Moreover, Sparta, the great war state of Greece, had been applied to,
and had promised succor to Athens, though the religious observance which
the Dorians paid to certain times and seasons had for the present
delayed their march. Was it not wise, at any rate, to wait till the
Spartans came up, and to have the help of the best troops in Greece,
before they exposed themselves to the shock of the dreaded Medes?

Specious as these reasons might appear, the other five generals were for
speedier and bolder operations. And, fortunately for Athens and for the
world, one of them was a man, not only of the highest military genius,
but also of that energetic character which impresses its own type and
ideas upon spirits feebler in conception.

Miltiades was the head of one of the noblest houses at Athens. He ranked
the AEacidae among his ancestry, and the blood of Achilles flowed in the
veins of the hero of Marathon. One of his immediate ancestors had
acquired the dominion of the Thracian Chersonese, and thus the family
became at the same time Athenian citizens and Thracian princes. This
occurred at the time when Pisistratus was tyrant of Athens. Two of the
relatives of Miltiades--an uncle of the same name, and a brother named
Stesagoras--had ruled the Chersonese before Miltiades became its prince.
He had been brought up at Athens in the house of his father, Cimon,[43]
who was renowned throughout Greece for his victories in the Olympic
chariot-races, and who must have been possessed of great wealth.

[Footnote 43: Herodotus.]

The sons of Pisistratus, who succeeded their father in the tyranny at
Athens, caused Cimon to be assassinated; but they treated the young
Miltiades with favor and kindness and when his brother Stesagoras died
in the Chersonese, they sent him out there as lord of the principality.
This was about twenty-eight years before the battle of Marathon, and it
is with his arrival in the Chersonese that our first knowledge of the
career and character of Miltiades commences. We find, in the first act
recorded of him, the proof of the same resolute and unscrupulous spirit
that marked his mature age. His brother's authority in the principality
had been shaken by war and revolt: Miltiades determined to rule more
securely. On his arrival he kept close within his house, as if he was
mourning for his brother. The principal men of the Chersonese, hearing
of this, assembled from all the towns and districts, and went together