twenty years longer, though Persian forces were frequently in the neighbourhood. Miltiades was, according to Herodotus, expelled by Scythian invaders, but was brought back by the Doloncians, and subsequently captured Lemnos and Imbros for Athens from the so-called Pelasgian inhabitants, who were Persian dependents. Having thus (probably) incurred the enmity of Darius, Miltiades fled to Athens on the approach of the Persians under Datis and Artaphernes, leaving his son Metiochus a prisoner in Persian hands, and was at once impeached unsuccessfully on the charge of tyranny in the Chersonese.[1] Possibly the story of his having tried to destroy the Danube bridge was invented or exaggerated at this time as an argument in his favour (see Grote, History of Greece, 1 vol., ed. 1907, p. 119 note). Since, however, Herodotus almost certainly relied on Alcmaeonid tradition, which was hostile to Miltiades, the whole story is uncertain; the statement that he fled before a Scythian invasion is especially improbable. If Miltiades really recommended the destruction of the bridge, we may infer that the Herodotean story of his flight before the Scythians is a misunderstanding of the fact that his residence in Chersonese after the Scythian invasion was insecure and not continuous.
On the approach of the Persians Miltiades was made one of the ten Athenian generals, and it was on his advice that the polemarch Callimachus decided to give battle at Marathon (q.v.). Subsequently he used his influence with the Athenians to induce them to give him a fleet of seventy ships without any indication of his object (Herod, vi. 132–136). Cornelius Nepos (Miltiades, c. vii.), probably on good authority (? Ephorus), states that he had a commission to regain control over the Aegean. No doubt his object was to establish an outer line of defence against future Persian aggression. Herodotus says that, having besieged Paros vainly for nearly a month, he made a secret visit to Timo, a priestess of Demeter in Paros, with a view to the betrayal of the island, and being compelled to flee wounded himself severely in attempting to leap a fence (but see Ephorus in Fragm. hist. gr. 107).
On his return to Athens he was impeached by Xanthippus, who was allied by marriage to the Alcmaeonids, on the ground that he had “deceived the people,” and only escaped on the strength of his past services with a fine of 50 talents. The facts of the trial and the charge are difficult to recover, nor do we know why the siege was raised. Some authorities hold that he was bribed to this course, and hence that the charge was one of treason; others suggest that he retired in the belief that a Persian fleet was approaching. All that is known is that he died of his wound (489–488), without paying the fine, which was paid subsequently by his son Cimon (q.v.). He appears to have been a man of strong determination and great personal courage, of a type characteristic of the pre-Cleisthenic constitution. His absence in the Chersonese during the first years of the new democracy (508–493?) and his patrician lineage account naturally for the difference which existed, between him and the popular leaders—Themistocles and Aristides.
See the passages of Herodotus and Cornelius Nepos, quoted above, and histories of Greece. On the Parian expedition and the trial, R. W. Macan, Herodotus iv.-vi., vol. 2, appendix xi.; on the foreign policy of Miltiades see Themistocles. (J. M. M.)
MILTON, JOHN (1608–1674), English poet, was born in Bread
Street, Cheapside, London, on the 9th of December 1608.
His father, known as Mr John Milton of Bread Street, scrivener,
was himself an interesting man. He was a native of Oxfordshire,
the son of a Richard Milton, yeoman of Stanton-St-John’s,
one of the sturdiest adherents to the old Roman Catholic religion
in his district, and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford,
where he turned Protestant. According to the poet’s earliest
biographer, John Milton senior was disinherited in the beginning
of Queen Elizabeth’s reign for reading the Bible. With a good
education and good abilities, especially in music, he may have
lived for some time in London by musical teaching and practice.
Not till 1595, at all events, when he must have been long past
the usual age of apprenticeship, do we hear of his preparation
for the profession of a scrivener; and not till February 1599–1600,
when he was about thirty-seven years of age, did he become
a qualified member of the Scriveners' Company. It was then
that he set up his “house and shop” at the sign of the Spread
Eagle in Bread Street, and began his business of drawing up
wills, marriage-settlements, and the like, with such related
business as that of receiving money from clients for investment
and lending it out to the best advantage. It was at the same
time that he married, not, as stated by Aubrey, a lady named
Bradshaw, but Sarah Jeffrey, one of the two orphan daughters
of a Paul Jeffrey, of St Swithin’s, London, “citizen and merchant-taylor,”
originally from Essex, who had died before 1583. At
the date of her marriage she was about twenty-eight years of
age. Six children were born to the scrivener and his wife, of
whom three survived infancy—Anne, who married Edward
Phillips; John, the poet; and Christopher (1615–1693), who was
knighted and made a judge under James II.
The first sixteen years of Milton’s life, coinciding exactly with the last sixteen of the reign of James I., associate themselves with the house in Bread Street. His father, while prospering in business, continued to be known as a man of “ingeniose” tastes, and acquired distinction in the London musical world of that time. He contributed Life and Works. a madrigal to Thomas Morley’s Triumph of Oriana (1601), four motets to Sir William Leighton’s Tears and Lamentations of a Sorrowful Soul (1614), and some hymn tunes—one of which, “Yor,” is still in common use—in Thomas Ravenscroft’s Whole Book of Psalms (1621). Music was thus a part of the poet’s domestic education from his infancy. Again and again Milton speaks with gratitude and affection of the ungrudging pains bestowed by his father on his early education. “Both at the grammar school and also under other masters at home,” is the statement in one passage, “he caused me to be instructed daily.” When Milton was ten years of age his tutor was Thomas Young (1587–1655), a Scottish divine, who afterwards became master of Jesus College, Cambridge. Young’s tutorship lasted till 1622, when he accepted the pastorship of the congregation of English merchants in Hamburg. Already, however, for a year or two his teaching had been only supplementary to the education which the boy was receiving by daily attendance at St Paul’s public school, close to Bread Street. The headmaster of the school was Alexander Gill, an elderly Oxford divine, of high reputation for scholarship and teaching ability. Under him, as usher or second master, was his son, Alexander Gill the younger, also an Oxford graduate of scholarly reputation, but of blustering character. Milton’s acquaintanceship with this younger Gill, begun at St Paul’s school, led to subsequent friendship and correspondence. Far more affectionate and intimate was the friendship formed by Milton at St Paul’s with his schoolfellow Charles Diodati, the son of an Italian physician, Dr Theodore Diodati, a naturalized Englishman settled in London, and much respected, both on his own account and as being the brother of the famous Protestant divine, Jean Diodati of Geneva. Young Diodati, who was destined for his father’s profession, left the school for Trinity College, Oxford, early in 1623; but Milton remained till the end of 1624. In that year his elder sister, Anne, married Edward Phillips, a clerk in the Government office called the Crown Office in Chancery.
Milton had then all but completed his sixteenth year, and was as scholarly, as accomplished and as handsome a youth as St Paul’s school had sent forth. We learn from himself that his exercises “in English or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly this latter,” had begun to attract attention even in his boyhood. Of these poems the only specimens that now remain are two copies of Latin verses, preserved in a commonplace book of his (printed by the Camden Society in 1877), and his “Paraphrase on Psalm CXIV” and his “Paraphrase on Psalm CXXXVI.” At the age of sixteen years and two months, Milton was entered as a student of Christ’s College, Cambridge,
- ↑ So Herodotus; but the story is difficult to believe in view of the fact that the family of Miltiades was distinctively μισοτύραννος. Possibly the trial is merely a hostile version of the ordinary test of a man’s qualification for office (δοκιμασία).
