Page:Herodotus (Swayne).djvu/144

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134
THE HISTORY OF HERODOTUS.

of Greece; but Greek respectability was not likely to invite into its sanctuary a party of strangers "dressed in outlandish garments, and carrying long spears in their hands." At last in Attica they passed by the countryhouse of one Miltiades, son of Cypselus (a descendant of the hero of the "meal-bin").[1] The democratic Tyranny had deprived him of occupation, for he was a nobleman of the old school, who came of "a four-horse family," says our historian—had won, indeed, the great Olympic race himself—who traced his pedigree back to Ajax, and was connected with the proud Isagorids. So he sat idle in his porch, heartily sick of Pisistratus and democratic respectability. Seeing the foreign wayfarers pass, out of mere curiosity, as it would seem, he invited them into his house and entertained them. The interview was satisfactory; Miltiades consented to take out a few colonists with them to their wilds, and be their king. The first thing he did was to build them a kind of Hadrian's wall to keep back their Picts and Scots. His nephew, Stesagoras, the son of Cimon, succeeded him, and was succeeded, on his violent death, by his brother, this second Miltiades, who came out from Athens, and made himself by a coup d'état despot of the whole Chersonese—a great sin in the eyes of his democratic countrymen, who brought him to trial for it when he came to Athens, but condoned it on account of his services to the state. When the Persians, in their march of vengeance after the Ionian revolt, came to the Hellespont, he ran the gauntlet of their fleet successfully with five galleys; but he left in their hands one ship, on board of which was his son. As Miltiades had advised the king's bridge

  1. See p. 103.