misfortunes.--SMITH.]

In the battle of Marathon, which succeeded these events, we have a
vivid picture presented to us in Creasy's glowing words:

Two thousand three hundred and forty years ago a council of Athenian
officers was summoned on the slope of one of the mountains that look
over the plain of Marathon, on the eastern coast of Attica. The
immediate subject of their meeting was to consider whether they should
give battle to an enemy that lay encamped on the shore beneath them; but
on the result of their deliberations depended, not merely the fate of
two armies, but the whole future progress of human civilization.

There were eleven members of that council of war. Ten were the generals
who were then annually elected at Athens, one for each of the local
tribes into which the Athenians were divided. Each general led the men
of his own tribe, and each was invested with equal military authority.
But one of the archons was also associated with them in the general
command of the army. This magistrate was termed the "Polemarch" or
War-ruler, He had the privilege of leading the right wing of the army in
battle, and his vote in a council of war was equal to that of any of the
generals. A noble Athenian named Callimachus was the war-ruler of this
year, and, as such, stood listening to the earnest discussion of the ten
generals. They had, indeed, deep matter for anxiety, though little aware
how momentous to mankind were the votes they were about to give, or how
the generations to come would read with interest the record of their
discussions. They saw before them the invading forces of a mighty
empire, which had in the last fifty years shattered and enslaved nearly
all the kingdoms and principal cities of the then known world. They knew
that all the resources of their own country were comprised in the little
army intrusted to their guidance. They saw before them a chosen host of
the great king, sent to wreak his special wrath on that country and on
the other insolent little Greek community which had dared to aid his
rebels and burn the capital of one of his provinces. That victorious
host had already fulfilled half its mission of vengeance.

Eretria, the confederate of Athens in the bold march against Sardis nine
years before, had fallen in the last few days; and the Athenian generals
could discern from the heights the island of AEgilia, in which the
Persians had deposited their Eretrian prisoners, whom they ha