against them, applied to Paros; it had
furnished, or was accused of having furnished, a trireme to Datis.
Whatever baseness Miltiades betrayed in using a public force for his own
private revenge, there is nothing to make it appear that the selection
of Paros for the object of his attack was not in perfect consistency
with the real public purpose of the enterprise.

What crime in all this had Miltiades committed against the _Athenians_?
The injustice of the expedition they shared; for it would be
childishness to suppose that they sent their general out with seventy
ships, and had no idea that he would attack any one. The personal
motives which led him to direct it against Paros, however mean and
unworthy of him, are not shown to have been at variance with the
professed objects of the expedition. Nor can any one doubt for a moment
that if he had succeeded in extorting from the Parians, and others, a
large sum of money, the Athenians would have welcomed him back with
applause, as loud as the censure they bestowed on their defeated
generals, who, instead of plunder, brought them back only the disgrace
of having tried to plunder. There were those at hand ready to take
advantage of the public irritation; they accused him, and obtained his
condemnation. We are not claiming for Miltiades the praise of virtue;
nor should we make any pathetic appeal in his behalf. He was not free
from a moral delinquency; but, so far as the Athenians were concerned,
his substantial offence was failure in his enterprise.

That his friends urged no other defence but that of his previous
services, is no proof that other grounds for acquittal were not present
to their minds. They were pleading before angry and irresponsible
judges, whom it, was their object to soothe and propitiate. Would the
strain of inculpatory observations that we have been making, have
answered their purpose? To tell an angry man that he is angry, because
he is disappointed, is not the way to abate his passion. That Miltiades
_had_ disappointed them was certain; undoubtedly the best method of
defence was to remind them of the great services that he had formerly
rendered them. It was not the demands of judicial reason his advocates
had to satisfy: they were pleading before judges whose feelings of the
moment were to be the law of the moment.

"Thus closed the life of the conqueror of Marathon. The last act of
it," continues Mr Grote, "produces an impression so mournfu