landed. While he was thus engaged, standing on the sand, he suddenly
sneezed. He was an old man, and his teeth--those that remained--were
loose. One of them was thrown out in the act of sneezing, and it fell
into the sand. Hippias was alarmed at this occurrence, considering it
a bad omen. He looked a long time for the tooth in vain, and then
exclaimed that all was over. The joining of his tooth to his mother
earth was the event to which his dream referred, and there was now no
hope of any further fulfillment of it. He went on mechanically, after
this, in marshaling his men and preparing for battle, but his mind was
oppressed with gloomy forebodings. He acted, in consequence, feebly
and with indecision; and when the Greeks explored the field on the
morning after the battle, his body was found among the other mutilated
and ghastly remains which covered the ground.

As the Persian fleet moved, therefore, along the coast of Attica, they
had no longer their former guide. They were still, however, very
reluctant to leave the country. They followed the shore of the
peninsula until they came to the promontory of Sunium, which forms the
southeastern extremity of it. They doubled this cape, and then
followed the southern shore of the peninsula until they arrived at the
point opposite to Athens on that side. In the mean time, however, the
Spartan troops which had been sent for to aid the Athenians in the
contest, but which had not arrived in time to take part in the
battle, reached the ground; and the indications which the Persians
observed, from the decks of their galleys, that the country was
thoroughly aroused, and was every where ready to receive them,
deterred them from making any further attempts to land. After
lingering, therefore, a short time near the shore, the fleet directed
its course again toward the coasts of Asia.

The mind of Datis was necessarily very ill at ease. He dreaded the
wrath of Darius; for despots are very prone to consider military
failures as the worst of crimes. The expedition had not, however, been
entirely a failure. Datis had conquered many of the Greek islands, and
he had with him, on board his galleys, great numbers of prisoners, and
a vast amount of plunder which he had obtained from them. Still, the
greatest and most important of the objects which Darius had
commissioned him to accomplish had been entirely defeated, and he
felt, accordingly, no little anxiety in respect to the reception which