your fathers' gods, and for the sepulchres of your sires. All--
all are now staked upon the strife!"

Instead of advancing at the usual slow pace of the phalanx,
Miltiades brought his men on at a run. They were all trained in
the exercises of the palaestra, so that there was no fear of
their ending the charge in breathless exhaustion: and it was of
the deepest importance for him to traverse as rapidly as possible
the space of about a mile of level ground, that lay between the
mountain foot and the Persian outposts, and so to get his troops
into close action before the Asiatic cavalry could mount, form,
and manoeuvre against him, or their archers keep him long under
bow-shot, and before the enemy's generals could fairly deploy
their masses.

"When the Persians," says Herodotus, "saw the Athenians running
down on them, without horse or bowmen, and scanty in numbers,
they thought them a set of madmen rushing upon certain
destruction." They began, however, to prepare to receive them
and the Eastern chiefs arrayed, as quickly as time and place
allowed, the varied races who served in their motley ranks.
Mountaineers from Hyrcania and Affghanistan, wild horsemen from
the steppes of Khorassan, the black archers of Ethiopia,
swordsmen from the banks of the Indus, the Oxus, the Euphrates,
and the Nile, made ready against the enemies of the Great King.
But no national cause inspired them, except the division of
native Persians; and in the large host there was no uniformity of
language, creed, race, or military system. Still, among them
there were many gallant men, under a veteran general; they were
familiarized with victory; and in contemptuous confidence their