iously made his way back to the Hellespont. So ended the
first invasion of Greece.

Three years afterwards another was made. Darius, indeed, first sent
heralds to Greece, demanding _earth and water_ in token of submission to
his will. To this demand some of the cities cowardly yielded; but
Athens, Sparta, and others sent back the heralds with no more earth than
clung to the soles of their shoes. And so, as Greece was not to be
subdued through terror of his name, the great king prepared to make it
feel his power and wrath, incited thereto by his hatred of Athens, which
Hippias took care to keep alive. Another expedition was prepared, and
put under the command of another general, Datis by name.

The army was now sent by a new route. Darius himself had led his army
across the Bosphorus, where Constantinople now stands, and where
Byzantium then stood. Mardonius conveyed his across the southern strait,
the Hellespont. The third expedition was sent on shipboard directly
across the sea, landing and capturing the islands of the AEgean as it
advanced. Landing at length on the large island of Euboea, near the
coast of Attica, Datis stormed and captured the city of Eretria, burnt
its temples, and dragged its people into captivity. Then, putting his
army on shipboard again, he sailed across the narrow strait between
Euboea and Attica, and landed on Attic soil, in the ever-memorable Bay
of Marathon.

It seemed now, truly, as if Darius was about to gain his wish and
revenge himself on Athens. The plain of Marathon, where the great
Persian army had landed and lay encamped, is but twenty-two miles from
Athens by the nearest road,--scarcely a day's march. The plain is about
six miles long, and from a mile and a half to three miles in width,
extending back from the sea-shore to the rugged hills and mountains
which rise to bind it in. A brook flows across it to the sea, and
marshes occupy its ends. Such was the field on which one of the decisive
battles of the world was about to be fought.

[Illustration: RUINS OF THE PARTHENON.]

The coming of the Persians had naturally filled the Athenians and all
the neighboring nations of Greece with alarm. Yet if any Athenian had a
thought of submission without fighting, he was wise enough to keep it to
himself. The Athenians of that day were a very different people from
what they had been fifty years before, when they tamely submitted to the
tyranny of Pisistratus. They had gained new laws, and