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BATTLE OF MARATHON.
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cessfully in mitigation of punishment, and the sentence was commuted from death to a fine of fifty talents. This was paid by his son, the afterwards illustrious Cimon, Miltiades dying, soon after the trial, of the injury which he had received at Paros.[1] The melancholy end of Miltiades after his elevation to such a height of power and glory,
- ↑ The common-place calumnies against the Athenians respecting Miltiades have been well answered by Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer in his "Rise and Fall of Athens," and Bishop Thirlwall in the second volume of his "History of Greece," but they have received their most complete refutation from Mr. Grote in the 4th volume of his History, p. 490 et seq., and notes. I quite concur with him that, "looking to the practice of the Athenian dicastery in criminal cases that fifty talents was the minor penalty actually proposed by the defenders of Miltiades themselves as a substitute for the punishment of death. In those penal cases at Athens, where the punishment was not fixed beforehand by the terms of the law, if the person accused was found guilty, it was customary to submit to the jurors subsequently and separately, the question as to amount of punishment. First, the accuser named the penalty which he thought suitable; next, the accused person was called upon to name an amount of penalty for himself, and the jurors were constrained to take their choice between these two; no third gradation of penalty being admissible for consideration. Of course, under such circumstances, it was the interest of the accused party to name, even in his own case, some real and serious penalty, something which the jurors might be likely to deem not wholly inadequate to his crime just proved; for if he proposed some penalty only trifling, he drove them to prefer the heavier sentence recommended by his opponent." The stories of Miltiades having been cast
