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CHAPTER VIII.

IONIA.

"O for a tongue to curse the slave,
Whose treason, like a deadly blight,
Comes o'er the counsels of the brave,
And blasts them in their hour of might!"
Moore, "Fire-Worshippers."

Darius had not forgotten the good service done him by Histiæus of Miletus, in preserving the Danube bridge for him on his hurried retreat from the Scythian expedition. He had given him a grant of land in Thrace, in a most desirable position for a new settlement. But he was afterwards persuaded that he had done wrong. A shrewd Greek would be tempted to form there the nucleus of an independent power. He therefore sent for Histiæus, and detained him in an honourable captivity in his own court at Susa. And this detention led to the great Persian war.

There was a revolution in the little island of Naxos. "The men of substance," as they were literally called, were expelled, and came to Miletus begging Aristagoras, now deputy-governor in the absence of his father-in-law Histiæus, to restore them. Thinking to get Naxos for himself, Aristagoras procured the aid of