[Footnote 44:  AEschines.]

Fresh fuel was thus added to the anger of Darius against Athens, and the Persian preparations went on with renewed vigor.  In the summer of B.C. 490, the army destined for the invasion was assembled in the Aleian plain of Cilicia, near the sea.  A fleet of six hundred galleys and numerous transports was collected on the coast for the embarkation of troops, horse as well as foot.  A Median general named Datis, and Artaphernes, the son of the satrap of Sardis, and who was also nephew of Darius, were placed in titular joint-command of the expedition.  The real supreme authority was probably given to Datis alone, from the way in which the Greek writers speak of him.

We know no details of the previous career of this officer; but there is every reason to believe that his abilities and bravery had been proved by experience, or his Median birth would have prevented his being placed in high command by Darius.  He appears to have been the first Mede who was thus trusted by the Persian kings after the overthrow of the conspiracy of the Median magi against the Persians immediately before Darius obtained the throne.  Datis received instructions to complete the subjugation of Greece, and especial orders were given him with regard to Eretria and Athens.  He was to take these two cities, and he was to lead the inhabitants away captive, and bring them as slaves into the presence of the Great King.

Datis embarked his forces in the fleet that awaited them, and coasting along the shores of Asia Minor till he was off Samos, he thence sailed due westward through the AEgean Sea for Greece, taking the islands in his way.  The Naxians had, ten years before, successfully stood a siege against a Persian armament, but they now were too terrified to offer any resistance, and fled to the mountain tops, while the enemy burned their town and laid waste their lands.  Thence Datis, compelling the Greek islanders to join him with their ships and men, sailed onward to the coast of Euboea.  The little town of Carystus essayed resistance, but was quickly overpowered.

He next attacked Eretria.  The Athenians sent four thousand men to its aid; but treachery was at work among the Eretrians; and the Athenian force received timely warning from one of the leading men of the city to retire to aid in saving their own country, instead of remaining to share in the inevitable destruction of Eretria.  Left to themselves, the Eretrians repulsed the assaults of the Persians against their walls for six days; on the seventh they were betrayed by two of their chiefs, and the Persians occupied the city.  The temples were burned in revenge for the firing of Sardis, and the inhabitants were bound, and placed as prisoners in the neighboring islet of AEgilia, to wait there till Datis should bring the Athenians to join them in captivity, when both populations were to be led into Upper Asia, there to learn their doom from the lips of King Darius himself.