500 B. C.-400 B. C.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.

(The dates given for this century are more or less conjectural.)

PROMINENT NAMES OF THE CENTURY.

GREECE.

Statesmen, Generals, and Orators. - Leonidas, Miltiades, Pausanias, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, Nicias, Alcibiades, Thrasybulus, Critias, Lysander, Xenophon, Gorgias, Isocrates.

Poets and Dramatists. - Anacreon, Simonides, Eschylus, Pindar, Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes.

Philosophers, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Zeno (of Elea), Empedocles, Protagoras, Socrates, Democritus, Plato.

Sculptors and Painters. — Phidias, Polycletus, Polygnotus, Alcamenes, Zeuxis, Parrhasius, Apollodorus.

PERSIA.

Principal Sovereigns. — Darius I. (Hystaspis), Xerxes I., Artaxerxes I. (Longimanus), Xerxes II., Darius II. (Nothus).

ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE PERSIAN WAR.

That great conflict from which Europe dates its intellectual and

PERSI

ERSIA was the chief power of the known world at this time, but the main interest of Persian history centres in her relations with Greece. Some Greek cities of Ionia, in Asia Minor, subject to Darius, monarch of Persia, revolted in the year 500 B. C. They received help from Athens, one of the chief cities of Greece. Darius quickly put down the revolt, but was much provoked with the Athenians for their interference, and resolved to punish them.

He [Darius] treated with great contempt the revolt of the Ionians, well knowing who they were, and that their revolt would soon be put down; but he desired to know who, and what manner of men, the Athenians were. On being told, he called for his bow, and shooting an arrow into the air he exclaimed, "Suffer me, O Jupiter, to be revenged on these Athenians." He afterwards directed one of his attendants to repeat to him three times every day, when he sat down to table, "Sire, remember the Athenians." - HERODOTUS.

This revolt brought on the Persian War, in 490 B. C.

The memorable tragedy (to adopt on this occasion an apt allusion of Plutarch), which ended in the eternal disgrace of the Persian

name, may be divided, with propriety, into three principal acts. The first contains the invasion of Greece by Darius' generals, Datis and Artaphernes, who were defeated in the battle of Marathon. The second consists in the expedition, undertaken ten years afterwards by Xerxes, the son and successor of Darius, who fled precipitately from Greece, after the ruin of his fleet near the isle of Salamis. The third and concluding act is the destruction of the Persian armies in the bloody fields of Mycale and Platea; events concurring on the same day, and which happened nearly two years after Xerxes' triumphal entry into Greece. GILLIES.

Marathon.

The first and most important battle of the Persian War, and one of the most momentous in history, was that of Marathon. At the plain of Marathon, near Athens, a small Athenian force of about ten thousand men (with the help of six hundred men from Platæa), under the famous general Miltiades, routed a Persian army of perhaps one hundred and ten thousand, in 490 B. C. This memorable battle, resulting as it did in the defeat of the power which had conquered the greater part of the known world, first taught the Greeks their own strength; and the evidence which it afforded them of their ability to repel the immense forces of Persia was of the greatest importance to them when considered in reference to the subsequent contests in which they were destined to engage.

This was the first of all the victories of the West over the East, the first battle which showed how skill and discipline can prevail over mere numbers. As such, it is perhaps the most memorable battle in the history of the world. — FREEMAN.

At Marathon for Greece the Athenians fought;
And low the Medians' gilded power they brought.

SIMONIDES.

That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon.-SAMUEL JOHNSON.

If we turn to the map of the Old World [see map for this century] to test the comparative territorial resources of the two states whose armies were now about to come into conflict, the immense preponderance of the material power of the Persian King over that of the Athenian republic is more striking than any similar contrast which history can supply. Nor was there any power to the westward of Greece that could have offered an effectual opposition to Persia, had she once conquered Greece and made that country a basis for future military operations. Rome was at this time in her season of utmost weakness. Had Persia beaten Athens at Marathon, she could have found no obstacle to prevent Darius from advancing his sway over all the known Western races of mankind. The infant energies of Europe would have been trodden out beneath universal conquest, and the history of the world, like the history of Asia, would have become a mere record of the rise and fall of despotic dynasties, of the incursions of barbarous hordes, and of the mental and political prostration of millions beneath the diadem, the tiara, and the sword. - CREASY.

Hitherto the very name of Medes had struck terror into the hearts of the Greeks; and the Athenians were the first to endure the sight of their armor, and to look them in the face on the field of battle. HERODOTUS.

Nulla unquam tam exigua manus tantas opes prostravit.

CORNELIUS NEPOS.

The most remarkable [victory] for the disproportion of the parties engaged that history has recorded. COLONEL LEAKE.

There fell in this battle of Marathon, on the side of the barbarians, about six thousand and four hundred men; on that of the Athenians, one hundred and ninety-two. - HERODOTUS.

The disproportion between the two armies was far less than has generally been imagined. The Persian combatants were to the Greek as five to one, or possibly as six to one . . . and victories have often been gained against equal or greater odds, both in ancient and modern times. RAWLINSON.

...

Nor was the number of combatants confined to men then living in the flesh. The old heroes of the land rose to mingle in the fray; and every night from that time forth might be heard the neighing of phantom horses and the clashing of swords and spears. Thus were prolonged the echoes of the old, mysterious battle; and the peasants

would have it that the man who went to listen from mere motives of prying curiosity would get no good to himself, while the Daimones or presiding deities of the place bore no grudge against the wayfarer who might find himself accidentally belated in the field.-G. W. Cox. Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon.

The battle-field, where Persia's victim horde
First bowed beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword,
As on the morn to distant glory dear,
When Marathon became a magic word;
Which uttered, to the hearer's eye appear

The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career.

The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow;
The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear;
Mountains above, Earth's, Ocean's plain below,
Death in the front, Destruction in the rear!
Such was the scene.

I could believe that under such a sky,

BYRON.

Thus grave, thus streakt with thunderlight of yore,
The small Athenian troop rushed onward, more

As Bacchanals than men about to die.

How weak that massive, motley enemy

Seemed to those hearts, full-fed on that high lore,
Which for their use, in his melodious store,

Old Homer had laid up immortally.

Thus Marathon was Troy, - thus here again

They were at issue with the barbarous East,

And favoring Gods spoke out, and walkt the plain;
And every man was an anointed priest

Of Nemesis, empoweréd to chastise

The rampant insolence that would not be made wise.

LORD HOUGHTON.

When the traveller pauses on the plains of Marathon, what are the emotions which most strongly agitate his breast? Not, I imagine, that Grecian skill and Grecian valor were here most signally displayed; but that Greece herself was here saved. It is because to this spot, and to the event which has rendered it immortal, he refers all the succeeding glories of the republic. It is because if that day had gone otherwise, Greece had perished. It is because he perceives that her philosophers and orators, her poets and painters, her sculptors