that they did not put to death.
The Persian Wars: Marathon
The end of the Ionian Revolt did not mean the end of conflict between the Persians and the Greeks.
Indeed, it was only the beginning. Darius was determined to punish Athens and Eretria for their role in
aiding the Ionians in their revolt. According to Herodotus, Darius ordered one of his slaves to remind him
daily of his obligation to exact vengeance by repeating three times, “Master, remember the Athenians!”
Darius also sought to avenge himself on the other Greek poleis that had contributed military assistance
during the course of the Ionian Revolt. These latter included cities on the islands of Samos, Chios, and
Lesbos that lay just off the coast of Asia Minor. These islands were soon annexed to the Persian Empire,
which was now in a position to continue expanding westward across the Aegean Sea. In 492 BC, Darius
sent his son-in-law Mardonius with a fleet and an army to invade mainland Greece, but the army suffered
substantial losses, even before it reached Greece, at the hands of BARBARIAN tribes in Thrace, and the
navy came to grief in the northern Aegean as a result of a severe storm that arose as the fleet rounded the
promontory of Mount Athos. After this abortive attempt, Darius dispatched another fleet and another army
in 490 BC. The aim was to reduce Athens and Eretria to slavery and to restore to power the aged
Athenian tyrant Hippias, the son of Peisistratus, who had been deposed and exiled 20 years before. This
time the Persian fleet avoided the northern route and sailed straight across the Aegean, with Hippias on
board one of the ships. The Persians first attacked Eretria, which was easily overcome, especially after
the city was betrayed from inside the walls by some Persian sympathizers; or, rather, by some Eretrians
who recognized that Persian victory was inevitable and who could profit from appearing to be Persian
sympathizers. The city’s sanctuaries were burned down in retaliation for the sanctuaries of Sardis that had
been destroyed by fire during the Ionian Revolt; the surviving population of Eretria was enslaved and
transported to Asia for settlement at a site near the Euphrates River in what is today Iraq, over a distance
roughly equivalent to the distance through which members of the Cherokee Nation were forced to migrate
in AD 1838.
BARBARIAN The term used by the Greeks to refer to any non-Greek, whose unintelligible speech
was thought to resemble the nonsense syllables “bar-bar” from which the word was derived.The Persians then crossed over the channel that separates the island of Euboea from the mainland of
Greece and, following the advice of the Athenian Hippias, set up camp in the territory of Athens on the
plain of Marathon. There were in Athens, as there had been in Eretria, those who could profit from
appearing to be Persian sympathizers and there were certainly those who, for political reasons, would
have been happy to see the tyrant Hippias restored to power. It was perhaps only a matter of time before
Athens, too, was betrayed to the invaders. Further, the Athenian forces were heavily outnumbered by the
Persians and the only neighbors who sent help were the Plataeans, whose entire army numbered only in
the hundreds. The Athenians sent a messenger in great haste to the Spartans to ask them to send help
immediately. Because of the rugged terrain of much of Greece, runners rather than horsemen were often
used to transmit messages from one city to another. The distance from Athens to Sparta is slightly over
two hundred kilometers, and the Athenian runner made the journey in two days. Remarkable though his
accomplishment seems, it is even more remarkable that the Spartan army, in full battle gear, covered the
same distance in three days. But the Spartans could not commit their troops immediately; a ritual
requirement would not allow them to send an army into the field until the moon was full, which would not
be the case for another six days. When the Spartan army did finally arrive on the scene, it was too late to