The mind of Datis was necessarily very ill at ease. He dreaded the
wrath of Darius; for despots are very prone to consider military
failures as the worst of crimes. The expedition had not, however, been
entirely a failure. Datis had conquered many of the Greek islands, and
he had with him, on board his galleys, great numbers of prisoners, and
a vast amount of plunder which he had obtained from them. Still, the
greatest and most important of the objects which Darius had
commissioned him to accomplish had been entirely defeated, and he
felt, accordingly, no little anxiety in respect to the reception which
he was to expect at Susa.
One night he had a dream which greatly disturbed him. He awoke in the
morning with an impression upon his mind, which he had derived from
the dream, that some temple had been robbed by his soldiers in the
course of his expedition, and that the sacrilegious booty which had
been obtained was concealed somewhere in the fleet. He immediately
ordered a careful search to be instituted, in which every ship was
examined. At length they found, concealed in one of the galleys, a
golden statue of Apollo. Datis inquired what city it had been taken
from. They answered from Delium. Delium was on the coast of Attica,
near the place where the Persians had landed, at the time of their
advance on Marathon. Datis could not safely or conveniently go back
there to restore it to its place. He determined, therefore, to deposit
it at Delos for safe keeping, until it could be returned to its proper
home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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