s to join him with their ships and men, sailed onward to the
coast of Euboea. The little town of Carystus essayed resistance, but
was quickly overpowered.

He next attacked Eretria. The Athenians sent four thousand men to its
aid; but treachery was at work among the Eretrians; and the Athenian
force received timely warning from one of the leading men of the city to
retire to aid in saving their own country, instead of remaining to share
in the inevitable destruction of Eretria. Left to themselves, the
Eretrians repulsed the assaults of the Persians against their walls for
six days; on the seventh they were betrayed by two of their chiefs, and
the Persians occupied the city. The temples were burned in revenge for
the firing of Sardis, and the inhabitants were bound, and placed as
prisoners in the neighboring islet of AEgilia, to wait there till Datis
should bring the Athenians to join them in captivity, when both
populations were to be led into Upper Asia, there to learn their doom
from the lips of King Darius himself.

Flushed with success, and with half his mission thus accomplished, Datis
reembarked his troops, and, crossing the little channel that separates
Euboea from the mainland, he encamped his troops on the Attic coast at
Marathon, drawing up his galleys on the shelving beach, as was the
custom with the navies of antiquity. The conquered islands behind him
served as places of deposit for his provisions and military stores. His
position at Marathon seemed to him in every respect advantageous, and
the level nature of the ground on which he camped was favorable for the
employment of his cavalry, if the Athenians should venture to engage
him. Hippias, who accompanied him, and acted as the guide of the
invaders, had pointed out Marathon as the best place for a landing, for
this very reason. Probably Hippias was also influenced by the
recollection that forty-seven years previously, he, with his father
Pisistratus, had crossed with an army from Eretria to Marathon, and had
won an easy victory over their Athenian enemies on that very plain,
which had restored them to tyrannic power. The omen seemed cheering. The
place was the same, but Hippias soon learned to his cost how great a
change had come over the spirit of the Athenians.

But though "the fierce democracy" of Athens was zealous and true
against foreign invader and domestic tyrant, a faction existed in
Athens, as at Eretria, who were willing to purchase a party