Democedes still pined for home, and
managed to persuade Atossa to beg the king to give her Spartan and
Athenian slaves, and to tell him some great undertaking was expected from
him. The doctor's hope in this was that he should be sent as a spy to
Greece, before the war, and should make his escape; but it was a bad way
of showing love to his country. Hippias was at Susa too, trying to stir
up Darius to attack Athens, and restore him as a tributary king; and
there was also Histiaeus, a Greek, who had been tyrant of Miletus, and
who longed to get home. All the Ionian Greeks on the coast of Asia Minor
hated the Persian rule, and Histiaeus hoped that if they revolted he
should be wanted there, so he sent a letter to his friend Aristagoras, at
Miletus, in a most curious way. He had the head of a trusty slave
shaved, then, with a red-hot pin, wrote his advice to rise against the
Persians, and, when the hair was grown again, sent the man as a present
to Aristagoras, with orders to tell him to shave his head.

Aristagoras read the letter, and went to Sparta to try to get the help of
the kings in attacking Persia. He took with him a brass plate, engraven
with a map of the world, according to the notions of the time, where it
looked quite easy to march to Susa, and win the great Eastern empire. At
first Cleomenes, the most spirited of the kings, was inclined to listen,
but when he found that this easy march would take three months he changed
his mind, and thought it beyond Spartan powers. Aristagoras went
secretly to his house, and tried to bribe him, at least, to help the
Ionians in their rising; but while higher and higher offers were being
made, Gorgo, the little daughter of Cleomenes, only eight years old, saw
by their looks that something was wrong, and cried out, "Go away, father;
this stranger will do you harm." Cleomenes took it as the voice of an
oracle, and left the stranger to himself.

He then went to Athens, and the Athenians, being Ionians themselves,
listened more willingly, and promised to aid their brethren in freeing
themselves. Together, the Athenians and a large body of Ephesians,
Milesians, and other Ionians, attacked Sardis. The Persian satrap
Artaphernes threw himself into the citadel; but the town, which was built
chiefly of wicker-work, that the houses might not be easily thrown down
by earthquakes, caught fire, and was totally burnt. The Athenians could
not stay in the flaming streets, and had