Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/372

354 HISTORY OF GREECE. and the signal was upheld by these partisans as soon as theii measures were taken. But the rapidity of Miltiades so precipi- tated the battle, that this signal came too late, and was only gwen, " when the Persians were already in their ships," 1 after the Marathonian defeat. Even then it might have proved dangerous, had not the movements of Miltiades been as rapid after the victory as before it : but if time had been allowed for tli 3 Persian movement on Athens before the battle of Marathon had been fought, the triumph of the Athenians might well have been exchanged for a calamitous servitude. To Miltiades belongs the credit of having comprehended the emergency from the beginning, and overruled the irresolution of his col- leagues by his own single-hearted energy. The chances all turned out in his favor, for the unexpected junction of the Plataeans in the very encampment of Marathon must have wrought up the courage of his army to the highest pitch : ar d not only did he thus escape all the depressing and distracting accidents, but he was fortunate enough to find this extraueous encouragement immediately preceding the battle, from a source on which he could not have calculated. I have already observed that the phase of Grecian history best known to us, amidst which the great authors from whom we draw our information lived, was one of contempt for the Per- sians in the field. And it requires some effort of imagination to call back previous feelings after the circumstances have been altogether reversed: perhaps even .ZEschylus the poet, at the time when he composed his tragedy of the Persje, to celebrate the disgraceful flight of the invader Xerxes, may have forgot- ten the emotions with which he and his brother Kynegeirus must have marched out from Athens fifteen years before, on the eve of the battle of Marathon. It must therefore be again men- tioned that, down to the time when Datis landed in the bay of Marathon, the tide of Persian success had never yet been inter rupted, and that especially during the ten years immediately preceding, the high-handed and cruel extinction of the Ionic levolt had aggravated to the highest pitch the alarm of the 1 Herodot. vi, 115. Total Hfpayoi ava6e!;cu aoirida, kovoi ^<Jif / rp<rt vqvoi.