manner: each man lies in wait, climbing a tree — and trees are dense throughout the whole country — and each man has a horse trained to lie down on its belly for the sake of being low, and a dog ready as well; when he spots the animal from the tree, he shoots it, then mounts up and gives chase on horseback while his dog keeps hold of the quarry. Beyond these, toward the east, turning aside, dwell other Scythians,
who broke away from the royal Scythians and so came to this region. As far as the land of these Scythians, all that has been described is flat land and deep-soiled; but from that point on it is stony and rough. Having gone through much of this rough land too, there dwell, at the foot of high mountains, men said to be all bald
from birth, both males and females alike, and snub-nosed, and having large chins, speaking their own language, wearing Scythian dress, and living off trees. The name of the tree they live from is 'pontic,' about the size of a fig tree in size. It bears fruit the size of a bean, which has a stone. When this ripens, they pass it through cloth filters, and liquid runs out,
from it a thick black substance; the name of what flows out is 'aschy.' This they both lick and drink mixed with milk, and from the thick sediment of it they make cakes and eat these. For they do not have many sheep, since the pastures there are not good. Each of them lives under a tree; in winter, when they
cover the tree with a thick white felt, and in summer without the felt. No one harms these people, for they are said to be sacred; nor do they possess any weapon of war. It is these people who settle disputes for those living around them, and moreover, whoever flees for refuge to them is harmed by no one; their name is the Argippaeans. As far as the land of these bald men,
there is ample clear knowledge of the land and of the peoples before them; for some of the Scythians reach them, and learning of this is not hard from those Scythians, and also some of the Greeks from the trading post of Borysthenes and from the other trading posts on the Pontus; the Scythians who go to them conduct their business through seven interpreters and seven languages. Up to this point, then, it is known, but beyond
No one can say for certain what lies beyond the bald men. For high mountains cut off the land, impassable, and no one crosses them. These bald men say—though I do not find them credible—that goat-footed men inhabit the mountains, and that beyond them are other men who sleep half the year through. That claim I reject outright. But the region east of the bald men is known
with certainty to be inhabited by the Issedones. What lies further above it, toward the north wind, is not known either to the bald men or to the Issedones, except for what these people themselves report. The Issedones are said to observe the following customs. When a man's father dies, all his relatives bring sheep, and then, having sacrificed them and cut up the meat, they also cut up the dead father of the man receiving them, and mixing
all the meat together they set out a feast. His head, though, they strip of flesh and clean out, then gild it, and thereafter treat it as a sacred image, performing great sacrifices to it every year. A son does this for his father just as the Greeks hold their Genesia. In other respects too they are said to be a just people, and the women hold equal standing with the men. These people, then, are known; but what lies beyond
them, further up, belongs to the Issedones, who say that there are one-eyed men there and gold-guarding griffins. This the Scythians report, having taken it from the Issedones, and from the Scythians the rest of us have adopted it and call them, in the Scythian tongue, Arimaspians; for the Scythians call "one" arima, and "eye" spou. This whole region I have described is so extremely harsh in winter that
for eight of the months an unbearable frost sets in, during which pouring out water produces no mud, but lighting a fire does produce mud. The sea freezes, and the whole Cimmerian Bosporus with it, and the Scythians settled within the trench march out onto the ice and drive their wagons across to the Sindians on the other side. So winter continues in this way for eight months, and for the
remaining four months it is cold there as well. This winter is unlike, in its character, all the winters that occur in other places: in it, during the season proper for rain, there is scarcely any rain worth mentioning, while in summer it rains without stopping. And whereas elsewhere thunder occurs at that season, there it does not occur then, but is abundant in summer. If thunder happens to occur in winter, it is considered
a marvel to be wondered at. So too if an earthquake occurs, whether in summer or in winter, in Scythia, it is considered a marvel. Horses endure this winter and bear up under it, but mules and donkeys cannot endure it at all; whereas elsewhere horses standing in frost suffer frostbite, while donkeys and mules endure it. It seems to me that the breed of hornless cattle too
does not grow horns there for this same reason. My judgment is supported by a line of Homer in the Odyssey, which runs thus: "and Libya, where lambs are horned from birth" — rightly said, since in hot places horns grow quickly, while in places of severe cold cattle either do not grow horns at all, or grow them
only with difficulty. There, then, this happens because of the cold. But I marvel — since my account from the start has been seeking out such digressions — over a strange fact: mules cannot be born anywhere in Elis, even though the climate there isn't cold and no other obvious reason presents itself. The Eleans themselves say that mules are not born among them because of some curse, but that whenever the
season arrives when the mares are ready for breeding, the people take them across into the neighboring territories, and there, in the land of their neighbors, they put donkeys to the mares, until the mares are in foal; then they lead them back home again. As for the feathers which the Scythians say fill the air, and because of which they claim they can neither see nor travel
further into the mainland, this is the opinion I hold about them. The region above this land always has snow falling, less in summer than in winter, as is natural. Now whoever has seen thick snow falling close at hand knows what I mean, for snow resembles feathers. And it is because of this winter, being such as it is, that the northern parts of this continent are uninhabited.
It is the feathers, then, that I believe the Scythians and their neighbors mean when they liken the snow to them. These, then, are the furthest reaches of which anything is reported. Concerning a people called Hyperboreans, neither the Scythians say anything at all, nor do any of the others settled in that region, except perhaps the Issedones. And as I think, not even they say anything, for otherwise the Scythians too would have spoken of them, as they do about the
one-eyed men. But Hesiod has spoken of the Hyperboreans, and so has Homer, in the Epigoni, if indeed it was really Homer who composed those verses. By far the most is said about them by the Delians, who claim that offerings wrapped in stalks of wheat are carried out of Hyperborean lands and reach the Scythians, and that from the Scythians, each neighboring people in turn receiving them, carries them onward,
toward the west, as far as possible, to the Adriatic, and from there, sent southward, the Dodonaean Greeks are the first of the Greeks to receive them; from there they go down to the Malian Gulf and cross over to Euboea, and city passes them to city as far as Carystus; from there Andros is skipped, for it is the Carystians who carry them onward to Tenos, and it is the Tenians who bring them to Delos. In this way, then,
these sacred offerings are said to arrive at Delos. First, according to the account, two maidens carried the offerings from the Hyperboreans, whom the Delians name Hyperoche and Laodice; and along with them, for their safety, the Hyperboreans sent five men of their own citizens as escorts, those who are now called the Perpherees and hold great honors at Delos. But when those sent out by the Hyperboreans
failed to return home, the Hyperboreans took this hard, thinking it would always be their fate, whenever they sent people out, never to get them back. And so they took to carrying the sacred offerings, bound up in wheat straw, to their borders, and charged their neighbors to send them onward, out of their own land, to another people. And thus passed on from people to people, these offerings, they say, arrive at Delos. I myself know of a practice similar to this performed with these very offerings: the Thracian
and Paeonian women, whenever they sacrifice to Artemis the Queen, never do so without having wheat straw accompanying their offerings. This I know these women do. As for the maidens from the Hyperboreans who died at Delos, the Delian children — girls and boys alike — cut their hair in mourning for them: the girls, before marriage, cut off a lock and wind it around a spindle, and place it upon the
tomb — this tomb lies within the sanctuary of Artemis, as one enters on the left, and an olive tree grows upon it — while as many of the Delian boys as there are wind some of their hair around a green shoot and likewise place it upon the tomb. Such is the honor these maidens receive from the inhabitants of Delos. The same people also say that Arge and
Opis, being maidens from the Hyperboreans, traveled by way of these same peoples and arrived at Delos even before Hyperoche and Laodice. These latter came bringing to Eileithyia the tribute they had pledged in exchange for easy childbirth, but Arge and Opis, they say, arrived together with the gods themselves, and other honors were given to them by the Delians: for the women collect
contributions for them, naming their names in the hymn composed for them by Olen, a Lycian man, and it is from these people that the islanders and the Ionians learned to sing hymns naming Opis and Arge, invoking them by name and collecting contributions — this same Olen, having come from Lycia, also composed the other ancient hymns that are sung at Delos — and when the thigh-bones are burned upon
the altar, this ash is used, being cast upon the tomb of Opis and Arge. Their tomb lies behind the sanctuary of Artemis, facing east, very close to the banqueting hall of the Ceans. Let this much be said concerning the Hyperboreans, for the story about Abaris, who is said to have been a Hyperborean, I will not tell — how he carried his arrow around the whole earth eating nothing
at all. But if there are indeed some people beyond the north, there are also others beyond the south. I laugh when I see that many have already drawn maps of the world, and yet none has explained it sensibly: they draw Ocean flowing around the earth, which they make circular as though shaped on a lathe, while treating Asia as equal in size to Europe. I will show in brief compass the size of each of them and what
each is like for the purposes of a map. The Persians dwell reaching down to the southern sea, called the Red Sea; above them, toward the north wind, dwell the Medes, above the Medes the Saspires, above the Saspires the Colchians, who reach up to the sea in the north, the one into which the Phasis river empties. These four peoples occupy the land from sea to sea. From there, westward, two peninsulas stretch out from it
to the sea, which I will now describe. On one side, the first peninsula, on the north, beginning from the Phasis, extends to the sea running alongside the Pontus and on to the Hellespont, reaching as far as Sigeum in the Troad; on the south side this same peninsula extends from the Myriandic Gulf, which lies near Phoenicia, to the sea as far as the Triopian headland. There dwell
in this peninsula thirty nations of men. This, then, is the one of the two peninsulas; the other, beginning from the Persians, extends to the Red Sea — first the Persian territory, then, taking over from it, the Assyrian, and after Assyria, Arabia; this peninsula ends, though it does not truly end except by convention, at the Arabian Gulf, into
the one that Darius brought in from the Nile as a canal. Now as far as Phoenicia, the region running from the Persians is broad and extensive; from Phoenicia onward this coastline runs along this sea past Syria Palestine and Egypt, where it ends. In it there are only three nations. This, then, is what lies to the west of Asia as reckoned from the Persians.
Above the Persians and Medes and Saspires and Colchians, toward the east and the rising sun, lies the region where the Red Sea extends; and to the north lie the Caspian Sea and the Araxes river, its current running toward the sunrise. Asia is inhabited as far as India; but beyond that, toward the
east, it is already desert, and no one can say what sort of place it is. Such, then, and so great is Asia. Libya lies on the other coastline; for after Egypt, Libya immediately follows. Now at Egypt this coastline is narrow: from this sea to the Red Sea it is a hundred thousand fathoms, which
would be a thousand stadia; but beyond this narrow neck, the coastline called Libya turns out to be very broad indeed. I am amazed, then, at those who have marked out and divided Libya, Asia, and Europe, for the differences between them are not small: in length Europe extends alongside both of the others, but in breadth it does not seem to me worthy even of comparison.
For Libya shows itself to be surrounded by sea, except for the part where it borders Asia — a fact first demonstrated, as far as we know, by Necho, king of the Egyptians. He, after he ceased digging the canal linking the Nile to the Arabian Gulf, dispatched Phoenician crews by ship, instructing them to sail back through the Pillars of Heracles until they reached the northern sea,
and so return to Egypt. So the Phoenicians set out from the Red Sea and sailed the southern sea; whenever autumn came, they would put in to whatever part of Libya they were passing and plant crops there, and wait for the harvest. Then, having reaped the grain, they continued their voyage, with the result that two full years passed before, in the third year, they rounded the Pillars of Heracles and arrived in Egypt. And
they reported something I do not believe, though someone else might: that as they rounded Libya the sun stood to their right hand. In this way this land was first discovered. After that the Carthaginians are the ones who report on it. As for Sataspes son of Teaspis, a man of the Achaemenid clan, he did not sail around Libya, though he was sent for that very purpose, but turned back out of fear of the length of the voyage and the desolation,
and went back home, and did not accomplish the task his mother had laid upon him. For he had raped Zopyrus son of Megabyzus's daughter, still unmarried; then, facing impalement by King Xerxes on account of this crime, his mother, who was Darius's sister, interceded for him, saying that she herself would impose a greater penalty on him than that: for he would be compelled to sail around Libya, until he arrived
at the Arabian Gulf by sailing around it. Xerxes having agreed to these terms, Sataspes went to Egypt, and taking a ship and crew from the Egyptians, sailed to the Pillars of Heracles. Having sailed through them and rounded the headland of Libya called Soloeis, he sailed toward the south; and after crossing much sea over many months, since he always needed still more,
he turned around and sailed back to Egypt. From there he went to King Xerxes and reported that at the farthest point he had sailed past small men who wore garments of palm fiber, who, whenever he put in with his ship, fled to the mountains, abandoning their towns; but his men did no harm entering the towns, only taking food from them. And he said the reason he did not sail all the way around Libya was this:
that the ship could no longer go forward but was stuck fast. Xerxes did not believe he was telling the truth, and since he had not completed the task set for him, he impaled him, carrying out the original sentence. As for this Sataspes' eunuch, he fled to Samos as soon as he learned that his master had died, taking great wealth with him, which a man of Samos seized — a man whose name I know well but
intentionally forget. Most of Asia was explored by Darius, who, wishing to know where the Indus river — which is the second of all rivers to produce crocodiles — empties into the sea, sent by ship, among others whom he trusted to report the truth, a man named Scylax of Caryanda. They set out from the city of Caspatyrus and the land of Pactyica, and sailed
down the river toward the east and the rising sun to the sea, and then sailing through the sea toward the west, in the thirtieth month they arrived at that place from which the king of Egypt, as I said before, had sent out the Phoenicians to sail around Libya. After these men had made this circuit, Darius subdued the Indians and made use of that sea. Thus for Asia too, except for the parts toward
the rising sun, everything else has been found to be similar in nature to Libya. But Europe is not clearly known by anyone, neither to the east nor to the north, whether it is surrounded by sea; in length it is known to extend alongside both of the others. Nor can I understand for what reason, though it is one land, it bears three names, all named after women, and its boundaries were set as the Nile,
the river of Egypt, and the Phasis, the river of Colchis (though some say instead the river Tanais, the Maeetian, and the Cimmerian ferries) — nor can I learn the names of those who marked out these divisions, or where they got the names. For Libya is said by most Greeks to take its name from Libya, a native woman, while Asia takes its name from the wife of Prometheus. And
of this name the Lydians also lay claim, saying that Asia was named after Asies son of Cotys son of Manes, and not after Prometheus's Asia; and from this the tribe at Sardis is also called Asias. But Europe — whether it is surrounded by sea is not known by anyone, nor where it got this name, nor who it was that gave it,
unless we say that the land took its name from Tyrian Europa; before that it was, it seems, nameless like the other two. But she at least clearly came from Asia and never came to this land which the Greeks now call Europe, but only as far as from Phoenicia to Crete, and from Crete to Lycia. This
much, then, let this suffice to say; for we shall use the names as they are conventionally applied. Now the Black Sea, against which Darius made his campaign, contains, apart from the Scythian nation, the most ignorant peoples of all lands. For we cannot point to any nation within the Black Sea region as distinguished for wisdom, nor do we know of any learned man having arisen there, except for the Scythian nation and Anacharsis. But for the Scythian race,
one thing, the greatest of all human affairs, has been discovered more cleverly than by any people we know, though I do not admire the rest of their ways: this greatest thing has been contrived by them so that no one who invades them can escape, and if they choose not to be discovered, catching them becomes impossible. For they have neither founded cities nor walls, but all of them, carrying their homes with them, are mounted archers, living
not by plowing but by herding cattle, and their dwellings are on wagons — how then could these people not be unbeatable and impossible to engage in battle? This has been contrived by them because the land is suited to it and the rivers are their allies. For this land, being flat, is grassy and well-watered, and rivers flow through it not
much fewer in number than the canals in Egypt. Of these, those that are notable and navigable from the sea I shall name: the Ister with five mouths, then the Tyras, the Hypanis, the Borysthenes, the Panticapes, the Hypacyris, the Gerrhus, and the Tanais. These flow as follows. The Ister, being the greatest of all rivers we know, flows equal
in volume both summer and winter; and being the first of the rivers in Scythia as one comes from the west, it has become the greatest for the following reason: there are other rivers flowing into it that make it great — through the Scythian land itself there flow five: the one the Scythians call Porata and the Greeks call Pyretus, and another, the Tiarantus,
and the Araros and the Naparis and the Ordessus. The first-named of these rivers is large and, flowing eastward, joins its waters with the Ister; the second-named, the Tiarantus, flows more toward the west and is smaller; while the Araros and the Naparis and the Ordessus, flowing between these, empty into the Ister. These are
native Scythian rivers that swell it; and from the Agathyrsi the river Maris flows and joins the Ister, while from the peaks of Haemus three other great rivers, flowing toward the north wind, empty into it: the Atlas, the Auras, and the Tibisis. Flowing through Thrace and through the land of the Thracian Crobyzi, the Athrys, the Noes, and the Artanes empty into the Ister; and from the Paeonians
and Mount Rhodope, the river Cius, splitting Mount Haemus down the middle, empties into it. From the Illyrians, flowing toward the north wind, the river Angrus flows into the Triballic plain, joining the river Brongus, which in turn joins the Ister; so the Ister takes in both of these mighty streams. And from the country above, home to the Ombrici, come the river Carpis and a second river, the Alpis
flowing toward the north wind, and these too empty into it; for the Ister flows through the whole of Europe, beginning among the Celts, who, apart from the Cynetes, are the westernmost people living in Europe; and flowing through the whole of Europe it discharges into the flanks of Scythia. It is from these rivers named, and from many others contributing their own water,
that the Ister ranks as the largest of all rivers by volume — though measured strictly water against water, the Nile actually holds more, since no river or spring adds a comparable amount to the Nile's flow. Yet the Ister keeps a constant level year-round, in both summer and winter, for a reason that seems to me as follows: in winter it holds exactly as much as
it naturally is, or only a little larger than its natural size; for this land is rained on very little in winter and instead gets snow throughout. But in summer the abundant snow that fell in winter, melting from every side, flows down into the Ister. So this snow, discharging into it, swells its volume, together with many violent rainstorms that accompany it,
for it does rain in summer. And in proportion as the sun draws up more water to itself in summer than in winter, by that much the tributaries that mix with the Ister are many times more abundant in summer than in winter; these two effects, set against each other, balance out, so that the river always appears the same size. So the Ister is one of the rivers belonging to the Scythians,
and after it the Tyras, which rises from the north wind and begins to flow from a great lake that forms the border between the Scythian land and that of the Neuri. At its mouth dwell Greeks called Tyritae. Third is the river Hypanis, which rises in Scythia and flows from a great lake around which graze wild white horses;
and this lake is rightly called the Mother of the Hypanis. Rising from it, the river Hypanis flows for a five days' sail short and sweet, but from there to the sea, for a four days' sail, it is dreadfully bitter; for a bitter spring flows into it, so very bitter that although small in size it corrupts the Hypanis, otherwise a great river,
into one of the few bitter ones. This spring lies on the borders of the land of the Scythian farmers and the Alizones; in Scythian this spring and the place it rises from are called Exampaeus, while the Greek name for it is the Sacred Ways. The Tyras and the Hypanis draw close together at their upper courses near the Alizones, then after that each turns away and flows apart,
widening the space between them. Fourth is the river Borysthenes, which is the greatest after the Ister among these, and in my judgment the most productive not only of the Scythian rivers but of all others, except the Egyptian Nile; for with the Nile no other river can be compared; but among the rest the Borysthenes is the most productive, providing the finest and richest pastures
for cattle, and excellent fish in abundance beyond all others; its water is the sweetest to drink, and it flows clear beside other rivers that are turbid; the finest crops grow beside it, and where the land is not sown the grass grows the deepest; at its mouth salt forms of its own accord in vast quantities; and it yields great boneless fish, which they call antacaei, fit for salting, along with many other things worth wondering at.
As far as the region of the Gerrhi, a forty days' sail up, it is known to flow from the north wind; but beyond that, no one can say through what peoples it flows. It appears to flow through desert until it reaches the land of the farming Scythians; these Scythians occupy its banks for a stretch of ten days' sailing. Of this river, together with the Nile,
I cannot state where its sources lie, and I doubt any Greek can either. The Borysthenes, as it flows near the sea, meets the Hypanis, which pours into the same marsh with it. The land between these two rivers, a spit jutting into the country, is called Cape Hippolaus, and on it stands a temple of Demeter; and across the strait from the temple, on the Hypanis, the Borysthenites dwell.
So much for what concerns these rivers. After them comes a fifth river, named the Panticapes, which likewise flows from the north out of a lake, and the land between it and the Borysthenes is occupied by the farming Scythians; it discharges into the Hylaea, and after passing through it joins the Borysthenes. Sixth is the river Hypacyris, which rises
from a lake, and flowing through the middle of the nomadic Scythians discharges near the city of Carcinitis, keeping to its right the Hylaea and the so-called Course of Achilles. Seventh is the river Gerrhus, which branches off from the Borysthenes at the point in the land where the Borysthenes becomes known; it branches off from that point, and bears the same name
as the place itself, Gerrhus; flowing to the sea it forms the boundary between the land of the nomads and that of the royal Scythians, and it discharges into the Hypacyris. Eighth is the river Tanais, which flows down from far above, issuing from a great lake, and discharges into a still greater lake called the Maeetian, which separates the royal Scythians from the Sauromatae. Into this Tanais
another river flows, named the Hyrgis. With such rivers, then, of note, the Scythians are equipped; as for their livestock, the grass that grows up in Scythia is the most bile-producing of all grasses we know; and when the cattle are opened up, one can judge from this that it is so. So they are amply provided with the greatest necessities; the rest
of their customs are arranged as follows. They propitiate only these gods: Hestia above all, and then Zeus and Earth, believing Earth to be the wife of Zeus, and after them Apollo, and heavenly Aphrodite, and Heracles, and Ares. All the Scythians hold these gods, but the so-called royal Scythians also sacrifice to Poseidon. In the Scythian tongue,
Hestia is called Tabiti; Zeus, most rightly in my judgment, is called Papaeus; Earth is Api; Apollo is Goetosyrus; heavenly Aphrodite is Argimpasa; and Poseidon is Thagimasadas. It is not their custom to make images, altars, or temples, except to Ares; to him they do make them. The same manner of sacrifice is established for all their rites alike, performed as follows:
the victim itself stands with its forefeet bound together, and the sacrificer, standing behind the animal, pulls the end of the cord and throws it down; as the victim falls he calls upon whichever god he is sacrificing to, and then, having cast a noose around its neck, he inserts a stick and turns it, strangling the animal, without kindling a fire, without a preliminary offering, and without a libation; having strangled it and
skinned it, he turns to boiling it. Since the Scythian land is remarkably lacking in wood, this is the method they have devised for boiling the meat: once they have skinned the victims, they strip the meat from the bones, then throw it in — if they happen to have them — into local cauldrons very much resembling Lesbian mixing bowls, except much larger; throwing the meat into these they boil it, burning the bones of the
victims beneath as fuel. But if they do not have the cauldron on hand, they throw all the meat into the bellies of the victims, add water, and burn the bones beneath; the bones burn very well, and the bellies easily hold the meat once stripped from the bones; and so the ox boils itself, and each of the other victims boils itself as well. When the meat is boiled,
the sacrificer, taking a first portion of the meat and of the entrails, throws it in front of him. They sacrifice other livestock too, and horses most of all. To the other gods they sacrifice in this manner and with these animals, but the rite for Ares differs. Within every district, at the seat of each ruling territory, they have established a shrine to Ares of this sort: bundles of brushwood are heaped up over an area of about three stadia
in length and breadth, though less in height; on top of this a square platform has been made, and three of its sides are sheer, while on the fourth side it can be climbed. Each year they pile a hundred and fifty wagonloads of brushwood onto it, for it is always settling from the weather. On this mound an ancient iron sword is set up for each community, and this is the image of
Ares. To this sword they bring yearly sacrifices of sheep and horses, and indeed they sacrifice more to it than to the other gods; and from whatever captives they seize among their enemies, one man in a hundred is offered up, done differently from how the livestock are slaughtered. For after pouring wine over their heads, they cut the men's throats over
a vessel, and then, carrying the blood up onto the pile of brushwood, they pour it over the sword. That is what they carry up above; and down below, beside the shrine, they do the following: cutting off the right arms of all the slaughtered men at the shoulder, together with the hands, they toss them upward, and once the remaining offerings are completed, they withdraw. The arm lies wherever it
falls, and the corpse lies apart from it. Such, then, are their established sacrifices. Of pigs they make no use at all, and they are unwilling to raise them in their land in any way. As for matters of war, their customs are arranged as follows: once a Scythian fells his first opponent, he tastes a bit of the man's blood; and for every enemy slain in battle afterward, he brings the severed head to the king.
For if he brings back the head, he shares in the spoils they have taken, but if he does not bring it he gets none. He flays it in this way: cutting round the ears, he takes hold of the head and shakes it out; then, having stripped the flesh with an ox rib, he works the skin soft with his hands, and once he has kneaded it he keeps it as a hand-towel, and hangs it on the bridle of his own mount, taking pride in the trophy,
for whoever has the most skin hand-towels is judged the best man. Many of them also make cloaks to wear out of the skins, stitching them together like herdsmen's cloaks. Many, too, flay the right hands of dead enemies, nails and all, and make covers for their quivers out of them. Human skin, it turns out, is thick and glossy, brighter than almost any other skin,
the most brilliant in whiteness. Many also flay whole men, and stretching the skins on frames of wood, carry them about on horseback. Such are their customs. As for the heads themselves — not of all enemies, but of the most hated — they do the following: each man saws off the whole part below the eyebrows and cleans it out; and if he is poor, he merely stretches raw oxhide around the outside and uses it as it is, but if
he is rich, he stretches the raw hide around it and then gilds the inside as well, and drinks from it as a cup. The same is done even with kin, should they turn into enemies and the man prevails over him before the king; and when guests come whom he holds in regard, he brings out these heads and explains that these were his own kinsmen who started a war against him, and that he himself prevailed over them — counting
this as a mark of manly valor. Once each year every district governor, in his own district, mixes a bowl of wine, from which those Scythians who have killed enemies drink. But those who have not accomplished this do not taste of that wine, but sit apart in dishonor; and this is for them the greatest disgrace. But as many of them as have killed a very
great number of men drink from two cups at once, holding both together. There are many diviners among the Scythians, who divine with a great many willow rods in this manner: when they have brought great bundles of rods, they lay them on the ground and unroll them, and setting them out one rod at a time they utter their prophecy, and as they speak they gather the rods back together again and put them back one by one. This is
their ancestral method of divination. But the Enarees, the man-woman diviners, say that Aphrodite gave them the art of divination, and they divine by the bark of the linden tree: when they split a strip of linden bark into three, they weave it between their own fingers and, unweaving it, give their oracle. Whenever the king of the Scythians falls ill, he sends for the three most reputed of the diviners, who divine in the manner described, and these say,
for the most part, something like this: claiming that a particular citizen — whichever one they name — has broken his oath sworn on the royal hearth. It is the Scythian custom to swear especially by the royal hearth whenever they wish to swear the greatest oath. And at once the man they say has sworn falsely is seized and brought in bound, and when he arrives the diviners charge him, saying that he plainly appears, by their art of divination,
to have sworn falsely by the royal hearth, and that this is the cause of the king's suffering; and he denies it, saying he did not swear falsely, and protests loudly. Once he denies the charge, the king summons a second group of diviners, double the number, and if they likewise, through their divination, find him guilty of perjury, they cut off his head at once, and the first diviners divide his property among themselves;
but if the diviners who come afterward acquit him, other diviners come, and yet others again. If, then, the majority acquit the man, it has been decided that the first diviners themselves must perish. And they put them to death in this way: when they have filled a wagon with brushwood and yoked oxen to it, they tie the diviners' hands behind them, stop up their mouths, wedge them into the center of the brushwood pile, and set it on fire,
they let the oxen loose, terrifying them. Many oxen are burned up together with the diviners, and many escape scorched all over, when the pole of the wagon burns through. For other offenses too they burn diviners this same way, branding them false prophets. And those whom the king puts to death — he does not even leave their sons alive, but kills all the males, while doing no harm to the females. Oaths
are made by the Scythians in this way toward those with whom they make them: pouring wine into a large earthenware cup, they mix in it the blood of those swearing the oath, pricking the body with an awl or making a small cut with a knife, and then a short sword, some arrows, a battle-axe, and a javelin are dipped into the mixture; and when they have done this, they utter many prayers over it, and then those making the oath drink it down themselves,
along with the most worthy of their followers. The burials of the kings are at Gerrhi, as far as the Borysthenes is navigable. There, when the king dies, they dig a great four-sided pit in the ground, and having made it ready they take up the corpse, its body coated in wax, its belly slit open and cleansed, and filled with chopped cypress, incense, celery seed, and
anise seed, then sewn back up, and they carry it in a wagon to another tribe. Those who receive the corpse brought to them do just as the royal Scythians do: they cut off a piece of their ear, shave off their hair, cut their arms, gash their forehead and nose, and drive an arrow through their left hand. From there they carry the king's body onward in the wagon to another tribe of those they rule,
and the people they had previously visited follow along with them. And when they have carried the corpse around to all the tribes, they arrive at Gerrhi, which is the farthest inhabited of the tribes they rule and where the burial grounds are. And then, once they have laid the corpse in the tomb on a bed of reeds, they fix spears upright on either side of the body and lay timbers across them, and then roof it over with wicker mats, and in
the remaining open space of the tomb they strangle and bury one of the king's concubines, and his cupbearer, his cook, his groom, his personal attendant, his messenger, and horses, and firstfruits of everything else, and golden cups — for they use neither silver nor bronze. Having done this, they all heap up a great mound, vying and striving eagerly with one another to make it as large as possible. Then, when a year has come round, they
do the following again: taking the most suitable of the remaining servants (these are native-born Scythians, for they serve whomever the king himself commands, and they have no servants bought with silver), they strangle fifty of these attendants and fifty of the finest horses, and having removed their entrails and cleaned them out, they fill them with chaff and sew them up again. Then, setting half of a wheel's rim upright on two
posts, and the other half of the rim on two other posts, and fixing many such frames in this way, they then drive thick pieces of wood through the horses lengthwise up to their necks and mount them on the frames; and of these, the front frames support the shoulders of the horses, while the rear ones bear up the bellies near the thighs, and both
pairs of legs hang free in the air. And having put bits and bridles on the horses, they stretch them forward and tie them fast to stakes. Then they mount one each of the fifty strangled young men on the horses, mounting them in this way: when they have driven a straight piece of wood through each corpse alongside the spine up to the neck, the lower part of this
wood, which projects below, they fix into a socket in the other piece of wood that runs through the horse. Having set up such horsemen in a circle around the tomb, they ride away. Thus, then, they bury the kings. As for the other Scythians, whenever they die, their nearest relatives carry them around lying in wagons among their friends, and each of these, receiving them, feasts those who accompany the corpse, and sets before the dead man a share of everything just as
he sets before the others. In this way commoners are paraded about across forty days before finally being laid to rest. After burying, the Scythians purify themselves in this manner: having washed and rinsed their heads, they do the following to their bodies: they set up three poles leaning together toward one another, and stretch felt mats around them, and packing them together as tightly as possible, they throw red-hot stones into a basin set in the middle of
the poles and the felts. There grows in their country a hemp very like flax except in thickness and height, and in this the hemp far surpasses it. It grows both wild and cultivated, and from it the Thracians make garments very like linen ones — indeed no one who was not very practiced at it could tell whether it was linen or
hemp; someone who has not yet laid eyes on hemp would take the garment for linen. Now once the Scythians gather the seed of this hemp plant, they crawl in beneath their felt tents, and then cast the seed onto stones heated red-hot in the fire; and once thrown on, it smolders and produces a vapor so thick that no vapor-bath in Greece could match it. The Scythians,
thrilled by the vapor, cry out. This takes the place of bathing for them, since they never wash their bodies in water at all. Their women, meanwhile, pour out water and rub it into a rough stone along with cypress, cedar, and frankincense wood, and afterward they smear this thick paste over their whole body and face; a fragrance then settles over them
from this, and when on the next day they remove the plaster, they become clean and radiant. As for foreign customs, they too shun adopting them very strongly — none at all, but especially Greek ones, as Anacharsis showed, and after him Scyles again. For Anacharsis, after he had observed much of the world and, in the course of it, displayed great wisdom, was on his way home
Anacharsis was sailing through the Hellespont toward Scythia when he put in at Cyzicus. There he found the people of Cyzicus holding a magnificent festival in honor of the Mother of the Gods, and Anacharsis made a vow to her: if he came home safely to his own country, he would offer sacrifice to her exactly as he had watched the Cyzicenes do, and would hold an all-night vigil in her honor. Once he reached Scythia, he went down into the district called
the Hylaea (which lies along the Racecourse of Achilles and happens to be entirely covered with woods of every kind), and there, having gone down into it, Anacharsis performed the whole rite for the goddess, holding a hand-drum and hanging images on himself. One of the Scythians observed him doing this and reported it to King Saulius. The king himself came and, when he saw Anacharsis
while doing this, an arrow struck him down. Even now, if anyone brings up Anacharsis, the Scythians claim they do not know him, on the grounds that he had gone off to Greece and taken up foreign ways. Yet according to what I heard from Tymnes, steward to Ariapithes, Anacharsis was uncle to Idanthyrsus, king of the Scythians, and his father was Gnurus, son of Lycus, son of Spargapithes. If, then, Anacharsis
truly came from this house, one should know he died at his own brother's hand: for Idanthyrsus was Saulius's son, and Saulius was the one who killed Anacharsis. Still, I have heard a different version circulated among the Peloponnesians, that Anacharsis was dispatched by the Scythian king to learn in Greece, and upon his return told the man who sent him that the Greeks were all preoccupied with every branch of knowledge
except the Lacedaemonians, and that they alone knew how to give and receive speech with restraint. But this story has been invented out of nothing by the Greeks themselves, and the man, as was said before, was actually killed. This, then, is how that man fared, because of his foreign customs and his associations with Greeks. Many years later, Scyles, son of Ariapithes, suffered something very similar. For Ariapithes,
the Scythian king, had a son named Scyles among his other children, born of a mother from Istria rather than a native woman; and it was this mother who taught him Greek speech and writing. Later on, Ariapithes met his end through treachery at the hands of Spargapithes, ruler of the Agathyrsi, and Scyles inherited both the throne and his father's wife, whose name was
Opoea. This Opoea was a native woman, and by her Ariapithes had a son, Oricus. Now Scyles, while ruling as king of the Scythians, was in no way pleased with the Scythian way of life, but was far more inclined toward Greek ways, owing to the upbringing he had received. He used to do the following: whenever he brought the Scythian army to the city of the Borysthenites (these Borysthenites claim to be
Milesians), whenever Scyles came among them, he would leave the army in the suburb, and he himself, once inside the walls with the gates shut, would take off his Scythian dress and put on Greek clothing, and wearing it he would walk about the marketplace with neither bodyguards nor anyone else accompanying him. And the gatekeepers guarded the gates so that no Scythian might see him wearing
this dress. In every other respect too he followed the Greek way of life and offered sacrifices to the gods according to Greek customs. Whenever he had spent a month or more there, he would depart, putting his Scythian dress back on. He did this often, and he even built a house in Borysthenes and married a native woman there. But when it was fated that things would go badly for him, it happened for the following reason.
He grew eager to be initiated into the rites of Dionysus Bacchius, and just as he was about to undergo the initiation, an enormous sign appeared to him. In the town of the Borysthenites he owned a walled compound belonging to a grand and expensive house, which I noted just before this, ringed by sphinxes and griffins carved from white stone; a bolt from the god struck this building. It burned to the ground completely, yet Scyles
still went ahead and finished the rite anyway. The Scythians taunt the Greeks over this Bacchic practice, insisting it makes no sense to invent a god who drives people into frenzy. Once Scyles had undergone the Bacchic initiation, a certain Borysthenite went and informed the Scythians, saying, "You mock us, Scythians, for holding Bacchic rites and letting the god take hold of us; well now"
this very spirit has seized your own king as well, and he revels in Bacchic frenzy, driven mad by the god. If you doubt my word, come along, and I will point him out to you." The Scythian chiefs went along with him, and the man from Borysthenes brought them up quietly and placed them on a tower. When Scyles passed by in the company of his revelers and the Scythians caught sight of him in his frenzy, they were struck by a great
distressed, and going out they reported to the whole army what they had seen. After this, when Scyles set out to return to his own quarters, the Scythians, putting forward his brother Octamasades, who was the son of the daughter of Teres, rose up against Scyles. He, learning what was happening against him and the reason for it, fled for refuge into Thrace. Octamasades, learning of this,
Octamasades set out to campaign against Thrace with these forces. When he reached the Ister, the Thracians met him there, and just as the two sides were about to clash, Sitalces sent word to Octamasades with this message: "Why should we put each other to the test? You have my sister's son with you, and I hold your uncle. Return him to me, and I will hand your Scyles over to you;"
and let neither of our armies risk battle." Sitalces sent this message to him through a herald, for a brother of Sitalces had fled and was with Octamasades. Octamasades agreed to this, and handing over his own maternal uncle to Sitalces, he received his brother Scyles in exchange. Sitalces took his brother and led him away, but Octamasades cut off the head of Scyles right there. This is how the Scythians
guard their own customs, and such are the penalties they impose on those who adopt foreign customs in addition to their own. As for the population of the Scythians, I was not able to learn it with any accuracy, but I heard differing accounts about their number: some say they are very many, others that there are few real Scythians. This much, however, they showed me for myself to see. Between the river Borysthenes and the Hypanis there is a place called
Exampaeus, which I noted just before this, saying it holds a spring of bitter water, and the water flowing from it renders the Hypanis undrinkable. At this location stands a bronze vessel, its size six times that of the mixing bowl standing at the mouth of the Pontus, dedicated there by Pausanias son of Cleombrotus. For any reader who has not laid eyes on it, here is my description.
The Scythian bronze vessel easily holds six hundred amphorae, and this Scythian vessel is six fingers thick. The locals told me it was made from arrowheads. For their king, whose name was Ariantas, wishing to know the number of the Scythians, ordered every Scythian to bring him one arrowhead from his arrows, on pain of death for anyone who did not
bring one. A great quantity of arrowheads was brought together, and he decided to make from them a memorial and leave it behind. From these, then, he made this bronze vessel and dedicated it at this place, Exampaeus. This is what I heard concerning the number of the Scythians. This land has no marvels except that it has by far the largest rivers, and the most
numerous. But what is worthy of note, besides the rivers and the great size of the plain, I will now tell. They show a footprint of Heracles imprinted in rock, which resembles the tread of a man, but is two cubits in size, beside the river Tyras. This, then, is what it is; I will now go back to the account I set out to tell at the start. While Darius was preparing against the Scythians
and sending messengers to instruct some to provide an infantry army, others ships, and others to bridge the Thracian Bosporus, Artabanus son of Hystaspes, who was Darius's brother, urged him by no means to make this campaign against the Scythians, listing the difficulties of dealing with the Scythians. But since he did not persuade him with his good advice, he gave up, and Darius, once everything had been prepared for him, led out his
army from Susa. There Oeobazus, a Persian, having three sons all of whom were on campaign, begged Darius that one of them be left behind for him. Darius said that since he was a friend and was asking for something reasonable, he would leave behind all his sons. Oeobazus was overjoyed, hoping that his sons had been released from the campaign, but Darius ordered the men in charge of them to kill all the sons of Oeobazus.
and these men had their throats cut and were left lying there. Darius, once his journey from Susa brought him to the Bosporus on the Chalcedonian shore where the bridge stood, boarded a vessel there and sailed toward the rocks called Cyanean, which the Greeks claim used to wander before; taking a seat on a headland, he gazed upon the Pontus, a spectacle worth beholding. Among all seas it stands out as the most astonishing.
Its length is eleven thousand one hundred stadia, and its breadth, at its widest point, is three thousand three hundred stadia. The mouth of this sea is four stadia wide; and the length of the narrow strait at the mouth, which is called the Bosporus, over which the bridge had been built, is one hundred and twenty stadia. The Bosporus extends into the Propontis,
and the Propontis, being five hundred stadia wide and one thousand four hundred long, empties into the Hellespont, which is seven stadia across at its narrowest and four hundred long. The Hellespont opens out into the expanse of sea called the Aegean. These measurements were made as follows: a ship, on average, covers about seventy thousand fathoms in a long day, and sixty thousand by night. Now,
Now the voyage from the mouth of the Pontus to the Phasis (for that is the longest stretch of the Pontus) is nine days and eight nights: this comes to a hundred and eleven myriads of fathoms, and from these fathoms the stadia amount to eleven thousand one hundred. And to Themiscyra on the river Thermodon from Sindice (for that is the widest stretch of the Pontus)
comes to a crossing lasting two nights and three days, equal to thirty-three myriads of fathoms, or three thousand three hundred stadia. So this Pontus, along with the Bosporus and the Hellespont, has now been measured out by me and shown to have the dimensions stated; this Pontus, moreover, feeds a lake that drains into it, one only slightly smaller than itself,
which is called the Maeetis, and is called the mother of the Pontus. Darius, when he had viewed the Pontus, sailed back to the bridge, whose builder was Mandrocles the Samian; and having viewed the Bosporus too, he set up two pillars there of white stone, engraving on them letters — on the one Assyrian, on the other Greek — with all the peoples he was leading, for he led all
the nations he commanded. Apart from the fleet, these were counted at seven hundred thousand men including cavalry, and six hundred ships were gathered together. As for these pillars, the Byzantines later carried them into their city and put them to use at the altar of Artemis Orthosia, all except a single stone; that stone was left standing by the temple of Dionysus at Byzantium, covered in Assyrian writing. Now the district by the Bosporus
where King Darius bridged it is, as I judge by reckoning, midway between Byzantium and the sanctuary at the mouth of the strait. Darius, afterward, being pleased with the floating bridge, rewarded its builder, Mandrocles the Samian, with a gift of everything tenfold; and from this Mandrocles had a picture painted as a first-offering, showing the whole bridging of the Bosporus, and King Darius seated on his throne, and his army
crossing it; he had this scene painted and set up as an offering in the Heraeum, with the following inscription: "Having spanned the fish-rich Bosporus with a bridge, Mandrocles dedicated to Hera this memorial of the floating crossing, winning himself a crown and glory for the Samians, having fulfilled the wishes of King Darius." These, then, were the memorials of the bridge's builder. After rewarding Mandrocles, Darius crossed over into Europe, instructing the Ionians to sail up into the Pontus as far as
the river Ister; once they arrived at the Ister, they were to wait there for him, spanning the river with a bridge. The fleet itself was manned by Ionians, Aeolians, and Hellespontines. This fleet passed through the Cyanean rocks and headed directly for the Ister; then, having rowed upstream for two days' distance from the sea, they bridged the river at its narrow neck, the point where the mouths of the
Ister branch off. Darius, when he had crossed the Bosporus by the floating bridge, marched through Thrace, and coming to the springs of the river Tearus he encamped there for three days. Now the Tearus is said by those who dwell around it to be the best of rivers, both for its other healing properties, and especially for curing scab in men and horses. Its springs are
thirty-eight springs in all, pouring out of the same rock face, some of them cold and some hot. The distance to reach them is equal whether one starts from the city of Heraeum near Perinthus or from Apollonia on the Euxine Sea, a two-day trip either way. This Tearus flows out into the river Contadesdus, and the Contadesdus into the
Agrianes, and the Agrianes into the Hebrus, and the Hebrus flows into the sea near the town of Aenus. Darius, upon reaching this river and setting up camp, was so taken with it that he erected a pillar there too, inscribed with these words: "The headwaters of the river Tearus supply water finer and better than any other river; and to these headwaters came, marching an army against the Scythians,"
a man who is the best and finest of all men, Darius son of Hystaspes, king of the Persians and of the whole mainland." This is what was written there. Darius, setting out from there, came to another river named the Artescus, which flows through the land of the Odrysae. Having come to this river he did the following: marking out a place for the army, he ordered every man, as he passed by,
to set down one stone at this marked-out place. When the army had done this, he left behind great mounds of stones there and marched the army onward. Before reaching the Ister, he first subdued the Getae, who believe themselves immortal. For the Thracians who hold Salmydessus and dwell above the cities of Apollonia and Mesambria, called the Cyrmianae and the Nipsaei, surrendered themselves
to Darius without a fight; but the Getae, turning to folly, were at once enslaved, though they are the bravest and most just of the Thracians. They believe themselves immortal in this way: they do not think that they die, but that the one who perishes goes to the god Salmoxis; and some of them call this same god Gebeleizis. Every four years they send one of their number, chosen by lot, as a messenger to Salmoxis, instructing him in
whatever they need at each occasion; and they send him in this way: some of them, appointed for the task, hold three javelins, while others, taking hold of the hands and feet of the man being sent to Salmoxis, swing him up into the air and throw him onto the spearpoints. If he dies pierced through, they believe the god is gracious to them; but if he does not die, they blame the messenger himself, saying
that the man is bad, and after leveling that charge they send off someone new. They deliver these instructions to him while he still lives. These same Thracians, whenever thunder and lightning strike, shoot arrows upward toward the sky in defiance of the god, since they recognize no god except their own. According to what I gather from the Greeks living along the Hellespont and the Pontus, this Salmoxis, who was once a man,
lived as a slave on Samos, owned by Pythagoras son of Mnesarchus; after gaining his freedom there he built up considerable wealth, and once wealthy he traveled back to his homeland. Given how harsh and rather unsophisticated Thracian life was, this Salmoxis, familiar with Ionian customs and with ways of thinking more profound than the Thracians knew, having mixed with Greeks and with Pythagoras, no minor intellect among the Greeks,
had a men's hall built, in which he received the leading men of the city and entertained them, teaching them that neither he nor his fellow drinkers nor their descendants forever would die, but would come to a place where, living on forever, they would have all good things. While he was doing and saying these things, he was at the same time building an underground chamber. When
the chamber stood entirely complete, he vanished from among the Thracians, descending into the underground room where he dwelt for three years; meanwhile they longed for him and grieved him as though dead. In the fourth year he showed himself again to the Thracians, and in this way his teachings gained credibility with them. That, at least, is the account of what he supposedly did. For my own part, regarding this matter and the
underground chamber, I neither reject it outright nor place too much confidence in it, though my own view is that this Salmoxis lived a good many years before Pythagoras. Whether some man named Salmoxis actually existed, or whether he is simply a local deity of the Getae, let that question rest. These people, following this practice, once conquered by the Persians, joined the rest of the army on its march. Darius, once he and the infantry force with
him reached the Ister, and once everyone had crossed over, Darius directed the Ionians to dismantle the bridge and follow him overland along with the troops from the ships. But just as the Ionians were preparing to dismantle it and carry out these orders, Coes son of Erxander, commander of the Mytilenaeans, addressed Darius as follows, having first inquired whether Darius would welcome an opinion from someone willing
to offer it. "O King, you are about to march against a land in which nothing plowed nor any inhabited city will appear: so now let this bridge stand where it is, leaving as its guards those who built it. And if we find the Scythians and things go as we wish, there is a way back for us; and if we cannot find them, still the way back is safe for us; for
I have never once worried that the Scythians might defeat us in a pitched battle, but rather that, failing to track them down, we might come to harm while roaming the country. Someone might say I argue this out of self-interest, wanting to remain behind; but I offer you, O King, the plan I judge best, openly, while I myself intend to accompany you and have no wish to be left behind." Darius was delighted with this proposal,
and answered him thus: "Lesbian guest, when I am safely home again, be sure to appear before me, so that I may repay you for your good counsel with good deeds." Having said this, and having tied sixty knots in a leather strap, he called the tyrants of the Ionians to a meeting and said the following: "Men of Ionia, let the earlier opinion given about the bridge be set aside by me; instead, keeping
this strap, do the following: as soon as you see me setting out against the Scythians, from that time begin loosening one knot each day; and if within that time I have not returned, but the days of the knots have passed for you, then sail away to your own lands. Until then, since it has been so resolved, guard the bridge, showing every eagerness for its safety
and its guarding. In doing this you will do me a great favor." Having said this, Darius pressed on ahead. Now Thrace projects toward the sea in front of the Scythian land; and as the land curves into a gulf, the Scythian land receives it, and the Ister empties into it, its mouth turned toward the east wind. I shall now go on to describe the coast from the Ister onward.
This concerns the measurement of the seaward side of the Scythian land itself. From the Ister onward this is now ancient Scythia, lying toward the midday and the south wind, as far as the city called Carcinitis. From there, along the same coastline, in country that is mountainous and juts out into the Pontus, the Tauric people occupy the land as far as the peninsula called
the Rugged one; this peninsula extends down to the sea that lies toward the east wind. For Scythia has two of its borders reaching to the sea, the one toward the midday and the one toward the dawn, just as Attica does; and the Taurians occupy a portion of Scythia comparable to this, as if in Attica some other people, and not the Athenians,
held the headland of Sunium, which juts out further into the sea, running from Thoricus to the deme of Anaphlystus—I say this granting that it means comparing small things to great: such is Taurica. But for one who has not sailed along that part of Attica, I will make it plain another way: as if in Iapygia some other people, and not the Iapygians, beginning from the harbor of Brentesium, cut off
a portion as far as Tarentum and occupied the headland. In naming these two cases I am naming many similar ones, to which Taurica bears resemblance. Beyond Taurica the Scythians now occupy the country above the Taurians and the land along the eastern sea, both the part west of the Cimmerian Bosporus and the shore of the Maeetian lake as far as the river Tanais, which flows out into
the innermost part of this lake. Now then, from the Ister the parts extending inland are shut off from Scythia first by the Agathyrsi, then by the Neuri, then by the Man-eaters, and last by the Black-cloaks. So then, Scythia, being as it were four-sided, with two of its sides reaching to the sea, is everywhere equal in extent, both the side running inland and the one running along
the sea. From the Ister to the Borysthenes is a ten-day journey, and from the Borysthenes to Lake Maeotis another ten days; while the distance inland from the coast to the Black-Cloaks settled above the Scythians is a twenty-day journey. I count each day's travel as two hundred stadia. By this reckoning, the width of Scythia across would come to four thousand stadia, and
the length reaching inland the same number of stadia again. Such then is the size of this land. Now the Scythians, reasoning among themselves that they were not able alone to drive back Darius' army by open battle, sent messengers to their neighbors; and the kings of these peoples had already met together and were taking counsel, since a great army was advancing against them. Those who had
met were the kings of the Tauri, the Agathyrsi, the Neuri, the Man-Eaters, the Black-Cloaks, the Gelonians, the Budini, and the Sauromatae. Of these, the Tauri follow these customs: they sacrifice to the Maiden both shipwrecked men and any Greeks they take by putting out to sea and capturing, in this manner: after the preliminary rites, they strike the head with a club. Some say that they then push the body down from the cliff
(since the shrine sits atop a cliff), while they fix the head upon a stake. Others agree about the head but say the body is not thrown down from the cliff, but instead buried in the ground. The Tauri themselves claim that this deity to whom they sacrifice is Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon. As for enemies they capture, they proceed as follows: each man cuts off the head and takes it back to
his own house, then mounts it on a tall pole and raises it well above the roofline, most often over the smoke-vent. They claim these heads keep watch as guardians over the entire household. They live off plunder and warfare. The Agathyrsi are the most luxury-loving of all peoples and wear gold more than anyone; they share their women in common, so that they may count each other as brothers, and,
being all kinsmen, may feel neither envy nor hatred toward each other. In their other customs they have come close to the Thracians. The Neuri follow Scythian customs; but one generation before Darius' expedition, it befell them to abandon their whole country because of snakes. For their land brought forth many snakes on its own, and still more fell upon them from the deserts above, until,
under pressure, they abandoned their own territory and settled among the Budini. These people, it seems, may well practice sorcery. For both the Scythians and the Greeks settled in Scythia claim that once every year, each of the Neuri turns into a wolf for a few days before reverting back to his usual form. For my part, this claim does not convince me, yet they insist on it all the same, and
they swear to it as they say it. The Man-Eaters have the most savage customs of all men, observing no justice and following no law whatsoever. They are nomads, wear clothing like the Scythians', but have their own language, and are the only ones among these peoples who eat human flesh. The Black-Cloaks all wear black garments, from which they also take their name, and follow Scythian customs. The Budini are a great nation
and numerous, and are all strongly blue-eyed and ruddy. Among them a city has been built of wood, called Gelonus. The wall of this city, each side of it, measures thirty stadia; it is tall, and entirely of wood, and their houses too are of wood, and so are their temples. For there are indeed sanctuaries of Greek gods there, built in Greek fashion, with statues and
altars and wooden shrines, and they hold triennial festivals for Dionysus and celebrate his rites. For the Gelonians were originally Greeks, who left their trading posts and settled among the Budini; and they use partly the Scythian tongue and partly the Greek. The Budini, however, do not use the same tongue as the Gelonians, nor do they share the same way of life. For the Budini, being natives of the land,
are nomads and are the only people in that region who eat lice, whereas the Gelonians work the soil, eat grain, keep gardens, and are not at all like them in appearance or in coloring. Yet by the Greeks the Budini too are called Gelonians, though this is not correct. Their whole country is thick with forests of every kind; and in the densest of the forest there is a great lake
and marsh, with reeds growing around it; in it otters and beavers are caught, and other square-faced creatures, whose pelts are sewn onto cloaks along the border, and whose testicles are useful for treating diseases of the womb. As for the Sauromatae, this is the account given. When the Greeks fought against the Amazons (the Scythians call the Amazons Oiorpata, a name which means
in the Greek tongue man-killers; for they call a man 'oior' and 'pata' means to kill), the story goes that the Greeks, having won the battle at the Thermodon, sailed away carrying off in three ships as many of the Amazons as they had been able to take alive, and that the women, once at sea, attacked and cut down the men. But they had no knowledge of ships, nor could they use rudders or sails or oars; so once they had cut down the
the men were swept along by wave and wind, washing up at Cremni on Lake Maeotis; Cremni sits within the territory of the free Scythians. There the Amazons climbed down from their ships and set out on foot toward the inhabited land. Coming across the first herd of horses in their path, they seized it, and riding these horses they began plundering the Scythians' property. The Scythians could not figure out
what was happening, for they recognized neither their speech nor their dress nor their nation, and were utterly at a loss as to where they had come from; they supposed them to be men of the same age, and so gave battle against them. From the battle the Scythians took possession of the dead, and thus learned that they were women. Taking counsel, they resolved no longer to kill them in any way, but
to send their own youngest men out to them, matching their numbers to those of the women, and have these men camp close to the women, mirroring whatever actions the women took. Should the women give chase, the men were not to fight but to retreat; and once the pursuit ended, they were to return and camp nearby once more. The Scythians settled on this plan because they wanted children born from these women. So the young men, once dispatched,
did as they had been instructed. When the Amazons realized that they had come with no harmful intent, they let them be; and day by day the two camps drew closer to one another. Now the young men had nothing beyond their weapons and their horses, just as the Amazons had, but lived the same kind of life as they did, hunting and raiding. The Amazons, for their part, would do the following
at midday: they would scatter, going off singly or in twos, spreading apart from one another to relieve themselves in private. Learning of this, the Scythians did the same thing. And one of them, finding himself alone, drew near to one of the women who was alone, and the Amazon did not push him away but allowed him to have his way with her. Words were impossible between them, since neither understood the other's language, but she gestured with her hand for him to
come the next day to the same spot and to bring another man, indicating by signs that there would be two of them, and that she herself would bring another woman. The young man, when he went back, told this to the rest; and on the next day he himself came to the spot, bringing another with him, and found the Amazon waiting there together with a second. The rest of the young men, when they learned of this, likewise won over
the remaining Amazons for themselves. Afterward, joining their camps together, they lived as one, each man keeping as his wife the woman with whom he had first come together. The men were unable to learn the women's language, but the women grasped that of the men. When they understood one another, the men said the following to the Amazons: 'We have parents,' they said, 'and we have
possessions; so now let us no longer live this kind of life, but let us go back and live among our people. We will have you, and no other women, as our wives.' To this the women replied as follows: 'We could not live together with your women, for our customs and theirs are not the same. We shoot the bow and throw the javelin and ride horses, and have never learned women's
work; but your women do none of the things we have just named, and instead do women's work, staying in their wagons, never going out to the hunt or anywhere else. We could not, then, get along with them. But if you wish to have us as wives and to be thought just men, go to your parents and claim your share of the property,
and then come back and let us live on our own.' The young men were persuaded and did as they said. When, having claimed the share of the property that fell to them, they came back again to the Amazons, the women said to them: 'Fear and dread take hold of us at the thought of how we are to live in this land, since we have deprived you of your fathers and have done much harm
to your country besides. But since you think us worthy to have as wives, do this together with us: let us rise up out of this land and go and live across the river Tanais.' The young men agreed to this too, and having crossed the Tanais they journeyed toward the rising sun for a three days' march from the Tanais, and for three days' march from Lake Maeotis toward the north wind. Arriving at
this place, where they now dwell, they settled there. And from that time the women of the Sauromatae have kept to their ancient way of life, riding out on horseback to the hunt together with their men and apart from them as well, joining in war and dressed just like the men. As for speech, the Sauromatae use the Scythian tongue, though they speak it incorrectly, corrupted from the old,
since the Amazons did not learn it well. This is how matters stand with them regarding marriage: no maiden is married until she has killed a man of the enemy, and some of them even die of old age before marrying, unable to fulfill the law. Now the messengers of the Scythians, having come to the assembled kings of the peoples just named, spoke, explaining that
the Persian, since he has subjugated everything on the other continent, has yoked a bridge over the neck of the Bosporus and crossed over into this continent, and having crossed and subdued the Thracians he is bridging the river Ister, wishing to bring all these lands too under his sway. "So do not, sitting apart in the middle, look on while we are destroyed, but let us think as one and face
the invader. Will you not do this? We, being hard pressed, will either abandon our land or, if we stay, come to terms. For what could we suffer if you refuse to help us? For you nothing will be any lighter on that account. The Persian has come no more against us than against you, nor will it be enough for him, once he has subdued us, to hold back from you. We will give you a great
proof of these words. If the Persian were campaigning against us alone, wishing to punish us for our former enslavement of him, he ought to have marched against our land alone, avoiding all the others, and so he would have shown everyone that he was marching against the Scythians and not against the others. But as it is, ever since he crossed into this continent, he has been subduing everyone who stands in his way; he
already holds under him the rest of the Thracians, and in particular the Getae, who are our neighbors." When the Scythians made these declarations, the kings who had come from the several peoples deliberated, and their opinions were divided. The Gelonian, the Budinian, and the Sauromatian, agreeing together, undertook to help the Scythians; but the Agathyrsian, the Neurian, the Man-eater, and
the Melanchlaenians and Taurians answered the Scythians as follows: "If you were not the first to wrong the Persians and begin the war, then the request you now make would seem to us just, and we, giving heed, would act accordingly with you. But as it is, you invaded their land without us and held sway over the Persians for as long as the
god granted it to you, and now they, since that same god rouses them, are giving you the like in return. We did no wrong to these men then, nor will we now be the first to attempt any wrong against them. Yet if he comes against our land too and begins the wrong, we will not submit either; until that happens, though, we will stay put, since in our view the Persians have marched not against us
but against those who were responsible for the wrongdoing." When the Scythians learned that this answer had been brought back, they resolved not to engage in any open pitched battle, since these peoples were not joining them as allies, but instead to withdraw and, as they withdrew, to stop up the wells they passed and fill in the springs, and to strip the grass from the earth, dividing themselves into two groups. To
one of these divisions, of which Scopasis was king, the Sauromatae were to attach themselves; these were to retreat, and if the Persian turned that way, to flee straight toward the river Tanais along the Maeotian lake, and, when the Persian drew off, to pursue him as he advanced. This was one division of their kingdom, assigned to follow this course as has been described; the other two divisions of the kingdom, that
great one which Idanthyrsus ruled and the third which Taxacis ruled, having come together into one, with the Gelonians and Budinians joining them too, were to withdraw a day's march ahead of the Persians, retreating and doing what had been decided: first they were to lead them straight into the lands of those peoples who had refused their alliance, so that these too might be drawn into the war; for if they
had not willingly taken up the war against the Persians, they would be forced into it against their will; after this they were to turn back into their own land and attack, if upon deliberation it should seem good to them. Having decided this, the Scythians went out to meet the army of Darius, sending ahead the best of their horsemen as an advance guard. The wagons in which their children and all their women dwelt, and all their flocks, except for
as many as were needed for provisions, these they kept back, and sent the rest on ahead together with the wagons, instructing them always to drive toward the north. This, then, was sent forward. Now the advance riders of the Scythians, when they found the Persians about three days' journey distant from the Ister, upon finding them, being a day's march ahead, made camp, cropping down the things growing from the earth,
while the Persians, when they saw the Scythian cavalry appear, followed on their trail, the Scythians always withdrawing before them; and then, since they made for one of the divisions, the Persians pursued them toward the east and straight for the Tanais. When these had crossed the river Tanais, the Persians, crossing after them, pursued until, having passed through the land of the Sauromatae, they arrived at that of the Budini.
For as long as the Persians were passing through the land of the Scythians and of the Sauromatae, they had nothing to damage, since the land was barren; yet once they pushed into Budinian territory, they encountered the wooden stronghold there—the Budini having abandoned it and the fortress being emptied of everyone—and they burned it. Having done this, they continued to follow ever onward
along the trail, until, having passed through this land, they arrived at the desert. This desert is inhabited by no men at all, and lies beyond the land of the Budini, being seven days' journey in extent. Beyond the desert dwell the Thyssagetae, and four great rivers flow out from their land, running through the country of the Maeetae and emptying into the lake called Maeotis; these rivers bear the following names,
Lycus, Oarus, Tanais, Syrgis. Now when Darius reached the desert, he halted his march and encamped the army on the river Oarus. Having done this, he built eight great forts, equidistant from one another, about sixty stadia apart; the ruins of these were still standing in my own time. While he was occupied with this, the Scythians who were being pursued
circled around through the upper country and turned back into Scythia. When these had vanished altogether, and no longer appeared before them, then Darius abandoned those forts half-finished, and himself turned back and marched westward, thinking that these were all the Scythians and that they were fleeing westward. Driving his army onward as fast as possible, when he reached Scythia he ran into
both divisions of the Scythians together, and upon encountering them he pursued them as they withdrew a day's march ahead. And since Darius did not let up in his pursuit, the Scythians, according to their plan, kept withdrawing toward the peoples who had refused their alliance, first into the land of the Melanchlaeni. When the Scythians and Persians, invading it, threw these people into confusion, the Scythians led the way into the
territory of the Man-eaters; when these too were thrown into confusion, they led on toward the land of the Neuri; and as these in turn were being disturbed, the Scythians went on, withdrawing, into the land of the Agathyrsi. But the Agathyrsi, seeing their neighbors too fleeing before the Scythians and thrown into confusion, before the Scythians could invade them, sent a herald forbidding the Scythians to set foot on their borders, warning that if they attempted to invade, they would first have to fight them. The Agathyrsi,
having given this warning, went out to defend their borders, intending to keep back those advancing; but the Melanchlaeni, the Man-eaters, and the Neuri, when the Persians invaded together with the Scythians, did not turn to resistance but, forgetting their threat, fled ever northward into the desert, thrown into confusion. The Scythians no longer went on into the land of the Agathyrsi, since these had forbidden them, but
led the Persians instead out of the land of the Neuri back into their own land. Since this kept happening at length without ceasing, Darius sent a horseman to the Scythian king Idanthyrsus, saying this: "Strangest of men, why do you always flee, when it is in your power to do one of two other things? For if you think yourself capable of withstanding my power, you should stand your ground and cease your wandering
and fight; but if you acknowledge that you are weaker, then you too, ceasing your flight, should come and hold parley with your master, bringing gifts of earth and water." To this the Scythian king Idanthyrsus replied as follows: "This is how matters stand with me, Persian. I have never yet fled from any man out of fear, neither before nor now do I flee from you, nor am I doing anything new
now that I did not also do in time of peace. As for why I do not fight you at once, I will explain this too. We have neither cities nor cultivated land, out of fear for which, lest it be captured or ravaged, we would join battle with you the sooner. But if it is altogether necessary to come to this quickly, we do happen to have ancestral tombs; come,
find these and try to disturb them, and then you will know whether we will fight you for the tombs or whether we will not fight. Until then, unless we think it good, we will not engage you. So much, then, be said concerning battle; as for masters, the only ones I recognize are Zeus, from whom I am descended, and Hestia, queen of the Scythians. As for you, in place of gifts of earth
and water, I will send such gifts as are fitting for you to receive; and in return for your claiming to be my master, I bid you weep." This is the Scythian saying. So the herald departed to report this to Darius, and the Scythian kings, hearing the word "slavery," were filled with anger. As for the division that had been sent with the Sauromatae, which Scopasis led,
they sent word to the Ionians who were guarding the bridge over the Ister, asking them to come to a conference. Those who were left behind decided no longer to wander about but to attack the Persians each time they went out to gather food. So by watching for Darius's men gathering food they did what had been planned. The Scythian cavalry always routed the Persian cavalry, and the Persian horsemen, fleeing, fell back on their
infantry, and the infantry would come to their aid. But the Scythians, having driven back the cavalry, would themselves turn back for fear of the infantry. The Scythians also made similar attacks by night. Now the thing that helped the Persians and worked against the Scythians when they attacked Darius's camp — I will tell a very strange fact — was the braying of the donkeys and the appearance of the mules. For neither
donkey nor mule is found in the land of Scythia, as I have already shown, and there is no donkey or mule anywhere in the whole Scythian country because of the cold. So when the donkeys brayed they threw the Scythian cavalry into confusion. Often, as they were riding against the Persians, as soon as the horses heard the sound of the donkeys, they would panic and wheel about,
and be seized with wonder, pricking up their ears, since they had never before heard such a sound nor seen such a creature. This, then, had only a small effect on the course of the war. Now the Scythians, whenever they saw the Persians thrown into confusion, would act so that the Persians would stay longer in Scythia and, staying, would suffer distress from lacking everything. They did as follows: whenever they
left some of their own flocks behind with the herdsmen, they themselves would ride off to another place. The Persians would come upon the flocks, seize them, and after seizing them would grow proud of what they had done. This happened many times, until finally Darius was at a loss, and the Scythian kings, learning of this, sent a herald bearing gifts to Darius: a bird, a mouse, a frog,
and five arrows. The Persians asked the man bringing the gifts what the meaning of what was given might be. He said he had been instructed to say nothing else except to deliver them and depart as quickly as possible; but he told the Persians themselves, if they were wise, to figure out what the gifts meant to say. Having heard this, the Persians deliberated. Now Darius's opinion was that the Scythians were surrendering to him
themselves, and earth and water, reasoning it out as follows: that a mouse is born in the earth and eats the same crop as a man, a frog lives in water, a bird resembles a horse more than anything, and the arrows meant that they were surrendering their own might. This was the opinion Darius put forward. But opposed to this opinion was that of Gobryas, one of the seven men
who had done away with the Magus, who guessed the gifts meant: "Unless you Persians become birds and fly up into the sky, burrow into the earth as mice, or leap into the marshes as frogs, you will not return home again, but will be struck down by these arrows." So the Persians interpreted the gifts in these two ways. Meanwhile the one division of the Scythians that had earlier been assigned
to guard by Lake Maeotis, and was now to go to the Ionians at the Ister to hold a conference, when it arrived at the bridge, said the following. "Men of Ionia, we have come bringing you freedom, if indeed you are willing to listen. For we understand that Darius ordered you to guard the bridge for only sixty days, and if he did not arrive within that time, to depart for your own country. Now
if you do this you will be blameless both before him and before us: stay the appointed days, and after that depart." These, then, when the Ionians had promised to do this, hurried back as quickly as possible. After the gifts had come to Darius, the Scythians who remained drew up against the Persians in infantry and cavalry, as if to give battle. But as the Scythians stood in formation, a hare
darted through their midst. As each of them saw the hare, they gave chase to it. When the Scythians fell into confusion and raised a shout, Darius asked about the uproar among his opponents; and learning that they were chasing the hare, he said to those he was accustomed to address on other matters as well: "These men hold us in great contempt, and it now seems to me that Gobryas spoke rightly about the Scythian
gifts. Since I too now think as he does, we need good counsel, so that our return may be safe." To this Gobryas said, "O king, I already knew fairly well from report the helplessness of these men, but having come here I have learned it far better still, seeing them mocking us. Now it seems to me that as soon as night falls,
we should light the fires as we are accustomed to do at other times too, deceive the weakest of our soldiers into thinking they will be left to endure hardship, tie up all the donkeys, and depart, before the Scythians either rush straight to the Ister to break the bridge, or the Ionians decide on something that could destroy us." This was Gobryas's advice. And afterward night came, and Darius
followed this plan: the exhausted men, and those whose loss would matter least, along with all the donkeys tied up, he left behind there in the camp. He left the donkeys and the weak of the army for this reason: so that the donkeys would make noise; and the men were left behind because of their weakness, but the pretext given was, of course, that
he himself, with the sound part of the army, intended to attack the Scythians, while these men were to guard the camp for that time. Having given these instructions to those left behind, Darius lit the fires and hurried as fast as possible toward the Ister. The donkeys, left alone without the crowd, brayed all the more loudly; and the Scythians, hearing the donkeys, fully
believed that the Persians were still in place. When day came, those left behind, realizing they had been betrayed by Darius, stretched out their hands to the Scythians and told them what had happened. When the Scythians heard this, they gathered together as quickly as possible — the two divisions of the Scythians and the one, along with the Sauromatae, the Budini, and the Geloni — and pursued the Persians straight toward the Ister. Since
the Persian army was mostly infantry and did not know the roads, since the roads had not been marked out, while the Scythian force was cavalry and knew the shortcuts of the route, they missed each other, and the Scythians arrived at the bridge long before the Persians. Finding that the Persians had not yet come, they spoke to the Ionians, who were stationed in their ships,
"Men of Ionia, the number of days appointed to you has run out, and you are not acting rightly by still remaining. But since before you stayed out of fear, now break the crossing and depart quickly, rejoicing in your freedom, and giving thanks to the gods and to the Scythians. As for the man who was formerly your master, we will deal with him in such a way that he will never again campaign against any people." At this the Ionians took counsel.
Miltiades the Athenian, general and tyrant of the Chersonesites on the Hellespont, was of the opinion that they should obey the Scythians and free Ionia; but Histiaeus of Miletus was opposed to this, saying that at present each of them ruled his city because of Darius, and that if Darius's power were overthrown, neither would he himself be able to rule the Milesians, nor would anyone else be able to rule anywhere else; for each of the cities would want
to be governed as a democracy rather than ruled by a tyrant. When Histiaeus put forward this opinion, all of them immediately turned to this view, though before they had favored that of Miltiades. Those who cast their votes and were men of standing with the king were these: of the Hellespontine tyrants, Daphnis of Abydos, Hippoclus of Lampsacus, Herophantus of Parium, Metrodorus of Proconnesus, Aristagoras of Cyzicus, and Ariston of Byzantium.
These were the men from the Hellespont; from Ionia there were Strattis of Chios, Aeaces of Samos, Laodamas of Phocaea, and Histiaeus of Miletus, whose opinion had been set forth in opposition to that of Miltiades. Of the Aeolians, the only man of note present was Aristagoras of Cyme. When these men adopted Histiaeus's opinion, they resolved to add to it the following actions and words: they would break down
the part of the bridge that faced the Scythians, breaking it down as far as an arrow's shot could reach, so that they would seem to be doing something while doing nothing, and so that the Scythians, even by force and by their own wish, would not attempt crossing the Ister at the bridge; and while breaking that part of the bridge facing Scythia, they would say that they would do everything that pleased the Scythians. This they added to
their plan. After that Histiaeus, speaking on behalf of them all, answered as follows. "Men of Scythia, you have come bringing good news, and at the right time you are urging haste; and both what comes from you is guiding us well and what comes from us serves you fittingly. For as you see, we are breaking the crossing, and we shall show every eagerness, wishing to be free. But while we are breaking this,
it is the time for you to seek out those men, and having found them, to avenge both us and yourselves as befits them." The Scythians, believing a second time that the Ionians spoke the truth, turned back to search for the Persians, and missed the whole of their route. The Scythians themselves were the cause of this, having destroyed the horse-pastures in that region and filled in the water sources. For if
they had left this undone, finding the Persians, if they so wished, would have proved an easy matter for them. But as it was, the very thing they thought was their best plan was what made them fail. Now the Scythians, in the part of their own country where there was fodder for the horses and water, went through that region searching for their enemies, thinking that they too were making their escape through such places. But the Persians, following their earlier
they went on, keeping to the track they themselves had made, and so with difficulty found the crossing. Having arrived at night to find the bridge dismantled, they fell into utter dread that the Ionians had abandoned them. Now there was with Darius an Egyptian man with the loudest voice of anyone: this man Darius ordered to stand on the bank of the Ister and call for Histiaeus the Milesian.
He did this, and Histiaeus, hearing the very first call, brought up all the ships to ferry the army across and rejoined the bridge. So the Persians escaped in this way, while the Scythians, searching, missed the Persians a second time, and for this reason they judge the Ionians, being free men, to be the basest and most unmanly of all people; but on the other hand,
speaking of them as though they were slaves, they say they are slaves fond of their masters and unlikely to run off. This much has been thrown at the Ionians by the Scythians. Darius journeyed through Thrace and reached Sestos, in the Chersonese. From there he himself crossed by ship to Asia, but he left behind as general in Europe Megabazus, a Persian man, to whom Darius had once given an honor, having spoken
this saying among the Persians. When Darius was about to eat pomegranates, as soon as he opened the first of them, his brother Artabanus asked him what he would wish to have in such abundance as there were seeds in the pomegranate. Darius said he would wish to have that many Megabazuses in number rather than have Greece subject to him. By saying this among the Persians he honored him,
and now he left him behind as general in charge of his own army, eighty thousand strong. This Megabazus, by saying the following thing, left behind an immortal memory among the people of the Hellespont. Being in Byzantium, he learned that the Chalcedonians had founded their land seventeen years before the Byzantines, and on learning this he said that the Chalcedonians must have been blind at that time; for they would not have chosen
the uglier site when the finer one was available, unless they were blind. So this Megabazus, left behind then as general in the land of the Hellespont, was subduing those who did not side with the Medes. This is what he was doing. At the same time another great expedition of an army was being mounted against Libya, for a reason which I will relate after first telling the following in advance. Of the sons of the crew of the Argo,
their children, driven out by the Pelasgians from Brauron who had carried off the women of Athens, were driven out by them from Lemnos and sailed off to Lacedaemon, and settling on Mount Taygetus they kindled a fire. The Lacedaemonians, seeing it, sent a messenger to find out who they were and from where; and to the messenger's questioning they said that they were Minyans, children of the heroes
who had sailed on the Argo, who had put in at Lemnos and begotten them there. The Lacedaemonians, having heard the account of the lineage of the Minyans, sent a second time and asked what they wanted, coming into the land and lighting a fire. They said that, having been cast out by the Pelasgians, they had come to their fathers; for it was most just that this should happen so. And they asked to dwell together with them, sharing
in honors and receiving a portion of the land. It seemed good to the Lacedaemonians to receive the Minyans on whatever terms they themselves wished. What most drove them to do this was that the sons of Tyndareus had sailed on the Argo. Once they had received the Minyans, they allotted them a share of land and divided them up among the tribes. They at once contracted marriages, and gave in marriage the women they had brought from Lemnos to others.
Not much time had passed before the Minyans grew arrogant, laying claim to the kingship and doing other things not lawful. So it seemed good to the Lacedaemonians to kill them; and seizing them they threw them into prison. Now the Lacedaemonians kill those whom they kill by night, never by day. When they were about to put them to death, the wives of the Minyans, being citizens and
daughters of the leading Spartiates, begged permission to go into the prison and speak, each with her own husband. The guards let them in, thinking no trick would come of it. But when they had entered, they did as follows: they gave over to the men all the clothing they were wearing and themselves took that of the men, and the Minyans, putting on the women's clothing, went out
as though they were women; escaping by this trick, they settled again on Mount Taygetus. At this same time Theras, son of Autesion, son of Tisamenus, son of Thersander, son of Polyneices, was setting out from Lacedaemon to found a colony. This Theras was by lineage a Cadmean, the brother of the mother of the sons of Aristodemus, Eurysthenes and Procles. While these children were still infants Theras held
the kingship at Sparta as guardian. But when his nephews grew up and took over the rule, then Theras, thinking it terrible to be ruled by others once he had tasted rule, said he would not remain in Lacedaemon but would sail away to his kinsmen. There were, on the island now called Thera, but formerly called Callista, the same island, descendants of Membliarus son of Poeciles,
a Phoenician man. For Cadmus son of Agenor, seeking Europa, had put in at what is now called Thera: and having put in, whether the land pleased him or he wished to do this for some other reason, he left on this island, among other Phoenicians, Membliarus of his own kinsmen. These people inhabited the island called Callista for generations, before Theras
came from Lacedaemon — eight men in all. Against these Theras set out with a body of men drawn from the tribes, to settle together with them, in no way to drive them out but rather to make them fully his own. And when the Minyans, having escaped from the prison, had settled on Mount Taygetus, and the Lacedaemonians were deliberating on destroying them, Theras begged that no killing take place, and he himself undertook
to lead them out of the country. The Lacedaemonians agreeing to this proposal, he sailed with three thirty-oared ships to the descendants of Membliarus, not taking all the Minyans but only a few. Most of them turned instead against the Paroreatae and the Caucones, and driving these out of their country, divided themselves into six groups, and then founded the following cities among them: Lepreum, Macistus,
Phrixae, Pyrgus, Epium, Nudium. Most of these, in my own time, were destroyed by the Eleans. The island was named Thera after its founder. His son — for he said he would not sail with him, so his father said he would leave him behind like a sheep among wolves — because of this saying the young man came to be called Oeolycus, and somehow this name prevailed. From Oeolycus
was born Aegeus, after whom the Aegeidae are called, a great tribe in Sparta. The men of this tribe — for their children did not survive — established, on the advice of an oracle, a shrine of the Furies of Laius and Oedipus; and after this the children born to these men in Thera also survived in the same way. Up to this point in the story the Lacedaemonians and the Theraeans agree,
but from this point on only the Theraeans tell it as follows. Grinnus son of Aesanius, a descendant of this Theras and king of the island of Thera, arrived at Delphi bringing a hecatomb from his city; and there followed him also other citizens, and in particular Battus son of Polymnestus, by lineage a Euphemid of the Minyans. When Grinnus, king of the Theraeans, consulted the oracle
about other matters, the Pythia gave an oracle to found a city in Libya. He replied, saying: "I, lord, am already too old and heavy to be stirred; bid one of these younger men do this." While saying this he gestured toward Battus. That was all that was said then. Afterward, when they had returned home, they paid no heed to the oracle, neither
knowing where in the world Libya was, nor daring to send out a colony to so uncertain a thing. But seven years after this it did not rain on Thera, during which all the trees on the island but one withered away. When the Theraeans consulted the oracle, the Pythia again urged the colony to Libya. Since they had no remedy for their trouble, they sent to Crete
messengers to inquire whether any Cretan or resident alien there had ever been to Libya. Wandering about the island, these men came also to the city of Itanus, and there they met a purple-fisher named Corobius, who said winds had swept him off course to Libya, and from there to the island of Platea. Persuading him with pay, they brought him to Thera, and from Thera scouts sailed out,
few men at first: with Corobius guiding them to this island of Platea, they left Corobius there, leaving behind provisions for a certain number of months, while they themselves sailed as quickly as possible to report to the Theraeans about the island. But when these men were away longer than the agreed time, Corobius ran out of everything, and after this a Samian ship, whose captain was
Colaeus, sailing for Egypt, was carried off course to this Platea; and the Samians, learning the whole story from Corobius, provided him a year's worth of food. Setting out from the island, eager to reach Egypt, they sailed on, driven off course by an easterly wind; and since the wind did not let up, they went through the Pillars of Heracles and arrived at Tartessus, guided by divine providence. This trading port
was at that time untouched, so that these men, on returning home, made the greatest profit from their cargo of all the Greeks of whom we have accurate knowledge, except for Sostratus son of Laodamas, an Aeginetan; for with him no other could vie. The Samians, taking out a tenth of their profits, six talents' worth, had a bronze vessel made in the manner of an Argolic mixing-bowl; around it griffins' heads project in a row
...they are. And they dedicated in the Heraeum three colossal bronze statues, seven cubits tall, each resting on its knees as a base. It was from this deed that great friendship first arose between the people of Cyrene and Thera on one side and the Samians on the other. As for the Therans, once they had left Corobius on the island and come back to Thera, they reported that a colony had been established for them on an island off Libya. The Therans then decided
to send men chosen by lot, brother from brother, and from all the districts, which numbered seven, and that their leader and king should be Battus. So they fitted out two fifty-oared ships for Platea. This much the Therans say; the rest of the story the Therans and Cyrenaeans no longer agree on. For the Cyrenaeans do not at all agree with the Therans about Battus; they tell it this way. There is
in Crete a city called Oaxus, where there was a king named Etearchus, who, having a motherless daughter named Phronime, married another woman on her account. This woman, once brought into the household, made sure to act the stepmother toward Phronime both in name and in deed, causing her trouble and contriving everything against her, and finally, charging her with wantonness, she persuaded her husband to deal with her accordingly. And he, persuaded
by his wife, contrived an unholy deed against his daughter. For there was a Theran man, a merchant, named Themison, living in Oaxus. Etearchus took him in as a guest-friend and made him swear that he would do for him whatever he asked. When he had sworn the oath, Etearchus led out his own daughter and handed her over, ordering him to take her away and drown her in the sea. But Themison, indignant at having been tricked by the oath,
broke off the guest-friendship and did the following instead: he took the girl and put out to sea; once he was on the open water, in order to fulfill the letter of his oath to Etearchus, he bound her with cords, lowered her into the sea, then hauled her back up, and so arrived at Thera. From there Polymnestus, a man of repute among the Therans, took Phronime and kept her as a concubine. In time there was born to him a son who was weak-voiced
and had a stammer, and he was named Battus, as the Therans and Cyrenaeans say — though I myself think it was something else. He was renamed Battus after he arrived in Libya, taking the name from the oracle given him at Delphi and from the honor he received there. Since the Libyans use the word "battos" for a king, I think it was for this reason that the Pythia, in prophesying,
addressed him in the Libyan tongue, knowing that he would be king in Libya. Once he had grown to manhood, he went to Delphi about his voice, and when he put his question, the Pythia gave him this response: "Battus, you have come about your voice. But lord Phoebus Apollo sends you to Libya, rich in flocks, to found a colony" — as if she had said in the Greek tongue, "O king, you have come about your voice." And he
answered her thus: "Lord, I came to you to consult about my voice, but you tell me other things impossible to do, bidding me colonize Libya — with what power, with what hand?" Saying this he did not persuade her to give him a different oracle, and when she prophesied the same things to him as before, he went off, leaving her in the middle of it, and returned to Thera. After this, misfortune befell both him and
the other Therans, one calamity after another. Not understanding the cause of these disasters, the Therans sent to Delphi about the troubles that beset them. The Pythia responded that they would fare better if they helped Battus found Cyrene in Libya. After this the Therans sent out Battus with two fifty-oared ships. These men sailed to Libya, but not knowing what else to do, they turned back and sailed for
Thera. But the Therans pelted them as they came in to land and would not let them touch shore, ordering them to sail back. Forced to do so, they sailed back and settled an island lying off Libya, whose name, as was said before, is Platea. This island is said to be equal in size to the present city of Cyrene. They lived there for two years, but since nothing went well for them, they left one
man behind and all the rest sailed to Delphi, and upon reaching the oracle they questioned it, telling it that they were dwelling in Libya but that things were no better for them living there than before. To this the Pythia gave them this response: "If you know rich-in-flocks Libya better than I who have been there, though you have not been there yourself, greatly do I marvel at your wisdom." Hearing this, Battus and his men sailed back —
for the god was not going to release them from the colony until they had actually reached Libya itself. Arriving at the island and taking up the man they had left behind, they founded a place on the Libyan mainland itself, opposite the island, whose name was Aziris; this place is enclosed on both sides by the most beautiful wooded glens, and a river flows along one side of it. They lived in this place for six years,
but by the seventh year the Libyans had talked them into leaving, promising to lead them to a better place. So the Libyans made them get up and led them away from there toward the west, and, timing the journey by hours of the day, they led the Greeks past the most beautiful of all the regions by night, so that they would not see it. This place is called Irasa. Having brought them to a spring said to belong to
Apollo, they said, "Men of Greece, here it is fitting for you to live; for here the sky is pierced." Now during the lifetime of Battus the founder, who ruled for forty years, and of his son Arcesilaus, who ruled for sixteen years, the Cyrenaeans continued to live there in the same numbers as those first sent out to found it. Yet in the reign of the third king, Battus called the Fortunate, the Pythia by her oracle stirred up all the Greeks
to set sail and settle in Libya together with the Cyrenaeans, for the Cyrenaeans themselves were inviting them, offering a share in the land; and this was the oracle she gave: "Whoever comes later to lovely Libya, when the land has already been divided up, will one day, I say, have cause to regret it." A great crowd gathered at Cyrene, and the Libyans round about, along with their king, whose name was Adicran, finding much of their land
cut away and being treated with contempt by the Cyrenaeans, sent to Egypt and surrendered themselves to Apries, king of Egypt. He gathered a large army of Egyptians and sent it against Cyrene. The Cyrenaeans marched out to the place called Irasa, to the spring called Theste, and joined battle with the Egyptians, and won the engagement. For the Egyptians,
never before having had experience of Greeks, and underestimating them, were so utterly destroyed that only a few of them made it back to Egypt. Because of this, and holding other grievances against him, the Egyptians revolted from Apries. This Battus had a son, Arcesilaus, who, when he became king, first fell into strife with his own brothers, until they left him and went off to another part of Libya and, on their own initiative, founded the city
that was then, and still is, called Barca. As they founded it, they also persuaded the Libyans there to revolt from the Cyrenaeans. Afterward Arcesilaus made war on those same Libyans who had both received his brothers and revolted along with them; and the Libyans, in fear of him, fled to the Libyans of the east. Arcesilaus pursued them as they fled, until he came to Leucon in Libya,
and there, as he was pursuing them, the Libyans resolved to attack him. Joining battle, they defeated the Cyrenaeans so decisively that seven thousand Cyrenaean hoplites fell there. After this disaster, Arcesilaus, who was ill and had taken a drug, was strangled by his brother Haliarchus; and Haliarchus was killed by treachery by Arcesilaus's own wife, whose name was Eryxo. Arcesilaus's kingship was inherited by his
son Battus, who was lame and not sound of foot. The Cyrenaeans, in the face of the disaster that had befallen them, sent to Delphi to ask by what arrangement they might best establish their state. The Pythia bade them bring a reformer from Mantinea in Arcadia. The Cyrenaeans then asked, and the Mantineans gave them a man held in highest regard among their citizens, named Demonax. This man, when he arrived
in Cyrene and had learned all the particulars, first divided them into three tribes, arranging them as follows: he made one division of the Therans and the surrounding peoples, a second combining Peloponnesians and Cretans, and a third comprising all the islanders. Then, having set aside sacred estates and priesthoods for king Battus, he put everything else that the kings had previously held into the common possession of the people. So under
this Battus things continued in this state, but under his son Arcesilaus much turmoil arose over the royal privileges. For Arcesilaus, son of the lame Battus and Pheretime, said he would not put up with things as Demonax the Mantinean had arranged them, but demanded back the privileges of his ancestors. Rising up in faction over this, he was defeated and fled to Samos, while his mother fled to Salamis
in Cyprus. At that time Salamis was ruled by Evelthon, who dedicated at Delphi the censer worth seeing, which lies in the treasury of the Corinthians. Coming to him, Pheretime asked for an army that would restore them to Cyrene. But Evelthon offered her anything rather than an army; and she, accepting each gift as it was given, would say it too
was fine, but finer still would be for him to give her, as she asked, an army. This she said after every gift he gave her, until finally Evelthon sent her, as a last gift, a golden spindle and distaff, with wool attached to it as well. When Pheretime again repeated the same request, Evelthon said that such things were fit gifts for women, not an army. Meanwhile Arcesilaus, during this time,
being in Samos, was gathering together every man he could for a redistribution of land; and as a great army was being assembled, he set out for Delphi to consult the oracle about his return. The Pythia gave him this response: "For four Battuses and four Arcesilauses, eight generations of men, Loxias grants your line the kingship of Cyrene, but beyond this he advises you not even to attempt it. You, however, be at peace when you have returned to
"your own. And if you find the kiln full of jars, do not fire the jars, but send them away with a favorable wind; but if you fire the kiln, do not enter the land surrounded by water, or else you will die, both you and the finest bull." This is what the Pythia prophesied to Arcesilaus. And he, taking the men from Samos with him, returned to Cyrene, and having gained control of
affairs he did not remember the oracle, but demanded justice from his political opponents for his own exile. Of these, some left the country altogether, while others Arcesilaus seized and sent off to Cyprus for execution. These men were carried off course to Cnidus, and the Cnidians rescued them and sent them off to Thera; but certain others of the Cyrenaeans who had taken refuge in a great private tower
belonging to Aglomachus, Arcesilaus piled wood around and burned. When he learned, after the deed was done, that this was what the oracle had meant—that the Pythia was warning him not to fire the jars if he found them in the kiln—he willingly kept away from the city of the Cyrenaeans, fearing the death that had been foretold and believing Cyrene to be the "land surrounded by water." Now he had a wife who was his own kinswoman, the daughter of the king of the Barcaeans,
whose name was Alazir. He went to him, and certain men of Barca, along with some of the exiles from Cyrene, learned that he was in the marketplace and killed him, and along with him his father-in-law Alazir as well. So Arcesilaus, whether he erred in understanding the oracle willingly or unwillingly, fulfilled his own destiny. As for his mother Pheretime, while Arcesilaus
was living in Barca, having brought this evil upon himself, she held her son's honors in Cyrene, administering the rest of his affairs and sitting in the council. But when she learned that her son had died in Barca, she fled and went off to Egypt. For favors had been done by Arcesilaus for Cambyses son of Cyrus; for it was this Arcesilaus who had given Cyrene
to Cambyses and imposed a tribute upon it. So when Pheretime arrived in Egypt she sat as a suppliant of Aryandes, calling on him to avenge her, putting forward as her pretext that her son had died because of his medizing. Now this Aryandes was the governor of Egypt appointed by Cambyses, who at a later time, setting himself up as equal to Darius, was destroyed. For learning and seeing that Darius desired to leave behind a memorial of himself
such as no other king had achieved, he set out to copy it, and in the end that copying earned him his reward. For Darius had refined gold to the utmost purity and struck coin of it, the purest possible; but Aryandes, who ruled Egypt, produced silver coinage by that identical method, and the purest silver money is still called Aryandic today. When Darius learned that he was doing this, he brought another charge against him, that he was rising up against him, and put him to death. But at that time
this same Aryandes, taking pity on Pheretime, gave her the entire army from Egypt, both infantry and navy: as commander of the infantry he appointed Amasis, a man of the Maraphian people, and of the navy Badres, a man of Pasargadae by birth. But before sending off the army, Aryandes sent a herald to Barca to inquire who it was that had killed Arcesilaus. And the
Barcaeans themselves all took responsibility, saying that they had suffered many evils at his hands. Learning this, Aryandes then sent off the army together with Pheretime. This, then, was the pretext put forward for the expedition, but the army was sent, as it seems to me, for the subjugation of Libya. For there are many and varied peoples of the Libyans, and some of them
were subject to the King, only a few, while the greater part paid Darius no heed at all. The Libyans dwell as follows. Beginning from Egypt, the first Libyans settled are the Adyrmachidae, who follow for the most part Egyptian customs, but wear the same clothing as the other Libyans do. Their women wear a bronze anklet around each leg; they wear their hair long, and when they catch lice
each woman bites her own in retaliation and thus casts them away. These are the only Libyans who do this, and they alone show to the king the maidens who are about to be married. Whichever one pleases the king is deflowered by him. These Adyrmachidae extend from Egypt as far as the harbor called Plynos. Next to them come the Giligamae, who occupy the land to the west as far as
the island of Aphrodisias. In the region between lies the island of Platea, which the Cyrenaeans colonized, and on the mainland there is the harbor of Menelaus, and Aziris, where the Cyrenaeans once lived, and it is from here that silphium begins to grow: it extends from the island of Platea to the mouth of the Syrtis. These people follow customs similar to the others.
Next to the Giligamae, to the west, come the Asbystae, who dwell above Cyrene. The Asbystae do not reach the sea, for the coastal land is occupied by the Cyrenaeans. They are the most skilled chariot-drivers of all the Libyans, not the least but the very best, and they make it their practice to imitate most of the customs of the Cyrenaeans. Next to the Asbystae, to the west, are the Auschisae: these dwell above Barca, reaching down to the sea near Euesperides.
In the middle of the Auschisae's territory dwell the Bacales, a small people, reaching down to the sea near the city of Tauchira in the Barcaean territory. They follow the same customs as those who dwell above Cyrene. Next to these Auschisae, to the west, come the Nasamones, a numerous people, who in summer leave their flocks by the sea and go up into the region of Augila to harvest the dates.
which grow there abundantly and widely-spread, all of them fruit-bearing. When they catch locusts, they dry them in the sun and grind them up, and then sprinkle them over milk and drink it. Each man is thought to have numerous wives, and the women are shared in common among them, following a custom much like that of the Massagetae: whenever a man plants his staff before a tent, they come together. It is the custom, at the first marriage of a Nasamonian man, for the bride on the first night
to pass through all the guests in turn, having intercourse with each; and each one, as he has intercourse with her, gives her whatever gift he happens to have brought from his house. This is how they take oaths and divine the future: touching the tombs of those among them reputed to have been the most just and finest men, they swear by them; and they practice divination by going to the tombs of their ancestors, and after praying they lie down to sleep upon them; whatever
they see in a dream, that is what they act upon. To seal a pledge of good faith, they use this method: each gives the other something to drink poured from his own hand, and drinks likewise from the other's hand; should no liquid be available, they scoop up dust from the ground instead and lick it. Bordering the Nasamones are the Psylli. These came to a complete end in this manner: a wind out of the south dried up
the reservoirs of water, and their entire land, lying within the Syrtis, became waterless. They, taking counsel together, marched out against the south wind (I tell this as the Libyans tell it), and when they came into the sand, the south wind blew and buried them. With these destroyed, the Nasamones now hold their land. Above these, toward the south wind, in the
land full of wild beasts, dwell the Garamantes, who avoid every man and all human company, and own no weapon meant for war, and have no notion of how to defend themselves. These, then, dwell above the Nasamones; along the sea, to the west, come the Macae, who shave their heads in a peculiar fashion, letting the middle of the hair grow long while shaving it close on either side; and for
war they carry as shields the skins of ostriches. Through their land flows the river Cinyps, running down to the sea from a rise known as the Hill of the Graces. This Hill of the Graces is thickly wooded, whereas the rest of Libya described above is bare; from the sea to it is two hundred stadia. Next to these Macae come the Gindanes, whose women each wear many leather anklets,
as is said, for the following reason: for each man she has had intercourse with, she ties on an anklet; and the woman with the most anklets is judged the finest, since more men than any other have desired her. On a headland projecting into the sea from the territory of these Gindanes dwell the Lotus-eaters, who live on the fruit of the lotus alone. The fruit of the lotus is about the size
of the mastic-tree's fruit, and in sweetness it resembles the fruit of the date palm. The Lotus-eaters also make wine from this fruit. Next to the Lotus-eaters, along the sea, come the Machlyes, who also use the lotus, though less than those mentioned before; they extend down to a great river called the Triton, which flows into a great lake, the Tritonis.
In this lake there is an island called Phla. It is said that there was an oracle for the Lacedaemonians to colonize this island. There is also this other story told: that Jason, when the Argo had been built for him under Mount Pelion, and he had put aboard it, along with another hecatomb, a bronze tripod, sailed around the Peloponnese, wishing to reach Delphi. And as he was sailing, when he came off
Cape Malea, a north wind caught him and carried him off toward Libya; and before he sighted land, he found himself among the shallows of Lake Tritonis. And while he was at a loss how to find his way out, the story goes that Triton appeared and asked Jason for the tripod in return, promising to reveal the way through and send them off unharmed. Jason agreeing,
Triton then showed them the channel through the shallows and placed the tripod within his own shrine, and having pronounced a prophecy over the tripod, he declared to those with Jason the whole matter: that whenever one of the descendants of those who had sailed together on the Argo should carry off the tripod, then it would be an absolute necessity for a hundred Greek cities to be built around Lake Tritonis. Hearing this, the local people
of the Libyans, to hide the tripod. Among these the Auseans live along with the Machlyes; both these peoples and the Machlyes dwell around Lake Tritonis, with the Triton river as their boundary. The Machlyes grow their hair long behind, while the Auseans wear it long in front. At the yearly festival of Athena their maidens divide into two groups and fight one another with stones and sticks,
saying that in doing so they are performing the rites of their ancestral goddess, whom we call Athena. Any maidens who die of their wounds they call false maidens. Before they let the girls fight, they do the following together: the maiden judged most beautiful on each occasion is dressed in a Corinthian helmet and full Greek armor, set up on a chariot, and led around the lake in a circle. In earlier times, before Greeks came to settle among them, I cannot say how they used to dress
the maidens, but I suppose they were dressed in Egyptian armor, for I hold that both the shield and the helmet reached the Greeks from Egypt. As for Athena, they say she is the daughter of Poseidon and of Lake Tritonis, and that, having some grievance against her father, she gave herself to Zeus, who then
made her his own daughter. This is what they say. As for marriage, they hold women in common, neither living in pairs nor forming settled unions, but coupling like herd animals. When a woman's child has grown sturdy, the men gather together in the third month, and whichever man the child resembles is reckoned as its father. These, then, are the coastal nomadic Libyans I have described; above them, further
inland, lies the wild-beast country of Libya, and beyond that wild region a ridge of sand stretches from Egyptian Thebes to the Pillars of Heracles. Along this ridge, roughly every ten days' journey, one finds lumps of salt in great chunks, heaped in mounds, and at the top of each mound cold, sweet water spurts up from the middle of the salt; and around
it live people at the edge of the desert, beyond the wild-beast region — first, ten days' journey from Thebes, the Ammonians, who have their sanctuary derived from the Zeus of Thebes; for indeed the statue of Zeus at Thebes, as I have said before, has a ram's face. They also happen to have another spring of water, which at dawn is
lukewarm, grows colder as the marketplace fills, and by midday is very cold indeed; at that time they water their gardens with it. As the day declines it loses its coldness, until at sunset the water becomes lukewarm again. As it moves further toward the hot, it approaches boiling around midnight, at which point it bubbles up in surges; then midnight passes
and it cools again until dawn. This spring is called the Spring of the Sun. After the Ammonians, another ten days' journey further along the sandy ridge, there is a salt mound like the one at Ammon, with water as well, and people living around it; the name of this place is Augila. It is to this place that the Nasamones go
to gather dates in season. From Augila, another ten days' journey away, there is yet another salt mound with water and many fruit-bearing date palms, just as at the other places; and people live there whose name is the Garamantes, a very powerful people, who spread earth over the salt and so plant their crops in it. The shortest route to the Lotus-eaters is thirty days' journey from
them. Among these people are also found the backward-grazing cattle; they are called backward-grazing for this reason: their horns curve forward, and because of this they walk backward as they graze, since they cannot move forward while their horns are jabbing into the ground ahead of them. Apart from this trait, and the thick, tough hide they carry, nothing else sets them apart from ordinary cattle.
These Garamantes chase down the cave-dwelling Ethiopians using chariots drawn by four horses; for among all the men we have reports of, none run faster than these cave-dwelling Ethiopians. The cave-dwellers eat snakes and lizards and other such creeping things, and their language resembles no other, but is a kind of squeaking like that of bats. Beyond the
Garamantes, another ten days' journey away, there is yet another salt mound and water, and people living around it whose name is the Atarantes, who alone of all men we know are without individual names. For as a group they are called Atarantes, but no single name is assigned to any one of them. They curse the sun as it rises overhead, and besides this they heap on it every kind of abuse,
because, they say, it scorches and destroys them, both themselves and their land. Then, another ten days' journey further, there is another salt mound and water, with people living around it. Adjoining this salt deposit is a mountain called Atlas, which is narrow and perfectly conical in shape, and so high, it is said, that
its peaks cannot be seen — for clouds never leave them, neither in summer nor in winter. The local people say this is the pillar of heaven. It is after this mountain that these people take their name, for they are called the Atlantes. It is said that they eat nothing that has life in it, and that they see no dreams. As far as these Atlantes, I am able to list the names of the peoples
settled along the ridge, but beyond them I can no longer do so. The ridge stretches all the way to the Pillars of Heracles and beyond. There is a salt mine within it, ten days' journey further on, with people living there. The houses of all these people are built out of blocks of salt, since
this part of Libya gets no rain at all — for the walls, being made of salt, could not stand if it rained. The salt quarried there is of two kinds, white and purple. Beyond this ridge, to the south and toward the interior of Libya, the land is desert, waterless, without animals, without rain, and without trees, and there is no moisture in it at all. So it is, then, that as far as Lake Tritonis,
going from Egypt, the Libyans are nomads who eat meat and drink milk; they do not touch the flesh of cows, just as the Egyptians do not, and they do not keep pigs. Even the women of Cyrene do not think it right to eat the flesh of cows, on account of the Egyptian Isis, and they observe fasts and festivals in her honor. The women of Barca, meanwhile, refrain from eating pork as well as beef.
Such, then, is the state of things there. West of Lake Tritonis, the Libyans are no longer nomads, nor do they follow the same customs, nor do they treat their children as the nomads are accustomed to do. Whether every nomadic Libyan follows this practice is something I am unable to state with certainty, though a good number of them do the following: when a child
of theirs reaches the age of four, they burn the veins at the crown of its head with a tuft of sheep's wool — some of them burn the veins at the temples instead — so that for the rest of its life no phlegm running down from the head may harm it. And because of this, they say, they are the healthiest of people; indeed the Libyans truly are the healthiest of all men we know, whether
it is because of this practice I cannot say for certain, but healthiest they are. And if the children suffer convulsions while being burned, they have found a remedy for this too: they sprinkle them with the urine of a he-goat, and by this cure them. What follows is simply what the Libyans themselves report. The nomads' sacrifices are as follows: when they have cut a piece from the ear of the animal, they throw it over the roof of the house, and once this is done, they wring its neck
back. The sun and the moon alone receive their sacrifices. All Libyans sacrifice to these, but those who live around Lake Tritonis sacrifice chiefly to Athena, and after her to Triton and Poseidon. As for the dress and the aegis of the statues of Athena, the Greeks took these from the Libyan women; except that the Libyan women's dress is of leather and the tassels hanging from their aegis are not snakes but thongs,
in all other respects the dress is fashioned in the same way. And indeed the very name testifies that the costume of the images of Pallas comes from Libya; for the Libyan women wear bare goatskins about their dress, fringed and dyed red with madder, and it is from these goatskins that the Greeks derived the name 'aegis.'
It seems to me, too, that the ritual cry raised in sacred rites first arose there, for the Libyan women use it very skillfully and often. The Greeks also learned from the Libyans how to yoke four horses together. The nomads bury their dead as the Greeks do, except for the Nasamones; these bury their dead sitting up, taking care, as the person is about to breathe their last, to sit them upright so that they do not die lying flat on their back.
Their dwellings are woven together out of asphodel stalks bound around reeds, and these are portable. That is the way of life these people keep to. West of the Triton river, next to the Auseans, are Libyans who are already farmers and who are accustomed to owning houses; their name is the Maxyes. These grow the hair long on the right side of the head and shave it away on the left, and they smear their bodies with red ochre. They say
that they are descended from the men of Troy. This land, and the rest of Libya toward the west, is far more full of wild beasts and more thickly wooded than the land of the nomads. For the eastern part of Libya, which the nomads inhabit, is low-lying and sandy as far as the Triton river, while the land beyond
West of this region, the land of the plowing peoples is very mountainous, thickly wooded, and full of wild animals: for there are the huge snakes, and lions of that region, and elephants and bears and asps and donkeys with horns and the dog-headed creatures and the headless beings that have their eyes in their chests, as
the Libyans say they do — wild-natured men, wild-natured women, and a great number of other creatures too real to be mere invention. Among the nomads, however, none of these exist, but rather these: white-rumped antelopes, gazelles, hartebeest, and donkeys — not the horned kind but others that never drink water (for indeed they do not drink), and oryxes, whose horns the Phoenicians
make into the curved handles of lyres (this animal is the size of an ox), and jackal-foxes and hyenas and porcupines and wild rams and 'nets' and jackals and panthers and 'boryes,' and crocodiles on land about three cubits long, most similar to lizards, and ostriches that burrow in the ground, and small snakes, each having a single horn: these, then, are the animals found there, and those
that exist elsewhere too, except for deer and wild boar — for deer and wild boar do not exist in Libya at all. There are three kinds of mice there: some are called two-footed, others zegeries (this name is Libyan, and in the Greek tongue it means 'hills'), and others hedgehog-mice. There are also weasels living among the silphium plants
most similar to the Tartessian weasels. So many, then, are the animals that the land of the nomadic Libyans has, as far as we, through our inquiry, have been able to reach in our research. Next to the Maxyes of Libya come the Zauekes, among whom the women drive the chariots into war. Next to these come the Gyzantes, among whom bees produce a great deal of honey, and still more, it is said, is made by craftsmen.
All these people daub themselves with red ochre, and monkeys, plentiful in their mountains, form part of their diet. Near these, the Carthaginians say, lies an island called Cyraunis, two hundred stadia in length and narrow in width, reachable on foot from the mainland, full of olive trees and vines. There is a lake in it, from which the local maidens, using feathers
of birds smeared with pitch, bring up gold dust from the mud. Whether this is really true I do not know, but I write what is said. It could all be true, since I myself have seen, in Zacynthus, pitch being brought up from a lake and water. There are indeed several lakes there, and the largest of them is seventy feet across in every direction, and two fathoms deep.
Into this they let down a pole with a myrtle branch tied to its tip, and then they bring up pitch on the myrtle, having a smell like asphalt but otherwise better than Pierian pitch. They pour it into a pit dug near the lake, and when they have gathered a good amount, they then pour it from the pit into jars. Whatever falls into the lake
passes underground and reappears in the sea, which is about four stadia from the lake. So then, what is said about the island lying off Libya is also plausible in light of this truth. The Carthaginians also tell this story: beyond the Pillars of Heracles lies a region of Libya inhabited by people; that when they arrive among them and unload their cargo, having set it out
in a row along the shore, they board their ships and raise smoke. The local inhabitants notice the smoke, make their way down to the shore, and lay out gold as payment for the goods, and withdraw far back from the goods. The Carthaginians then disembark and inspect it, and if the gold seems to them a fair price for the goods, they take it and depart, but if it does not seem enough, they board
their ships again and sit there: the others then come and set down more gold, until they satisfy them. Neither side wrongs the other, for the Carthaginians do not touch the gold until it equals in value the worth of the goods, nor do the others touch the goods until the Carthaginians have taken the gold. These, then, make up the Libyan peoples that we can identify by name, and among these
most of them, neither now nor then, gave any thought at all to the king of the Medes. This much more I can say about this land: that four peoples inhabit it and no more than these, as far as we know, and two of these peoples are native and two are not — the Libyans and the Ethiopians are native, the former living in the northern part and the latter
in the southern part of Libya, while the Phoenicians and Greeks are settlers there. It seems to me that Libya has no fertility worth comparing to either Asia or Europe, except for the region of Cinyps alone: for that land bears the same name as its river. This land is like the best land for bringing forth the crop of Demeter, and it is nothing at all like the rest of
Libya. Its soil is black and fed by springs, suffering neither drought nor harm from excess rain — for rain does indeed fall in that part of Libya. The measures of the yield of its crop are the same as those established for the land of Babylon. Good land too is that which the people of Euesperides occupy: when it bears its very best, it yields a hundredfold, while the land in
Cinyps yields three hundredfold. The land of Cyrene also, being the highest part of this Libya which the nomads occupy, has three seasons within itself worthy of wonder. First, the crops near the coast come into season for reaping and harvesting; once these are gathered in, the crops of the middle region above the coastal lands come into season for harvesting — the region they call the 'hills'; this
middle crop having been gathered in, the crop in the highest part of the land also ripens and comes into season, with the result that the first crop is already consumed and gone before the last one comes in alongside it. Thus the harvest season occupies the Cyrenaeans for eight months. Let this much, then, be said on this subject. The Persian avengers of Pheretime, after they had been sent from Egypt by Aryandes and arrived at Barca,
laid siege to the city, demanding that they hand over those responsible for the murder of Arcesilaus; but since the whole population was implicated, they did not accept the terms. Then they besieged Barca for nine months, digging underground tunnels leading to the wall and making violent assaults. The tunnels were discovered by a bronze-smith by means of a bronze shield, having conceived the idea as follows: carrying
it around inside the wall, he pressed it against the ground of the city. Everywhere else it pressed against the ground it made no sound, but wherever there was digging underneath, the bronze of the shield rang out. Digging counter-tunnels at that point, the people of Barca killed the Persians who were tunneling there. This, then, is how it was discovered, and the assaults the Barcaeans beat back. When much time had been spent
and many had fallen on both sides, no fewer among the Persians, Amasis the commander of the infantry devised the following scheme. Realizing that the Barcaeans could not be taken by force but could be taken by trickery, he did this: by night he dug a wide trench and laid weak timbers across it, and over the timbers he laid down a covering of soil, so that the ground looked even with everything around it. At
daybreak he invited the Barcaeans to a parley, and they gladly agreed, until it was decided to make use of an agreement. The agreement they made was of this sort: cutting the oath over the hidden trench, that as long as this ground remained as it was, the oath would remain in force, and that the Barcaeans would agree to pay a tribute worthy to the king, and the Persians would do nothing else new against the Barcaeans.
After the oath, the Barcaeans, trusting in these terms, themselves came out of the city, and allowed any of the enemy who wished to enter within the wall, opening all the gates. But the Persians broke through the hidden bridge and ran inside the wall. They broke through the bridge they had made for this reason, so that they might keep faith with their oath, since they had sworn to the Barcaeans that the oath would remain
in force for as long as the ground remained as it then was: once they had broken it through, the oath no longer remained in force as it stood. Pheretime then, once the most guilty of the Barcaeans had been handed over to her by the Persians, had them impaled in a circle around the wall; their wives' breasts she cut off and fixed those around the wall as well, in a ring; the rest of the Barcaeans she ordered
the Persians to take as plunder, except for those who were of the house of Battus and were not implicated in the murder; to these Pheretime entrusted the city. The rest of the Barcaeans, then, the Persians enslaved and led away, and when they arrived before the city of Cyrene, the Cyrenaeans, in fear of some oracle, let them pass through the city. As the army was passing through, Badres,
the commander of the naval force, urged that they take the city, but Amasis, commander of the infantry, would not allow it, saying that they had been sent out against Barca alone, the only Greek city they were to attack; but once they had passed through and settled on the hill of Zeus Lycaeus, they regretted not having seized Cyrene, and they tried a second time to enter it; but the Cyrenaeans would not let them. Then, with no one fighting against the Persians,
fear fell upon them, and they fled some sixty stadia and made camp there; and while the army was encamped there, a messenger came from Aryandes recalling them. The Persians then asked the Cyrenaeans to give them provisions for the road, and having received these, they departed for Egypt. From there the Libyans took over, and for the sake of their clothing and gear killed those of them who lagged behind and straggled,
until they came to Egypt. This Persian army went farther into Libya than any other, as far as Euesperides. As for the Barcaeans they had enslaved, they carried them off from Egypt to the king, and King Darius gave them a village in Bactrian territory to settle in. They gave this village the name Barce, and it was still inhabited
in the land of Bactria down to my own time. As for Pheretime, she too did not finish out her life well. Once she had made her way back to Egypt from Libya after avenging herself on the Barcaeans, she died a horrible death: while still alive she seethed and swarmed with worms, since it seems that excessively severe vengeance taken by human beings provokes the resentment of the gods. Such, then, and so great was the vengeance that came from Pheretime, daughter of Battus,
upon the Barcaeans.

======== Histories — Book 5 (Terpsichore) ========

The Persians left behind in Europe by Darius, whom Megabazus commanded, first subdued the Perinthians of the Hellespont, who were unwilling to be subjects of Darius, though they had earlier been roughly handled by the Paeonians as well. For the Paeonians from the Strymon, on the god's instruction to campaign against the Perinthians, were told that if the Perinthians, encamped opposite them, should call out to them by name and challenge them, they were to attack; but if they were not called out to, they were not to attack. The Paeonians did just this.
When the Perinthians had encamped opposite them in the suburb, a threefold single combat arose there by challenge: man was matched against man, horse against horse, and dog against dog. The Perinthians won two of the three, and as they raised the paean in their joy, the Paeonians reckoned that this very thing was the fulfillment of the oracle, and said among themselves,
"Now surely the oracle is being fulfilled for us; now it is our work." So while the Perinthians were singing their paean, the Paeonians attacked them, and prevailed decisively, leaving few of them alive. That is how the earlier affair with the Paeonians came about. But now, when the Perinthians proved brave men in the cause of their freedom, the Persians and Megabazus prevailed by sheer numbers.
When Perinthus had been subdued, Megabazus marched his army through Thrace, bringing under the king's sway every city and every people settled in that region; for this had been enjoined upon him by Darius, to subdue Thrace. The Thracian people is the greatest of all mankind, after the Indians at least; and if it were ruled by one man, or were of one mind, it would be invincible and by far
the mightiest of all peoples, in my judgment. But since this is impossible for them and can never come about, they are for that reason weak. They have many names, each group according to its own region, but they all follow customs very much alike in every respect, except the Getae, the Trausi, and those settled above the Crestonaeans. Of these, what the Getae do, who claim to be immortal, has already been told
by me. The Trausi carry out all their other customs just as the rest of the Thracians do, but as regards one who is born and one who dies among them, they do this: when a child is born, the relatives sit around it and lament, reckoning up all the sufferings it must endure now that it has come into being, rehearsing every human woe; but when a man dies, they bury him in the earth with playfulness and rejoicing, saying that he is now rid of so many evils and is
in complete happiness. Those settled above the Crestonaeans do the following: each man has many wives; and whenever one of them dies, a great contest arises among the wives, with keen efforts on the part of their friends, over which of them was most loved by the husband; and whichever is judged and honored, praised by both men and women, is slaughtered over the grave by her nearest kinsman,
and having been slaughtered is buried together with her husband. The other wives count this a great misfortune, for it is reckoned the greatest disgrace to them. Among the rest of the Thracians the custom is this: they sell their children to be taken abroad. They do not guard their unmarried daughters, but let them have intercourse with whatever men they wish; their wives, however, they guard strictly, and they buy their wives from the parents
for great sums of money. To be tattooed is reckoned a mark of noble birth, and to be without tattoos a mark of low birth. To be idle is considered most honorable, and to work the land most dishonorable; to live by war and plunder is considered most honorable of all. These are their most notable customs. They worship only the following gods: Ares, Dionysus, and Artemis. But their kings, apart from the rest of the citizens, worship Hermes above all the gods,
and swear only by him, and say that they themselves are descended from Hermes. The burial customs for their wealthy men are these: they lay out the corpse for three days, and after slaughtering all sorts of victims they feast, having first mourned; then they bury the body, either burning it or otherwise hiding it in the earth, and after heaping up a mound they hold games of every kind, in which the greatest prizes are set for single combat, as is fitting. Such then
are the burial customs of the Thracians. As for the region north of this country, no one can say for certain what people inhabit it, but already beyond the Ister the land appears to be empty and boundless. The only people I can learn of dwelling beyond the Ister are those called Sigynnae, who wear Median dress; their horses
are said to be shaggy over their whole body to a depth of five fingers' breadth of hair, small, snub-nosed, and unable to carry men, but when yoked to chariots they are extremely swift; and it is for this reason that the local people drive chariots. Their borders reach close to the Enetoi who live on the Adriatic. They say they are colonists of the Medes. How they came to be colonists of the Medes
I myself cannot explain, but anything might happen in the long course of time. In any case, the people whom the Ligurians who live inland above Massalia call Sigynnae are what the Cyprians call peddlers, and spears are called sigynnae by the Cyprians. As the Thracians tell it, bees occupy the land beyond the Ister, and because of them it is impossible to travel further in that direction.
To me, however, those who say this seem to be saying something implausible, for those creatures are evidently unable to endure cold; rather it seems to me that the regions under the Bear are uninhabited because of the cold. This, then, is what is said about this country; but Megabazus made the coastal parts of it subject to the Persians. As for Darius, as soon as he had crossed the Hellespont and arrived at Sardis, he remembered the good service done him by Histiaeus of Miletus
and the advice of Coes of Mytilene, and summoning them to Sardis he offered each of them his choice of a reward. Histiaeus, since he was already tyrant of Miletus, did not ask for any tyranny at all, but asked for Myrcinus in the land of the Edonians, wishing to found a city there. This, then, is what he chose; but Coes, since he was not a tyrant but a private citizen, asked to become tyrant of Mytilene. When both
requests had been granted, each of them went off to pursue what he had chosen; but Darius, as it happened, came to see something that made him desire to instruct Megabazus to capture the Paeonians and forcibly remove them from Europe to Asia. There were two Paeonian men, Pigres and Mantyes, who, once Darius had crossed over into Asia, being themselves eager to become tyrants of the Paeonians, came to Sardis, bringing with them their sister, who was tall and beautiful. Having watched
for a time when Darius was seated in state in the suburb of the Lydians, they did the following: having adorned their sister as well as they could, they sent her for water, carrying a jar on her head, leading a horse by its bridle from her arm, and spinning flax as she went. When the woman passed by, it caught Darius's attention; for what the woman was doing was neither Persian nor Lydian custom, nor
anything like the customs of the peoples of Asia at all. Since it had caught his attention, he dispatched some of his spearmen with orders to observe how the woman would deal with the horse. So they followed along behind her, and when she reached the river, she watered the horse, and having watered it and filled the jar with water, she passed back along the same road, carrying the water on
her head, leading the horse by the bridle from her arm, and turning her spindle. Darius, marveling both at what he heard from his scouts and at what he saw himself, ordered her to be brought before him. When she was brought, her brothers were also present, having been watching from not far off. When Darius asked her what country she was from, the
young men said that they were Paeonians, and that she was their sister. He answered by asking who the Paeonians were as a people, and where in the world they lived, and what they wanted in coming to Sardis. Their reply was that they had come intending to hand themselves over to him, and that Paeonia was a land settled on the river Strymon, the Strymon not far from the Hellespont,
and that they were colonists of the Teucrians from Troy. This is what they told him, each point in turn, and he asked whether all the women there were such hard workers. They said that this was indeed eagerly so, for it was for this very reason that she had been made to do it. At this Darius wrote a letter to Megabazus, whom he had left as general in Thrace, instructing him to uproot
the Paeonians from their homes and bring them to him, both the people themselves and their children and wives. At once a horseman ran off carrying the message to the Hellespont, and having crossed over gave the letter to Megabazus. He, having read it and taking guides from Thrace, marched against Paeonia. When the Paeonians learned that the Persians were coming against them, they gathered together
and marched out toward the sea, expecting that the Persians would attempt to invade by that route. The Paeonians, then, were ready to check Megabazus's advancing army; but the Persians, learning that the Paeonians had assembled and were guarding the approach from the sea, took guides and turned onto the inland road instead, and without the Paeonians' knowledge fell upon their cities, which were empty of men; and falling upon them while empty
they took them easily. When the Paeonians learned that their cities were held, they at once scattered, each man going his own way, and gave themselves up to the Persians. Thus of the Paeonians the Siriopaeonians and the Paeoplae, and those as far as Lake Prasias, were uprooted from their homes and led away into Asia. But those around Mount Pangaeum, and Doberes, and the Agrianes, and the Odomanti, and Lake
Prasias itself were not at first subdued by Megabazus; he did, however, attempt to remove those settled on the lake in the following manner. Platforms fastened upon tall piles stand in the middle of the lake, with a single narrow approach from the mainland by one bridge. The piles that support the platforms were originally set up jointly by all the citizens in common, but afterward
They follow this custom in setting up their dwellings: bringing timber down from the mountain called Orbelos, each man who marries sets up three stakes for each wife he takes—and each man takes many wives. They live in this fashion: each holds his own hut on the platforms, where he lives, and there is a trapdoor through the platform leading down to the lake. They tie the little children
by the foot with a cord, fearing that they might roll down into the water. To their horses and pack animals they give fish as fodder, and fish are so abundant that when a man opens the trapdoor and lets down an empty basket on a rope into the lake, after waiting only a short time he draws it up full of fish. There are two kinds of these fish, which they call papraх and tilon. As for the Paeonians,
those who had been subdued were led away to Asia. Once Megabazus had subdued the Paeonians, he sent messengers to Macedonia—seven Persians ranking, after himself, as the most eminent men in the army. These were sent to Amyntas to demand earth and water for King Darius. There is a very direct route from Lake Prasias to Macedonia: first
there lies next to the lake the mine from which, later on, a talent of silver came in to Alexander every day, and beyond the mine, once one has crossed the mountain called Dysoron, one is in Macedonia. So when these Persians who had been sent arrived at Amyntas's court, they came into his presence and asked for earth and water on behalf of King Darius. And he gave these
and invited them to be his guests, and having prepared a magnificent dinner he received the Persians hospitably. When the meal was over, as they sat drinking, the Persians said this: "Macedonian host, it is our custom among the Persians, whenever we set out a great feast, then to bring in our concubines and wedded wives as well to sit beside us. You, then, since you have received us so eagerly and entertain us so lavishly, and since you give
earth and water to King Darius, follow our custom." Amyntas answered them thus: "Persians, that is not our custom here; among us men and women are kept apart. But since you, as our masters, request this, it shall be granted to you as well." Having said this much, Amyntas sent for the women, and when they came at his summons, they sat down in a row facing
the Persians. Then the Persians, seeing the beautiful women, said to Amyntas that what had been done was not wise at all: it would have been better from the start for the women not to come at all than to come and sit opposite them rather than beside them, a torment to their eyes. Amyntas, under compulsion, ordered the women to sit beside them; and when the women obeyed, the Persians at once began fondling their breasts, being rather far gone in wine, and
some of them even tried to kiss them. Amyntas, seeing this, held himself still, though he was distressed, for he was in great fear of the Persians. But Alexander, Amyntas's son, who stood by watching all this unfold, being young and untried by hardship, could no longer contain himself, and being sorely aggrieved said this to Amyntas: "Father, you should yield to your age
and go withdraw and rest, and not press yourself further with the drinking; I will remain here myself and provide everything needful for our guests." At this Amyntas, understanding that Alexander intended to do something rash, said, "My son, I understand from your heated words, since you are on fire, that you wish to send me away so as to do something rash. I ask you, then, not to act rashly against these men,
so that you do not ruin us, but bear with watching what is being done; as for my own departure, I will follow your advice on that." When Amyntas, having asked this, had gone away, Alexander said to the Persians, "Guests, as regards these women, you have full freedom to lie with all of them, or with as many of them as you wish. On this matter you yourselves may declare your pleasure. But now, since
the hour of retiring to bed is already approaching for you, and I see you are in a fine state from your drinking, allow these women, if it is agreeable to you, to go and bathe, and after bathing receive them back again." Having said this—for the Persians agreed—he sent the women out to the women's quarters, and Alexander himself dressed an equal number of beardless young men in the women's clothing, and giving them daggers
led them in, bringing them before the Persians and saying this: "Persians, it seems you have been feasted with a complete banquet: for everything else we had, and whatever else we could find and provide, all this is at your disposal, and above all this, the greatest thing of all, we lavish upon you our own mothers and sisters, so that you may fully learn that you are honored by us
as much as you deserve, and further that you may tell the king who sent you here how a Greek man, governor of the Macedonians, received you well both at table and in bed." Having said this, Alexander seated a Macedonian man beside each Persian man, in the guise, in word, of a woman; and these men, when the Persians tried to touch them, killed them. And so they perished by this fate, they
and their attendants as well; for there had followed them their carriages and servants and all their great equipage—all this together with all of them vanished. Not long afterward a great search for these men was mounted by the Persians, and Alexander suppressed it by cunning, giving much money and his own sister, whose name
was Gygaea; giving these, Alexander bought off Bubares, a Persian man, one of those searching for the lost men, on behalf of the general. Thus the death of these Persians was covered up and passed over in silence. That these men, the descendants of Perdiccas, are Greek, as they themselves say, I myself happen to know to be so, and I will indeed demonstrate in the following account that they are Greeks; and further,
the Hellenodicae who administer the contest at Olympia have also judged it to be so. For when Alexander chose to compete and came down for that very purpose, his prospective Greek rivals in the footrace sought to bar him, claiming the contest was open to Greeks only and not open to barbarians; but Alexander, when he proved that he was an Argive, was judged to be Greek, and competing in the stadion race he tied for first place. Such, then,
is how that came about. Megabazus, leading the Paeonians, arrived at the Hellespont; from there, having crossed over, he arrived at Sardis. Since Histiaeus of Miletus was already fortifying the place he had asked of Darius as a reward for guarding the bridge—the place being by the river Strymon, called Myrcinus—Megabazus, learning what Histiaeus was doing,
as soon as he arrived at Sardis leading the Paeonians, said this to Darius: "O king, what a thing you have done, in allowing a clever and capable Greek man to found a city in Thrace, where there is abundant timber for shipbuilding and many oars and silver mines, and where a great crowd, both Greek and non-Greek, dwells around, who, once they get a leader, will do
whatever he directs, day and night. You, then, must stop this man from doing these things, lest you become embroiled in a war at home; stop him by summoning him in some gentle manner. And once you have got hold of him, see to it that he never returns to the Greeks again." By saying this, Megabazus easily persuaded Darius, since it seemed he foresaw well what was going to happen. Then, sending a messenger to
Myrcinus, Darius said this: "Histiaeus, King Darius says this: as I reflect, I find that there is no man more well-disposed to me and to my affairs than you; and this I know not from words but from deeds I have witnessed. Now then, since I am planning to accomplish great undertakings, come to me by all means, so that I may lay these plans before you." Trusting these words, Histiaeus, and at the same time
making it a great thing to become the king's counselor, came to Sardis; and when he arrived, Darius said this to him: "Histiaeus, I summoned you for this reason. From the moment I returned from the Scythians and you passed out of my sight, I have sought nothing else so urgently in so short a time as to see you and to come to speech with you, knowing that of all possessions the most precious is
a friend who is wise and well-disposed, qualities which I know you possess in both respects and can attest to regarding my own affairs. Now then, since you have done well in coming, I propose this to you: leave Miletus and the newly founded city in Thrace, and follow me to Susa, where you shall have what I have, as my table companion and counselor."
Having said this, Darius, after appointing Artaphrenes, his own brother by the same father, to be governor of Sardis, drove away to Susa, taking Histiaeus with him, and having appointed Otanes to be general of the men along the coast. Otanes's father Sisamnes, who had been one of the royal judges, King Cambyses had put to death and flayed entirely, because he had given an unjust judgment for money; and having stripped off his skin, he cut it into strips
and stretched them over the seat on which Sisamnes used to sit in judgment. Having stretched it, Cambyses appointed as judge in place of Sisamnes, whom he had killed and flayed, the son of Sisamnes, instructing him to remember, when seated on that seat, what judgments he gave. This Otanes, then, who sat upon that seat, having now become Megabazus's successor in the command, took Byzantium and Chalcedon,
and took Antandros in the Troad, and took Lamponion; and having taken ships from the Lesbians, he took Lemnos and Imbros, both of which were still at that time inhabited by Pelasgians. The Lemnians fought well and, defending themselves, were worn down over time; and over the survivors of them the Persians set as governor Lycaretus, brother of Maeandrius, who had been king of Samos. This man
Lycaretus, the governor of Lemnos, died. This was the reason: he had been enslaving and subjugating everyone, accusing some of desertion from the campaign against the Scythians, and others of harming Darius' army as it made its way back from the Scythians. Such were his accomplishments as governor. Not long after, there was a lull in troubles, and then, for the second time, misfortunes began to arise for the Ionians, this time from Naxos and Miletus.
Naxos surpassed the other islands in prosperity, and at the same time Miletus itself, then at the very height of its own power, was the pride of Ionia. Yet in the two generations before this, Miletus had been afflicted by civil strife of the worst kind, until the Parians restored order there; for the Milesians chose the Parians, out of all the Greeks, as their arbitrators.
The Parians reconciled them in this way. When their best men arrived in Miletus and saw how terribly ruined the estates were, they said they wished to go through the countryside. As they did this, passing through the whole territory of Miletus, whenever they saw a well-cultivated field amid the devastated land, they wrote down the name of the field's owner.
After driving through the whole territory and finding only a few such men, as soon as they came down to the city they called an assembly and declared that these men, whose fields they had found well cultivated, should govern the city; for they said they believed these men would take care of public affairs just as they had cared for their own. As for the rest of the Milesians, who had previously been rioting, they ordered them to obey these men. Thus did the Parians restore order to Miletus.
It was from these cities that troubles now began to come upon Ionia in this way. Certain wealthy men were exiled from Naxos by the common people, and in their flight they came to Miletus. It happened that the guardian of Miletus at that time was Aristagoras son of Molpagoras, who was both son-in-law and cousin of Histiaeus son of Lysagoras, whom Darius was keeping at Susa; for Histiaeus was tyrant of Miletus,
and he happened to be in Susa at that time, when the Naxians, who had previously been guest-friends of Histiaeus, arrived. Coming to Miletus, the Naxians asked Aristagoras whether he might somehow supply them with a force so that they could return to their own land. He, reasoning that if they returned to their city through his agency he would rule Naxos, put forward as his pretext
his guest-friendship with Histiaeus, and made this proposal to them: "I myself am not able to supply you with a force great enough to bring you back against the will of the Naxians who now hold the city; for I hear that the Naxians have eight thousand shields and many long ships. But I will contrive something, using all diligence. Here is my plan. Artaphrenes happens to be a friend of mine, and Artaphrenes is son of Hystaspes
and brother of King Darius, and he commands all the peoples along the sea in Asia, with a large army and many ships. I think this man will do whatever we ask of him." Hearing this, the Naxians left it to Aristagoras to act as best he could, and told him to promise gifts and provisions for the army, which they themselves would repay, having great hopes
that once they appeared before Naxos, the Naxians would do everything they commanded, and likewise the other islanders too; for none of these Cycladic islands was yet under Darius. Arriving at Sardis, Aristagoras told Artaphrenes that Naxos was an island not great in size, but otherwise fair and
good, and near Ionia, and that it had much wealth and many slaves. "So lead an expedition against this land, restoring to it the exiles from it. If you do this, in the first place I have great sums of money ready for you, over and above what will be spent on the army—for it is only right that we who are leading the expedition should provide this—and in the second place you will win for the king islands,
Naxos itself and those that depend on it, Paros, Andros, and the others called the Cyclades. And setting out from there, you will easily attack Euboea, a large and prosperous island, no smaller than Cyprus and very easy to capture. A hundred ships would suffice to subdue all of these." Artaphrenes replied to him thus: "You are proposing an excellent course of action for the house of the king,
and all your advice is good, except for the number of ships. Instead of a hundred ships, two hundred will be ready for you by spring. But the king himself must also give his consent to these plans." When Aristagoras heard this, he was overjoyed and went back to Miletus. Artaphrenes, once he had sent to Susa and reported what Aristagoras had said,
and Darius himself had also given his consent, prepared two hundred triremes and a very great host of Persians and other allies, and appointed as their commander Megabates, a Persian of the Achaemenids, cousin to both himself and Darius—whose daughter, if the story is indeed true, Pausanias son of Cleombrotus the Lacedaemonian later married, having conceived a desire
to become tyrant of Greece. Having appointed Megabates as commander, Artaphrenes sent the army off to Aristagoras. Megabates took Aristagoras from Miletus, along with the Ionian force and the Naxians, and sailed, ostensibly for the Hellespont; but when he reached Chios, he put in with the fleet at Caucasa, so that from there he could cross to Naxos with a north wind. And since it was not fated
for the Naxians to be destroyed by this expedition, the following incident occurred. As Megabates was going around inspecting the watches on the ships, it happened that no one was standing guard on a Myndian ship. Enraged at this, he ordered his spearmen to find the commander of this ship, whose name was Scylax, and to bind him by passing him through an oar-hole of the ship in such a way that his head was outside and his body inside.
When Scylax had been bound in this way, someone reported to Aristagoras that Megabates had tied up his guest-friend the Myndian and was mistreating him. Aristagoras went and pleaded with the Persian on his behalf, but got nothing of what he asked for, so he went himself and released the man. When Megabates learned of this, he was greatly angered and grew furious with Aristagoras, who said to him, "What business is this of yours and these matters?
Did not Artaphrenes send you to obey me and to sail wherever I order? Why do you meddle in so much?" So spoke Aristagoras. Megabates, enraged by this, when night came, sent men by boat to Naxos to tell the Naxians everything that was in store for them. For the Naxians had not at all expected that this expedition was setting out against them. When, however,
they learned of it, they immediately brought in their possessions from the fields into the city wall, prepared food and drink as if to withstand a siege, and strengthened the wall. So they made ready as men expecting war to come upon them; and when the enemy had crossed over their ships from Chios to Naxos, they attacked a people already fortified, and besieged them for four months. When the money the Persians
had brought with them was used up, and Aristagoras himself had spent a great deal in addition, and the siege demanded still more, at that point they built forts for the Naxian exiles and withdrew to the mainland in bad shape. Aristagoras was unable to fulfill his promise to Artaphrenes; at the same time, he was pressed by the demand for repayment of the army's expenses, and he was afraid on account of the army's failure
and of having been slandered by Megabates, and he thought he would be deprived of the rule of Miletus. Fearing all these things, he began to plot a revolt; for it happened that at the same time the man with the tattooed head arrived from Susa from Histiaeus, signaling that it was time for Aristagoras to break away from the king's rule. Histiaeus, wishing to signal to Aristagoras to revolt, had no other safe way of doing so, since the roads were guarded, so he
shaved the head of his most trusted slave, tattooed it, and waited for the hair to grow back. As soon as it had grown back, he sent the man to Miletus with no other instructions except that, when he arrived in Miletus, he should tell Aristagoras to shave his hair and examine what was on his scalp. The tattoo marks signaled, as I have said before, revolt. Histiaeus did this because he considered
his detention at Susa a great misfortune; for he cherished strong hopes that, should an uprising break out, he would be sent down to the coast, but that if Miletus made no new move, he reckoned he would never return there again. With this in mind, then, Histiaeus sent off his messenger, and all these things happened to coincide for Aristagoras at the same time. So he took counsel with his partisans, revealing to them both
his own opinion and what had come from Histiaeus. All the others expressed the same view, urging revolt; but Hecataeus the logographer first advised against taking up war with the king of the Persians at all, listing all the nations Darius ruled over and his power. When he failed to persuade them, he then advised, as a second course, that they should make themselves masters
of the sea. He said he could see no way for this to come about otherwise, for he knew that the power of the Milesians was weak; but that if the treasures were taken down from the temple at Branchidae, which Croesus the Lydian had dedicated, he had great hopes they could gain mastery of the sea, and in this way they themselves would have the use of the money, and the enemy would not plunder it.
This treasure was great, as I have shown in the first of my accounts. This proposal did not prevail; nevertheless the decision for rebellion was taken, together with a plan that one of their number would voyage to Myus, where the expedition that had withdrawn from Naxos lay encamped, and there attempt to arrest the generals sailing aboard the ships. Iatragoras having been sent off for this very purpose
After Iobates' son had treacherously seized Oliatus of Mylasa, and Histiaeus son of Tymnes had seized Hermon of Termera, and Coes son of Erxander—the man on whom Darius had bestowed Mytilene—along with Aristagoras son of Heraclides of Cyme, and many others besides, Aristagoras now revolted openly, contriving everything against Darius. First he gave up the tyranny in name only and established equal rights under law at Miletus, so that the Milesians would join his revolt willingly. Then
he did the same thing in the rest of Ionia, driving out some of the tyrants; and those tyrants he had taken from the ships that had sailed together against Naxos he handed over to their own cities, wishing to win favor with them, giving each man back to whatever city he came from. As for Coes, the Mytilenaeans, as soon as they got hold of him, took him out and stoned him to death; the people of Cyme, however, let their own man
go free, and most of the others released theirs as well. So the removal of the tyrants took place throughout the cities. And when Aristagoras of Miletus had put down the tyrants, he ordered that generals be appointed in each of the cities, and then he himself set out as an envoy by trireme to Lacedaemon; for he needed to find some great ally. Now at Sparta, Anaxandrides son of Leon was no longer
alive to be king, for he had died, and Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides held the kingship—not because of any merit, but by right of birth. Anaxandrides, in fact, had married his own sister's daughter, and though she was dear to him, they had no children. Since this was the state of affairs, the ephors summoned him and said, "If you yourself will not look out for your own interest, we cannot allow this to go unwatched—that the line
of Eurysthenes should die out. You now have a wife, but since she bears you no children, divorce her and marry another; if you do this you will please the Spartans." He answered that he would do neither of these things, and that they were not giving him good advice in urging him to send away the wife he had, who was blameless toward him, and take another in her place; he would not obey them. In response to this the ephors and
the elders took counsel and put the following proposal to Anaxandrides. "Since we see that you cling to the wife you have, then do as we say and do not oppose us, lest the Spartans decide on some other course concerning you. We are not asking you to send away the wife you have; keep giving her everything you now provide, and in addition to her bring in another wife who can bear children."
Speaking to him in this way, they persuaded him, and afterward he kept two wives and maintained two separate households, doing nothing that was customary for a Spartan. Not much time passed before the wife who had come to him later bore this Cleomenes. And she thereby produced an heir to the kingship for the Spartans, while the earlier wife, who had been childless all that time, then somehow became pregnant, as it happened by coincidence. Now while she was
truly pregnant, the relatives of the second wife, on learning of it, made trouble, saying she was boasting falsely and wanted to substitute a child. And since they made such an uproar, and the time was drawing near, the ephors, out of distrust, sat around the woman and watched her give birth. She, once she had borne Dorieus, immediately conceived Leonidas, and right after him immediately conceived Cleombrotus; though some say that Cleombrotus and Leonidas were twins.
The woman who bore Cleomenes, the second wife who had come to him, was the daughter of Prinetadas son of Demarmenus, and she did not bear a second child. Now Cleomenes, as is said, was not sound of mind, in fact quite mad, whereas Dorieus was first among all his peers in age, and he was well aware that he himself would hold the kingship by his own merit. Being of this mind, then, when Anaxandrides
died and the Lacedaemonians, following their custom, established the eldest, Cleomenes, as king, Dorieus, taking this hard and not thinking it right to be ruled by Cleomenes, asked for a body of people and led them out as a colony, without consulting the oracle at Delphi as to what land he should go found, and without doing any of the customary things. Bearing this heavily, he sent his ships off to Libya;
and men of Thera guided him there. On arriving in Libya he settled the finest region of the Libyans, beside the river Cinyps. But driven out from there in the third year by the Macae, a Libyan people, and by the Carthaginians, he came to the Peloponnese. There Antichares, a man of Eleon, advised him, on the basis of the oracles of Laius, to found Heraclea in Sicily, saying that the whole territory of Eryx belonged to the Heraclidae, since Heracles himself
had acquired it. On hearing this he went to Delphi to consult the oracle, whether he would take the land to which he was setting out; and the Pythia declared that he would take it. So Dorieus took up the same expedition he had led to Libya, and sailed along the coast of Italy. At that time, as the people of Sybaris say, they themselves together with Telys their king were
about to march against Croton, and the Crotonians, becoming very afraid, begged Dorieus to help them, and got what they asked; Dorieus, they say, joined the campaign against Sybaris and helped to take it. This is what the Sybarites say Dorieus and his men did, but the Crotonians say that no foreigner joined their side in the war against Sybaris except Callias the Iamid, a seer from Elis, and him alone,
and even him in the following way: he had fled to them from Telys, tyrant of the Sybarites, because when he sacrificed against Croton the omens did not turn out favorable. This is what these people say. Each side offers proof of its claims: the Sybarites point to a sacred precinct and temple beside the dry Crathis, which they say Dorieus, after taking the city, established for Athena with the epithet Crathia; and this,
they say, is the greatest proof—the death of Dorieus himself—for they say he perished because he did what was contrary to the oracle's instructions; for if he had done nothing beside what he was sent to do, he would have taken the territory of Eryx and, having taken it, held it, and neither he nor his army would have perished. The Crotonians, for their part, point out that Callias of Elis was given choice lands in Crotoniate territory,
much of it, which even down to my time Callias' descendants still hold, while Dorieus and his descendants got nothing. Yet if Dorieus had actually taken part in the Sybarite war, far more would have been given to him than to Callias. These, then, are the proofs each side puts forward, and anyone may side with whichever party he finds convincing. Other Spartans also sailed with Dorieus as fellow founders—Thessalus,
Paraebates, Celees, and Euryleon; and when they arrived in Sicily with the whole expedition, they were defeated in battle and killed by the Phoenicians and the people of Egesta. Of the fellow founders, only Euryleon survived this disaster. Gathering together the survivors of the army, he took Minoa, the colony of the Selinuntians, and helped free the Selinuntians from their sole ruler Peithagoras; and afterward, once he had put an end to him,
he himself attempted to seize the tyranny of Selinus and ruled alone for a short time; for the Selinuntians rose up against him and killed him as he had taken refuge at the altar of Zeus of the marketplace. Dorieus was accompanied and died together with Philip son of Butacides, a man of Croton, who had become betrothed to the daughter of Telys the Sybarite and fled Croton; but cheated of the marriage, he sailed off to Cyrene, and setting out from there he had joined the expedition with his own trireme and
his own crew paid at his own expense, being an Olympic victor and the handsomest of the Greeks of his time. Because of his beauty he received from the people of Egesta an honor no one else received: they built a shrine over his tomb and propitiate him with sacrifices. Dorieus, then, met his end in this way; but if he had put up with being ruled by Cleomenes and had stayed in Sparta, he would have become king of Lacedaemon; for
Cleomenes did not rule for very long, but died without a son, leaving only a daughter whose name was Gorgo. Aristagoras, the tyrant of Miletus, arrived at Sparta while Cleomenes still held power; and he came before him for a conversation, as the Lacedaemonians say, carrying a bronze tablet on which was engraved a map of the whole earth, with every sea and every river marked. Coming
before him for the conversation, Aristagoras spoke to him as follows: "Cleomenes, do not be surprised at my eagerness in coming here; for the matter at hand is this: it is a disgrace, and the greatest source of grief, that the sons of the Ionians are slaves rather than free—grief for us most of all, but also, beyond that, for you, insofar as you stand at the head of Greece. Now then, in the name of the gods of the Greeks, rescue
the Ionians, men of your own blood, from slavery. This is a thing easy for you to accomplish, for the barbarians are not valiant in war, while you have brought your skill in warfare to the highest pitch of excellence; and their manner of fighting is this: bow and short spear. Into battle they go clad in trousers, with felt caps on their heads. So they are easy to conquer.
Moreover, the people who inhabit that continent possess good things such as no other peoples together possess, beginning with gold, and then silver and bronze and embroidered clothing and pack animals and slaves; all these you could have for yourselves, if you wished. They are settled next to one another as I shall show you: here, next to these Ionians, are the Lydians, who inhabit a good land and are very rich in silver." As he said
this he pointed to the world map that he had brought along, engraved on the tablet. "Next to the Lydians," Aristagoras went on, "come the Phrygians here, to the east, who have more flocks than any people I know, along with crops richer than anyone else's. Bordering the Phrygians are the Cappadocians, whom we call Syrians. Bordering these are the Cilicians, reaching down to this sea here, in which lies this island of Cyprus;
they pay the King five hundred talents as their yearly tribute. Next to these Cilicians come these Armenians here, who likewise have many flocks, and next to the Armenians the Matieni, who hold this land here. Next to these comes this land, Cissia, in which, beside this river here, the Choaspes, lies Susa itself, the place where the Great King keeps his court, and where the treasuries of his wealth
That is where they live. Once you have taken this city you can confidently vie with Zeus himself for wealth. But is it really necessary that for the sake of a small and not very good stretch of land, and narrow borders, you should keep putting off battles against the Messenians, who are your equals in strength, and against the Arcadians and Argives, none of whom have anything to do with gold or silver, for which some men are driven by
eagerness to die fighting—when it is open to you to rule all of Asia with ease, will you choose something else instead?" So spoke Aristagoras, and Cleomenes answered him thus: "My Milesian guest-friend, I put off my answer to you until the third day." At that point they took the matter that far. But when the appointed day for the answer came and they met at the agreed place, Cleomenes asked Aristagoras how many days'
long the road ran from the Ionian coast up to the King. Now Aristagoras, clever as he was in other respects and skilled at deceiving that man, slipped up here: for since he wanted to lead the Spartiates out into Asia, he ought not to have told the truth, but he did tell it, saying that the journey inland was three months. Cleomenes seized on the rest of what Aristagoras was setting out to say
about the road, and said: "My Milesian guest-friend, be gone from Sparta before the sun sets. You are proposing nothing agreeable to the Lacedaemonians, wanting to lead them a three-months' journey from the sea." Having said this Cleomenes went off to his house, and Aristagoras took an olive branch as a suppliant and went to Cleomenes' house; entering as a suppliant he asked to be heard, and asked Cleomenes to send away
the child—for Cleomenes' daughter was standing beside him, whose name was Gorgo; she happened to be his only child, about eight or nine years old. Cleomenes told him to say what he wanted and not to hold back on the child's account. Then Aristagoras began by promising ten talents if Cleomenes would grant what he asked. When Cleomenes refused,
Aristagoras kept raising the sum, until he had promised fifty talents, at which point the child cried out, "Father, this stranger will corrupt you, if you don't get up and leave." Cleomenes, pleased at the child's advice, went into another room, and Aristagoras left Sparta altogether, and had no further opportunity to explain anything more
about the journey up to the King. The matter of this road stands as follows: everywhere along it there are royal way-stations and excellent lodgings, and the whole road runs through inhabited and safe country. Through Lydia and Phrygia there are twenty stations, and ninety-four and a half parasangs. Next after Phrygia comes the river Halys, at
which there are gates that one must absolutely pass through, and so cross the river, and there is a great garrison post there. Having crossed into Cappadocia and traveling through it as far as the borders of Cilicia, there are twenty-eight stations, and a hundred and four parasangs. On these borders you will pass through two sets of gates and past two garrison posts.
Once past these and making one's way through Cilicia, there are three stations, and fifteen and a half parasangs. The border of Cilicia and Armenia is a navigable river named the Euphrates. In Armenia there are fifteen stations with lodgings, and fifty-six and a half parasangs, with a garrison post among them. From this Armenia, crossing into
the land of Matiene, there are thirty-four stations, and a hundred and thirty-seven parasangs. Four navigable rivers flow through this land, which one must absolutely cross by ferry: the Tigris first of all, and after it two more, a second and a third, each bearing that same name, yet not the same river as one another nor fed from the same source. The first of these mentioned flows
from Armenia, and the second later one from the Matieni. The fourth of the rivers is called the Gyndes, which Cyrus once split into three hundred and sixty channels. Crossing from this land into the Cissian country, there are eleven stations, and forty-two and a half parasangs, as far as the river Choaspes, which is likewise navigable; on it stands the city of Susa. These
stations altogether number a hundred and eleven. Such is the count of lodging-stations for one traveling inland from Sardis up to Susa. Now supposing the royal road has been correctly measured in parasangs, and a parasang is worth thirty stades—as indeed it is—then from Sardis to the palace called Memnonian the distance is thirteen thousand five hundred stades, the parasangs being
four hundred and fifty. Traveling a hundred and fifty stades each day, the journey uses up exactly ninety days. So when the Milesian Aristagoras told Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian that the journey up to the King was three months, he spoke correctly. But if anyone wants a more precise figure still, I will give that too: for one must add to this
the road from Ephesus to Sardis. And I say that the total number of stades from the Greek sea to Susa (for that is what the city of Memnon is called) is fourteen thousand and forty; for from Ephesus to Sardis it is five hundred and forty stades, and so the three-month journey is lengthened by three days. Having been driven out of Sparta, Aristagoras went to Athens,
which had become free of its tyrants in the following way. After Hipparchus, son of Pisistratus and brother of the tyrant Hippias, had seen in a dream a vision that most vividly foretold his own fate, and was then killed by Aristogeiton and Harmodius, men of Gephyraean stock by origin, the Athenians were ruled as tyrants for four more years no less harshly but even more so than before. Now this was Hipparchus's dream: on the
night before the Panathenaea, Hipparchus dreamed that a tall and handsome man stood over him and spoke these riddling verses: "Endure, lion, enduring the unendurable with an enduring heart: no man who does wrong will go unpunished." As soon as day came, he openly consulted dream-interpreters about this; then, dismissing the vision, he sent out the procession, in which he met his death. As for the Gephyraeans, to whom
the killers of Hipparchus belonged, by their own account they originally came from Eretria, but as I find by inquiry, they were Phoenicians, among those who came with Cadmus to the land now called Boeotia, and they settled in the portion of that land allotted to them, the Tanagraean district. From there, the Argives first drove out the Cadmeans, and afterward the Boeotians in turn expelled these Gephyraeans
and turned toward Athens. The Athenians received them as citizens of their own on stated terms, imposing on them restrictions of many kinds not worth recounting. These Phoenicians who came with Cadmus, of whom the Gephyraeans were part, after settling in this land, introduced among the Greeks a number of skills, and in particular writing, which the Greeks did not have before, as it seems to me,
at first using the letters that all Phoenicians use; but as time passed, together with their language, they also changed the form of the letters. At that time the Greeks who lived around them in most of these regions were Ionians, who learned the letters through instruction from the Phoenicians and adopted them, changing their form slightly, and in using them called them, as was only right since the Phoenicians had brought them into
Greece, Phoenician letters. And the Ionians from ancient times call books "skins," because once, in a scarcity of papyrus, they used the skins of goats and sheep; and even in my own time many foreign peoples still write on such skins. I myself have also seen Cadmean letters at Thebes in Boeotia, inside the shrine of Apollo of Ismenus,
engraved on certain tripods, mostly similar to the Ionic letters. One of the tripods bears the inscription: "Amphitryon dedicated me from the spoils of the Teleboae." This would date to about the time of Laius, son of Labdacus, son of Polydorus, son of Cadmus. Another tripod says, in hexameter verse: "Scaeus the boxer, having won, dedicated me to far-shooting Apollo, a very beautiful offering." This Scaeus
would be the son of Hippocoon, if indeed it is he who made the dedication and not someone else bearing the same name as the son of Hippocoon, dating to about the time of Oedipus, son of Laius. A third tripod also says, in hexameter: "Laodamas, while sole ruler, himself dedicated this tripod to keen-sighted Apollo, a very beautiful offering." It was in the time of this Laodamas, son of Eteocles, as sole ruler, that the Cadmeans were driven out by the Argives and
turned toward the Encheleis. The Gephyraeans, who were left behind, were later driven out by the Boeotians and withdrew to Athens; and they have shrines established at Athens in which the rest of the Athenians have no share, being set apart from the other rites, among them in particular the shrine and mysteries of Achaean Demeter. So much then for the account of Hipparchus's dream and of where the Gephyraeans came from, to whom
the killers of Hipparchus belonged. Now I must go back and take up again the story I set out to tell at the start, of how the Athenians were freed from their tyrants. While Hippias was ruling as tyrant and growing embittered against the Athenians because of Hipparchus's death, the Alcmeonids, who were Athenians by birth and were in exile from the Pisistratids, when their attempt along with the other Athenian exiles to force their return by strength did not succeed, but met with great disaster
in their attempt to return and free Athens—after fortifying Lipsydrium above Paeonia—then the Alcmeonids, contriving every possible scheme against the Pisistratids, took a contract from the Amphictyons to build the temple at Delphi, the one now standing but which did not yet exist then. Being well supplied with money and men of repute from of old, they built the temple more beautiful than the design called for in other
Among other things, although they had contracted to build the temple of porous stone, they had its front finished in Parian marble instead. Now the Athenians say that these men, once established at Delphi, bribed the Pythia with money so that whenever Spartans came to consult the oracle, whether on a private errand or on public business, she would put before them the charge to free Athens. The Lacedaemonians, since the same prophecy kept coming to them again and again, sent
Anchimolius son of Aster, a man of good standing among the citizens, to drive the Pisistratids out of Athens with an army, even though the Pisistratids were their closest guest-friends; for they held the god's business to be of greater weight than the affairs of men. They sent these men by sea in ships. Anchimolius put in at Phalerum and disembarked his army there, but the Pisistratids, forewarned of this, sent to Thessaly for aid,
for an alliance had been made between them. The Thessalians, at their request, by common decision sent a thousand horsemen and their own king, Cineas, a man of Conium. When the Pisistratids had these allies, they devised the following plan: having cleared the plain of Phalerum and made that ground fit for cavalry, they let the horse loose upon the enemy camp. Falling upon it, the cavalry destroyed many others
of the Lacedaemonians, and Anchimolius among them; those of them who survived they penned up in their ships. So the first expedition from Lacedaemon ended in this way, and Anchimolius' grave is in Attica at Alopecae, near the Heracleum in Cynosarges. After this the Lacedaemonians sent out a larger expedition against Athens, appointing King Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides as commander of the army,
no longer sending it by sea but by land. When they invaded Attic territory, the Thessalian cavalry was the first to meet them, and before long it was routed, and more than forty of their men fell; the survivors made off at once, just as they were, straight for Thessaly. Cleomenes reached the city with the Athenians who favored liberty at his side, and there he laid siege to the tyrants, who were shut up
within the Pelasgian wall. And the Lacedaemonians would certainly not have driven out the Pisistratids at all, for they had no intention of making a blockade, and the Pisistratids were well supplied with food and drink, and after besieging them for a few days the Lacedaemonians would have gone back to Sparta. But as it happened, chance turned out badly for the one side and, as it happened, was an ally for the other: for the children
of the Pisistratids, being smuggled out of the country, were captured. When this happened, all their affairs were thrown into confusion, and they surrendered their children back on terms the Athenians wished, so as to leave Attica within five days. After this they withdrew to Sigeum on the Scamander, having ruled the Athenians for thirty-six years, and being themselves originally of Pylos
and of the line of Neleus, descended from the same stock as those around Codrus and Melanthus, who, though originally immigrants, became kings of the Athenians. In memory of this Hippocrates gave his son the same name, calling him Pisistratus after Pisistratus the son of Nestor. In this way the Athenians were rid of their tyrants. But before I tell of the notable things they did or suffered once freed,
before Ionia revolted from Darius and Aristagoras of Miletus came to Athens to ask for their help, I will first relate this. Athens, though great even before, once rid of her tyrants became still greater. In her two men held power: Cleisthenes, a man of the Alcmaeonid family, who is said to have persuaded the Pythia, and Isagoras son of Tisander, of a distinguished household, though
of his more distant origins I cannot speak; his kinsmen sacrifice to Zeus of Caria. These men contended for power, and Cleisthenes, being worsted, took the people into partnership with him. Then he changed the Athenians, who had been organized into four tribes, into ten, doing away with the names taken from the sons of Ion — Geleon, Aegicores, Argades, and Hoples — and finding instead the names of other local heroes, except for Ajax:
him, being a neighbor and ally, though a foreigner, he added. In this, it seems to me, this Cleisthenes was imitating his own mother's father, Cleisthenes the tyrant of Sicyon. For Cleisthenes of Sicyon, when at war with the Argives, first stopped the rhapsodes in Sicyon from competing in recitations of Homer's verses, because the Argives and Argos are celebrated in them throughout; and second, since there was, and still is, in the very
marketplace of the Sicyonians a shrine of Adrastus son of Talaus, Cleisthenes wished to expel him, an Argive, from the land. Going to Delphi, he asked the oracle whether he should expel Adrastus; and the Pythia answered him saying that Adrastus was king of the Sicyonians, but he himself was a stone-thrower. Since the god would not grant this, he went back and thought of a device by which Adrastus himself
would depart. When he thought he had found one, he sent to Thebes in Boeotia saying he wished to bring in Melanippus son of Astacus; and the Thebans gave him leave. Bringing in Melanippus, Cleisthenes assigned him a precinct within the very town hall, setting him up there in its most secure spot. Cleisthenes brought in Melanippus (for this too must be told) because
he was the bitterest enemy of Adrastus, since he had killed both Adrastus' brother Mecisteus and his son-in-law Tydeus. Once he had assigned him the precinct, he took away the sacrifices and festivals from Adrastus and gave them to Melanippus. Now the Sicyonians had been accustomed to honor Adrastus very greatly, for the land had been Polybus', and Adrastus was the son of Polybus' daughter, and Polybus, dying childless, gave
the rule to Adrastus. So among other honors the Sicyonians paid to Adrastus, they especially honored his sufferings with tragic choruses, honoring not Dionysus but Adrastus. Cleisthenes gave the choruses back to Dionysus and the rest of the worship to Melanippus. This is what he did concerning Adrastus. As for the tribes of the Dorians, so that they should not be
the same for the Sicyonians as for the Argives, he changed them to other names. There too he made the greatest mockery of the Sicyonians, for he named the tribes after a pig and a donkey, only changing the endings, except for his own tribe: that one he named after his own rule. These were called the Archelaoi, others the Hyatae, others the Oneatae, and others
the Choereatae. The Sicyonians used these names of the tribes both during Cleisthenes' rule and for sixty years after his death; but afterward, taking counsel together, they changed them to the Hylleis, the Pamphyli, and the Dymanatae, and added a fourth to these, named after Aegialeus son of Adrastus, calling it the Aegialeis. This is what Cleisthenes of Sicyon had done;
but the Athenian Cleisthenes, being the grandson of this man of Sicyon through his mother and bearing the same name after him, it seems to me that he too, looking down on the Ionians so that his people's tribes would not match those of the Ionians, imitated his namesake. For once he had won over the Athenian people, who had before been rejected, entirely to his own side, he renamed the tribes and made
them more numerous than before out of fewer: he made ten tribe-leaders instead of four, and likewise distributed the demes among the tribes in groups of ten; and having won the people over, he was far superior to his rivals. Isagoras, getting the worst of it in his turn, devised the following counter-move: he called in Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian, who had become his guest-friend since the siege of the Pisistratids; and Cleomenes was accused of
visiting Isagoras' wife. At first Cleomenes dispatched a herald to Athens who called for Cleisthenes to be cast out, and along with him a great number of other Athenians, whom he named as men under the curse; he sent this message on the instructions of Isagoras. For the Alcmaeonids and their partisans bore the guilt for that killing, while Isagoras himself had no part in it, nor did his friends. The
accursed men of the Athenians got their name in this way. There was Cylon, an Athenian and an Olympic victor; he aimed at tyranny, and gathering a company of men his own age, he attempted to seize the acropolis, but failing to gain control of it, he sat as a suppliant at the statue of the goddess. The presidents of the naucraries, who then governed Athens, made them rise on the promise of safety short of death; but the killing of them is charged to the Alcmaeonids.
This happened before the time of Pisistratus. When Cleomenes sent to demand the expulsion of Cleisthenes and the accursed, Cleisthenes himself withdrew quietly, but Cleomenes nonetheless came to Athens, not with a large force; and on arriving he drove out as accursed seven hundred Athenian households, which Isagoras had suggested to him. Having done this, he next attempted to dissolve the Council, putting the offices into the hands of three hundred partisans of
Isagoras. But when the Council resisted and refused to obey, Cleomenes and Isagoras and his partisans seized the acropolis. The rest of the Athenians, of one mind, laid siege to them for two days; on the third day, those of them who were Lacedaemonians left the country under truce. And the prophecy was fulfilled for Cleomenes.
For when he went up to the acropolis, intending to take possession of it, he went into the inner sanctuary of the goddess as if to address her; but before he could pass through the doors, the priestess rose from her seat and said, "Stranger of Lacedaemon, turn back and stay out of this shrine, for Dorians are not permitted to enter it." He said, "But woman, I am not
a Dorian, but an Achaean." Paying no heed at all to the omen, he made his attempt, and was then again driven out along with the Lacedaemonians; but the rest the Athenians bound and held for execution, among them Timesitheus the Delphian, whose feats of hand and daring I could relate at great length. These men, then, being bound, met their end. After this the Athenians, Cleisthenes
and the seven hundred households driven out by Cleomenes having been sent for and recalled, sent messengers to Sardis, wishing to make common cause with the Persians, since they knew that war had broken out between the Lacedaemonians and Cleomenes on one side and themselves on the other. When the messengers arrived at Sardis and said what they had been instructed to say, Artaphrenes son of Hystaspes, governor of Sardis, asked who these people were and where in the world they lived, that they wanted to become allies of the Persians; and having learned this,
the sum of what the messengers said on his behalf was this: if the Athenians gave King Darius earth and water, he would make an alliance with them, but if they did not, they were to leave. The messengers, taking it upon themselves, said they would give it, since they wanted the alliance to be made. On returning home they came under grave blame for this. Cleomenes, meanwhile, understanding that he had been badly insulted
in word and deed by the Athenians, gathered an army from the whole Peloponnese, without saying against whom he was gathering it, wanting both to punish the Athenian people and to set up Isagoras as tyrant, for Isagoras had come out with him from the acropolis. So Cleomenes invaded Eleusis with a great force, and the Boeotians, by prearrangement, seized Oenoe and Hysiae, the outlying villages of
Attica, while the Chalcidians for their part came in and ravaged parts of Attica. The Athenians, though caught between two fronts, decided to deal with the Boeotians and Chalcidians later, and drew up their arms against the Peloponnesians who were at Eleusis. But when the armies were about to join battle, the Corinthians were the first to reconsider among themselves that they were not acting justly, and they changed their minds and
withdrew, and after them Demaratus son of Ariston, who was likewise a king of the Spartans and had joined in leading out the army from Lacedaemon, though he had not before been at odds with Cleomenes. Because of this rift, Sparta established a rule barring both kings from accompanying the army together on campaign - for until then both had gone along together - and when one of them was excused from this, the other was to be left behind, and also
one of the sons of Tyndareus; for before this both of them too, being invoked as helpers, had gone along. So then at Eleusis, when the rest of the allies saw that the kings of the Lacedaemonians did not agree and that the Corinthians had abandoned their post, they too went off and departed, this being the fourth time the Dorians had come against Attica, twice invading in war and
twice for the good of the Athenian people: first when they also settled Megara - this expedition may rightly be called the one under Codrus, king of the Athenians; second and third when they came from Sparta to expel the sons of Pisistratus; and fourth, on this occasion, when Cleomenes led the Peloponnesians in and invaded Eleusis. Thus this was the fourth time the Dorians invaded Athens. When this expedition
broke up ingloriously, the Athenians, wanting to take revenge, first made a campaign against the Chalcidians. The Boeotians came to help the Chalcidians at the Euripus. Seeing the Boeotians, the Athenians decided to attack the Boeotians before the Chalcidians. They joined battle with the Boeotians and won decisively, killing very many and taking seven hundred of them alive. On this very same day
the Athenians crossed over to Euboea and engaged the Chalcidians too, and having defeated them as well, they left four thousand settlers on the land of the hippobotai. The hippobotai were what the wealthy men of the Chalcidians were called. As many of these as they took alive they kept in custody bound in fetters along with the Boeotian captives; but in time they released them, setting a ransom of two minae each. The fetters in which
they once were shackled they set hanging upon the acropolis, and the fetters still survived into my own time, hanging from the walls scorched by fire at the hands of the Mede, opposite the chamber that faces west. And they dedicated a tenth of the ransom money, making of it a bronze four-horse chariot; it stands on the left hand as one first enters the propylaea on the acropolis, and on it is inscribed
this: "Having subdued the peoples of the Boeotians and Chalcidians, the sons of the Athenians quenched their insolence in deeds of war, with chains of iron and darkness; from the ransom they set up these horses, a tenth part, for Pallas." So the Athenians grew in power. And it is clear, not in this one instance alone but everywhere, that equality of speech is a serious matter, if indeed the Athenians, while ruled by tyrants, were no better in war than any of
their neighbors, but once freed of tyrants became by far the foremost. This shows that while held down they were deliberately slack, working as for a master, but once liberated each man was eager to achieve for himself. So this is what the Athenians were doing. The Thebans, meanwhile, afterward sent to the god, wanting to take revenge on the Athenians. The Pythia said there was no vengeance to be had from their own resources, but told them to bring the matter before the assembly of many voices and to
ask help of those nearest them. When the envoys had left, they laid the oracle before an assembly. As they heard those present say to ask those nearest, the Thebans, on hearing this, said, "Do not the Tanagraeans and Coroneans and Thespians live nearest us? And these indeed always fight alongside us and eagerly share the burden of war with us. What need is there to ask them? Rather, perhaps
this is not what the oracle means." As they were pondering such things, someone who had understood said, "I think I grasp what the oracle wants to tell us. Asopus is said to have had daughters, Thebe and Aegina; since these are sisters, I think the god means that we should ask the Aeginetans to become our avengers." And since no better opinion appeared than this, they sent at once and asked
the Aeginetans, calling on them by the oracle to help them, as being their nearest kin. They, when asked for aid, said they would send along the Aeacidae with them. When the Thebans, trusting in the alliance of the Aeacidae, made an attempt and were roughly handled by the Athenians, the Thebans sent again and gave the Aeacidae back to them, but asked instead for the men themselves. The Aeginetans, elated by their great prosperity and recalling
an old enmity toward the Athenians, then, at the Thebans' request, waged an undeclared war on the Athenians: for while the Athenians were occupied with the Boeotians, the Aeginetans sailed with warships against Attica and sacked Phalerum and, along the rest of the coast, many villages, and by doing this did great harm to the Athenians. This enmity that the Aeginetans owed the Athenians from before had its origin as follows. For the Epidaurians their
land yielded no crop. Concerning this misfortune the Epidaurians consulted the oracle at Delphi; the Pythia bade them set up statues of Damia and Auxesia, and told them that things would go better for them if they did so. The Epidaurians then asked whether they should make the statues of bronze or of stone; the Pythia allowed neither of these, but said they should be made of the wood of the cultivated olive. So the Epidaurians asked
the Athenians to give them an olive tree to cut, considering the Athenian olives to be the most sacred. It is said, too, that at that time there were no olive trees anywhere else in the world except at Athens. The Athenians said they would give it on these terms: that the Epidaurians should bring yearly offerings to Athena Polias and to Erechtheus. The Epidaurians agreed to this and got what they asked for,
and having made statues from these olive trees they set them up; and their land bore crops, and they fulfilled toward the Athenians what they had agreed. Up to this time, and even before it, the Aeginetans were subject to the Epidaurians in other respects and also crossed over to Epidaurus for their lawsuits, giving and receiving judgment from one another there. But from this point on they built ships and,
acting willfully, revolted from the Epidaurians. Being now at odds with them, and being masters of the sea, they harassed them, and indeed they carried off these very statues of Damia and Auxesia from them, and brought them and set them up in their own territory, in the interior, in a place called Oea, about twenty stadia
from the city. Having set them up in this place, they propitiated them with sacrifices and with women's choruses full of mockery, ten men being appointed as chorus-leaders for each of the two deities; and the choruses spoke ill of no man, but only of the local women. The Epidaurians too had the same sacred rites; and they have secret rites as well. When these statues were stolen, the Epidaurians
stopped fulfilling toward the Athenians what they had agreed. The Athenians sent in anger to the Epidaurians; but they replied that they were doing no wrong: for as long as they had had the statues in their land, they had fulfilled what they had agreed, but now that the statues had been taken from them, it was no longer fair for them to keep paying, but they told the Athenians to demand payment from the Aeginetans who now held them. In response to this the Athenians sent to Aegina
and demanded the statues back; but the Aeginetans said they had no dealings whatsoever with the Athenians. The Athenians say that after this demand a single trireme was sent out carrying certain of their citizens, who, being sent on behalf of the state and arriving at Aegina, tried to tear these statues, as being made of their own wood, up out of their bases, so as to carry them off. Not being able
to overpower them in this way, they threw ropes around them and tried to drag the statues off, and as they were dragging them, a thunderclap occurred, and along with the thunderclap an earthquake; and the sailors of the trireme who were hauling on the ropes, affected by this, lost their senses, and in this state killed one another as though they were enemies, until at last only one was left of them all and he made his way back to Phalerum. This is how the Athenians say it happened, but the Aeginetans say the Athenians did not come in a single
ship: for a single ship, or a small number beyond that, they could have driven off without difficulty, even lacking ships of their own; but they say a great many ships sailed against their land, and that they themselves gave way and avoided a naval engagement. On this point they cannot say for certain whether it was because they recognized themselves inferior in a sea fight that they gave way on this account, or because they wished to do
something like what they in fact did. As for the Athenians, when no one came out to fight them, they say they disembarked from their ships and turned to the statues, and being unable to tear them up out of their bases, they thereupon threw ropes around them and dragged them, until, as they were being dragged, both statues did the same thing - though to me this seems incredible, even if to someone else it may not: for they fell upon their knees
to fall, and that ever since that time he had remained in this condition. That is what the Athenians say happened. But the Aeginetans say that when the Athenians learned that they were about to campaign against them, they made the Argives ready to help. So when the Athenians had landed on Aegina, the Argives came to their aid, having crossed over from Epidaurus to the island without being noticed, and before the Athenians had any warning
they fell upon them, cutting them off from their ships; and at that same moment there came a thunderclap and an earthquake upon them. This, then, is what is said by the Argives and the Aeginetans, and it is agreed even by the Athenians that only one of their men got back safely to Attica. Except that the Argives say it was because the Argives destroyed the Attic force that this one man
survived, while the Athenians say it was through divine action; yet not even this one man survived, they say, but perished in the following manner. Once he was brought back to Athens he reported the disaster; and when the wives of the men who had campaigned against Aegina learned of it, they were furious that he alone of all the men should have been saved, and surrounding the man they stabbed him with the pins of their garments, each of them asking him where
her own husband was. And so this man was killed in this way, and to the Athenians the deed of the women seemed to be a thing even more terrible than the disaster itself. Not having any other way to punish the women, they changed their dress to the Ionian style; for before this the women of Athens had worn Dorian dress, very similar to that of Corinth. So they changed it
to the linen tunic, so that they would have no need of pins. In truth, if one is speaking accurately, this dress was not originally Ionian but Carian, since all the ancient Greek dress for women was the same as what we now call Dorian. As for the Argives and the Aeginetans, in addition to this they also made it a law among
themselves in each case that their pins should be made half again as long as the measure then in use, and that women should dedicate pins above all else in the temple of these goddesses, and that nothing of Attic manufacture should be brought to the temple, not even pottery, but that henceforth it should be the custom there to drink from local vessels only. And so from that time to this day the women of Argos and Aegina, on account of this quarrel with
the Athenians, have worn pins larger than before. This was the beginning of the hostility toward the Aeginetans arising from the Athenians, as has been described. Now, when the Thebans made their appeal, remembering eagerly the affair of the statues, the Aeginetans came to the aid of the Boeotians. The Aeginetans ravaged the coastal parts of Attica, and when the Athenians set out to campaign against Aegina
an oracle came from Delphi telling them to hold off from retaliation against the Aeginetans' wrongdoing for thirty years, and in the thirty-first year, having dedicated a precinct to Aeacus, to begin the war against the Aeginetans, and things would go as they wished; but if they campaigned at once, they would suffer much and do much in the meantime, but in the end would subdue them. When the Athenians heard this report brought back,
they dedicated the precinct to Aeacus which now stands on the agora, but they could not endure hearing that they must wait thirty years, having suffered such outrageous treatment from the Aeginetans. But while they were preparing for revenge, a matter arising from the Lacedaemonians became an obstacle. For the Lacedaemonians, learning of the scheme devised by the Alcmaeonids against the Pythia, and what the Pythia had contrived against themselves
and the Pisistratids, felt it a double misfortune: that they had driven out men who were their guest-friends from that man's land, and that after doing this they received no gratitude from the Athenians. Moreover, beyond this, the oracles urged them on, declaring that many hostile things would come to them from the Athenians—oracles of which they had previously been ignorant, but which they had now learned in full, since Cleomenes had brought them to Sparta. Cleomenes had
acquired these oracles from the Athenian acropolis, which the Pisistratids had previously possessed, but had abandoned in the shrine when driven into exile, and Cleomenes recovered what had been left behind. So then, when the Lacedaemonians had recovered the oracles and saw the Athenians growing in power and by no means willing to obey them, they reasoned that the Attic people, if free,
would become a match for their own power, but that if held down under tyranny, it would be weak and ready to be ruled. Having grasped each of these points, they sent for Hippias son of Pisistratus from Sigeum on the Hellespont, where the Pisistratids had taken refuge. When Hippias came at their summons, the Spartans, having also summoned messengers from their other allies, spoke to them as follows: "Allied men, we acknowledge that we ourselves did not act rightly:
stirred up by counterfeit oracles, we drove out men who were our closest guest-friends and who had undertaken to deliver Athens into our hands—we drove them from their homeland, and then, having done this, we handed the city over to an ungrateful people, who, once freed through us and having lifted up its head, drove us out along with our king in the most insolent manner, and having grown a reputation, now increases in power, so that the neighboring peoples, above all the
Boeotians and Chalcidians, have learned this to their cost, and perhaps someone else too will learn it by making the same mistake. Since we erred in doing what we did, we shall now try, coming together with you, to take revenge upon them; for this very reason we have summoned this man Hippias, and you from your cities, so that with a common plan and a common expedition we may bring him into Athens and restore to him what we took away." So they spoke,
but the majority of the allies were unwilling to accept these words. Most of them kept silent, but Socles of Corinth spoke as follows. Socles, speaking as ambassador from Corinth, said these things, and Hippias answered him, calling upon the same gods as Socles had, saying that indeed the Corinthians of all people would most long for the Pisistratids, whenever their appointed days came for them to be vexed by the Athenians. Hippias answered in this way,
as one who knew the oracles most accurately of all men; but the rest of the allies, who up to that point had kept themselves quiet, once they heard Socles speak freely, each of them broke silence and took the side of the Corinthian's opinion, and they charged the Lacedaemonians solemnly to do nothing new against a Greek city. Thus this matter was stopped. And as Hippias was driven away from there,
Amyntas king of the Macedonians offered him Anthemus, and the Thessalians offered him Iolcus. But he chose neither of these, and withdrew instead back to Sigeum, which Pisistratus had taken by the spear from the Mytilenians, and having gained control of it had established as tyrant there his own bastard son Hegesistratus, born of an Argive woman, who did not hold without a fight what he had received from Pisistratus. For the Mytilenians and the Athenians made war for a long time,
the former setting out from the city of Achilleum and the latter from Sigeum, the Mytilenians demanding the return of the territory, while the Athenians neither conceded the point nor accepted it, arguing by reasoning that the Aeolians had no more claim to the territory of the Iliad than they themselves and all the other Greeks who had joined with Menelaus in avenging the abduction of Helen. As they made war, all sorts of other things happened in their battles, and in one of these
the poet Alcaeus, when a battle took place and the Athenians were winning, himself fled and escaped, but the Athenians took his arms and hung them up in the temple of Athena at Sigeum. Alcaeus composed a poem about this and sent it to Mytilene, announcing his own misfortune to his comrade Melanippus. Periander son of Cypselus reconciled the Mytilenians and the Athenians; for to him
they submitted the matter as arbiter. He reconciled them in this way: that each side should keep what it then held. Thus Sigeum came under the Athenians. Now when Hippias arrived in Asia from Lacedaemon, he set every wheel in motion, slandering the Athenians to Artaphrenes and doing everything he could so that Athens might come under his own power and that of Darius. Hippias was carrying out these plans, and the
Athenians, learning of this, sent messengers to Sardis, urging the Persians not to trust the Athenian exiles. Artaphrenes told them that, if they wished to be safe, they should take Hippias back. Now the Athenians would not accept these words as reported; and having refused them, they resolved to be openly at war with the Persians. It was while they held this view, having already fallen under suspicion with the Persians,
that at this very time Aristagoras of Miletus, having been driven out of Sparta by Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian, arrived at Athens; for this city held the greatest power of the rest. Coming before the assembly, Aristagoras said the same things he had said at Sparta about the good things to be found in Asia and about the war with Persia, how the Persians
had no use of shield or spear and would be easy to conquer. This is what he said, and in addition to this he also said that the Milesians were colonists of the Athenians, and that it was fitting that the Athenians, being powerful, should rescue them; and there was nothing he did not promise, in his great need, until he persuaded them. It seems that deceiving a crowd is simpler than deceiving one man, since
he was unable to deceive Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian alone, yet he managed to do this to thirty thousand Athenians. So the Athenians, persuaded, voted to send twenty ships to help the Ionians, appointing as their commander Melanthius, a citizen held in the highest regard in every respect. These ships were the beginning of troubles for both Greeks and barbarians. Aristagoras sailed on ahead and arrived at Miletus, and having devised
a plan from which no benefit at all was going to come to the Ionians—nor indeed did he do it for their sake, but only in order to trouble King Darius—he sent a man into Phrygia to the Paeonians, who had been taken captive by Megabazus from the river Strymon and were living in Phrygia in a district and village of their own. When this man arrived among the Paeonians, he said the following: "Men
"Paeonians, Aristagoras the tyrant of Miletus has sent me to advise you of a way to safety, if indeed you are willing to follow it. All Ionia has now revolted from the King, and it is open to you to save yourselves and return to your own land. As far as the sea, the matter is yours to manage; from there on it will be our concern." Hearing this, the Paeonians were very glad, and taking their children and wives
they fled toward the sea, though some of them stayed behind out of fear. When the Paeonians reached the sea, they crossed from there to Chios. While they were already on Chios, a large force of Persian cavalry had come on their heels, pursuing them. When it failed to overtake them, it sent word to Chios demanding that the Paeonians be sent back. But the Paeonians
would not agree to this; instead, the Chians carried them from Chios over to Lesbos, and from there the Lesbians took them on to Doriscus, from where they made their way on foot and arrived in Paeonia. As for Aristagoras, once twenty Athenian ships had reached him, bringing along five triremes of Eretrians, who campaigned not as a favor to the Athenians but to the Milesians themselves, repaying a debt they owed them—for the Milesians earlier
had shared with the Eretrians in the war against the Chalcidians, at the time when the Samians had come to the aid of the Chalcidians against the Eretrians and Milesians—once these allies had arrived along with the rest of the allied force, Aristagoras organized an expedition against Sardis. He himself did not join the campaign but remained in Miletus, appointing other men as commanders of the Milesians, his own brother Charopinus and, of
the citizens, another man, Hermophantus. Arriving with this expedition, the Ionians came to Ephesus, where they left their ships at Coressus in Ephesian territory, and themselves went up inland with a large force, taking the Ephesians as guides for the way. Traveling along the river Cayster, from there, once they had crossed Mount Tmolus, they arrived and took Sardis, with no one opposing them; they took everything except the acropolis, and the acropolis was defended
by Artaphrenes himself, who had no small force of men. What kept them from plundering the city once they had taken it was this. In Sardis most of the houses were built of reeds, and even those that were of brick had roofs of reed thatch; when one of the soldiers set fire to one of these, the fire spread at once from house to house across the whole city.
As the city burned, the Lydians and every Persian who was in it, cut off on every side as the fire consumed the outskirts and finding no way out of the city, gathered together in the marketplace and by the river Pactolus, which carries gold dust down from Tmolus and flows through the middle of the marketplace and then
empties into the river Hermus, and the Hermus into the sea; gathering along this Pactolus and in the marketplace, the Lydians and Persians were forced to defend themselves. When the Ionians saw some of the enemy resisting and others advancing against them in great numbers, they grew afraid and withdrew to the mountain called Tmolus, and from there, under cover of night, they made their way
back to their ships. And so Sardis was burned, and in it a temple of the native goddess Cybebe, which the Persians later used as their pretext for burning down the temples in Greece in return. At that time the Persians who held the territories on this side of the river Halys, hearing of these events, gathered together and came to the aid of the Lydians. And when they found that the Ionians were no longer at Sardis, they followed their track
and caught up with them at Ephesus. The Ionians drew up against them, but when battle was joined they were badly defeated. The Persians killed many of them, including men of note, among them Eualcides, commander of the Eretrians, who had won crowns in the games and had been much praised by Simonides of Ceos; those of them who escaped the battle scattered to their several cities. Such was the outcome
of that engagement. Afterward the Athenians abandoned the Ionians entirely; though Aristagoras appealed to them repeatedly through messengers, they refused to help them further. Deprived of Athenian alliance, the Ionians—since matters already stood as they did with regard to Darius—nonetheless prepared no less vigorously for the war against the King. Sailing to the Hellespont, they brought Byzantium and all the other cities in that region
under their own control, and having sailed out beyond the Hellespont they won over most of Caria as an ally as well; for Caunus too, which had earlier been unwilling to join the alliance, joined them after the burning of Sardis. The Cypriots all joined them of their own accord, except for the Amathusians; for they too had revolted from the Medes in this way. Onesilus, brother of Gorgus king of the Salaminians
and younger than he, was the son of Chersis, son of Siromus, son of Euelthon. This man had often before urged Gorgus to revolt from the King, and now, when he learned that the Ionians too had revolted, he pressed him all the more insistently; but when he could not persuade Gorgus, Onesilus and his own partisans watched for him to leave the city of the Salaminians and shut him out of the gates. Gorgus,
deprived of his city, fled to the Medes, and Onesilus took power in Salamis and tried to persuade all the Cypriots to join the revolt with him. He persuaded all the rest, but the Amathusians were unwilling to obey him, and so he laid siege to them, encamping before their city. Onesilus, then, was besieging Amathus. When word was brought to King Darius that Sardis had been taken and burned by the Athenians and Ionians, and that the man who had led the gathering that
had brought this about was Aristagoras of Miletus, it is said that at first, on learning this, he took no account of the Ionians at all, well knowing that they at least would not go unpunished for their revolt, but asked who the Athenians were; and having learned this, he called for his bow, took it, set an arrow to it, and shot it up toward the sky, and as he shot it into the air he said, "O Zeus,
grant that it fall to me to make the Athenians pay." Having said this, he ordered one of his attendants to say to him three times every time his dinner was set before him, "Master, remember the Athenians." Having given this order, he then summoned into his presence Histiaeus of Miletus, whom Darius had by now been keeping at his court for a long time, and said, "I hear, Histiaeus, that your deputy, to whom you entrusted Miletus, has done me a mischief. For men
whom he brought over from the other continent, and Ionians along with them who will pay me the penalty for what they have done—these he has persuaded to follow along with those others, and he has robbed me of Sardis. Now then, how does this seem to you to be a good thing? And how was any of this done without your own counsel? Take care that you do not later find yourself held to blame." To this Histiaeus replied, "King,
what a thing you have said, that I should have devised a plan from which any trouble, great or small, was likely to come upon you! What could I gain by seeking to do this, being in want of nothing? I have everything that you yourself have, and I am deemed worthy to be privy to all your counsels. But if my deputy is indeed doing anything such as you describe, be assured
that he has done it entirely on his own account. For my part, I do not even accept the report at all, that the Milesians and my deputy are stirring up any trouble against your affairs. But if indeed they are doing something of the kind, and you, O King, have heard of it as it truly is, then understand what a thing you have done in dragging me away from the sea. For it seems the Ionians, once I was out of their sight,
have done what they had long desired to do; whereas had I been in Ionia, no city would have stirred. Now then, send me as quickly as possible to Ionia, so that I may set all these matters right again for you and deliver into your hands this deputy of Miletus who has contrived all this. And when I have done this according to your wish, I swear by the gods of the King's house that I will not
take off the tunic I am wearing until I go down to Ionia and make Sardo, the greatest of islands, pay tribute to you." By saying this Histiaeus meant to deceive him, but Darius believed him and let him go, charging him, once he had fulfilled what he had promised, to come back to him at Susa. Meanwhile the report about Sardis was making its way up to the King, and while Darius,
dealt with the matter of the bow, was in conversation with Histiaeus, and Histiaeus, released by Darius, was making his way to the sea—during all this time the following was happening. As Onesilus of Salamis was besieging Amathus, word was brought to him that Artybius, a Persian, was expected to arrive in Cyprus bringing a large Persian force by ship; on learning this, Onesilus sent heralds through Ionia calling on them for help, and the Ionians
after brief deliberation came with a large fleet. The Ionians duly arrived in Cyprus, and the Persians, having crossed by ship from Cilicia, marched against Salamis by land, while the Phoenicians with their ships sailed around the headland of Cyprus called the Keys. This being so, the tyrants of Cyprus, calling together the commanders of the Ionians, said to them,
"Men of Ionia, we Cypriots give you the choice which of the two you wish to engage, the Persians or the Phoenicians. If you wish to be drawn up on land to try your strength against the Persians, now is the time to leave your ships and take up positions on land, while we board your ships to contend against the Phoenicians; but if you would rather try your strength against the Phoenicians, you must do
whichever of these you choose, so that, as far as it lies with you, both Ionia and Cyprus may be free." To this the Ionians replied, "It was the common council of the Ionians that sent us to guard the sea, not so that we should hand our ships over to the Cypriots and ourselves engage the Persians on land. We, then, will try to prove ourselves worthy in the position to which we were assigned; as for you, you must remember
"...what you suffered as slaves under the Medes, to become good men." This is how the Ionians answered them. Afterward, once the Persians had reached the plain of Salamis, the Cyprian kings arrayed their forces, arraying the rest of the Cyprians opposite the rest of the enemy's soldiers, but selecting the best of the Salaminians and Solians they arrayed them against the Persians; and against Artybius, the general of the Persians, Onesilus arrayed himself as a volunteer.
Artybius rode a horse trained to stand on its hind legs and attack a hoplite. Onesilus, learning of this—for he had a shield-bearer who was Carian by birth, very distinguished in war and otherwise full of spirit—said to him: "I hear that Artybius's horse rears up and strikes with both feet and mouth against whomever it is brought against. So consider and tell me at once which of the two
you wish to watch for and strike, the horse or Artybius himself." His attendant answered him thus: "My king, either task suits me, both together or just one, whatever you order I am ready for it; but I will tell you what seems to me more fitting to your position. I say that a king and a general ought to engage
a king and a general. For if you bring down the general, that is a great thing for you; and second, if he brings you down—may it not happen—being killed by a worthy man is half a misfortune; while it is fitting for us attendants to engage other attendants, and the horse as well. As for its tricks, have no fear at all; for I promise you it will never again rear up against any man." Having said this,
immediately the armies engaged, both by land and by sea. By sea the Ionians proved themselves supreme that day and overcame the Phoenicians, and among them the Samians distinguished themselves most; by land, when the armies met, they fell upon each other and fought. As for the two generals, this is what happened: as Artybius, mounted on his horse, bore down upon Onesilus, Onesilus, according to what he had agreed
with his shield-bearer, struck at Artybius himself as he came on; and when the horse set its feet upon Onesilus's shield, the Carian struck with his sickle and lopped off the horse's feet. So Artybius, the general of the Persians, fell there together with his horse. While the others too were fighting, Stesenor, who was tyrant of Curium, betrayed his side, having with him no small
force of men. These Curians are said to be colonists of the Argives. When the Curians had betrayed them, at once the war-chariots of the Salaminians did the same as the Curians had done. When this happened, the Persians got the upper hand over the Cyprians. When the army was routed, many others fell, and among them Onesilus son of Chersis, the man responsible for stirring up the Cyprian revolt, and
Aristocyprus son of Philocyprus, king of the Solians—this Philocyprus was praised in verse above all other tyrants by Solon the Athenian, during his visit to Cyprus. As for Onesilus, the Amathusians, because he had besieged them, cut off his head and carried it to Amathus and hung it up above the gates; and when the head, now hollow, had been hanging there, a swarm of bees entered it and filled it
with honeycomb. When this had happened, the Amathusians, since they consulted an oracle about the head, were told to take it down and bury it, and to sacrifice to Onesilus every year as to a hero, and that if they did this, things would go better for them. So the Amathusians did this down to my own time. As for the Ionians who had fought at sea off Cyprus, when they learned that Onesilus's cause had been destroyed and
that the cities of the Cyprians were all under siege except Salamis, and that the Salaminians had handed that one over to Gorgus, their former king, the Ionians, learning this at once, sailed away back to Ionia. Of the cities in Cyprus, the one that held out longest under siege was Soli; digging tunnels under the surrounding wall, the Persians captured it in its fifth month. So the Cyprians, having been free for one year,
were once again enslaved. Daurises, husband to one of Darius's daughters, along with Hymaees and Otanes, other Persian generals also married to daughters of Darius, pursued those of the Ionians who had marched against Sardis and drove them back onto their ships, and having thus prevailed in the battle, from then on they divided up the cities among themselves and sacked them. Daurises turned toward the cities on the Hellespont and took Dardanus; he took
Abydos too, and Percote, and Lampsacus, and Paesus. These he captured one on each day; but as he was marching from Paesus against the city of Parium, news came to him that the Carians, of the same mind as the Ionians, had revolted from the Persians. So he turned back from the Hellespont and led his army against Caria. Somehow this was reported to the Carians before Daurises arrived;
and when the Carians learned of it, they gathered at the place called the White Pillars, near the river Marsyas—a stream that rises in the region of Idrias and pours into the Maeander. When the Carians had assembled there, many plans were proposed, but the best one, in my opinion, was that of Pixodarus son of Mausolus, a man of Cindye, who had married the daughter of Syennesis, king of the Cilicians. This man's
proposal was that the Carians should cross the Maeander and fight with the river at their backs, so that the Carians, having no way to retreat, would be forced to stand their ground and thus become even braver than their nature. But this proposal did not prevail; instead they decided that the Maeander should be at the Persians' backs rather than their own, evidently so that if the Persians were put to flight
and defeated in the battle, they would not be able to escape home, but would fall into the river. Afterward, when the Persians had arrived and crossed the Maeander, there on the river Marsyas the Carians engaged the Persians and fought a fierce battle for a long time; but in the end they were defeated by sheer numbers. Of the Persians about two thousand men fell, of the Carians about ten thousand.
Those of them who escaped from there were driven together into Labraunda, into the sanctuary of Zeus Stratius, a great and holy grove of plane trees. The Carians are the only people we know of who offer sacrifices to Zeus Stratius. Having been driven together there, they deliberated about their safety, whether it would be better for them to surrender themselves to the Persians or to abandon Asia altogether. While they were deliberating
on this, the Milesians and their allies arrived to help them; then the Carians abandoned the plans they had been considering before, and instead prepared to make war again from the beginning. When the Persians advanced they engaged them, and in the fighting they were defeated even more badly than before; and of all who fell, the Milesians suffered the heaviest losses. After this defeat, however,
the Carians recovered and fought back. For learning that the Persians had set out to march against their cities, they set an ambush along the road near Pedasus, and the Persians, falling into it at night, were destroyed, both the soldiers themselves and their generals Daurises, Amorges, and Sisimaces; along with them died Myrsus son of Gyges as well. The leader of this ambush was Heraclides son of Ibanollis, a man of Mylasa. These
were the Persians destroyed in this way. As for Hymaees, he too had been among those pursuing the Ionians who had marched against Sardis, and turning toward the Propontis he took Cius in Mysia; and having taken this, when he learned that Daurises had abandoned the Hellespont to march on Caria, he in turn abandoned the Propontis, marched his army toward the Hellespont, and took all the Aeolians who occupy
the Troad, and he took the Gergithians, the remnant of the ancient Teucrians. But Hymaees himself, while capturing these peoples, died of disease in the Troad. Thus he met his end. Meanwhile Artaphrenes, the governor of Sardis, and Otanes, the third general, were appointed to make war against Ionia and the neighboring Aeolis. In Ionia they took Clazomenae, and among the Aeolians, Cyme. As the cities were being taken,
Aristagoras of Miletus proved, as it turned out, to be a man of no great spirit; for having thrown Ionia into turmoil and stirred up great troubles, he began, seeing how things stood, to plan flight; moreover it seemed to him impossible to overcome King Darius. In view of this, he called together his fellow conspirators and took counsel, saying it would be better for them to have some place of refuge ready, in case they should be driven out of
Miletus, whether he should lead them from there to Sardo to found a colony, or to Myrcinus of the Edonians, which Histiaeus had fortified after receiving it as a gift from Darius. This is what Aristagoras asked. Hecataeus son of Hegesander, a writer of accounts, advised that they should go to neither of these places, but should build a fortress on the island of Leros and remain quiet there, if
they were driven out of Miletus; and afterward, setting out from there, they could return to Miletus. This is what Hecataeus advised, but Aristagoras himself was most inclined to lead them off to Myrcinus. So he entrusted Miletus to Pythagoras, a man of good standing among the citizens, and he himself, taking with him whoever wished to go, sailed to Thrace, and took possession of the region for which
he had set out; but setting out from there, Aristagoras himself and his army were destroyed by the Thracians, while he was besieging a city, even though the Thracians were willing to come out under a truce.

======== Histories — Book 6 (Erato) ========

Aristagoras, having stirred Ionia into revolt, thus came to the end of his life. Meanwhile Histiaeus, tyrant of Miletus, now released by Darius, reached Sardis. Once he arrived there from Susa, Artaphrenes, governor of Sardis, pressed him to explain why, in his judgment, the Ionians had risen in rebellion. Histiaeus claimed ignorance and voiced surprise at the whole affair, acting as if he knew nothing of what was currently happening. But Artaphrenes, perceiving
that he was being deceitful, said, since he knew the truth about the revolt, "This is how it stands with these matters, Histiaeus: you stitched this shoe, and Aristagoras put it on." Artaphrenes said this with reference to the revolt. Histiaeus, frightened because Artaphrenes understood, fled to the sea the following night, having deceived King Darius; for he had undertaken to subdue Sardinia, the largest
island, and win it for him, but instead he set about slipping into the leadership of the Ionians' war against Darius. He crossed over to Chios, and was put in chains by the Chians, who suspected him of plotting new mischief against them on Darius's behalf. But when the Chians learned the whole story, that he was in fact an enemy of the king, they released him. Then, when he was asked by the Ionians why he had so eagerly written
to Aristagoras urging him to revolt from the king, and had thereby brought about so great an evil upon the Ionians, he did not reveal to them the true reason, but told them instead that King Darius had planned to remove the Phoenicians and settle them in Ionia, and settle the Ionians in Phoenicia, and that it was for this reason he had sent the letter. King Darius had planned no such thing at all, but by saying this he terrified the Ionians. After this
Histiaeus, using as messenger Hermippus, a man of Atarneus, sent letters to those Persians at Sardis who had previously discussed with him the matter of revolt. But Hermippus did not deliver them to the men to whom he had been sent; instead he carried them and handed them over to Artaphrenes. Artaphrenes, learning the whole affair, ordered Hermippus to deliver the letters from Histiaeus to the very men he had been carrying them to, but
to give to him the replies which the Persians sent back to Histiaeus. When these things became known, Artaphrenes then put to death many Persians. There was thus great turmoil around Sardis. Histiaeus, disappointed of this hope, was brought back to Miletus by the Chians, at his own request. But the Milesians, glad to be free of Aristagoras too, had scant enthusiasm for taking on yet another tyrant, having
tasted freedom. And indeed, one night, as Histiaeus tried by force to make his way into Miletus, a Milesian struck him and wounded him in the thigh. So, being thus driven off from his own city, he went back to Chios; and from there, since the Chians could not be persuaded to supply him with ships, he made his way across to Mytilene, where he convinced the Lesbians to furnish him vessels.
They manned eight triremes and sailed with Histiaeus to Byzantium, and there, taking position, they seized the ships sailing out of the Pontus, except for those whose crews declared themselves ready to obey Histiaeus. This is what Histiaeus and the Mytilenaeans were doing. Meanwhile, against Miletus itself a large naval and land force was expected: for the Persian generals had gathered together and
formed one army, and were marching against Miletus, treating the other towns as of lesser importance. Of the fleet the Phoenicians were the most eager, and along with them served the Cyprians, newly subdued, and the Cilicians and Egyptians. These, then, were marching against Miletus and the rest of Ionia, while the Ionians, learning of this, sent representatives of their own to the Panionium. When these men arrived at
this place and took counsel, it was decided not to gather any land army to oppose the Persians, but to let the Milesians themselves defend their walls, while the rest should man their fleet, leaving no ship unmanned, and having manned them, assemble as quickly as possible at Lade to fight a naval battle in defense of Miletus. Lade is a small island lying off the city of the Milesians. After this, when the ships had been manned,
the Ionians arrived, and with them also as many of the Aeolians as inhabit Lesbos. They were arrayed as follows. The Milesians themselves held the eastern wing, furnishing eighty ships; next to them came the Prienians with twelve ships and the Myesians with three ships; next to the Myesians came the Teians with seventeen ships; next to the Teians came the Chians with a hundred ships; and besides these the Erythraeans were arrayed
and the Phocaeans, the Erythraeans furnishing eight ships, the Phocaeans three; next to the Phocaeans came the Lesbians with seventy ships; last of all, holding the western wing, were arrayed the Samians with sixty ships. The total number of all these together came to three hundred and fifty-three triremes. These were the Ionians' ships; the number of the barbarians' ships was six hundred. When
these too arrived off the Milesian territory, and their whole land army was present as well, then the Persian generals, learning the number of the Ionian ships, grew afraid that they would not be able to overcome them, and that thus they would be unable to capture Miletus, not having command of the sea, and would risk suffering some harm at Darius's hands. Considering this, they gathered together the tyrants of the Ionians,
who had been deposed from their offices by Aristagoras of Miletus and had fled to the Medes, and who happened at that time to be serving in the campaign against Miletus; calling together those of these men who were present, they said to them the following: "Men of Ionia, it is time for each of you to prove himself a friend to the king's house: let each of you try to detach his own countrymen from the rest of the alliance. Hold out these promises and proclaim them,
that they will suffer no harm on account of the revolt, that neither their sanctuaries nor their homes will be set ablaze, nor will they be treated any more harshly than before. But if they will not do this, and are determined to go through with battle regardless, then tell them this too, threatening them with what will in fact befall them: that if defeated in battle they will be enslaved, and that we will make
their sons eunuchs, and carry off their maidens to Bactra, and hand their land over to others." So they said. The tyrants of the Ionians each sent this message by night to their own people. But the Ionians to whom these messages came held stubbornly to their resolve and would not accept the betrayal; each group thought that these threats
were being announced by the Persians to themselves alone. This is what happened immediately upon the Persians' arrival at Miletus; afterward, when the Ionians had gathered at Lade, assemblies were held, and no doubt various men addressed them, among them Dionysius, the Phocaean general, who spoke as follows. "Our affairs stand on a razor's edge, men of Ionia, whether we are to be free or
slaves, and slaves who are runaways at that. Now then, if you are willing to endure hardship, you will have toil for the present, but you will be able to overcome your enemies and be free; but if you give yourselves over to softness and disorder, I have no hope that you will avoid paying for your revolt when the king reckons with you. Instead, obey me, and entrust yourselves
to me: and I promise you, if the gods deal fairly, that either the enemy will not engage us at all, or if they do engage, they will be badly defeated." Hearing this, the Ionians entrusted themselves to Dionysius. He then led out the ships each day in column, so as to use the rowers, making them pass through one another's lines, and armed the marines, and for the rest of the day he kept the ships
at anchor, giving the Ionians toil throughout the day. For seven days they obeyed and did as they were told; but the day after that, the Ionians, unused to labors of this kind and worn down by hardship and by the sun, said to one another the following: "Which of the gods have we offended that we are fulfilling this penalty? We must have lost our senses and taken leave of our wits when we entrusted ourselves to this
boastful Phocaean, who brings only three ships. Having taken us in hand, he abuses us with irreparable abuses; already many of us have fallen into sickness, and many more are likely to suffer the same thing; it would be better for us to suffer anything else whatsoever, even to endure whatever slavery is coming, rather
than be oppressed by our present state. Come, let us no longer obey him from now on." So they said, and after this no one was willing to obey any longer; instead, like an army, they pitched tents on the island and stayed in the shade, and would not go aboard the ships or practice maneuvers. Learning of what the Ionians were doing, the Samian generals then, from Aeaces son of Syloson,
received those same proposals which Aeaces had previously sent at the Persians' bidding, asking them to abandon the Ionian alliance. The Samians, then, seeing on the one hand the great disorder among the Ionians, and on the other perceiving that it was impossible to overcome the king's power, and knowing well that, supposing they did defeat the fleet now facing them, another
fivefold as great would come upon them; so, seizing on this pretext, as soon as they saw that the Ionians were unwilling to be of any use, they reckoned it to their advantage to preserve their own temples and property. This Aeaces, from whom the Samians received the proposals, was the son of Syloson son of Aeaces, and had been tyrant of Samos, but Aristagoras of Miletus had stripped him of his rule, just as
the other tyrants of Ionia had been. So now, when the Phoenicians sailed against them, the Ionians too led out their ships in column to meet them. When they drew near and engaged one another, I am not able to write with certainty from this point on which of the Ionians proved cowardly or brave in this sea battle, for they all accuse one another. But it is said that the Samians at this point, in accordance with
agreed with Aeaces, hoisted sail and fled the line for Samos, all but eleven ships. The trierarchs of these stayed and fought, disobeying their generals, and for this deed the Samian state granted that their names and their fathers' names be inscribed on a pillar as men who had proved brave, and this pillar stands in the marketplace to this day.
The Lesbians, seeing their neighbors fleeing, did the same as the Samians, and so did most of the Ionians. Of those who stayed in the sea-fight, the Chians suffered the roughest handling, since they performed brilliant deeds and were not willing to play the coward. For they supplied, as was said before, a hundred ships, and on each one forty of their own citizens serving as marines
serving as marines. Seeing that most of their allies were betraying them, they did not think it right to become like these cowards, but, left isolated with a few allies, they fought on, breaking through the enemy line, until they had captured many of the enemy's ships but lost most of their own. The Chians fled with their remaining ships to their own country; but those Chians whose ships were disabled by
wounds took refuge, as they were pursued, at Mycale. There they beached their ships and left them, and made their way on foot through the mainland. When the Chians, on their journey, entered the territory of Ephesus, arriving at night, and while the women there were celebrating the Thesmophoria, the Ephesians, who had not heard beforehand how things stood with the Chians
and now saw an army invading their land, took them for certain to be robbers coming after their women, and rushed out in full force and killed the Chians. Such was the fate that befell these men. Dionysius the Phocaean, when he learned that the cause of the Ionians was lost, sailed off, having captured three enemy ships, no longer to Phocaea, knowing well that it would be enslaved along
with the rest of Ionia; instead he sailed straight for Phoenicia, and there, after sinking some merchant vessels and taking much money, he sailed to Sicily, and from there he set himself up as a raider, not of Greeks but of Carthaginians and Etruscans. The Persians, once they had won the sea-battle over the Ionians, besieged Miletus by land and sea, undermining its walls and
bringing up engines of every kind, and took it completely, six years after Aristagoras's revolt began, and enslaved the city, so that its suffering matched the oracle that had been given concerning Miletus. For when the Argives consulted at Delphi about the safety of their own city, a joint oracle was given, one part addressed to the Argives themselves, and the added part concerned the Milesians. The
part concerning the Argives I will mention when I come to that point in my account; but the part that was given for the Milesians, who were not present, runs as follows: Then, Miletus, deviser of evil deeds, you will become a feast and splendid gifts for many, and your wives will wash the feet of many long-haired men, and our temple at Didyma will pass into the care of others. This then befell the Milesians
at that time, when most of the men were slain by the long-haired Persians, and the women and children were counted as slaves, and the sanctuary at Didyma, both the temple and the oracle, was plundered and burned. Of the treasures in that sanctuary I have often made mention elsewhere in my account. From there the Milesians taken alive were led away to Susa.
King Darius did them no further harm, but settled them by the sea called the Red Sea, in the city of Ampe, past which the river Tigris flows on its way to the sea. Of the Milesian territory the Persians themselves kept the area around the city and the plain, while they gave the highland parts to the Carian people of Pedasa to hold. Having suffered this at the hands of the Persians, the Milesians did not
receive equal treatment in return from the Sybarites, who, having been driven from their city, dwelt in Laus and Scidrus. For when Sybaris was captured by the Crotoniates, all the Milesians of military age cropped their hair short and gave themselves over to deep mourning; for of all the cities we know of, these two were bound to each other in the closest guest-friendship. The Athenians did nothing similar. The Athenians made plain
their deep grief at the capture of Miletus in many other ways, and above all when Phrynichus composed a play called The Capture of Miletus and staged it, the whole theater burst into tears, and they fined him a thousand drachmas for reminding them of a disaster that was their own, and decreed that no one should ever perform that play again. So Miletus was emptied of its Milesians. As for those Samians who had property, what had been done regarding the Medes by their own generals did not please them at all,
and it seemed best to them, deliberating right after the sea-battle, before the tyrant Aeaces should reach their land, to sail off and found a colony rather than stay and be slaves to the Medes and to Aeaces. For the men of Zancle in Sicily, at this very time, were sending messengers to Ionia inviting the Ionians to the Fair Coast, wishing to found an Ionian city there. This place called the Fair
Coast belongs to the Sicels, and lies on the part of Sicily that faces toward Tyrrhenia. Of those invited, the Samians alone among the Ionians set out, joined by the Milesians who had managed to escape; and along the way the following chanced to happen. The Samians, on their way to Sicily, came to the Epizephyrian Locrians, and the men of Zancle themselves, together with their king, whose name was Scythes,
were encamped around a city of the Sicels which they wished to capture. Learning of this, Anaxilaus, tyrant of Rhegium, who was at that time at odds with the men of Zancle, met with the Samians and persuaded them that it would be better to let the Fair Coast go, toward which they were sailing, and instead to seize Zancle itself, which was left undefended by men. The Samians were persuaded and seized Zancle, and then the men of Zancle, when they learned that their
city was taken, came to its aid and called upon Hippocrates, tyrant of Gela, for he was their ally. When Hippocrates arrived with his army to help them, he put Scythes, the sole ruler of the men of Zancle, in chains, on the grounds that he had lost the city, and sent him and his brother Pythogenes off to the city of Inyx, and then, negotiating with the rest of the men of Zancle together with the
Samians, and giving and receiving oaths, he betrayed them. The reward agreed upon for him by the Samians was this: that he should receive half of all the movable goods and slaves in the city, and that he should take for himself all that was in the countryside. So he kept most of the men of Zancle bound and treated as slaves, but he handed over their three hundred leading men to the
Samians to be slaughtered; the Samians, however, did not do this. Scythes, the sole ruler of the men of Zancle, escaped from Inyx to Himera, and from there made his way to Asia and went up to King Darius; and Darius considered him the most upright of all the Greeks who had ever come up to him. For, having asked leave of the king, he went to Sicily
and then again back from Sicily to the king, until in old age, greatly prosperous, he died among the Persians. The Samians, having got rid of the Medes with no effort, took possession of the very beautiful city of Zancle. After the sea-battle fought for Miletus, the Phoenicians, at the Persians' command, brought back to Samos Aeaces son of Syloson, since he had proved of great worth to them and had accomplished great things; and for the Samians alone
of those who had revolted from Darius, because of the desertion of their ships in the sea-battle, neither their city nor their temples were burned. Once Miletus was taken, the Persians at once took Caria, some of the cities submitting willingly, others being brought in by force. Such was the course of these events. Meanwhile Histiaeus of Miletus, who was near Byzantium seizing the merchant vessels of the Ionians sailing out
from the Pontus, learned the news of what had happened at Miletus. He entrusted his affairs around the Hellespont to Bisaltes son of Apollophanes, an Abydene, while he himself, taking his Lesbians, sailed to Chios, and when the Chian garrison would not admit him, he fought them at a place in Chian territory called the Hollows. He killed many of them there, and the rest of the Chians, since they had been
badly weakened by the sea-battle, Histiaeus, with his Lesbians, overpowered, operating from Polichne in Chian territory. It is somehow the way of things that a sign is given beforehand whenever great evils are about to befall a city or a people; and indeed great signs had come to the Chians before this. One was that of a chorus of a hundred young men they had sent to Delphi, only two returned home, and the other ninety-eight were seized by a plague
and carried off; the other was that in the city, at this same time, shortly before the sea-battle, the roof fell in on children being taught their letters, so that out of a hundred and twenty children, only a single one got out alive. These were the signs that the god showed them beforehand, and after this the sea-battle came upon them and brought the city to its knees, and after the sea-battle came Histiaeus, bringing his Lesbians
with him; and since the Chians were already worn down, he made short work of subduing them. From there Histiaeus made an expedition against Thasos, bringing with him a sizable body of Ionian and Aeolian troops. While he was besieging Thasos, news came to him that the Phoenicians were sailing up from Miletus against the rest of Ionia. Learning this, he left Thasos unravaged, and hurried himself to Lesbos with his whole army.
From Lesbos, since his army was starving, he crossed over to the mainland, from Atarneus, meaning to harvest the grain there and that from the plain of the Caicus belonging to the Mysians. In these parts there happened to be Harpagus, a Persian general with no small force, who, when Histiaeus had disembarked, engaged him, took Histiaeus himself alive, and wiped out most of the men under his command.
...more he destroyed. Histiaeus was captured in this way. As the Greeks and Persians were fighting at Malene in the territory of Atarneus, the two sides stood their ground against each other for a long time, but then the Persian cavalry, having set out later, fell upon the Greeks. This was the cavalry's achievement, and once the Greeks had been routed, Histiaeus, hoping the king would spare his life despite the offense he had just committed, resorted to the following expedient out of love of life:
as he was fleeing he was overtaken by a Persian man, and just as the man, having seized him, was on the verge of spearing him through, he broke into Persian speech and revealed himself, saying that he was Histiaeus the Milesian. Now if, when he had been taken alive, he had been carried off to King Darius, I do not think he would have suffered any harm, and Darius would have forgiven him the charge; but as it was,
for this very reason, and so that he might not escape and become powerful again with the king, both Artaphrenes, governor of Sardis, and Harpagus, who had captured him, when he arrived at Sardis under escort, impaled his body there on the spot, and having embalmed his head they carried it up to King Darius at Susa. When Darius learned of this, he blamed those who had done it,
because they had not brought him alive into his own presence, and gave orders that the head of Histiaeus be washed and properly dressed and then buried, as befitting a man who had been a great benefactor to himself and to the Persians. So it was with Histiaeus. As for the Persian naval force, it wintered near Miletus, and in the second year, when it put to sea again, it easily took the islands lying off the mainland,
Chios, Lesbos, and Tenedos. Each time the barbarians seized one of these islands, they netted the people living there. They net them in the following manner: the men join hands, forming a line from the northern shore to the southern, and after that they sweep across the entire island, driving the people out of hiding. They likewise took the Ionian cities on
the mainland in the same fashion, except that they did not net the people there, since that was not possible. There the Persian generals made good on the threats they had made against the Ionians when the two sides were encamped facing each other. For once they had gained mastery of the cities, they picked out the most handsome boys and castrated them, making them eunuchs instead of whole men, and they took the most beautiful girls and carried them off to
the king. They did this, and they also burned the cities down, temples and all. Thus the Ionians were enslaved for the third time, first by the Lydians, and now twice in succession by the Persians. Departing from Ionia, the naval force took everything on the left as one sails into the Hellespont, for everything on the right had already fallen into Persian hands by land.
These are the places on the European side of the Hellespont: the Chersonese, home to a good number of cities, and Perinthus, and the forts on the Thracian coast, and Selymbria, and Byzantium. Now the Byzantines and the Chalcedonians across the strait did not even wait for the Phoenicians to sail against them, but abandoned their own land and went off into the Euxine Sea, and there they settled the city of Mesambria.
The Phoenicians, having burned these places just named, turned against Proconnesus and Artace, and having consigned these too to fire, they sailed back to the Chersonese to root out the remaining cities, as many as they had not destroyed on their earlier approach. Cyzicus, though, they never sailed against at all, since the Cyzicenes themselves, even before the Phoenician fleet arrived, had already come to terms with the king, having submitted to Oebares son of
Megabazus, the governor at Dascylium. Of the Chersonese, apart from the city of Cardia, the Phoenicians subdued all the rest. The tyrant over these places up to that time was Miltiades son of Cimon son of Stesagoras, though this rule had earlier been acquired by Miltiades son of Cypselus in the following way. The Dolonci, a Thracian people, held this Chersonese. Worn down by the Apsinthians' war against them, these Dolonci sent envoys to Delphi
their kings to consult the oracle about the war. The Pythia answered them that they should bring in as founder for their land whoever should be the first to invite them to be his guests as they left the shrine. So the Dolonci went along the Sacred Way through Phocis and Boeotia, and since no one invited them, they turned aside to Athens. At Athens at that time
Pisistratus held the whole power, but Miltiades son of Cypselus also had influence, being of a house that kept four-horse chariot teams, tracing its descent originally from Aeacus and Aegina, but more recently Athenian, Philaeus son of Ajax having been the first member of this house to become an Athenian. This Miltiades, sitting in his own porch and seeing the Dolonci passing by wearing foreign dress
and carrying spears, called out to them, and when they came up to him he offered them lodging and hospitality. They accepted, and once entertained by him, they revealed the whole oracle, and having revealed it they begged him to obey the god. Miltiades, on hearing this, was persuaded at once, since he was chafing under the rule of Pisistratus and wanted to be out of the way. He set out immediately for Delphi to ask the oracle whether he should
do what the Dolonci asked of him. And since the Pythia bade him do so as well, Miltiades son of Cypselus, who had already won a victory at Olympia with a four-horse chariot, then took with him every Athenian who wished to share in the expedition and sailed off together with the Dolonci, and took possession of the land; and those who had brought him in established him as tyrant. He first walled off the isthmus of the Chersonese from
the city of Cardia to Pactye, so that the Apsinthians could not harm them by invading the land. This isthmus is thirty-six stades across; measured from that isthmus, the whole interior of the Chersonese runs four hundred and twenty stades in length. Having walled off the neck of the Chersonese, Miltiades, having thus pushed back the Apsinthians,
went on to make war first of all the rest on the people of Lampsacus, and the Lampsacenes, laying an ambush for him, took him alive. Now Miltiades stood high in the favor of Croesus the Lydian; so when Croesus learned of this, he sent word ordering the Lampsacenes to release Miltiades, or else, he threatened, he would wipe them out like a pine tree. When the Lampsacenes were at a loss over what Croesus meant by his threat,
that he would wipe them out like a pine tree, at last one of the elders, having understood it, told them the truth: that the pine is the only one of all trees which, once cut down, sends up no new shoot at all, but perishes utterly. So the Lampsacenes, in fear of Croesus, released Miltiades and let him go. This man, then, escaped by means of Croesus, but afterward died childless, handing over his rule and his property to Stesagoras son of Cimon,
his half-brother's son by the same mother. And to him, now dead, the Chersonesites offer sacrifice as is customary for a founder, and they hold a contest of horse-racing and athletics in his honor, in which no man of Lampsacus is permitted to compete. While war was going on against the Lampsacenes, it befell Stesagoras too to die childless, his head split open by an axe blow delivered in the town hall — the killer posing as a deserter but in truth an enemy agent, and rather too hot-tempered besides. After
Stesagoras too had died in this manner, the Pisistratids sent Miltiades son of Cimon, the brother of the dead Stesagoras, on a trireme to take charge of affairs in the Chersonese; they had also treated him well at Athens, as though they knew nothing of the death of his father Cimon at their hands, the story of which I shall relate elsewhere. Miltiades, on arriving at the Chersonese, kept
to his house, ostensibly honoring the memory of his brother Stesagoras. When the Chersonesites learned of this, the men of power from all the cities gathered together from every quarter, and having come together in a common expedition, as if to share in mourning with him, they were seized and put in chains by him. So Miltiades took possession of the Chersonese, maintaining five hundred bodyguards, and he married Hegesipyle, the daughter of Olorus king of the Thracians. This Miltiades son of Cimon had only recently arrived in
the Chersonese when there befell him, upon his arrival, troubles harder than those that had already beset him. For three years before this he had fled from the Scythians. The nomadic Scythians, provoked by King Darius, had banded together and driven as far as this Chersonese; and Miltiades, unable to withstand their attack, fled the Chersonese, until the Scythians withdrew and the Dolonci brought him back again. This
had happened three years before the troubles then besetting him. At that time, learning that the Phoenicians were at Tenedos, he loaded five triremes with the property he had at hand and sailed off for Athens. And just as he had set out from Cardia, the city he had left behind, he sailed through the Black Gulf; but as he was passing the Chersonese, the Phoenicians fell upon him with their ships. Miltiades himself, with
four of his ships, escaped to Imbros, but the fifth ship the Phoenicians caught up with and captured in the chase. It happened that in command of this ship was the eldest of Miltiades' sons, Metiochus, who was not the son of Olorus the Thracian's daughter but of another wife; and the Phoenicians captured him along with the ship, and on learning that he was Miltiades' son they carried him up
to the king, thinking they would earn great favor thereby, because Miltiades had declared his opinion among the Ionians that they should obey the Scythians, when the Scythians asked them to dismantle the boat-bridge and sail home to their own land. Darius, when the Phoenicians brought Metiochus son of Miltiades up to him, did Metiochus no harm at all, but treated him generously instead: he gave him a household, property, and a Persian wife,
from whom children were born to him who are counted among the Persians. Miltiades made his way from Imbros to Athens. And in that year nothing further happened on the part of the Persians tending to hostility against the Ionians; rather, the following things, very useful to the Ionians, occurred in that year: Artaphrenes the governor of Sardis, summoning envoys from the cities, compelled them to make agreements
he forced them to submit disputes to arbitration among themselves, so that they would not raid and plunder one another. Having compelled them to do this, he also measured their territories in parasangs—what the Persians call units of thirty stades—and on this basis he assessed tribute for each people, which they have continued to pay from that time down to my own day,
as it was assessed by Artaphrenes; and it was assessed at roughly the same rates as they had paid before. That much brought them peace. Then, at the beginning of spring, with the other generals relieved of their commands by the king, Mardonius son of Gobryas came down to the coast, leading with him an enormous force of infantry along with a sizable fleet. He was young in years, and had recently married Artozostre, the daughter of King Darius.
Leading this army, when Mardonius reached Cilicia he himself boarded a ship and traveled with the rest of the fleet, while other commanders led the infantry to the Hellespont. As he sailed along the coast of Asia and arrived in Ionia, there I have a very remarkable thing to report, for those Greeks who refuse to believe that Otanes, one of the seven Persians,
declared the opinion that Persia should be governed as a democracy: Mardonius deposed all the tyrants of the Ionians and set up democracies in their cities instead. Having done this, he hurried on to the Hellespont. When a great quantity of ships had been assembled, and a great land army as well, they crossed the Hellespont in the ships and advanced through Europe, marching against Eretria
and Athens. These were the ostensible aims of the expedition, but in fact they intended to subdue as many of the Greek cities as they possibly could. First, using their fleet, they subdued the Thasians, who never lifted a finger against them; then, with their infantry, they added the Macedonians to the slaves they already possessed, for all the peoples this side of Macedonia had already come under their power. From
Thasos they crossed over to the mainland opposite and sailed along the coast as far as Acanthus, and setting out from Acanthus they rounded Mount Athos. But as they were sailing around it a great and utterly unmanageable north wind fell upon them and battered them severely, casting great numbers of the ships onto Athos. It is said that three hundred ships were destroyed, and more than twenty thousand men. For since this sea around Athos
is full of savage creatures, some of the men were seized and killed by these beasts, others were dashed against the rocks; some of them, unable to swim, drowned as a result, and others died of cold. Such was the fate of the naval force. As for Mardonius and the land army encamped in Macedonia, the Brygian Thracians attacked them by night, and
the Brygians killed many of them and wounded Mardonius himself. Yet even they did not escape servitude to the Persians, for Mardonius did not withdraw from that country until he had subdued them. Having subjugated them, he led the army back, since he had suffered a setback on land against the Brygians and a great disaster at sea off Athos. So this
expedition returned to Asia in disgrace after its poor showing. In the second year after this, Darius, since the Thasians had been denounced by their neighbors for plotting revolt, sent a messenger and ordered them to tear down their wall and bring their ships to Abdera. For the Thasians, since they had been besieged by Histiaeus of Miletus and had large revenues, had been using their money
to build warships and to strengthen their fortifications further. Their revenue came from the mainland and from their mines: from the gold mines at Scapte Hyle came in general about eighty talents, and from the mines on Thasos itself somewhat less, but still so much that the Thasians, though exempt from tax on their crops, took in altogether
from the mainland and the mines two hundred talents a year, and when it was at its greatest, three hundred. I myself saw these mines, and by far the most remarkable of them were those discovered by the Phoenicians who settled the island together with Thasos, from whom this island now takes its name, Thasos the Phoenician. These Phoenician
mines are on Thasos between a place called Aenyra and Coenyra, opposite Samothrace: a great mountain that has been turned upside down in the search for ore. That, then, is how matters stand there. The Thasians, at the king's command, both tore down their own wall and brought all their ships to Abdera. After this Darius set about testing the Greeks to learn
what they intended, whether to make war against him or to surrender themselves. He therefore sent heralds in different directions throughout Greece, instructing them to demand earth and water on the king's behalf. Those he sent into Greece; he also sent other heralds around to the coastal cities that paid him tribute, ordering them to build warships and horse-transport vessels. These
were making these preparations, and when the heralds arrived in Greece, many of the mainland peoples gave the Persian what he demanded through his messengers, and all the islanders to whom they came with the request did likewise. So the other islanders gave earth and water to Darius, and so did the Aeginetans. When they had done this the Athenians immediately set upon them, believing that the Aeginetans
had given it in order to join with the Persian in campaigning against Athens, and they gladly seized on the pretext, going to Sparta to accuse the Aeginetans of having betrayed Greece by what they had done. In response to this accusation Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides, the Spartan king, made the crossing to Aegina, wishing to arrest the men most responsible among the Aeginetans. But when he tried to make the arrests, various Aeginetans
opposed him, and among them especially Crius son of Polycritus, who said that Cleomenes would not lead away a single Aeginetan and get away with it; for he was acting without the authority of the Spartan state as a whole, having been bribed by the Athenians—since if he had come with the other king, he would have been justified in making the arrests. He said this on the strength of a letter from Demaratus. Cleomenes, being driven off from Aegina, asked Crius what
his name was, and Crius told him truly. Cleomenes then said to him, "Now, ram, you had better plate your horns with bronze, since you are going to run into great trouble." Meanwhile at Sparta, Demaratus son of Ariston, who had remained behind, was slandering Cleomenes—he too being a king of the Spartans, though from the lesser house, inferior to the other
in no respect except this: they descend from the same stock, but by right of seniority the house of Eurysthenes has somehow been given the greater honor. For the Lacedaemonians, in agreement with no poet, say that it was Aristodemus himself, son of Aristomachus, son of Cleodaeus, son of Hyllus, who as king led them into the land they now possess, and not the sons of Aristodemus. Not long after this, they say, Aristodemus's wife bore him children—her name being
Argeia, and they say she was the daughter of Autesion, son of Tisamenus, son of Thersander, son of Polynices. She bore twins, and Aristodemus, having seen the children, died of illness. The Lacedaemonians of that time resolved, according to custom, to make the elder of the boys king. But they did not know which one to choose, since the two were alike and equal in every way; and being unable to decide,
or even before this, they asked the mother. But she said that she herself could not tell them apart. She knew perfectly well, in fact, and said this because she wanted both of them to become kings if possible. So the Lacedaemonians were at a loss, and being at a loss they sent to Delphi to ask what they should do about the matter. The Pythia told them to regard both children as kings, but to honor
the elder more. When the Pythia had given them this answer, the Lacedaemonians were nonetheless at a loss as to how they might discover which of the two was the elder, until a Messenian man named Panites suggested to them a way. This Panites advised the Lacedaemonians to keep an eye on the mother and note which child she bathed and fed first; and if she were seen always doing this in the same order, they
would then have everything they were seeking and wished to discover, but if she varied and did it now one way, now another, it would be clear to them that she herself knew no more than they did, and they should turn to some other method. So the Spartans, following the Messenian's advice, watched the mother of Aristodemus's children and found that she always honored the elder in the same way, both with food
and with washing, she herself not knowing why she was being watched. So they took the child that was honored by its mother as being the elder and reared it at public expense; and they named it Eurysthenes, and the other Procles. These two, when grown to manhood, though brothers, are said to have been at odds with each other for their entire lives, and their descendants continued in the same way ever after. This
is what the Lacedaemonians alone among the Greeks say. But what follows I write according to what is said by the Greeks generally: that these kings of the Dorians, counted back as far as Perseus, the son born to Danae by the god — leaving that parentage aside — are correctly listed by the Greeks and shown to be Greek, for by that time they already counted as Greeks. I have gone back only as far as Perseus and no further, because
no name of a mortal father is attached to Perseus, as Amphitryon is to Heracles. So if I reckon correctly, I have spoken rightly in going back as far as Perseus; but if one traces the line further back from Danae daughter of Acrisius, naming their forefathers in each generation, the leaders of the Dorians would appear to be, in fact, native-born Egyptians. This, then, is how the genealogy runs according to what the Greeks say; but according to the account told by the Persians, he himself
Perseus was an Assyrian who became a Greek, but his ancestors were not; and the forefathers of Acrisius, though they had no kinship with Perseus at all, were, as the Greeks say, Egyptians. Let this much be said about these matters. As for how, being Egyptians, and by doing what, they got hold of the kingships of the Dorians, I will leave that aside, since others have written about it.
I will make mention instead of what others have not recorded. These are the privileges the Spartans have given their kings: two priesthoods, of Zeus Lacedaemon and of Zeus of Heaven; the right to make war on whatever land they wish, with no Spartan permitted to obstruct them, on pain of being held guilty of impiety; and, when they campaign, to march out first and return last.
A hundred chosen men guard them on campaign. They may use as many sheep as they wish on their expeditions, and from all the animals sacrificed they receive the hides and the chines. These are their privileges in wartime; in peacetime the following have been granted them. Whenever a sacrifice is held at public expense, the kings sit first at the feast,
and from them the serving begins, each of the two receiving twice as much of everything as the other guests, and to them belongs the right to pour the first libation, and the hides of the victims are theirs. At every new moon and on the seventh of the month a full-grown victim is given to each of them from the public treasury for the temple of Apollo, along with a bushel of barley meal and a Laconian quart of wine, and at all the games they have reserved seats of honor.
It is theirs to appoint as public hosts any of the citizens they wish, and each is to choose two Pythians. The Pythians are the messengers sent to consult the oracle at Delphi, and they take their meals with the kings at public expense. Should the kings skip the dinner, two quarts of barley meal and a cup of wine are sent to each of their houses instead; but when they are present, they are given twice as much of everything. The same
honor is shown them when private citizens invite them to dinner. They alone are to guard the oracles that are delivered, and the Pythians are to share this knowledge with them. The kings alone are to judge the following cases and no others: concerning an heiress, as to who is entitled to her hand, if her father has not betrothed her; and concerning public roads; and if anyone wishes to adopt a son, this must be done
in the presence of the kings. They are to sit beside the elders in council, who number twenty-eight; and if the kings do not attend, those of the elders most closely related to them are to hold their privileges, casting two votes plus a third of their own. These privileges have been granted to the kings while living, by the community of the Spartans; when they die, the following are given. Horsemen carry the news of their death throughout all Laconia,
and through the city women go about beating cauldrons. When this happens, it is required that from every house two free persons, a man and a woman, go into mourning; and heavy penalties are imposed on those who fail to do so. The Lacedaemonians have the same custom regarding the deaths of their kings as the barbarians in Asia do; for most of the barbarians follow the
same custom concerning the deaths of their kings. For whenever a king of the Lacedaemonians dies, from the whole of Laconia, apart from the Spartans themselves, a fixed number of the perioikoi are compelled to attend the funeral. These, together with the helots and the Spartans themselves, gather in the same place, many thousands of them mixed with the women, and they beat their foreheads vigorously and give themselves over to boundless wailing, declaring that
whichever king died most recently was always the best. Whoever of the kings dies in war has an effigy made of him and is carried out on a well-spread bier. When they have buried him, no assembly convenes for ten days, nor is any election held, but they mourn during those days. In this the Lacedaemonians agree with the Persians in another respect: whenever, after a king's death, another
king takes his place, the incoming king releases any Spartan who owed a debt to the king or to the public treasury; and likewise among the Persians, the king who takes power remits to all the cities the tribute previously owed. The Lacedaemonians also agree with the Egyptians in this: their heralds, flute-players, and cooks inherit their fathers' trades, and a flute-player's son becomes a flute-player, a cook's son a cook, and
a herald's son a herald; others do not take over these offices by outshouting them with a louder voice, but they carry them out according to ancestral custom. So much for that. At that time, while Cleomenes was in Aegina working for the common good of Greece, Demaratus slandered him, not out of concern for the Aeginetans so much as out of envy and jealousy. Cleomenes, on returning from Aegina, plotted to remove Demaratus from
the kingship, making this affair his opening against him. Ariston, king in Sparta, who had married two wives, had no children. Since he did not admit that he himself was to blame for this, he married a third wife; and this is how he married her. He had a friend among the Spartans, a citizen to whom Ariston was especially devoted. This man happened to have a wife who was by far the most beautiful of the
women in Sparta, and moreover she had become the most beautiful after having been the ugliest. For being unsightly in appearance, her nurse — since she was the daughter of wealthy people and yet ill-favored, and seeing besides that her parents regarded her appearance as a misfortune — taking all this to heart, devised the following plan: she carried the child every day to the shrine of Helen. This shrine
is located in the place called Therapne, above the temple of Phoebus. Whenever the nurse brought her, she would set her before the image and beseech the goddess to free the child from her ugliness. And once, as the nurse was leaving the shrine, a woman is said to have appeared to her, and having appeared, to have asked what she was carrying in her arms, and the nurse said she was carrying a child,
and the woman told her to show it to her, but the nurse refused, saying she had been forbidden by the parents to show it to anyone; still the woman insisted she show it to her regardless. Seeing that the woman was very eager to see it, the nurse then showed her the child; and the woman, stroking the child's head, said that she would become the most beautiful of all the women in Sparta. From
that day on her appearance changed completely. When she reached marriageable age, Agetus son of Alcides, this same friend of Ariston, married her. But desire for this woman gnawed at Ariston; so he devised the following scheme: he himself promised his friend, the husband of this woman, that he would give him one gift, whichever he chose of all his possessions,
and he asked his friend to grant him the same in return. The man, having no fear at all concerning his wife, seeing that she was already Ariston's friend's wife too, agreed to this; and upon these terms they swore oaths. After this Ariston himself gave the gift, whatever it was, that Agetus chose from among Ariston's treasures, and he himself, seeking
to take the like from him, then tried to carry off his friend's wife. The man said he had agreed to everything except this alone; yet, compelled by his oath and by the trick that had led him on, he let her be taken. Thus Ariston brought in his third wife, having sent away the second. And in a shorter time than that, before the full ten
months had gone by, this same wife gave birth to Demaratus. One of the household servants went to him while he sat in council with the ephors and announced the arrival of a son. Knowing how long it had been since he married the woman, and counting the months on his fingers, he swore an oath and declared, "He could not be mine." The ephors heard this, but took no action at the time.
took no action about it at the time. The boy grew up, and Ariston came to regret what he had said, for he came to regard Demaratus as truly his own son in every way. He gave him the name Demaratus for this reason: before this time, the Spartans as a whole had offered a prayer that a son be born to Ariston, since he was a man held in the highest esteem of all the kings who had ever ruled in Sparta.
For this reason the name Demaratus was given him. As time went on, Ariston died, and Demaratus took possession of the kingship. But it was fated, it seems, that these facts, once made known, would bring about the removal of Demaratus from the kingship, on account of the great enmity he had incurred with Cleomenes — first when Demaratus withdrew the army from Eleusis, and again now when Cleomenes had crossed over against the Aeginetans who had medized. Setting out to take revenge, Cleomenes
he struck a bargain with Leotychides son of Menares, grandson of Agis, a member of the same house as Demaratus: if Leotychides made him king instead of Demaratus, Leotychides would side with him against the Aeginetans. Leotychides had come to hate Demaratus above all others because of the following matter: once Leotychides was betrothed to Percalus, daughter of Chilon son of Demarmenus, Demaratus schemed against him and robbed Leotychides of the marriage, getting to Percalus first and taking her
seizing Percalus and taking her as his wife. This was the source of Leotychides's enmity toward Demaratus; and now, spurred on by Cleomenes's eagerness, Leotychides swore an oath against Demaratus, declaring that he was not rightfully king of the Spartans, since he was not the son of Ariston; and after this sworn declaration he pursued the matter, recalling that very statement which Ariston had made at the time when the servant announced to him that a son had been
born to him, and he, reckoning the months, had sworn that the child was not his. Relying on this statement, Leotychides declared that Demaratus was neither born of Ariston nor rightfully king of Sparta, producing as witnesses those ephors who had at that time been sitting beside Ariston and had heard him say this. In the end, since disputes were arising over these matters, the Spartans decided to inquire of the
the oracle at Delphi as to whether Demaratus was really the son of Ariston. When the question was referred there through Cleomenes' scheming, Cleomenes won over Cobon son of Aristophantus, a man of the greatest influence at Delphi, and Cobon persuaded Perialla the priestess to say what Cleomenes wanted said. So when the sacred envoys put their question, the Pythia ruled that Demaratus was not Ariston's
son. Some time afterward this affair came out into the open, and Cobon fled Delphi while Perialla the priestess lost her office. Such was the manner in which Demaratus's kingship came to an end; Demaratus then fled from Sparta to the Medes owing to the following disgrace. Once his kingship had ended, Demaratus took up an office to which he had been chosen. During the celebration of the Gymnopaidiai, while
Demaratus looked on, Leutychides, now ruling as king in his place, sent his servant to mock him with the question of what it felt like to hold a lesser office after having been king. Stung by the taunt, Demaratus answered that he had now tasted both offices himself, while Leutychides had not, and that this very question would prove the start, for the Lacedaemonians, of either vast suffering or
boundless prosperity. Having said this, he covered his head and left the theater for his own house, and at once, having made preparations, he sacrificed an ox to Zeus; and after the sacrifice he summoned his mother. When his mother arrived, he placed some of the entrails in her hands and begged her, saying this. "Mother, I beg you by all the gods, and above all by Zeus of the household here,
to tell me the truth: who is truly my father? For Leutychides said, in the course of the quarrels, that you were already pregnant by your former husband when you came to Ariston; and others, telling an even more foolish story, say that you went to one of the servants, the donkey-herd, and that I am his son. I beg you now, by the gods, to tell me
the truth. For even if you did do something of what is said, you would not be alone in it—many women have done such things; and besides, there is much talk in Sparta that Ariston had no seed capable of producing children, since otherwise his earlier wives would have borne him children too." So he spoke, and she answered him thus. "My son, since you beg me with entreaties to tell you the truth, the whole
truth shall be told to you. On the third night after Ariston brought me to his house, a phantom resembling Ariston came to me, and after lying with me it placed on me the garlands it was wearing. Then it departed, and afterward Ariston came. When he saw me wearing the garlands, he asked who had given them to me; I said it was he, but he
denied it. And I swore an oath, saying he was not doing right to deny it, for he had come and lain with me only a little before and given me the garlands. Seeing me swear this, Ariston realized that the matter was of divine origin. And it turned out that the garlands had come from the shrine near the courtyard gate, the one they call the shrine of Astrabacus, and moreover
the seers declared that this same hero was the one responsible. So, my son, you now have everything you wish to know: either you were born from this hero, and your father is the hero Astrabacus, or else it is Ariston; for it was on that very night that I conceived you. As for the charge your enemies bring against you most of all, saying that Ariston himself, when
you were reported born to him, said before many who were listening that you were not his own (because the term, the ten months, had not yet run out), he threw out that remark out of ignorance of such matters. For women give birth also at nine months and at seven months, and not all of them complete the full ten months; and I, my son, bore you at seven months. Ariston himself came to realize, not long
afterward, that he had made that remark out of foolishness. Do not believe any other stories about your birth; you have heard the whole truth. As for the donkey-herds, may their wives bear children to Leutychides himself and to those who tell such tales." So she spoke, and he, having learned what he wanted, took provisions and set out for Elis, saying publicly
claiming he meant to consult the oracle at Delphi. The Lacedaemonians, however, suspected Demaratus of trying to flee and gave chase. Demaratus nonetheless managed to slip across from Elis to Zacynthus before they caught him; the Lacedaemonians followed him over the water, seized him, and took his attendants from him. Afterward, since the Zacynthians refused to hand him over, he crossed from there into Asia to King Darius. Darius then
received him with great honor and gave him land and cities. Thus Demaratus arrived in Asia, having met with such a fortune, after having distinguished himself among the Lacedaemonians many times by deeds and counsel, and in particular having won an Olympic victory with a four-horse chariot, being the only one of all the kings who had ever ruled at Sparta to have done this. Leutychides son of Menares, once Demaratus was deposed, succeeded
to the kingship, and a son, Zeuxidemus, was born to him, whom some of the Spartans called Cyniscus. This Zeuxidemus never reigned over Sparta, for he died before Leutychides, leaving a son, Archidemus. Leutychides, having lost Zeuxidemus, married a second wife, Eurydame, who was the sister of Menius and daughter of Diactorides; by her he had no male child, but a daughter, Lampito, whom Archidemus son of Zeuxidemus
she married, given to him by Leutychides. Yet Leutychides himself did not live out his old age in Sparta; instead he paid a certain penalty for what he had done to Demaratus. He led a Lacedaemonian force into Thessaly, and though he might have brought the whole region under his control, he accepted a great sum of silver as a bribe; caught red-handed in his own camp, seated upon a glove stuffed with silver, he was hauled before a court, fled Sparta, and had his house torn down; he went into exile
to Tegea, and died there. But this happened later. At the time, once the affair concerning Demaratus had been contrived by Cleomenes, he immediately took Leutychides with him and went against the Aeginetans, holding a terrible grudge against them for the insult they had done him. So now, with both kings come against them, the Aeginetans no longer thought it right to resist further, and the two kings picked out
ten Aeginetans of the greatest standing in wealth and lineage; among them were Crius son of Polycritus and Casambus son of Aristocrates, who wielded the most power. They brought these men to Attic soil and handed them over as hostages to the Athenians, the bitterest foes of Aegina. Afterward, once Cleomenes' schemes against Demaratus came to light, dread of the Spartiates took hold of him,
and slipped away to Thessaly. From there he went on to Arcadia and began plotting fresh mischief, rallying the Arcadians against Sparta; among other oaths, he made them swear to follow wherever he led, and he was especially keen to bring the Arcadian leaders to the city of Nonacris and have them swear by the water of the Styx. In that city, it is said,
the water of the Styx exists among the Arcadians, and indeed it is something like this: a little water, visible, drips from a rock into a hollow, and around that hollow runs a kind of circular wall of stones. Nonacris, where this spring happens to be, is a city of Arcadia near Pheneus. When the Lacedaemonians learned that Cleomenes was doing these things, they brought him back to Sparta out of fear, under the
same terms on which he had ruled before. But when he had returned, madness at once seized him — though he had already been somewhat unbalanced before: for whenever he happened to meet any Spartiate, he would strike him in the face with his staff. Since he was doing this and was out of his mind, his relatives bound him in the stocks. Bound, he saw that his guard had been left alone apart from the others and asked him for a knife. At first the guard was unwilling to give it,
but Cleomenes kept threatening what he would do to him later, until the guard — one of the helots — grew afraid of the threats and handed him the knife. Cleomenes took the blade and began cutting himself starting at the shins: slicing his flesh lengthwise, he worked upward from shin to thigh, and then from thigh to the
hips and the flanks, until he reached the belly, and there, slicing it into strips, he died in this manner — according to most of the Greeks, because he had persuaded the Pythia to say what she said about Demaratus; but according to the Athenians alone, because he invaded Eleusis and cut down the sacred precinct of the goddesses; and according to the Argives, because from their sanctuary of Argus he dragged out the Argives
those who had fled there from the battle for shelter, cutting them down, and, showing no regard even for the grove itself, set it ablaze. For when Cleomenes had earlier asked the oracle at Delphi, he was told he would capture Argos. When he led the Spartiates to the river Erasinus, said to flow out of the Stymphalian lake — for that lake, it is said, drains into a hidden chasm and surfaces again at Argos, so that from there the water
already being called by the Argives the Erasinus — Cleomenes, on arriving at this river, offered sacrifice to it; and since the omens in no way allowed him to cross it, he said he admired the Erasinus for not betraying its own citizens, but that the Argives would nonetheless not rejoice at this. After this he withdrew his army and led it down to Thyrea, and having sacrificed a bull to the sea, he carried his men by ship
to the land of Tiryns and to Nauplia. The Argives, learning of this, came to the aid of the coast; and when they drew near Tiryns, in the place called Hesipeia, leaving only a small space between, they took up position facing the Lacedaemonians. There the Argives were not afraid of open battle, but only that they might be taken by some trick; for indeed
there was an oracle bearing on this very matter, which the Pythia had given jointly to them and to the Milesians, saying this: But when the female defeats the male and drives him out, and wins glory among the Argives, she will make many Argive women tear their cheeks in mourning. So that someone among men yet to come will say: the terrible thrice-coiled serpent perished, tamed by the spear. All these things together
caused fear among the Argives. In view of this they resolved to exploit the enemy's own herald, and they carried out their plan in this way: whenever the Spartan herald gave some signal to the Lacedaemonians, the Argives did the very same thing. Cleomenes, learning that the Argives were doing whatever their own herald announced, gave orders that when the herald signaled the men to take their breakfast, then
they should take up their arms and advance against the Argives. This was in fact carried out by the Lacedaemonians: for as the Argives were taking their breakfast in accordance with the announcement, they fell upon them, and killed many of them, and penned in far more still who had fled for refuge into the grove of Argus, keeping watch around them. From there Cleomenes did the following. He had deserters with him, and by questioning them he called out, sending a herald,
naming by name those Argives shut up in the sanctuary, and calling them out claiming to hold their ransom. Among the Peloponnesians, the fixed ransom to be paid for each captive man is two minas. So then, calling them out fifty at a time, Cleomenes killed each group as they came. This, somehow, went unnoticed by the rest still in the precinct: for since the
grove was thick, those inside could not see what those outside were doing, until one of them climbed a tree and saw what was being done. After that they no longer came out when called. Then Cleomenes ordered every one of the helots to pile wood around the grove, and when they obeyed, he set the grove on fire. Once the flames had taken hold, he put a question to one of the deserters: to which god
the grove belonged: he said it belonged to Argus. On hearing this, Cleomenes groaned aloud and said, "O prophetic Apollo, you have greatly deceived me in saying I would take Argos: I gather that the oracle has already been fulfilled for me." After this Cleomenes sent most of his army back to Sparta, and taking a thousand of the best men himself, he went to the Heraeum to sacrifice; but
when he wished to sacrifice at the altar, the priest forbade him, saying it was not lawful for a foreigner to sacrifice there. Cleomenes ordered the helots to drag the priest away from the altar and whip him, and he himself performed the sacrifice; having done this, he departed for Sparta. On his return, his enemies brought him before the ephors, claiming that he had taken bribes and so failed to take Argos,
when he could easily have taken it. He told them — whether lying or speaking the truth, I cannot say clearly, but he said — that once he had taken the sanctuary of Argus, he thought the god's oracle had been fulfilled; and on that account he judged it wrong to press the assault on the city itself before he had consulted the sacrifices and learned whether the god
would grant it to him or stood in his way; and while he was sacrificing favorably in the Heraeum, a flame of fire had blazed out from the breast of the statue, and by this he himself learned the truth of the matter, that he would not take Argos: for if it had blazed out from the head of the statue, he would have taken the city entirely, from top to bottom, but since it blazed from the breast, everything had been accomplished that the god wished
to come about. In saying this he seemed to the Spartiates to be speaking credibly and plausibly, and he escaped his pursuers by a wide margin. Argos was so bereft of men that the slaves among them took over all affairs, ruling and administering them, until the children of the dead grew up to become men; then these, reclaiming Argos for themselves, drove the slaves out; and being thrust out, the slaves took
Tiryns by force. For a time there was peace between them, but then a seer came to the slaves, Cleandrus by name, an Arcadian by birth from Phigalea; he persuaded the slaves to attack their former masters. Out of this conflict arose, lasting a great while, and only with difficulty did the Argives eventually prevail. So the Argives say that Cleomenes died badly, gone mad on account of these things;
but the Spartiates themselves say that Cleomenes went mad not from any divine cause, but that from mingling with the Scythians he became a heavy drinker of unmixed wine, and that from this he went mad. For the nomadic Scythians, once Darius had invaded their land, afterward were eager to take revenge on him, and sent envoys to Sparta proposing an alliance, under which it was agreed that the Scythians themselves would attempt to invade Media by way of the Phasis
river, while they urged the Spartiates, setting out from Ephesus, to march inland and then meet them at the same point. And they say that when the Scythians came to Sparta for this purpose, Cleomenes associated with them more than was fitting, and by associating with them more than was proper, he learned from them the drinking of unmixed wine; and it is from this that the Spartiates believe he went mad. And from that time, as they themselves say, whenever
they wish to drink their wine stronger, they call it "Scythian style." Such is what the Spartiates relate concerning Cleomenes; in my own judgment, though, this was the penalty Cleomenes paid to Demaratus. This is the account the Spartiates give regarding Cleomenes; my own view, however, is that here Cleomenes was paying back Demaratus. When the Aeginetans learned of Cleomenes' death, they sent messengers to Sparta to denounce Leutychides over the hostages held at Athens. The Lacedaemonians, convening a court, judged that the Aeginetans had been grievously wronged by Leutychides, and condemned him to be handed over and taken to Aegina
in place of the men held at Athens. As the Aeginetans were about to lead Leutychides away, Theasides son of Leoprepes, a man of standing in Sparta, said to them, "What do you intend to do, men of Aegina? To lead away the king of the Spartiates, handed over by his own citizens? If the Spartiates have now decided this out of anger, see to it that afterward, if you do this, they do not bring utter ruin
"they will bring some disaster upon the land." On hearing this the Aeginetans held back from the deportation, and they came to this agreement: Leutychides would accompany the men back to Athens and there return them to the Aeginetans. But when Leutychides arrived at Athens and demanded the deposit back, the Athenians dragged out excuses, unwilling to give the men up, saying that two kings had left the men in their keeping and that it was not right to hand them over to one without the
other. When Leutychides said this and saw that the Athenians would not listen even so, he departed. The Aeginetans, before they had paid the penalty for the earlier wrongs they had done the Athenians to please the Thebans, did the following. Angry at the Athenians and believing themselves wronged, they made preparations to take vengeance on them; and since the Athenians happened to have a sacred ship that made the five-yearly voyage to Sunium, the Aeginetans lay in wait and seized this ship
and took it, full of the foremost men of Athens; and having taken the men, they put them in chains. The Athenians, having suffered this at the hands of the Aeginetans, no longer put off contriving every possible measure against them. Now there was a man of repute on Aegina named Nicodromus, son of Cnoethus, who bore a grudge against the Aeginetans for his own earlier banishment from the island; and learning at that time that the Athenians were resolved
to do the Aeginetans harm, he made an agreement with the Athenians to betray Aegina, letting them know the day he planned to act and the day on which they needed to arrive to help him. After this, Nicodromus, following the plan arranged with the Athenians, took possession of the place known as the old city; the Athenians, however, failed to show up in time, since they lacked ships capable of matching those of the Aeginetans. While they were asking the Corinthians
to lend them ships, in that interval the whole plan was ruined. The Corinthians, who were at that time on the friendliest terms with them, gave the Athenians, at their request, twenty ships, giving them at a price of five drachmas apiece, since by their law a gift outright was not permitted. Taking these ships, together with their own, and manning seventy ships in all, the Athenians sailed against
Aegina, arriving one day later than had been agreed. Nicodromus, when the Athenians did not arrive in time, boarded a boat and fled from Aegina; and with him went other Aeginetans as well, to whom the Athenians gave Sunium to settle. Setting out from there, these men raided and plundered the Aeginetans on the island. This, however, happened
later. As for the well-to-do among the Aeginetans, when the common people rose up together with Nicodromus, they got the upper hand, and having overpowered them they led them out to be put to death. From this a curse fell upon them, which for all their efforts they were unable to purify away, and they were driven out of the island before they could make the goddess propitious to them. For they had taken seven hundred of the common people alive and were leading them out to be killed, when one
of them escaped his bonds and fled to the porch of Demeter the Lawgiver, and taking hold of the door-handles clung to them; and when they could not drag him away by pulling, they cut off his hands and carried him off in that state, and those hands were left clinging fast to the handles. This is what the Aeginetans did among themselves; but when the Athenians came against them, they fought a sea battle with seventy ships, and having been defeated
in the battle they called upon the same allies as before, the Argives. These, however, no longer came to their aid, being angry that Aeginetan ships, seized by force by Cleomenes, had put in at the land of Argos and there landed troops together with the Lacedaemonians, and that men from Sicyonian ships had also landed in that same invasion; and the Argives had imposed on them a fine of a thousand talents to pay, five hundred on each.
The Sicyonians admitted their fault and settled matters by paying a hundred talents to clear themselves of the charge, but the Aeginetans would neither admit wrongdoing nor agree to anything, proving far more obstinate. For this reason, when they asked for help, no one from the Argive state any longer came to their aid, but about a thousand volunteers did; their commander was a man named Eurybates, a man trained in the pentathlon. Most of these did not return home again, but died
at the hands of the Athenians on Aegina; and Eurybates himself, the commander, who practiced single combat, killed three men in this way, but was killed by the fourth, Sophanes of Decelea. The Aeginetans, engaging the disordered Athenians with their ships, won the battle, and captured four of their ships along with their crews. So war had broken out between the Athenians and the Aeginetans. Meanwhile the Persian pursued his own
course, since his servant kept reminding him continually to remember the Athenians, and the Pisistratids stood beside him bringing accusations against Athens; Darius, for his part, meant to seize on this excuse in order to subdue those parts of Greece that had not given him earth and water. He removed Mardonius from his command, since he had fared badly on his expedition, and having appointed other generals he sent them out against Eretria
and Athens — Datis, a Mede by birth, and Artaphrenes, son of Artaphrenes, his own nephew. He sent them off with instructions to enslave Athens and Eretria and bring the captives before him for him to see. When these appointed generals, on their journey from the king, arrived at the Aleian plain in Cilicia, leading a sizable, well-outfitted infantry force, while they were encamped there
the whole fleet assigned to each contingent came up to join them, and the horse-transport ships also arrived, which Darius had ordered his tribute-paying subjects to prepare the previous year. Having loaded the horses onto these and embarked the land army onto the ships, they sailed with six hundred triremes to Ionia. From there they did not keep their ships along the mainland straight
toward the Hellespont and Thrace, but setting out from Samos they made their voyage past Icaria and through the islands, because, as it seems to me, they were most afraid of the voyage around Athos, since the previous year, making the passage that way, they had suffered a great disaster; and besides, Naxos, not having been captured before, compelled them to this course. When they were bearing in from the Icarian sea
and approached Naxos — for it was against this island first that the Persians intended to campaign, remembering what had happened before — the Naxians fled to the mountains and did not stand their ground, and the Persians, enslaving those of them they caught, burned both the temples and the city. Having done this, they put out to sea against the other islands. While they were doing this, the Delians
likewise abandoned Delos and fled to Tenos. As the fleet sailed on, Datis went ahead and would not let the ships anchor at Delos, but had them anchor across the strait at Rhenea instead; and having learned where the Delians were, he sent a herald to proclaim to them as follows: "Sacred men, why have you fled, judging me capable of things unbecoming? For I myself
have this much understanding, and it has been enjoined upon me by the king, not to harm in any way the land in which the two gods were born, neither the land itself nor its inhabitants. So now go back to your own homes and inhabit your island." This message he sent to the Delians, and then he heaped up three hundred talents' weight of frankincense on the altar and burned it as offering.
Having done this, Datis then sailed with his army against Eretria first, bringing with him also Ionians and Aeolians. After he had put out from there, Delos was shaken, as the Delians said, both for the first and last time up to my own day. And by this, I suppose, the god was showing men a portent of the evils that were to come. For in the time of Darius son of Hystaspes, and of
Xerxes son of Darius, and Artoxerxes son of Xerxes, in these three generations in succession, more evils befell Greece than in the twenty generations before Darius — some coming to her from the Persians themselves, and some from her own leading men fighting among themselves over supremacy. So it was nothing strange that Delos, previously unmoved, should be moved. And in an oracle
it was written concerning it thus: "I will move Delos too, unmoved though it be." These names, translated into the Greek tongue, mean this: Darius means "doer," Xerxes means "warrior," Artoxerxes means "great warrior." These are the names by which the Greeks might rightly call these kings in their own language. As for the barbarians, when they had put out from Delos, they touched at the islands one by one, and from there they levied troops
and took as hostages the children of the islanders. And as they sailed around the islands and put in also at Carystus, since the Carystians would not give hostages nor agree to campaign against neighboring cities, meaning Eretria and Athens, they laid siege to them there and ravaged their land, until the Carystians too came over to the
Persian side. The Eretrians, learning that the Persian force was sailing against them, asked the Athenians to come to their aid. The Athenians did not refuse the assistance, but gave them as helpers the four thousand men who held allotments of the land of the horse-breeding Chalcidians. But the counsel of the Eretrians was in fact unsound in every way; even as they summoned the Athenians for help, they themselves were split between two courses. Some
of them planned to abandon the city for the heights of Euboea, while others, expecting private gain from the Persian, were preparing to betray the city. Learning how matters stood on both sides, Aeschines son of Nothon, a leading man among the Eretrians, told the Athenians who had come everything about the situation they were in, and asked them to withdraw to their own country, so that they might not
perish along with the rest. The Athenians followed this advice given by Aeschines, and crossing over to Oropus they saved themselves. The Persians, sailing on, brought their ships to land in Eretrian territory near Temenos, Choereae, and Aegilea, and having taken these places they at once disembarked their horses and made ready to attack their enemies. The Eretrians, for their part, did not intend to come out and give battle
They took no counsel about it, except that they were concerned to keep the walls intact, once the decision had been made not to abandon the city. When a strong assault came against the wall, many fell on both sides over six days; but on the seventh, Euphorbus son of Alcimachus and Philagrus son of Cyneas, men of standing among the citizens, betrayed the city to the Persians. They entered
the city, and first plundered and burned the temples, in requital for the temples burned at Sardis, and second they enslaved the people, in accordance with Darius' orders. Having subdued Eretria and waited a few days, they sailed for the land of Attica, pressing hard and expecting to do to the Athenians the same as they had done to the Eretrians. And since Marathon
was the place in Attica most suited for cavalry to maneuver and nearest to Eretria, Hippias son of Pisistratus led them there. When the Athenians learned of this, they too marched out to Marathon to meet them. Ten generals led them, the tenth of whom was Miltiades. His father Cimon, son of Stesagoras, had been driven out of Athens by Pisistratus, the son of Hippocrates, and it was during that exile that an Olympic victory fell to him
with a four-horse chariot, and by winning this victory he achieved the same feat as his half-brother by the same mother, Miltiades. Then, at the next Olympiad, winning with the same horses, he allowed Pisistratus to be proclaimed victor, and by yielding the victory to him he returned home under a truce. And after winning yet another Olympiad with the same horses, it befell him to be killed by the sons of Pisistratus, Pisistratus himself no longer being alive.
They killed him near the town hall by posting men at night. Cimon is buried outside the city, across the road called Through the Hollow; and opposite him are buried those very horses that won three Olympiads. Other horses have achieved this same feat before, those of Evagoras the Laconian, but none more than these. Of Cimon's sons, the elder,
Stesagoras, was at that time being raised by his uncle Miltiades in the Chersonese, while the younger was with Cimon himself in Athens, named Miltiades after the founder of the Chersonese, Miltiades. This Miltiades, then, having come from the Chersonese, and having escaped a double death, was now general of the Athenians. For on the one hand the Phoenicians, pursuing him as far as Imbros, were
most eager to catch him and bring him up before the King; and on the other hand, having escaped them and reached his own country and thinking himself now safe, from that point his enemies welcomed him only to haul him into court, where they charged him with tyranny in the Chersonese. Having escaped these as well, he was thus appointed general of the Athenians, chosen by the people. And first, while
still in the city, the generals sent to Sparta as herald Phidippides, an Athenian man, and moreover one who made this his profession, a day-runner. To him, as Phidippides himself said and reported to the Athenians, near Mount Parthenium above Tegea, Pan appeared; and calling out Phidippides' name, Pan bade him tell the Athenians why
it was that they took no thought of him, though he was well disposed toward the Athenians and had been useful to them many times already, and would be again in the future. And the Athenians, once their affairs had settled well, believing this to be true, established a shrine of Pan below the Acropolis, and from this message they propitiate him with yearly sacrifices and a torch race. At that time, sent by the generals,
this Phidippides, on the very day he said Pan had appeared to him, arrived in Sparta the day after leaving the city of Athens. Coming before the magistrates he said, "Lacedaemonians, the Athenians beg you to come to their aid, and not to stand by while the most ancient city among the Greeks falls into slavery at the hands of barbarians; for indeed Eretria has already been enslaved, and Greece
has become weaker by the loss of a city of note." He reported what he had been charged to say, and they decided in favor of aiding the Athenians, yet could not act immediately, unwilling as they were to violate their own law; the month had just begun its ninth day, and they insisted that on the ninth they were forbidden to march out until the moon's disk was full. So they waited for the full moon. Meanwhile the barbarians were being led
by Hippias son of Pisistratus to Marathon, having on the previous night seen a vision of this kind: Hippias dreamed that he lay with his own mother. From this dream he concluded that he would return to Athens, recover his rule, and die in old age in his own country. This is what he concluded from the vision. Now as he led them, he first landed the captives from Eretria
on the island of the Styreans, called Aegilia, and second he brought the ships in to anchor at Marathon and marshaled the barbarians as they disembarked onto the land. While he was engaged in this, it happened that he sneezed and coughed more violently than usual; and since he was rather old, most of his teeth were loose, and one of these teeth he knocked out
by the force of his coughing. It fell into the sand, and he took great pains to find it; but when the tooth did not appear, he groaned and said to those standing by, "This land is not ours, and we will never bring it under our control; whatever portion belonged to me, the tooth now possesses." So Hippias concluded that this was the meaning of the vision. Meanwhile the Athenians,
drawn up in the precinct of Heracles, were joined by the Plataeans coming to help with their whole force. For the Plataeans had given themselves over to the Athenians, and the Athenians had already undertaken many labors on their behalf; and they had given themselves in this way. Being hard pressed by the Thebans, the Plataeans first offered themselves to Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides and the Lacedaemonians, who happened to be present. But they refused to accept them and said this to them: "We
live too far away, and such help as we could give you would be a cold comfort; for you might often be enslaved before any of us learned of it. We advise you instead to give yourselves to the Athenians, men who are your neighbors and quite capable of defending you." This the Lacedaemonians advised not so much out of goodwill toward the Plataeans as because they wished the Athenians to have troubles entangled with the Boeotians. The Lacedaemonians,
then, gave this advice to the Plataeans, and they did not disregard it, but when the Athenians were performing sacrifice to the twelve gods, they sat as suppliants at the altar and gave themselves over. When the Thebans learned this, they marched against the Plataeans, and the Athenians came to their aid. Just as battle was about to begin, the Corinthians stepped in and prevented it; being present at the time, they reconciled the two sides and, with the consent of both, fixed the boundary of the territory on these terms: that
the Thebans should let alone those of the Boeotians who did not wish to belong to the Boeotian league. Having decided this, the Corinthians departed; but as the Athenians were withdrawing, the Boeotians attacked them, and in attacking were defeated in the battle. And the Athenians, going beyond the boundaries the Corinthians had set for the Plataeans, made the Asopus river itself the boundary between the Thebans and both Plataea and Hysiae. Thus the Plataeans gave themselves
to the Athenians in the manner told, and now they came to Marathon to help. The Athenian generals were divided in opinion, some not wishing to join battle, since they were too few to engage the army of the Medes, others, including Miltiades, urging it. With the generals split and the inferior view about to win out, then—because an eleventh vote existed, belonging to the man selected by lot
to be polemarch of the Athenians (for in former days the Athenians granted the polemarch a vote equal to that of the generals), and the polemarch then in office was Callimachus of Aphidnae—Miltiades approached him and spoke as follows: "It is now in your hands, Callimachus, either to enslave Athens, or instead to set her free and thereby leave behind a memorial lasting through all human time to come, such as not even Harmodius and Aristogeiton leave. For now, since the Athenians came into being,
they have come to the greatest danger they have ever faced, and if they submit to the Medes, it has been decided what they will suffer once handed over to Hippias; but if this city survives, it can become the first of the Greek cities. How this can come about, and how the deciding of these matters falls upon you, I will now explain. Of us
the ten generals, opinion is divided, some urging that we join battle, others not. Now if we do not join battle, I expect some great dissension will fall upon the spirits of the Athenians and shake them so as to make them side with the Medes; but if we join battle before anything unsound arises among some of the Athenians, then, provided the gods deal fairly, we are able to prevail in the engagement. All this now
depends on you and hangs upon your decision. For if you add your vote to my opinion, your country will be free, and your city the first in Greece; but if you choose the side of those who are eager to avoid battle, you will have the opposite of the good things I have listed." By saying this, Miltiades won Callimachus over; and with the polemarch's vote added to his opinion,
it was resolved to join battle. After this, the generals whose opinion favored fighting, as each one's turn to hold the presidency for the day came around, yielded it to Miltiades; and he, though he accepted it, did not yet give battle, until his own day of presidency came. Once his turn arrived, the Athenians then arranged themselves as follows, ready to engage: the polemarch Callimachus led the right wing, for
the custom among the Athenians at that time was that the polemarch should hold the right wing; and with him leading, the tribes followed according to their numbered sequence, each behind the next, with the Plataeans arrayed last, holding the left wing. And ever since this battle, when the Athenians conduct sacrifices at the festivals held every four years, the Athenian herald prays together
good things were coming to the Athenians and Plataeans. At that time, as the Athenian forces took their positions at Marathon, this happened: the army, being made equal in length to the Median army, had its center formed up only a few ranks deep, and there the line was weakest, while each wing was strong in numbers. When they had been arrayed in this way and the sacrificial omens proved favorable, then, as soon as
the signal was given, the Athenians charged at a run against the barbarians. The space between the two armies was no less than eight stadia. The Persians, seeing them coming on at a run, made ready to receive them, thinking the Athenians utterly mad and bent on their own destruction, since they saw how few they were and that these few were rushing on at a run with neither cavalry nor archers to support them. That is what the barbarians supposed; but the Athenians,
once they had closed with the barbarians in a body, fought in a way worth recounting. They were the first of all Greeks we know of to charge the enemy at a run, and the first to endure the sight of Median dress and the men wearing it, whereas until then the very name of the Medes had struck fear into the Greeks who heard it. The fighting at Marathon lasted a long time, and in the
center of the line the barbarians were winning, where the Persians themselves and the Sacae were stationed; there the barbarians were victorious, and breaking through they pursued the Greeks into the interior of the country. But on each wing the Athenians and the Plataeans were victorious; and having won, they let the routed part of the barbarians flee, while they brought the two wings together and fought against those of the barbarians who had broken through the center,
and the Athenians were victorious. They pursued the fleeing Persians, cutting them down, until they came to the sea, where they called for fire and laid hold of the ships. In this struggle the polemarch was killed, having proved himself a brave man, and of the generals Stesilaus son of Thrasylaus died; and there too Cynegeirus son of Euphorion, seizing hold of the stern-ornament of a ship, had his
hand cut off by an axe and fell, and along with him many other Athenians, men of note, fell as well. In this way the Athenians took possession of seven of the ships; the barbarians shoved the remaining ships off from the shore, and after retrieving from the island the Eretrian captives they had left there, sailed around Sunium, hoping to reach the city ahead of the Athenians. The blame for this fell among the Athenians on the
Alcmaeonids, who were said to have contrived it: they, it was said, had made an agreement with the Persians and had raised a shield as a signal while the Persians were already aboard their ships. These, then, sailed around Sunium; but the Athenians rushed to the city as fast as they could manage, getting there ahead of the barbarians' arrival; then, marching from the Heracleum at Marathon, they set up camp at the other Heracleum, the one at Cynosarges.
The barbarians lay off shore with their ships at Phalerum — for that was then the port of Athens — and having lain to there for a time, they sailed back to Asia. In this battle at Marathon about six thousand four hundred of the barbarians were killed, and of the Athenians one hundred and ninety-two. So many fell on both sides. And it happened that a remarkable thing occurred there,
an Athenian man named Epizelus son of Cuphagoras, who, fighting hand to hand and showing himself courageous, lost his eyesight without being struck anywhere on his body or hit by anything, and for all the years that followed remained blind from that moment on. I have heard that he told the following story about what happened to him: he said that a tall hoplite seemed to stand opposite him, whose beard
cast a shadow over his whole shield; this apparition passed him by but killed the man standing beside him. This is what I learned Epizelus used to say. Datis, meanwhile, on his way back to Asia with the army, had a dream while sleeping once he reached Myconos. What the vision was is not told; but he, as soon as day broke, made a
search of the ships, and finding in a Phoenician ship a gilded statue of Apollo, he inquired from where it had been plundered, and once he learned which temple it belonged to, he took his own ship and sailed to Delos; finding that the Delians had by then come back to their island, he placed the statue in the temple there and directed the Delians to return it to Delium in Theban territory,
which lies on the coast opposite Chalcis. Having given these instructions, Datis sailed away; but the Delians did not carry the statue back — instead, twenty years later, the Thebans themselves brought it to Delium in accordance with an oracle. The enslaved Eretrians Datis and Artaphrenes, when they had put in on the coast of Asia in the course of their voyage, brought up to Susa. King Darius, before
the Eretrians were taken captive, had held a fierce anger against them, since the Eretrians had been the first to commit the wrong; but when he saw them brought before him and in his power, he did them no further harm, but settled them in a district of Cissia at one of his own stations called Ardericca, two hundred and ten stadia distant from Susa, and forty from the well
that yields three different substances: for bitumen, salt, and oil are all drawn up from it in the following way. It is drawn up by means of a swape, and instead of a bucket half a wineskin is fastened to it; the man dips this in, draws it up, and then pours it into a reservoir; from there, poured into another vessel, it separates into three streams. The bitumen and the salt at once solidify into a solid mass, while the
oil the Persians call rhadinace; it is black and gives off a heavy smell. There King Darius settled the Eretrians, and they held that land even down to my own time, keeping their ancient language. This, then, is what became of the Eretrians. As for the Lacedaemonians, two thousand of them came to Athens after the full moon, making such great haste to arrive that they reached Attica
from Sparta on the third day. Though they arrived too late for the battle, they nonetheless wished to view the Medes; so they went to Marathon and viewed them. Afterward, praising the Athenians and their achievement, they departed back home. I find it astonishing, and I do not accept the story, that the Alcmaeonids would ever have agreed with the Persians to raise a shield as a signal, wishing the Athenians to be under the barbarians and
under Hippias; for they show themselves to have been haters of tyrants no less, indeed more, than Callias son of Phaenippus, father of Hipponicus. Callias alone of all the Athenians dared, whenever Pisistratus was driven out of Athens, to buy up his property when it was put up for public auction, and in every other way devised the most hostile schemes against him. Of this Callias it is fitting that everyone should remember many things. This
is one: what has already been told, how he was a man foremost in freeing his country; and this too: what he did at Olympia — winning with a horse, and coming in second with a four-horse chariot, and having earlier taken a Pythian victory, he made himself famous to all the Greeks through the greatest expenditures. And this too: what sort of man he showed himself to be regarding his own three daughters; for when they came of marriageable age, he gave them a most magnificent gift, granting each of them the
privilege he gave them: out of all the Athenians, each daughter was allowed to choose for herself the husband she wished, and to him he gave her. And the Alcmaeonids were likewise, or no less than he, haters of tyrants. So I find it astonishing, and I do not accept the slander, that these men would have raised a shield, men who were exiled for the whole of that time by the tyrants, and through whose contrivance the sons of Pisistratus lost
their tyranny, and so it was these men who were the liberators of Athens, far more than Harmodius and Aristogeiton, as I judge. For the latter, by killing Hipparchus, only enraged the rest of the sons of Pisistratus still more, and did not at all put a stop to the others' tyranny; whereas the Alcmaeonids openly freed Athens, if indeed it was truly they who persuaded the Pythia to instruct the Lacedaemonians to free Athens,
as I have shown earlier. But perhaps, one might say, they had some grievance against the Athenian people and so betrayed their country. Yet there were no others among the Athenians held in higher esteem than they, nor any more honored. Thus reason does not allow that a shield would have been raised by these men on any such account. That a shield was raised is beyond dispute — that much did happen —
but who it was that raised it, I am unable to say further than this. The Alcmaeonids had been illustrious at Athens even from ancient times, and from the time of Alcmaeon, and again of Megacles, they became exceedingly illustrious. For one thing, Alcmaeon son of Megacles served as a helper and eagerly assisted the Lydians who came from Sardis on behalf of Croesus to the oracle at Delphi, and
he assisted them eagerly, and Croesus, learning from the Lydians who frequented the oracles that Alcmaeon had done him good service, summoned him to Sardis, and upon his arrival offered to let him take away, in one visit, as much gold as his own body could bear. Alcmaeon, in view of a gift of such a kind, devised and employed the following scheme: putting on a large tunic and leaving a deep fold in it, and fitting on the widest boots he could find,
he went into the treasury to which he was led. Falling upon a heap of gold dust, first he packed as much gold as his boots would hold in against his shins, then filled the whole fold of his tunic with gold, and sprinkled gold dust over the hair of his head as well, and took still more in his mouth, and came out of the treasury
dragging his boots with difficulty, looking like anything rather than a human being, his mouth stuffed full and his whole body swollen out. At the sight of him Croesus burst out laughing, and gave him all of that and made him further gifts no less than that. In this way this house became greatly wealthy, and this Alcmaeon, having in this way come to keep a four-horse chariot team, won an Olympic victory. After this
In the second generation after that, Cleisthenes the tyrant of Sicyon raised it up again, so that it became far more celebrated among the Greeks than it had been before. For to Cleisthenes son of Aristonymus, son of Myron, son of Andreas, was born a daughter whose name was Agariste. This daughter he wished to marry to the best man he could find out of all the Greeks. So at the Olympic games, where he had won victory in the four-horse chariot race, Cleisthenes had a proclamation made,
that whichever Greek man thought himself worthy to become Cleisthenes' son-in-law should come to Sicyon within sixty days, or even sooner, since Cleisthenes intended to settle the marriage within a year, counting from the sixtieth day. Thereupon all the Greeks who were proud of themselves and their homeland came forward as suitors; and for them Cleisthenes had a running track and a wrestling ground built, and kept them there for just this purpose. From
Italy came Smindyrides son of Hippocrates, a Sybarite, who had reached the greatest luxury of any single man (Sybaris was then at the very height of its prosperity), and Damasus of Siris, son of Amyris, who was known as the Wise. Both of these men set out from Italy; and from the Ionian Gulf came Amphimnestus son of Epistrophus, of Epidamnus; he came from the Ionian Gulf. From Aetolia came Males, the brother of that Titormus
who surpassed all the Greeks in strength and fled from men to the farthest parts of the Aetolian land. From the Peloponnese came Leocedes, son of Pheidon the tyrant of the Argives — that Pheidon who established weights and measures for the Peloponnesians and committed the greatest outrage of all the Greeks, when he drove out the Elean stewards of the games and himself presided over the contest at Olympia. This man's son, then,
and Amiantus son of Lycurgus, an Arcadian from Trapezus, and from the city of Paeus in Azania, Laphanes son of Euphorion — the same Euphorion who, as the story is told in Arcadia, received the Dioscuri into his house and ever after entertained all comers — and Onomastus son of Agaeus, an Elean. These, then, came from the Peloponnese itself; and from Athens came Megacles son of that Alcmeon who had visited Croesus, and
another, Hippocleides son of Tisander, who surpassed the Athenians in wealth and looks. From Eretria, which was flourishing at that time, came Lysanias; he alone came from Euboea. From Thessaly came Diactorides of Crannon, one of the Scopadae, and from the Molossians came Alcon. So many were the suitors. When they arrived on the appointed day, Cleisthenes first inquired into each man's homeland and
lineage, and then, keeping them with him for a year, tested their manly worth, their temper, their upbringing, and their character, meeting with each one alone and with all together, taking the younger ones out to the gymnasium, and — most important of all — testing them at his own table; for as long as he kept them he did all this, and at the same time entertained them
lavishly. Now of the suitors those who had come from Athens pleased him most, and of these Hippocleides son of Tisander was judged the best both for his manly qualities and because his family was, from ancient times, related to the Cypselids of Corinth. When the day arrived that had been set for the wedding banquet, the day on which Cleisthenes was to announce which of them he had chosen, Cleisthenes sacrificed a hundred oxen
and feasted the suitors themselves and all the people of Sicyon. When the dinner was over, the suitors fell to competing with one another in music and in speaking before the company. As the drinking went on, Hippocleides, who was by far outdoing the others, ordered the flute-player to play him a dance tune, and when the flute-player complied, he danced. He danced, it seems, to his own satisfaction,
but Cleisthenes, watching the whole performance, began to have his doubts. After a while Hippocleides, pausing, ordered someone to fetch a table; once it had been carried in, he first danced on it some Laconian figures, then some Attic ones, and third he rested his head on the table and gestured with his legs in the air. Cleisthenes, though during the first and second dances he had already begun to loathe
the idea of Hippocleides becoming his son-in-law, on account of his dancing and his shamelessness, restrained himself, not wishing to burst out against him; but when he saw him gesturing with his legs in the air, he could no longer hold back and said, "Son of Tisander, you have danced away your marriage." Hippocleides took him up and replied, "Hippocleides doesn't care." From this the saying arose. Cleisthenes then called for silence
and spoke to the assembled company as follows: "Suitors of my daughter, I have praise for every one of you, and if it could be done I would gladly please each of you, neither singling out one for preference nor rejecting the rest. But since it is not possible, deliberating as I am about a single girl, to satisfy all of you at once, to those of you who are set aside from this marriage I give a talent of silver
to each, as a gift in recognition of the honor you have done me in wishing to marry into my family, and for the trouble of leaving your homes; but to Megacles son of Alcmeon I betroth my daughter Agariste, according to the customs of the Athenians." And when Megacles agreed to the betrothal, the marriage was confirmed by Cleisthenes. So much, then, happened concerning the judging of the suitors, and this is how the Alcmeonidae came to be renowned throughout Greece. From this marriage was born the Cleisthenes
who set up the tribes and brought democracy to Athens, named after his mother's father, the man of Sicyon. This man was born to Megacles, along with Hippocrates; and from Hippocrates came another Megacles and another Agariste, who took her name from Cleisthenes' daughter Agariste. She, having married Xanthippus son of Ariphron and being pregnant, saw a vision in her sleep in which she dreamed
she had given birth to a lion, and a few days later she bore Pericles to Xanthippus. After the defeat that the Persians suffered at Marathon, Miltiades, who had already been held in high regard among the Athenians, now rose to even greater prominence. He asked the Athenians for seventy ships, along with troops and money, without telling them against what country he meant to campaign, but saying only that he would make them rich if they followed him; for he would lead them
against a land from which gold in abundance could easily be carried home. So saying, he asked for the ships. The Athenians, excited by these words, granted them. Miltiades, taking command of the force, sailed against Paros, on the pretext that the Parians had been the first to campaign against the Athenians, sending triremes to Marathon in support of the Persian. This was the professed reason given, but he also nursed a private grudge against the Parians because of Lysagoras son of
Tisias, a man of Parian descent, who had slandered him to Hydarnes the Persian. Having arrived where he was sailing with his force, Miltiades besieged the Parians, who had shut themselves within their walls, and sending in a herald he demanded a hundred talents, saying that if they did not give it, his army would not return home until it had destroyed them. The Parians had no intention whatsoever of giving Miltiades any money,
but instead devised ways to defend their city, contriving various measures and, in particular, wherever the wall happened at any time to be most vulnerable to attack, building it up in the night to twice its former height. Up to this point in the story all the Greeks agree; from here on the Parians themselves say the following happened. As Miltiades was at a loss, a captive woman came to speak with him, a Parian by birth, named
Timo, who was an under-priestess of the chthonic goddesses. She, coming into Miltiades' presence, advised him that if he set great store by taking Paros, he should do whatever she suggested. Following this, she gave him her advice, and he, making his way to the mound in front of the city, leaped over the fence of the sanctuary of Demeter the Lawgiver, since he was unable to open the gates, and having leaped over,
went to the inner shrine to do something there, whether to move some object that should not be moved or to carry out some other act. When he reached the doors, a sudden shudder came over him and he rushed back by the same way he had come; and as he leaped down from the wall he wrenched his thigh — though some say he struck his knee. Miltiades, then, in a wretched state, sailed
back home, bringing neither money for the Athenians nor Paros as a new possession, but having besieged the island for twenty-six days and ravaged it. When the Parians learned it was Timo, under-priestess of the goddesses, who had shown Miltiades the way, they wished to punish her for it, and as soon as the siege was over they sent messengers to Delphi, to ask whether they ought to execute the goddesses' under-priestess who
had shown their enemies the way to capture her homeland and had revealed to Miltiades the rites forbidden to male eyes. But the Pythia would not allow it, saying that Timo was not to blame for these things; but since Miltiades was fated to come to a bad end, she had appeared to him as the guide to his misfortunes. This is the oracle the Pythia gave the Parians. As for the Athenians, when Miltiades returned from Paros, they had him on their lips —
the rest of them, and above all Xanthippus son of Ariphron, who brought Miltiades before the people on a capital charge and prosecuted him for having deceived the Athenians. Miltiades himself did not speak in his own defense, being unable to do so since his thigh had become gangrenous; instead, as he lay before them on a couch, his friends spoke at length in his defense, recalling repeatedly the battle at Marathon
and the capture of Lemnos, telling how he had taken Lemnos and, having punished the Pelasgians, had handed it over to the Athenians. The people, siding with him on the matter of the death penalty, but fining him for his wrongdoing fifty talents — after this Miltiades died, his thigh having festered and rotted, and the fifty talents were paid off by his son Cimon. Miltiades son of Cimon had taken Lemnos in the following way. The Pelasgians,
after they had been driven out of Attica by the Athenians — whether this was done fairly or not, I cannot say, except for what is reported, namely that Hecataeus son of Hegesander said in his account that it was unjustly done, on the grounds that the Athenians had once looked upon the land lying beneath Hymettus, land they themselves had given to the Pelasgians to live in as payment for the wall around
the acropolis had once been driven by a wall, so that when the Athenians saw it well built, whereas before it had been poor and worth nothing, they were seized by envy and desire for the land, and so drove the Pelasgians out, offering no other pretext. But as the Athenians themselves tell it, their expulsion of them was just. For the Pelasgians, settled below Hymettus, used to set out from there and do the following wrong: their own daughters and sons
used always to go for water to the Nine Springs (for at that time neither the Athenians nor the other Greeks yet had household servants); and whenever these girls came there, the Pelasgians, out of arrogance and contempt, would force themselves upon them. And this was not enough for them, but in the end they were caught red-handed plotting an actual attack.
The Athenians, they say, proved themselves so much better men than the Pelasgians that, though it was in their power to kill them once they had caught them plotting, they were unwilling to do so, but instead ordered them to leave the land. And so the Pelasgians, having withdrawn in this way, occupied other places and, in particular, Lemnos. This is what Hecataeus said; this is what the Athenians say. As for these Pelasgians, who were then occupying Lemnos
and wished to take revenge on the Athenians, since they knew well the Athenians' festivals, they got fifty-oared ships and lay in wait for the Athenian women who were celebrating a festival to Artemis at Brauron; and seizing many of them from there, they sailed off, and bringing them to Lemnos kept them as concubines. When these women became pregnant with children, the boys were taught Attic speech and Athenian customs.
These boys were unwilling to mix with the sons born of the Pelasgian women, and if one of them was struck by another, they would all come to his aid and avenge one another; and indeed the boys claimed the right to rule over the other boys, and had by far the upper hand. Learning of this, the Pelasgians took counsel among themselves; and as they deliberated, a terrible thought crept in on them: if
the boys were already ready to help each other against the sons of the lawfully wedded wives and were already trying to rule over them, what indeed would they do once they had grown to manhood? At this point they resolved to kill the sons of the Attic women. They did this, and along with them destroyed their mothers as well. From this deed, and from an earlier one before it, which the women had done to the men of Thoas
killing their own husbands, it has become customary throughout Greece to call every cruel deed a Lemnian deed. But when the Pelasgians had killed their own children and wives, their land ceased producing fruit, and neither their women nor their flocks bore young as before. Pressed by hunger and by the lack of children, they sent envoys to Delphi seeking release from the troubles weighing on them. The Pythia
bade them give the Athenians whatever penalty the Athenians themselves should decide. So the Pelasgians came to Athens and announced that they were prepared to make full amends for their wrongdoing. The Athenians, having spread a couch in the prytaneum as finely as they could and set beside it a table laden with every good thing, told the Pelasgians to hand over their land to them in that same condition. The Pelasgians, taking this up,
said, "Whenever a ship completes the journey from your land to ours in a single day with the north wind, then we will hand it over," knowing that this was impossible, since Attica lies far to the south of Lemnos. That was the matter then; but very many years after this, when the Chersonese on the Hellespont had come under Athenian control, Miltiades son of Cimon, when the etesian winds were blowing steadily, made the crossing by ship
from Elaeus in the Chersonese to Lemnos, and told the Pelasgians they must quit the island, calling to their minds the oracle that they themselves had never expected to be fulfilled. The people of Hephaestia obeyed, but the Myrinaeans, not admitting that the Chersonese was Attic, were besieged, until they too submitted. Thus did the Athenians and Miltiades gain possession of Lemnos.

======== Histories — Book 7 (Polymnia) ========

When news of the battle fought at Marathon reached King Darius son of Hystaspes, who had already been greatly provoked at the Athenians because of their attack on Sardis, he now grew far more indignant still and was all the more eager to march against Greece. At once he sent messengers around to the cities ordering them to prepare an army, commanding each to furnish far more
than before—ships, horses, grain, and transport vessels. As these orders went out, Asia was in turmoil for three years, as the best men were being enrolled and equipped to campaign against Greece. But in the fourth year the Egyptians, who had been enslaved by Cambyses, revolted from the Persians. At that point Darius was all the more eager to campaign against both peoples. While Darius was preparing
his expedition against Egypt and Athens, a great dispute arose among his sons over the succession, since Persian custom required that a king be designated before he went on campaign. Darius had had three sons born before he became king, by his first wife, the daughter of Gobryas, and four more after he became king, by Atossa, daughter of Cyrus. Of the elder sons the eldest was Artobazanes; of the
younger, Xerxes. Since they were of different mothers, they were in dispute: Artobazanes because he was the eldest of all the offspring, and because it was customary among all mankind for the eldest to hold rule; Xerxes because he was the son of Atossa, daughter of Cyrus, and because it was Cyrus who had won the Persians their freedom. Darius had
had not yet given his verdict, when it so happened that Demaratus son of Ariston, stripped of his kingship at Sparta and having exiled himself from Lacedaemon, had also come up to Susa around this same time. Learning of the quarrel between the sons of Darius, this man went to Xerxes—so the account goes—and urged him to add, beyond what he had already been arguing, that he himself was born to Darius after Darius had already become king and
already held the Persian throne, whereas Artobazanes had been born to Darius while he was still a private man; so it would be neither fitting nor just for anyone else to receive the honor ahead of him. Demaratus pointed out that this same custom held even at Sparta: if sons were born before their father took the throne, and a later son was born to him once he was already king, the claim to succeed
kingship belonged to the one born after. Xerxes followed Demaratus's advice, and Darius, recognizing that he spoke justly, declared him king. But it seems to me that even without this advice Xerxes would have become king, for Atossa held all the power. Having declared Xerxes king of the Persians, Darius set about his campaign. But then, after this, while preparing his response to the revolt of Egypt in the following year,
Darius, after a reign of thirty-six years in all, came to die, and he was never able to punish either the rebel Egyptians or the Athenians. When Darius died, the throne passed to his son Xerxes. Xerxes, for his part, had at the outset no real eagerness to march against Greece, and instead set about mustering an army against Egypt. But present
and the man who carried the most weight with him among the Persians, Mardonius son of Gobryas, kept returning to this argument, saying, "Master, it would not be right for the Athenians, after inflicting so much harm on the Persians, to escape paying the penalty for what they did. Still, for the moment attend to the business now in your hands; once you have subdued Egypt in its arrogance,
lead your army against Athens, so that you may have a good name among men, and that in future anyone will think twice before invading your land." This was his argument for vengeance; but to this argument he would also add the claim that Europe was an exceedingly beautiful land, bearing every kind of cultivated tree, and of surpassing excellence, worthy to be possessed by the king alone among mortals.
He said this because he was eager for new exploits and wished himself to be governor of Greece. In time he worked on Xerxes and persuaded him to do this; and other things happening to coincide helped bring Xerxes around to being persuaded. For one thing, messengers had come from Thessaly on behalf of the Aleuadae, urging the king with every show of eagerness to march against Greece; these
Aleuadae were kings of Thessaly. For another, those of the Pisistratids who had come up to Susa were pressing the same arguments as the Aleuadae, and moreover urged him even further still: they had with them Onomacritus, an Athenian, an oracle-monger and arranger of the oracles of Musaeus, and they had come up having first settled their quarrel with him. For Onomacritus had been driven out of
Athens by Hipparchus son of Pisistratus, having been caught red-handed by Lasus of Hermione inserting into the oracles of Musaeus a prophecy that the islands lying off Lemnos would vanish beneath the sea. For this Hipparchus drove him out, though before that he had made great use of him. But now he had gone up together with them, and whenever he came into the king's presence, the Pisistratids would speak solemn words about him, and he would recite from the oracles; and if there
was anything in them foretelling misfortune for the barbarian, he said nothing of it, but chose out the most favorable prophecies and recited them, saying that it was fated that the Hellespont be bridged by a Persian, and expounding the details of the march. So this man came bearing his oracles, and the Pisistratids and the Aleuadae kept declaring their opinions besides. When Xerxes was persuaded to march against Greece, then, in the second year after
the death of Darius, he first made an expedition against those who had revolted. Having subdued them and made all Egypt far more enslaved than it had been under Darius, he entrusted it to Achaemenes, his own brother and a son of Darius. Now Achaemenes, while governing Egypt, was later murdered by Inaros son of Psammetichus, a Libyan. After the conquest of Egypt, when Xerxes was about to take in hand
the expedition against Athens, he convened a special assembly of the leading Persians, so that he might learn their opinions and himself state before them all what he wished. When they had gathered, Xerxes spoke as follows. After him Mardonius spoke: "Master, you are not only the best of the Persians who have ever lived but also of those yet to come, since in everything else you have judged most excellently
and most truly, and you will not allow the Ionians settled in Europe to laugh at us, unworthy as they are. For it would be a monstrous thing if we, who have subdued and hold as slaves the Sacae, Indians, Ethiopians, Assyrians, and many other great nations that did us no wrong, merely because we wished to add to our power, should fail to take vengeance on the Greeks who were the first to commit injustice against us. Mardonius,
having smoothed Xerxes's judgment with words to this effect, fell silent. And since the rest of the Persians were silent and did not dare to put forward an opinion opposed to the one already proposed, Artabanus son of Hystaspes, who was Xerxes's uncle and relied on that very fact, spoke as follows. Artabanus said this, and Xerxes, angered, answered him thus: "Artabanus, you are my father's brother; that alone will save you from receiving the fitting payment for
your foolish words. But I do impose this disgrace upon you, since you are a coward and lack spirit: you shall not campaign with me against Greece, but shall remain here with the women. As for me, I will accomplish all that I have said, even without you. For may I not be a descendant of Darius son of Hystaspes, son of Arsames, son of Ariaramnes, son of Teispes, son of Cyrus, son of Cambyses, son of Teispes, son of Achaemenes,
if I do not take vengeance on the Athenians—knowing well that if we remain at peace, they will not, but will indeed march against our land, if one may judge by what they have already done: they burned Sardis and marched into Asia. So it is not possible for either side now to withdraw; the contest before us is to do or to suffer, so that either all this land shall come under the Greeks or all
that land shall come under the Persians, for there is no middle ground in this hostility. It is right, then, that since we have already suffered wrong, we should now take our vengeance, so that I may also learn what this terrible thing is that I am to suffer, by marching against these men—men whom even Pelops the Phrygian, who was a slave of my forefathers, subdued so completely that to this very day the people themselves and their land are named
after their conqueror." So much was said on this matter. Afterward night came, and the opinion of Artabanus continued to trouble Xerxes; and taking counsel with himself in the night, he found it altogether no advantage to campaign against Greece. Having again resolved on this, he fell asleep, and in the night, it is said by the Persians, he saw a vision of this kind: Xerxes
dreamed that a tall and handsome man stood over him and said, "Are you then changing your mind, Persian, about not leading your army against Greece, after having proclaimed that the Persians should gather their forces? You do not do well in changing your mind, nor is there anyone here who will forgive you; but go the way you resolved to go by day." Having said this, the figure seemed to Xerxes to fly away; and when day dawned, he
took no account of this dream, but assembled the Persians whom he had gathered before and said to them: "Men of Persia, forgive me for changing my mind so abruptly; I have not yet reached the full maturity of my judgment, and those who urge me toward that other course never leave me in peace for a moment. When I heard the opinion of Artabanus, my youth at once boiled over, so that I
hurled at an older man words more unbecoming than was proper; but now I acknowledge my fault and will follow his judgment. So then, since I have changed my mind and will not campaign against Greece, be at ease." When the Persians heard this, they rejoiced and did obeisance. But when night came, the same dream stood again over Xerxes as he slept and said, "Son of Darius, you have now plainly declared before the Persians that you renounce the expedition,
and hold my words in no regard, as though you had heard them from no one? Know this well: if you do not lead an army at once, this is what will come of it—just as you became great and mighty in a short time, so too you will quickly become humbled again." Xerxes, terrified by the vision, leapt up from his bed and
sent a messenger to summon Artabanus. When he arrived, Xerxes said this to him: "Artabanus, in the moment I was not of sound mind when I spoke rash words to you in return for your good advice; but not long after I changed my mind, and I recognized that I must do what you had proposed. Yet I am not able to do this even though I wish to, for since I turned back and changed my mind, a dream keeps visiting me
that appears to me and by no means approves of my doing this; and just now it has departed after threatening me besides. Now if it is a god who is sending it, and it is altogether his pleasure that the expedition against Greece take place, this same dream will fly to you as well and give you the same command it gives me. And I find this would happen if you were to take all my clothing and, putting it on, sit down
onto my own throne, and afterward lie down and sleep in my bed." Such were Xerxes' words to him. Artabanus did not yield to the first order, feeling unworthy to take his seat upon the royal throne, but finally, once compelled, having said as much, he carried out what was asked of him. Having spoken those words, and expecting to prove that Xerxes' claim amounted to nothing, Artabanus did as he was told. He put on Xerxes' robes and
sat upon the royal throne, and when afterward he lay down to sleep, the same dream that had been visiting Xerxes came to him too, and standing over Artabanus it said: "Are you indeed the one who tries to dissuade Xerxes from marching against Greece, as though you cared for him? But neither in the future nor now at present will you escape the consequences of turning aside what
was destined to happen. As for Xerxes, what would befall him for refusing to listen has already been shown to him directly." Artabanus took this to mean the dream was threatening him, and that it meant to sear his eyes shut with heated iron rods. Crying out loudly, he sprang up, and taking a seat beside Xerxes, after describing the vision of the dream to him in full, he spoke to him a second time, saying: "I, O king, being a man who has already witnessed many
great affairs collapse at the hands of lesser men, would not allow you to give way entirely to your youth, knowing how harmful it is to crave more and more—recalling how Cyrus's campaign against the Massagetae turned out, and recalling too Cambyses' campaign against the Ethiopians, while I myself took part with Darius in the expedition against the Scythians. Knowing all this, my judgment was that if you stayed at peace, you would be counted fortunate above everyone
men. But since some divine impulse has arisen, and it seems that some god-driven destruction is now overtaking the Greeks, I myself also turn and change my mind, and you should announce to the Persians what is being sent from the god, and bid them make use of the preparations you first proposed, and act in such a way that, since the god is granting it, nothing on your part
shall be lacking." When these things had been said, both being lifted up by the vision, as soon as day came Xerxes laid this matter before the Persians, and Artabanus, who before had alone appeared to oppose it, now was plainly urging it on. When Xerxes had set his mind on leading the campaign, after this a third vision came to him in his sleep, which the Magi, upon hearing of it, interpreted to mean that it portended rule over the whole earth and that all mankind would be his slaves.
The dream vision was this: Xerxes dreamed he was crowned with an olive branch, and that shoots from the olive spread out to cover the whole earth, after which the crown resting on his head vanished. Once the Magi had interpreted this, every Persian who had gathered there set off at once for his own province, full of enthusiasm over what had been declared, each man wishing
to obtain the prizes set before them, and it was in this way that Xerxes gathered his army, searching out every region of the continent. For from the conquest of Egypt he spent four full years preparing his army and what was suited to it, and in the fifth year, as it was ending, he led forth his expedition with a great multitude of forces. Of all the expeditions known to us, none came close to matching this one in scale, so that neither that of Darius
against the Scythians appears anything beside it, nor the Scythian one, when the Scythians, pursuing the Cimmerians, invaded the land of the Medes, conquering and settling in almost the whole upper region of Asia, for which Darius afterward took vengeance, nor, according to what is said, that of the sons of Atreus against Ilium, nor that of the Mysians and Teucrians, which came before the Trojan war, when they, crossing over into
Europe by the Bosporus, subdued all the Thracians and came down to the Ionian sea, and advanced as far south as the river Peneius. All these expeditions together, even if others were added to them besides, are not worth this one. What people did Xerxes fail to draw out of Asia against Greece? What water fit for drinking did he not exhaust,
except that of the great rivers? For some peoples furnished ships, others were arrayed as infantry, others had cavalry assigned to them, others horse-transport vessels along with the troops on campaign, others were to furnish long ships for the bridges, and others provisions and ships. And this, since those who first sailed around Athos had come to grief, had been prepared for about three years before,
the works concerning Athos. For triremes lay at anchor at Elaeus in the Chersonese; setting out from there, men of every nation in the army dug under the lash, and relief crews came in turn; and those who dwelt around Athos also dug. Bubares son of Megabazus and Artachaees son of Artaeus, Persian men, oversaw the work. For Athos is a mountain great and famous, reaching down
to the sea, and inhabited by people. Where the mountain ends toward the mainland, it is peninsula-shaped, with an isthmus about twelve stadia wide; there is a plain here and low hills, from the sea by Acanthus to the sea opposite Torone. On this isthmus, where Athos ends, the Greek city of Sane is settled, and the cities beyond Sane, within
Athos, which the Persian was then trying to make into islands instead of parts of the mainland, are these: Dium, Olophyxus, Acrothoum, Thyssus, and Cleonae. These are the cities that occupy Athos, and the barbarians dug in this way, having divided the ground by nations: at the city of Sane they made a line with a rope, and when the trench became deep, some stood at the very bottom and dug, while others
passed on the earth as it was continually dug out to others standing above on platforms, and these in turn to others, until it reached those at the very top; and these carried it off and threw it away. Now for all the others except the Phoenicians, the sides of the excavation kept collapsing and caused them double labor; for since they made the top opening and the bottom the same width, this
result was bound to follow for them. But the Phoenicians displayed their skill in this matter as in other works too. For having been allotted the portion that fell to them, they dug the upper mouth of the channel twice as wide as the channel itself needed to be, and as the work progressed they kept narrowing it; so that at the bottom it came out even with the work of the others.
There is a meadow there, where they had a market and a place of trade; and much grain, already ground, was brought to them from Asia. As far as I can conjecture, Xerxes ordered it to be dug out of pride, wanting to show off his power and leave something by which he would be remembered; for though it was possible, without taking any trouble, to haul the ships across the isthmus, he ordered a channel to be dug for the sea, wide enough for two
triremes to be rowed through it side by side. The same men who were assigned to the digging were also ordered to bridge the river Strymon by yoking it together. This is how he did these things; and he also had prepared for the bridges cables of papyrus and of white flax, assigning this task to the Phoenicians and Egyptians, and he had provisions laid up for the army, so that neither the army nor the pack animals should go hungry as they marched
against Greece. And having inquired about the locations, he ordered provisions to be stored wherever it was most suitable, bringing them from all parts of Asia in merchant ships and ferry boats to various places. Most of it they brought to a place called the White Shore in Thrace, some to Tyrodiza in the territory of Perinthus, some to Doriscus, some to Eion on the Strymon, and some assigned to Macedonia.
While these men were carrying out the appointed labor, meanwhile the entire infantry, having been assembled, marched together with Xerxes to Sardis, setting out from Critalla in Cappadocia; for it had been ordered that there all the land forces that were to march together with Xerxes himself should assemble. Which of the governors, having led the army arrayed most splendidly, received from the king the promised
gifts, I am unable to say, since I have no knowledge that they ever reached any judgment on this matter. But when they had crossed the river Halys and entered Phrygia, marching through it they arrived at Celaenae, where the springs rise that give rise to the river Maeander and to another river no smaller than the Maeander, whose name happens to be Catarrhactes, which rises out of the very marketplace of Celaenae and flows into the
Maeander; in which city also the skin of Silenus Marsyas is hung up, which, as the Phrygians tell the tale, was flayed by Apollo and hung up there. In this city Pythius son of Atys, a Lydian man, residing there, entertained the king's entire army with the greatest hospitality, and Xerxes himself, and he offered to furnish money for the war. And when Pythius offered money, Xerxes asked the Persians
who among the men present Pythius was and how much wealth he possessed, that he made this offer. In reply they said: "O king, this man gave your father Darius the golden plane tree and gave him also the golden vine; and among the men we know of, he now ranks first in wealth after you." Marveling at the last of these words, Xerxes himself then asked
Pythius how much wealth he had. He said, "O king, I will neither hide it from you nor pretend not to know my own property, but since I know it exactly I will tell you precisely. For as soon as I learned that you were coming down to the Greek sea, wishing to give you money for the war, I worked it out, and I found by reckoning that I have two thousand talents of silver, and of gold
four hundred myriads of Daric staters, lacking seven thousand. These I give to you as a gift; for myself, from my slaves and my farmland I have a sufficient livelihood." So he spoke, and Xerxes, pleased with what had been said, replied, "Lydian guest-friend, since I left the land of Persia I have met no man up to now who wished to offer hospitality to my army, nor
anyone who, coming into my presence of his own accord, wished to give money toward my war effort, except you. You have both entertained my army lavishly and now offer great sums of money. In return for this I give you these honors: I make you my guest-friend, and I will make up your four hundred myriads of staters to the full sum by giving you from my own the seven thousand that are lacking,
so that your four million may not be seven thousand pieces short, but the exact sum stand complete through my hand. Keep for yourself what you yourself have acquired, and know how to remain always such a man; for by acting so you will not regret it, either now or in time to come." Having said this and made it good, he went on ever forward. Passing by the city called Anaua
of the Phrygians, and a lake from which salt is produced, he arrived at Colossae, a large Phrygian city, where the river Lycus, plunging into a chasm in the earth, disappears, then after about five stadia reappears and empties, it too, into the Maeander. Setting out from Colossae, the army arrived at the borders of the Phrygians and Lydians, at the city of Cydrara,
where a stone pillar, fixed in the ground and set up by Croesus, marks the borders by an inscription. When he entered Lydia from Phrygia, the road forks, one branch leading left toward Caria, the other right toward Sardis; for one traveling this way it is entirely necessary to cross the river Maeander and to pass by the city of Callatebus, where
craftsmen make honey from tamarisk and wheat. Going along this road, Xerxes found a plane tree which, because of its beauty, he adorned with golden ornaments and entrusted to one of the Immortals as its keeper; on the following day he arrived at the city of the Lydians. Having reached Sardis, he first sent out heralds to Greece to demand earth and water, and to instruct the cities to prepare feasts
for the king; except that he did not send to Athens or to Lacedaemon to demand earth, but everywhere else. The reason he sent a second time to demand earth and water was this: he thought that those who had not given it before, when Darius had sent for it, would now give it out of fear; wishing to learn this precisely, he sent. After this he made preparations to march to Abydos.
Meanwhile they were bridging the Hellespont from Asia to Europe. There is, on the Chersonese by the Hellespont, between the cities of Sestos and Madytus, a broad headland running down to the sea opposite Abydos; there afterward, not long after this, under the generalship of Xanthippus son of Ariphron, the Athenians took Artayctes, a Persian man, governor of Sestos, alive, and nailed him to a plank,
a man who used to bring women to the shrine of Protesilaus at Elaeus and there commit unlawful acts. To this headland, then, setting out from Abydos, they built the bridges, with those assigned to the task working on them, the Phoenicians with a cable of white flax, the Egyptians the other with a cable of papyrus. It is seven stadia from Abydos to the point opposite. When the strait had been bridged, a great storm came up and smashed
all of it and broke it apart. When Xerxes learned of this, furious, he ordered that the Hellespont be given three hundred lashes with a whip and that a pair of fetters be let down into the sea. I have even heard that he sent branders along with these to brand the Hellespont. He commanded them, as they scourged it, to say barbarous and reckless words: "Bitter water, your master lays this punishment on you because you wronged him,
though you suffered no wrong from him. King Xerxes will cross you whether you wish it or not; it is with justice that no man offers you sacrifice, since you are a turbid and brackish river." He commanded the sea to be punished with these words, and the heads to be cut off of those who had overseen the bridging of the Hellespont. And those
to whom this thankless honor had fallen did as ordered, and other master-builders bridged the strait anew. They bridged it in this way: joining together fifty-oared ships and triremes, three hundred and sixty under the bridge toward the Black Sea, and three hundred and fourteen under the other, the ships on the Black Sea side set crosswise to the current, those on the Hellespont side aligned with it, so as to ease the strain on the cables; and having joined them together they let down
very long anchors, on the Black Sea side because of the winds blowing outward from within, and on the other side, toward the west and the Aegean, because of the west and south winds. They left a gap as a passage among the fifty-oared ships and triremes, so that whoever wished could still sail into and out of the Black Sea with small boats. Having done this,
they stretched the cables taut from the shore, twisting them with wooden windlasses, no longer keeping the two kinds of cable separate as before, but assigning two flax cables to each bridge and four papyrus ones. The thickness and appearance were the same, but proportionally the flax cables were heavier, a cubit of it weighing a talent. When the strait had been bridged, they sawed logs of timber and cut them to a length equal to
the width of the floating bridge, and laid them in order on top of the stretched cables; and having set them side by side there, they fastened them together again. Having done this, they carried brushwood onto it, and having laid the brushwood in order, they carried earth on top of it and tamped it down; and having also tamped down the earth, they drew a fence along either side, so that the pack animals and horses would not be frightened at seeing the sea below them. When the work on
the bridges were now complete, along with the works done at Athos — the mounds around the mouths of the canal, which had been made because of the surf, so that the mouths of the excavation should not be silted up, and the canal itself was reported complete — then, having wintered there, the army, once prepared, set out with the coming of spring from Sardis to march on Abydos. As it set out, the sun
left its place in the sky and vanished, although not a cloud was in sight and the air was utterly clear, and night came in place of day. Seeing and taking note of this, Xerxes grew concerned, and he asked the Magi what the apparition meant to foretell. They declared that the god was giving the Greeks advance notice that their cities would be destroyed, explaining that for the Greeks the sun serves as herald, and the moon
for the Persians themselves. Learning this, Xerxes, overjoyed, pressed on with the march. As he was marching the army out, Pythius the Lydian, frightened by the apparition from the sky and emboldened by the gifts Xerxes had given him, approached and spoke as follows: "Master, I would like to ask something of you, a thing that is light for you to grant but would be great for me." Xerxes, expecting
that he would ask for almost anything rather than what he actually requested, said he would grant it and told him to say what he wanted. When he heard this, he spoke boldly as follows: "Master, I happen to have five sons, and it falls to all of them at once to campaign with you against Greece. You, O king, take pity on me, who have reached this age, and release one of my sons
the eldest, from the campaign, so that he may be the caretaker of me and of my property; take the other four with you, and having accomplished what you intend, may you return home safely." Xerxes grew violently angry and answered as follows: "Wretched man, you dared, when I myself am campaigning against Greece, and leading my own sons and brothers and kinsmen and friends,
to make mention of your son, though you are my slave, one who ought to follow along with his whole household, his wife included? Know this well: the heart lives in men's ears — hearing what is good, it floods the body with joy, while hearing the reverse, it swells with rage. When you did good deeds and offered more of the same, you will not be able to boast of having outdone the king in acts of generosity; but since
you have now turned to shamelessness, you will not receive what you deserve, but less than you deserve. You and four of your sons are saved by your hospitality; but for the one you cling to most, you will be punished with his life." Having given this answer, he immediately ordered those assigned to the task to carry it out: to find the eldest of Pythius' sons and cut him in half, and having cut him,
to set the two halves apart, placing one to the right of the road and one to the left, so the army could march through the space between. When they had done this, the army then passed through. Leading the way first were the baggage-carriers and the pack animals, and after them a mixed army of every sort of people together, not sorted out by nation; and when more than half had passed by, a gap was left there, and these did not mix
These belonged to the king. In front marched a thousand cavalrymen, chosen out of all the Persians; then a thousand spearmen, these too chosen out of all, with their spear-points turned down toward the ground; then ten sacred horses called Nisaean, adorned as beautifully as possible. The horses are called Nisaean for this reason: there is a great plain in Media called Nisaean, and it is this plain that produces
the large horses. Behind these ten horses came the sacred chariot of Zeus, pulled by a team of eight white horses, and following behind on foot was a charioteer gripping the reins, since no human being takes that seat. After this rode Xerxes in person, in a chariot pulled by Nisaean horses, and beside him stood
a charioteer named Patiramphes, son of Otanes, a Persian. Xerxes rode out of Sardis in this fashion, but he would change over, whenever the fancy took him, from the chariot to a covered carriage. Behind him came the spearmen, the best and noblest of the Persians, a thousand strong, holding their spears in the customary manner; then another thousand cavalry chosen from the Persians; then, after the cavalry, chosen from
the rest of the Persians, ten thousand men. These were infantry, and of them a thousand had golden pomegranates on the butt-ends of their spears instead of spikes, and these enclosed the rest all around, while the other nine thousand, who were within them, had silver pomegranates. Those who turned their spears toward the ground also had golden pomegranates, and those who followed closest behind Xerxes had golden apples. Behind these
ten thousand was stationed ten thousand Persian cavalry. After the cavalry there was a gap of as much as two stadia, and then the rest of the host followed all mixed together. The army made its way from Lydia to the river Caicus and the land of Mysia, and setting out from the Caicus, keeping Mount Canes on its left, it went through Atarneus to the city of Carene, and from there
it made its way across the plain of Thebe, going past the city of Adramyttium and Antandrus, the Pelasgian city. Then, keeping Mount Ida on its left, it entered the land of Ilium. And first, as it waited through the night beneath Ida, thunder and lightning bolts fell upon it and destroyed a good many people there. When the army arrived at the river Scamander, which was the first river,
since setting out from Sardis and undertaking the march, whose water failed and was not sufficient for the army and the animals to drink — when Xerxes arrived at this river, he climbed up to Priam's citadel, Pergamum, wishing to view it; and after seeing it and inquiring into everything about it, he sacrificed a thousand cattle to Athena of Ilium, and the Magi poured libations to the heroes.
After they had done this, a panic fell upon the camp during the night. At daybreak the army set out from there, keeping on its left the cities of Rhoeteum, Ophryneum, and Dardanus, which borders on Abydos, and on its right the Teucrian Gergithes. When it came to be in the middle of Abydos, Xerxes wished to view the whole army; and a raised seat of white stone had been built beforehand for him on a hill there for this very purpose,
the men of Abydos having made it at the king's earlier command. There he sat, and looking down upon the shore he viewed both the infantry and the ships, and as he watched he desired to see a race held among the ships. It took place, and the Phoenicians of Sidon won, and he was delighted both with the race and with the army. And when he saw the whole of the Hellespont
hidden by ships, and all the shores and plains of Abydos filled with people, then Xerxes counted himself blessed, but afterward he wept. Artabanus his uncle, who earlier had spoken his mind openly, urging that Xerxes should not campaign against Greece, this man, perceiving that Xerxes had wept, asked him this: "O king, how far apart are the things you have just done from what you did a little while ago!
Just now you counted yourself blessed, and now you weep." And he said, "Yes, for a feeling of pity came over me as I reckoned how brief the whole of human life is, seeing that of all these people here, not one will still be alive a hundred years from now." And the other answered, saying, "Yet we suffer other things in the course of life more pitiable than that. For in so short a life no human being is
so fortunate, neither these men nor any others, that the wish to die will not come upon him many times, and not once only, rather than to live. For the misfortunes that befall us and the sicknesses that trouble us make life, brief as it is, seem long. And so death has become, since life is so wretched, the most desirable refuge for man, and the god, having given us a taste of the sweetness of life,
is found to be envious in this." Xerxes answered, saying, "Artabanus, let us stop speaking of human life, since it is such as you describe it to be, and let us not brood over misfortunes while good matters are before us; instead answer me this — had the vision in the dream not shown itself so clearly, would you still keep your earlier opinion, refusing to let me march against
Greece, or would you have changed your mind? Come, tell me this truly." And in reply he said, "O king, may the dream-vision that appeared come to pass just as we both hope; but I am still, even to this moment, full of fear and not in my right mind, considering many other things and especially seeing that there are two things, the greatest of all, that are most hostile to you." Xerxes
answered this with the following: "You strange man, what are these two things you say are most hostile to me? Is it that the infantry seems to you deficient in number, and that the Greek army will prove many times greater than ours, or that our navy will fall short of theirs, or both of these together? For if in this respect our forces seem to you insufficient,
one might very quickly gather another army." And he answered, saying, "O king, no man of sense would find fault with this army, nor with the number of the ships; but if you gather more, the two things I speak of become still far more hostile to you. Land and sea are the two things I mean. For nowhere is there, as I reckon,
a harbor anywhere so large that, when a storm arises, it would be able to receive this fleet of yours and keep the ships safe. And yet it is not enough that there be one such harbor, but there must be one all along the coast you sail past. Since then you have no harbors able to receive you, understand that misfortunes rule men, and not men their misfortunes. And so, of the
two things, having spoken of one, I now go on to speak of the other. The land becomes hostile to you in this way: if nothing opposes you, the land becomes the more hostile to you the farther you advance, always lured onward and onward, since men never reach their fill of good fortune. And so, I tell you, supposing no one opposes you, the land, growing greater over greater time, will bring forth
famine. But the best man would be one who, in deliberating, is fearful, reckoning that he will suffer every possible mischance, but who in action is bold." Xerxes answered with the following: "Artabanus, you reason reasonably about each of these matters; but do not fear everything, nor reckon on everything alike. For if in every matter that comes up you wished to reckon on everything alike, you would
accomplish nothing at all. It is better to face all things with confidence and suffer half of the terrors than to fear everything beforehand and suffer nothing at all. And if you dispute everything that is said without showing what is certain, you are bound to be mistaken in these matters just as much as the one who says the opposite. This, then, is equal on both sides; but how can a man, being human, know what is certain? I think
in no way. So then, for those who wish to act, gains generally tend to come, but for those who reckon on everything and hesitate, they do not come so readily. You see to what power the Persians' affairs have advanced. If those kings who came before me had held opinions like yours, or, without holding such opinions, had had other advisers of that sort, you would never
have seen these affairs come to this point. As it is, they brought them to this point by risking dangers, for great things tend to be won by great dangers. We, then, following their example, are marching in the finest season of the year, and once we have subdued the whole of Europe we will return home, having encountered famine nowhere nor suffered any other unpleasant thing. For we are marching carrying much provision with us, and moreover,
whatever land and people we set foot upon, we shall have their grain as well; for we are marching against men who are farmers, not nomads." After this Artabanus said, "O king, since you allow no fear of anything at all, at least accept this advice from me; for in matters of great weight one must necessarily extend the discussion further. Cyrus son of Cambyses subdued the whole of Ionia, except for the Athenians, to be tribute-paying
to the Persians. These men, then, I advise you by no means to lead against their fathers, for even without them we are able to be superior to our enemies. For necessarily, if they follow, they will become the most unjust of men, by helping to enslave their mother-city, or the most just, by helping to set it free along with us. Now if they become most unjust, they bring us no great gain; but if they become most just, they are capable of doing great harm to
your army. Take to heart, then, the old saying, well spoken, that the end of a matter is not apparent at its beginning." Xerxes answered this: "Artabanus, of the opinions you have expressed, you are mistaken above all in this one, in that you fear the Ionians may change sides — the very thing of which we have the greatest proof, of which you yourself are a witness, as are the others who campaigned with Darius against the Scythians,
that the whole Persian army was capable of both destroying and preserving on these terms; and they had shown justice and loyalty, nothing displeasing. Besides this, since they have left children and wives and property in our land, you must not even imagine that they would attempt any revolt. So do not fear this either, but keep a good heart and preserve both my house and my kingship,
for to you alone of all men I entrust my scepter." Having said this and sent Artabanus off to Susa, Xerxes next summoned the most eminent of the Persians; and once they had assembled in his presence, he addressed them thus. "Men of Persia, I have gathered you together because I require this of you: to prove yourselves brave men and not to disgrace the deeds accomplished before now by the Persians, which are great and worth much, but rather
let each man individually, and all of us together, show eagerness; for this good that is being pursued is shared by all in common. I proclaim to you the reasons why you must hold fast to this war with all your strength: from what I have learned, the men we march against are brave, and if we defeat them, no other army in the world will ever again stand against us. Now let us cross, after praying to the gods who watch over the Persians." On that day
they made preparations for the crossing; and on the next they waited, wishing to see the sun rise, burning all sorts of incense upon the bridges and strewing the road with myrtle boughs. And when the sun rose, Xerxes poured a libation into the sea from a golden bowl and made a prayer to the sun, asking that no misfortune befall him such as would stop him from subduing Europe before he reached its farthest limits.
Having prayed, he threw the bowl into the Hellespont, together with a mixing-bowl of gold and a sword of Persian make, the type called an akinakes. I cannot say for certain whether he was dedicating these to the sun when he threw them into the sea, or whether he had repented of having scourged the Hellespont and was offering the sea these gifts in its place. When this had been done, the army crossed—
by one of the bridges, the one toward the Pontus, went the infantry and all the cavalry; by the other, toward the Aegean, went the pack animals and the camp-followers. Leading the way were first the ten thousand Persians, all crowned with wreaths, and after them the mixed army of every nation. That was the order for that day; but on the next, first came
the cavalry and those who carried their spears pointed downward; these too wore wreaths. After them came the sacred horses together with the sacred chariot, then Xerxes himself with his spearmen and his thousand cavalrymen, followed finally by the remainder of the army. And at the same time the fleet put out to sea for the opposite shore. I have also heard it said
that the king crossed last of all. When Xerxes had crossed into Europe, he watched the army crossing under the lash; his army took seven days and seven nights to cross, without any pause. It is said that at this point, when Xerxes had already crossed the Hellespont, a man of the Hellespont said, "O Zeus, why have you taken the likeness of a Persian man and taken the name Xerxes instead of Zeus,
in order to lay Greece waste, leading all mankind with you? For you could have done this without their help too." When all had crossed and were setting out on the march, a great portent appeared to them, which Xerxes made nothing of although it was easily interpreted: a mare gave birth to a hare. It was easily interpreted in this way, that Xerxes was about to lead his army against Greece
most proudly and magnificently, but would come running back to the same place for his own life. Another portent had also occurred to him while he was at Sardis: a mule gave birth to a mule that had double genitals, both male and female, with the male parts above. Taking no account of either portent, he continued on his way, with the infantry accompanying him.
The fleet, sailing out of the Hellespont, made its way along the coast, doing the opposite of what the infantry did. For it sailed westward, making for the Sarpedonian headland, where it had been ordered to go and wait for him; while the land army made its way eastward, toward the sunrise, through the Chersonese, having on its right
the tomb of Helle, Athamas's daughter, with the city of Cardia on its left, passing through the center of a city called Agora. From there, rounding the gulf called Melas and the river Melas, whose stream did not then suffice for the army but ran dry, crossing this river, from which the gulf also takes its name, he went westward,
passing by Aenus, an Aeolian city, and Lake Stentoris, until he arrived at Doriscus. Doriscus is a stretch of coast and a great plain of Thrace, through which flows a great river, the Hebrus; in it a royal fortress had been built, the one called Doriscus, and a Persian garrison had been stationed in it by Darius from the time
when he campaigned against the Scythians. So it seemed to Xerxes that this place was suitable for arranging and counting the army, and he did so. As for the ships, when they had all arrived at Doriscus, the admirals, at Xerxes' command, brought them to the stretch of coast adjoining Doriscus, where the Samothracian city of Sale is built, and Zone, and the promontory named Serreium marks its end.
This region was in ancient times inhabited by the Cicones. Putting in at this stretch of coast, they hauled up the ships and let the men rest. Meanwhile at Doriscus Xerxes was counting the number of his army at this time. Now how large a force each people supplied in number, I cannot say for certain, for no one reports it; but the total number of the whole infantry force
was found to be one million seven hundred thousand. They counted them in the following way: they gathered a myriad of men together in one place, and packing them together as tightly as possible, they drew a circle around them on the outside; having drawn the circle and released the ten thousand, they built a wall around the circle, reaching up to a man's navel in height; having made this, they brought others into the enclosed space, until they had counted
all of them in this manner. Having counted them, they arranged them by nation. The forces campaigning were as follows: the Persians were equipped in this manner: on their heads they wore soft felt caps called tiaras, and around their bodies they wore multicolored tunics with sleeves, with the look of iron scales like a fish's skin, and around their legs trousers, and instead of shields they carried wicker shields; and quivers hung beneath them; they had short spears,
large bows, and reed arrows, and besides these, daggers hanging from their belts alongside their right thighs. Their commander was Otanes, father of Amestris, Xerxes' wife. In old times they were called by the Greeks Cephenians, but by themselves and their neighbors, Artaeans. But when Perseus, son of Danae and Zeus, came to Cepheus son of Belus
and took his daughter Andromeda as wife, a son was born to him whom he named Perses, and he left him there; for Cepheus happened to have no male offspring. It was after this man that they took their name. The Medes campaigned equipped in this very same manner; for this equipment is Median, not Persian. The Medes provided as commander Tigranes, a man
of the Achaemenid line; in old times they were called by everyone Arians, but when Medea of Colchis came from Athens to these Arians, they too changed their name. This is how the Medes themselves tell it about themselves. The Cissians, when campaigning, were equipped in all other respects like the Persians, but instead of felt caps they wore turbans. Anaphes son of Otanes commanded the Cissians. The Hyrcanians were
equipped just like the Persians, providing as leader Megapanus, who later became governor of Babylon. The Assyrians, when campaigning, wore bronze helmets on their heads, woven in a somewhat barbaric fashion not easy to describe, and they carried shields and spears and daggers similar to those of the Egyptians, and besides these, wooden clubs studded with iron, and linen breastplates. These people are called by the Greeks Syrians, but
by the barbarians they are called Assyrians. Among these were the Chaldeans. Otaspes son of Artachaees commanded them. The Bactrians campaigned with headgear very close to that of the Medes, but with native reed bows and short spears. The Sacae, who are Scythians, wore on their heads tall stiff caps rising to a point, and had put on trousers, and carried native bows and
daggers, and besides these they also carried battle-axes called sagaris. These people, though they are Scythians, are called Amyrgian Sacae; for the Persians call all Scythians Sacae. Hystaspes, son of Darius and Atossa daughter of Cyrus, commanded the Bactrians and the Sacae. The Indians, wearing garments made of tree-fiber, carried reed bows and reed arrows tipped with iron. The Indians
were equipped in this way, and they had been assigned to campaign together under Pharnazathres son of Artabates. The Arians were equipped with Median bows, but in all else like the Bactrians. Sisamnes son of Hydarnes commanded the Arians. The Parthians, Chorasmians, Sogdians, Gandarians, and Dadicae campaigned equipped just like the Bactrians. These were commanded as follows: of the Parthians
and Chorasmians, Artabazus son of Pharnaces; of the Sogdians, Azanes son of Artaeus; of the Gandarians and Dadicae, Artyphius son of Artabanus. The Caspians campaigned wearing cloaks of skin and carrying native reed bows and short swords. They were equipped in this way, providing as leader Ariomardus, brother of Artyphius; the Sarangae wore conspicuous dyed garments, and boots reaching up to the knee, and
and Median spearheads. Pherendates son of Megabazus commanded the Sarangians. The Pactyans wore cloaks of skin and carried native bows and daggers. The Pactyans furnished as their commander Artayntes son of Ithamitres. The Utians, the Mycians, and the Paricanians were equipped just like the Pactyans. These were their commanders: Arsamenes son of Darius commanded the Utians and Mycians, and Siromitres son of Oeobazus commanded the Paricanians.
The Arabians wore girded robes, and carried long bows curved back, on their right side. The Ethiopians were clad in leopard and lion skins, and carried long bows made from palm-wood strips, no shorter than four cubits, and on these small reed arrows, tipped not with iron but with a sharpened stone, the very stone used for engraving seals. They also carried spears, tipped with a gazelle's horn
sharpened into the shape of a spearpoint, and they also carried knobbed clubs. Going into battle they smeared half their body with gypsum, the other half with red ochre. The Arabians and the Ethiopians settled above Egypt were commanded by Arsames son of Darius and of Artystone, daughter of Cyrus, whom Darius loved most of all his wives and for whom he had a golden statue made, hammered out of solid gold. These
Ethiopians and Arabians above Egypt, then, were commanded by Arsames, while the Ethiopians from the sunrise side—for two contingents of Ethiopians took part in the campaign—were attached to the Indians, differing from the others in no way in appearance, but only in speech and in hair: for the Ethiopians from the east have straight hair, while those from Libya have the woolliest hair of all mankind. These Ethiopians from
Asia were, for the most part, equipped like the Indians, though on their heads they wore horses' scalped foreheads, ears and mane included; the mane served in place of a crest, while the horses' ears were kept standing stiffly upright. As shields they used the hides of cranes. The Libyans wore leather gear, and used javelins
hardened by fire. Their commander was Massages son of Oarizus. The Paphlagonians took the field wearing woven helmets on their heads, small shields, spears that were not large, and in addition javelins and daggers; on their feet they wore native boots reaching to mid-calf. The Ligyans, the Matienians, the Mariandynians, and the Syrians took the field equipped the same way as the Paphlagonians. These
Syrians are called Cappadocians by the Persians. Dotus son of Megasidrus commanded the Paphlagonians and Matienians, while Gobryas, son of Darius and Artystone, commanded the Mariandynians, the Ligyans, and the Syrians. The Phrygians were equipped very much like the Paphlagonians, with only slight differences. The Phrygians, as the Macedonians say, were called Briges as long as they lived in Europe as neighbors of the Macedonians, but when they moved into
Asia, along with the land they changed their name too, to Phrygians. The Armenians were equipped just like the Phrygians, being colonists of the Phrygians. Both these peoples together were commanded by Artochmes, who had a daughter of Darius as his wife. The Lydians carried arms very close to the Greek style. The Lydians were called Maeonians in ancient times, and took their present name from Lydus son of Atys, when they changed their name. The Mysians wore
native helmets on their heads, small shields, and used fire-hardened javelins. These are colonists of the Lydians, and are called Olympieni after Mount Olympus. Artaphrenes son of Artaphrenes, who invaded at Marathon together with Datis, commanded the Lydians and Mysians. The Thracians took the field wearing fox-skin caps on their heads, tunics on their bodies, and over these cloaks
of many colors, and on their feet and shins boots of fawn-skin; besides this they had javelins, light shields, and small daggers. Once they crossed over into Asia they were called Bithynians, though before that, as they themselves say, they were called Strymonians, since they dwelt on the Strymon; they say they were driven from their homes by the Teucrians and Mysians. Bassaces son of Artabanus commanded the Thracians
in Asia. They carried small shields of raw oxhide, and each man carried two Lycian-made hunting spears; on their heads they wore bronze helmets, and on the helmets were fixed bronze ox-ears and horns, along with crests; their shins were bound with strips of red cloth. It is among these men that an oracle of Ares is found. The Cabelees, who are Maeonians, called Lasonians,
wore the same equipment as the Cilicians, which I will describe when in going through the list I come to the position of the Cilicians. The Milyans carried short spears and had their garments fastened with brooches; some of them carried Lycian bows, and on their heads wore caps made of hide. Badres son of Hystanes commanded all of these. The Moschi wore caps of wood
on their heads, and carried small shields and spears; but their spearheads were large. The Tibarenians, the Macrones, and the Mossynoeci took the field equipped just like the Moschi. These were arranged under the following commanders: Ariomardus, son of Darius and of Parmys daughter of Smerdis son of Cyrus, commanded the Moschi and Tibarenians; Artayctes, Cherasmis's son, governor of Sestos on the Hellespont, commanded the Macrones and Mossynoeci. The Mares
wore native plaited helmets on their heads, small leather shields, and javelins. The Colchians wore wooden helmets on their heads, small shields of raw oxhide, short spears, and in addition carried knives. Pharandates son of Teaspis commanded the Mares and Colchians. The Alarodians and Saspires took the field armed just like the Colchians. Masistius son of
Siromitres commanded these. The island peoples coming from the Red Sea, from the islands where the king settles the people called the deportees, wore clothing and arms very close to the Median style. Mardontes son of Bagaeus commanded these islanders; he served as a general at Mycale and died there in battle in the second year after these events. These were the peoples
who campaigned by land and were mustered into the infantry. This army, then, was commanded by those named above; they were the ones who organized and numbered the men and appointed the commanders of thousands and of ten thousands, while the commanders of ten thousands appointed the commanders of hundreds and of tens. There were other officers over the units and the nations as well. These, then, were the commanders named above, but the generals over these and over the
whole infantry army were Mardonius son of Gobryas, and Tritantaechmes son of Artabanus—the Artabanus who had advised against campaigning against Greece—and Smerdomenes son of Otanes, both of these being sons of brothers of Darius and thus cousins to Xerxes, and Masistes son of Darius and Atossa, and Gergis son of Ariazus, and Megabyzus son of Zopyrus. These were the generals of the whole infantry apart from
the ten thousand. Of these ten thousand chosen Persians, Hydarnes son of Hydarnes was the general; these Persians were called the Immortals, for this reason: if any one of them was removed from the number, whether by death or by sickness, another man was chosen to replace him, and so they were never more nor fewer than ten thousand. Of all the troops the Persians displayed the finest array, and they themselves were the best soldiers;
they had the equipment already described, and besides that they stood out for the abundance of gold they wore, plain to see; they were accompanied by covered wagons, in which rode their concubines and a large, well-equipped retinue of servants; camels and pack animals carried food for them separately from the rest of the soldiers. All these nations use cavalry, except that not all of them provided horses, but only the following did,
the Persians equipped the same way as their infantry, except that some of them wore on their heads beaten pieces of bronze and iron. There are certain nomadic people called the Sagartians, Persian by race and by language, but with equipment made partway between the Persian and the Pactyan styles; they provided eight thousand horsemen, and they are not accustomed to carry weapons of bronze or iron except daggers,
but they use ropes plaited from leather thongs, and trusting in these they go to war. Their manner of fighting is this: when they engage the enemy, they throw out the ropes, which have nooses at the end; whatever they catch, whether horse or man, they drag toward themselves; and the victims, entangled in the coils, are destroyed. This
is their manner of fighting, and they were posted beside the Persians. The Medes wore the same gear they had in the infantry, and so did the Cissians. The Indians were equipped the same as in the infantry, but rode both mounted horses and chariots; under the chariots ran horses and wild asses. The Bactrians were equipped just as in the infantry, as were
the Caspians, similarly equipped. As for the Libyans, they too carried the same gear as their infantry, and all of them likewise drove chariots. In the same way the Caspians and Paricanians were equipped just as in the infantry. The Arabians had the same equipment as in the infantry, but all of them rode camels, which are not inferior to horses in speed. These are the only peoples that supplied cavalry. The number
The cavalry totaled eighty thousand, not counting the camels and chariots. The other horsemen, meanwhile, were arranged by units, while the Arabians were stationed last; for since the horses could not endure the presence of the camels, they were placed at the rear, so that the cavalry would not be frightened. The cavalry commanders were Harmamithres and Tithaeus, sons of Datis. Their third co-commander, Pharnuches, had been left behind at
Sardis, ill. For as they were setting out from Sardis he had met with an unwanted misfortune: as he rode along, a dog darted beneath his horse's legs, and the horse, caught off guard, panicked, reared upright, and threw Pharnuches off, who fell and vomited blood, and his illness turned into consumption. As for the horse, they did just as he had ordered at the outset: leading it away
The servants, at the spot where he had thrown down his master, cut off his legs at the knees. That was how Pharnuches was relieved of his command. The number of the triremes came to one thousand two hundred and seven, and they were furnished by the following peoples. The Phoenicians, together with the Syrians of Palestine, furnished three hundred, equipped as follows: on their heads they had helmets
made very close to the Greek style, and they wore linen breastplates and carried shields without rims, and javelins. These Phoenicians in ancient times dwelt, as they themselves say, on the Red Sea, and from there, having crossed over, they now dwell along Syria's coastline; this portion of Syria, together with the entire stretch reaching to Egypt, bears the name Palestine. The Egyptians
furnished two hundred ships. These men had on their heads woven helmets, and hollow shields with large rims, and spears suited to fighting at sea, and great battle-axes. Most of them wore breastplates, and carried great swords. That was how they were equipped. The Cypriots furnished a hundred and fifty ships, equipped as follows: their kings
had their heads bound with turbans, while the rest wore tunics, but otherwise were dressed like the Greeks. Among them are the following peoples: some from Salamis and Athens, some from Arcadia, some from Cythnus, some from Phoenicia, some from Ethiopia, as the Cypriots themselves say. The Cilicians furnished a hundred ships. These in turn, on their
heads, had helmets of their own country's style, and instead of shields carried light wicker shields made of raw oxhide, and wore woolen tunics; each man carried two javelins and a sword made very close to the Egyptian knives. These people were in ancient times called Hypachaeans, but took their present name from Cilix son of Agenor, a Phoenician man. The Pamphylians furnished thirty ships, equipped with Greek arms. These Pamphylians are
descendants of those scattered from Troy together with Amphilochus and Calchas. The Lycians furnished fifty ships, wearing breastplates and greaves; they carried bows of cornel wood and unfeathered reed arrows, and javelins, and had a goatskin slung about their shoulders, and on their heads felt caps crowned round with feathers; they also carried daggers and sickles. The Lycians were called Termilae, being originally from Crete,
but took their present name from Lycus son of Pandion, an Athenian man. The Dorians from Asia furnished thirty ships, carrying Greek arms and being originally from the Peloponnese. The Carians furnished seventy ships, equipped in all other respects like the Greeks, but they also carried sickles and daggers. What these people were called before has been told earlier in my account.
The Ionians furnished a hundred ships, equipped as Greeks. Now the Ionians, during the period when they lived in the region of the Peloponnese now called Achaea, and before Danaus and Xuthus arrived in the Peloponnese, were called, as the Greeks say, Pelasgian Aegialeans, but after Ion son of Xuthus, Ionians. The islanders furnished seventeen ships, armed as Greeks, and this too is a Pelasgian people,
which was later called Ionian, by the same reasoning as the twelve-city Ionians from Athens. The Aeolians furnished sixty ships, equipped as Greeks and formerly called Pelasgians, as the Greek account has it. The Hellespontines, except the people of Abydos (for the Abydenes had been assigned by the king to remain in their own territory as guards of the bridges), the rest of those from the Pontus who
took part in the campaign furnished a hundred ships, and were equipped as Greeks. These were colonists of the Ionians and Dorians. On board all the ships as marines were Persians, Medes, and Sacae. Of these, the best-sailing ships were furnished by the Phoenicians, and among the Phoenicians, by the Sidonians. Over all of these, and over the units assigned to the infantry, each people had its own native commanders, whom I,
since I am not compelled by the demands of my inquiry to do so, do not mention. For neither were the commanders of each people particularly worthy of note, and in each nation there were as many commanders as there were cities, and they followed not as generals but, like the rest on campaign, as slaves; but the generals who held full command and ruled over each of the nations, as many of them as were Persians, I have already named.
Of the naval force the generals were Ariabignes son of Darius, Prexaspes son of Aspathines, Megabazus son of Megabates, and Achaemenes son of Darius; of the Ionian and Carian forces Ariabignes, son of Darius and of the daughter of Gobryas, was general; of the Egyptians Achaemenes, full brother of Xerxes on both sides, was general; and of the rest of the force the other two were generals. The triaconters and
penteconters and light boats and the long horse-transport vessels, when gathered together, came to a total of three thousand. Of those who sailed on board, the most notable after the generals were these: Tetramnestus of Sidon, son of Anysus; Matten of Tyre, son of Sirom; Merbalus of Aradus, son of Agbalus; Syennesis of Cilicia, son of Oromedon; Cyberniscus of Lycia, son of Sicas; and of the Cypriots, Gorgus, whose father was Chersis, and Timonax, whose father was Timagoras; and of the Carians, Histiaeus
son of Tymnes, and Pigres son of Hysseldomus, and Damasithymus son of Candaules. Of the other unit commanders I make no mention, since nothing compels me to; but of Artemisia I make particular note of my wonder, since she was a woman who campaigned against Greece. After her husband's death, holding the sovereignty herself, and though she had a son who was still a young man, she took the field out of spirit and courage, no necessity compelling her to do so.
Her name was Artemisia; Lygdamis was her father, and her lineage traced to Halicarnassus on her father's side and to Crete on her mother's. She commanded the men of Halicarnassus, Cos, Nisyros, and Calydna, furnishing five ships. Of the whole fleet, after the ships of the Sidonians, hers were the most renowned, and among all the allies she gave the king the best counsel. Of the
cities I have listed as under her command, I declare the whole people to be Dorian: the Halicarnassians being of Troezenian stock, the rest of Epidaurian. So much has been told of the naval force. As for Xerxes, once the army had been counted and arranged, he wished to drive through it himself and review it. Afterward he did so, and driving along in a chariot past each nation in turn, he made inquiries, and the scribes wrote it all down,
until he had gone from one end to the other, of both the cavalry and the infantry. When this had been done, and the ships had been drawn down into the sea, Xerxes then changed from his chariot into a Sidonian ship and sat beneath a golden canopy, and sailed along past the prows of the ships, questioning each of them just as he had the infantry, and having it recorded. The
ships the admirals had drawn out to about four plethra from the shore and kept them at anchor there, with their prows turned toward the land, all lined up abreast, and had armed the marines as if for war. And he, sailing within the line of prows, surveyed them, and the shore as well. And when he had sailed through these too and disembarked from the ship, he sent for Demaratus son of Ariston, who was accompanying him on the campaign against Greece,
and having summoned him, asked him this: 'Demaratus, it is now a pleasure for me to ask you what I wish to know. You are a Greek, and, as I learn from you and from the other Greeks who come to converse with me, you are from a city neither the smallest nor the weakest. Now tell me this: will the Greeks stand their ground and raise their hands against me? For I do not think,
even if all the Greeks and the rest of the peoples who dwell toward the west were gathered together, that they would be a match for me, able to withstand my advance, if they are not united. Still, I wish to learn from you as well what you say about them.' So he asked, and Demaratus, taking up the question, said: 'O king, shall I deal with you in truth, or in pleasing words?' And he
bade him deal in truth, saying that he would find it no less pleasing than before. Hearing this, Demaratus answered in these words: 'O king, since you command me above all to speak truthfully, speaking words which no one will later be caught by you having falsified, poverty has always been Greece's foster-companion, but excellence is something acquired, wrought out of wisdom and strong law; by making use of this, Greece
wards off both poverty and despotism. Now I praise all the Greeks who dwell in those Dorian lands, but I am going to speak these words not about all of them but about the Lacedaemonians alone: first, that there is no way they will ever accept terms from you that bring slavery upon Greece; and next, that they will meet you in battle even if
all the other Greeks side with you. As for their number, do not ask how many there are who are capable of doing this: for whether it happens that a thousand are in the field, these will fight you, or whether fewer than that, or more.' Hearing this, Xerxes laughed and said: 'Demaratus, what a thing to say, that a thousand men will fight against an army as great as this! Come, tell me: you
say that you yourself once became king of these men; are you then willing to fight right now against ten men? And yet if your whole civic order is entirely such as you describe, it would be fitting for you, as their king, to be arrayed against double that number, according to your own laws. For if each of your men is worth ten of my soldiers in combat, then you
I expect to be a match for twenty, and in that case the account you have given would be proved right. But if, being such as you are, and of the stature that you and those Greeks who come to converse with me boast so greatly about, take care that this claim not prove an empty boast. Come, let me look at it in every reasonable way: how could
a thousand or even ten thousand or even fifty thousand of them, if they are all equally free and not ruled by one man, stand up against so great an army? Since if they number a thousand, we amount to more than a thousand for each one of them, given that they are five thousand. If they were ruled by one man in our fashion, they might, out of fear of him, become better than their own nature, and go forward, driven by the lash,
against greater numbers though they are fewer; but once released into freedom they would do neither one. I myself believe that even if their numbers were made equal, the Greeks would have a hard time fighting the Persians alone. But among us alone is found what you speak of, and even that not often but rarely; for there are among my Persian spearmen those who would be willing to fight three Greek men
at once — of which you, having no experience, talk a great deal of nonsense." To this Demaratus replies, "O king, from the start I knew that if I spoke the truth I would not be saying what pleases you. But since you compelled me to speak the truest of words, I told you what belongs to the Spartans. And yet how much I myself now happen to love them, you yourself know especially well — they who, taking from me my honor and my ancestral
privileges, made me cityless and an exile, while your father took me in and gave me both a livelihood and a house. It is not reasonable for a sensible man to reject goodwill when it is shown, but rather to cherish it above all. As for myself, I do not claim to be able to fight ten men, nor even two, and if it were up to me I would not even fight one man alone in single combat. But if there were necessity, or some great contest
driving me to it, I would fight most gladly of all against one of these men who each claim to be worth three Greeks. So too the Lacedaemonians, fighting one against one, are inferior to no men, but massed together they are the best of all men. For though they are free, they are not free in everything: over them is set a master, Law, which they fear much more than your men fear you. They do
at any rate whatever it commands; and it commands the same thing always, not allowing them to flee from battle whatever the number of the enemy, but to remain in their rank and either prevail or perish. If in saying this I seem to you to be talking nonsense, I am willing to be silent about the rest from now on; I have spoken now only because I was compelled to. May it turn out according to your wish, O king." So he answered, and Xerxes
turned it into laughter and felt no anger, but sent him away gently. After conversing with him, and appointing Maskames son of Megadostes as governor there in Doriskos, removing the one whom Darius had installed, Xerxes marched the army out through Thrace toward Greece. He had left this Maskames as a man such that Xerxes alone sent him gifts as
to the best of all the governors he himself or Darius had appointed, sending them every year; and so too Artaxerxes son of Xerxes did for the descendants of Maskames. For governors had already been established, even before this expedition, throughout Thrace and the Hellespont. All these, both those from Thrace and those from the Hellespont, except the one at Doriskos, were later removed by the Greeks after
this expedition; but Maskames at Doriskos no one has yet been able to remove, though many have tried. For this reason gifts are sent to him always by whoever is king among the Persians. Of those removed by the Greeks, King Xerxes considered none of them to be a good man except Boges alone, the one from Eion; this man he never ceased praising, and he honored greatly the children of his
who survived in Persia, since Boges indeed became worthy of great praise. When he was besieged by the Athenians and Cimon son of Miltiades, though it was open to him to depart under truce and return to Asia, he was unwilling to do so, lest he seem to survive out of cowardice in the king's eyes, but held out to the very end. And when there was no longer any food left within the wall, he heaped up a great pyre and slaughtered
his children and his wife and his concubines and his household servants, and then cast them into the fire; then he flung every bit of the city's gold and silver from the wall down into the Strymon, and having done this he cast himself into the fire. So it is that this man is justly praised even to this day
by the Persians. Xerxes marched on from Doriskos toward Greece, forcing all whom he encountered along the way to join the expedition; for, as I have shown before, the whole region as far as Thessaly had been enslaved and was tribute-paying to the king, conquered first by Megabazus and later by Mardonius. As he marched on from Doriskos he passed by first the Samothracian fortified towns, the westernmost of which is founded as a city
called Mesambria. Bordering this is the Thasian city of Stryme, and between the two runs the river Lisos, which on that occasion did not hold out in supplying water to Xerxes' army but ran dry. This land was formerly called Gallaic, but now Briantic; yet by the most accurate account it too belongs to the Cicones. Having crossed the Lisos river,
whose bed had dried up, he passed by these Greek cities: Maroneia, Dicaea, Abdera. He passed close by these, and by these notable lakes near them: the Ismaris lying between Maroneia and Stryme, and near Dicaea the Bistonis, into which two rivers pour their water, the Travos and the Compsantus. Near Abdera Xerxes passed by no notable lake, but the river Nestos
flowing into the sea. After these regions, going on he passed by the inland cities, among which is one situated on a lake about thirty stadia in circumference, full of fish and very briny; this lake the pack animals alone, by drinking from it, dried up. This city's name is Pistyros. These, then, are the coastal Greek cities he passed by, keeping them on his
left hand; and the Thracian tribes through whose land he made his way were these: Paitoi, Cicones, Bistones, Sapaeans, Dersaeans, Edonians, Satrae. Of these, those settled along the sea followed with the ships; but those of them dwelling inland, listed by me, all followed on foot under compulsion, except the Satrae. The Satrae have never yet, as far as we know, been subject
to any man, but continue even down to my own time to be, alone among the Thracians, always free; for they dwell in high mountains covered with forests of every kind and with snow, and they are supreme in war. These are the ones who possess the oracle of Dionysus; this oracle is situated on the highest of the mountains, and the Bessi, a tribe of the Satrae, are the ones who serve as prophets
of the shrine, and there is a priestess who delivers oracles, just as at Delphi, and nothing more elaborate than that. Having passed by the region just named, Xerxes next passed by the fortified towns of the Pierians, one of which is named Phagres and the other Pergamos. Along this stretch he made his way right past these very walls, keeping Mount Pangaeum on his right hand — a great and high mountain
in which there are mines of gold and silver, worked by the Pierians and the Odomanti and especially the Satrae. Passing by those dwelling above Pangaeum toward the north wind, the Paeonians, Doberes, and Paeoplae, he went on westward until he arrived at the river Strymon and the city of Eion, which, while still alive, was ruled by Boges, of whom I made mention
a little earlier. This land around Mount Pangaeum is called Phyllis, extending westward to the river Angites, a tributary of the Strymon, and reaching southward to the Strymon itself; into this river the Magi made sacrifices of good omen, slaughtering white horses. Having performed these rites of sorcery upon the river, and many others besides, at the Nine Ways
in the territory of the Edonians, they proceeded over the bridges, finding the Strymon already bridged. Learning that this place was called Nine Ways, they buried alive that many boys and girls, children of the local inhabitants, in it. It is a Persian custom to bury people alive, since I learn that Amestris too, the wife of Xerxes, when she grew old, buried alive twice seven children of eminent Persian men, as a gift in return, on her own behalf, to the god
who is said to dwell beneath the earth. When the army marched on from the Strymon, there in the direction of the setting sun is a shore on which stands the Greek city of Argilos, which he passed by; this city and the region above it are called Bisaltia. From there, keeping on his left hand the gulf by Posideium, he went through the plain called Syleus, passing by the Greek city of Stageiros, and arrived
at Acanthus, bringing along with him each of these tribes and those dwelling around Mount Pangaeum, in the same way as those I listed before, keeping those settled along the sea campaigning with the ships, and those above the sea following on foot. This road, by which King Xerxes marched the army, the Thracians neither disturb nor sow over, but hold it in great reverence even down to
my own time. When he arrived at Acanthus, Xerxes proclaimed friendship toward the Acanthians and gave them gifts of Median clothing, and praised them, seeing that they too were eager for the war and hearing about the canal. While Xerxes was at Acanthus, it happened that Artachaies, who was in charge of the canal, died of illness — a man held in high regard by Xerxes and of the Achaemenid clan,
and the tallest in stature of all the Persians (for he fell short of five royal cubits by only four fingers), and the loudest-voiced of all men, so that Xerxes, treating it as a great misfortune, had him carried out most splendidly and buried; and the whole army heaped up his burial mound. To this Artachaies the Acanthians sacrifice as to a hero, in accordance with an oracle, invoking his name. King Xerxes, then, took the death of Artachaies as a misfortune. The
and those Greeks who received his army and gave dinners for Xerxes were reduced to utter ruin, so that they were driven from their very houses. For example, the Thasians, on behalf of their cities on the mainland, received Xerxes' army and gave the dinner; Antipater son of Orges, chosen for the task, a man of the highest standing among the citizens, reported that the single dinner had cost four hundred silver talents. So
in much the same way the officials appointed in the other cities rendered their account. For the dinner turned out something like this, since it had been announced long in advance and was taken very seriously: as soon as the citizens learned of it from the heralds who went around proclaiming it, they distributed grain in the cities and everyone spent many months making wheat-flour and barley-meal. And besides that, they fattened
livestock, seeking out the best at any price, and raised land birds and waterfowl in pens and ponds, to have ready for the army's reception. Besides that, they had gold and silver cups and mixing-bowls made, and everything else that is set upon a table. These things were made ready for the king and his dining companions, while for the rest of the army only
provisions were assigned. Whenever the army arrived, a tent stood ready pitched, in which Xerxes himself would take lodging, while the rest of the army stayed in the open. When the hour for dinner came, the hosts had their labor to bear, while the guests, once they had eaten their fill and spent the night there, would on the next day pull up the tent, take all its furnishings, and march off in this way,
leaving nothing behind but carrying everything off with them. It was on this occasion that Megacreon of Abdera made a remark well worth recording: he advised the people of Abdera to go, all of them together, men and women, to their temples and sit there as suppliants of the gods, begging them that in future they would ward off half of the evils still to come, and to give great thanks for what was past, because King Xerxes was not in the habit of taking
a meal twice each day. For if a breakfast on the same scale as the dinner had also been ordered in advance, the people of Abdera would have had to choose between not waiting for Xerxes' arrival at all, or, if they stayed, being worn down more wretchedly than any people on earth. So, though hard-pressed, they nonetheless carried out what was imposed on them. Xerxes, meanwhile, from Acanthus, having instructed the generals of the naval force to wait at Therma, dismissed the ships to proceed on their own from him, while he himself made for Therma,
the city situated on the Thermaic Gulf, from which that gulf indeed takes its name; for he learned that this was the shortest way. Up to Acanthus the army had made its march from Doriscus arranged as follows: Xerxes divided the whole infantry into three divisions, one of which he ordered to go along the coast together with the fleet; this division
was commanded by Mardonius and Masistes, while another division, a third of the army, marched inland, commanded by Tritantaechmes and Gergis; and the third division, with which Xerxes himself traveled, marched through the middle between them, and its commanders were Smerdomenes and Megabyzus. Now the naval force, once it had been dismissed by Xerxes and had sailed through the canal
cut through Athos, which opens into the gulf on which lie the cities of Assa, Pilorus, Singus, and Sarte — from there, once it had also taken on troops from these cities, it sailed on toward the Thermaic Gulf, and rounding Ampelus, the headland of Torone, it passed by these Greek cities, from which it took on ships and troops: Torone, Galepsus,
Sermyle, Mecyberna, and Olynthus. This region is called Sithonia. The naval force of Xerxes, cutting a straight course from the headland of Ampelus to the headland of Canastraeum, which projects furthest of all of Pallene, from there took on ships and troops from Potidaea, Aphytis, Neapolis, Aegae, Therambos, Scione, Mende, and Sane, for these
are the cities that occupy what is now called Pallene, but was formerly called Phlegra. Sailing along this land too, the fleet proceeded to its appointed destination, taking on troops also from the cities bordering Pallene and adjoining the Thermaic Gulf, whose names are these: Lipaxus, Combreia, Aesa, Gigonus, Campsa, Smila, Aenea; the region of these is still called Crossaea to this day.
From Aenea, at which I end my list of the cities, the fleet's voyage from there on went directly into the Thermaic Gulf itself and the land of Mygdonia, and sailing on it reached the aforementioned Therma, and also the city of Sindus and Chalestra, on the river Axius, the border separating Mygdonia from Bottiaea, of which
the cities of Ichnae and Pella hold the narrow strip along the sea. So the naval force encamped there around the river Axius and the city of Therma and the cities between them, waiting for the King, while Xerxes and the infantry marched from Acanthus cutting across the interior, wishing to reach Therma; and they marched through
Paeonia and Crestonia to the river Cheidorus, which rises among the Crestonians and flows through the land of Mygdonia and empties out beside the marsh on the river Axius. As they marched this way, lions attacked the camels that carried the grain supplies. For the lions, coming down at night and leaving their own haunts, touched nothing else, neither pack animal nor man, but ravaged
the camels alone. I marvel at what the cause could have been, what it was that compelled the lions, while leaving everything else untouched, to attack the camels — an animal they had never before seen nor had any experience of. Now there are in these regions many lions and also wild oxen, whose horns, of enormous size, are the ones that come to Greece. And the boundary for the lions is the
river Nestus, which flows through Abdera, and the Achelous, which flows through Acarnania; for east of the Nestus one would nowhere see a lion in all the Europe that lies before it, nor west of the Achelous in the rest of the continent, but they occur only in the region between these two rivers. When Xerxes arrived at Therma, he stationed
his army there. The army, in encamping, occupied this much of the coastal land, beginning from the city of Therma and Mygdonia as far as the rivers Lydias and Haliacmon, which form the boundary between the land of Bottiaea and Macedonia, mingling their waters into the same stream. It was in these regions, then, that the barbarians set up camp, and among the rivers just named
the Cheidorus, flowing from the Crestonians, was the only one that did not suffice for the army's drinking but ran dry. When Xerxes, looking from Therma at the Thessalian mountains, Olympus and Ossa, saw that they were of enormous height, and learned that between them there was a narrow gorge through which the Peneus flows, and heard that there was a road there leading into Thessaly, he conceived a desire to sail there and view
the mouth of the Peneus, because he intended to lead his army by the upper road through the country of the Macedonians who live further inland, as far as the Perrhaebians, past the city of Gonnus; for he learned that this was the safest way. And as he had desired, so he did: he boarded a Sidonian ship, the one he always boarded whenever he wished to do something of this kind, and gave the signal for the others to put to sea as well, leaving his infantry
there behind. When Xerxes had arrived and viewed the mouth of the Peneus, he was seized with great wonder, and calling the guides of the road he asked whether it was possible to divert the river and lead it out to the sea by another course. It is said that in ancient times Thessaly was a lake, hemmed in on every side by exceedingly tall mountains. For its eastern side,
Mount Pelion and Ossa, meeting and joining their lower slopes together, shut it in; on the north, Olympus; on the west, Pindus; and on the south and the south wind's quarter, Othrys. In the middle of these mountains just named lies Thessaly, forming a hollow. So then, since many rivers, among others, flow into it, five of which
are the most notable, namely the Peneus, the Apidanus, the Onochonus, the Enipeus, and the Pamisus — these rivers, gathering into this plain from the mountains that enclose Thessaly, each bearing its own name, have their outflow to the sea through a single gorge, and that a narrow one, all their waters mingling together into one; and as soon as they have mingled, from that point on the Peneus, by its name,
prevails and makes the others nameless. It is said that long ago, before this gorge and channel came into being, these rivers—along with, in addition to them, the lake Boebeis—bore no names such as they carry now, yet flowed just as much as they do today, and their flowing turned the whole of Thessaly into a sea. The Thessalians themselves claim that Poseidon made the
gorge through which the Peneus flows, and they speak reasonably; for whoever believes that Poseidon shakes the earth and that the rifts made by an earthquake are the works of this god would, upon seeing that gorge, say that Poseidon had made it; for that separation of the mountains is, as it seems to me, the work of an earthquake. The guides, questioned by Xerxes as to whether some other passage to the sea existed for the
Peneus, knowing the truth precisely, said, "O king, this river has no other outlet reaching the sea, but this alone; for the whole of Thessaly is crowned round about by mountains." And Xerxes is said to have replied to this, "The Thessalians are wise men. This, then, is why they took precaution long before, reckoning among other things that they held a country easy to seize and quick to conquer. For it would have been a simple matter
"only their land is left to them, once the water is led out of the gorge by a dam and diverted so that it flows through channels other than the ones through which it now runs, so that all of Thessaly outside the mountains would be submerged." He said this with the sons of Aleuas in mind, because the Thessalians, being the first Greeks to give themselves over to the king, Xerxes supposed that on behalf of their whole nation they were offering him friendship. Having said this
and having viewed the river, he sailed back to Therme. He himself spent many days around Pieria, for a third of the army was cutting through the Macedonian mountain, so that by that route the whole army might pass through to the Perrhaebians. Meanwhile the heralds who had been sent out to Greece to demand earth and water arrived back, some empty-handed, others bringing earth and water.
Those who gave these were the following: the Thessalians, the Dolopians, the Enienians, the Perrhaebians, the Locrians, the Magnesians, the Malians, the Achaeans of Phthiotis, and the Thebans, and the rest of the Boeotians except the Thespians and the Plataeans. Against these the Greeks who had taken up war against the barbarian swore an oath, and the oath ran thus: whichever Greeks had given themselves over to the Persian without being compelled, once their affairs
were set right, these they would tithe to the god at Delphi. Such was the oath sworn by the Greeks. To Athens and Sparta, however, Xerxes did not send heralds to demand earth, for this reason: earlier, when Darius had sent men for this very purpose, some of those making the demand were thrown into the pit and others into a well, and they were told to take earth and water
from there to carry to the king. That is why Xerxes sent no one to demand satisfaction. I cannot say what calamity befell the Athenians on account of what they did to the heralds, beyond noting that their city and countryside were ravaged—though I doubt that was the true cause. But upon the Lacedaemonians the wrath of Talthybius,
the herald of Agamemnon, descended. For in Sparta there is a shrine of Talthybius, and there are also descendants called Talthybiadae, to whom all heraldic missions from Sparta are given as a privilege. After this the Spartans, when sacrificing, could not obtain favorable omens, and this went on for a long time. The Lacedaemonians, being troubled and afflicted by this misfortune, held assembly after assembly and made this proclamation, asking if any
of the Lacedaemonians would be willing to die on behalf of Sparta. Then Sperthias son of Aneristus and Bulis son of Nicolaus, Spartan men of good birth and among the foremost in wealth, volunteered to pay Xerxes the penalty for the heralds of Darius who had perished in Sparta. Thus the Spartans sent these men off to the Medes as men going to their deaths. This daring act of these men deserves admiration,
as do these words besides. For as they journeyed to Susa they came to Hydarnes; and Hydarnes was Persian by birth, general of the peoples along the coast of Asia. He set out hospitality for them, and while entertaining them he asked them this: "Men of Lacedaemon, why do you flee becoming friends to the king? For you see how the king knows how to honor good men, looking at
me and my own affairs. So too if you were to give yourselves to the king—since you have been judged by him to be good men—each of you would rule over a portion of Greece, were the king to grant it." To this they replied as follows: "Hydarnes, the advice you give us is not evenly balanced. For you counsel us about one thing you have experience of, but of the other you are without experience:
slavery is something you know well, but freedom you have never tasted, so you cannot say whether it is sweet. Were you to taste it, you would urge us to fight for it using not just spears, but axes as well." Such was their answer to Hydarnes. From there, when they went up to Susa and came into the king's presence, first, when the spearmen ordered them and tried to force them
to fall down and prostrate themselves before the king, they refused, saying they would never do such a thing, even if forced down bodily; bowing before a mortal was against their custom, and that was not why they had come. Having argued their way past this, they went on to say, in substance: 'King of the Medes, we were dispatched by the Lacedaemonians as replacements for the heralds who died in Sparta, to render payment for that loss.' To this
Xerxes replied, out of magnanimity, that he would not be like the Lacedaemonians; for they, by killing heralds, had overturned the customs observed by all mankind, but he himself would not do the very things for which he rebuked them, nor by killing these men in return would he release the Lacedaemonians from their guilt. Thus the wrath of Talthybius, even though the Spartans had done this, ceased for the time being, although Sperthias and Bulis had returned safe to Sparta. But
much later it flared up once more, in the course of the conflict between the Athenians and Peloponnesians, according to the Lacedaemonians. This strikes me as among the most god-driven events on record. That Talthybius's wrath struck down envoys and persisted until it had run its full course was simple justice; but that it should also strike the sons of these very men who had gone up to the king on account of that wrath, upon
Nicolas son of Bulis and upon Aneristus son of Sperthias, who captured the men of Halieis from Tiryns by sailing down upon them with a merchant ship full of men, this makes it clear to me that the affair was of divine origin, arising from the wrath. For these men, sent as messengers by the Lacedaemonians to Asia, were betrayed by Sitalces, king of the Thracians and son of Teres, along with Nymphodorus son of Pytheas, a man of Abdera, and were seized while
Bisanthe on the Hellespont; and they were taken to Attica, where the Athenians executed them, along with Aristeas son of Adeimantus, a Corinthian. But all this happened many years after the king's expedition, and I now return to my earlier narrative. The king's march bore the name of an expedition against Athens, but in fact it was aimed at the whole of Greece.
The Greeks had learned of this long in advance, but they did not all take it the same way. Those of them who had given earth and water to the Persian were confident that they would suffer nothing unpleasant at the barbarian's hands; but those who had refused fell into great fear, since there were not enough ships in Greece to be a match for the invader, and most of the Greeks had no wish
to take up the war, but were eagerly going over to the Medes. Necessity forces me here to state an opinion that will provoke resentment in most people; still, since it seems to me to be true, I will not hold it back. If the Athenians, terrified by the approaching danger, had abandoned their country, or if without abandoning it they had stayed and surrendered themselves to Xerxes, no one would have attempted to oppose the king at sea. And if
no one had opposed Xerxes at sea, this is what would have happened on land: even if the Peloponnesians had built themselves many tunics of walls across the Isthmus, the Lacedaemonians would have been betrayed by their allies — not willingly, but of necessity, as city after city was captured by the barbarian's fleet — until they stood alone; and standing alone, they would have performed great deeds and died nobly.
Either they would have suffered that fate, or, seeing beforehand the rest of the Greeks going over to the Medes, they would have come to terms with Xerxes. And so in either case Greece would have come under the Persians. For I cannot discover what use the walls built across the Isthmus would have been while the king was master of the sea. As it is, if anyone were to say that the Athenians
were the saviors of Greece, he would not miss the truth. For whichever way they turned, that way the scale was bound to tip; and by choosing that Greece should survive free, it was they who stirred into action the rest of the Greek world, those who had not sided with the Medes, and who — after the gods — drove back the king. Not even the terrifying oracles that came from Delphi and threw them into
dread persuaded them to abandon Greece; they stood their ground and braced themselves to meet the invader on their own soil. For the Athenians had sent envoys to Delphi and were ready to consult the oracle; and when they had performed the customary rites around the sanctuary and had entered the inner hall and taken their seats, the Pythia, whose name was Aristonice, gave this response: Wretches, why do you sit there? Leave your homes and the topmost heights of your wheel-round city, and flee to the ends of the earth.
For neither the head remains firm, nor the body, nor the lowest feet, nor the hands, nor is anything of the middle left, but all is in ruin: fire brings it down, and sharp Ares, driving a Syrian chariot. Many other strongholds too he will destroy, not yours alone; many temples of the immortals he will give to ravening fire —
temples that even now stand streaming with sweat, quaking with fear, while down from the topmost roofs black blood pours, foreseeing the compulsion of evil. Go from the shrine, and steep your hearts in woe. When the Athenian envoys heard this, they treated it as the greatest of calamities. As they were giving themselves up for lost because of the evil that had been prophesied, Timon son of Androbulus, a man as respected as any
in Delphi, advised them to take suppliant boughs, return once more, and put their question to the oracle as suppliants. Following this advice, the Athenians declared: 'Lord, give us some better oracle concerning our homeland, out of respect for these suppliant boughs we have come bearing; or else we will not leave your shrine but will stay right here until we die.' When they said this, the
prophetess gave this second response: Pallas cannot appease Olympian Zeus, though she entreats him with many words and shrewd counsel. But to you I will speak this word again, making it firm as adamant: when all else is taken that the boundary of Cecrops holds within it, and the hollow of holy Cithaeron, yet far-seeing Zeus grants to the Trito-born a wooden wall, alone to remain unsacked, which shall profit you and your children. Do not wait quietly for the horsemen
and the great host of foot coming from the mainland, but withdraw, turning your back; the day will come when you will yet stand against them. O divine Salamis, you will destroy the children of women, either when Demeter is scattered or when she is gathered in. This seemed to them — as indeed it was — gentler than the earlier response, so they wrote it down and departed for Athens. And when the envoys had returned and reported
to the people, many opinions were put forward as men searched out the meaning of the oracle, and these two were most sharply opposed. Some of the older men said they thought the god had prophesied that the acropolis would survive; for in old times the acropolis of Athens had been fenced with a thorn hedge. These men, then, inferred from the fence that this was the wooden wall; but others said the god meant the ships,
and urged that these be got ready, letting everything else go. Yet those who said the ships were the wooden wall were tripped up by the last two lines spoken by the Pythia: O divine Salamis, you will destroy the children of women, either when Demeter is scattered or when she is gathered in. Those lines left the camp that took the ships for the wooden
wall foundered; for the oracle-interpreters took the words to mean that they were fated to be defeated in a sea battle after preparing to fight around Salamis. Now there was among the Athenians a man who had lately risen into the first rank, whose name was Themistocles, called the son of Neocles. This man said the interpreters had not got it entirely right, arguing as follows: if the verse had really been directed at the Athenians, it would not,
he thought, have been phrased so gently — it would have been 'O cruel Salamis' instead of 'O divine Salamis,' if the inhabitants were indeed to perish around it. No, rightly understood, the god's oracle was aimed at the enemy, not at the Athenians. He therefore advised them to prepare to fight at sea, for the ships were the wooden wall.
When Themistocles declared this view, the Athenians judged it preferable to that of the oracle-interpreters, who would not allow them to prepare for a sea battle — indeed, to put it in a word, would not let them lift a hand at all, but told them to abandon Attica and settle in some other land. Before this, another proposal of Themistocles had prevailed at just the right moment: when the Athenians had built up a large sum in their public treasury, income that had come in
from the mines at Laurium, they were about to share it out at ten drachmas a head; but Themistocles convinced the Athenians to abandon this distribution and instead build two hundred ships with the money 'for the war' — meaning the war against the Aeginetans. For it was the outbreak of that war which at that juncture saved Greece, by forcing the Athenians to become a seafaring people. The ships were not used for the purpose for which they were built,
but in this way they were there when Greece needed them. These ships, then, already built, were available to the Athenians, and others had to be constructed in addition. And in their deliberations after the oracle they resolved to obey the god and meet the barbarian invading Greece with their ships, in full force, together with those of the Greeks who were willing. Such, then, were the oracles given to the Athenians. Now when those Greeks
who had the better cause of Greece at heart gathered in one place and exchanged discussion and pledges, they resolved in council that the first thing of all was to reconcile their enmities and end the wars they had with one another. There were quarrels afoot between various states, but the greatest was that between the Athenians and the Aeginetans. Then, learning that Xerxes and his army
were at Sardis, they decided to send spies into Asia to observe the king's affairs; to send messengers to Argos to conclude an alliance against the Persian; to send others to Sicily to Gelon son of Deinomenes, and to Corcyra, calling on them to help Greece, and others to Crete — their thought being that, if possible, the Greek world might become one, and that all might bend together to the same task,
since the danger threatened all Greeks alike. Gelon's power was reported to be immense — surpassing by far that of any other Greek state. When they had so resolved, they reconciled their enmities and first sent three men as spies into Asia. These arrived at Sardis and got a full view of the king's army; but when they were discovered, they were interrogated under torture by the generals of the
land army and led off to be executed. Death had been decreed for them; but when Xerxes learned of it, he found fault with the generals' decision and sent some of his bodyguards, with orders to bring the spies before him if they found them still alive. They did find them still alive and brought them into the king's presence; whereupon, having learned what they had come for, he ordered the bodyguards
to lead them around and show them the whole land army and the cavalry, and when they had looked their fill, to send them away unharmed to whatever country they wished. In giving this order he added this reasoning: had the spies instead been executed, the Greeks would not have learned in advance that his power was beyond report, nor would the killing of three men have done the enemy any great harm;
whereas if these men returned to Greece, he thought the Greeks, on hearing of his power, would surrender their own liberty before the expedition ever set out, and so there would be no need to go to the trouble of marching against them. This judgment of his is like another of his. For when Xerxes was at Abydos, he saw boats out of the
grain-ships sailing out through the Hellespont from the Pontus, bound for Aegina and the Peloponnese. His attendants, when they learned that the vessels were enemy craft, were ready to seize them, watching the king for his signal to act. But Xerxes asked them where they were sailing. They answered, "To your enemies, master, carrying grain." He replied,
"Are we not sailing to the very same place as they are, provisioned with everything, including grain? What wrong, then, are they doing us by carrying grain there?" So the spies, having seen what they came to see, were sent off and returned to Europe. The Greeks who had sworn together against the Persian, after sending off the spies, next sent messengers to Argos. The Argives say that what concerned
them happened as follows. They say that they learned at once, at the start, of the forces being raised by the barbarian against Greece, and having learned this, and understanding that the Greeks would try to bring them in against the Persian, they sent inquirers to Delphi to ask the god what would be best for them to do; for not long before, six thousand of them had been killed by the Lacedaemonians and Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides. It was for
this reason that they sent. And to their inquiry the Pythia is said to have given this response: "Hateful to your neighbors, dear to the immortal gods, sit within, holding your spear guarded, keeping watch over your head; for the head will save the body." This the Pythia had prophesied earlier. Then, when the messengers came to Argos, they went before the council and delivered their instructions. The Argives, in reply
to what was said, answered that they were ready to do this, on condition of making a thirty-year peace with the Lacedaemonians and having command of half of the whole alliance. And yet by right the leadership should belong to them alone; still, they would be satisfied with half the command. This, they say, was the council's answer, even though the oracle had forbidden them to make
the alliance with the Greeks; but they were eager to have the thirty-year truce made, even though they feared the oracle, so that their children might grow to manhood in those years; and, if there were no truce, they reasoned that should another disaster befall them on top of what had already happened, this time at the hands of the Persian, they would be forever subject to the Lacedaemonians. Now the messengers from Sparta, in answer to
what had been said by the council, replied as follows: concerning the truce, that matter would be referred back to the larger assembly at home; but as to the leadership, they had been instructed to answer, and to say, that they had two kings, whereas the Argives had only one; there was no way to strip either of the pair of Spartan kings of command, yet nothing barred the Argive king from casting a vote equal to that of their two. In this way, then, the Argives
say, they could not bear the Spartans' greed for more, but chose rather to be ruled by the barbarians than to yield anything to the Lacedaemonians; and they told the messengers to leave the land of Argos before sunset, or else be treated as enemies. This is what the Argives themselves say about the matter. But there is another story told throughout Greece, that Xerxes sent a herald
to Argos before he set out to campaign against Greece, and that when this man arrived he is said to have spoken thus: "Men of Argos, this is what King Xerxes says to you. We consider Perses, from whom we ourselves are descended, to have been the son of Perseus son of Danae, born of the daughter of Cepheus, Andromeda. Thus we would be your descendants. Given that, it would not be fitting for us to campaign against our own forefathers,
nor that you, by aiding others, should become our opponents; rather you should stay quietly at home for yourselves. For if things go according to my wish, I will hold no one in greater honor than you." On hearing this, the Argives are said to have taken the matter seriously, and at the time made no promise and asked for nothing; but afterward, when the Greeks tried to bring them in, knowing that the Lacedaemonians would not share the command, they asked for it on that ground, so that they might have a pretext for
keeping quiet. Some of the Greeks also say that this story fits with another event that occurred many years after these events. It happened that Athenian envoys, Callias son of Hipponicus and those who went up with him, were at Susa, the city of Memnon, on other business, and that the Argives at this same time had also sent envoys to Susa, asking Artaxerxes son of Xerxes whether
the friendship they had made with Xerxes still held firm in his eyes, or whether they were considered by him to be enemies; and King Artaxerxes is said to have answered that it held very firmly indeed, and that he considered no city friendlier than Argos. Now whether Xerxes really sent a herald to Argos saying this, and whether Argive envoys went up to Susa and asked Artaxerxes about friendship, I cannot say for certain, nor do I offer any judgment about
this beyond what the Argives themselves say. I know only this much: that if all men were to bring their own troubles into one place, meaning to exchange them with their neighbors, each, after looking closely at the troubles of others, would gladly take back what he had brought. So the Argives' conduct has not been the most shameful of all. For my part I am obliged to report what is said, though I am by no
means obliged to believe it, and let this statement hold for the whole of my account: since it is also said that it was the Argives who invited the Persian against Greece, because their war with the Lacedaemonians had gone badly for them, wishing for anything at all in preference to their present distress. So much has been said about the Argives. As for Sicily,
other envoys arrived from the allies to meet with Gelon, and among them Syagrus from the Lacedaemonians. Now the ancestor of this Gelon, a settler at Gela, was from the island of Telos, which lies off Triopium; he was not left out when Gela was founded by Lindians from Rhodes and by Antiphemus. In time his descendants became hierophants of the chthonic
gods and continued to be so, one of his ancestors, Telines, having acquired this office in the following manner. Men of Gela, defeated in civil strife, fled to the city of Mactorium, which lies above Gela; from there Telines led them back down to Gela, having no force of men behind him but only the sacred objects of these gods. Where he got them, or whether he acquired them himself, I cannot say; but relying on these
he brought the men back, on condition that his descendants should be hierophants of the gods. Now this too has struck me as a marvel, in view of what I have learned, that Telines should have accomplished so great a deed; for such deeds, I have supposed, are not accomplished by any ordinary man, but by one of noble spirit and manly strength. Yet he is said by the inhabitants of Sicily to have been of the opposite nature to this,
a man rather soft and effeminate. So this man acquired that privilege. When Cleander son of Pantares, who had ruled Gela as tyrant for seven years and died at the hands of Sabyllus, a man of Gela, met his death, then Hippocrates, being Cleander's brother, took up the sole rule. While Hippocrates held the tyranny, Gelon, being a descendant of Telines the hierophant, along with many others,
including Aenesidemus son of Pataicus, served as a spearman of Hippocrates. Not long afterward, on account of his valor, he was appointed commander of the entire cavalry; for when Hippocrates was besieging the Callipolitans, the Naxians, the Zancleans, the Leontines, and moreover the Syracusans and many of the barbarians as well, Gelon proved himself the most brilliant man in these wars. Of the cities I have named,
not one, except Syracuse, escaped enslavement at the hands of Hippocrates; but the Syracusans were rescued, after being defeated in battle by the river Helorus, by the Corinthians and Corcyraeans, who rescued them by arranging a settlement on the following terms: that the Syracusans should hand over Camarina to Hippocrates. Camarina had originally belonged to Syracuse. And when it befell Hippocrates, having ruled for a span matching that of his brother Cleander, to die near the city of Hybla while campaigning
against the Sicels, then Gelon, professing to be avenging the sons of Hippocrates, Euclides and Cleander, since the citizens no longer wished to be subject to them, in fact, once he had prevailed in battle over the Gelans, ruled himself, having deprived the sons of Hippocrates of power. After this stroke of fortune, the men called the landowners among the Syracusans, who had been driven out both by the common people there and by their own
slaves, called the Cyllyrians, Gelon brought back from the city of Casmene and took possession of Syracuse as well; for when Gelon drew near, the Syracusan populace itself handed over the city and themselves to him. Once he had taken possession of Syracuse, he made less of his rule over Gela, entrusting it to his brother Hiero, while he himself strengthened his hold on Syracuse; and to him now belonged
all of Syracuse: and the city at once shot up and flourished. For one thing, he brought all the people of Camarina over to Syracuse and granted them citizenship there, razing the town of Camarina; for another, he did the same with more than half of the citizens of Gela as he had done with the Camarinaeans. As for the Megarians in Sicily, when, besieged, they came to terms of surrender, he took the well-off among them, who had raised war against him
and expected on that account to be killed, and brought them to Syracuse, giving them citizenship there; the Megarian commons, however, who bore no responsibility for that war and looked for no harm to come to them, he likewise carried to Syracuse and sold for export out of Sicily. He did this same thing also with the Euboeans of Sicily, making the same distinction. He did this to both groups because he considered the common people
a most unpleasant thing to have living alongside him. In this way Gelon had become a great tyrant. Then, when the envoys of the Greeks arrived at Syracuse, they came before him and spoke as follows: "The Lacedaemonians and their allies have sent us to win you over against the barbarian; for you surely have heard of the one advancing against Greece, that a Persian man intends, having yoked the"
the Hellespont and leading his whole army out of Asia from the rising sun, he will march against Greece, making a show of advancing against Athens, but with the intention of bringing all of Greece under his own power. You, since you have come to great power, and no small share of Greece belongs to you as ruler of Sicily, help those who are freeing Greece
and join in freeing it. For if all of Greece is joined together, a great force is gathered, and we become a match for those attacking us. But if some of us betray the cause and others refuse to help, and the sound part of Greece is small, then it becomes a fearsome thing that all of Greece may fall. Do not hope, if the Persian subdues us by defeating us in battle,
that he will not come against you as well — guard against that before it happens. By helping us you defend yourself. A matter well planned tends, for the most part, to reach a good outcome." So they spoke, and Gelon pressed his case at length, saying the following. "Men of Greece, with a grasping argument you have dared to come and call on me as an ally against the barbarian. Yet you yourselves, when I earlier asked
you to join me with a foreign army, when I was at war with the Carthaginians, and when I urged you to exact justice from the people of Egesta for the murder of Dorieus son of Anaxandrides, and offered to help free the trading posts from which you have gained great benefits and profits — you came neither to help me nor to avenge the murder of Dorieus, and as far as it depended on you all these lands are now under barbarian rule. But things turned out
well and even better for us. Now, with the war having circled back around and reaching your shores, only now has Gelon been remembered. Yet though I have been dishonored by you, I will not make myself like you, but am ready to help, offering two hundred triremes, twenty thousand hoplites, two thousand cavalry, two thousand archers, two thousand slingers, and two thousand light cavalry skirmishers; and I undertake
to supply grain for the whole Greek army until we finish the war. I promise these things on one condition, that I be general and leader of the Greeks against the barbarian. On any other terms I would neither come myself nor send others." Hearing this, Syagros could not restrain himself and said the following. "How greatly would Agamemnon son of Pelops groan aloud
if he learned that the Spartans had been stripped of the leadership by Gelon and the Syracusans. No, speak no more of this — of how we should hand over the leadership to you. If you wish to help Greece, know that you will be commanded by the Lacedaemonians; but if you do not think it right to be commanded, then do not help at all." In response to this, when Gelon saw that Syagros' words were hostile, he
delivered to them this final speech. "Spartan stranger, insults thrown at a man tend to rouse his anger; yet though you have indulged in insolent words, you will not persuade me to be unseemly in my reply. Since you cling so tightly to the leadership, it is fitting that I cling to it even more than you, being the leader of a far greater army and of many more ships. But since
this proposal is so unwelcome to you, we will yield somewhat from our original position: if you lead the infantry, let me lead the navy; or if it pleases you to command by sea, I am willing to command the infantry. Either you must be content with these terms or depart deprived of such allies as these." Such were Gelon's offers, but the Athenian envoy spoke first,
answering the Lacedaemonian envoy with these words. "King of the Syracusans, Greece sent us to you not in need of a commander but of an army. But you show no sign of sending an army unless you lead Greece, while you are eager to command it. As long as you were asking to lead the whole Greek force, it was enough for us Athenians to remain silent, knowing that the Laconian
would be capable of answering for both of us. But since, having been rejected from leading the whole force, you now ask instead to command the fleet, here is how matters stand: even if the Laconian should allow you to command it, we would not allow it. For this command is ours, if the Lacedaemonians themselves do not want it. To those who wish to lead it we do not object, but we will yield command of the navy to no one else. For it would be pointless for us
to possess the largest naval force of the Greeks, if we Athenians were to concede the leadership to the Syracusans — we who offer the most ancient of peoples, and alone among the Greeks have never migrated; of whom even Homer the epic poet said that the best man who came to Troy was the one to marshal and array the army. Thus there is no shame for us in saying this." Gelon answered them thus. "Athenian stranger, it seems you have
those to command, but will not have those to be commanded. Since then you are unwilling to yield anything and want to have it all, you would do well to leave as quickly as possible and go tell Greece that her year has lost its spring." This is what his statement meant: it is clear that spring is the most valued season of the year,
just as he compared his own army to that of the Greek forces; so, deprived of his alliance, Greece would be left as though her year had lost its spring. So the Greek envoys, having concluded such business with Gelon, sailed away; and Gelon, fearing on account of these events that the Greeks might not be able to overcome the barbarian, yet also thinking it dreadful and unbearable
to go to the Peloponnese and be commanded by the Lacedaemonians, he being tyrant of Sicily, abandoned that course and took up another. As soon as he learned that the Persian had crossed the Hellespont, he sent Cadmus son of Scythes, a Coan by birth, aboard three fifty-oared ships to Delphi, carrying much money and friendly words, to wait and see which way the battle would tip, and if the barbarian came out on top, to give
him the money along with earth and water for the lands Gelon ruled, but if the Greeks won, to bring it back. This Cadmus had earlier received from his father a tyranny at Cos that was well established, yet of his own free will, with no danger threatening, but out of a sense of justice, he had laid down that rule before the Coan people and departed for Sicily, where with the help of the Samians he took
and settled the city of Zancle, which later changed its name to Messene. This Cadmus, then, who had come to Sicily in such a manner because of his justice, Gelon sent on this mission, knowing him to be a man of the same character; and among the other just deeds he had done on his own, he left behind this one, not the least of them. For having gained control of the large sums of money entrusted to him by Gelon, though he could have kept it,
he refused to do so, but when the Greeks had prevailed in the sea battle and Xerxes had gone off in retreat, he too then came to Sicily bringing back all the money. It is also said by those who live in Sicily that even though he was about to be commanded by the Lacedaemonians, Gelon would still have gone to help the Greeks, had it not been that Terillus son of Crinippus,
tyrant of Himera, having been driven out of that city by Theron son of Ainesidemos, ruler of Acragas, brought against him at that very time three hundred thousand Phoenicians, Libyans, Iberians, Ligurians, Elisycans, Sardinians, and Corsicans, with Hamilcar son of Hanno, king of the Carthaginians, as their general, whom Terillus had persuaded on the grounds of his own ties of hospitality, and especially through the eagerness of Anaxilas son of
Cretines, who, being tyrant of Rhegium, gave his own children as hostages to Hamilcar and brought him against Sicily to avenge his father-in-law; for Anaxilas had married the daughter of Terillus, whose name was Cydippe. Thus it was not possible for Gelon to help the Greeks, and so he sent the money to Delphi. In addition to this they say that it happened, on the very same day,
that in Sicily Gelon and Theron defeated Hamilcar the Carthaginian, and at Salamis the Greeks defeated the Persian. As for this Hamilcar the Carthaginian, Carthaginian by his father but Syracusan on his mother's side, who had become king of the Carthaginians through his valor, I have learned that when the battle joined and he was being defeated, he vanished from sight: for he was seen nowhere on earth, neither alive nor dead, though Gelon
searched everywhere for him. But the following account is given by the Carthaginians themselves, and it seems plausible: that the barbarians fought the Greeks in Sicily from dawn until late evening (for the engagement is said to have lasted that long), and that Hamilcar in that time, remaining in the camp, was sacrificing and seeking good omens, burning whole bodies on a great pyre,
but when he saw his own men being routed, just as he was pouring a libation over the offerings, he threw himself into the fire; and thus, being burned up, he vanished. Whether Hamilcar vanished in this manner as the Phoenicians say, or in some other way as the Carthaginians and Syracusans say, they both offer sacrifices to him and have made monuments to him in all the cities of their colonies, the greatest one being in Carthage itself.
So much for the events from Sicily. The Corcyraeans, in response to the envoys, gave the following answer and did as follows: since the very envoys who had traveled to Sicily came to them as well, using the identical arguments they had used before Gelon. And the Corcyraeans at once promised to send help and to defend Greece, saying that Greece must not be allowed to perish before their eyes; for if it should fall, they themselves
would have nothing else to look forward to but slavery from the very first day, so they must help to the utmost of their power. So they answered fair-seeming words; but when the time came to help, with other intentions they manned sixty ships, and with difficulty putting out to sea, they approached the Peloponnese, and anchored their ships off Pylos and Taenarum in Lacedaemonian territory, watching, as the others did, to see how the war would fall out, having no expectation that the Greeks
to outdo the rest, thinking that once the Persian had conquered he would rule all of Greece. They did this on purpose, so that they would have this to say to the Persian: "O King, when the Greeks were enlisting us for this war, though we had a force not the smallest, nor would we have supplied the fewest ships but the most after the Athenians, we were unwilling to oppose you or to do anything displeasing to you." By saying such things
they hoped to gain more than the rest, and this, I think, is just what would have happened. And toward the Greeks a pretext had been prepared for them, which indeed they used. For when the Greeks blamed them for not coming to help, they said they had manned sixty triremes, but that because of the etesian winds they had not been able to round Malea, and so had not arrived at Salamis, and
had not been left behind from the sea battle through any cowardice. In this way they put off the Greeks. As for the Cretans, when those of the Greeks appointed to this task tried to enlist them, they did the following: they sent envoys in common to Delphi to ask the god whether it would be better for them to help defend Greece. The Pythia answered: "O foolish ones, do you complain of all the tears of vengeance Minos sent you because of your help to Menelaus,
because they did not join in avenging his death that occurred at Camicus, while you helped them avenge the woman carried off from Sparta by a foreign man?" When the Cretans heard this reported to them, they held back from giving aid. For it is said that Minos, going to Sicania (now called Sicily) in search of Daedalus, died a violent death. And in time the Cretans, at a god's urging, all
except the people of Polichna and Praesus, went with a great expedition to Sicania and besieged for five years the city of Camicus, which in my time the people of Acragas inhabit. In the end, unable either to take it or to remain there, being overcome by famine, they departed. But when they came to be sailing off Iapygia, a great storm caught them and cast them onto the land; and since their ships were smashed to pieces, and
they saw no way of returning to Crete, they founded the city of Hyria there and stayed, changing from Cretans into Iapygian Messapians, and from islanders into mainlanders. From the city of Hyria they settled the other towns, which the Tarentines, much later, trying to expel them, ran into great disaster, so that this became the greatest slaughter of Greeks of any I know of, both of the Tarentines themselves and of the Rhegians,
who were compelled by Micythus son of Choerus, a citizen of theirs, to go and help the Tarentines, and died there three thousand strong in this way; of the Tarentines themselves there was no reckoning of the number. This Micythus, who had been a servant of Anaxilaus, had been left as governor of Rhegium; he it was who, being expelled from Rhegium and settling in Tegea in Arcadia, dedicated the many statues at Olympia. But this matter of the Rhegians and Tarentines
has come into my account as a digression. As for Crete, once it was left empty, as the people of Praesus say, other people settled it, especially Greeks, and in the third generation after Minos died the events at Troy took place, in which the Cretans proved to be not the least valiant avengers of Menelaus. But because of this, when they returned home from Troy, famine and plague came upon both them and their flocks,
until Crete, emptied a second time, is now inhabited, along with the remaining people, by a third population of Cretans. So the Pythia, by reminding them of this, restrained them though they were willing to help the Greeks. The Thessalians, for their part, had at first medized out of necessity, as they showed, since they did not like what the Aleuadae were contriving. For as soon as they learned that the Persian was about to cross into Europe, they sent messengers to the
Isthmus, where the representatives of Greece were gathered, chosen from the cities that had the best judgment concerning Greece. When the messengers of the Thessalians came to these men, they said: "Men of Greece, the pass at Olympus must be guarded, so that Thessaly and all of Greece may be sheltered from the war. We ourselves are ready
to help guard it, but you too must send a large army, since, if you do not send one, be assured that we will come to terms with the Persian. For it is not right that we, so far advanced ahead of the rest of Greece, should perish alone on your behalf. If you do not wish to help, you have no way to compel us; for necessity has never proved stronger than inability. We ourselves will try to devise some means of safety
on our own." So spoke the Thessalians. In response, the Greeks resolved to send by sea an infantry force to Thessaly to guard the pass. When the army had been gathered, it sailed through the Euripus; arriving at Alus in Achaea, they disembarked and marched to Thessaly, leaving their ships there, and came to Tempe, to the pass that leads
from lower Macedonia into Thessaly along the river Peneus, between Mount Olympus and Ossa. There about ten thousand hoplites of the Greeks encamped together, and the Thessalian cavalry joined them; the Lacedaemonian commander was Evaenetus son of Carenus, chosen from among the polemarchs, though not of the royal line, and the Athenian commander was Themistocles son of Neocles. They stayed there
only a few days; for messengers came from Alexander son of Amyntas, a Macedonian, advising them to withdraw and not remain in the pass to be trampled by the advancing army, pointing out the size of the force and the number of the ships. When these men gave this advice, since it seemed good advice and the Macedonian appeared well-disposed toward them, they were persuaded. I think, however,
that fear was really what persuaded them, when they learned that there was also another pass into Thessaly, through upper Macedonia by way of the Perrhaebi, near the city of Gonnus, the very pass by which Xerxes' army actually did invade. So the Greeks went down to their ships and returned to the Isthmus. This was the expedition to Thessaly, made while the king was about to cross into
Europe from Asia and was already at Abydus. The Thessalians, left without allies, therefore medized so eagerly and without any hesitation that, as matters unfolded, the king found them exceptionally useful. The Greeks, when they arrived at the Isthmus, deliberated, in light of what Alexander had told them, where they should make their stand for the war and in what places. The prevailing
opinion was to guard the pass at Thermopylae; for it seemed narrower than the one into Thessaly and at the same time closer to their own territory. As for the path by which those Greeks who were captured at Thermopylae were caught, they did not even know it existed until, arriving at Thermopylae, they learned of it from the people of Trachis. This pass, then, they resolved to guard, so as not to let the barbarian through into Greece, while the
naval force would sail along the coast of the Histiaean territory to Artemisium. These places are close enough to each other that news of events at either could be learned, given how the locations lie. As for Artemisium: from the wide Thracian sea it narrows into the strait between the island of Sciathos and the mainland of Magnesia; and from that strait
the coast of Euboea beyond receives Artemisium, where there is a temple of Artemis. As for the entrance into Greece through Trachis, it is half a plethron wide at its narrowest. This, however, is not the narrowest part of that whole region; there is a place narrower still both before Thermopylae and behind it, at Alpeni behind it, where there is only a single wagon track, and in front near the river Phoenix, close to
the city of Anthele, another single wagon track. Of Thermopylae, the mountain on the western side is impassable and sheer, high, rising up to Oeta; on the eastern side of the road the sea and marshes take over. In this pass there are hot springs, which the locals call the Pots, and an altar of Heracles has been set up beside them. A wall had been built
across this pass, and in ancient times there were gates there as well. The Phocians built the wall out of fear, when the Thessalians came from Thesprotia to settle the land of Aeolis, which they now hold. Since the Thessalians were trying to subdue them, the Phocians took this precaution beforehand, and they also let loose the hot water then upon the entrance, so that the place would be gullied out — doing everything
they could arrange matters so the Thessalians would not invade their territory. The old wall dated from long ago, and by this time most of it had crumbled with age; but those who rebuilt it resolved to defend Greece from the barbarian at that spot. The village nearest the road is called Alpeni; from this the Greeks reckoned they would get their provisions.
These places, then, seemed suitable to the Greeks; for having considered everything and reckoned that the barbarians would be unable to use either their numbers or their cavalry there, they decided to make their stand there against the invader of Greece. Once word reached them that the Persian king was in Pieria, they left the Isthmus and departed, some marching by land to Thermopylae, others going
by sea to Artemisium. So the Greeks hastened to help, divided into these two groups. Meanwhile the Delphians, in fear for themselves and for Greece, consulted the god's oracle, and were told to pray to the winds; for these would prove great allies to Greece. Having received this oracle, the Delphians first announced what had been prophesied to them to those Greeks who wished to be free, and
by announcing it to men terribly afraid of the barbarian, they earned undying gratitude. After this the Delphians set up an altar to the winds at Thyia, where the precinct of Thyia, daughter of Cephisus, is (from whom this place also takes its name), and they propitiated them with sacrifices. And to this day the Delphians, in accordance with that oracle, still propitiate the winds.
Xerxes' naval force, setting out from the city of Therma, sent ten of its best-sailing ships straight for Skiathos, where three Greek ships were keeping watch—one from Troezen, one from Aegina, and one from Athens. When these caught sight of the barbarians' ships they fled. The Troezenian ship, commanded by Prexinus, was overtaken and captured at once by the barbarians, and then, of the marines aboard her,
they took the handsomest man, led him to the prow of the ship, and cut his throat, taking it as a good omen that the first and finest of the Greeks they had captured should be sacrificed this way. The name of the man sacrificed was Leon, and perhaps the name itself had something to do with it. The Aeginetan ship, whose captain was Asonides, gave them some trouble, because of Pytheas son of Ischenous, a marine aboard her who proved himself the finest man that day.
For when the ship was being captured he held out fighting until he had been hacked entirely to pieces. Since he fell but did not die, and still breathed, the Persians who served as marines on the ships, on account of his valor, took the greatest pains to save him, treating his wounds with myrrh and binding them with strips of fine linen. And when they got back to
their own camp, they displayed him to the whole army with admiration, treating him well; but the rest of the men they had taken from that ship they treated as slaves. So two of the three ships were captured in this way; the third, commanded by Phormus, an Athenian, ran aground fleeing at the mouth of the Peneius, and the barbarians got possession of the hull, but not of the men,
for as soon as the Athenians had beached the ship, they leapt out and made their way through Thessaly back to Athens. The Greeks stationed at Artemisium learned of this from fire signals sent from Skiathos; and on learning it, in fear, they moved their anchorage from Artemisium to Chalcis, meaning to guard the Euripus, but leaving day-watchers on the high places of Euboea. Of the ten barbarian ships,
three ran up onto the reef lying between Skiathos and Magnesia, called the Ant. There the barbarians, once they had brought a stone pillar and set it up on the reef, set out themselves from Therma, now that the obstacle in their path had been marked clear, and sailed on with all their ships, eleven days after the king's departure from Therma. The reef in the channel was pointed out to them
chiefly by Pammon of Scyros. Sailing the whole day, the barbarians reached the region of Magnesia at Sepias and the stretch of shore between the city of Casthanaea and the headland of Sepias. Up to this point, and as far as Thermopylae, the army had suffered no misfortune, and its numbers at that time were still, as I reckon by calculation,
such as follows: of the ships from Asia — twelve hundred and seven in total — the complement originally drawn from each nation totaled two hundred forty-one thousand four hundred men, figuring two hundred men per ship. Aboard these ships, apart from each contingent's own local marines, there also served, of Persians, Medes, and
Sacae, thirty men each. This other body comes to thirty-six thousand two hundred and ten. I will add further to this and to the previous number the men from the fifty-oared ships, reckoning, whether more or fewer served on them, an average of eighty men each. These vessels, as was said before, numbered three thousand. So the men aboard them would be
two hundred and forty thousand. This, then, was the naval force from Asia, amounting in total to five hundred and seventeen thousand six hundred and ten. The infantry came to one million seven hundred thousand, and the cavalry to eighty thousand. I will add further to these the camel-riding Arabians
and the Libyans who drove chariots, putting their number at twenty thousand. And so the total from the ships and the infantry together comes to two million three hundred seventeen thousand six hundred and ten. This is the count of the force brought out from Asia itself, apart from the attendants following it and
the supply vessels and all who sailed in them. But the force brought from Europe still has to be added to this whole sum already reckoned—though here one must speak by estimate. The Greeks from Thrace and from the islands lying off Thrace supplied one hundred and twenty ships; from these ships the men come to
twenty-four thousand. As for infantry, the Thracians, Paeonians, Eordians, Bottiaeans, the Chalcidian people, Brygians, Pierians, Macedonians, Perrhaebians, Enienians, Dolopians, Magnesians, Achaeans, and all who inhabit the coast of Thrace supplied, I reckon, three hundred thousand men from these nations. These, added to those from
Asia, make in all two million six hundred and forty-one thousand six hundred and sixty fighting men. Given that the fighting force amounted to this number, I do not suppose that the attendants following them, and those aboard the supply boats and the other vessels sailing along with the army, were
fewer than the fighting men, but rather more. Still, I will reckon them as equal to that number, neither more nor fewer. Made equal to the fighting force in this way, they fill out the same number again. Thus Xerxes son of Darius led five million two hundred eighty-three thousand two hundred twenty men as far as Sepias and Thermopylae. This
then is the number of Xerxes' entire force; but of the women who baked the bread, the concubines, and the eunuchs, no one could give an accurate count, nor again of the pack animals and other beasts of burden and the Indian dogs that followed—no one could give a number for these either, owing to their multitude. So it is no wonder to me that the streams of certain rivers
failed, but rather it is a wonder to me how the provisions held out for so vast a multitude. For I find by calculation that if each man received one choenix of wheat a day and no more, one hundred and ten thousand medimni would be used up each day, plus another three hundred and forty medimni; and I am not even reckoning for the women, eunuchs, pack animals, and dogs. Of men there being so many tens of thousands, in beauty
and stature none among them was more deserving to hold that power than Xerxes himself. As for the fleet, after setting out and sailing until it reached the Magnesian coast, in the stretch lying between Casthanaea and Cape Sepias, the leading vessels anchored nearest the shore, while others lay at anchor farther out behind them; for
since the shore was not large, they lay anchored in rows out to sea, eight ships deep. So they spent that night; but at dawn, out of a clear and windless sky, the sea began to seethe, and a great storm fell on them along with a strong east wind, which the people living in those parts call the Hellespontian. Those of them who noticed the wind rising
and where their ships lay anchored got ahead of the storm by hauling their ships up onto land, and both they and their ships survived; but as for those ships the storm caught out at sea, it carried some to the place called the Ovens on Pelion, others onto the shore; some were wrecked around Sepias itself, others driven onto the city of Meliboea,
and others cast up at Casthanaea. The violence of the storm was unbearable. It is said that the Athenians had invoked Boreas by an oracle, after another oracle had come to them telling them to call on their son-in-law for help. Boreas, according to the Greek account, has an Attic wife, Oreithyia daughter of Erechtheus. On account of this marriage connection, the Athenians, as the story goes,
reckoning Boreas to be their son-in-law, when they were stationed with their fleet at Chalcis in Euboea and saw the storm rising, or even before that, offered sacrifices and invoked Boreas and Oreithyia to help them and wreck the barbarian ships, as had occurred earlier near Athos. I cannot say whether this was actually why Boreas struck the barbarians while they were anchored; but
the Athenians themselves say that Boreas had helped them before and accomplished this too, and on returning home they founded a shrine to Boreas beside the river Ilissus. In this disaster it is said that no fewer than four hundred ships were destroyed, along with countless men and an abundance of wealth beyond counting. As a result this shipwreck proved a great boon to Ameinocles son of Cretines, a Magnesian who owned land around Sepias, for he
picked up many gold cups washed ashore later, and many silver ones, found treasures belonging to the Persians, and acquired other untold wealth besides. Yet though he grew very rich from these finds, he was not fortunate in everything else, for a bitter misfortune, the loss of a child, also grieved him. As for the destruction of the grain-carrying merchant vessels and the other ships, there was no counting them. So fearing that the Thessalians would attack them while they were in this crippled state, the commanders of
the naval force built a high barrier out of the wreckage, for the storm raged for three days. At last, by performing sacrifices and having the Magi chant incantations to the wind, and by sacrificing further to Thetis and the Nereids besides, they brought it to an end on the fourth day—or else it simply died down of its own accord. They sacrificed to Thetis because they had learned
the story from the Ionians: that Peleus had seized her from this very spot, and that the entire headland called Sepias was hers, shared with the rest of the Nereids. The storm ceased on the fourth day. As for the Greeks, their lookouts, hurrying down from the Euboean heights on the second day since the storm began, brought word of everything that
had happened concerning the shipwreck. When the Greeks learned of it, they prayed to Poseidon the Savior and poured libations, then hurried back as fast as they could to Artemisium, expecting to find only a few enemy ships left to face. They came a second time to Artemisium and anchored there, and from that time to this they have honored Poseidon under the title Savior. As for the barbarians, once the
wind died down and the swell had settled, they hauled down their ships and sailed along the mainland, and after passing the Magnesian cape, they sailed directly toward the gulf leading to Pagasae. Within this gulf, in Magnesia, lies a spot where, according to tradition, Jason and his fellow voyagers on the Argo abandoned Heracles after sending him to fetch water, when
they were sailing for the fleece to Aea in Colchis; for it was from there that they intended to draw water before setting out onto the open sea. From this the place has taken the name Aphetae. It was here, then, that Xerxes's fleet made anchorage. Fifteen of these ships happened to put out very much later than the rest and somehow caught sight of the Greek ships at Artemisium. The barbarians thought these
were their own ships and, sailing on, fell in among the enemy. In command of them was Sandoces son of Thamasius, the governor from Cyme in Aeolis, whom King Darius had earlier arrested on the following charge and had impaled, he being one of the royal judges. Sandoces had given an unjust verdict for money. After he had been hung up on the stake, Darius, reckoning it over, found that he had done more good than harm for
the royal house; and having found this, and recognizing that he himself had acted more hastily than wisely, Darius released him. So it was that he had escaped death at the hands of King Darius and survived; but now, having sailed against the Greeks, he was not going to escape a second time. For when the Greeks spotted them approaching, they recognized the enemy's blunder, sailed out to meet them, and seized them with ease.
On one of these ships was captured Aridolis, tyrant of Alabanda in Caria, who was sailing in it; on another was the Paphian commander Penthylus son of Demonous, who had brought twelve ships from Paphos, only to lose eleven when the storm struck near Sepias, and was captured while sailing the sole survivor toward Artemisium. The Greeks questioned these men, learning from them what they wished to know about Xerxes's
army, and then sent them off in bonds to the isthmus of Corinth. So the barbarians' naval force, apart from the fifteen ships whose commander I said was Sandoces, arrived at Aphetae. Xerxes and the land army, meanwhile, had marched through Thessaly and Achaea and had already, on the third day, invaded the country of the Malians, having held in Thessaly a horse race in which he tested both his own horses and
the Thessalian horses, having learned that these were the best in Greece; and there the Greek horses were left far behind. Of the rivers in Thessaly, only the Onochonus did not suffice with its flow to supply the army's drinking; and of the rivers flowing in Achaea, not even the Epidanus, the largest of them, held out except barely. When Xerxes had come to Alus in Achaea,
his guides, wishing to explain everything, told him a local story concerning the sanctuary of Laphystian Zeus: how Athamas son of Aeolus, together with Ino, plotted death for Phrixus, and how afterward, by an oracle's command, the Achaeans impose these ordeals on his descendants — whoever is the eldest of that family is barred by the others, who set a watch on him, from entering the
town hall. The Achaeans call the town hall the "leiton." If he enters, there is no way he can leave again except when he is about to be sacrificed; and indeed many of those who were about to be sacrificed have already fled in fear to another country, and, when time has passed, if they return and are caught, they are led to the town hall; there they describe how the man is sacrificed, wreathed all over with garlands,
and led out in a procession. This is what happens to the descendants of Cytissorus, son of Phrixus, because when the Achaeans, following an oracle, were purifying the land and were about to sacrifice Athamas son of Aeolus, this Cytissorus arrived from Aea in Colchis and rescued him — and by doing this he brought down the god's wrath upon his own descendants. When Xerxes heard this, as he came
near the sacred grove, he himself kept away from it and gave the same order to his whole army, and he showed the same reverence to the house and precinct of Athamas's descendants. Such were the events in Thessaly and in Achaea. From these regions he went on into Malis, along a gulf of the sea where an ebb and flow occurs every day. Around
this gulf there is a flat area, in places broad, in others quite narrow; and around this area lie high, impassable mountains that enclose the whole land of Malis, called the Trachinian Rocks. The first city one comes to in this gulf, coming from Achaea, is Anticyra, beside which the river Spercheius flows down from the Enienes and empties into the sea. From there,
about twenty stades on, is another river called the Dyras, which legend says appeared to aid Heracles as he was burning. From there, another twenty stades on, is another river called the Melas. The city of Trachis is five stades from this river Melas. It is here, where Trachis is built, that this whole region is widest from the mountains
to the sea; for the plain measures twenty-two thousand plethra. The mountain range enclosing Trachinian territory has a gorge south of the town of Trachis, and the Asopus river runs through this gorge, following the base of the mountain. There is also another river, the Phoenix, not large, to the south of the Asopus, which flows down from
these mountains and empties into the Asopus. At the Phoenix river the pass is at its narrowest — a single wagon-track has been built there. From the river Phoenix it is fifteen stades to Thermopylae. Between the river Phoenix and Thermopylae there is a village called Anthele, past which the Asopus flows on its way to empty into the sea, and there is a broad space around
it, in which a temple to Demeter Amphictyonis is located, along with council seats for the Amphictyons and a shrine to Amphictyon himself. King Xerxes made his camp in the Trachinian part of Malis, while the Greeks made theirs in the pass. This place is called Thermopylae by most Greeks, but Pylae by the local people and their neighbors. Each side, then,
made camp in these places, and each controlled the ground on its own side: Xerxes everything to the north as far as Trachis, the Greeks everything to the south and toward the mainland on this side. The Greeks who awaited the Persian in this place were the following: three hundred Spartan hoplites, and a thousand from Tegea and Mantinea, half from each, and from
Orchomenus in Arcadia sent a hundred and twenty men, while the remainder of Arcadia supplied a thousand more — that was the Arcadian total; Corinth contributed four hundred, Phlius two hundred, and Mycenae eighty. These came from the Peloponnese; from Boeotia came seven hundred Thespians and four hundred Thebans. In addition to these, the Opuntian Locrians came in full force when summoned, along with a thousand Phocians. For
the Greeks themselves had called on them, sending word by messengers that they themselves had come ahead as a vanguard of the rest, that the remaining allies were expected any day, that the sea was under guard, watched over by the Athenians, the Aeginetans, and those assigned to the fleet, and that there was nothing to fear: for it was not a god who was advancing upon
Greece but merely a man, and no mortal had ever lived, nor ever would, entirely free of misfortune from birth onward — indeed the greatest men bore the greatest share of it. So the one now advancing, being mortal himself, was bound to fall from his high repute. Hearing this, the Greeks went to the aid of Trachis. Now among them there were commanders from each city individually, but the man
most admired, and who commanded the entire force, was the Lacedaemonian Leonidas — descended, father to son, from Anaxandrides, Leon, Eurycratides, Anaxander, Eurycrates, Polydorus, Alcamenes, Teleclus, Archelaus, Hegesilaus, Doryssus, Leobotes, Echestratus, Agis, Eurysthenes, Aristodemus, Aristomachus, Cleodaeus, Hyllus, and Heracles — who had come to hold the kingship at Sparta
quite unexpectedly. For since he had two elder brothers, Cleomenes and Dorieus, he had put the thought of the kingship out of his mind. But when Cleomenes died leaving no male child, and Dorieus was no longer living either, having also died in Sicily, the kingship passed in this way to Leonidas — and because he was older than Cleombrotus, since Cleombrotus was the youngest son of Anaxandrides, and moreover
he was married to the daughter of Cleomenes. He it was who then went to Thermopylae, having chosen the men enrolled as the standing three hundred and those among them who happened to have sons; and on his way he took along also the Thebans I mentioned in reckoning the number, whose commander was Leontiades son of Eurymachus. Leonidas was eager to bring these men, of all the Greeks, along with him for this reason: that they were strongly accused of favoring the Medes. He therefore summoned them to the war,
wanting to know whether they would openly send reinforcements or openly refuse the Greek alliance. The Spartans, their minds elsewhere, kept sending men anyway. They sent the men with Leonidas out first, so that the rest of the allies, seeing them, would take the field and not, on hearing that the Spartans were putting things off, also go over to the Medes. Later on, once they had kept the festival of the Carneia, which stood in their way, and had left garrisons behind in Sparta, they intended
to come to help with the whole army, and with all speed. So too the rest of the allies had decided to act likewise, since it happened that the Olympic festival coincided with these events; and since they did not expect the conflict at Thermopylae to be settled so fast, they sent only advance troops. These, then, had resolved to act in this way. As for the Greeks at Thermopylae, when the Persian drew near the pass,
they grew afraid and took counsel about withdrawing. It was the view of the rest of the Peloponnesians that they should go back into the Peloponnese and hold the Isthmus under guard; but Leonidas, since the Phocians and Locrians were indignant at this plan, voted to stay there himself and to send messengers to the cities urging them to send help, on the ground that they were too few to ward off the army of the Medes. While they were debating this, Xerxes sent
a horseman as a scout, to see how many they were and what they were doing. He had heard, while still in Thessaly, that a small force had gathered there, and that its leaders were the Lacedaemonians together with Leonidas, who was of the line of Heracles. When the horseman rode up to the camp, he looked and observed it, though not the whole camp; for those posted inside the wall—
the wall which they had restored and were guarding—he could not make out; but he took note of those outside, whose arms lay in front of the wall. At that time it happened that the Lacedaemonians were posted outside. Some of the men he saw exercising, others combing their hair. Watching this, he was amazed, and took note of their number as well. Having learned everything precisely,
he rode back at his leisure; for no one pursued him, and he met with a great deal of indifference. When he came back he told Xerxes everything he had seen. Hearing this, Xerxes could not grasp the truth of it—that they were preparing to die and to kill as best they could—but since what they were doing seemed absurd to him, he sent for Demaratus son of Ariston, who was in the camp. When he arrived,
Xerxes questioned him closely about all this, wanting to understand what the Lacedaemonians were doing. Demaratus said, "You heard me before, when we were setting out for Greece, speaking about these men; and when you heard me, you made me a laughingstock for saying how I saw these matters turning out. Yet for me, striving to speak the truth before you, O king, is the greatest of contests. Hear me now as well.
These men have come to fight us for the passage, and that is what they are preparing for. It is their custom, when they are about to risk their lives, to groom their heads. Know this: if you subdue these men and the force remaining behind in Sparta, there is no other nation of men on earth that will withstand you, O king, and raise its hands against you; for now you are approaching the kingdom and
the finest city among the Greeks, and the best men." To Xerxes what was said seemed utterly incredible, and he asked further how, being so few, they would fight against his army. Demaratus said, "O king, treat me as a liar if this does not turn out for you just as I say." Saying this he did not persuade Xerxes. For four
days he let them be, still expecting that they would run off at any moment. But on the fifth day, when they had not withdrawn but seemed to him to be persisting out of sheer insolence and folly, he grew angry and sent the Medes and Cissians against them, ordering them to take them alive and bring them into his presence. When the Medes fell upon the Greeks and charged, many of them fell, but others came on in their place, and they were not driven back,
even though they were suffering great losses. They made it plain to everyone, and not least to the king himself, that there were many men there but few real fighters. The engagement went on all day. When the Medes were being roughly handled, they then withdrew, and the Persians took their place and came on—those the king called the Immortals, whom Hydarnes commanded—thinking that they at least would easily finish the task.
But when these too closed with the Greeks, they gained nothing more than the Median force had, but the same result, since they were fighting in a narrow place and using shorter spears than the Greeks, and could not make use of their numbers. The Lacedaemonians fought in a manner worth recounting, showing themselves skilled in fighting against men unskilled in it, in various ways—and whenever they turned their backs, closing ranks
they would pretend to flee, and the barbarians, seeing them flee, would come on with shouting and clatter; but the Greeks, once overtaken, would wheel about to face the barbarians, and turning back on them would cut down countless numbers of the Persians. A few of the Spartans themselves fell there as well. Since the Persians, trying by companies and in every way to force their way through the entrance, could gain nothing, they withdrew. During
these approaches in the battle it is said that the king, watching, leapt up three times from his throne in fear for his army. So they fought that day, and on the next the barbarians did no better. For since they were few, expecting them to be wounded already and no longer able to raise their hands against them, they joined battle. But the Greeks were arranged in ranks and by nations,
and each contingent fought in its turn, except the Phocians; these had been posted on the mountain to guard the path. When the Persians found nothing different from what they had seen the day before, they withdrew. While the king was at a loss what to do about the situation before him, Ephialtes son of Eurydemus, a man of Malis, came to speak with him; thinking to win a great reward from the king,
he told him of the path leading over the mountain to Thermopylae, and thereby brought about the destruction of the Greeks who had held out there. Later, fearing the Lacedaemonians, he fled to Thessaly; and while he was in exile a price was put on his head by the Pylagorai of the Amphictyons when they had gathered at the Pylaea. Some time afterward, when he had come down to Anticyra, he was killed by Athenades, a man of Trachis. This Athenades killed
Ephialtes for another reason, which I shall explain later in my account, yet he was honored by the Lacedaemonians no less for it. Ephialtes, then, died later in this way. But there is another account given, that Onetes son of Phanagoras, a Carystian, and Corydallus of Anticyra were the ones who told the king these things and guided the Persians around the mountain—an account which to me
is in no way credible. For one must reckon this: that the leaders of the Greeks, the Pylagorai, put a price not on Onetes and Corydallus but on Ephialtes of Trachis, having surely learned the truth of the matter as exactly as possible; and this too, that we know Ephialtes fled on this very charge. Onetes might indeed have known this path even without being a Malian, if he had had much dealing with the region;
but since it was Ephialtes who guided them around the mountain by the path, it is he whom I name as responsible. Xerxes, since what Ephialtes promised to accomplish pleased him, was overjoyed at once and sent Hydarnes, and Hydarnes led the force he commanded; they set out from the camp about the time the lamps are lit. This path had been discovered by the local people of Malis, who upon discovering it had guided the Thessalians against
the Phocians, at the time when the Phocians had walled off the pass and were under shelter from the war; and from that time it had been known, being of no use to the Malians. This path runs as follows: it begins at the river Asopus, which flows through the ravine, and the mountain and the path bear the same name, Anopaea; this Anopaea
runs along the ridge of the mountain, and ends at the city of Alpenus, the first of the Locrian towns as one comes from Malis, and by the rock called Melampygus and the seats of the Cercopes, where the path is narrowest. Along this path, being such as it is, the Persians, having crossed the Asopus, marched the whole night, with the mountains
of the Oetaeans on their right and those of Trachis on their left. Dawn was just breaking when they reached the summit of the mountain. At this point of the mountain there kept guard, as I have said before, a thousand Phocian hoplites, defending their own territory and guarding the path. The lower pass was guarded by those already mentioned, but the path over the mountain
was guarded, at their own request, by the Phocians, who had undertaken this for Leonidas. The Phocians became aware of them coming up in this way: the Persians, in climbing, went unnoticed, the whole mountain being covered with oak trees. There was no wind, but as was natural a great deal of noise arose from the leaves scattered underfoot, so the Phocians sprang up and put on their arms, and at once the barbarians were upon them. When
they saw men putting on armor, they were struck with astonishment; for expecting no one to appear opposed to them, they had run into an army. At this Hydarnes, fearing that the Phocians might be Lacedaemonians, asked Ephialtes what people the force was; and learning the truth precisely, he drew up the Persians for battle. The Phocians, as they were struck by the arrows, many and thick, fled to the top
of the mountain, thinking that they had been the original target of the attack, and prepared themselves to be destroyed. This was their thinking; but the Persians under Ephialtes and Hydarnes paid the Phocians no further attention, and instead went down the mountain with all speed. As for the Greeks at Thermopylae, first the seer Megistias, looking into the sacred offerings, declared what was about to happen at
of their death at dawn, and in addition there were deserters from among the Persians who reported the going-around march. These men brought their report while night still held; third came the day-watchers, hurrying down from the heights as daylight began to break. At this point the Greeks took counsel, and their opinions were divided: some said they should not abandon their position, while others argued against this. After this, once they had split apart, some
went their separate ways and, scattering, each turned toward their own city, while others of them made ready to stay there with Leonidas. It is said, too, that Leonidas himself sent them away, out of concern that they not perish; but that for himself and the Spartans present it was not fitting to abandon the post they had come to guard from the start. To this view I myself most incline, that Leonidas, when he perceived that the
allies were without enthusiasm and unwilling to share the danger, ordered them to withdraw, but that for himself to leave was not honorable; for if he stayed, great glory would be his, and Sparta's prosperity would remain intact. The Pythia had in fact prophesied to the Spartans, when they first sought her counsel about this war at its outset, that either the barbarians would lay Lacedaemon waste, or their king
would perish. This she declared to them in hexameter verses, speaking as follows: 'For you, dwellers in wide-wayed Sparta, either your great and glorious city will be sacked by men of Perseus's line, or, if not that, then the borderland of Lacedaemon will mourn a king dead, one from the stock of Heracles. For the might of bulls nor of lions will not hold him back in resistance; for he has the might of Zeus, and I say he will not be held back until
he has utterly torn apart one or the other of these two.' Reflecting on this, and wishing to lay up fame for the Spartans alone, Leonidas sent away the allies rather than have those who went depart in such disorder because of a difference of opinion. And no small proof of this, in my view, has come to me in this: that even the seer who accompanied this army, Megistias the Acarnanian, said to be descended in his lineage from Melampus,
this man, after declaring from the sacrificial signs what was going to befall them, is plainly seen to have been sent away by Leonidas, so that he might not perish along with them. But he, though sent away, did not himself leave; instead he sent away his son, who was serving in the campaign with him and was his only child. So then the allies who were sent away departed and obeyed Leonidas, but the Thespians and the Thebans alone remained behind with the Lacedaemonians. Of these the Thebans
remained unwillingly and against their will, for Leonidas held them back, treating them as hostages; but the Thespians remained willingly, to the highest degree, for they refused to abandon Leonidas and those with him and depart, but stayed and died together with them. Their general was Demophilus son of Diadromes. Xerxes, after making libations at sunrise, waited a while, until about the time the marketplace fills up, and then began his advance; for it had been so instructed
by Ephialtes: for the descent from the mountain is more direct and the distance much shorter than the circuit and the ascent. So the barbarians around Xerxes advanced, and the Greeks around Leonidas, since they were now making their sortie as men going out to death, advanced much further than before into the wider part of the pass.
For the defensive wall had been guarded on the earlier days, and they had gone out into the narrow passage to fight; but this time, fighting in the open ground beyond the narrows, vast numbers of the barbarians died; behind the ranks, their officers gripped whips and lashed every man, constantly forcing them onward. Many of them fell into the sea and perished,
and far more still were trampled alive by one another; there was no accounting for the dying. For since they knew the death that was coming to them from those going around the mountain, they displayed as much strength as they had against the barbarians, as men reckless of their lives and driven to desperation. By this time most of their spears happened to be broken, and they were dispatching the
Persians with their swords. And in this struggle Leonidas fell, having proven himself a man of the greatest excellence, and with him other Spartans of note, whose names I have learned, being men worthy of it, and I have learned the names of all three hundred as well. And there too fell many notable Persians, among them two sons of Darius, Abrocomes and Hyperanthes,
born to Darius by Phratagune, daughter of Artanes. This Artanes was brother of King Darius, being the son of Hystaspes son of Arsames; and when he gave his daughter in marriage to Darius he bestowed his entire estate upon him as well, since she was his only child. So it was that two of Xerxes's brothers died in the fighting, and a fierce struggle broke out over Leonidas's body between the Persians and
the Lacedaemonians, until the Greeks by their valor dragged it away and turned back their opponents four times. This went on until those with Ephialtes arrived. When the Greeks learned that these had come, from that point the character of the fight changed: they withdrew back into the narrow part of the road, and passing beyond the wall they went and took their stand on the
hillock, all of them gathered together except the Thebans. This hillock is at the entrance, where the stone lion now stands in honor of Leonidas. In this spot, defending themselves with daggers, those of them who still had any left, and with hands and teeth, they were buried under missiles by the barbarians pelting them, some coming on from the front and having demolished the defensive wall, and others
having come around and surrounded them on every side. Though the Lacedaemonians and Thespians were in such straits, it is nevertheless said that the bravest man was a Spartan, Dienekes; and he is said to have spoken these words before engaging the Medes, after a man from Trachis told him that when the barbarians loosed their arrows, the sheer mass of shafts blotted out the sun: so vast was their number. But he, not
at all dismayed by this, unfazed by this news, dismissed the size of the Median host and said the Trachinian stranger's report was all good news, since if the Medes blocked out the sun, the fight would take place in shade rather than under the blazing sun. This remark, along with other similar ones, is said to be what Dienekes the Lacedaemonian left behind as his memorial; following him, two Lacedaemonian brothers are said to have excelled, Alpheus
and Maron, sons of Orsiphantus. Of the Thespians the one who won the greatest fame was a man named Dithyrambus, son of Harmatides. They were buried there where they fell, and for them, along with those who had died earlier, before those sent away by Leonidas had departed, there is inscribed this writing: 'Here once against three hundred myriads fought four thousand men from the Peloponnese.' This inscription is for all of them together, and there is a separate one for the Spartans in particular. O
stranger, tell the Lacedaemonians that here we lie, obedient to their words. This is for the Lacedaemonians, and this other for the seer: 'This is the monument of famous Megistias, whom once the Medes slew after crossing the river Spercheius, a seer who, though he knew clearly the fates coming upon him, could not bear to abandon the leader of Sparta.' Now with these inscriptions and pillars, apart from the inscription for the seer, it was the Amphictyons
who honored them with these adornments; but the inscription for the seer Megistias was written by Simonides son of Leoprepes, out of guest-friendship. Of these three hundred it is said that two, Eurytus and Aristodemus, though it was possible for them, having agreed together, either to make their way back safely together to Sparta—since Leonidas had in fact released them from the camp, and they lay at Alpeni with an eye disease at its worst stage—or, if
they did not wish to return home, to die together with the others, chose not to act in agreement with either of these courses, but instead, differing in judgment, Eurytus, upon learning of the Persians' flanking march, called for his weapons, armed himself, and instructed his helot to guide him to the combatants; once the helot had brought him there, the helot fled, while Eurytus himself plunged into the
throng and was killed, while Aristodemus, being faint of spirit, was left behind. Now if either Aristodemus alone had returned home to Sparta suffering from his ailment, or if both of them together had made their way back, it seems to me that the Spartans would not have laid up any resentment against them; but as it was, since one of them had perished, and the other, clinging to the same excuse, was unwilling to die, it was inevitable that they should feel great resentment
toward Aristodemus. Some, then, say that Aristodemus was saved and returned to Sparta by this excuse; others say that a message had brought him from the camp on this errand, and that although it was possible for him to arrive back in time to catch the battle taking place, he was unwilling to do so, but stayed behind on the road and so survived, while his fellow messenger, who did arrive at the battle, was killed. When Aristodemus returned home to Lacedaemon he had reproach and dishonor;
and he suffered dishonor of this kind: no Spartan would kindle fire for him nor speak with him. He bore the reproach of being called Aristodemus the Trembler. But he, in the battle at Plataea, redeemed entirely the blame that had been laid upon him. It is also said that another man, sent as messenger to Thessaly, survived from these three hundred, whose name was Pantites; and when he returned to Sparta, since he had been dishonored,
he hanged himself. The Thebans, whom Leontiades commanded, for a time fought alongside the Greeks against the king's army, being held to it by necessity; yet once it became clear the Persian cause was winning out, then, while the Greeks with Leonidas were hurrying to the hillock, they broke away from them and, stretching out their hands, went closer to the barbarians, telling the truest of the
accounts, that they had indeed medized and had among the first given earth and water to the king, and that it was under compulsion that they had come to Thermopylae, and were blameless for the harm that had come to the king. So by saying this they survived; for they had the Thessalians as witnesses to these claims. Not everything, however, went well for them; for as the barbarians took them when they arrived, some of them
They killed some as they approached, but the greater part of them, at Xerxes' command, they branded with the royal marks, beginning with their general Leontiades, whose son Eurymachus was killed years afterward by the Plataeans, after he had led four hundred Thebans as general and taken the city of Plataea. So the Greeks at Thermopylae fought their fight, and Xerxes, summoning Demaratus, began questioning him thus: "Demaratus, you are a good man.
I judge this from the truth of it, for everything you told me has turned out just so. Now tell me, how many Lacedaemonians are left, and how many of them are of this quality in war, or are they all such?" He said, "O king, the whole body of Lacedaemonians numbers a great many, spread across many cities; but as for what you wish to learn, you shall know it. There is in Lacedaemon a city, Sparta, of men
about eight thousand, and all these are equal to those who fought here; the rest of the Lacedaemonians are not their equal, though they too are good men." To this Xerxes said, "Demaratus, by what means might we most easily overcome these men? Come, explain, for you know the outcome of their plans, having been their king yourself." He answered, "O king, if indeed
you are earnestly asking my counsel, it is right that I tell you the best course: that you send three hundred ships of your naval force against the Laconian land. There lies off it an island called Cythera, which Chilon, a man among us of the greatest wisdom, said would be a greater gain for the Spartiates if it were sunk beneath the sea than if it stood above it, always expecting from it
something such as I am now explaining to you—not that he foresaw your expedition, but fearing every expedition of men alike. Setting out from this island, let your forces terrify the Lacedaemonians; with a war of their own so close at hand, they will have no fear of coming to the aid of the rest of Greece when it is being conquered by your land forces. And once the rest of Greece has been enslaved, the Laconian power will be left
weak and alone. But if you do not do this, expect the following to happen: there is a narrow isthmus of the Peloponnese; in that place, with all the Peloponnesians sworn together against you, expect other battles stronger than those that have already occurred. But if you do as I say, that isthmus and the cities will come over to you without a fight." After him spoke Achaemenes, who was Xerxes' brother and
general of the naval force, who happened to be present at this speech and, fearing that Xerxes might be persuaded to do this, said, "O king, I see you listening to the words of a man who envies your good fortune, or else is even betraying your affairs. For indeed the Greeks delight in behaving in such ways: they envy good fortune and hate what is stronger than themselves. If, in the present circumstances,
in which four hundred ships have been wrecked, you send off another three hundred from the camp to sail around the Peloponnese, your opponents become a match for you; but while the naval force remains together as a whole, it is difficult for the enemy to handle, and to begin with they will be no match for you at all, and the whole navy will support the army and the army the navy as they proceed together. But if you split them apart, neither will you be of use to them
nor they to you. My opinion is that, if you manage your own affairs well, you need not concern yourself with what your opponents will do, where they will make their stand in war, what they will do, or how many they are; for they themselves are capable enough of looking after their own affairs, and we likewise of ours. As for the Lacedaemonians, if they come out against the Persians to battle, they will not heal the wound already inflicted on them."
Xerxes answered him thus: "Achaemenes, you seem to me to speak well, and I will do as you say. Demaratus speaks what he believes to be best for me, yet in judgment he is bested by you. For I will not accept this—that he is not well disposed toward my affairs—judging both by what he has said before and weighing it against the facts, that a citizen envies a fellow citizen who is prospering
and is hostile to him even in silence, and a citizen would not, even if consulted by a fellow citizen, advise him of what seems to him the best course, unless he has attained to a high degree of virtue—and such men are rare. But a guest-friend is most well disposed of all toward a guest-friend who is prospering, and if consulted would give the best advice. So then, I bid everyone hereafter refrain from speaking ill
of Demaratus, since he is my guest-friend." Having said this, Xerxes passed through the dead, and having heard that Leonidas had been king and general of the Lacedaemonians, he ordered that his head be cut off and set on a stake. To me it is clear from many other pieces of evidence, and not least from this one, that King Xerxes was more enraged at Leonidas while he lived than at any other man; for he would never have committed
such an outrage against a corpse, since the Persians, more than any other people I know, are accustomed to honor men who are brave in war. Those who had been ordered to do this did so. I now return to that point in my account where I earlier left off. The Lacedaemonians learned that the king was setting out against Greece before anyone else, and so they dispatched envoys to the Delphic oracle, where indeed
the response was given to them which I mentioned a little earlier; and they learned it in a remarkable way. Demaratus son of Ariston, who had fled to the Medes, was not, as I believe and as probability also supports me, well disposed toward the Lacedaemonians, and one may guess whether he did what he did out of good will or out of malicious pleasure. For when Xerxes had resolved to march against Greece, Demaratus, who was in Susa and had learned of this,
wished to send word of it to the Lacedaemonians. He had no other way to signal it, since there was danger that he would be caught; so he devised the following scheme. Taking a folding writing tablet, he scraped off its wax, and then wrote the king's plan on the wood of the tablet itself; having done this, he covered the writing again with a fresh coat of wax, so that the blank-looking tablet, once carried off, would cause no trouble
from the guards of the road. When it arrived at Lacedaemon, the Lacedaemonians could not make sense of it, until, as I learn, Gorgo, daughter of Cleomenes and wife of Leonidas, worked it out herself and suggested to them, telling them to scrape off the wax, and that they would find writing on the wood. Following her advice they found it and read it, and then sent it on to the rest of the Greeks. This
is how, it is said, these things happened.

======== Histories — Book 8 (Urania) ========

The Greeks assigned to the naval force were as follows: the Athenians provided one hundred and twenty-seven ships. The Plataeans, though inexperienced in seamanship, manned these ships alongside the Athenians out of sheer valor and eagerness. The Corinthians provided forty ships, the Megarians twenty. The Chalcidians manned twenty ships that the Athenians supplied, and the Aeginetans eighteen,
the Sicyonians twelve; from Lacedaemon came ten, from Epidaurus eight, from Eretria seven, from Troezen five, from Styra two; and the Ceans supplied two ships along with two penteconters; the Opuntian Locrians came to their aid with seven penteconters. These, then, were the forces that campaigned at Artemisium, and I have also stated how many ships each contingent provided. The total
number of ships gathered at Artemisium, apart from the penteconters, was two hundred and seventy-one. The commander who held the supreme authority was provided by the Spartans: Eurybiades son of Eurycleides. For the allies said that if a Laconian did not lead them, they would not follow the Athenians even if the Athenians led, but would dissolve the expedition that was to be. For there had been talk earlier, before they even sent to
Sicily for an alliance, that the naval command ought to be entrusted to the Athenians. But when the allies opposed this, the Athenians yielded, since they set great store on the survival of Greece and recognized that if they quarreled over the leadership, Greece would perish — and in this they judged rightly, for civil strife within a like-minded body is as much worse than war fought in harmony as war is worse than peace. Understanding this themselves, they did not press their claim but yielded,
for as long as they had great need of the allies, as they later showed. For once they had driven back the Persian and the fight had shifted to his own territory, they took the leadership away from the Lacedaemonians, using Pausanias' arrogance as their pretext. But that happened later. At the time in question, those Greeks who had come to Artemisium, when they saw many ships put in at Aphetae and the whole army
filling every space, since the enemy's situation had turned out contrary to what they expected — quite different from what they themselves had reckoned — they took fright and considered fleeing from Artemisium into the interior of Greece. When the Euboeans learned they were deliberating this, they begged Eurybiades to wait a short while, until they themselves had gotten their children and household safely away. When they could not persuade him, they turned instead to the Athenian general and persuaded
Themistocles, for a fee of thirty talents, on condition that they stay and fight the sea battle in defense of Euboea. Themistocles brought about the Greeks' staying in the following way: of this money he gave Eurybiades a share of five talents, pretending it was a gift from his own funds. When Eurybiades had been won over by this, only Adeimantus son of Ocytus, the Corinthian commander, still balked among the rest, declaring that he would sail away from
Artemisium and not remain. To him Themistocles said, with an oath, "You will not abandon us, since what I will give you exceeds anything the Persian king could send you for deserting the allies." And as he said this he sent to Adeimantus' ship three talents of silver. So all of these men were won over by gifts,
and the Euboeans got what they wanted, while Themistocles himself profited too, since it went unnoticed that he kept the rest of the money for himself; those who received a share of it believed it had come from Athens for this very purpose. Thus they remained in Euboea and fought the sea battle, and it came about like this. When the barbarians arrived at Aphetae in the early afternoon,
having learned even earlier that a few Greek ships lay at anchor off Artemisium, and now catching sight of them directly, they grew eager to attack, in hopes of somehow capturing them. Sailing straight at them did not yet seem wise, and for this reason: they worried that if the Greeks spotted them closing in, the Greeks would bolt into flight, with darkness then overtaking them as they ran, and so escape — whereas their design required that not even
a single fire-bearer should escape and survive. So against this they devised the following scheme: separating out two hundred ships from the whole fleet, they sent them around outside Sciathos, so that they would not be seen by the enemy sailing around Euboea past Caphereus and around Geraestus into the Euripus, so that the ships going that way might come round and block the Greeks' route of retreat, while the main fleet itself pressed them from
the opposite direction. Having planned this, they sent off the assigned ships, while they themselves had no intention of attacking the Greeks on that day, nor before the signal was due to appear from those sailing around, to show that they had arrived. So they sent these ships around, and meanwhile made a count of the remaining ships at Aphetae. During the time in which they were making this count
of the ships — for there was in that camp Scyllias of Scione, the best diver of the men of that time, who at the shipwreck that occurred off Pelion had recovered much of the treasure for the Persians, and had also kept much of it for himself — this Scyllias had actually intended to desert to the Greeks even earlier, but had had no opportunity to do so
until then. By what means he then made his way to the Greeks I cannot say for certain, and I am amazed if what is told is true: it is said that he dove into the sea at Aphetae and did not come up until he reached Artemisium, having made his way through the sea a distance of about eighty stadia. Many other things are also told
about this man that resemble falsehoods, though some of them are true; but concerning this particular matter, let it be my judgment that he reached Artemisium by boat. When he arrived, he immediately reported to the generals what had happened in the shipwreck, and told them of the ships sent around Euboea. Hearing this, the Greeks conferred among themselves. After much had been said,
the decision won out that they should stay put that day, camping there, and afterward, once midnight had gone by, set out to meet the ships sailing around the coast. Following this, since no one came out to attack them, they held off until late in the afternoon and then sailed out themselves against the barbarians, wanting to try their hand at fighting and at breaking through the enemy line. When the rest of Xerxes' soldiers
and his generals saw them sailing out with so few ships, they thought them utterly mad, and put out to sea themselves as well, expecting to capture them easily — a reasonable expectation, since they saw the Greek ships were few, while their own were many times more numerous and better sailers. With this contempt they surrounded them in a circle. Now those of the Ionians who were well disposed
toward the Greeks served unwillingly and were deeply distressed to see them surrounded, believing that none of them would return home — so weak did the Greeks' position seem to them. But those who were pleased at what was happening vied with one another to be the first to capture an Athenian ship and win gifts from the King, for it was the Athenians who were talked of most in the camps.
When the signal was given to the Greeks, first they turned their prows toward the barbarians and drew their sterns together into the center; then, at the second signal, they set to work, hemmed in as they were within a narrow space and facing the enemy head-on. There they captured thirty of the barbarian ships, along with Philaon son of Chersis, brother of Gorgus king of the Salaminians, a man of note in the camp. The first Greek to capture an enemy
ship was Lycomedes son of Aeschraeus, an Athenian, and he received the prize for valor. Those contending in this battle with indecisive fortune were parted by the coming of night. The Greeks sailed back to Artemisium, and the barbarians to Aphetae, having fought quite differently than they expected. In this sea battle Antidorus of Lemnos, alone among the Greeks serving with the King, deserted to
the Greeks, and for this deed the Athenians gave him land on Salamis. When night fell — it was midsummer — rain poured down without measure the whole night through, and there were harsh peals of thunder from Pelion; the corpses and the wreckage were carried toward Aphetae and gathered around the prows of the ships, entangling the blades of the oars.
The soldiers stationed there, hearing this, fell into fear, expecting to perish utterly, given the troubles that had befallen them. For before they could even catch their breath from the shipwreck and the storm that had occurred off Pelion, a fierce sea battle overtook them, and after the sea battle came a violent downpour and strong torrents
rushing toward the sea, and harsh thunderclaps. Such was that night for these men. But for those assigned to sail around Euboea, the same night was far more savage still, in proportion as it fell upon them out on the open sea, and their end was a grim one. For as they sailed on, the storm and the rain overtook them off the Hollows
of Euboea, and carried along by the wind, not knowing where they were being carried, they were driven onto the rocks. Everything was arranged by the god so that the Persian force might be brought down to equal the Greek and not be so much greater. These men, then, perished around the Hollows of Euboea. As for the barbarians at Aphetae, when day dawned upon them to their relief, they kept their ships
quiet, and in their present troubles they were content simply to remain at rest. Meanwhile fifty-three Attic ships came to reinforce the Greeks. Their arrival strengthened the Greeks' spirits, as did the news that came at the same time, that all the barbarian ships sailing around Euboea had been destroyed by the storm that had occurred. Waiting for the same hour as before, they sailed out and fell upon some Cilician ships; these they destroyed,
Once night fell, they sailed back to Artemisium. On the third day the barbarian commanders, finding it unbearable that so few ships should inflict such damage on them, and afraid of what Xerxes might do, refused to wait any longer for the Greeks to begin the fight, but urged each other on and launched their ships at midday. As it turned out, these naval battles occurred on the same days as
the land battles at Thermopylae. For the whole struggle at sea was about the Euripus, just as the men with Leonidas were guarding the pass. The one side urged each other on so that the barbarians should not get through into Greece, the other so that they might destroy the Greek force and gain control of the strait. When the men of Xerxes had drawn up their ships and sailed forward, the Greeks held their position without moving
off Artemisium. The barbarians formed their ships into a crescent and tried to encircle them, so as to surround them. At this the Greeks put out and engaged. In this sea battle both sides came off much alike. For the army of Xerxes, because of its size and numbers, fell into disorder by its own doing, the ships becoming tangled and running into one another; nevertheless it held its ground and did not give way,
for they thought it a terrible thing to be routed by so few ships. Many Greek ships were destroyed, and many men, but far more ships and men of the barbarians, and after fighting in this way each side drew apart. In this sea battle the Egyptians among the soldiers of Xerxes distinguished themselves most, who among other great feats performed also captured five Greek ships
with their crews. Among the Greeks on that day the Athenians distinguished themselves, and among the Athenians Cleinias son of Alcibiades, who served at his own expense with two hundred men and a ship of his own. When the two sides parted, each was glad to hurry to its own anchorage. The Greeks, once separated and free from the sea battle, held the field of the dead and the wrecks, but had been roughly
handled, not least the Athenians, half of whose ships had been damaged, and they were planning to flee back into Greece. But Themistocles, having conceived the idea that if the Ionian and Carian contingents could be broken off from the barbarian, the Greeks might be able to gain the mastery over the rest, and noting that the Euboeans were driving their flocks down to this stretch of sea, gathered the
commanders and told them that he thought he had a plan by which he hoped to draw away the best of the king's allies. This much he revealed for the moment, but as to the matter at hand he said they should do the following: slaughter as many of the Euboean flocks as anyone wished, for it was better that their own army have them than the enemy; and he advised that each man tell his own
men to light fires; as for the timing of departure, that would be his concern, so that they might reach Greece safely. They were pleased to do this, and at once lit fires and turned to the flocks. For the Euboeans, having disregarded the oracle of Bacis as meaningless, had neither carried anything away nor laid in provisions in expectation of war, and so brought ruin upon themselves.
Bacis has an oracle concerning this matter that reads thus: 'Take heed, when a man of foreign speech casts a papyrus yoke upon the sea, keep the loud-bleating goats far away from Euboea.' Because they had made no use of these words amid the troubles then upon them and those still expected, they were left to face only misfortune in the gravest matters. While this was going on, the scout from Trachis showed up. For at
Artemisium there was a scout, Polyas, an Anticyran by birth, who had been assigned, and kept a rowing boat ready, so that if the fleet should suffer defeat he might signal to those at Thermopylae; and likewise there was Abronichus son of Lysicles, an Athenian, ready with Leonidas to announce by a thirty-oared ship to those at Artemisium if anything new should befall the land force. This Abronichus, then, arriving, announced to them what had happened
concerning Leonidas and his force. When they learned this, they no longer delayed their withdrawal, but departed each in the order assigned to them, the Corinthians first, the Athenians last. Themistocles, choosing out the best-sailing ships of the Athenians, went about to the watering places, cutting inscriptions on the stones. These the Ionians, coming upon the following day at Artemisium, read.
The message read as follows: 'Men of Ionia, it is unjust for you to march against your own fathers and help enslave Greece. Better still, come over to our side; and if that proves impossible for you, then at least withdraw yourselves from the fighting now, and urge the Carians to do likewise. If neither
of these is possible for you, but you are bound by too great a compulsion to revolt, then in the actual battle, when we engage, play the coward deliberately, remembering that you are descended from us and that the enmity toward the barbarian originally arose on our account through you.' Themistocles wrote this, I think, with a double purpose in mind: either that the message, escaping the king's notice, might make the Ionians change over
and come to their side, or that, if it were reported and denounced to Xerxes, it might make him distrust the Ionians and keep them away from the sea battles. This is what Themistocles wrote. Meanwhile, immediately after this, a man of Histiaea came by boat to the barbarians announcing the Greek withdrawal from Artemisium. They, out of disbelief, kept the messenger under guard and sent fast ships
ahead to look for themselves; and when these reported that it was so, then, as the sun was spreading its light, the whole fleet sailed together to Artemisium. Having waited there until midday, from then on they sailed to Histiaea; and arriving they took possession of the city of the Histiaeans, and overran all the coastal region of the Ellopian district and the land of Histiaeotis.
Meanwhile Xerxes, once he had settled matters concerning the dead, dispatched a herald to the naval force, having first arranged the following: of his own army's dead at Thermopylae — some twenty thousand in number — he left roughly a thousand of them exposed, and buried the remainder in dug trenches, covering them with brushwood and heaped earth, so the naval force would not catch sight of them.
When the herald had crossed over to Histiaea, he called an assembly of the whole camp and said this: 'Men, allies, King Xerxes grants to whoever of you wishes it leave to quit his post and come to see how he fights against those foolish men who hoped to overcome the king's power.' After he made this announcement, nothing thereafter became scarcer than boats, so many wished to see the sight. Crossing over
they went about viewing the dead; and all believed that those lying there were all Lacedaemonians and Thespians, though they also saw the helots. Yet it did not escape those who had crossed over that Xerxes had done this concerning his own dead; indeed it was even laughable: of the enemy's dead a thousand were shown lying there, while all of their own were gathered together and heaped up in one place, four
thousand strong. They devoted that day to this spectacle, and on the following day some sailed back to Histiaea to rejoin the fleet, while Xerxes and his men set out on the road. A handful of deserters from Arcadia reached them, men lacking a livelihood who wanted work. Bringing them before the king, the Persians questioned them about the Greeks,
what they were doing; one man before all the rest was the one asking them this. They told him that they were holding the Olympic games and watching a contest of athletics and horse racing. He then asked what the prize was that was set for them to contend for; they said it was a crown of olive that was given. At this Tigranes son of Artabanus, in speaking a most noble opinion, incurred a charge of cowardice
from the king. For on learning that the prize was a crown and not money, he could not keep silent, and said before everyone: 'Good heavens, Mardonius, what kind of men have you brought us to fight against, who contend not for money but for excellence!' This is what he said. In the meantime, once the disaster at Thermopylae had occurred, at once
the Thessalians dispatched a herald to the Phocians, for they had long borne them a grudge, one sharpened further by their most recent defeat. When the Thessalians and their allies had once invaded Phocian territory in full force, not many years before this royal campaign, the Phocians had beaten them back and handled them roughly. For when the Phocians had been cornered on Parnassus,
having with them the seer Tellias of Elis, then this Tellias devised for them the following stratagem. He whitened with chalk six hundred of the best men of the Phocians, both the men themselves and their weapons, and by night set them upon the Thessalians, having told them beforehand to kill anyone they saw who was not gleaming white. The Thessalian sentries, seeing these men first, were terrified, thinking it was some other kind of apparition, and
after the sentries the army itself was likewise, so that the Phocians gained control of four thousand dead bodies and shields, half of which they dedicated at Abae and the other half at Delphi; and a tenth of the spoils from this battle produced the great statues standing around the tripod in front of the temple at Delphi, and others like them are dedicated at Abae.
This is what the Phocians did to the Thessalian infantry who were besieging them; and to the cavalry that invaded their land they did irreparable harm. For at the pass that leads by Hyampolis, there they dug a great trench and placed empty jars in it, and heaping earth over them and making it look like the rest of the ground, they awaited the Thessalians as they invaded. And they, as
Rushing forward to seize the Phocians, they fell headlong into the storage jars, and the horses' legs were broken. Bearing a grudge over both of these incidents, the Thessalians sent a herald and proclaimed as follows: "Phocians, it is time you learned better than to think yourselves our equals. In the past, among the Greeks, as long as that policy suited us, we always had the upper hand over you; but now with the barbarian
we have such power that it is in our hands to strip you of your land, or worse, enslave you. Yet though we hold all the advantage, we bear you no lasting grudge; let there be fifty talents of silver in place of it, and we undertake to turn aside the forces advancing on your country." This was the offer the Thessalians made them. For the Phocians alone among the peoples of that region had not gone over to the Persians, for no other reason, as far as I can work out,
beyond their hatred for the Thessalians; had the Thessalians instead championed the Greek cause, I suspect the Phocians would have sided with the Medes. When the Thessalians made this proposal, the Phocians replied that they would not hand over the money, adding that they too were as free as the Thessalians to medize if that was their wish; but they would never willingly betray Greece. When word of this answer
was brought back, the Thessalians, now enraged against the Phocians, became guides for the barbarian's army on its march. From Trachis they invaded Doris; for a narrow strip of the land of Doris stretches this way, about thirty stadia wide, lying between the land of Malis and Phocis, which was in ancient times called Dryopis; this land
is the mother-city of the Dorians in the Peloponnese. This land of Doris the barbarians did not harm when they invaded it, for its people had medized and the Thessalians did not wish it. But when they invaded Phocis from Doris, they did not catch the Phocians themselves. Some of the Phocians had gone up to the heights of Parnassus. There is a peak there well suited to shelter a crowd,
the peak of Parnassus, standing apart near the city of Neon; its name is Tithorea; it was to this height that they hauled their belongings and climbed up themselves. Most of the rest carried their possessions away to the Ozolian Locrians and the city of Amphissa above the Crisaean plain. The barbarians overran the whole territory of Phocis, since the Thessalians guided the army this way; and whatever
lay in their path, they burned and cut down entirely, setting fire to the cities and to the temples as well. Marching this way along the Cephisus river, they laid waste to everything, and they burned the city of Drymus, and Charadra, and Erochus, and Tethronium, and Amphicaea, and Neon, and Pediea, and Tritea, and Elateia, and Hyampolis, and Parapotamii, and Abae, where there was
a rich sanctuary of Apollo, furnished with many treasuries and offerings; and there was then, as there still is now, an oracle there. This sanctuary too they plundered and burned. And pursuing some of the Phocians, they caught them near the mountains, and violated some women until they died from the sheer numbers of the men. Passing by Parapotamii, the barbarians came to Panopeae. From there their army, already dividing,
split apart. The greater and stronger part of the army, marching together with Xerxes himself toward Athens, invaded the land of Boeotia, into the territory of the Orchomenians. The whole population of Boeotia had medized, and their cities were being protected by Macedonian men stationed there, sent by Alexander; and they protected them for this reason, wishing to make it clear to Xerxes that the Boeotians favored the Persian side. These, then, of the barbarians
turned this way; but others of them, with guides, set out for the sanctuary at Delphi, keeping Parnassus on their right. Whatever part of Phocis these too passed through, they ravaged entirely; for they burned the city of the Panopeans, and of Daulis, and of the Aeolidae. They marched this way, separated from the rest of the army, for this reason: so that after plundering the sanctuary at Delphi
they might present its treasures to King Xerxes. For Xerxes, as I learn, knew everything in the sanctuary worth mentioning better than he knew what he had left behind in his own house, since so many people were always speaking of it, and especially of the offerings of Croesus son of Alyattes. The Delphians, learning of this, fell into utter terror, and in great fear consulted the oracle about the sacred
treasures, whether they should bury them in the ground or carry them off to another land. The god would not allow them to move them, saying he was himself able to protect what was his own. Hearing this, the Delphians turned to thinking of their own safety. Their children and women they sent across to Achaea, while of the men themselves most went up to the peaks of Parnassus and
carried their goods up into the Corycian cave, while others made their way out to Amphissa in Locris. All the Delphians, then, abandoned the city, except sixty men and the prophet. When the barbarians drew near and were in sight of the sanctuary, at that moment the prophet, whose name was Aceratus, saw sacred weapons lying in front of the temple, brought out from within the inner shrine,
weapons which it was forbidden for any man to touch. He went off to tell the Delphians who remained of this omen; but the barbarians, as they came hurrying toward the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia, encountered omens still greater than the one that had occurred before. It is indeed a great wonder in itself, that weapons of war should appear of their own accord lying outside the temple;
but what happened next was even more astonishing, and worthy of wonder above all portents. For when the barbarians were advancing on the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia, at that moment thunderbolts fell upon them from the sky, and two peaks broke off from Parnassus and came crashing down upon them with a great noise, killing many of them, and from the
sanctuary of Pronaia there arose a shout and a battle-cry. When all these things came together, terror fell upon the barbarians. The Delphians, learning that they were fleeing, came down after them and killed a good number of them. The survivors fled straight toward Boeotia. Those of the barbarians who returned said, as I learn, that besides these things they saw other divine happenings as well: two hoplites of greater than
human stature, they said, followed them, killing and pursuing. These two, the Delphians say, are local heroes, Phylacus and Autonous, whose sacred precincts are near the sanctuary, that of Phylacus right beside the road above the sanctuary of Pronaia, and that of Autonous near the Castalian spring, beneath the peak of Hyampeia. The stones that fell from Parnassus
were still preserved down to my own time, lying in the precinct of Athena Pronaia, where they had crashed down through the ranks of the barbarians as they fled. Such, then, was the departure of these men from the sanctuary. Meanwhile the Greek fleet, at the request of the Athenians, put in from Artemisium to Salamis. The Athenians asked them to put in at Salamis
for this reason: so that they themselves might get their children and women out of Attica, and also so they could deliberate on what course of action they should take. For given the state of their affairs they intended to hold a council, since their expectations had proved mistaken. They had expected to find the Peloponnesians in full force stationed in Boeotia to meet the barbarian, but they found none of them there; instead they learned that the Peloponnesians were walling off the Isthmus, since
they valued above all else the survival of the Peloponnese and were keeping guard over it, letting everything else go. Learning this, they then asked the fleet to put in at Salamis. So the rest of the fleet put in at Salamis, while the Athenians put in at their own land. After their arrival they made a proclamation, that any Athenian who was able should try to save his children and household. At this
most of them sent their families off to Troezen, some to Aegina, and some to Salamis. They hastened to remove them, wishing both to comply with the oracle, and also, not least, for this reason: the Athenians say that a great serpent, guardian of the acropolis, dwells in the sanctuary there. They say this and also that they set out monthly offerings for it as though it truly existed; and the monthly offering is a honey-cake.
This honey-cake, which in all previous time had always been consumed, was on this occasion left untouched. When the priestess announced this, the Athenians were all the more eager and ready to abandon the city, believing that the goddess herself had abandoned the acropolis. And when everything had been removed to safety, they sailed to the fleet's camp. When those from Artemisium had put in their ships at Salamis, there gathered
also the rest of the Greek fleet, on hearing of it, from Troezen; for it had been announced beforehand that they should assemble at Pogon, the harbor of the Troezenians. And so far more ships gathered than had fought at Artemisium, and from more cities as well. The admiral in command was the same man as at Artemisium, Eurybiades son of Eurycleides, a Spartan, though not of royal descent; but by far
by far the greatest number of ships came from the Athenians, and the best-sailing ones too. Those who joined the campaign were as follows: from the Peloponnese, the Lacedaemonians supplied sixteen ships, the Corinthians the same number as at Artemisium, the Sicyonians fifteen ships, the Epidaurians ten, the Troezenians five, the Hermionians three — all of them, except the Hermionians, belonging to the Dorian and Macedonian stock, having set out last from Erineus and Pindus
and the land of Dryopis. The Hermionians are Dryopes, expelled by Heracles and the Malians from the territory now known as Doris. Such, then, were the Peloponnesians who joined the campaign; and from the mainland beyond the Peloponnese came the Athenians, who supplied more ships than everyone else put together, one hundred eighty in all, alone; for the Plataeans did not fight alongside the Athenians in the sea battle at Salamis, for the reason given below
a strange thing happened: as the Greeks were withdrawing from Artemisium, when they came opposite Chalcis, the Plataeans landed on the mainland of Boeotia and set about carrying off their households. These men, then, stayed behind saving their people. As for the Athenians: while the Pelasgians held the land now called Hellas, the Athenians were Pelasgians, called Cranaans; under king Cecrops they were called Cecropidae; and when Erechtheus took over
the rule they were renamed Athenians, and when Ion son of Xuthus became their war-leader they were called Ionians after him. The Megarians supplied the same complement of ships as at Artemisium; the Ambraciots came to help with seven ships, the Leucadians with three, these being a Dorian people from Corinth. Of the islanders the Aeginetans supplied thirty. They had other manned ships as well, but with those they guarded their own land,
while with the thirty best sailers they fought at Salamis. The Aeginetans are Dorians from Epidaurus; the island's former name was Oenone. After the Aeginetans came the Chalcidians, supplying the twenty they had at Artemisium, and the Eretrians the seven; these are Ionians. Then the Ceans supplying the same number, a people Ionian in stock, from Athens. The Naxians supplied four, though they had been sent
to the Medes by their fellow citizens, like the other islanders, but disregarding their orders they came over to the Greeks, at the urging of Democritus, a man of standing among the citizens and at that time a trierarch. The Naxians are Ionians descended from Athens. The Styrians supplied the same ships as at Artemisium, the Cythnians one ship and a fifty-oared vessel, both peoples being Dryopians. And
the Seriphians, Siphnians, and Melians joined the campaign, being the only islanders who had not offered the barbarian earth and water. All of these, living within the Thesprotians and the river Acheron, took part in the campaign; for the Thesprotians border the Ambraciots and Leucadians, who came from the most distant regions to campaign. Among those living beyond these, only the Crotoniates came to Greece's aid in her hour of danger, with one
ship, led by a man who had won the Pythian games three times, Phayllus; the Crotoniates are Achaean by descent. The rest who joined the campaign brought triremes, but the Melians, Siphnians, and Seriphians brought fifty-oared vessels: the Melians, of Lacedaemonian stock, supplied two, and the Siphnians and Seriphians, being Ionians from Athens, one apiece. The full count of ships, not counting the fifty-oared vessels, reached three hundred
and seventy-eight. When the generals from the cities named came together at Salamis, they took counsel, Eurybiades proposing that whoever wished should declare his opinion as to where it seemed most advantageous to fight the sea battle, among those regions still in their own control—for Attica was already given up—and he put the question concerning the rest. The opinions of most of the speakers agreed in favor of sailing
to the Isthmus and fighting the sea battle before the Peloponnese, giving this reasoning: that if they were defeated in the battle, being at Salamis they would be besieged on an island, where no help could reach them, whereas at the Isthmus they could retreat to their own people. While the generals from the Peloponnese were reasoning this out, an Athenian man arrived with the report that the barbarian had come into Attica and that the whole country was being burned. For
the army that had marched with Xerxes through Boeotia, after burning the city of Thespiae — its people having fled to the Peloponnese — and Plataea's city likewise, reached Athens and laid waste to everything there. He burned Thespiae and Plataea upon learning that the Thebans had refused to medize. From the crossing of the Hellespont, from where the barbarians began their march, after spending a month there
while they crossed into Europe, they were in Attica within three further months, in the archonship of Calliades at Athens. And they took the city deserted, finding only a few Athenians in the sanctuary, treasurers of the temple and poor men, who had barricaded the acropolis with doors and timbers and defended themselves against the attackers, partly from poverty of means not having
withdrawn to Salamis, and partly because they thought they had grasped the true meaning of the oracle the Pythia had given them — that the wooden wall would remain unconquered — and that this very thing, rather than the ships, was the refuge the oracle meant. The Persians took up position on the hill facing the acropolis, the one the Athenians call the Areopagus, and laid siege in this manner: whenever they wrapped tow around
their arrows and set it alight, they shot it at the barricade. Then those Athenians under siege nonetheless defended themselves, though they had come to the utmost extremity and the barricade had failed them; nor did they accept the terms of surrender the Pisistratids brought forward, but defending themselves they contrived various countermeasures, and in particular, as the barbarians approached the gates, they rolled down boulders, so that Xerxes was held for a good while in perplexity, unable
to take them. In time, however, a way out of the impasse appeared for the barbarians, for it was fated, according to the oracle, that all of the Attic mainland should come under the Persians. In front, then, before the acropolis, but behind the gates and the ascent, where no one kept watch, since no one would have expected anyone to climb up that way
—there some men climbed up near the shrine of Aglaurus, daughter of Cecrops, even though the place is a sheer cliff. When the Athenians saw them having climbed up onto the acropolis, some threw themselves down from the wall and were killed, while others fled into the sanctuary's inner chamber. Of the Persians who had climbed up, the first turned to the gates,
opening these, they killed the suppliants; and once all had been struck down, they stripped the temple of its treasures and set the entire acropolis ablaze. Having taken Athens completely, Xerxes sent a horseman to Susa to inform Artabanus of their present success. On the day after sending the herald, he assembled the Athenian exiles who traveled with him and ordered them to climb up to the acropolis and offer sacrifice according to
offerings in their own manner—whether because he had seen some vision in a dream that prompted this order, or because he felt some remorse for having burned the temple. The Athenian exiles did as instructed. I will explain why I have mentioned this. There is in this acropolis a shrine said to belong to Erechtheus, called earthborn, in which there is an olive tree and a pool of sea water, which
according to the account of the Athenians, Poseidon and Athena set down as tokens when they contended over the land. This olive tree, along with the rest of the sanctuary, happened to be burned by the barbarians; but on the second day after the burning, the Athenians ordered by the king to sacrifice, when they went up to the sanctuary, saw a shoot grown up from the stump, about a cubit long. This, then,
is what they told him. The Greeks at Salamis, once word reached them of what had happened at the Athenian acropolis, fell into such disorder that some of the generals did not even wait for the matter before them to be decided, but dashed to their ships and raised sail as though about to flee; and those who stayed behind agreed to fight the sea battle in front of the Isthmus instead. Night was coming on and
they, breaking up from the council, went aboard their ships. Then, as Themistocles arrived at his ship, Mnesiphilus, an Athenian, asked him what had been decided. Learning from him that it had been resolved to lead the ships back to the Isthmus and fight the sea battle before the Peloponnese, he said, "Then indeed, if they take the ships away from Salamis, you will no longer be fighting for one
fatherland: for each people will scatter to their own cities, and neither Eurybiades nor anyone else will be able to restrain them from letting the army disperse; and Greece will be destroyed by bad counsel. But if there is any device, go and try to undo what has been decided, if you can somehow persuade Eurybiades to change his mind and stay here." This suggestion pleased Themistocles greatly,
and without answering anything to it, he went to Eurybiades' ship. On arriving, he said he wished to share with him a matter of common concern; and Eurybiades bade him come aboard and say what he wished. Then Themistocles, sitting beside him, related all that he had heard from Mnesiphilus, presenting it as his own, and adding much more besides, until he persuaded him, by his insistence, to
disembark from the ship and gather the generals in council. When they had come together, before Eurybiades could set forth the reason for which he had gathered the generals, Themistocles spoke at great length, as a man in urgent need. And as he spoke, the Corinthian general Adeimantus son of Ocytus said, "Themistocles, in the games those who start before the signal get whipped."
He, defending himself, replied, "But those who are left behind win no crown." At that time he answered the Corinthian mildly; but to Eurybiades he no longer said anything of what he had said before, that if they took the ships away from Salamis they would scatter and flee—for in the presence of the allies he did not think it proper to accuse anyone—but he held to another line of argument, saying the following. While Themistocles was speaking thus,
Adeimantus the Corinthian broke in again, telling him to hold his tongue since he had no fatherland, and urging Eurybiades not to permit a vote from a man without a city; for he said Themistocles ought to produce a city before offering opinions at all. He raised this charge against him because Athens had fallen and was in enemy hands. At that Themistocles unleashed harsh words against him and the Corinthians, and made plain
in his speech that they possessed both a city and a territory larger than theirs, as long as two hundred ships of theirs remained fully manned; for no Greeks could push them back if they attacked. Driving this point home, he turned his speech toward Eurybiades, speaking now more sharply. "If you stay put here, staying will make you a good man; but if you do not, you will bring Greece down: for our entire cause
the war is carried by the ships. But listen to me. If you do not do this, we will take up our households as we are and make our way to Siris in Italy, which has been ours from ancient times, and the oracles say it must be founded by us. And you, deprived of allies such as these, will remember my words." As Themistocles said this,
Eurybiades was won over by his argument. And it seems to me that it was chiefly fear of the Athenians that made him change his mind — fear that they would abandon the fleet if he led the ships to the Isthmus, since if the Athenians left, the rest would no longer be a match for the enemy. So he chose this course: to remain there and fight the sea battle. Thus the men at Salamis, having skirmished with words, once Eurybiades had decided, made their preparations there to fight at sea. Day was breaking, and
at the same moment as sunrise there was an earthquake on both land and sea. They decided to pray to the gods and to summon the sons of Aeacus as allies. Having so decided, they did this: after praying to all the gods, they called upon Ajax and Telamon from Salamis itself, and for Aeacus and the other sons of Aeacus they sent a ship to
Aegina. Now Dicaeus son of Theocydes, an Athenian exile who had become a man of standing among the Medes, said that at this time, when Attic land was being ravaged by Xerxes' infantry and was empty of Athenians, he happened to be with Demaratus the Lacedaemonian on the Thriasian plain, and saw a cloud of dust moving from Eleusis, as if raised by about thirty thousand men, and they marveled
at whose dust this could be, and presently they heard a voice, and the voice seemed to him to be the mystic cry of Iacchus. Demaratus, being unfamiliar with the rites performed at Eleusis, asked him what this sound was that they were hearing. And he himself said, "Demaratus, there is no way that some great disaster will not befall the king's
the army. For this much is clear, given that Attica lies deserted: the voice speaking is divine, coming forth from Eleusis to bring help to the Athenians and their allies. Should it descend upon the Peloponnese, danger will threaten the king himself along with the army on the mainland; but should it turn toward the ships at Salamis, the king will be risking
losing his fleet. This festival the Athenians hold every year for the Mother and the Daughter, and any Athenian who wishes, and any other Greek as well, is initiated into it; and the voice you hear is the cry of Iacchus that they raise at this festival." To this Demaratus replied, "Be silent, and do not speak this word to anyone else; for if it is reported to the king,
you will lose your head, and neither I nor anyone else on earth will be able to save you. Keep quiet, and let the gods take care of this army." So he counseled him, and out of the dust and the voice a cloud formed and was lifted up and carried toward Salamis, to the camp of the Greeks. Thus
they came to realize that Xerxes' fleet was fated for destruction. So said Dicaeus son of Theocydes, appealing to Demaratus and other witnesses. As for those stationed with Xerxes' fleet, once they had viewed the wreckage at Trachis and crossed over into Histiaea, they held there for three days, then sailed through the Euripus, and in another three days reached Phalerum.
As I judge the matter, the force that marched into Athens, arriving by both land and sea, numbered no fewer than the one that had reached Sepias and Thermopylae. For against those lost in the storm, and those who fell at Thermopylae and in the sea battles off Artemisium, I will set those who at that point had not yet joined the king's cause — the Malians, the Dorians, and
the Locrians and the Boeotians, who followed with their full levy except for the Thespians and the Plataeans, and also the Carystians and the Andrians and the Tenians and all the rest of the islanders, except the five cities whose names we mentioned earlier. For the further the Persian advanced into Greece, the more peoples followed him. When all these had arrived at Athens, except
the Parians (the Parians had lingered behind at Cythnos, watching to see which way the war would turn) — and the rest, once they reached Phalerum, Xerxes himself went down to the ships there, wanting to meet with them and learn the views of those sailing under him. Once he arrived and took his seat, the rulers of the various peoples and the ship commanders came at his summons and took their seats
in the order of honor that the king had given each of them, first the king of Sidon, then the king of Tyre, and then the rest. When they were seated in order, Xerxes sent Mardonius to go around and ask each of them, testing their opinion, whether he should give battle at sea. Mardonius went around asking, beginning with the man from Sidon, and all the others gave the same opinion, urging that a sea battle be fought; but Artemisia said this:
— what she had said. When she addressed Mardonius this way, those loyal to Artemisia treated her words as a disaster, expecting the king to punish her for opposing the sea battle; but those who resented and envied her, given her high standing among all the allies, took delight in the inquiry, hoping to see her ruined. But once the opinions reached Xerxes, he was
greatly pleased with Artemisia's opinion, and though he had already thought well of her before, he now praised her all the more. Nonetheless he ordered that the majority be followed, believing that at Euboea they had shirked because he himself was not present, but that now he had prepared to watch them fight the battle himself. When the order was given to put to sea, they led the ships out toward Salamis and arranged themselves in formation at their leisure. But
then the day did not allow time enough for them to fight the battle, for night came on; so they made their preparations for the next day. But fear and dread gripped the Greeks, especially those from the Peloponnese; they were afraid because, sitting there at Salamis, they were about to fight at sea on behalf of Athenian territory, and if defeated, they would be cut off on an island and besieged, leaving their own land
unguarded; meanwhile that same night the barbarians' infantry was on the march toward the Peloponnese. And yet every possible measure had been taken to keep the barbarians from invading by land. Once news reached the Peloponnesians that Leonidas and his men had died at Thermopylae, they rushed together from their cities and took up positions at the Isthmus, with Cleombrotus son of Anaxandrides, Leonidas's brother, in command.
Taking their position at the Isthmus and having blocked the Scironian road, after this, since they had so decided in council, they built a wall across the Isthmus. Since there were many tens of thousands of them and every man was working, the project advanced; for stones, bricks, timber, and baskets full of sand were brought in, and those who had come to help never rested from their labor, neither by night nor
by day. Those Greeks who came in full force to help at the Isthmus were these: the Lacedaemonians, all the Arcadians, the Eleans, the Corinthians, the Epidaurians, the Phliasians, the Troezenians, and the Hermionians. These were the ones who came to help, exceedingly fearful for Greece in her danger; but the rest of the Peloponnesians cared nothing for it, though the Olympic and Carneian festivals had already passed. The Peloponnese is inhabited by
seven peoples. Of these, two are indigenous and are settled in the same place now as in ancient times — the Arcadians and the Cynurians. One people, the Achaean, has not left the Peloponnese, but has left its own territory and now dwells in land not its own. The remaining four of the seven peoples are immigrants: the Dorians, the Aetolians, the Dryopians, and
the Lemnians. Of the Dorians there are many notable cities; of the Aetolians, Elis alone; of the Dryopians, Hermion and Asine near Cardamyle in Laconia; of the Lemnians, all the Paroreatae. The Cynurians, being indigenous, seem to be the only Ionians, but they have been thoroughly Dorianized, both by the rule of the Argives and by time, being the people of Orneae and their neighbors. Of these seven peoples, then,
the remaining cities, apart from those I have listed, sat out the war; and if I may speak freely, by sitting out they were siding with the Medes. So those at the Isthmus were engaged in this labor, as men running, so to speak, a race for everything, and having no hope of distinguishing themselves with their ships; but those at Salamis, hearing of this, nonetheless felt fear — not so much fear for themselves
as for the Peloponnese. For a time each man stood beside another and spoke in low voices, marveling at Eurybiades' poor judgment; but at last it broke out into the open. A meeting was held, and much was said on the same points — some arguing that they ought to sail away to the Peloponnese and risk their lives for that land, rather than remain and fight for a country already taken by the spear, while the Athenians,
the Aeginetans, and the Megarians pressed for staying put and defending the position. Themistocles, seeing himself outvoted by the Peloponnesians, quietly slipped away from the council, and once outside sent a man by boat to the Persian camp, telling him exactly what to say. This man was named Sicinnus; he served as a household slave and tutor to Themistocles' children, whom Themistocles afterward,
once the situation had settled, had enrolled as a citizen of Thespiae when the Thespians were taking in new citizens, and made rich with money besides. This man, arriving by boat, told the barbarian commanders: "The Athenian general has sent me in secret, without the other Greeks' knowledge (for he happens to favor the king's cause and hopes your side prevails over the Greeks), to let you know that the Greeks, gripped by fear, are plotting to flee,
"And now it offers you the finest of all opportunities, if only you do not let them slip away. For they do not agree with one another, nor will they stand against you—rather you will see them fighting each other at sea, those on your side against those who are not." Having told them this, he departed. The Persians, once the report seemed trustworthy, first put ashore many of their men on the islet called Psyttaleia, which lies between
Salamis and the mainland. Second, when it was the middle of the night, they moved their western wing forward, encircling toward Salamis, and those stationed around Ceos and Cynosura also moved forward, holding the whole strait with their ships as far as Munychia. They advanced their ships for this reason: so that the
Greeks might have no chance to escape, but might be trapped at Salamis and pay the penalty for the fighting at Artemisium. They put Persian troops ashore on the islet called Psyttaleia for this reason: since, once the sea battle began, it was there above all that the men and wrecks would be carried ashore (for the island lay right in the path of the coming battle), so that they might
save some and destroy others. They did this in silence, so that their enemies would not learn of it. So through that night, without any sleep, they made their preparations. As for oracles, I am not in a position to argue that they are untrue, since I do not wish to try to discredit words spoken so plainly, when I look at matters of this kind. But when they bridge with ships the sacred shore of golden-sworded Artemis, and sea-girt Cynosura, in mad hope,
having sacked shining Athens, holy Justice will quench mighty Excess, the son of Hybris, terribly raging, thinking he will devour everything. For bronze will clash with bronze, and Ares will redden the sea with blood. Then wide-seeing Zeus and lady Victory will bring the day of freedom to Greece. Regarding oracles that speak so plainly as this, spoken by Bacis, I dare not myself dispute them, nor do I accept such disputes from others.
Among the commanders at Salamis there was a good deal of back-and-forth argument; they did not yet realize that the barbarians had them surrounded with their ships, and assumed the enemy still held the positions seen by day. While the commanders were still disputing, Aristides son of Lysimachus crossed over from Aegina — an Athenian, though one the people had ostracized. Judging by what I have learned of his character,
to have been the best and most just man in Athens. This man, standing at the entrance to the council, called out Themistocles—though he was no friend of his, but rather his greatest enemy. But because of the magnitude of the present troubles he set that aside and called him out, wishing to confer with him; for he had already heard that those from the Peloponnese were eager to bring the ships back to the Isthmus. When Themistocles came out to him, Aristides said
the following: "We ought to quarrel with each other both at other times and especially now, over which of us will do more good for our country. But I tell you it makes no difference whether much or little is said about the Peloponnesians sailing away from here. For I tell you as an eyewitness that now, even if the Corinthians and Eurybiades himself
wished it, they would not be able to sail out; for we are surrounded on all sides by the enemy. Go in and tell them this." Themistocles answered him thus: "You urge something very useful, and you bring good news; for what I wished to happen, you have come having seen with your own eyes. Know that what the Medes are doing is my own doing; for since the Greeks were not willing to enter battle of their own accord,
it was necessary to force them into it against their will. But since you have come bringing good news, announce it to them yourself. For if I say it, I will seem to be inventing it, and I will not persuade them that the barbarians are not doing this. So go and tell them yourself how things stand. And once you have told them, if they believe you, that will be for the best; but if it does not seem credible to them, it will make no difference to us:
for they will no longer have any way to escape, if we are indeed surrounded on every side, as you say." At this Aristides stepped forward and spoke, saying he had come from Aegina and had barely managed to slip past the blockading ships unseen; for the whole Greek encampment was ringed by Xerxes' ships; and he urged them to ready themselves for defense. Having said this he withdrew, and once again a dispute broke out among them
of words; for most of the generals did not believe what had been reported. While they still disbelieved it, a trireme of Tenian men arrived as deserters, commanded by a man named Panaetius son of Sosimenes, and this ship brought the whole truth. Because of this deed the Tenians' name was engraved on the Delphic tripod, among the peoples credited with destroying the barbarian. With this ship that
deserted to Salamis, and with the one from Lemnos that had deserted earlier at Artemisium, the Greek fleet reached its full strength of three hundred eighty vessels; until then it had fallen two ships short of that figure. When the words of the Tenians seemed trustworthy to the Greeks, they prepared themselves to fight at sea. Dawn was breaking, and they held an assembly of the marines, and
Themistocles spoke best of all, his words all setting the better against the worse, whatever occurs in human nature and condition. Having urged them to choose the better of these, and having concluded his speech, he ordered them to board the ships. And so they began boarding, and the trireme from Aegina arrived, the one that had gone to fetch the sons of Aeacus. Then
the Greeks put out to sea with all their ships, and as they put out the barbarians at once fell upon them. The rest of the Greeks began backing water and running their ships aground, but Ameinias of Pallene, an Athenian man, put out and rammed a ship; and when his ship became entangled and they were unable to break free, then the others came to help Ameinias and joined the fight. This is how the Athenians say the sea battle
began, but the Aeginetans say it was the ship that had gone to Aegina to fetch the sons of Aeacus that began it. It is also said that a phantom of a woman appeared to them, and appearing, urged them on so that the whole Greek army heard it, first reproaching them thus: "Men, how long will you still be backing water?" Facing the Athenians were stationed the Phoenicians (for these held the
wing toward Eleusis and the west), and facing the Lacedaemonians were the Ionians; these held the wing toward the east and the Piraeus. A few of them, however, deliberately fought badly in accordance with Themistocles' instructions, but most did not. I could list the names of many trireme commanders who captured Greek ships, but I will make use of none of them except Theomestor son of Androdamas and Phylacus
son of Histiaeus, both Samians. I mention these two alone for this reason: because Theomestor, on account of this deed, was made tyrant of Samos by the Persians who established him, while Phylacus was recorded as one of the king's benefactors and was given much land. The king's benefactors are called orosangae in Persian. So it stood with these men; but the mass of the ships at Salamis was being destroyed, some
being destroyed some by the Athenians, some by the Aeginetans. For since the Greeks fought in good order and formation, while the barbarians were no longer arranged in ranks and did nothing with any sense, it was bound to turn out for them as in fact it did. And yet on that day they were, and proved themselves, far better than they had been off Euboea, every man eager and
fearing Xerxes, each one imagining that he himself was being watched by the king. As regards the others I cannot say precisely how each of the barbarians or the Greeks fought, but with Artemisia this is what happened, and it won her still greater esteem with the king. When the king's forces had fallen into great confusion, at that moment Artemisia's ship
was being pursued by an Athenian ship. Unable to escape, since other friendly ships were in front of her, and her own ship happened to be nearest of all to the enemy, she decided to do something, and it worked out well for her in doing it. Being pursued by the Athenian ship, she drove forward and rammed a friendly ship, one of the Calyndians, with the king of the Calyndians himself, Damasithymus, aboard. Whether indeed
some quarrel had arisen between her and him earlier while they were still around the Hellespont, I cannot say, nor whether she did this deliberately or whether the Calyndian ship simply happened by chance to fall in her path. But when she rammed and sank it, her good fortune brought her a double benefit. For the trierarch commanding the Athenian ship, spotting her ram
barbarian men, supposed that Artemisia's ship was either a Greek one, or had deserted from the barbarians and was fighting on their side, and so he turned away and went after other ships. This was one thing that turned out well for her — to escape and not be destroyed — and it also happened that by doing this harm she won the very greatest esteem with Xerxes. It is said that the king was watching and noticed her ship making the ram, and
one of those present said, "Master, do you see how well Artemisia is fighting, and how she has sunk a ship of the enemy?" And he asked whether the deed was truly Artemisia's, and they said yes, for they clearly recognized the ensign of her ship; the ship destroyed they supposed to be an enemy one. For, as has been said, everything else too worked out fortunately for her, and it helped that none of the men from the
Calyndian ship survived to accuse her. And Xerxes is said to have replied to what was told him, "My men have turned into women, while my women have become men." This is what they say Xerxes said. In this struggle there died the commander Ariabignes, son of Darius and brother of Xerxes, and many other well-known men of the Persians and Medes and
of the other allies died as well, though only a few Greeks; for the Greeks could swim, and those who lost their ships, unless killed in hand-to-hand fighting, swam over to Salamis. But most of the barbarians perished in the sea, not knowing how to swim. When the ships in front turned to flight, that is when most of them were destroyed; for those stationed behind, in
trying to press forward past the ships ahead so that they too might show the king some feat, collided with their own fleeing ships. And this too happened in that confusion. Some Phoenicians, whose ships had been destroyed, went before the king and laid blame on the Ionians, claiming that it was through them that the ships had been lost, as traitors. But it turned out that the Ionian commanders did not
perish, and the Phoenicians who made the accusation received the following reward instead. While they were still saying this, a Samothracian ship rammed an Athenian ship; the Athenian ship was sinking, but an Aeginetan ship bearing down sank the Samothracian ship in turn. But since the Samothracians were javelin-throwers, they struck down the marines from the ship that had sunk theirs, and boarded and took possession of it. This deed saved the Ionians,
for when Xerxes saw them accomplish this great feat, he turned on the Phoenicians, being extremely angry and blaming everyone, and ordered their heads cut off, so that men who had themselves proved cowards should not slander their betters. For whenever Xerxes saw any of his own men accomplish some feat in the battle, sitting as he was beneath the mountain opposite Salamis called
Aegaleos, he would ask who had done it, and his scribes would write down the trierarch's name, his father's name, and his city. Something also contributed to this outcome — the presence of a Persian named Ariaramnes, a friend, who was there for this Phoenician misfortune. So they turned their attention to the Phoenicians. Meanwhile the barbarians who had turned to flight and were sailing out toward Phalerum, the Aeginetans, lying in wait in the strait, performed deeds worthy of
note. For the Athenians in the confusion were destroying both the ships that stood against them and those that fled, while the Aeginetans dealt with those sailing out; and whenever some ships escaped the Athenians, fleeing they fell in among the Aeginetans. There the ship of Themistocles, in pursuit, and that of Polycritus son of Crius, an Aeginetan, which had rammed a Sidonian ship — the very one that had captured the
Aeginetan ship that had been on watch at Skiathos, on which Pytheas son of Ischenous was sailing, the man whom the Persians, admiring his courage, kept aboard their ship even after he had been cut to pieces — these two came together; while carrying him along with the Persians the Sidonian ship was captured, so that Pytheas was in this way brought safely to Aegina. When Polycritus saw the Athenian ship, he recognized the emblem of the flagship, and
he called out to Themistocles and mocked him, taunting him about the Aeginetans' supposed medizing. This is what Polycritus, having rammed the ship, hurled at Themistocles. As for the barbarians whose ships survived, they fled and arrived at Phalerum under the protection of the land army. In this sea battle the Aeginetans were reckoned the best of the Greeks, and after them the Athenians; among individual men, Polycritus the Aeginetan, and the Athenians
Eumenes of Anagyrus and Aminias of Pallene, who also pursued Artemisia. Had he realized that it was Artemisia sailing aboard that ship, he would not have stopped before either capturing her or being captured himself; for the Athenian trierarchs had been given orders to that effect, and besides there was a prize of ten thousand drachmas set for whoever should capture her while still living, so shocking did they find the idea of a woman campaigning against
Athens. As already noted, that ship got away safely; and the others too, whose ships had survived, were at Phalerum. As for Adeimantus, the Corinthian commander, the Athenians say that at the very outset, as the ships were closing, he was so terrified and struck with fear that he raised his sails and fled, and that the Corinthians, seeing their flagship fleeing, likewise sailed off. But when
they came in their flight opposite the sanctuary of Athena Skiras on Salamis, they met, by divine providence, a light boat; no sender for it could be identified, nor did it draw near the Corinthians with any knowledge of what had happened with the fleet. From this they infer that the matter was divine. For when the boat drew near the ships, those aboard it said this: "Adeimantus, you have turned your ships around and set out in
flight, betraying the Greeks; but they are in fact winning, gaining the victory over their enemies just as they had prayed for." When they said this, Adeimantus did not believe them, so they said again that they themselves were willing to be taken as hostages and put to death if the Greeks did not appear to be winning. So then he turned his ship around, and he and the others arrived at the camp only after the deed had already been accomplished.
Such is the account the Athenians give concerning these men, though the Corinthians themselves do not agree with it, but consider themselves to have been among the foremost in the sea battle; and the rest of Greece bears them witness too. Aristides son of Lysimachus, an Athenian, whom I mentioned a little earlier as a most excellent man, did the following in this confusion that arose around Salamis:
taking many of the hoplites who were arrayed along the Salaminian coastline, men of Athenian stock, he led them across and landed them on the island of Psyttaleia, and they slaughtered all the Persians who were on that little island. When the sea battle had broken up, the Greeks drew to Salamis whatever of the wrecks happened still to be there, and were ready for another sea battle,
expecting that the king would still make use of the ships that survived. But many of the wrecks the west wind caught up and carried along the coast of Attica to the shore called Colias; so that the whole of the oracle concerning this sea battle spoken by Bacis and Musaeus was fulfilled, and in particular, regarding the wrecks carried ashore there, what had been said many years before this
in an oracle to Lysistratus, an Athenian oracle-monger, which had escaped the notice of all the Greeks: "the women of Colias will roast with oars." This was destined to happen after the king had marched away. When Xerxes learned of the disaster that had occurred, fearing that some one of the Ionians might suggest to the Greeks, or that they themselves might think of it, to sail toward the Hellespont so as to destroy the bridges, and that he, cut off in Europe, might be in danger of perishing, he began planning
flight. But wishing not to make this evident either to the Greeks or to his own men, he attempted to build a causeway across to Salamis, and lashed together Phoenician merchant vessels to serve both as a bridge and as a wall, and made preparations for war as though he intended to fight another sea battle. All the others who saw him doing this were fully persuaded that he was fully resolved to remain and fight the war through; but Mardonius
was not at all deceived by any of this, since he was most experienced in the king's way of thinking. While Xerxes was doing these things, he also sent a messenger to Persia to announce the disaster that had befallen them. Of these messengers there is nothing among mortal things that arrives faster; this is how it has been devised by the Persians. For they say that for as many days as the whole journey takes, that many horses and
And men are stationed at intervals, one for each day's journey, each with a horse assigned to him. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor night keeps them from completing their appointed course with all speed. The first rider hands off his instructions to the next, who in turn passes them along to the one after him, and from there the message runs on through one man after another,
just as in the torch-race that the Greeks perform for Hephaestus. The Persians call this relay of horses the angareion. Now the first message that arrived at Susa, that Xerxes held Athens, delighted those Persians left behind so much that they strewed all the roads with myrtle and burned incense and were themselves engaged in sacrifices and
festivities. But the second message that came upon them threw them into such confusion that they all tore their tunics and gave themselves over to endless shouting and wailing, laying the blame on Mardonius. It was not so much grief over the ships that made the Persians act this way as fear for Xerxes himself. And this went on among the Persians the whole time in between, until Xerxes
himself arrived and put a stop to it. Mardonius, seeing that Xerxes took the sea-battle very hard, and suspecting that he was planning flight from Athens, reflected to himself that he would pay the penalty for having persuaded the king to march against Greece, and that facing the risk of conquering Greece, or else dying honorably himself, having been raised up for great things, was preferable; yet
his judgment leaned more toward subduing Greece. So having reckoned this, he brought forward the following proposal. "Master, do not grieve, and do not take this event that has happened as any great disaster. For it is not wood that decides everything for us, but men and horses. None of these men who now think they have accomplished everything will disembark from
their ships to try to oppose you, nor will anyone come out from this mainland to do so. Those who did oppose us have paid the penalty. Now if it seems good, let us attempt the Peloponnese at once; and if it seems good to wait, that too can be arranged. Do not be discouraged, for there is no escape for the Greeks from having to answer, sooner or later, for what they have done, both now and before, and become your slaves. So above all
do this. But if you have in fact decided to withdraw and lead the army away yourself, I have another plan besides. Do not, O king, let the Persians become an object of ridicule to the Greeks, for in the Persians' case nothing has been damaged in this affair, nor can you say where we proved cowardly. If the Phoenicians and Egyptians and Cypriots and Cilicians proved cowardly, that
disaster has nothing to do with the Persians. Since then it is not the Persians who are at fault, listen to me: if you have resolved not to remain, march back to your own land, taking the greater part of the army with you, but I must furnish you with Greece enslaved, choosing out three hundred thousand of the army for myself." When Xerxes heard this he rejoiced, as one does out of troubles, and was
pleased, and after deliberating with Mardonius he said he would decide which of the two courses he would take. As he was deliberating with the invited Persians, it occurred to him to summon Artemisia to the council as well, since earlier she alone had seemed to know what should be done. When Artemisia arrived, having dismissed the others, both the Persian counselors and the bodyguards, Xerxes said this. "Mardonius urges me to remain here
and attempt the Peloponnese, telling me that the Persian forces and the infantry bear no blame at all for what happened, but would be glad to give proof of it. He therefore urges me either to do this, or else he himself wishes to choose out three hundred thousand of the army and furnish me with Greece enslaved, while he urges me to march off along with what remains of the army toward my own homeland. You then,
advise me — for you also advised me well about the sea-battle that took place, urging me not to bring it about — now too advise me which course I should take to succeed by good counsel." So he asked her advice, and she said this. "King, it is difficult for one giving advice to hit upon the best course when asked, but given the present circumstances, it seems to me that you yourself should march back, while Mardonius, if he wishes
and undertakes to do as he says, should be left behind with those he wishes. For if he subdues what he claims he wishes, and things go for him as he plans, the achievement, master, becomes yours, since your slaves accomplished it. But if the opposite of Mardonius's design comes about, it will be no great disaster as long as you yourself survive, and those affairs
concerning your own house survive too. For as long as you yourself survive and your house survives, the Greeks will have to run many races, many times, for their own survival. But if something happens to Mardonius, it is of no account, nor will the Greeks, in winning, have won anything, having destroyed only your slave; while you, having achieved the purpose for which you made this expedition, by burning Athens, will march away." Xerxes was delighted with this advice,
for she happened to say exactly what he himself was thinking. Indeed, I think that even if all men and women together had advised him to remain, he would not have remained, so thoroughly had he been frightened. Having praised Artemisia, he sent her off to convey his children to Ephesus, for some illegitimate children of his were accompanying him. And with the children he sent as guardian Hermotimus, a Pedasian by birth, ranked
not second among the eunuchs in the king's favor. The Pedasians live above Halicarnassus, and among these Pedasians the following thing is said to occur: whenever something difficult is going to happen within a set time to all the people dwelling around this city, then the priestess of Athena there grows a great beard. This has already happened to them twice. It was from among these
Pedasians that Hermotimus came, the man who, of all we know, exacted the greatest vengeance for a wrong done to him. He had been captured by enemies and put up for sale, and was bought by a man of Chios named Panionius, who made his living from the most unholy of trades: whenever he acquired boys of outstanding looks, he would castrate them and take them to sell at Sardis and Ephesus for large sums, since among the barbarians
eunuchs are valued more highly than others, for the sake of their complete trustworthiness. Panionius castrated many others besides, making his living from this practice, and this man among them. And since Hermotimus did not suffer misfortune in everything, he came from Sardis to the king bearing gifts along with the rest, and as the years passed he was honored above all the eunuchs by Xerxes. When the Persian
army was setting out against Athens while the king was at Sardis, Hermotimus, having gone down for some reason into the land the Chians occupy, known by the name Atarneus, found Panionius there. Recognizing him, he greeted him warmly and spoke many friendly words, telling him first of all the good things he himself owed to him, and second
promising him in return all the good things that would follow if he brought his household and came to live there, so that Panionius, gladly welcoming these words, brought his children and his wife. And when he had gotten his whole household in his power, Hermotimus said this: "O man who of all men has gained his living from the most unholy deeds, what evil did I, or any of
my ancestors, ever do to you or to any of yours, that you made me, instead of a man, into nothing? Did you think the gods would fail to notice what you were contriving then? They, following the just law, have brought you, for the unholy deeds you did, into my hands, so that you cannot complain of the justice that is now going to be done to you by me." Having reproached him with this, when
his children were brought before his eyes, Panionius was forced to cut off the genitals of his own four sons, and being forced, he did it; and when he had done this, his sons, being forced in turn, cut his off. So it was that vengeance and Hermotimus came round upon Panionius in this way. Xerxes, after entrusting his children to Artemisia to take away to Ephesus, called Mardonius and ordered him to choose out from the army whatever
men he wished, and to try to make his deeds match his words. For that day matters went thus far, and during the night, on the king's order, the generals led the ships back from Phalerum to the Hellespont as quickly as each could manage, so as to guard the bridges for the king's crossing. When the barbarians, sailing near Zoster, saw thin headlands
jutting out from this mainland, they thought they were ships and fled for a long distance; but in time, learning that they were not ships but headlands, they gathered together and continued on their way. When day came, the Greeks, seeing the land army remaining in place, expected the ships to be near Phalerum as well, and thought they would fight a sea-battle, and made ready to defend themselves. But when they learned that the ships
had gone, immediately after this they decided to pursue. Now they did not catch sight of Xerxes' naval force in their pursuit as far as Andros, and having arrived at Andros they took counsel. Themistocles then put forward the view that they should turn among the islands, and having pursued the ships, sail straight for the Hellespont to break the bridges; but Eurybiades proposed the opposite view, saying that if they broke
the bridges, this above all things would do Greece the greatest harm. For if the Persian were forced to remain in Europe, he would try not to stay quiet, since if he stayed quiet, no progress in his affairs would be possible for him nor would any way home appear, and his army would perish of famine; but if he made the attempt and set his hand to the work
Next, everything in Europe would fall to them, city by city and people by people, whether by conquest or by prior surrender; and they would have as food, forever, the annual produce of the Greeks. But since he thought the Persian, defeated in the sea battle, would not remain in Europe, he said they should let him flee, until in his flight he came
to his own country: from that point on, he urged, the struggle should be waged over his territory. The other Peloponnesian generals held to this same opinion. But when Themistocles realized he would not persuade the majority to sail to the Hellespont, he turned to the Athenians instead (for they, being most vexed at the enemy's escape, were eager to sail to the Hellespont
and to attempt it even on their own, if the others were unwilling), and he said the following to them: "I myself have been present at many such events, and have heard of many more like them: men driven to necessity, once defeated, fighting back and recovering from their former misfortune. But as for us—since we have found a windfall for ourselves and for Greece, having driven back so vast a swarm of men—we should not chase after men who are fleeing."
For it is not we who accomplished this, but the gods and heroes, who begrudged that one man should be king of both Asia and Europe, a man both unholy and reckless: who made no distinction between sacred things and private, burning and toppling the statues of the gods; who even scourged the sea and cast fetters into it. But since things stand well
for us as they are now, let us for the present remain in Greece; each of us should tend to himself and to his household, rebuild his house, and see carefully to the sowing of his fields, once he has driven the barbarian completely away; and with the coming of spring let us sail down to the Hellespont and Ionia." He said this intending to lay up credit with the Persian, so that if any misfortune should befall him at the hands of
the Athenians, he would have a way of escape—and indeed that is exactly what happened. By saying these things Themistocles was practicing deception, but the Athenians believed him; for since he had already before this been reputed wise and had shown himself to be truly wise and prudent in counsel, they were altogether ready to trust what he said. When they had been won over by him, immediately after this Themistocles sent men in a boat, men whom he trusted to keep silent
even under every kind of torture, to tell the king what he himself had instructed them to say. Among them was Sicinnus his household servant once again. When they arrived off the coast of Attica, the others remained with the boat while Sicinnus went up to Xerxes and said the following: "Themistocles son of Neocles, general of the Athenians and the best and wisest man of all the allies, has sent me to tell you that Themistocles the
Athenian, wishing to do you a service, held back the Greeks when they wanted to pursue your ships and to break up the bridges in the Hellespont. Now you may withdraw at your leisure." Having delivered this message, they sailed back. The Greeks, since they had decided against chasing the barbarians' ships any farther and against sailing toward the Hellespont to destroy the crossing there, laid siege around Andros,
wishing to seize it. Among the islanders, the Andrians were first asked by Themistocles for money and refused it; and when Themistocles put forward this argument—that the Athenians had come with two great gods on their side, Persuasion and Necessity, and that therefore they were certainly obliged to give money—they answered in reply, saying that it was quite reasonable that Athens should be great and prosperous, since she was blessed with useful gods,
but that the Andrians themselves were exceedingly short of land, and that two useless gods never left their island but always clung fondly to it: Poverty and Helplessness; and that the Andrians, being in the grip of these gods, would give no money—for never could the power of Athens be stronger than their own powerlessness. Having answered in this way and having refused to give
the money, they were besieged. Themistocles, for he did not stop pursuing his own advantage, sent threatening messages to the other islands as well, demanding money through the same messengers he had used with the king, saying that if they did not give what was asked, he would bring up the army of the Greeks and destroy them by siege. By saying this he gathered great sums from the people of Carystus and Paros, who, on learning
that Andros was under siege because it had medized, and that Themistocles was held in the highest esteem among the generals, sent money out of fear. Whether any other islanders also gave, I cannot say, though I think that some others did give as well, and not only these. Yet the Carystians suffered no lesser misfortune on this account; the Parians, however, by appeasing Themistocles with money,
escaped the army altogether. Themistocles, then, operating from Andros, acquired money from the islanders in secret from the other generals. Meanwhile Xerxes and his men, after waiting a few days following the sea battle, marched off toward Boeotia by the same road. For Mardonius had decided that he would see the king off partway and, since it was now too late in the season for warfare, that it was better to winter in Thessaly, and
then, with the coming of spring, to make an attempt on the Peloponnese. When they arrived in Thessaly, Mardonius there picked out first of all the Persians, all those called the Immortals, except for Hydarnes their commander (for he said he would not leave the king's side), and after them, from the rest of the Persians, the breastplate-wearers and the thousand horsemen, and the Medes and Sacae and Bactrians and
Indians, both infantry and the rest of the cavalry. These whole peoples he took entire, but from the other allies he picked out only a few at a time, choosing men of fine appearance or those he knew had done something useful. But the one people he chose in the greatest number was the Persians, men who wore torques and bracelets, and after them the Medes; these were not fewer in number
than the Persians, but inferior in strength. So that altogether they numbered three hundred thousand, cavalry included. During this time, while Mardonius was selecting his army and Xerxes was still around Thessaly, an oracle had come from Delphi to the Lacedaemonians, telling them to demand satisfaction from Xerxes for the killing of Leonidas and to accept whatever he offered. So the Spartans sent a herald with all speed, who, when he caught up
with the army, still entirely in Thessaly, came before Xerxes and addressed him thus: "King of the Medes, the Lacedaemonians and the descendants of Heracles from Sparta demand from you satisfaction for a killing, because you killed their king while he was defending Greece." Xerxes laughed and, after a long pause, since Mardonius happened to be standing beside him, pointed to him and said, "Well then, Mardonius here
will give them the satisfaction that is fitting for them." The herald, taking this answer, departed. Xerxes, leaving Mardonius behind in Thessaly, himself marched in haste to the Hellespont, and reached the crossing point in forty-five days, bringing back scarcely any part of his army, so to speak. Wherever they went on their march and among whatever peoples they passed,
they seized and ate the crops of those people; but if they found no crops at all, they gathered the grass growing up from the ground and stripped the bark from trees and picked their leaves and ate them, whether from cultivated or wild trees alike, and left nothing behind: this they did out of hunger. Plague and dysentery also seized the army along the road and
destroyed it. Those among them who fell sick he left behind, ordering the cities where he happened to be marching at the time to care for and feed them—some in Thessaly, some in Siris in Paeonia, and some in Macedonia. It was there that he had left the sacred chariot of Zeus when he marched against Greece, and on his way back he did not recover it, for the Paeonians had handed it over to the Thracians, and later, when Xerxes demanded it back, claimed
that it had been seized while grazing by the Thracians living further up near the sources of the Strymon. There too the king of the Bisaltae and of the Crestonian land, a Thracian, did a monstrous thing: he himself said he would never willingly be enslaved to Xerxes, and went off up into Mount Rhodope, and forbade his sons to campaign against Greece. But they,
paying no heed—or perhaps simply feeling a desire to watch the war—campaigned along with the Persian; and when all six of them returned unharmed, their father gouged out their eyes for this reason. This was the reward they received. As for the Persians, marching on from Thrace, they arrived at the crossing point, and hastened to cross the Hellespont in their ships
to Abydos: for they no longer found the bridges of boats stretched across, but broken apart by a storm. There, while held up, they got a larger ration of food than they had had on the march, and eating without any restraint and changing waters, many of the surviving army died. The rest, together with Xerxes, arrived at Sardis. There is also another story told, that when Xerxes
marching away from Athens reached Eion on the Strymon, from there he no longer traveled by land, but put Hydarnes in charge of leading the army back to the Hellespont, and boarded a Phoenician ship himself to be carried to Asia. As he sailed, a great and stormy wind called the Strymonian is said to have caught him. And since the storm grew worse as the ship was overloaded, so that on the deck
there were many Persians of those traveling with Xerxes, the king, falling into terror, called out to the helmsman and asked whether there was any way of safety for them; and the man said, "Master, there is none, unless some relief is made from these many passengers." And Xerxes, on hearing this, is said to have replied, "Men of Persia, now let one of you show his care for the king: for it is in your hands
"seems to be my only safety." He said this, and they, doing obeisance, leapt into the sea, and the ship, thus lightened, made it safely across to Asia. As soon as Xerxes had disembarked on land, he did the following: because the man had saved the king's life, he gave the helmsman a golden crown, but because he had destroyed many Persians, he cut off his head.
This is another story told about Xerxes' homeward journey, but it seems to me in no way credible, neither in general nor in this particular about the fate of the Persians. For if these words had really been spoken by the helmsman to Xerxes, I have not found one opinion in ten thousand that would disagree that the king would have done the following instead: brought down onto the hold those on the deck, since they were Persians
and indeed the foremost of the Persians, while the rowers were Phoenicians, so that he would have thrown into the sea an equal number of the Phoenicians. But in truth, as noted earlier, he returned to Asia by the land route, marching with the rest of his army. This too is strong evidence: it is clear that Xerxes, on his return journey, arrived at Abdera and made a pact of friendship
with them, and gave them gifts, a golden sword and a tiara worked with gold thread. And as the Abderites themselves say — though what they say seems to me in no way credible — he first loosened his belt in flight from Athens on his way back, once he felt himself safe. Now Abdera lies nearer to the Hellespont than to the Strymon and Eion, from which they say he boarded the ship.
The Greeks, when they were unable to take Andros, turned instead to Carystus, and having ravaged its territory, departed for Salamis. First of all, then, they set aside first-fruits for the gods, including three Phoenician triremes, one to be dedicated at the Isthmus, which was still there in my time, one at Sunium, and one to Ajax
himself at Salamis. After this they divided up the spoil and sent the first-fruits to Delphi, from which a statue was made holding in its hand the ornament of a ship's prow, being twelve cubits in size; it stands where the golden statue of Alexander the Macedonian stands. Having sent the first-fruits to Delphi, the Greeks asked the god jointly whether he had received the first-fruits in full and to his satisfaction.
He said that he had received them in full from the other Greeks, but not from the Aeginetans, and he demanded from them the prize for valor for the sea battle at Salamis. The Aeginetans, on learning this, dedicated golden stars, which stand on a bronze mast, three of them, at the corner, very near the mixing bowl of Croesus. After the division of the spoil, the Greeks sailed to the Isthmus
to award the prize for valor to the man judged most worthy among the Greeks throughout this war. When the generals arrived, they distributed the votes at the altar of Poseidon, judging the first and second out of all, and there each of them cast a vote for himself, each thinking himself to have been the best, but for second place the majority converged in judging Themistocles. So the others each got one vote apiece,
but Themistocles far outstripped the rest for second place. Because the Greeks were unwilling to decide the matter out of envy, but each sailed off to his own home without a verdict, nevertheless Themistocles was proclaimed and reputed to be by far the wisest man among the Greeks throughout the whole of Greece. But because, though victorious, he was not honored by those who had fought at Salamis, he went soon after this to Lacedaemon, wanting to be honored; and
the Lacedaemonians received him well and honored him greatly. As prizes for valor they gave to Eurybiades a crown of olive, and to Themistocles too, for his wisdom and skill, a crown of olive; and they gave him the finest chariot in Sparta as a gift. Having praised him much, three hundred chosen Spartans, those who are called the Knights, escorted him on his departure as far as the borders of Tegea. He alone of all men we
know of the Spartans ever escorted. When he arrived from Lacedaemon at Athens, there Timodemus of Aphidnae, one of the enemies of Themistocles but otherwise not among the distinguished men, maddened by envy, reviled Themistocles, bringing up his journey to Lacedaemon, saying that he had received the honors from the Lacedaemonians on account of Athens, not on account of himself. And he, when Timodemus
would not stop saying this, said, "It is like this: I would not have been honored so by the Spartans had I been a Belbinite, nor would you, my good man, had you been an Athenian." So much, then, for that. Artabazus son of Pharnaces, a man of repute among the Persians even before, and become still more so after the events at Plataea, having six myriads of troops that Mardonius
had picked out, was accompanying the king on his journey as far as the strait. But when the king was in Asia, and Artabazus on his way back was passing through Pallene — since Mardonius was wintering around Thessaly and Macedonia and was in no hurry for him to come to the rest of the army — he did not think it right, having come upon the Potidaeans in revolt, not to enslave them. For the Potidaeans, once the king had passed by
and the Persian fleet had fled away from Salamis, had openly revolted from the barbarians; and so too had the others who held Pallene. Thereupon Artabazus laid siege to Potidaea. Suspecting also that the Olynthians were revolting from the king, he laid siege to that city as well; it was held by the Bottiaeans, who had been driven out from the Thermaic Gulf by the Macedonians. When
he had taken it by siege, he led the people out to a lake and slaughtered them, and handed over the city to Critobulus of Torone and to the Chalcidian people to govern, and thus the Chalcidians got possession of Olynthus. Having destroyed this city, Artabazus applied himself intently to Potidaea; and as he pressed on eagerly, Timoxeinus, the general of the Scionaeans, agreed with him on a betrayal — in what manner it began at first I am not able to say (for it is not told),
but in the end it happened as follows: whenever Timoxeinus wished to send a letter to Artabazus, or Artabazus to Timoxeinus, they would wrap it around the notch of an arrow, and feathering it, shoot it to an agreed place. But Timoxeinus' betrayal of Potidaea was discovered: for Artabazus, shooting at the agreed spot, missed it and struck a man of Potidaea in the shoulder,
and a crowd ran around the man who had been struck, as tends to happen in war, and they immediately took the arrow, and when they learned of the letter, they carried it to the generals; the allied forces of the other Pallenians were also present. When the generals had read the letter and learned who was responsible for the betrayal, they decided not to expose Timoxeinus for his betrayal, for the sake of the city of Scione, so that the Scionaeans should not be considered
traitors for all time thereafter. He, then, was discovered in this way. But for Artabazus, when three months had passed in the siege, there occurred a great ebb of the sea, lasting a long time. The barbarians, seeing that a shoal had formed, passed over into Pallene. But when they had crossed two portions of the way, and three still remained, which they needed to cross to be safely inside
Pallene, a great tidal surge of the sea came upon them, bigger than any that had ever occurred before, as the local people say, though it happens often enough. Those of them who did not know how to swim perished, and those who did know how the Potidaeans finished off by sailing out against them in boats. The Potidaeans say that the cause of the surge and the flood tide and the disaster to the Persians was this: that against the temple of Poseidon
and the statue in the suburb these same Persians who were destroyed by the sea had committed sacrilege; and in saying this was the cause, they seem to me to speak well. Those who survived Artabazus led away to Mardonius in Thessaly. Such was the fortune of those who had escorted the king. As for the fleet of Xerxes, the survivors, when it reached Asia in flight from Salamis
and had ferried the king and the army across from the Chersonese to Abydos, wintered at Cyme. When spring began to shine early, they gathered quickly at Samos; some of the ships had wintered there too. Most of the Persians and Medes aboard were marines. As commanders there came to them Mardontes son of Bagaeus and Artayntes son of Artachaees; and sharing command with these, at Artayntes' own choosing, was his nephew
Ithamitres. Since they had been struck so hard, they did not advance further westward, nor did anyone force them to, but sitting at Samos they kept watch over Ionia so that it should not revolt, having three hundred ships including the Ionian ones. Nor did they expect the Greeks to come to Ionia at all, but thought it would be enough for them to guard their own, reckoning by the fact that the Greeks had not pursued them in their flight from Salamis but
had gladly gone off home. By sea, then, they were beaten in spirit, but on land they thought Mardonius would prevail by far. Being at Samos, they at once deliberated whether they could do their enemies any harm, and also listened out for which way Mardonius' affairs would turn. The coming of spring roused the Greeks, as did Mardonius' being in Thessaly.
The land army had not yet gathered, but the fleet arrived at Aegina, one hundred and ten ships in number. The general and admiral was Leutychides, son of Menares, son of Hegesilaus, son of Hippocratides, son of Leutychides, son of Anaxilaus, son of Archidamus, son of Anaxandrides, son of Theopompus, son of Nicander, son of Charilaus, son of Eunomus, son of Polydectes, son of Prytanis, son of Eurypon, son of Procles, son of Aristodemus, son of
Aristomachus, son of Cleodaeus, son of Hyllus—Heracles' own line—and belonging to the other royal house. All these, except for the first seven named after Leutychides, were the other kings of Sparta. Of the Athenians, Xanthippus son of Ariphron was general. When all the ships had gathered at Aegina, messengers from the Ionians arrived at the camp of the Greeks, who had also gone to Sparta
A little before this they had arrived asking the Lacedaemonians to free Ionia—among them Herodotus son of Basileides, who with his fellow conspirators had plotted the death of Strattis, tyrant of Chios, being seven in number. When their plot became known, one of those involved having betrayed the enterprise, the other six fled the island and made their way to Sparta, and
now again to Aegina, asking the Greeks to sail down to Ionia. The Greeks brought them only as far as Delos, with great reluctance, for anything beyond that seemed altogether dangerous to the Greeks, who had no experience of those regions and imagined everything full of enemy forces—they believed Samos to be as far off as the Pillars of Heracles. And it so happened that
the barbarians, out of fear, dared not sail down further west than Samos, while the Greeks, though the Chians pressed them, would not go further east than Delos. So fear guarded the space between them. The Greeks then sailed to Delos, while Mardonius wintered around Thessaly. From there he set out and sent to the oracles a man of European stock named Mys, instructing him
to go and consult every oracle he could test. What exactly he wished to learn from the oracles by giving these instructions I cannot say, for it is not recorded; but I myself suppose he sent concerning the present situation and nothing else. This Mys is reported to have gone to Lebadeia and, by paying a local man, persuaded him to go down to
Trophonius, and to have gone to Abae in Phocis to the oracle there; and indeed when he first came to Thebes he consulted Ismenian Apollo—for there, just as at Olympia, one may get an oracle from the sacrifices—and besides this he persuaded some foreigner, not a Theban, with money, to sleep in the shrine of Amphiaraus. No Theban is allowed to seek an oracle there for this reason:
Amphiaraus, through oracles, bade them choose whichever of two things they wanted—to have him as a seer or as an ally—and to give up the other. They chose to have him as an ally. For this reason no Theban is allowed to sleep there seeking an oracle. But at that time, the Thebans report an extraordinary marvel took place: this European Mys, making his rounds of every oracle in turn, came also to
the precinct of Ptoan Apollo. This shrine is called the Ptoon and belongs to the Thebans; it lies above Lake Copais, very near the mountain by the city of Acraephia. When this man called Mys came to the shrine, three men chosen from the citizens by the community were following him, meant to record whatever oracle should be given, and suddenly the
prophet delivered the oracle in a foreign tongue. The Thebans who were following were astonished to hear a foreign language instead of Greek, and did not know what to do with the situation before them. But Mys the European snatched from their hands the tablet they were carrying, on which he wrote what the prophet said, saying that the oracle had been given in the Carian tongue; and having written it down, he departed to
Thessaly. Mardonius, having read whatever it was the oracles said, afterward sent as messenger to Athens Alexander son of Amyntas, a Macedonian, partly because the Persians were connected to him by marriage—for Bubares, a Persian, had married Gygaea, sister of Alexander and daughter of Amyntas, from whom was born to him Amyntas of Asia, who bore the name of his mother's father,
to whom the great city of Alabanda in Phrygia was given by the king to hold; and Mardonius sent him also because he learned that Alexander was proxenos and benefactor of the Athenians. For he thought this was the best way to win the Athenians over, having heard that they were a numerous and valiant people, and knowing that it was chiefly the Athenians who had brought about the disasters that had befallen the Persians at sea. If these joined him
he expected easily to gain control of the sea—as indeed would have happened—and on land he thought himself far superior, and so he reckoned that his cause would prevail over that of the Greeks. Perhaps too the oracles told him this, advising him to make the Athenian his ally; trusting these, he sent Alexander. Now the seventh ancestor of this Alexander was Perdiccas, who acquired the
tyranny over the Macedonians in the following manner. Three brothers of the descendants of Temenus fled from Argos to Illyria—Gauanes, Aeropus, and Perdiccas—and crossing over from Illyria into upper Macedonia they came to the city of Lebaea. There they served for wages under the king, one tending horses, another cattle, and the youngest of them, Perdiccas, the small
livestock. Now the king's wife herself baked their food, for in ancient times the ruling houses of men, not only the common people, were poor in wealth. Whenever she baked, the bread of the boy Perdiccas, the hired servant, would come out double its own size. As this kept happening again and again, she told her husband; and he,
on hearing it, was struck at once by the thought that it was a portent signifying something great. So he summoned the servants and told them to leave his land. They said it was only fair that they should receive their wages before departing. When the king heard talk of wages—for as it happened the sun was shining into the house through the smoke-hole—he said, struck with madness,
"I give you the wage you deserve—this," pointing to the sun. Now Gauanes and Aeropus, the elder brothers, stood dumbfounded on hearing this; but the boy, who happened to be holding a knife, said, "We accept, O king, what you give," and with the knife he traced a circle on the floor of the house around the sun, and having traced it, he scooped into the fold of his garment three handfuls of
sunlight, and then departed, he and his companions. So they went away; but one of the king's counselors told him what the boy had done, and how it was with understanding that the youngest of them had taken what was given. The king, hearing this and enraged, sent horsemen after them to kill them. But there is a river in that country,
to which the descendants from Argos of these men sacrifice as their savior: this river, once the sons of Temenus had crossed it, rose so greatly that the horsemen were unable to cross. The brothers, coming into another part of Macedonia, settled near the so-called Gardens of Midas son of Gordias, where roses grow of their own accord, each having sixty petals and surpassing all others
in fragrance. In these very gardens, as the Macedonians say, Silenus was caught. Above the gardens lies a mountain called Bermion, impassable because of the cold. Setting out from there once they held this region, they went on to subdue the rest of Macedonia as well. From this Perdiccas, then, Alexander was descended as follows: Alexander was son of Amyntas, Amyntas of Alcetas, and Alcetas' father was
Aeropus, his father was Philip, Philip's father was Argaeus, and his father was Perdiccas, who acquired the rule. This is what Alexander said. The Lacedaemonians learned that Alexander had reached Athens on a mission for the barbarian, seeking to win the Athenians over to an agreement, and recalling the oracles that said they, along with the other Dorians, were fated to be driven from the Peloponnese through the combined action of the Medes and the Athenians, were greatly afraid that the Athenians might come to terms
with the Persian, and at once resolved to send envoys. And it so happened that both embassies arrived together, for the Athenians had deliberately delayed, knowing well that the Lacedaemonians would hear that a messenger had come from the barbarian to negotiate terms, and that on learning it they would send envoys with all speed. They did this on purpose, to show the Lacedaemonians their own resolve. When
Alexander had finished speaking, the envoys from Sparta took their turn and said: "The Lacedaemonians have sent us to ask you neither to do anything new in Greece nor to accept proposals from the barbarian. For this would be neither just nor honorable for any of the Greeks, but least of all for you, for many reasons. You are the ones who stirred up this war, though we
wished nothing of the kind, and the struggle at first concerned your own territory, but now it extends to all of Greece. Besides, it is in no way to be endured that the Athenians should become the cause of slavery for the Greeks, you who have always, even long ago, shown yourselves to be liberators of many peoples. Still, we sympathize with you in your distress, since you have now been deprived of two harvests and your homes have been ruined for a long time now. In
return for this, the Lacedaemonians and their allies promise to support your women and all those of your households useless for war, for as long as this war continues. Do not let Alexander the Macedonian win you over, smoothing out Mardonius' message as he does. He must act as he does, for being a tyrant himself he cooperates with a tyrant; but you must not act so, if indeed you are
thinking rightly, knowing that among barbarians there is nothing trustworthy or true." So spoke the envoys. And the Athenians answered Alexander as follows: "We too know well that the power of the Mede is many times greater than ours, so there is no need to reproach us with that. But nonetheless, in our longing for freedom we shall defend ourselves as best we can. Do not attempt
to persuade us to come to terms with the barbarian, for we shall not be persuaded. And now report back to Mardonius that the Athenians say this: as long as the sun keeps to the same course by which it now goes, we shall never come to terms with Xerxes; rather, trusting in the gods and heroes as our allies, we shall go out against him in our defense—the gods and heroes whom he showed no regard for when he burned their houses and their images.
"and in the future, do not come before the Athenians with speeches of that sort, nor, thinking you are doing them a service, urge them to do something unlawful. For we do not wish anything unpleasant to happen to you at the hands of the Athenians, seeing that you are our guest-friend and friend." This was their reply to Alexander, but to the messengers from Sparta they said the following. "That the Lacedaemonians should fear we might come to terms with the barbarian was very natural indeed; but
it seems shameful that you, knowing well the spirit of the Athenians, should still have been afraid of this—that there is nowhere on earth so much gold, nor a land so surpassing in beauty and excellence, that we would accept it and be willing to enslave Greece by taking the Persian side. For there are many great reasons preventing us from doing this, even if we wished to: first and greatest, the images of the gods and
their dwellings, burned and razed to the ground, which we are bound of necessity to avenge to the utmost rather than come to terms with the one who did these things; and further, the fact that the Greek people are of one blood and one language, and have shared shrines of the gods and sacrifices, and alike customs—for the Athenians to become betrayers of these would not be right. Know this then, if you did not happen to know it before:
as long as even one Athenian remains alive, we will never come to terms with Xerxes. We are grateful, however, for the concern you have shown for us, in that you foresaw our households being ruined and were willing to undertake to support our dependents. And for you the favor has been fulfilled in full; we, however, will hold out as best we can, without troubling you at all. But now, since things stand thus, send out an army as quickly as possible,
for as we reckon, it will not be long before the barbarian arrives and invades our land, but as soon as he learns the news that we will do none of the things he asked of us. Before he arrives in Attica, then, it is time for us to go forth in aid to Boeotia." When the Athenians had given this answer, the envoys departed for Sparta.

======== Histories — Book 9 (Calliope) ========

Mardonius, once Alexander had returned and reported to him what the Athenians had said, set out from Thessaly and led his army in haste against Athens. Wherever he came, he took up the men of that place along with him. The rulers of Thessaly felt no regret at all for what they had done before, but urged the Persian on all the more; indeed Thorax of Larisa had escorted Xerxes on his flight, and now openly sent Mardonius on his way against Greece.
When the army on its march reached Boeotia, the Thebans tried to detain Mardonius and advised him, saying that there was no place better suited for encamping than theirs, and urged him not to go any farther, but to settle there and see to it that he subdued all of Greece without a battle. For as long as the Greeks stood united in strength, as they had done before, it would be hard, they said, for all mankind together to overcome them.
"But if you do as we advise," they said, "you will have, without effort, all their strongest plans. Send money to the men who hold power in the cities; by sending it you will split Greece apart, and from then on, with the aid of your partisans, you will easily subdue those who do not think as you wish." This was their advice, but he
would not be persuaded. Instead a terrible longing had settled in him to take Athens a second time, partly out of stubbornness, and partly because he thought to signal to the King, who was at Sardis, by means of beacon-fires across the islands, that he held Athens. But when he arrived in Attica this time too he did not find the Athenians there; he learned that most of them were at Salamis and in the ships, and he took the city
empty of people. The King's capture of Athens and this later expedition of Mardonius's were ten months apart. When Mardonius was in Athens, he sent to Salamis a man of the Hellespont named Murychides, carrying the same message that Alexander the Macedonian had conveyed to the Athenians. He sent this a second time, though he well knew the Athenians' feelings were not friendly, in hopes that they would give way in
their stubbornness, now that Attica lay conquered by the spear and in his hands. For this reason he sent Murychides to Salamis. When he arrived before the council he delivered Mardonius's message. Of the councilors, Lycidas gave his opinion that it seemed better to accept the proposal Murychides was putting to them and bring it before the assembly of the people. This opinion
he declared, whether because he had taken money from Mardonius or because this was truly his own view. But the Athenians, council members and outsiders alike, were filled with fury the moment they learned of it, and surrounding Lycidas they stoned him to death, but sent Murychides the Hellespontine away unharmed. When the uproar over Lycidas arose in Salamis, the wives of the Athenians learned what was happening, and one woman
urging another, and taking others with her, and together they made their way unbidden to Lycidas's house and stoned his wife and his children as well. Now this is how the Athenians had crossed over to Salamis. As long as they still hoped that a Peloponnesian army would arrive to defend them, they stayed put in Attica; but when the Peloponnesians kept delaying and dragging their feet, and the
enemy was advancing and was already said to be in Boeotia, then they moved everything out and crossed over themselves to Salamis, and sent messengers to Lacedaemon, partly to reproach the Lacedaemonians for having allowed the barbarian to invade Attica instead of meeting him together with the Athenians in Boeotia, and partly to remind them of what the Persian had promised to give them if they changed sides, and to warn
that if they did not come to the Athenians' aid, the Athenians too would find some way to save themselves. For the Lacedaemonians at that time were holding festival, keeping the Hyacinthia, and set the greatest importance on attending to the rites of the god; and at the same time the wall they were building across the Isthmus was already being fitted with battlements. When the messengers arrived at Lacedaemon,
the ones from Athens, bringing with them also messengers from Megara and from Plataea, they came before the ephors and spoke as follows. When the ephors heard this, they put off giving an answer until the next day, and on the next day until the day after; this they did for ten days running, putting it off from day to day. Meanwhile all the Peloponnesians were building the wall across the Isthmus
with great urgency, and it was nearly finished. I cannot say what the reason was that, back when Alexander the Macedonian reached Athens, they had taken great pains that the Athenians should not go over to the Persians, yet now they showed no concern at all — except that the Isthmus had by then been walled and they thought they no longer had any need of the Athenians; whereas when Alexander came to Attica,
the wall was not yet finished, and they were working at it in great fear of the Persians. In the end, the manner of their answer and of the Spartiates' setting out was as follows. On the day before the last hearing was to take place, Chileus, a man of Tegea who carried more weight with the Lacedaemonians than any other foreigner, learned from the ephors the whole speech that the Athenians had been making. Having heard it, Chileus said this to them: "It stands thus,
gentlemen ephors: if the Athenians are not on our side but instead allies of the barbarian, then, even though a strong wall has been built across the Isthmus, wide gates stand open into the Peloponnese for the Persian. Listen to me, before the Athenians decide on some other course that brings ruin upon Greece." This was his advice to them; and they, taking the argument to heart at once, without saying anything to the messengers who had come
from the cities, sent out that very night five thousand Spartiates, assigning seven helots to each man, with orders that Pausanias son of Cleombrotus should lead them out. The command rightly belonged to Pleistarchus son of Leonidas, but he was still a boy, and Pausanias was his guardian and cousin. For Cleombrotus, Pausanias's father and son of Anaxandrides, was no longer living; he had led the army
away from the Isthmus after it had finished building the wall, and not long after that he died. Cleombrotus led the army away from the Isthmus for this reason: while he was sacrificing against the Persian, the sun in the sky grew dark. Pausanias took as his colleague Euryanax son of Dorieus, a man of the same house as himself. So these men had set out with Pausanias
out of Sparta. But the messengers, when day came, knowing nothing of the departure, went before the ephors, intending each to leave for home; and coming before them they said this: "You Lacedaemonians stay here and celebrate the Hyacinthia and enjoy yourselves, betraying your allies. The Athenians, since they have been wronged by you and lack
allies, will make terms with the Persian in whatever way they can; and once we have made terms — for it is plain that we shall then become allies of the King — we shall join his campaign against whatever land he leads us. You will then learn what the outcome of this will be for you." As the messengers said this, the ephors declared on oath that they believed the men were already on the road to Orestheum, marching against the strangers; for "strangers"
was what they called the barbarians. The messengers, not knowing this, asked what was meant, and on inquiring learned the whole truth, so that in astonishment they set out in pursuit as fast as they could; and with them went five thousand chosen hoplites of the Lacedaemonian perioikoi, doing the same thing. These men then hastened toward the Isthmus. But the Argives, as soon as they learned that the men under Pausanias had set out from Sparta,
sent as herald the best of their day-runners to Attica, since they had earlier promised Mardonius that they would prevent the Spartiate from marching out. When he arrived at Athens he said this: "Mardonius, the Argives have sent me to tell you that the young men have set out from Lacedaemon, and that Argos lacks the power to stop them from marching out. In light of this, take good counsel."
Having said this, he went back the way he came. Mardonius, when he heard this, was no longer at all eager to remain in Attica. Before learning this he had held back, wishing to know what the Athenians would do, and he neither harmed nor damaged the land of Attica, expecting that the whole time they would come to terms with him; but when he could not persuade them, having learned the whole matter,
before the men under Pausanias could invade the Isthmus, he withdrew, but first he burned Athens, and whatever was still standing of the walls or the houses or the temples, he threw all of it down and razed it to the ground. He marched away for these reasons: the land of Attica was not suited to cavalry, and if he were defeated in battle there was no way out except through
a tight defile where only a handful of defenders could hold it against him. He therefore resolved to withdraw to Thebes and give battle near a city friendly to him and in country suited to cavalry. So Mardonius withdrew; but while he was already on the road, word came to him that another army, an advance force, had arrived at Megara — a thousand Lacedaemonians. On learning this he deliberated, wishing to see if he might somehow catch these men first. He turned his army back
and led it against Megara; and his cavalry, going on ahead, overran the land of Megara. This was the farthest point toward the setting sun in Europe that this Persian army ever reached. After this, word came to Mardonius that the Greeks were gathered together at the Isthmus, and so he marched back by way of Decelea; for the Boeotarchs sent for the men of Asopia who lived nearby,
and these men guided him on the road to Sphendalae, and from there to Tanagra. At Tanagra he spent the night camped, and on the next day, turning toward Scolus, he was in the territory of Thebes. There, although the Thebans had sided with the Medes, he cut down their trees — not out of hatred for them, but under great necessity, to make a fortified camp for his army, and so that, if it came to battle,
so that if things did not turn out as he wished, he would have this as a refuge. He extended his camp from Erythrae past Hysiae and stretched it into the land of Plataea, drawn up along the river Asopus. The wall itself, however, he did not make so large, but each face about ten stadia at most. While the barbarians were occupied with this labor, Attaginus son of Phrynon,
a Theban man, made great preparations and invited to a feast both Mardonius himself and fifty of the most eminent Persians; and being invited, they came. The dinner was held at Thebes. What follows I heard from Thersander, a man of Orchomenus, one of the foremost people there. Thersander said that he too had been invited by Attaginus to this
dinner, and that fifty Theban men had also been invited, and that they were not seated apart from each other but a Persian and a Theban together on each couch. When the dinner was over, as they were drinking, the Persian who shared his couch, speaking in Greek, asked him where he was from, and he answered that he was from Orchomenus. The Persian said, "Since you have now become my table-companion and drinking-companion,
I want to leave with you a memorial of my thinking, so that you yourself, forewarned, may be able to plan what is advantageous for you. Do you see these Persians feasting here, and the army we left encamped by the river? Of all these, you will see, when a little time has passed, only a few survivors remaining." As the Persian said this he shed many tears. He himself,
astonished at the speech, said to him, "Should not this be said to Mardonius, and to those among the Persians who are honored next after him?" The Persian then said, "Friend, what is destined to happen from god, a man cannot by any device turn aside; for no one is willing to believe even those who speak the truth. Many of us Persians know this well, yet we follow, bound by necessity, and the bitterest
pain among men is this: to know much and have power over nothing." This is what I heard from Thersander of Orchomenus, and this in addition, that he himself told these things to people right away, before the battle at Plataea took place. While Mardonius was encamped in Boeotia, all the rest supplied troops and joined the invasion of Attica, as many of the Greeks living in that region as were on the Persian side,
except the Phocians alone, who did not join the invasion (though they too were very much on the Persian side) — not willingly, but under compulsion. Not many days after their arrival at Thebes, a thousand of their hoplites came, led by Harmocydes, a man held in the highest esteem among his countrymen. When these too had arrived at Thebes, Mardonius sent horsemen and ordered them to
take up a position by themselves in the plain. When they had done this, at once the entire cavalry appeared. After this a rumor passed through the Greek army that was on the Persian side, that the cavalry would spear the Phocians down; and the same rumor passed through the Phocians themselves. Then their general Harmocydes exhorted them, speaking as follows: "Phocians, it is plain enough that these men
intend to give us over to a foreseen death, slandered as we have been by the Thessalians, as I guess. Now every one of you must prove himself brave: it is better to end one's life doing something and defending oneself than to be destroyed by submitting to the most shameful death. Let each of them learn that, being barbarians, they have plotted murder against Greek men." So he exhorted them; and the horsemen, when
they had encircled them, charged as if to destroy them, and indeed drew their bows as if to shoot, and some perhaps did loose an arrow. But the Phocians stood firm on every side, drawing themselves together and closing ranks as tightly as possible. Then the horsemen wheeled about and rode back. I cannot say for certain whether they came intending to destroy the Phocians at the Thessalians' request, but then, seeing them turn to defend themselves, feared
that they themselves might suffer losses, and so rode back — for this is what Mardonius had ordered them — or whether he wished to test them to see if they had any courage. When the horsemen had ridden back, Mardonius sent a herald and said this: "Take courage, Phocians; you have shown yourselves to be brave men, contrary to what I had been told. Now carry on this war eagerly; for in good service
you will not outdo either me or the King." So much for what concerned the Phocians. The Lacedaemonians, when they came to the Isthmus, encamped there. Learning of this, the rest of the Peloponnesians whose views were the better ones, and others too seeing the Spartiates marching out, felt it would be wrong to lag behind the Lacedaemonian advance. So then, from the Isthmus, once the sacrifices proved favorable, they all marched
and arrived at Eleusis; and having performed sacrifices there too, since these were favorable, they marched onward, and the Athenians together with them, having crossed over from Salamis and joined them at Eleusis. When they arrived at Erythrae in Boeotia, they learned that the barbarians were encamped by the Asopus, and having been informed of this they drew up opposite them on the lower slopes of Cithaeron. Mardonius,
since the Greeks were not coming down into the plain, sent against them the whole of his cavalry, commanded by Masistius, a man held in high repute among the Persians, whom the Greeks call Macistius, riding a Nesaean horse with a golden bit and otherwise splendidly adorned. When the horsemen rode up against the Greeks, they attacked by squadrons, and in attacking did great harm and called them women. By chance
the Megarians happened to be stationed at the point that was most exposed to attack in the whole position, and it was there that the cavalry could approach most easily. As the cavalry attacked, the Megarians, hard pressed, sent a herald to the generals of the Greeks; and when the herald arrived before them he said this: "The Megarians say: we, allied men, are not able to withstand the Persian cavalry alone, holding
the position we have taken up from the start; yet even so, up to now we have held out by persistence and courage, hard pressed though we are. Now, unless you send some others to relieve us in this position, be assured we will abandon it." So he reported this to them; and Pausanias sounded out the Greeks to see if any others were willing to volunteer to go to that place and take up
the position in relief of the Megarians. As the others were unwilling, the Athenians undertook it, and among the Athenians the three hundred picked men, whose company Olympiodorus son of Lampon commanded. These were the ones who undertook the task and who, ahead of the rest of the Greeks present, were stationed toward Erythrae, having taken the archers along with them. As they fought for a time, the battle came at last to the following outcome. As the cavalry attacked by squadrons, Masistius's
horse, being out in front of the others, was struck by an arrow in the flank, and in pain it reared up and threw off Masistius; and as he fell the Athenians immediately set upon him. They seized his horse and killed the man himself as he defended himself, though at first they were unable to, for he was armored thus: he wore beneath a golden scaled breastplate, and over the breastplate he had put on a crimson tunic. As they struck
against the breastplate they accomplished nothing, until someone, realizing what was happening, struck him in the eye. Thus he fell and died. Somehow all this happened without the notice of the other horsemen; for they neither saw him fall from his horse nor saw him die, since it happened as they were wheeling and turning back, and so they did not perceive what had happened. But when they halted, at once they missed him,
since there was no one to give them orders; and realizing what had happened, they urged one another on and rode their horses forward all together, so as to recover the corpse. Seeing the horsemen no longer attacking by squadrons but all at once, the Athenians called out to the rest of the army for help. While all the infantry was coming to their aid, a fierce battle over the corpse took place. As long as the three hundred
were alone, they were getting much the worse of it and were abandoning the corpse; but when the main body came to their aid, then the horsemen no longer held their ground, nor were they able to carry off the corpse, but in addition to Masistius they lost still more of their horsemen. Withdrawing about two stadia, they deliberated what they ought to do; and since they had no commander, riding back to Mardonius seemed the best course.
When the cavalry arrived back at the camp, the whole army and Mardonius above all made the greatest mourning for Masistius, cropping their own hair and the manes of their horses and pack animals, and giving themselves over to unbounded wailing; for all Boeotia rang with the sound, since a man had died who was the most esteemed among the Persians and with the King, next after Mardonius. So the barbarians, in their own
fashion, honored Masistius in death. As for the Greeks, once they had withstood the cavalry's attack and, having withstood it, driven it back, they took much greater courage, and first placing the corpse on a wagon they carried it along their ranks; and the corpse was worth seeing for its size and beauty, and it was for this reason that they did this: leaving their ranks, men came flocking to look at Masistius. After this
it seemed best to them to go down to Plataea; for the Plataean ground appeared to them far more suitable for encamping than that of Erythrae, both in other respects and because it had better water. They decided it was necessary to go to this place and to the spring called Gargaphia, which was in this district, and to encamp there in their assigned positions. Taking up their arms, they went along the
lower slopes of Cithaeron, past Hysiae, into the land of Plataea; and having arrived, they drew up by nations close to the Gargaphia spring and the sacred grove of the hero Androcrates, over ground of low hills and level land. There, in the arranging of positions, a great dispute of words arose between the Tegeans and the Athenians; for each of the two claimed the right to hold the one wing.
bringing up examples both new and old. The Tegeans spoke first, saying this: "We have always been deemed worthy of this position by all the allies, in every joint campaign the Peloponnesians have ever undertaken, both in old times and new, ever since the Heraclidae, after the death of Eurystheus, tried to come back down into the Peloponnese. It was then that we won this honor, through the following affair."
"When we marched out to the aid of the Achaeans and Ionians who then lived in the Peloponnese, and took our stand at the Isthmus opposite those coming down against us, the story goes that Hyllus proclaimed that it was not right for army to risk battle against army, but that whoever the Peloponnesians judged to be their best man should fight him in single combat on agreed terms. The Peloponnesians resolved
that this should be done, and swore an oath to this effect: if Hyllus should defeat the champion of the Peloponnesians, the Heraclidae were to return to their ancestral lands; but if he were defeated, the Heraclidae were to withdraw instead, lead their army away, and for a hundred years make no attempt to return to the Peloponnese. From all the allies there was chosen, as a volunteer, Echemus son of Aeropus son of Phegeus, who was both our general
and our king, and he fought the single combat and killed Hyllus. As a result of this deed we won, among the Peloponnesians of that time, other great privileges as well, which we have continued to hold ever since, and in particular the right always to command one of the two wings whenever a joint expedition takes place. To you, Lacedaemonians, we make no objection; we leave you the choice of which wing you wish to command, and yield it to you. But the other wing
we say belongs to us to command, as in time past. And apart from this deed we have related, we are more deserving than the Athenians of holding this position. Many contests, men of Sparta, have we fought against you and won honorably, and many against others as well. It is therefore just that we, and not the Athenians, should hold the second wing, for they
have no such deeds to their credit as we do, neither new nor old." So the Tegeans spoke, and the Athenians replied to this as follows: "We understand that this gathering was assembled for battle against the barbarian, not for speeches. But since the man of Tegea has proposed to speak of the good deeds, old and new, that each side has accomplished in all time, we are obliged to make clear
to you the grounds on which it is our inheritance to be first always, being men of merit, rather than the Arcadians. As for the Heraclidae, whose leader these men claim to have killed at the Isthmus—these very men, when they were being driven out earlier by all the Greeks to whom they fled to escape enslavement by the Mycenaeans, we alone took in and put down the arrogance of Eurystheus, fighting alongside them and defeating in battle those who then held the Peloponnese.
And as for the Argives who marched with Polynices against Thebes and, having died, lay unburied—we campaigned against the Cadmeans, recovered the bodies, and buried them in our own land at Eleusis. We also have a fine deed to our credit concerning the Amazons, who once invaded the land of Attica after crossing over from the Thermodon, and in the hardships of the Trojan War we ranked behind no one. But
there is no advantage in dwelling on these things: for those who were good men then might well be worse now, and those who were poor men then might well be better now. Let old deeds be enough, then. But even if we had no other achievement to point to—though in fact we have many, and good ones, as many as any other Greeks—still, on the strength of our deed at Marathon
alone we deserve to hold this honor, and more besides: we who alone of the Greeks fought the Persian in single combat, and undertook so great a deed, and survived, and defeated forty-six nations. Are we not entitled to hold this position on the strength of this deed alone? But since it is not fitting to quarrel over position at a time like this, we are ready
to obey you, Lacedaemonians, as to wherever you think it best for us to stand, and against whichever troops: wherever we are stationed, we shall try to prove ourselves good men. Only give the order, and we shall obey." This was their answer, and at it the whole Lacedaemonian army shouted out that the Athenians were more deserving of holding the wing than the Arcadians. So the Athenians won it, and prevailed over the Tegeans. After this the Greeks were arrayed
in the following order, both those who had come from the start and those who joined later. The right wing was manned by ten thousand men of Lacedaemon; of these, the five thousand who were Spartiates were guarded by thirty-five thousand light-armed helots, seven assigned to each man. The Spartans chose to have the Tegeans stand next to them, both for honor's sake and for their valor; these numbered fifteen hundred hoplites.
After these stood five thousand Corinthians, and next to them, by arrangement with Pausanias, stood the three hundred men of Potidaea from Pallene who were present. Next to these stood six hundred Arcadians of Orchomenus, and next to them three thousand Sicyonians. Next to these came eight hundred Epidaurians. Beside them were arrayed a thousand Troezenians, and next to the Troezenians two hundred men of Lepreum, and next to these four hundred Mycenaeans and Tirynthians, and next to these
a thousand Phliasians. Beside these stood three hundred men of Hermione. Next to the Hermionians stood six hundred Eretrians and Styreans, and next to these four hundred Chalcidians, and next to these five hundred Ampraciots. Following them came eight hundred men from Leucas and Anactorium, and beside those stood two hundred Paleans from Cephallenia. After these were stationed five hundred Aeginetans. Beside them were arrayed three thousand Megarians. Next to these
stood six hundred Plataeans. Last, though also first, were arrayed the Athenians, holding the left wing, eight thousand strong, commanded by Aristides son of Lysimachus. All these, apart from the seven light-armed men assigned to each Spartiate, were hoplites, numbering in all thirty-eight thousand seven hundred. This was the total number of hoplites gathered against the barbarian; as for the light-armed troops,
their number was as follows: of the Spartan contingent there were thirty-five thousand men, since seven were assigned to each man, and every one of these was equipped for war; among the remaining Lacedaemonians and other Greeks the light troops, one per man, came to thirty-four thousand five hundred. So the total number of all the light-armed fighting men was
sixty-nine thousand five hundred, and the whole Greek force that assembled at Plataea, hoplites and light-armed fighting men together, numbered one hundred and ten thousand, lacking eight hundred men. This number of one hundred and ten thousand was made complete by the Thespians who were present, for there were also survivors of the Thespians in the camp, numbering
eighteen hundred; but these had no arms. Such, then, was the force arrayed and encamped along the Asopus. As for Mardonius and his barbarians, once they had finished mourning Masistius, they came, on learning that the Greeks were at Plataea, to the Asopus that flows past there. On arriving they were arrayed by Mardonius as follows, facing them. Facing the Lacedaemonians he placed the Persians. And since the Persians greatly outnumbered them
far outnumbered the Lacedaemonians, they were drawn up several ranks deep, extending also to face the Tegeans. He arrayed them in this way: whatever was the strongest and best among the Persians he picked out and stationed opposite the Lacedaemonians, while the weaker troops he arrayed opposite the Tegeans. He did this on the advice and instruction of the Thebans. Next to the Persians he stationed the Medes; these faced the Corinthians, the Potidaeans, the Orchomenians,
and the Sicyonians. Next to the Medes he stationed the Bactrians; these faced the Epidaurians, the Troezenians, the men of Lepreum, the Tirynthians, the Mycenaeans, and the Phliasians. Beyond the Bactrians came the Indians, whom he placed facing the Hermionians, the Eretrians, the Styreans, and the Chalcidians. Next to the Indians he stationed the Sacae, who faced the Ampraciots, the Anactorians, the Leucadians,
the Paleans, and the Aeginetans. Next to the Sacae, facing the Athenians, the Plataeans, and the Megarians, he stationed the Boeotians, the Locrians, the Malians, the Thessalians, and the thousand Phocians; for not all the Phocians had medized, but some of them supported the Greek cause, having taken refuge around Parnassus, and setting out from there they harried and raided
Mardonius' army and those Greeks who were with him. He also stationed the Macedonians and the peoples living around Thessaly opposite the Athenians. These are the greatest of the nations arrayed by Mardonius that have been named, the most notable and most spoken of; but there were also men of other nations mixed in among them—Phrygians and Thracians and Mysians and
Paeonians and the rest, and among them also Ethiopians and Egyptians, both the class called Hermotybies and the Calasiries, sword-bearers, who are the only fighting men among the Egyptians. These he had disembarked from the ships while still at Phalerum, for they had served as marines; the Egyptians were not assigned to the infantry that came with Xerxes to Athens. So the barbarian forces numbered
three hundred thousand, as has already been shown; but of the Greeks who were allies of Mardonius no one knows the number, for they were never counted; by conjecture, however, I guess they amounted to about fifty thousand gathered together. These were the infantry drawn up in battle order; the cavalry was arrayed separately. When all had been arrayed according to their nations and their units, on the next day both sides offered sacrifice.
For the Greeks the one who performed the sacrifice was Tisamenus son of Antiochus, for it was he who accompanied this army as its seer. He was an Elean of the clan of the Iamidae, of the Clytiadae, and the Lacedaemonians had made him a citizen of their own. For when Tisamenus consulted the oracle at Delphi about offspring, the Pythia declared that he would win the five greatest contests. He, misunderstanding the oracle, took up athletic training, thinking he would win contests in the games, and while training
He missed winning the Olympic crown in the pentathlon by a single wrestling fall, when he competed against Hieronymus of Andros. The Spartans, learning that his gift of prophecy was directed not toward athletic contests but toward the contests of war, tried to persuade Tisamenus for a fee to become, alongside the Heraclid kings, a leader in their wars. He saw how eager the Spartiates were to win him as a friend, and once he understood this he raised his price, signaling to them that
if they made him their fellow citizen, giving him a share in everything, he would do it, but for no other payment. The Spartiates at first, on hearing this, were outraged and dropped the matter of the oracle entirely, but in the end, with the great fear of this Persian invasion hanging over them, they went back to him and agreed. But he, noticing the shift in their mood, said even so he was no longer satisfied with these terms alone, but that his
brother Hegias too must become a Spartiate on the same terms as he himself was becoming one. In saying this he was imitating Melampus, if one may compare a man asking for citizenship and one asking for kingship. For indeed Melampus too, when the women of Argos went mad and the Argives tried to hire him from Pylos to cure their women of the disease, set as his price half of the kingship.
The Argives could not bear this and left, but as more and more of the women went mad, they came back prepared to give him what Melampus had demanded. He then, seeing them turned around, reached for still more, declaring that unless they also gave a third of the kingship to his brother Bias, he would not do what they wanted. The Argives, driven into a corner, agreed to
this as well. So too the Spartiates, since they needed Tisamenus desperately, gave in to him on every point. And once the Spartiates had conceded this too, Tisamenus the Elean, having become a Spartiate, went on to help them win, by his prophecy, five of the greatest contests. These men alone of all mankind ever became citizens of Sparta. The five contests were these: the first and earliest was the one at
Plataea; next the one at Tegea against the Tegeans and Argives; after that the one at Dipaea against all the Arcadians except the Mantineans; then the one against the Messenians at Ithome; and last the clash at Tanagra, fought against the Athenians and the Argives — this last was the final one accomplished of the five contests. It was this same Tisamenus who at that time, with the Spartiates
leading, gave prophecy for the Greeks at Plataea. For the Greeks the sacrifices came out favorable so long as they stood on the defensive, but not if they crossed the Asopus and opened battle. For Mardonius, eager to open battle, the sacrifices likewise came out unfavorable, but favorable if he too stood on the defensive. For he too used Greek rites of divination, having as his seer Hegesistratus, a man of Elis and the most eminent of the Telliad clan,
whom the Spartans had earlier seized and bound, intending to put him to death for the many terrible wrongs he had done them. Caught in this desperate situation, running for his life and facing much cruel suffering before his death, he did a deed greater than words can tell. For as he lay bound in a stocks of iron-bound wood, a piece of iron happened to be brought in, and he got hold of it; at once
he devised the most courageous deed of any we know of. Calculating how the rest of his foot could be got free, he cut off his own instep. Having done this, since he was under guard, he dug through the wall and escaped to Tegea, traveling by night and by day hiding in the woods and lodging there, so that although the Lacedaemonians searched for him in full force, by the third night he had reached Tegea,
while they were struck with great amazement at his daring, seeing the severed half of his foot lying there yet unable to find him. Having thus escaped the Lacedaemonians at that time, he took refuge in Tegea, which was not on friendly terms with the Lacedaemonians at that period. Once healed and fitted with a wooden foot, he set himself up as an open enemy of the Lacedaemonians. Yet in the end his
hatred toward the Lacedaemonians did not turn out well for him: he was caught prophesying in Zacynthus and put to death by them. His death, however, came after the events at Plataea; at the time in question, hired by Mardonius at no small price on the Asopus, he was sacrificing and showing great zeal both out of his hatred for the Lacedaemonians and for the sake of the pay. When the sacrifices would not come out favorable for battle either for the Persians themselves
or for the Greeks who were with them (for these too had their own seer, Hippomachus of Leucas), and as the Greeks kept streaming in and growing more numerous, Timagenidas son of Herpys, a Theban, advised Mardonius to guard the passes of Cithaeron, saying that the Greeks kept streaming in every day and that he would cut off many of them. They had already been encamped facing each other for eight days
when Timagenidas gave Mardonius this advice. He, recognizing that the counsel was sound, when night came sent his cavalry to the passes of Cithaeron that lead down toward Plataea, which the Boeotians call the Three Heads and the Athenians call Oak Heads. The horsemen who were sent did not go in vain: they caught, as it was coming down into the plain, five hundred pack animals bringing provisions
from the Peloponnese to the camp, along with the men who were following the wagons. Having taken this catch, the Persians slaughtered it without mercy, sparing neither pack animal nor man. When they had had their fill of killing, they rounded up what was left and drove it to Mardonius and to the camp. After this action they let two more days pass, neither side wishing to
open battle: the barbarians advanced as far as the Asopus to test the Greeks, but neither side crossed it. Mardonius' cavalry, however, kept pressing and harassing the Greeks continually. For the Thebans, being wholeheartedly on the Persian side, carried on the war eagerly and always led the way up to the point of battle, and from there the Persians and Medes took over, and it was they who
performed the feats of valor. For the first ten days nothing more than this took place; but when the eleventh day had come with the two sides still encamped facing each other at Plataea, and the Greeks had grown far more numerous while Mardonius chafed at the delay, then Mardonius son of Gobryas and Artabazus son of Pharnaces, who was among the few Persians held in esteem by Xerxes, came together in council.
Their views in deliberation were as follows: Artabazus' opinion was that it would be best to break camp at once and lead the whole army to the walled town of the Thebans, where much grain and pack-animal fodder had already been stored up for them, and there settle down quietly and finish matters by doing the following: they possessed vast quantities of gold, both stamped coin and unworked metal, along with great stores of silver and
drinking vessels; sparing none of these, they should distribute them among the Greeks, and especially among the leading men in the various cities, and these would quickly hand over their freedom to them; there was no need to risk battle. This opinion agreed with that of the Thebans too, as though Artabazus had some foreknowledge beyond the rest; but Mardonius' opinion was more forceful and stubborn and would admit of no concession: he held that
their own army was far superior to that of the Greeks, and that they should join battle as soon as possible and not allow still more Greeks to gather beyond those already assembled, and that they should disregard the sacrifices of Hegesistratus and not force the issue on them, but engage in battle following the custom of the Persians. Since he argued this so decisively, no one spoke against him, so that his opinion prevailed: for command of the army lay with him, by the king's authority, not with Artabazus. Having summoned then the
he questioned the division commanders and, among the Greeks serving under him, their generals, asking whether they knew of any oracle concerning the Persians, that they would be destroyed in Greece. When those called upon fell silent — some not knowing the oracles, others knowing them but not thinking it safe to speak — Mardonius himself said, "Since, then, you either know nothing or dare not
speak, then let me be the one to tell you, for I know it well: there is an oracle that the Persians are fated, once they come to Greece, to plunder the sanctuary at Delphi, and that after the plundering all of them are to perish. We, then, knowing this very thing, will neither go against that sanctuary nor attempt to plunder it, and for that reason we shall not perish. So then, as many of you as happen to be
well disposed toward the Persians, rejoice on this account, that we shall prevail over the Greeks." Having said this to them, he next gave orders that everything be made ready and put in good order, since battle would take place at daybreak the following day. As for this oracle which Mardonius said applied to the Persians, I myself know it to have been composed concerning the Illyrians and the army of the Encheleans, not concerning the Persians. But
there are other verses composed by Bacis about this very battle: "By the Thermodon and grassy Asopus, the gathering of the Greeks and the barbarous cry, where many will fall beyond their allotted fate and the doom of the bow-bearing Medes, when the fated day comes upon them" — this and other similar verses I know Musaeus composed concerning the Persians. As for the river Thermodon, it runs its course between Tanagra and Glisas. After
the questioning about the oracles and the exhortation from Mardonius, night came on and the men were posted to their watches. When the night was far advanced and quiet seemed to have settled over the camps, and most of all the men appeared to be asleep, at that hour Alexander son of Amyntas, general and king of the Macedonians, rode up to the Athenian sentries and asked
to speak with their generals. Most of the sentries stayed at their posts, but some ran to the generals, and coming to them said that a man had arrived on horseback from the camp of the Medes, who would reveal nothing else but, naming the generals, said he wished to speak with them. When they heard this, they at once followed to the sentry posts.
When they had come, Alexander said this: "Men of Athens, I am placing these words with you as a deposit, asking that you keep them secret and tell no one but Pausanias, so that you do not ruin me too. For I would not speak them if my concern for the whole of Greece were not so deep. I myself am a Greek by ancient descent, and I would not want to see Greece enslaved instead of free. I tell you
then, that the sacrificial victims cannot come out favorably for Mardonius and his army; for otherwise you would have fought long ago. But now he has decided to let the omens be, and to bring on the engagement as soon as day breaks. For he is afraid, as I guess, that you will gather in still greater numbers. So prepare yourselves accordingly. And if Mardonius should put off the engagement and not bring it on, hold your ground
and wait; for only a few days' provisions remain to them. And if this war ends according to your wish, someone ought to remember me too, with a view to my freedom—I who, out of zeal on the Greeks' behalf, have carried out so hazardous a deed, wishing to reveal to you Mardonius's intention, so as to keep the barbarians from catching you off guard with a sudden attack. I am Alexander the Macedonian." With that
he said this and rode back, returning to the camp and taking up his own post again. The Athenian generals went to the right wing and told Pausanias what they had heard from Alexander. He, made fearful of the Persians by this report, said the following. "Since, then, the battle is to take place at dawn, you Athenians ought to stand opposite the Persians,
and we opposite the Boeotians and those Greeks arrayed against you, for this reason: you know the Medes and their manner of fighting, from having fought them at Marathon, whereas we are inexperienced and unacquainted with these men—for none of the Spartans has had experience of the Medes—while we are experienced with the Boeotians and Thessalians. So it would be best for you to take up your arms and go
to this wing, and for us to go to the left one." To this the Athenians replied as follows. "We too, from the very start, ever since we saw the Persians drawn up opposite you, had it in mind to say this very thing which you have now proposed first; but we were afraid the proposal might not be welcome to you. Since, then, you yourselves have brought it up, we too
are pleased by the proposal and are ready to do this." Since this pleased both parties, as dawn was breaking they exchanged positions. But the Boeotians, perceiving what was being done, reported it to Mardonius. He, upon hearing it, at once tried himself to shift his own troops, leading the Persians across to face the Lacedaemonians. When Pausanias learned that this was happening, realizing that he was
not going unnoticed, led the Spartans back to the right wing; and Mardonius likewise did the same on his left. When they had been restored to their original positions, Mardonius dispatched a messenger to the Spartans, who delivered the following speech. "Lacedaemonians, you are indeed said by the people of this region to be the best of men, since they marvel that you neither flee from war nor abandon your post,
but either destroy your enemies by standing firm or are destroyed yourselves. But none of this was true; for before we even came together and engaged hand to hand, we already saw you fleeing and abandoning your position, letting the Athenians make the first trial of us while you yourselves took up position against our slaves. These are in no way the deeds of brave men, and we have been altogether
deceived in you. For we expected, on the strength of your reputation, that you would send a herald to us challenging and wishing to fight against the Persians alone, being ready to do this; yet we found you saying nothing of the sort, but rather cowering. Now then, since you did not begin this proposal, we begin it. Why do you not, since you are reputed to be the best of the Greeks, fight on behalf of the Greeks against us, before
the barbarians, we being equal in number to equal? And if it seems good that the others too should fight, let them fight afterward; but if it seems best that we alone should suffice, then let us fight it out—and whichever of us wins, let that side be reckoned as having won for the whole army." Having said this and having waited some time, since
no one answered him anything, he withdrew back, and upon returning he reported to Mardonius what had happened. He, overjoyed and elated by this empty victory, sent his cavalry against the Greeks. When the horsemen had ridden up, they harassed the whole Greek army, hurling javelins and shooting arrows, since being mounted archers they were hard to come to grips with; and the spring called Gargaphia, from which
the whole Greek army drew its water, they threw into confusion and choked up. Now the Lacedaemonians alone were stationed near the spring, but for the rest of the Greeks the spring was farther off, as each contingent happened to be positioned, while the Asopus was near; yet being kept from the Asopus, they resorted to the spring for that reason—for they were not able to fetch water from the river because of
the horsemen and their arrows. With this happening, the Greek generals, since the army was being deprived of water and thrown into disorder by the cavalry, gathered together concerning these matters and others, going to Pausanias at the right wing. For other things too, besides these, troubled them further; food had by now run out entirely, and the men serving as their attendants
who had been sent off to the Peloponnese to fetch food had been shut off from the camp by the cavalry, unable to make their way back. As the generals deliberated, it seemed best to them that, if the Persians should put off giving battle that day, they should withdraw to the island. This island is, from the Asopus and the spring of Gargaphia where they were then encamped, ten stadia distant, in front of the city of the Plataeans.
Such an island could exist on the mainland in this way: the river, splitting above from Cithaeron, flows down into the plain, its two streams separated from each other by about three stadia, and then they join together again into one. Its name is Oëroe; the local people say she is a daughter of Asopus. It was to this place, then, that they resolved to move, so that they might
have water in abundance and the cavalry might not harass them as they were doing while positioned directly opposite. They decided to shift their position then, when it should be the second watch of the night, so that the Persians would not see them setting out and so that the cavalry, following them, would not throw them into disorder. When they had reached this place—the one where the Asopian Oëroe splits apart as it flows down from Cithaeron—during that same night
it was decided to send off half of the army toward Cithaeron, so as to pick up the attendants who had gone for provisions; for these were cut off on Cithaeron. Having decided this, they endured a whole day of unrelenting toil, hemmed in by the pressing cavalry; only when day gave way to evening and the horsemen ceased did night come on, and when it was the hour
at which they had agreed to withdraw, then most of them, once they had roused themselves, set out—not with the intention of going to the place agreed upon, but as soon as they were set in motion, they fled gladly from the cavalry toward the city of the Plataeans, and in their flight they arrived at the Heraion; this lies in front of the city of the Plataeans, twenty stadia distant from the spring of Gargaphia; and having arrived
they set down their arms before the sanctuary. And they encamped around the Heraion, while Pausanias, seeing them leaving the camp, ordered the Lacedaemonians too to take up their arms and follow after those already advancing, supposing that they were going to the place they had agreed upon. Then the rest of the captains of companies were ready to obey Pausanias, but Amompharetus
son of Poliades, the leader of the Pitanate company, insisted he would never run from foreigners, nor would he willingly bring shame upon Sparta, and he marveled, seeing what was being done, since he had not been present at the earlier discussion. Pausanias and Euryanax thought it a terrible thing that he would not obey them, but thought it still more terrible, since he refused to comply, to abandon the Pitanate company,
lest, if they abandoned it while carrying out what had been agreed with the rest of the Greeks, Amompharetus himself and those with him, being left behind, should perish. Reasoning thus, they kept the Laconian army still, and tried to convince him that doing this would not be right. And so they tried to talk over Amompharetus, who alone of the Lacedaemonians and Tegeans had been left behind, while the Athenians did the following: they kept themselves still
where they had been posted, knowing the temper of the Lacedaemonians, that they thought one thing and said another. When the army began moving, they dispatched a rider to observe whether the Spartans intended to march out, or whether they had no thought at all of leaving, and to ask Pausanias what he meant to do. When the herald arrived among the Lacedaemonians, he found them still drawn up in their places
and their leading men engaged in a quarrel. For when Euryanax and Pausanias were trying to persuade Amompharetus not to endanger himself by remaining behind alone with his men, cut off from the rest of the Lacedaemonians, they could not persuade him at all, until finally they fell into open dispute, just as the Athenian herald arrived and stood beside them. In the course of the quarrel Amompharetus took up a stone in both hands, and setting it down before the feet
of Pausanias, said that with this pebble he cast his vote not to flee from the strangers—meaning by this the barbarians. Pausanias called him a madman out of his senses, and turning to the Athenian herald, who was asking what he should report, told him to describe the situation as it stood, and asked the Athenians to come over to the Lacedaemonians' side and do, regarding the withdrawal, whatever
they themselves did. So the herald went off to the Athenians. Meanwhile, as the Lacedaemonians spent the time disputing among themselves, dawn overtook them, and at that point Pausanias, since he did not believe Amompharetus would be willing to be left behind when the rest of the Lacedaemonians departed—which is exactly what happened—gave the signal and led the rest of the army away through the hills; and the Tegeans followed with them. The Athenians, for their part, having been posted separately, marched the opposite way from
the Lacedaemonians: for the Lacedaemonians kept close to the hills and the foothills of Cithaeron, out of fear of the cavalry, while the Athenians turned down toward the plain. Amompharetus, who had never at all believed that Pausanias would dare to abandon his men, held his ground, insisting that they must not leave their position; but when Pausanias' troops had already gone some distance ahead, thinking that they were truly abandoning him, he took up his company and its
arms and led them at a walk toward the main body. That body, having gone about ten stades, waited for Amompharetus' company, halting by the river Moloeis, at a place called Argiopium, where there also stands a temple of Eleusinian Demeter. They waited there for this reason: so that, if Amompharetus and his company did not leave the position where they had been stationed but remained there, they might go back
and help them. And indeed Amompharetus' men caught up with them just as the enemy's cavalry, in full force, fell upon them. For the horsemen were doing what they always did; seeing the place empty where the Greeks had been posted on the previous days, they kept riding their horses ever forward, and as soon as they overtook the Greeks, they pressed hard upon them. When Mardonius
learned that the Greeks had gone off during the night and saw the place deserted, he called for Thorax of Larissa and his brothers Eurypylus and Thrasydeius, and said: 'Sons of Aleuas, now that you see this place empty, what will you say? You who live nearby used to tell me that the Lacedaemonians never flee from battle, but are the foremost of men in war—the very men you saw leaving their positions before,
and now again, during the night just past, all of us see they have run away. They have shown, now that they were about to be tested in battle against men who are truly the best in the world, that they are nobodies, standing among Greeks who are themselves nobodies. And as for you, who have had no experience of Persians, I could readily forgive you for praising these men, since you knew something of them yourselves; but I was far more astonished
that Artabazus should be so afraid of the Lacedaemonians, and being afraid, should put forward so cowardly a proposal—that we should break camp and go to besiege the city of the Thebans. The king shall yet hear of this from me. But that matter shall be discussed elsewhere. For now, we must not let these men do as they are doing; we must pursue them until they are overtaken, and pay us the penalty for all
that the Persians have suffered.' Having said this, he led the Persians at a run across the Asopus, following the Greeks' tracks, as though they were indeed fleeing, and directed his pursuit against the Lacedaemonians and Tegeans alone; for he could not see the Athenians, who had turned down into the plain, hidden by the hills. When the other commanders of the barbarian units saw the Persians setting out in pursuit of the Greeks, they all at once raised their signals,
and pursued as fast as each man's feet could carry him, with neither order nor formation. They came on with shouting and a great rush, as though they would sweep the Greeks away entirely. But Pausanias, when the cavalry pressed upon him, sent a horseman to the Athenians with this message: 'Men of Athens, since the greatest of struggles now lies before us—whether Greece is to be free or enslaved—we have been betrayed by our allies, both we
Lacedaemonians and you Athenians, since during the night just past they ran away. Now, then, it has been decided what we must do from here on: we must defend ourselves as best we can and shield one another. If the cavalry had turned against you first, it would have been right for us, together with the Tegeans, who have not betrayed Greece, to come to your aid; but as it is, since the whole force
has advanced against us, the just course is for you to go to the aid of that part which is pressed hardest. But if something has happened to make it impossible for you yourselves to come to our aid, then do us this favor: send us your archers. We know that throughout this present war you have shown the greatest zeal of all, so that you will surely listen to this request too.' When the Athenians heard this,
they set out at once to help and to give aid as best they could; but as they were already on the march, the Greeks who had taken the king's side and were stationed opposite them attacked, so that they could no longer bring help, since the enemy pressing upon them gave them no relief. So the Lacedaemonians and Tegeans, left to fight alone, together with their light-armed troops numbering fifty thousand—the Lacedaemonians—and three thousand Tegeans (for these never separated themselves from the Lacedaemonians), began to offer sacrifice, since they were about to engage Mardonius and the army before them. But since
the sacrifices were not turning out favorable, in the meantime many of them were falling and far more were being wounded; for the Persians, having set up a barrier of their wicker shields, shot off a great many arrows without restraint, so that as the Spartans were being hard pressed and the sacrifices still would not come out right, Pausanias looked toward the temple of Hera at Plataea and called upon the goddess, begging that they should in no way be cheated of their hope.
While he was still calling upon her, the Tegeans rose up first and advanced against the barbarians, and immediately after Pausanias' prayer the sacrifices, as the Lacedaemonians offered them, turned out favorable. So then, when the time at last came, they too advanced against the Persians, and the Persians met them, setting aside their bows. The fighting began first around the wicker shields. When these
had fallen, the battle grew fierce right by the temple of Demeter itself, and lasted a long time, until at last it came to close combat; for the barbarians would seize hold of the spears and break them. In courage and strength the Persians were not inferior, but being unarmored and, moreover, unskilled, and no match for their opponents in tactical skill, they would dash forward singly or in tens,
in larger or smaller groups, and fall upon the Spartans, and so be destroyed. Now in the place where Mardonius himself happened to be, fighting on a white horse and having around him a picked band of the thousand best Persians, there they pressed hardest upon their opponents. As long as Mardonius lived, the Persians held their ground and, defending themselves, cut down many of the Lacedaemonians; but
when Mardonius was killed, and the unit stationed around him, which was the strongest, fell as well, then indeed the rest turned and gave way before the Lacedaemonians. For what harmed them most was that they wore no armor; being lightly clad, they fought a battle against hoplites. There the justice owed for Leonidas' death, according to the oracle, was paid to the Spartans by Mardonius, and Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus, son of Anaxandrides, won the fairest victory
of all we know of. The names of his ancestors before him have already been given, in the account of Leonidas; for they happen to be the same. Mardonius was killed by Aeimnestus, a man of note in Sparta, who some time afterward, after the Persian wars, engaging with three hundred men at Stenyclerus during the war against all the Messenians, was himself killed along with his
three hundred. At Plataea, when the Persians were routed by the Lacedaemonians, they fled in complete disorder, making for their own camp and for the wooden stockade which they had built in the territory of Thebes. It is a marvel to me that although the fighting took place right by the grove of Demeter, not a single Persian was seen either to enter the sacred precinct or to die within it, while
most of them fell around the sanctuary, on unconsecrated ground. I think—if one ought to hold any opinion about matters divine—that it was the goddess herself who would not let them in, since they had burned her sanctuary, the shrine at Eleusis. So far, then, went this battle. As for Artabazus son of Pharnaces, he had been displeased from the start at Mardonius being left behind by the king, and now too,
though he protested strongly against it, he accomplished nothing by trying to prevent the engagement. He himself, however, acted in a way that showed his displeasure with what Mardonius was doing. The forces Artabazus commanded—and he had no small force, but as many as forty thousand men under him—he led in an orderly manner, once the battle had begun, knowing well what the outcome would be, having instructed all of them beforehand
to go together wherever he himself should lead, keeping their eyes on him and matching his pace. Having given these orders, he led his army forward as though toward the battle. But as he advanced along the way, he saw that the Persians were already in flight; and at that point he no longer led them in the same order, but fled at full speed, heading neither for the wooden stockade nor for the wall of Thebes, but toward Phocis,
wanting to reach the Hellespont as quickly as possible. So these men turned that way; but of the other Greeks who were with the king and were fighting half-heartedly, the Boeotians fought against the Athenians for a considerable time. For the Thebans who sided with the Medes showed no small eagerness, fighting and not shirking, so much so that three hundred of their best and foremost men fell there at the hands of the Athenians.
But when these too turned to flight, they made for Thebes, fleeing by a different route than the Persians and the whole crowd of the other allies, who fled without fighting it out with anyone or accomplishing anything. This shows me that the whole fortune of the barbarians hung upon the Persians, since even these men fled then before they had even engaged the enemy, simply because they saw the Persians retreating.
So all fled, except the cavalry, both the rest and that of Boeotia; and this cavalry helped those fleeing greatly, since it stayed always closest to the enemy and shielded the friendly fugitives from the Greeks. The victors followed after Xerxes' men, pursuing and slaughtering them. In the midst of this rout, word was brought to the other Greeks
who were stationed around the Heraion and had taken no part in the battle, that a fight had already occurred and that Pausanias' men were winning. When they heard this, drawn up in no order at all, some, the Corinthian contingent, turned along the foothill road and the hills leading up straight to the temple of Demeter, while others, the Megarian and Phliasian contingent, went through the plain by the
smoothest of the roads. But when the Megarians and Phliasians drew near the enemy, the Theban horsemen, seeing them advancing in no order, rode against them at a gallop—their commander was Asopodorus son of Timander—and falling upon them struck down six hundred of them, and drove the rest, pursuing them, back to Cithaeron. These men perished without anyone taking notice; but the Persians
and the rest of the throng, when they had fled for refuge into the wooden stockade, managed to climb up onto the towers before the Lacedaemonians arrived, and once up they fortified the wall as well as they could; and when the Lacedaemonians came up, a fiercer battle for the wall broke out. For as long as the Athenians were absent, the defenders held out and had much the better of the Lacedaemonians, since the Lacedaemonians did not know how to attack walls;
but when the Athenians came up, then indeed the fighting for the wall grew fierce and lasted a long time. At last, by valor and persistence, the Athenians mounted the wall and broke it down; and there the Greeks poured in. The Tegeans were the first to enter the wall, and it was they who plundered Mardonius' tent, taking from it, among other things, the manger
of his horses, which was entirely of bronze and worth seeing. This manger of Mardonius the Tegeans dedicated in the temple of Athena Alea, while everything else they had taken they brought to the same place as the rest of the Greeks. The barbarians, once the wall had fallen, formed no body of resistance at all, nor did any of them think of defending himself, but they scurried about in a panic, crowded as they were in a small space,
terrified, many tens of thousands of men penned in together. It was possible for the Greeks to slaughter them so freely that of an army of three hundred thousand, less the forty thousand with whom Artabazus fled, not even three thousand of the rest survived. Of the Lacedaemonians from Sparta, ninety-one in all died in the battle, of the Tegeans sixteen, of the Athenians fifty-two. Of the barbarians the most valiant
were the Persian infantry, the Sacae cavalry, and among individual men Mardonius is said to have been so. Of the Greeks, though the Tegeans and the Athenians proved good, the Lacedaemonians surpassed them in valor. I can point to no other proof of this except this—that all these contingents defeated the forces facing them—than that the Lacedaemonians engaged and overcame the strongest part of the enemy. And by far the bravest man, in my judgment, was Aristodemus, who
alone of the three hundred survived from Thermopylae and bore the reproach and disgrace of it. After him the most valiant were Posidonius, Philocyon, and Amompharetus the Spartan. Yet when talk arose as to which of them had been best, the Spartans present judged that Aristodemus, wishing openly to die because of the charge then hanging over him, had raged forth from his post and performed great deeds, while Posidonius, not wishing
to die, had shown himself a good man—and for that reason judged him the better of the two. But this they might say out of envy; for all those I have named, except Aristodemus, who died in this battle were held in honor, while Aristodemus, because he wished to die on account of the charge already mentioned, was not honored. These, then, were the most renowned of those at Plataea. As for Callicrates, he died outside the battle, having come
the handsomest man in the camp of the Greeks of that time, not only among the Lacedaemonians themselves but among all the other Greeks. As Pausanias was sacrificing, he, sitting in his rank, was wounded in the side by an arrow. And so while the others fought, he, carried off the field, was dying hard and said to Arimnestus, a man of Plataea, that it did not trouble him to die for Greece, but rather that he had not
used his hand, and that he had no deed accomplished worthy of himself, though he had been eager to perform one. Of the Athenians, Sophanes son of Eutychides is said to have distinguished himself, from the deme of Decelea—the Deceleans who once did a deed useful for all time, as the Athenians themselves say. For long ago, when the sons of Tyndareus invaded the land of Attica with an army in pursuit of Helen's recovery,
and were driving the people from their homes, not knowing where Helen had been hidden away, then, they say, the Deceleans—or, as some say, Decelus himself, aggrieved at Theseus' outrage and fearing for the whole territory of the Athenians—explained the whole matter to them and guided them to Aphidnae, which Titacus, a native of the place, betrayed to the sons of Tyndareus. For this deed the Deceleans have had, from that
deed, exemption from taxes and front seats at Sparta continuing even to this day, so much so that even in the war that arose many years later between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians, while the Lacedaemonians were ravaging the rest of Attica, they kept away from Deceleia. Being of this deme, and having distinguished himself then above all the Athenians, Sophanes has two stories told of him: one, that from the belt of his
breastplate he carried an iron anchor fastened by a bronze chain, which he would hurl down whenever he drew near the enemy, so that the enemy, breaking out of their ranks, could not dislodge him from his position; and when the enemy took to flight, it was arranged that he would take up the anchor and so pursue them. This is one account; the other story, disputing the one told first, says that he carried an anchor, always
circling about and never still, on his shield, and not one of iron fastened to his breastplate. There is also another brilliant deed accomplished by Sophanes: while the Athenians were besieging Aegina, he killed Eurybates the Argive, a champion of the pentathlon, in single combat by challenge. Sophanes himself, some time after these events, met his end as a valiant man, serving as general of the Athenians together with Leagrus son of Glaucon, killed by the Edonians at Datus while
fighting over the gold mines. Now when the barbarians had been struck down and laid low by the Greeks at Plataea, there came to them a woman deserting from the enemy; she, when she learned that the Persians had perished and that the Greeks were victorious, being the concubine of Pharandates son of Teaspis, a Persian, adorned herself and her attendants with much gold and in the finest clothing she had, and stepping down from her covered wagon went toward
the Lacedaemonians, who were still in the midst of the slaughter; and seeing Pausanias directing all of it, having known his name and his country beforehand, from having heard of them often, she recognized Pausanias, and taking hold of his knees said the following: 'O king of Sparta, save me, your suppliant, from the slavery of captivity. For you have already done good service in this, having destroyed these men who have regard neither for spirits nor
for gods. I am by birth a woman of Cos, daughter of Hegetorides son of Antagoras; the Persian took me by force while I was in Cos and held me there.' He answered her thus: 'Woman, take heart, both as a suppliant, and if besides you happen to be speaking the truth and are indeed the daughter of Hegetorides of Cos, who happens to be my greatest friend among those
who dwell in those parts.' Having said this, he at that time entrusted her to the ephors who were present, and later sent her to Aegina, to which she herself wished to go. After the arrival of this woman, immediately after, the Mantineans arrived when everything was already done; and learning that they had arrived after the fighting was already over, they took it as a great misfortune, and said they deserved to be punished for it. Learning that the Medes
who were fleeing with Artabazus were still fleeing, they pursued them as far as Thessaly; but the Lacedaemonians would not allow them to pursue the fugitives. Returning to their own land, they drove the commanders of their army into exile. After the Mantineans came the Eleans, and the Eleans likewise, taking it as a great misfortune like the Mantineans, went away; and they too, on their return, drove their commanders into exile. So much for the affair of the Mantineans and Eleans.
In the camp at Plataea, among the Aeginetans, there was Lampon son of Pytheas, one of the foremost men of Aegina; he, having in mind a most unholy proposal, hastened to Pausanias, and coming to him said the following in urgency: 'Son of Cleombrotus, a deed has been accomplished by you of extraordinary greatness and beauty, and god has granted to you, having saved Greece, to lay up the greatest glory of all the Greeks we know of. Do you now
also carry out what remains to be done after this, so that even greater fame may attach to you, and so that in future any of the barbarians may be on guard against committing reckless deeds against the Greeks. For when Leonidas died at Thermopylae, Mardonius and Xerxes cut off his head and impaled it; if you repay them in like manner, you will win praise first from all the Spartans, and again from
"and from the rest of the Greeks as well: for by impaling Mardonius you will avenge your uncle Leonidas." He said this thinking to please Pausanias, but Pausanias answered him as follows: "Aeginetan stranger, I admire your goodwill and your foresight, but you have missed the mark of sound judgment. You raised me up high, along with my country and my deed, and then cast me down to nothing by urging me to mistreat a corpse.
That is a thing better suited to barbarians than to Greeks—and even in them we resent it. As for me, on this account, I would not wish to please the Aeginetans or anyone else who takes pleasure in such things; it is enough for me to please the Spartans by doing and saying what is right. As for Leonidas, whom you bid me avenge, I say he has been greatly avenged already: by the countless lives
of these men here he has been honored, he himself and the others who died at Thermopylae. But you—so long as you hold such talk—do not come to me, nor give me such counsel, and be grateful that you go unpunished." Having heard this, the man went away. Pausanias then made a proclamation that no one should touch the plunder, and ordered the helots to gather the goods together. And they, scattering through the camp,
found tents furnished with gold and silver, couches overlaid with gold and silver, golden mixing-bowls, bowls, and other drinking vessels of every kind; they found sacks on wagons in which were seen cauldrons of gold and silver; and from the corpses lying there they stripped bracelets and torques and daggers of gold, though of embroidered clothing no one
took any account. There the helots stole much and sold it to the Aeginetans, and much too they revealed openly, whatever they could not hide; so that from this the great wealth of the Aeginetans first began, for they bought the gold from the helots as though it were bronze. When the goods had been gathered together and a tenth set apart for the god at Delphi—from which
the golden tripod was dedicated, the one standing on the bronze three-headed serpent nearest the altar—and a tenth was set apart for the god at Olympia, from which they dedicated a bronze Zeus ten cubits high, and for the god at the Isthmus, from which came a bronze Poseidon seven cubits high—when they had set these apart, they divided the rest among themselves, and each man took what he deserved, and also the concubines of the Persians and
the gold and silver and other goods and the pack animals. Now what was set aside as a special prize and given to those who had distinguished themselves at Plataea is not told by anyone, though I myself suppose that gifts were given to these men too. To Pausanias, however, everything was given tenfold and chosen out for him—women, horses, talents, camels—and likewise the rest of the goods as well. It is also said that this happened: that when Xerxes
fled from Greece he left his own equipment behind for Mardonius; so Pausanias, seeing Mardonius's furnishings set out with gold and silver and embroidered hangings, told the bakers and the cooks to make a dinner just as they would have for Mardonius. When these men, so ordered, did this, then Pausanias, seeing golden and silver couches well spread, and
golden and silver tables and the magnificent preparation of the meal, was amazed by the fine spread laid out before him, and, as a joke, told his own servants to make a Laconian dinner instead. When this meal was made ready, the difference between the two was great, and Pausanias, laughing, sent for the generals of the Greeks; and when they had gathered, Pausanias said, pointing to each of the two preparations of the meal, "Men of Greece, for this
reason I brought you together, wishing to show you the folly of this leader of the Medes, who, living in such luxury as this, still came against us who have so wretched a way of life, to take it from us." This is what Pausanias is said to have said to the generals of the Greeks. And afterward, in later time, many of the Plataeans found buried stores of gold and silver and other goods. And this too became apparent
afterward, once the flesh had been stripped from the bones of the dead: for the Plataeans were gathering the bones into one place, and a skull was found having no suture at all but being made of a single bone; and a jawbone also appeared having, in the upper jaw, teeth all grown from a single bone, both the front teeth and the molars; and the bones of a man five cubits tall were found.
When, on the second day, the body of Mardonius had disappeared, I cannot say with certainty by whose hand—though I have heard that many and various people buried Mardonius, and I know that many received great gifts from Artontes, son of Mardonius, for this deed—but who it was that took up and buried the body of Mardonius, I am not able
to learn with certainty. There is also a report that Dionysophanes, a man of Ephesus, buried Mardonius. In such fashion, then, he was buried, whichever way it was. As for the Greeks, once they had divided the plunder at Plataea, each people buried their own dead separately. The Lacedaemonians made three graves: in one they buried the young men, among whom were Posidonius and Amompharetus, and Philocyon and Callicrates.
In one of the graves, then, were the young men; in the other, the rest of the Spartiates; and in the third, the helots. Thus did they bury their dead. The Tegeans buried all their dead together apart from the others, while the Athenians buried theirs as one group, and the Megarians and Phliasians those slain by the enemy cavalry. Of all these, then, the graves were full of bodies; but as for the others,
whatever graves are to be seen at Plataea belonging to other peoples, these, as I learn, were heaped up empty as mounds of earth by each people out of shame at their absence from the battle, for the sake of those who came after. For there is even at that place a so-called grave of the Aeginetans, which, I hear, was heaped up ten years after these events, at the request of the Aeginetans, by Cleades son of Autodicus, a Plataean man who was their proxenos. When
the Greeks had thus buried the dead at Plataea, straightway it was resolved in council that they should march against Thebes and demand the surrender of those who had sided with the Medes, first among them Timagenidas and Attaginus, who were the foremost leaders of that faction; and if the Thebans refused to surrender them, they resolved not to withdraw from the city before capturing it. When they had decided this, on the eleventh day after
the battle they arrived and laid siege to the Thebans, demanding that they hand over the men; and when the Thebans would not consent to surrender them, they ravaged their land and made assaults upon the wall. And since the Greeks did not cease from doing damage, on the twentieth day Timagenidas said the following to the Thebans: "Men of Thebes, since the Greeks have resolved on this, not to give up the siege until they take Thebes or you hand us over to them,
now let not the land of Boeotia suffer further on our account; but if it is money they want, and they demand us merely as a pretext, let us give them money from the public treasury (for it was with the whole city's consent that we sided with the Medes, not we alone); but if they are besieging you because they truly want us, we ourselves will present ourselves to them for judgment." This seemed to be very well and fittingly said, and at once
the Thebans sent heralds to Pausanias, willing to hand over the men. When they had come to terms on these conditions, Attaginus fled from the city; but his sons, though led away, Pausanias released from the charge, saying that children could have no part in the guilt of Medizing. As for the other men whom the Thebans handed over, they supposed they would get a hearing, and indeed trusted that they could buy themselves off with money; but
Pausanias, when he received them, suspecting exactly this, dismissed the whole army of the allies, and, taking the men to Corinth, put them to death. This, then, is what happened at Plataea and Thebes. Artabazus son of Pharnaces, fleeing from Plataea, was already getting far away. When he arrived among the Thessalians, they invited him to their hospitality and asked him about the rest of the army,
knowing nothing of what had happened at Plataea. Artabazus, realizing that if he wished to tell them the whole truth of the battle, he himself and the army with him would be in danger of destruction—for he thought that everyone would set upon them once they learned what had happened—reckoning this, he revealed nothing to the Phocians and said the following to the Thessalians: "I myself,
men of Thessaly, as you see, am hastening at speed to make my way into Thrace, and am in haste, having been sent on some business from the camp along with these men; Mardonius himself and his army are close behind me and are expected to arrive. Entertain him and show yourselves doing well by him, for you will not regret it in time to come." Having
said this, he drove his army in haste through Thessaly and Macedonia straight toward Thrace, as one truly in a hurry, cutting across the inland route. And he arrived at Byzantium, having left behind many of his own army, cut down along the way by the Thracians, or perishing of hunger and exhaustion; and from Byzantium he crossed over by ships. Thus did he make his way back to Asia.
On the very same day that the defeat at Plataea took place, it happened also that one occurred at Mycale in Ionia. For when the Greeks who had come in their ships with Leutychides the Lacedaemonian were lying at Delos, messengers came to them from Samos—Lampon son of Thrasycles, and Athenagoras son of Archestratides, and Hegesistratus son of Aristagoras—sent by the Samians secretly from
the Persians and from Theomestor the tyrant, son of Androdamas—the man the Persians had installed as tyrant of Samos. When they came before the generals, Hegesistratus said many things of every sort, how, if only the Ionians should see them, they would revolt from the Persians, and how the barbarians would not stand their ground; and even if they should stand their ground, they would not find such another prey as this. He called on the gods too,
He called on them in common and urged them to free the Greeks from slavery and to drive back the barbarian; he said this would be easy for them, since the Persians' ships sailed badly and were no match for theirs. And they themselves, he said, if the Greeks suspected that the Samians were leading them into a trap, were ready to be taken aboard the Greek ships as hostages. As he went on pleading at length,
Leutychides asked the Samian stranger—whether he wished to learn an omen from it or whether it happened by pure chance with a god at work—"Samian stranger, what is your name?" And he said, "Hegesistratus." Leutychides cut off the rest of whatever Hegesistratus was about to say and said, "I accept the omen of Hegesistratus, Samian stranger. Now see to it that you
give us your pledge and sail off, you and these men with you, and that the Samians will indeed be eager allies for us." As he said this he also pushed the matter forward with action. At once the Samians made pledge and oaths concerning alliance with the Greeks. Having done this, some of them sailed off, for Leutychides bade Hegesistratus sail with them, taking his name as an omen.
The Greeks, having held back that day, on the next performed sacrifices for good omens, with Deiphonus son of Euenius, a man of Apollonia—the Apollonia on the Ionian Gulf—divining for them. His father Euenius had met with the following experience. In this Apollonia there are sheep sacred to the Sun, which by day graze along the river Chon, which flows from Mount Lacmon through the
territory of Apollonia down to the coast near the harbor of Oricum, and at night men selected from the citizens most notable for wealth and family origin stand guard over them, one year apiece; for the Apollonians hold these sheep in great account because of some oracle. They are penned at night in a cave far from the city. It was there that this Euenius, having been chosen, was keeping guard. And once,
when he had fallen asleep at his post, wolves came past the guard into the cave and destroyed about sixty of the sheep. When he became aware of it he kept silent and told no one, meaning to replace them by buying others in their place. But this did not escape the Apollonians; when they learned of it, they brought him before a court and condemned him, for having let his watch fall asleep, to be deprived of his sight. When they had blinded Euenius,
immediately after this their sheep ceased to bear young and the land no longer yielded crops as before. Oracles came to them from both Dodona and Delphi: when they questioned the prophets about what lay behind their misfortune, the prophets explained that they had unjustly deprived Euenius, the guardian of the sacred sheep, of his sight; for the gods themselves had sent the wolves against them, and would not cease
avenging him until they paid him whatever compensation he himself should choose and judge fitting; and when this had been done, the gods themselves would give Euenius such a gift that many men would count him blessed for having it. This was the oracle given to them, and the Apollonians, keeping it secret, assigned certain of the citizens to carry it out. And they carried it out in this way: as Euenius sat on his bench, they came
and sat beside him and talked of other things, until they came around to condoling with him over his misfortune. Leading him on in this way they asked him what compensation he would choose, if the Apollonians were willing to submit to paying for what they had done. He, not having heard the oracle, made his choice, saying that if someone gave him the fields—naming among the citizens' land the two finest allotments he knew of in Apollonia—and
besides these the house which he knew to be the finest in the city, then, having obtained these, he would bear no further grudge, and this compensation, once given, would satisfy him. And as he was saying this, the men sitting beside him broke in and said, "Euenius, the Apollonians pay you this compensation for your blinding in accordance with an oracle that has been given." At this he was greatly troubled,
once he learned from that the whole story, feeling he had been deceived. But they bought the properties from those who held them and gave him what he had chosen. And after this he at once possessed an inborn gift of prophecy, so that he even became famous for it. It was this man's son Deiphonus who, brought along by the Corinthians, was doing the divining for the army. I have also heard this, that Deiphonus, assuming the name of Euenius, undertook
work on behalf of Greece, though he was not actually the son of Euenius. When the sacrifices proved favorable for the Greeks, they put out from Delos toward Samos. When they came to the part of Samos near Calami, some of them anchored there off the Heraion in that place and prepared for a sea battle, while the Persians, learning that the Greeks were sailing toward them, likewise put out to sea toward the mainland with the rest of the ships,
but the Phoenician ships they sent off to sail away. For on deliberation it seemed best to them not to fight a sea battle, since they did not think themselves a match. They sailed off toward the mainland so as to be under cover of their own land army stationed at Mycale, which by order of Xerxes had been left behind from the rest of the army to guard Ionia; it numbered sixty thousand, and its commander was Tigranes,
who surpassed the Persians in beauty and stature. Under the protection of this army the generals of the fleet resolved to take refuge, to haul their ships ashore, and to build around them a fence and defense for the ships and a place of refuge for themselves. Having resolved this, they put out to sea. When they came, past the shrine of the Potniai on Mycale, to Gaeson and Scolopoeis, where there is a shrine of Eleusinian Demeter, which Philistus
son of Pasicles had founded when he accompanied Neileus son of Codrus to the founding of Miletus—there they hauled up the ships and built around them a fence of both stones and timber, cutting down cultivated trees, and drove stakes around the fence, and made ready both for a siege and for victory, preparing with both outcomes in mind. The Greeks, when they learned that the barbarians had gone off to the mainland, were troubled, thinking
that they had escaped them, and were at a loss what to do, whether to turn back or to sail toward the Hellespont. In the end they decided to do neither, but to sail against the mainland. So, having made ready for a sea battle both landing-ladders and everything else they needed, they sailed for Mycale. When they came near the camp and no one appeared coming out against them, but they saw ships
drawn up inside the wall, and a great infantry force arrayed along the shore, then first, sailing along in his ship and bringing it as close to the shore as possible, Leutychides had a herald proclaim to the Ionians, saying, "Men of Ionia, whoever of you happens to be listening, mark what I say: the Persians will understand none of what I am telling you. When we join battle, each of you must remember freedom
first of all, and after that the watchword 'Hebe.' And let whoever among you does not hear this learn it from whoever did." This device had the very same intent as that of Themistocles at Artemisium: either the words, escaping the barbarians' notice, would persuade the Ionians, or, if reported back to the barbarians, would make them distrust the Greeks. After
Leutychides had suggested this, the Greeks next did as follows: they brought their ships to shore and disembarked onto the beach. And these were forming up in ranks, while the Persians, when they saw the Greeks preparing for battle and urging the Ionians on, first, suspecting the Samians of favoring the Greek cause, stripped them of their weapons. For the Samians, when Athenian captives arrived among the barbarians' ships—
those whom Xerxes' men had captured, left behind throughout Attica—these the Samians had ransomed, all of them, and sent them off to Athens provided with supplies; and because of this they were held under no small suspicion, having ransomed five hundred lives of Xerxes' enemies. Second, they put the Milesians in charge of guarding the paths up to Mycale's summits, using as pretext that no one knew the terrain better than they did;
they did this for this reason, so that the Milesians would be kept away from the camp. In these ways the Persians took precautions beforehand against those of the Ionians whom they suspected might, given the opportunity, do something disruptive; and they themselves gathered their wicker shields together to serve as a barricade. When the Greeks had made their preparations, they advanced against the barbarians; and as they went, a rumor flew into the whole camp, and a herald's staff was seen lying on the
shoreline; and the rumor spread among them in this way, that the Greeks were victorious over Mardonius' army, fighting in Boeotia. Many proofs make clear that divine matters govern human affairs, since even then, when the same day coincided with the disaster about to befall both at Plataea and at Mycale, a rumor reached the Greeks in that place, so that the army took much greater courage
and was more eager to face danger with spirit. And this other thing also happened to coincide: there were precincts of Eleusinian Demeter near both battle sites; for indeed at Plataea the battle took place right beside the very temple of Demeter, as I have said before, and at Mycale it was likewise about to happen. And the rumor that came to them, that the Greeks under Pausanias had won a victory, turned out to
be accurate; for the battle at Plataea took place still early in the day, while that at Mycale took place around late afternoon. That they happened on the same day and the same month became clear to them not long afterward, when they worked it out. Before the rumor reached them they had been afraid, not so much for themselves as for the Greeks, lest
Greece should stumble because of Mardonius. But when this report flew in to them, they pressed their advance all the more, and more swiftly. So the Greeks and the barbarians alike hastened to battle, since the islands and the Hellespont lay before them as prizes. For the Athenians and those stationed next to them, up to about half the line, the march went
along the shore and the level ground, while the Lacedaemonians and those posted next to them were arrayed along a ravine and among the hills. While the Lacedaemonians were making their way around, the troops on the other wing were already fighting. As long as the wicker shields of the Persians stood upright, they defended themselves and held their own in the battle no less than their opponents; but when
the army of the Athenians and those next to them, so that the achievement might be theirs and not the Lacedaemonians', urged each other on and pressed the work more eagerly, from that point the affair took a different turn. For once they had pushed down the wicker shields, they charged in a mass upon the Persians, who received them and resisted for a long time, but at last fled to the wall. The Athenians, Corinthians, Sicyonians, and Troezenians (for it was in this order
that they had been posted) followed close behind and burst into the wall along with them. And once the wall too had been taken, the barbarians no longer turned to defend themselves but set out in flight, all except the Persians; these, forming into small groups, kept fighting against whichever of the Greeks kept bursting into the wall. Of the Persian commanders two escaped, and two died: Artayntes
and Ithamitres, who commanded the fleet, got away, whereas Mardontes and Tigranes, who led the infantry, fell in the fighting. While the Persians were still fighting, the Lacedaemonians and those with them arrived, and finished off the rest along with them. Many of the Greeks themselves also fell there, among others the Sicyonians and their general Perilaus; and of the Samians who were serving in
the Median camp and had been stripped of their weapons, as soon as they saw that the battle was, right from the start, turning out to favor now one side now the other, they did whatever they could, wishing to help the Greeks. When the other Ionians saw the Samians take the lead in this way, they too revolted from the Persians and turned on the barbarians. The Milesians had been assigned by the Persians to guard the mountain passes for their own safety, so that
if disaster should befall them, as indeed it did, they might have guides to bring them safely to the summits of Mycale. The Milesians were posted to this task both for that reason and so that they would not be present in the camp to cause any disturbance; but they did the very opposite of what had been ordered, leading the fleeing Persians by other paths, which in fact brought them to
the enemy, and in the end they themselves became the deadliest enemies, killing them. Thus Ionia broke away from Persian rule for a second time. In this battle the Athenians distinguished themselves among the Greeks, and among the Athenians Hermolycus son of Euthoenus, a man trained in the pancratium. This Hermolycus later met his end, once fighting broke out between Athens and Carystus, falling in battle at Cyrnus in Carystian land, where he lies buried at
Geraestus. After the Athenians, the Corinthians, Troezenians, and Sicyonians distinguished themselves. When the Greeks had dealt with most of the barbarians, some killing them in battle and some as they fled, they burned the ships and the whole wall, having first brought out the plunder onto the shore, and they found some treasuries of goods as well; and having burned the wall and the ships, they sailed away. On arriving at
At Samos the Greeks discussed resettling Ionia, weighing which region of Greece under their own control would be suitable for the Ionians to inhabit, while abandoning Ionia itself to the barbarians. It seemed to them impossible to keep permanent watch over the Ionians by stationing forces there indefinitely, yet without such a guard they held no hope that the Ionians could escape unpunished from Persian retaliation. Given this, the Peloponnesian leaders
who held command decided it was best to drive out the trading populations among the Greek peoples who had sided with Persia, and hand their territory over for the Ionians to settle; the Athenians, however, objected entirely to uprooting Ionia, and likewise objected to Peloponnesian involvement in decisions about their own colonies. Since the Athenians resisted forcefully, the Peloponnesians backed down. In this way they took in the Samians, Chians, Lesbians, and the rest of the islanders, who happened
to be campaigning alongside the Greeks, and enrolled them in the alliance, binding them by pledge and oath to stay loyal and never break away. Once these oaths were secured, the fleet sailed off to dismantle the bridges, still expecting to find them intact. This group then made for the Hellespont. Meanwhile the barbarians who had fled and been herded onto the heights of Mycale, not being numerous, managed to reach Sardis. As they
went along the road, Masistes son of Darius came upon the disaster that had just occurred and heaped abuse on the commander Artayntes, calling him, among other insults, more cowardly than a woman for leading the campaign as he had, and declaring he deserved every punishment for the ruin he had brought on the king's house. Among Persians, being called worse than a woman ranks as the harshest possible insult. Artayntes, once he had heard enough of this, flew into a rage and drew
his scimitar against Masistes, meaning to kill him. But Xeinagoras son of Praxileos, a man of Halicarnassus, standing behind him, saw him rushing at Masistes, seized him around the middle, lifted him up, and threw him to the ground; and in that moment Masistes' spearmen stepped forward to protect him. Xeinagoras did this deed as a favor to Masistes himself and to Xerxes, in saving the latter's brother; and because of
this deed Xeinagoras was given rule over the whole of Cilicia by the king's gift. Of those traveling along the road nothing further happened beyond this, and they arrived at Sardis. Now at Sardis the king had been staying ever since he had fled there after his setback in the sea battle off Athens. At that time, while staying at Sardis, he fell in love with the wife of Masistes, who was also
there at the time. When his approaches to her could not bring about his desire, and he did not resort to force, out of consideration for his brother Masistes, the same held true for the woman as well, for she knew well that she would not be subjected to force. At this point Xerxes, refraining from other means, arranged this marriage: he gave his own son Darius the daughter of this woman and Masistes, thinking he would win her the more readily if
he did this. Having concluded the match and performed the customary rites, he drove off to Susa; and when he arrived there and brought the woman home for Darius, he then ceased his desire for the wife of Masistes, and having shifted his affection, he came to love and to have as his own the wife of Darius, the daughter of Masistes; and this woman's name was Artaynte. As time went on, the affair came
to light in the following way. Amestris, Xerxes' wife, having woven a great, richly decorated robe worthy to behold, gave it to Xerxes. He, delighted, put it on and went to Artaynte; and being pleased with her as well, he told her to ask for whatever she wished to have in return for her favors to him, for she would obtain anything she asked. But since it was fated that ruin should come upon her whole household,
in response to this she said to Xerxes, "Will you give me whatever I ask of you?" He, supposing she would ask for anything but that, promised and swore it. And she, once he had sworn, boldly asked for the robe. Xerxes tried everything, unwilling to give it, for no other reason than his fear of Amestris, lest she, who already suspected what was happening, should thereby discover it for certain; instead he offered cities
and boundless gold and an army, of which no one but she should have command. An army is indeed a very Persian gift. But since he could not persuade her, he gave the robe. She, overjoyed with the gift, wore it and gloried in it. And Amestris learned that she had it; and having learned what was going on, she bore no anger toward this woman, but supposing
that her mother bore the blame and was behind these actions, she began plotting the destruction of Masistes' wife. She waited until her husband Xerxes was about to hold the royal banquet, a feast prepared just once each year, on the day the king was born. This banquet is called tykta in Persian, but in Greek it means "complete"; on that day alone the king anoints his own head
and bestows gifts upon the Persians. Watching for this day, Amestris begged Xerxes to give her the wife of Masistes. He thought this a terrible and monstrous thing, both to hand over his brother's wife, and because she was innocent of the matter, for he understood the reason she was asking for it. But in the end, since she pressed him persistently and he was constrained by the custom that
whoever makes a request cannot be refused when the royal banquet is set out, very much against his will he consented, and having handed her over, he did as follows: he told his wife to do as she wished, while he, summoning his brother, said this: "Masistes, you are the son of Darius and my brother, and besides this you are a good man. The woman you now live with — do not
live with her any longer; instead, in her place, I give you my own daughter. Live with her; and give up the woman you now have, for it does not please me that you keep her." Masistes, astonished at these words, said this: "Master, what useless proposal is this you put to me, bidding me give up a wife by whom I have young sons and daughters, one of whom you yourself took as a wife for
your own son — and she herself happens to suit my judgment entirely — that you bid me put her aside and marry your daughter? I, O king, count it a great honor to be deemed worthy of your daughter, yet I will do neither of these things. Do not force me by violence to such a course; instead, for your daughter another husband will appear no worse than I, and as for me,
allow me to keep living with my own wife." So he answered in this manner, and Xerxes, enraged, said this: "This is how matters stand for you, Masistes: I will neither give you my daughter to marry, nor shall you live with that woman any longer, so that you may learn to accept what is given to you." On hearing this, Masistes, saying only this much, went out: "Master, you have not yet destroyed me." And in the
During this interval, while Xerxes was speaking with his brother, Amestris summoned Xerxes' guards and disfigured the wife of Masistes: she sliced off her breasts and flung them to the dogs, cut away her nose, ears, lips, and tongue, and sent her home in this mutilated state. Masistes, who as yet knew nothing of what had happened, though sensing some misfortune had struck,
rushed home at a run. Seeing his wife destroyed, he at once, after consulting with his sons, set out for Bactra with his own sons and, no doubt, some others as well, intending to bring the Bactrian province into revolt and to do the king the greatest harm possible. And this is what would have happened, as I believe, if he had reached the Bactrians and the
Sacae in time, for they loved him and he was governor of the Bactrians. But Xerxes, learning what he was doing, sent an army after him and killed him on the road, along with his sons and his army. So much for the story of Xerxes' passion and the death of Masistes. As for the Greeks who had set out from
Mycale for the Hellespont, they first anchored off Lectum, held back by winds, and from there came to Abydos, where they found the bridges broken up, which they had expected to find still in place — and it was largely for this reason that they had come to the Hellespont. Now the Peloponnesians under Leotychides decided to sail back to Greece, but the Athenians and their general Xanthippus decided
to remain and make an attempt on the Chersonese. So the others sailed away, but the Athenians crossed from Abydos to the Chersonese and laid siege to Sestos. Since this was the strongest fortified place in that region, when they heard that the Greeks had arrived at the Hellespont, people gathered into it from the surrounding towns, and in particular from the city of Cardia came a Persian named Oeobazus, who
had brought there the tackle from the bridges. This place was held by native Aeolians, but with them were Persians and a large crowd of other allies as well. The governor of this province under Xerxes was Artayctes, a Persian, a clever and unscrupulous man, who had once deceived the king himself when he was marching against Athens, by stealing the treasures of Protesilaus son of Iphiclus from Elaeus. For at
At Elaeus on the Chersonese stands the tomb and sacred enclosure of Protesilaus, where great wealth was kept — bowls of gold and silver, bronze vessels, garments, and other dedications — all of which Artayctes seized with the king's consent, having tricked Xerxes with words like these: "Master, there stands here the house of a Greek who marched against your land and, having met his rightful end, died for it. Grant me his
house, so that people may learn not to campaign against your land." By saying this he easily persuaded Xerxes to give him the man's house, for the king had no suspicion of what Artayctes had in mind. He said that Protesilaus had campaigned against the king's land, meaning this: the Persians consider the whole of Asia to belong to themselves and to whoever is king at the time. Once the grant had been made, Artayctes carried off the treasures from Elaeus to Sestos,
and he sowed and worked the sacred precinct as farmland, and whenever he came to Elaeus he would have sex with women inside the very inner sanctuary. Now he was under siege by the Athenians, having neither prepared for a siege nor expecting the Greeks — they had fallen upon him somehow inescapably. When autumn came upon the besiegers, the Athenians grew distressed at being away from home and unable to take
the wall, and they asked their generals to lead them back home; but the generals refused to do so until they either took the place or were recalled by the Athenian government. So the men resigned themselves to the situation. Meanwhile those inside the wall had by now come to the very depths of suffering, so much so that they were boiling the leather straps of their beds and eating them. When even this ran out, then
under cover of night the Persians and Artayctes and Oeobazus fled, climbing down behind the wall at the point where the enemy's line was thinnest. When day came, the people of the Chersonese signaled to the Athenians from the towers what had happened, and opened the gates. Of the Athenians, most set off in pursuit, while some occupied the city. Oeobazus, as he fled
into Thrace, was caught by the Thracian Apsinthians, who sacrificed him to their local god Pleistorus in their own manner, and killed his companions in a different way. Those with Artayctes, who had set out to flee later, were overtaken, still few in number, beyond the river Aegospotami; after resisting for a long time some were killed and others taken alive. The Greeks bound them and led them to Sestos,
and with them Artayctes himself in bonds, along with his son. One of the guards, it is said, was roasting salted fish when a portent occurred among the Chersonesites: the salted fish lying on the fire leapt and writhed as though they were freshly caught. Those standing around were amazed, but Artayctes, when he saw the portent, called to the man roasting the fish and
said, "Athenian stranger, do not be afraid of this portent — it was not shown to you, but to me it signals that Protesilaus at Elaeus, even though dead and reduced to a salted fish, has power from the gods to punish the one who wronged him. Now I am willing to offer this as compensation: in place of the treasures I took from the sanctuary, I will pay the god a hundred talents, and in place of myself
and my son, I will give the Athenians two hundred talents, if I am spared." With these promises he did not persuade the general Xanthippus, for the people of Elaeus, seeking vengeance for Protesilaus, demanded that he be put to death, and the general's own inclination led the same way. So they led him off to the place where Xerxes had bridged the strait — or, as some say, to the hill above the city of Madytus — and nailing him to planks, they hung him up there;
and his son they stoned to death before Artayctes' own eyes. Having done this, they sailed back to Greece, bringing with them the other treasures and also the tackle of the bridges, to dedicate in the temples. Nothing further happened that year beyond this. Now the ancestor of this Artayctes who was hanged, Artembares, was the man who proposed to the Persians the plan which they
took up and brought to Cyrus, saying the following: "Since Zeus grants leadership to the Persians, and among men to you, Cyrus, having brought down Astyages, come, since we possess a small and rugged land, let us leave it and take possession of another, better one. There are many such lands bordering us, and many farther off; if we take one of these we shall be admired by more people. It is fitting that a ruling people should do such things, for when
will we have a better opportunity than now, when we rule over many peoples and the whole of Asia?" Cyrus, hearing this, was not impressed by the proposal, but told them to go ahead and do it — though he warned them, as he did so, to prepare themselves no longer to be rulers but to be ruled; for soft lands, he said, tend to breed soft men, since it is not the nature of any one land to produce
both wonderful crops and men good at war. So the Persians, recognizing this and yielding to Cyrus' judgment, went away and abandoned the plan, choosing rather to rule while living in a harsh land than to be slaves to others while farming a plain.