ms to have been one of those sagacious men who rarely
obtain their proper influence in public affairs, because they address
the reason in opposition to the passions of those they desire to lead.
Unsuccessful in this proposition, Hecataeus had equally failed on two
former occasions;--first, when he attempted to dissuade the Milesians
from the revolt of Aristagoras: secondly, when, finding them bent upon
it, he advised them to appropriate the sacred treasures in the temple
at Branchidae to the maintenance of a naval force. On each occasion
his advice failed precisely because given without prejudice or
passion. The successful adviser must appear to sympathize even with
the errors of his audience.

[268] The humane Darius--whose virtues were his own, his faults of
his station--treated the son of Miltiades with kindness and respect,
married him to a Persian woman, and endowed him with an estate. It
was the habitual policy of that great king to attach to his dominions
the valour and the intellect of the Greeks.

[269] Pausanias says, that Talthybius afterward razed the house of
Miltiades, because that chief instigated the Athenians to the
execution of the Persian envoys.

[270] Demaratus had not only prevented the marriage of Leotychides
with a maiden named Percalos, but, by a mixture of violence and
artifice, married her himself. Thus, even among the sober and
unloving Spartans, woman could still be the author of revolutions.

[271] The national pride of the Spartans would not, however, allow
that their king was the object of the anger of the gods, and
ascribing his excesses to his madness, accounted for the last
by a habit of excessive drinking which he had acquired from the
Scythians

[272] Herod., l. 6, c. 94.

[273] Ibid., l. 6, c. 107.

[274] The sun and moon.

[275] In his attack upon Herodotus, Plutarch asserts that the
Spartans did make numerous military excursions at the beginning of the
month; if this be true, so far from excusing the Spartans, it only
corroborates the natural suspicion that they acted in accordance, not
with superstition, but with their usual calculating and selfish policy
--ever as slow to act in the defence of other states as prompt to
assert the independence of their own.

[276] Paus., l. 8, c. 5.

[277] The exact number of the Athenians is certainly doubtful.
Herodotus does not specify it. Justin estimates the number of
citizens at ten thousand, besides a thousand