the Ionian section of Greek states, the supreme type is Athens.  Her early history is obscure.  The kingship seems to have ended by being, so to speak, placed in commission, the royal functions being discharged by an elected body of Archons.  Dissensions among the groups of citizens issued in the democratic Solonian constitution, which remained the basis of Athenian government, except during the despotism of the house of Pisistratus in the latter half of the sixth century B.C.  But outside of Greece proper were the numerous Dorian and Ionian colonies, really independent cities, planted in the coast districts of Asia Minor, at Cyrene and Barka in Mediterranean Africa, in Epirus (Albania), Southern Italy, Sicily, and even at Massilia in Gaul, and in Thrace beyond the proper Hellenic area.  These colonies brought the Greek world in touch with Lydia and its king, Croesus, with the one sea-going Semitic power, the Phoenicians, with the Egyptians, and more remotely with the wholly Oriental empires of Assyria and Babylon, as well as with the outer barbarians of Scythia.

Between 560 and 510 B.C., Athens was generally under the rule of the despot Pisistratus and his son Hippias.  In 510, the Pisistratidae were expelled, and Athens became a pure democracy.  Meanwhile, the Persian Cyrus had seized the Median monarchy and overthrown every other potentate in Western Asia; Egypt was added to the vast Persian dominion by his son Cambyses.  A new dynasty was established by Darius, the son of Hystaspes, who organized the empire, but failed to extend it by an incursion into European Scythia.

The revolt of the Ionic cities in Asia Minor against the governments established by the “great king” brought him in contact with the Athenians, who sent help to Ionia.  Demands for “earth and water,” i.e., the formal recognition of Persian sovereignty, sent to the apparently insignificant Greek states were insolently rejected.  Darius sent an expedition to punish Athens in particular, and the Athenians drove his army into the sea at the battle of Marathon.

Xerxes, son of Darius, organised an overwhelming force by land and sea to eat up the Greeks.  The invaders were met but hardly checked at Thermopylae, where Leonidas and the immortal three hundred fell; all Greece north of the Isthmus of Corinth was in their hands, including Athens.  But their fleet was shattered to pieces, chiefly by the Athenians under Themistocles and Aristides at Salamis, and the destruction of their land forces was completed by the united Greeks at Plataea.  A further disaster was inflicted on the same day at Mycale.

II.—­The Struggles of Athens and Sparta