instructions, went privately, in the night, perhaps, and with very
few attendants, to this temple. He attempted to enter by the gates,
which he had expected, it seems, to find open. They were, however,
fastened against him. He then undertook to scale the palisade. He
succeeded in doing this, not, however, without difficulty, and then
advanced toward the temple, in obedience to the instructions which he
had received from Timo. The account states that the act, whatever it
was, that Timo had directed him to perform, instead of being, as he
supposed, a means of propitiating the favor of the divinity, was
sacrilegious and impious; and Miltiades, as he approached the temple,
was struck suddenly with a mysterious and dreadful horror of mind,
which wholly overwhelmed him. Rendered almost insane by this
supernatural remorse and terror, he turned to fly. He reached the
palisade, and, in endeavoring to climb over it, his precipitation and
haste caused him to fall. His attendants ran to take him up. He was
helpless and in great pain. They found he had dislocated a joint in
one of his limbs. He received, of course, every possible attention;
but, instead of recovering from the injury, he found that the
consequences of it became more and more serious every day. In a word,
the great conqueror of the Persians was now wholly overthrown, and lay
moaning on his couch as helpless as a child.

He soon determined to abandon the siege of Paros and return to Athens.
He had been about a month upon the island, and had laid waste the
rural districts, but, as the city had made good its defense against
him, he returned without any of the rich spoil which he had promised.
The disappointment which the people of Athens experienced on his
arrival, turned soon into a feeling of hostility against the author of
the calamity. Miltiades found that the fame and honor which he had
gained at Marathon were gone. They had been lost almost as suddenly as
they had been acquired. The rivals and enemies who had been silenced
by his former success were now brought out and made clamorous against
him by his present failure. They attributed the failure to his own
mismanagement of the expedition, and one orator, at length, advanced
articles of impeachment against him, on a charge of having been bribed
by the Persians to make his siege of Paros only a feint. Miltiades
could not defend himself from these criminations, for he was lying, at
the time, in utter helplessness, up