Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/137

SECOND MILT1ADES AT THE CHERSONESE. H3 have been enfeebled at this time (somewhere between 537-527 B.c.) not only by the strides of Persian conquest on the mainland, but also by the ruinous defeat which they suffered from Polyk- rates and the Samians. 1 Hegesistratus maintained the place against various hostile attempts, throughout all the reign of Hip- pias, so that the Athenian possessions in those regions compre- hended at this period both the Chersonese and Sigeium. 2 To the former of the two, Hippias sent out Miltiades, nephew of the first oekist, as governor, after the death of his brother Ste- sagoras. The new governor found much discontent in the penin- sula, but succeeded in subduing it by entrapping and imprisoning the principal men in each town. He farther took into his pay a regiment of five hundred mercenaries, and married Hegesipyle, daughter of the Thracian king Olorus. 3 It appears to have been about 515 B.C. that this second Miltiades went out to the Cher- sonese. 4 He seems to have been obliged to quit it for a time, after the Scythian expedition of Darius, in consequence of having incurred the hostility of the Persians ; but he was there from the beginning of the Ionic revolt until about 493 B.C., or two or three years before the battle of Marathon, on which occasion we shall find him acting commander of the Athenian army. Both the Chersonese and Sigeium, though Athenian posses- sions were, however, now tributary and dependent on Persia And it was to this quarter that Hippias, during his last years of alarm, looked for support in the event of being expelled fron> Athens: he calculated upon Sigeium as a shelter, and upon-ZEan- tides, as well as Darius, as an ally. Neither the one nor the other failed him. 1 Herodot. iii, 39. 2 Herodot. vi, 104, 139, 140. 3 Herodot. vi, 39-103. Cornelius Nepos, in his Life of Miltiades, con- founds in one biography the adventures of two persons, Miltiades son of Kypsclus, the rekist, and Miltiades son of Kimon, the victor of Marathon, the uncle and the nephew. 4 There is nothing that I know to mark the date except that it was earlier than the death of Hipparchus in 514 B.C., and also earlier than the expedi- tion of Darius against the Scythians, about 516 B.C., in which expedition Miltiades was engaged : see Mr. Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, and J. M. Schultz, Beitrag zu genaueren Zeitbestimraungen dcr Hellcn. Geschichten von del 63sten bis zur 72sten Olympiade,p. 165. in the Kieler Philologische Studien 1841.