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 they were betrayed by two of their chiefs, and the Persians occupied the city. The temples were burnt in revenge for the firing of Sardis, and the inhabitants were bound, and placed as prisoners in the neighbouring islet of Ægylia, 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 Eubœa 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; and the level nature of
