Erato   

while others were dashed violently against the rocks; some, who did
not know how to swim, were engulfed; and some died of the cold.
While thus it fared with the fleet, on land Mardonius and his army
were attacked in their camp during the night by the Brygi, a tribe
of Thracians; and here vast numbers of the Persians were slain, and
even Mardonius himself received a wound. The Brygi, nevertheless,
did not succeed in maintaining their own freedom: for Mardonius
would not leave the country till he had subdued them and made them
subjects of Persia. Still, though he brought them under the yoke,
the blow which his land force had received at their hands, and the
great damage done to his fleet off Athos, induced him to set out
upon his retreat; and so this armament, having failed disgracefully,
returned to Asia.
The year after these events, Darius received information from
certain neighbours of the Thasians that those islanders were making
preparations for revolt; he therefore sent a herald, and bade them
dismantle their walls, and bring all their ships to Abdera. The
Thasians, at the time when Histiaeus the Milesian made his attack upon
them, had resolved that, as their income was very great, they would
apply their wealth to building ships of war, and surrounding their
city with another and a stronger wall. Their revenue was derived
partly from their possessions upon the mainland, partly from the mines
which they owned. They were masters of the gold mines at
Scapte-Hyle, the yearly produce of which amounted in all to eighty
talents. Their mines in Thasos yielded less, but still were so far
prolific that, besides being entirely free from land-tax, they had a
surplus income, derived from the two sources of their territory on the
main and their mines, in common years of two hundred, and in the
best years of three hundred talents.
I myself have seen the mines in question: by far the most
curious of them are those which the Phoenicians discovered at the time
when they went with Thasus and colonised the island, which
afterwards took its name from him. These Phoenician workings are in
Thasos itself, between Coenyra and a place called Aenyra, over against
Samothrace: a huge mountain has been turned upside down in the
search for ores. Such then was the source of their wealth. On this
occasion no sooner did the Great King issue his commands than
straightway the Thasians dismantled their wall, and took their whole
fleet to Abdera.
After this Darius resolved to prove the Greeks, and try the bent
of their minds, whether they were inclined to resist him in arms or
prepared to make their submission. He therefore sent out heralds in
divers directions round about Greece, with orders to demand everywhere
earth and water for the king. At the same time he sent other heralds
to the various seaport towns which paid him tribute, and required them
to provide a number of ships of war and horse-transports.
These towns accordingly began their preparations; and the
heralds who had been sent into Greece obtained what the king had bid
them ask from a large number of the states upon the mainland, and
likewise from all the islanders whom they visited. Among these last
were included the Eginetans, who, equally with the rest, consented
to give earth and water to the Persian king.
When the Athenians heard what the Eginetans had done, believing
that it was from enmity to themselves that they had given consent, and
that the Eginetans intended to join the Persian in his attack upon
Athens, they straightway took the matter in hand. In good truth it
greatly rejoiced them to have so fair a pretext; and accordingly
they sent frequent embassies to Sparta, and made it a charge against
the Eginetans that their conduct in this matter proved them to be
traitors to Greece.
Hereupon Cleomenes, the son of Anaxandridas, who was then king
of the Spartans, went in person to Egina, intending to seize those
whose guilt was the greatest. As soon however as he tried to arrest
them, a number of the Eginetins made resistance; a certain Crius,