before, successfully stood a siege against a Persian armament,
but they now were too terrified to offer any resistance, and fled
to the mountain-tops, while the enemy burnt their town and laid
waste their lands. Thence Datis, compelling the Greek islanders
to join him with their ships and men, sailed onward to the coast
of Euboea. The little town of Carystus essayed resistance, but
was quickly overpowered. He next attacked Eretria. The
Athenians sent four thousand men to its aid. But treachery was
at work among the Eretrians; and the Athenian force received
timely warning from one of the leading men of the city to retire
to aid in saving their own country, instead of remaining to share
in the inevitable destruction of Eretria. Left to themselves,
the Eretrians repulsed the assaults of the Persians against their
walls for six days; on the seventh day they were betrayed by two
of their chiefs and the Persians occupied the city. The temples
were burnt in revenge for the burning of Sardis, and the
inhabitants were bound and placed as prisoners in the
neighbouring islet of AEgylia, to wait there till Datis should
bring the Athenians to join them in captivity, when both
populations were to be led into Upper Asia, there to learn their
doom from the lips of King Darius himself.

Flushed with success, and with half his mission thus
accomplished, Datis reimbarked his troops, and crossing the
little channel that separates Euboea from the mainland, he
encamped his troops on the Attic coast at Marathon, drawing up
his galleys on the shelving beach, as was the custom with the
navies of antiquity. The conquered islands behind him served as
places of deposit for his provisions and military stores. His
position at Marathon seemed to him in every respect advantageous;