The ingenuity of Aristodikus completely nullified the oracular response, and left the Kymæans in their original perplexity. Not choosing to surrender Paktyas, nor daring to protect him against a besieging army, they sent him away to Mitylênê, whither the envoys of Mazarês followed and demanded him; offering a reward so considerable, that the Kymæans became fearful of trusting them, and again conveyed away the suppliant to Chios, where he took refuge in the temple of Athênê Poliuchus. But here again the pursuers followed, and the Chians were persuaded to drag him from the temple and surrender him, on consideration of receiving the territory of Atarneus (a district on the continent over against the island of Lesbos) as purchase-money. Paktyas was thus seized and sent prisoner to Cyrus, who had given the most express orders for this capture: hence the unusual intensity of the pursuit. But it appears that the territory of Atarneus was considered as having been ignominiously acquired by the Chians; none even of their own citizens would employ any article of its produce for holy or sacrificial purposes.[354] [354] Herodot. i, 160. The short fragment from Charôn of Lampsakus, which Plutarch (De Malignitat. Herod. p. 859) cites here, in support of one among his many unjust censures on Herodotus, is noway inconsistent with the statement of the latter, but rather tends to confirm it. In writing this treatise on the alleged ill-temper of Herodotus, we see that Plutarch had before him the history of Charôn of Lampsakus, more ancient by one generation than the historian whom he was assailing, and also belonging to Asiatic Greece. Of course, it suited the purpose of his work to produce all the contradictions to Herodotus which he could find in Charôn: the fact that he has produced none of any moment, tends to strengthen our faith in the historian of Halikarnassus, and to show that in the main his narrative was in accordance with that of Charôn. Mazarês next proceeded to the attack and conquest of the Greeks on the coast; an enterprise which, since he soon died of illness, was completed by his successor Harpagus. The towns assailed successively made a gallant but ineffectual resistance: the Persian general by his numbers drove the defenders within their walls, against which he piled up mounds of earth, so as either to carry the place by storm or to compel surrender. All of them were reduced, one after the other: with all, the terms of subjection were doubtless harder than those which had been imposed upon them by Crœsus, because Cyrus had already refused to grant these terms to them, with the single exception of Milêtus, and because they had since given additional offence by aiding the revolt of Paktyas. The inhabitants of Priênê were sold into slavery: they were the first assailed by Mazarês, and had perhaps been especially forward in the attack made by Paktyas on Sardis.[355] [355] Herodot. i, 161-169.