is head. Aristagoras did so, read the tattooed message, and
immediately took steps to obey.

Word of the proposed revolt was sent by him to the other cities along
the coast, and all were found ready to join in the attempt to secure
freedom. Not only the coast settlements, but the island of Cyprus,
joined in the revolt. At the appointed time all the coast region of Asia
Minor suddenly burst into a flame of war.

Aristagoras hurried to Greece for aid, seeking it first at Sparta.
Finding no help there, he went to Athens, which city lent him twenty
ships,--a gift for which it was to pay dearly in later years. Hurrying
back with this small reinforcement, he quickly organized an expedition
to assail the Persians at the centre of their power.

Marching hastily to Sardis, the capital of Asia Minor, the revolted
Ionians took and burned that city. But the Persians, gathering in
numbers, defeated and drove them back to the coast, where the Athenians,
weary of the enterprise, took to their ships and hastened home.

When word of this raid, and the burning of Sardis by the Athenians and
Ionians, came to the ears of Darius at his far-off capital city, he
asked in wonder, "The Athenians!--who are they?" The name of this
distant and insignificant Greek city had not yet reached his kingly
ears.

He was told who the Athenians were, and, calling for his bow, he shot an
arrow high into the air, at the same time calling to the Greek deity,
"Grant me, Zeus, to revenge myself on those Athenians."

And he bade one of his servants to repeat to him three times daily, when
he sat down to his mid-day meal, "Master, remember the Athenians!"

The invaders had been easily repulsed from Sardis, but the revolt
continued, and proved a serious and stubborn one, which it took the
Persians years to overcome. The smaller cities were conquered one by
one, but the Persians were four years in preparing for the siege of
Miletus. Resistance here was fierce and bitter, but in the end the city
fell. The Persians now took a savage revenge for the burning of Sardis,
killing most of the men of this important city, dragging into captivity
the women and children, and burning the temples to the ground. The other
cities which still held out were quickly taken, and visited like
Miletus, with the same fate of fire and bloodshed. It was now 495 B.C.,
more than twenty years after the invasion of Scythia.

As for Histiaeus, he was at first blamed by Darius for the revo