Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/325

RESTORA riON OF PERSIAN DOMINION. 307 the neighboring towns in Karia. 1 During the next summer, the Phenician fleet having wintered at Miletus, the Persian forces by sea and land reconquered all the Asiatic Greeks, insular as well as continental. Chios, Lesbos, and Tenedos, the towns in the Chersonese, Selymbria and Perinthus in Thrace, Prokonnesus and Artake in the Propontis, all these towns were taken or sacked by the Persian and Phenician fleet. 2 The inhabitants of Byzantium and Chalkedon fled for the most part, without even awaiting its arrival, to Mesembria, and the Athe- nian Miltiades only escaped Persian captivity by a rapid flight from his abode in the Chersonese to Athens. His pursuers were B.C.; which I am inclined to believe a year later if not two years later- than the reality. Indeed, as Mr. Clinton places the expedition of Aristag- oras against Naxos (which was immediately before the breaking out of the revolt, since Aristagoras seized the Ionic despots while that fleet yet re- mained congregated immediately at the close of the expedition) in 501 B.C., and as Herodotus expressly says that Miletus was taken in the sixth year after the revolt, it would follow that this capture ought to belong to 495, and not to 494 B.C. I incline to place it either in 496, or in 495 ; and the Naxian expedition in 502 or 501, leaning towards the earlier of the two dates : Schultz agrees with Larcher in placing the Naxian expedition in 504 B.C., yet he assigns the capture of Miletus to 496 B.C., whereas, Herod- otus states that the last of these two events was in the sixth year after the revolt, which revolt immediately succeeded on the first of the two, within the same summer. Weissenborn places the capture of Miletus in 496 B.C., and the expedition to Naxos in 499, suspecting that the text in Herodotus eKTu ire'i is incorrect, and that it ought to be rerupru erei', the fourth year (p. 125: compare the chronological table in his work, p. 222). He attempts to show that the particular incidents composing the Ionic revolt, as Herodotus recounts it, cannot be made to occupy more than four years ; but his reasoning is, in my judgment, unsatisfactory, and the conjecture inadmissible. The distinct affirmation of the historian, as to the entire interval between the two events, is of much more evidentiary value than our conjectural summing up of the details. It is vain, I think, to tiy to arrange these details according to precise years : this can only be done very loosely. 1 Herodot. vi, 25. 8 Herodot. vi, 31-33. It may perhaps be to this burning and sacking ot the cities in the Propontis, and on the Asiatic side of the Hellespont, that Strabo (xiii, p. 591 ) makes allusion ; though he ascribes the proceeding to a different cause, to the fear of Darius that the Scythians would cross into Asia to avenge themselves upon him for attacking them, and tht the the coast would furnish them with vessels for the passage.