The great Persian War and its preliminaries : $b A study of the evidence, literary and topographicalGrundy, G. B. (George Beardoe)
History
The great Persian War and its preliminaries : $b A study of the evidence, literary and topographical
Grundy, G. B. (George Beardoe)
Greece -- History -- Persian Wars, 500-449 B.C.
At Athens the fall of the great city created more than a momentary
impression. Phrynichos composed a drama on the subject which aroused so
bitter a sense of loss in the mind of the Athenians that they punished
the dramatist by a fine of a thousand drachmas. It is possible that
self-reproach was mingled with regret. The desertion of 498 was so
sudden, and is, in certain respects, so unaccountable, that it may well
have provoked considerable feeling even in Athens itself.
Herodotus draws a contrast between the emotion of Athens and the apathy
of the Sybarites. When Sybaris was destroyed by Kroton about the year
510, the whole Milesian population had mourned the loss of their
old commercial friend.
The last twenty years had been fateful in the history of Greek
trade. Sybaris, Chalkis, and Miletus—three of the greatest names in
the history of Greek commerce—had successively fallen; and their
disappearance from the stage of the commercial world must have greatly
modified that obscure but powerful factor in Greek history. It will
be a matter for later consideration whether the disappearance of
these competitors, especially from the western trade route, had not
a powerful influence in shaping the events of the later half of the
century.
Of the individual fortunes of the rest of the Asiatic Greek cities,
Herodotus says but little. Among the Samians, the divided counsels
in their contingent at Ladé seem to have given birth to such bitter
dissensions that a section of the population which had remained loyal
to the revolt left the island and set sail for Sicily, whence an
invitation had come from the people of Zanklé, calling such Ionians as
would to settle at Kale Akte on the north coast of the island. Their
adventures are related by Herodotus.[45] It is not necessary to follow
them thither. Suffice it to say that the gross treachery of their
conduct to their would-be hosts upon their arrival there affords one of
those painful and striking examples of the co-existence in the Greek
race of great virtues and great defects.
◆H. vi. 25.◆
Æakes, the tyrant who had negotiated the treachery at Ladé, as a reward
for his services on that occasion, was reinstated in Samos by the
Phœnician fleet. The city and its temples were left untouched.
“Immediately after the capture of Miletus,” says Herodotus, “the
Persians got possession of Caria, some of the cities submitting
voluntarily, and others being reduced by force.”
The part played by Caria, as described in the narrative of the revolt,
is quite incomprehensible. What had she been doing during the time that
had intervened since the great defeat of the Persians on the Pedasos
road? #SUBJUGATION OF CARIA.# The interval cannot, upon any calculation
from the facts mentioned by Herodotus, have amounted to less than
two years. Were the Carians during all this time inactive, sullenly
awaiting their fate? Their story during these years is a lost chapter
in history.
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