Erato   

sally forth and offer battle; their only care, after it had been
resolved not to quit the city, was, if possible, to defend their
walls. And now the fortress was assaulted in good earnest, and for six
days there fell on both sides vast numbers, but on the seventh day
Euphorbus, the son of Alcimachus, and Philagrus, the son of Cyneas,
who were both citizens of good repute, betrayed the place to the
Persians. These were no sooner entered within the walls than they
plundered and burnt all the temples that there were in the town, in
revenge for the burning of their own temples at Sardis; moreover, they
did according to the orders of Darius, and carried away captive all
the inhabitants.
The Persians, having thus brought Eretria into subjection after
waiting a few days, made sail for Attica, greatly straitening the
Athenians as they approached, and thinking to deal with them as they
had dealt with the people of Eretria. And, because there was no
Place in all Attica so convenient for their horse as Marathon, and
it lay moreover quite close to Eretria, therefore Hippias, the son
of Pisistratus, conducted them thither.
When intelligence of this reached the Athenians, they likewise
marched their troops to Marathon, and there stood on the defensive,
having at their head ten generals, of whom one was Miltiades.
Now this man's father, Cimon, the son of Stesagoras, was
banished from Athens by Pisistratus, the son of Hippocrates. In his
banishment it was his fortune to win the four-horse chariot-race at
Olympia, whereby he gained the very same honour which had before
been carried off by Miltiades, his half-brother on the mother's
side. At the next Olympiad he won the prize again with the same mares;
upon which he caused Pisistratus to be proclaimed the winner, having
made an agreement with him that on yielding him this honour he
should be allowed to come back to his country. Afterwards, still
with the same mares, he won the prize a third time; whereupon he was
put to death by the sons of Pisistratus, whose father was no longer
living. They set men to lie in wait for him secretly; and these men
slew him near the government-house in the night-time. He was buried
outside the city, beyond what is called the Valley Road; and right
opposite his tomb were buried the mares which had won the three
prizes. The same success had likewise been achieved once previously,
to wit, by the mares of Evagoras the Lacedaemonian, but never except
by them. At the time of Cimon's death Stesagoras, the elder of his two
sons, was in the Chersonese, where he lived with Miltiades his
uncle; the younger, who was called Miltiades after the founder of
the Chersonesite colony, was with his father in Athens.
It was this Miltiades who now commanded the Athenians, after
escaping from the Chersonese, and twice nearly losing his life.
First he was chased as far as Imbrus by the Phoenicians, who had a
great desire to take him and carry him up to the king; and when he had
avoided this danger, and, having reached his own country, thought
himself to be altogether in safety, he found his enemies waiting for
him, and was cited by them before a court and impeached for his
tyranny in the Chersonese. But he came off victorious here likewise,
and was thereupon made general of the Athenians by the free choice
of the people.
And first, before they left the city, the generals sent off to
Sparta a herald, one Pheidippides, who was by birth an Athenian, and
by profession and practice a trained runner. This man, according to
the account which he gave to the Athenians on his return, when he
was near Mount Parthenium, above Tegea, fell in with the god Pan,
who called him by his name, and bade him ask the Athenians
"wherefore they neglected him so entirely, when he was kindly disposed
towards them, and had often helped them in times past, and would do so
again in time to come?" The Athenians, entirely believing in the truth
of this report, as soon as their affairs were once more in good order,
set up a temple to Pan under the Acropolis, and, in return for the
message which I have recorded, established in his honour yearly