triumph over
their fellow-citizens at the price of their country's ruin.
Communications were opened between these men and the Persian camp, which
would have led to a catastrophe like that of Eretria, if Miltiades had
not resolved and persuaded his colleagues to resolve on fighting at all
hazards.

When Miltiades arrayed his men for action, he staked on the arbitrament
of one battle not only the fate of Athens, but that of all Greece; for
if Athens had fallen, no other Greek state, except Lacedaemon, would have
had the courage to resist; and the Lacedaemonians, though they would
probably have died in their ranks to the last man, never could have
successfully resisted the victorious Persians and the numerous Greek
troops which would have soon marched under the Persian satraps, had they
prevailed over Athens.

Nor was there any power to the westward of Greece that could have
offered an effectual opposition to Persia, had she once conquered
Greece, and made that country a basis for future military operations.
Rome was at this time in her season of utmost weakness. Her dynasty of
powerful Etruscan kings had been driven out; and her infant commonwealth
was reeling under the attacks of the Etruscans and Volscians from
without, and the fierce dissensions between the patricians and plebeians
within. Etruria, with her _lucumos_ and serfs, was no match for Persia.
Samnium had not grown into the might which she afterward put forth; nor
could the Greek colonies in South Italy and Sicily hope to conquer when
their parent states had perished. Carthage had escaped the Persian yoke
in the time of Cambyses, through the reluctance of the Phoenician
mariners to serve against their kinsmen.

But such forbearance could not long have been relied on, and the future
rival of Rome would have become as submissive a minister of the Persian
power as were the Phoenician cities themselves. If we turn to Spain; or
if we pass the great mountain chain, which, prolonged through the
Pyrenees, the Cevennes, the Alps, and the Balkan, divides Northern from
Southern Europe, we shall find nothing at that period but mere savage
Finns, Celts, Slavs, and Teutons. Had Persia beaten Athens at Marathon,
she could have found no obstacle to prevent Darius, the chosen servant
of Ormuzd, from advancing his sway over all the known Western races of
mankind. The infant energies of Europe would have been trodden out
beneath universal conquest, and the history of the worl