Artaphernes, brother of the reigning king Darius, the governor of Lydia.

The Persian had not at this time ever heard the name of Athens, and peremptorily demanded homage; the ambassadors yielded to the demand, but the state revoked it at their return with indignation; for the Corinthians had in the mean time taken measures very favourable to their interests, by separating from the Lacedæmonian alliance, and protesting strongly against the proposal of restoring Hippias; their opposition seems to have been founded in principle, having lately experienced a tyranny of the same sort in their own persons, and they carried their point by compelling Hippias to return in despair to Sigeum, from whence he betook himself to Lampsacus, where he began to cabal in the court of Æntides the tyrant, who was in great favour with the Persian monarch. By this channel Hippias introduced himself to Darius, and with all the inveteracy of an exiled sovereign, not abated by age or length of absence, became a principal instrument for promoting his expedition into Greece, which concluded in the memorable battle of Marathon, at which he was present, twenty years after his expulsion.

It was fortunate for the liberties of Athens, that when she sent her embassy to Artaphernes, he required as an indispensable condition of his aid that Hippias should be re-established in his tyranny. A more dangerous step could not have been resolved upon than this of inviting the assistance of the Persian, and in this applauded era of liberty it is curious to remark such an instance of debasement, as this embassy into Lydia: the memory however of past oppression was yet too fresh and poignant to suffer the Athenians to submit to the condition required, and nothing remained but to prepare them

selves to face the resentment of this mighty power: with this view they gave a favourable reception to Aristogaras the Milesian, who was canvassing the several states of Greece, to send supplies to the Ionians then on the point of falling under the dominion of Persia: Lacedæmon had refused to listen to him, and peremptorily dismissed him out of their territory. From Athens he obtained the succours he solicited, in twenty galleys well manned and appointed the Athenian forces, after some successful operations, suffered a defeat by sea, and the breach with Persia became incurable. Before the storm broke immediately upon Athens, the Persian armies were employed against the frontier colonies and islands of Greece with uninterrupted success: they defeated the Phoenician fleet and reduced Cyprus; many cities on the Hellespontic coast were added to their empire; in the confines of the Troade several places were taken; impressions were made upon Ionia and Æolia by the forces of Artamenes and Otanes, and in farther process of the war the rich and beautiful city of Miletus was besieged and taken, and the inhabitants of both sexes removed into the Persian territories, and colonized upon new lands: the isles of Chios, Lesbos, and Tenedos, shared the same fate, and not a city in Ionia, that had been involved in the defection, but was subjected in its turn in the Hellespont and Propontis every thing on the European shore was reduced, together with the important station of Chalcedon; the like success followed their arms in the Thracian Chersonesus. These operations were succeeded by the next year's campaign under the conduct of Mardonius, the son of a sister of Darius, a young and inexperienced general; and the check, which the power of Persia received this year by the wreck and dispersion of their fleet off the coast of Macedonia,

under Mount Athos, in the Singitic bay, afforded the first seasonable respite from the ill-fortune of the war.

At length the formidable torrent, which had so long threatened Athens at a distance, seemed ready to burst upon her, and surely a more unequal contest never occupied the attention of mankind. Mardonius, who had been so unsuccessful in his first campaign, was now superseded, and the vast army of Persia was put under the joint command of Datis a Mede, and the younger Artaphernes, nephew to King Darius and son to the prefect of Lydia. These commanders pursued a different route by sea from what Mardonius had taken, avoiding the unlucky coast of Macedonia, and falling upon Euboea in the neighbourhood of Attica by a straight course through the Ægean sea. Having reduced the city of Carystus, they laid siege to Eritria the capital of Eubœa; the Athenians had reinforced the garrison with four thousand troops; but although the Eretrians for a time stood resolutely to the defence of their city, it was given up by treachery on the seventh day, and pillaged and destroyed in a most barbarous manner, the very temples being involved in the common ruin and conflagration..

Having struck this stroke of terror under the very eye of Athens, the Persians embarked their troops, and passing them over the narrow channel, which separates Attica from Euboea, landed for the first time on Athenian ground, and encamped their vast army upon the sandy plain of Marathon.

Hippias, who had been now twenty years in exile, and in whose aged bosom the fires of ambition were not yet extinguished, accompanied the Persian forces into his native country, and according to the most probable accounts was slain in action. If any death can be glorious in a guilty cause, this of Hip

pias may be so accounted; to have brought three hundred thousand men in arms, after a career of victory, landed them on the Athenian territory, and there to have put the very existence of his country to the issue of a combat, was an astonishing effort both of mind and body, at a period of life which human nature rarely attains to. Ten thousand Greeks under the command of Miltiades discomfited this overgrown host in a pitched battle upon an open plain, where all the Persian numbers could act; but it has often happened that a small band of disciplined warriors have worsted an irregular multitude, how great soever. The army of Darius was broken and repulsed: six thousand were left on the field, and the fugitives returned into Asia overwhelmed with shame and disappointment.

This memorable day established the liberty and the glory of Athens, and from this we are to look forward to the most illuminated age in the annals of mankind. Though Hippias had several children, who survived him, yet as his descendants never gave any farther disturbance to the liberties and constitution of Athens, we are henceforward to consider the race of Pisistratus as historically extinct.

The friend of freedom, who reviews them as tyrants, will dismiss them with reproach; we who have regarded them only as patrons of literature, may take leave of them with a sigh.

NUMBER CXXXI.

Graiis ingenium; Graiis dedit ore rotundo

Musa loqui, præter laudem nullius avaris.-HORAT.

THE advances which the drama had made within the period now reviewed, were considerable; for the tragic poets Pratinas, Chærilus, Phrynichus and Eschylus were in possession of the stage, whilst Epicharmus and Phormis in Sicily, Chionides, Dinolochus, Evetes, Euxenides, Mylus and others in Attica, were writing comedy. Bacchus and his Satyrs were expelled, and a new species of composition, built upon short fables selected from the poems of Homer, succeeded to the village mask, and numbers of ingenious competitors began to apply themselves to the work.

Thespis had been acting tragedies, but Thespis was one of those early dramatists, who come under the description of Οἱ περὶ Διόνυσον, writers about Bacchus.

Pratinas succeeded Thespis, and wrote fifty tragedies, if they may be so called, when two-andthirty of the number were satiric, or allusive to the Satyrs. He was a Peloponnesian of the celebrated city of Philus, but resorted to Athens for the purpose of representing his dramas: he entered the lists with Charilus and Eschylus about the time of Olymp. lxx. some years antecedent to the battle of Marathon: he bore away the prize from his competitors with one composition only; on all other occasions he saw the palm decreed on the superior merit or better interest of his rivals.

Plays were still exhibited upon scaffolds or in