There could only be one result to this. The Persians gave battle and the Ionians were defeated, some of them even disgraced themselves by sailing away {125} without fighting at all. The men of Chios refused to play the coward and fought to the end, but there were too few of them to turn the tide of battle and the Persians overcame them completely. Miletus was taken by storm, the city was destroyed by fire, the men were all put to death, and the women and children sent as slaves to Susa. The news of the fall of Miletus was a terrible blow to the Greek world. Up to that time she had been the greatest of the Greek cities. She was rich, not only in material wealth, but in all that concerned the intellectual life, and now she had fallen! It was, above all, a blow to the Athenians, for Athens and Miletus were closely bound by ties of kinship, and when an Athenian dramatist composed a drama called the "Capture of Miletus," and put it on the stage, the body of spectators fell to weeping, and the Athenians moreover fined the poet heavily on the ground that he had reminded them of their own calamities; and they ordered also that no one in future should represent this drama. Thus it came about that again the Ionians became the subjects of the Persian King. They had been punished to the utmost for daring to revolt from his power, and there was no fear that they would do it again. Darius was now free to remember the Athenians. II. MARATHON In 492 B.C. Darius sent Mardonius, a general who was high in his favour, across the Hellespont with {126} orders to march through Thrace and Macedonia, and having firmly secured their allegiance, to march on to Greece, where Athens and Eretria were to be severely punished for their share in the burning of Sardis. Darius had several reasons for this expedition: the punishment of Athens and Eretria was the one about which most was said, but as it never entered his mind that he could be defeated, Darius probably intended so to destroy the cities on the mainland that the Greeks in Ionia would see that it would be useless to rely on the help of their kinsmen should they ever think of another revolt, and so to punish the European Greeks that they would never dare to interfere again in the affairs of the Persian Empire. But underneath all these reasons were dreams of conquest. The Great King had visions of subduing the whole of Greece and of extending his empire into Europe. Preparations were made and Mardonius set out. A fleet was to sail close to the coast and to keep in constant touch with the army. All went well until Mount Athos was reached and here a great storm arose.