He arrived there only to find that the food supplies of the island, exhausted probably by the influx of refugees, were insufficient to support his army. So he crossed over with it to the mainland, making Atarneus his base, and intending to operate from it and seize the harvest-produce of its neighbourhood, and of the valley of the Kaïkos river. ♠ “Kaikos” replaced with “Kaïkos” Here he was attacked by a large Persian army under Harpagos. A large part of his force was destroyed, and Histiæus himself was captured. ◆H. vi. 29.◆ “In the battle between the Greeks and Persians at Malene in the country at Atarneus, the Greeks resisted for a long time, but the cavalry being afterwards launched against them fell upon the Greeks. From that moment the attack became simply a cavalry affair. On the Greeks being put to flight, Histiæus, hoping that he would not perish at the hands of the king owing to his present transgression, conceived such a desire for life, that when in his flight he was overtaken by a Persian, and being overtaken was about to be stabbed to death by him, using the Persian language, he declared himself to be Histiæus the Milesian. If he had, when he was captured, been taken forthwith to King Darius, my belief is that he would have suffered no harm, but that the king would have freely forgiven him.” But so it was not to be. The great Persian officials had no intention of giving their old enemy a chance of his life. When Harpagos brought him to Sardes, Artaphernes had him executed and sent his head up to Susa. #HISTIÆUS.# Greek tradition represented Darius to have treated the poor remains with honour, as being those of a man who had been a great benefactor to the Persians and their king. Histiæus has come down in story as the arch-villain of his time. He was the most contemptible member of a hated class, as the men thought who created the story of his life, and as Herodotus, who implicitly copied the picture which they drew of him, thought also.