the carnage, fired the fleet. Cynaegirus, brother to Aeschylus, the
tragic poet (himself highly distinguished for his feats that day),
seized one of the vessels by the poop: his hand was severed by an axe;
he died gloriously of his wounds. But to none did the fortunes of
that field open a more illustrious career than to a youth of the tribe
Leontis, in whom, though probably then but a simple soldier in the
ranks, was first made manifest the nature and the genius destined to
command. The name of that youth was Themistocles [287]. Seven
vessels were captured--six thousand four hundred of the barbarians
fell in the field--the Athenians and their brave ally lost only one
hundred and ninety-two; but among them perished many of their bravest
nobles. It was a superstition not uncharacteristic of that
imaginative people, and evincing how greatly their ardour was aroused,
that many of them (according to Plutarch) fancied they beheld the
gigantic shade of their ancestral Theseus, completely armed, and
bearing down before them upon the foe.

So perished the hopes of the unfortunate Hippias; obscure and
inglorious in his last hour, the exiled prince fell confounded amid
the general slaughter. [288]

IX. Despite the capture of some vessels, and the conflagration of
others, the Persians still retained a considerable fleet, and,
succeeding in boarding their Eretrian plunder (which they had left on
the Euboean Isle), they passed thence the promontory of Sunium, with
the intention of circumventing the Athenians, and arriving at Athens
before them--a design which it was supposed they were induced to form
by the treachery of some one suspected, without sufficient proof, to
belong to the house of the Alcmaeonids, who held up a shield as a
signal to the Persians while they were under sail [289]. But the
Athenians were under a prompt and vigilant commander, and while the
barbarian fleet doubled the Cape of Sunium, they reached their city,
and effectually prevented the designs of the foe. Aristides, with the
tribe under his command, was left on the field to guard the prisoners
and the booty, and his scrupulous honesty was evinced by his jealous
care over the scattered and uncounted treasure [290]. The painter of
the nobler schools might find perhaps few subjects worthier of his art
than Aristides watching at night amid the torches of his men over the
plains of Marathon, in sight of the blue Aegean, no longer crowded
with the barbar