c.  At  this  time  Thebes  and  ^Egina  had  been  at  war  with  Athens  fourteen  years.    Ar'  gos,
which  had  contested  with  Sparta  the  supremacy  of  Greece,  had  recently  been  subdued  ;  and
Sparta  was  acknowledged  to  be  the  head  of  the  political  union  of  Greece  against  the  Per-
sians.   Grote's  Greece,  iv.  311-328.
CHAE  IV.]  GRECIAN  HISTORY.  75

3.  In  the  third  year  after  the  first  disastrous  campaign,  a  Persian
fleet  of  six  hundred  ships,  conveying  an  army  of  a  hundred  and  twenty
thousand  men,  commanded  by  the  generals  Datis  and  Artapher'  nes,
and  guided  by  the  exiled  tyrant  and  traitor  Hip'pias,  directed  its
course  towards  the  Grecian  shores.     (B.  C.  490.)     Several  islands  of
the  JSt'  gean  submitted  without  a  struggle ;  Euboe'  a  was  punished  for
the  aid  it  had  given  the  lonians  in  their  rebellion  ;  and  without  farther
opposition  the  Persian  host  advanced  to  the  plains  of  Mar' athon,1
within  twenty  miles  of  Athens.     The  Athenians  probably  called  on
the  Platae'  ansa  as  well  as  the  Spartans  for  aid  :a — the  former  sent
their  entire  force  of  a  thousand  men ;  but  the  latter,  influenced  by
jealousy  or  superstition,  refused  to  send  their  proffered  aid  before  the
full  of  the  moon.
4.  In  this  extremity  the  Athenian  army,  numbering  only  ten  thou-
sand men,  and  commanded  by  ten  generals,  marched  against  the  enemy.
