Atossa, mother of the only Persian king who ever set foot in Greece, the Sultana Validi of Persia during the reign of Xerxês, was a person of commanding influence in the reign of her last husband,[467] as well as in that of her son, and filled no inconsiderable space even in Grecian imagination, as we may see both by Æschylus and Herodotus. Had her influence prevailed, the first conquering appetites of Darius would have been directed, not against the steppes of Scythia, but against Attica and Peloponnesus; at least, so Herodotus assures us. The grand object of the latter in his history is to set forth the contentions of Hellas with the barbarians or non-Hellenic world; and with an art truly epical, which manifests itself everywhere to the careful reader of his nine books, he preludes to the real dangers which were averted at Marathon and Platæa, by recounting the first conception of an invasion of Greece by the Persians,—how it originated, and how it was abandoned. For this purpose,—according to his historical style, wherein general facts are set forth as subordinate and explanatory accompaniments to the adventures of particular persons,—he give us the interesting, but romantic, history of the Krotoniate surgeon Dêmokêdês. [467] Herodot. vii, 3. ἡ γὰρ Ἄτοσσα εἶχε τὸ πᾶν κράτος. Compare the description given of the ascendency of the savage Sultana Parysatis over her son Artaxerxês Mnêmon (Plutarch, Artaxerxês, c. 16, 19, 23). Dêmokêdês, son of a citizen of Krotôn named Kalliphôn, had turned his attention in early youth to the study and practice of medicine and surgery (for that age, we can make no difference between the two), and had made considerable progress in it. His youth coincides nearly with the arrival of Pythagoras at Krotôn, (550-520,) where the science of the surgeon, as well as the art of the gymnastic trainer, seem to have been then prosecuted more actively than in any part of Greece. His father Kalliphôn, however, was a man of such severe temper, that the son ran away from him, and resolved to maintain himself by his talents elsewhere. He went to Ægina, and began to practice in his profession; and so rapid was his success, even in his first year,—though very imperfectly equipped with instruments and apparatus,[468]—that the citizens of the island made a contract with him to remain there for one year, at a salary of one talent (about three hundred and eighty-three pounds sterling, an Æginæan talent). The year afterwards he was invited to come to Athens, then under the Peisistratids, at a salary of one hundred minæ, or one and two-thirds of a talent; and in the following year, Polykratês of Samos tempted him by the offer of two talents. With that despot he remained, and accompanied him in his last calamitous visit to the satrap Orœtês: on the murder of Polykratês, being seized among the slaves and foreign attendants, he was left to languish with the rest in imprisonment and neglect.