Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/135

MILTIADES GOES TO THE CHERSONESE. H7 It has already been mentioned that the Athenians, even so far tack as the days of the poet Alkaeus, had occupied Sigeium in the Troad, and had there carried on war with the Mityleneans ; so that their acquisitions in these regions date much before the time of Peisistratus. Owing probably to this circumstance, an appli cation was made to them in the early part of his reign from the Doloukian Thracians, inhabitants of the Chersonese on the oppo- site side of the Hellespont, for aid against their powerful neigh- bors the AbsinthSan tribe of Thracians; and opportunity was thus offered for sending out a colony to acquire this valuable peninsula for Athens. Peisistratus willingly entered into the scheme, and Miltiades son of Kypselus, a noble Athenian, living impatiently under his despotism, was no less pleased to take the lead in executing it : his departure and that of other malcontents as founders of a colony suited the purpose of all parties. Accord- ing to the narrative of Herodotus, alike pious and picturesque, and doubtless circulating as authentic at the annual games which the Chersonesites, even in his time, celebrated to the honor of their oekist, it is the Delphian god who directs the scheme and singles out the individual. The chiefs of the dis- tressed Dolonkians went to Delphi to crave assistance towards procuring Grecian colonists, and were directed to choose for their oekist the individual who should first show them hospitality on their quitting the temple. They departed and marched all along what was called the Sacred Road, through Phocis and Boeotia to Athens, without receiving a single hospitable invita- tion ; at length they entered Athens, and passed by the house of Miltiades, while he him'self was sitting in front of it. Seeing men whose costume and arms marked them out as strangers, he invited them into his house and treated them kindly : they then apprized him that he was the man fixed upon by the oracle, and abjured him not to refuse his concurrence. After asking for him- self personally the opinion of the oracle, and receiving an affirm- ative answer, he consented ; sailing as oekist, at the head of a body of Athenian emigrants, to the Chersonese. 1 Having reached this peninsula, and having been constituted despot of the mixed Thracian and Athenian population, he lost ' Ilcrodot i .30-37