But Artaphernes gave them in reply a menacing command to receive Hippias back again if they looked for safety.  The Athenians were resolved not to purchase safety at such a price, and after rejecting the satrap’s terms, they considered that they and the Persians were declared enemies.  At this very crisis the Ionian Greeks implored the assistance of their European brethren, to enable them to recover their independence from Persia.  Athens, and the city of Eretria in Euboea, alone consented.  Twenty Athenian galleys, and five Eretrian, crossed the AEgean Sea, and by a bold and sudden march upon Sardis, the Athenians and their allies succeeded in capturing the capital city of the haughty satrap who had recently menaced them with servitude or destruction.  They were pursued, and defeated on their return to the coast, and Athens took no further part in the Ionian war; but the insult that she had put upon the Persian power was speedily made known throughout that empire, and was never to be forgiven or forgotten.

In the emphatic simplicity of the narrative of Herodotus, the wrath of the Great King is thus described:  “Now when it was told to King Darius that Sardis had been taken and burned by the Athenians and Ionians, he took small heed of the Ionians, well knowing who they were, and that their revolt would soon be put down; but he asked who, and what manner of men, the Athenians were.  And when he had been told, he called for his bow; and, having taken it, and placed an arrow on the string, he let the arrow fly toward heaven; and as he shot it into the air, he said, ’Oh! supreme God, grant me that I may avenge myself on the Athenians,’ And when he had said this, he appointed one of his servants to say to him every day as he sat at meat, ‘Sire, remember the Athenians.’”

Some years were occupied in the complete reduction of Ionia.  But when this was effected, Darius ordered his victorious forces to proceed to punish Athens and Eretria, and to conquer European Greece, The first armament sent for this purpose was shattered by shipwreck, and nearly destroyed off Mount Athos.  But the purpose of King Darius was not easily shaken, A larger army was ordered to be collected in Cilicia, and requisitions were sent to all the maritime cities of the Persian empire for ships of war, and for transports of sufficient size for carrying cavalry as well as infantry across the AEgean.  While these preparations were being made, Darius sent heralds round to the Grecian cities demanding their submission to Persia.  It was proclaimed in the market-place of each little Hellenic state—­some with territories not larger than the Isle of Wight—­that King Darius, the lord of all men, from the rising to the setting sun,[44] required earth and water to be delivered to his heralds, as a symbolical acknowledgment that he was head and master of the country.  Terror-stricken at the power of Persia and at the severe punishment that had recently been inflicted on the refractory Ionians, many of the continental Greeks and nearly all the islanders submitted, and gave the required tokens of vassalage.  At Sparta and Athens an indignant refusal was returned—­a refusal which was disgraced by outrage and violence against the persons of the Asiatic heralds.