[68] Certain limitations, however, are referred to below, under “Metics.”—­ED.

[69] Not to mention the Archons, whom they had not ventured to suppress.

[70] Xenophon, “Memorabilia,” iii., 7, 6.

CHAPTER XIII

WARS OF THE GREEKS

THE PERSIAN WARS

=Origin of the Persian Wars.=—­While the Greeks were completing the organization of their cities, the Persian king was uniting all the nations of the East in a single empire.  Greeks and Orientals at length found themselves face to face.  It is in Asia Minor that they first meet.

On the coast of Asia Minor there were rich and populous colonies of the Greeks;[71] Cyrus, the king of Persia, desired to subject them.  These cities sent for help to the Spartans, who were reputed the bravest of the Greeks, and this action was reported to Cyrus; he replied,[72] “I have never feared this sort of people that has in the midst of the city a place where the people assemble to deceive one another with false oaths.” (He was thinking of the market-place.) The Greeks of Asia were subdued and made subject to the Great King.

Thirty years later King Darius found himself in the presence of the Greeks of Europe.  But this time it was the Greeks that attacked the Great King.  The Athenians sent twenty galleys to aid the revolting Ionians; their soldiers entered Lydia, took Sardis by surprise and burned it.  Darius revenged himself by destroying the Greek cities of Asia, but he did not forget the Greeks of Europe.  He had decreed, they say, that at every meal an officer should repeat to him:  “Master, remember the Athenians.”  He sent to the Greek cities to demand earth and water, a symbol in use among the Persians to indicate submission to the Great King.  Most of the Greeks were afraid and yielded.  But the Spartans cast the envoys into a pit, bidding them take thence earth and water to carry to the king.  This was the beginning of the Median wars.

=Comparison of the Two Adversaries.=—­The contrast between the two worlds which now entered into conflict is well marked by Herodotus[73] in the form of a conversation of King Xerxes with Demaratus, a Spartan exile:  “‘I venture to assure you,’ said Demaratus, ’that the Spartans will offer you battle even if all the rest of the Greeks fight on your side, and if their army should not amount to more than one thousand men.’  ‘What!’ said Xerxes, ’one thousand men attack so immense an army as mine!  I fear your words are only boasting; for although they be five thousand, we are more than one thousand to one.  If they had a master like us, fear would inspire them with courage; they would march under the lash against a larger army; but being free and independent, they will have no more courage than that with which nature has endowed them.’  ‘The Spartans,’ replied Demaratus, ’are not inferior to anybody in a hand-to-hand contest,