Greece -- History -- To 146 B.C.; History, Ancient
119. Now as to those Eretrians who had been reduced to slavery, Datis
and Artaphrenes, when they reached Asia in their voyage, brought them
up to Susa; and king Dareios, though he had great anger against the
Eretrians before they were made captive, because the Eretrians had done
wrong to him unprovoked, yet when he saw that they had been brought up
to him and were in his power, he did them no more evil, but established
them as settlers in the Kissian land upon one of his own domains, of
which the name is Ardericca: and this is distant two hundred and ten
furlongs from Susa and forty from the well which produces things of
three different kinds; for they draw from it asphalt, salt and oil, in
the manner which here follows:--the liquid is drawn with a swipe, to
which there is fastened half a skin instead of a bucket, and a man
strikes this down into it and draws up, and then pours it into a
cistern, from which it runs through into another vessel, taking three
separate ways. The asphalt and the salt become solid at once, and the
oil 108 which is called by the Persians rhadinake, is black and gives
out a disagreeable smell. Here king Dareios established the Eretrians
as settlers; and even to my time they continued to occupy this land,
keeping still their former language. Thus it happened with regard to the
Eretrians.
120. Of the Lacedemonians there came to Athens two thousand after the
full moon, making great haste to be in time, so that they arrived in
Attica on the third day after leaving Sparta: and though they had come
too late for the battle, yet they desired to behold the Medes; and
accordingly they went out to Marathon and looked at the bodies of the
slain: then afterwards they departed home, commending the Athenians and
the work which they had done.
121. Now it is a cause of wonder to me, and I do not accept the report,
that the Alcmaionidai could ever have displayed to the Persians a shield
by a previous understanding, with the desire that the Athenians
should be under the Barbarians and under Hippias; seeing that they are
evidently proved to have been haters of despots as much or more than
Callias the son of Phainippos and father of Hipponicos, while Callias
for his part was the only man of all the Athenians who dared, when
Peisistratos was driven out of Athens, to buy his goods offered for sale
by the State, and in other ways also he contrived against him everything
that was most hostile:
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