away by it; but he was naturally averse to war, without
individual energy and destitute of military genius, so that he allowed
himself to be beaten where, had he possessed anything of the instincts
of a commander, he would have been able to crush his adversary with the
sheer weight of his ships and battalions. Even after Salamis, even after
Plataea and Mycale, the resources of Hellas, split up as it was into
fifty different republics, could hardly bear comparison with those
of all Asia concentrated in the hands of one man: Xerxes must have
triumphed in the end had he persevered in his undertaking, and utilised
the inexhaustible amount of fresh material with which his empire could
have furnished him. But to do that he would have had to take a serious
view of his duties as a sovereign, as Cyrus and Darius had done, whereas
he appears to have made use of his power merely for the satisfaction of
his luxurious tastes and his capricious affections. During the winter
following his return, and while he was reposing at Sardes after the
fatigues of his campaign in Greece, he fell in love with the wife of
Masistes, one of his brothers, and as she refused to entertain his suit,
he endeavoured to win her by marrying his son Darius to her daughter
Artayntas. He was still amusing himself with this ignoble intrigue
during the year which witnessed the disasters of Plataea and Mycale, when
he was vaguely entertaining the idea of personally conducting a fresh
army beyond the AEgean: but the marriage of his son having taken place,
he returned to Susa in the autumn, accompanied by the entire court, and
from thenceforward he remained shut up in the heart of his empire. After
his departure the war lost its general character, and deteriorated into
a series of local skirmishes between the satraps in the vicinity of the
Mediterranean and the members of the league of Delos. The Phoenician
fleet played the principal part in the naval operations, but the
central and eastern Asiatics--Bactrians, Indians, Parthians, Arians,
Arachosians, Armenians, and the people from Susa and Babylon--scarcely
took any part in the struggle. The Athenians at the outset assumed the
offensive under the intelligent direction of Cimon. They expelled the
Persian garrisons from Eion and Thrace in 476. They placed successively
under their own hegemony all the Greek communities of the Asianic
littoral. Towards 466, they destroyed a fleet anchored within the Gulf
of Pamphylia, c