The message the king of Persia sent was short.

It ran like this. Histiaeus, these are the words of King Darius. I have thought it over and I find no man more devoted to me and to my affairs. I know it not from words but from deeds. Now I have in mind to carry out great things, and you must come to me, whatever happens, so that I can lay them before you.

The man who heard it was at Myrcinus on the river Strymon, the place he had asked of the king, where he was building the walls of a new city. Herodotus says Histiaeus trusted these words, and was proud besides to be the king's counsellor, and set out for Sardis.

How the message came to be sent begins with another conversation at the king's side.

Asking for a City

Darius had come back from Scythia, crossed the Hellespont, and reached Sardis.

He remembered what Histiaeus of Miletus had done for him: the bridge of boats over the Ister, which Histiaeus and the Ionians had held. He remembered, too, the advice of Coes of Mytilene. The king sent for both men to come to Sardis and told each to choose a reward.

Histiaeus was already tyrant of Miletus and wanted no other city. What he asked for was Myrcinus, in the land of the Edonians, so that he could found a city there. Coes was a commoner, not a tyrant, and he asked to be made tyrant of Mytilene. Both got what they asked, and each went off to the place he had chosen.

Why Myrcinus, Herodotus does not say. Soon afterwards someone else would set the reasons out in a list.

The Woman with the Jar

When the two had gone, Darius saw something else at Sardis. It was a sight that would send a whole people from their homes.

Two Paeonians, Pigres and Mantyes, each wanted to be ruler of their countrymen. When Darius had crossed back into Asia they came to Sardis, bringing their sister, a tall and beautiful woman.

They waited until Darius was sitting in state in the suburb of the Lydian city. Then they dressed their sister as finely as they could and sent her to fetch water. On her head she carried a jar. She led a horse by a rein over her arm. And as she walked she spun flax.

Darius took notice. What the woman was doing was not Persian or Lydian or the way of any people in Asia. He sent some of his guards after her to see what she would do with the horse.

She went down to the river and watered the horse. Then she filled her jar and came back by the same road, the jar on her head, the horse's rein over her arm, the spindle still turning.

What the guards reported was what Darius had seen with his own eyes. He was struck by it and ordered the woman brought before him. Her brothers had been watching from nearby, and they came too. Darius asked what people she belonged to. The young men said they were Paeonians and she was their sister.

"Who are the Paeonians? Where do they live? And what do you want at Sardis?"

They said they had come to give themselves to the king. Paeonia's towns lay on the Strymon, not far from the Hellespont, and they were colonists from the Teucrians of Troy.

Darius asked whether all the women of their country were so hard-working. They answered at once that they were. Herodotus says that was exactly what they had come for.

Darius wrote a letter to Megabazus, whom he had left in command in Thrace, ordering him to take the Paeonians from their homes and bring them to him, men, women and children. A horseman rode with it to the Hellespont and crossed.

Megabazus read the letter, took guides from Thrace, and marched into Paeonia.

The Paeonians heard the Persians were coming and gathered to meet them at the sea, thinking the Persians would come that way. The Persians learned of it and took the upland road instead, and came into the Paeonians' towns from behind. The towns had no men in them and fell at once. When the Paeonians learned their towns were taken, they scattered, each going his own way, and gave themselves up. The Siriopaeones, the Paeoplae, and all as far as Lake Prasias were taken from their homes and led into Asia.

The people around Mount Pangaeum, the Doberes, the Agrianes, the Odomanti, and the lake-dwellers, Megabazus never conquered.

He tried to take the people on the lake. Herodotus says a little more about them. In the middle of the lake stands a platform on tall piles, and a single narrow bridge leads out to it from the shore. The piles were once set up by all the people together; later a rule arose that a man bringing three piles from Mount Orbelus must set them up for each wife he marries, and each man marries many. Every household has a hut on the platform, and in its floor a trap-door that opens to the lake below. Small children have a cord tied to the foot, for fear they will roll off. Horses and pack animals are fed on fish: a man lifts the trap-door, lets an empty basket down on a rope, and in a short while pulls it up full of fish.

Of Pigres and Mantyes Herodotus says no more. He does speak of the people who were led away: years later they were living in a village of their own in Phrygia.

The General's List

Megabazus brought his Paeonian captives across the Hellespont to Sardis.

Histiaeus was by now fortifying Myrcinus. He had asked Darius for that place as his reward for guarding the bridge. Megabazus had heard what he was doing, and as soon as he reached Sardis he said to Darius:

"Sire, what have you done? You have let a clever and formidable Greek found a city in Thrace. There is timber there for ships and plenty of wood for oars, and silver mines. Many Greeks live around it and many foreigners, and once they have a leader they will do whatever he tells them, by day or by night.

"Make this man stop, so that you are not caught up in a war at home. But do it gently: send for him and make him stop. When you have him in your hands, see to it that he never goes back to the Greeks."

Herodotus goes on: Megabazus easily persuaded Darius, because Darius thought the words showed foresight.

After that, the king sent a man to Myrcinus.

A Seat at the Table

What the messenger carried to Myrcinus was the message with which this story began.

Histiaeus came to Sardis. Darius said to him:

"Histiaeus, this is why I sent for you. Since I came back from Scythia and you were out of my sight, there is nothing I have longed for so much as to see you and talk with you. I know that the most precious of all possessions is a friend who is wise and loyal. You are both, and I can bear witness to it for my own affairs.

"You have done well to come. Here is what I propose: let Miletus go, let go the city you have just founded in Thrace, and come with me to Susa. What I have, you shall have, eating at my table and sitting in my council."

A modern commentator says that to share the king's table was a great honour at the Persian court. What Darius offered Histiaeus was, in truth, a very high place.

Only, what he asked Histiaeus to let go were Miletus and the new city.

The Skin on the Chair

When he had said this, Darius set out for Susa and took Histiaeus with him. He left his half-brother Artaphrenes, a son of the same father, as governor of Sardis, and put Otanes in command of the men along the coast.

Here Herodotus turns aside to tell of Otanes' father.

His name was Sisamnes, and he was one of the king's judges. When Cambyses was king, he found that Sisamnes had taken money and given an unjust judgment. He killed him, flayed off all his skin, cut the skin into strips, and stretched them across the seat on which Sisamnes had sat to judge. Then Cambyses made Sisamnes' son judge in his place and told him to remember what he was sitting on when he gave judgment.

The man who sat on that seat was Otanes. He took over Megabazus' command. He took Byzantium and Chalcedon, Antandrus and Lamponium in the Troad, and with ships got from the Lesbians he took Lemnos and Imbros.

Herodotus is giving the background of a newly appointed commander. He does not say what this old story has to do with Histiaeus' journey to Susa.

The Man Left at Susa

Who was left to govern Miletus, Herodotus mentions only later: the deputy Aristagoras, Histiaeus' son-in-law and cousin, ruled it in his place.

It happened some years afterwards. A group of exiles from Naxos came to Miletus and asked Aristagoras to help them home. In introducing the deputy, Herodotus adds a line: Histiaeus was tyrant of Miletus, but at that time he was at Susa, where Darius "kept" him.

The verb in the Greek means to hold back or keep.

Further on, Herodotus sets down what was going on in Histiaeus' own mind. He took his detention at Susa as a great misfortune. He reckoned that if revolt broke out near the coast he had every hope of being sent down to the sea; if Miletus stayed quiet, he would never get back there.

The message spoke of a table and a counsellor. What Herodotus says afterwards is about a man who was being kept.

Inside the Walls, Outside the Walls

Histiaeus went to Susa with the word "devoted" in his ears. Herodotus mentions the city he left behind once more.

That was many years later. Aristagoras had thrown all Ionia into confusion, and when things began to go badly he called his fellow-rebels together to plan a place of refuge: Sardinia, or Myrcinus in the land of the Edonians? Herodotus says that Myrcinus was the place Histiaeus "had received from Darius as a gift, and walled." He also passes a judgment on Aristagoras: that he was, as he showed, a man of little courage.

Hecataeus the historian advised going to neither, and building a fortress on the island of Leros to wait there. Aristagoras chose Myrcinus. He left Miletus in the hands of Pythagoras, a citizen of repute, sailed for Thrace with all who would follow him, and took possession of the place.

From there he went out and laid siege to a town. The Thracians were ready to leave it under a truce, but he and his army were killed there.

Thucydides tells it a little differently. Speaking of Amphipolis, he says in passing that Aristagoras of Miletus, "fleeing from King Darius," had once tried to settle a colony on this very ground and was driven out by the Edonians. The place was then called Nine Ways.

Modern commentators hold that the town Aristagoras besieged in Herodotus' account is almost certainly Nine Ways, later Amphipolis, which is not at Myrcinus but in the same district. They place Aristagoras' death around 497 BC.

For the general's list at Sardis Herodotus himself offers a kind of support elsewhere. Describing Xerxes' army passing through the region, he says that on its right stood the great, high range of Mount Pangaeum, with gold and silver mines.

Thucydides adds one more piece. More than seventy years later, around 424 BC, the Spartan general Brasidas took Amphipolis, and the Edonian city of Myrcinus went over to him as well. The Athenians were seized with great fear at the loss: the city was useful to them for the timber it sent for building ships, and for the revenue it brought in.

Timber for ships, and money coming in: more than seventy years later, what still weighed on the Athenians in this region was the same kind of thing Megabazus had spoken of at Sardis.

Afterword

The message spoke of loyalty. The general had spoken of timber, silver, and men.

One was carried to the Strymon, and one stayed behind at Sardis. The man at Myrcinus heard the first. He trusted it.

Sources, versions, and editorial boundaries

1. Core narrative: Herodotus, Histories 5.11 (Darius at Sardis rewards Histiaeus and Coes); 5.12-16 (the Paeonians Pigres and Mantyes bring their sister to Sardis; Darius writes to Megabazus; the Paeonians are moved to Asia; those never conquered; the lake dwellings); 5.23-25 (Megabazus reaches Sardis with the Paeonians and speaks; Darius sends word; the talk at Sardis; departure for Susa; Artaphrenes and Otanes; the story of Sisamnes); 5.26.1 (Otanes' conquests). Also 5.30.2 (Aristagoras deputy at Miletus; Histiaeus "kept" at Susa by Darius), 5.35.4 (Histiaeus' view of his detention at Susa), 5.98.1 (the Paeonians led off live in a village in Phrygia), 5.124-126 (Aristagoras withdraws to Myrcinus and dies), and 7.112.1 (the gold and silver mines of Mount Pangaeum). Thucydides 4.102 (Aristagoras and Nine Ways), 4.107 (Myrcinus goes over to Brasidas), 4.108.1 (the Athenians' fear for Amphipolis). Herodotus in Godley's English (1920-1925) and the Greek of the public PerseusDL TEI edition (tlg0016.tlg001, eng2 and grc2), read side by side on 3 November; 7.112 read in English only. Thucydides read only in the Greek of PerseusDL (tlg0003.tlg001.perseus-grc2), with the English here my own rendering of the Greek; no English translation consulted. Printed editions not checked and no page numbers given.

2. Levels of evidence: the whole is Herodotus' report; he does not say whom he heard these conversations from. The speech of Megabazus (5.23) and what Darius says to Histiaeus (5.24) are words Herodotus records, not minutes. "The message": 5.24.1 says Darius sent a messenger to Myrcinus and "said these things" (πέμψας ἄγγελον ἐς τὴν Μύρκινον … ἔλεγε τάδε); Godley renders "a message which read as follows," but the Greek does not say it was written, so the text says "the words the king sent." For Megabazus, by contrast, 5.14.1 says plainly that Darius "wrote a letter" (γράφει γράμματα). "Because Darius thought the words showed foresight" renders 5.24.1 "ὡς εὖ προορῶν τὸ μέλλον γίνεσθαι," which Godley translates "who believed that his vision of the future was correct"; the phrase can also be read as Herodotus' own comment on Megabazus, and the text takes the former reading. What Darius had in mind in sending the message Herodotus does not say, and the text does not supply it. The reasoning attributed to Histiaeus in 5.35.4 is Herodotus' own statement. That Pigres and Mantyes had come "for this very purpose" (5.13.3) is Godley's rendering.

3. Key phrases in Herodotus' Greek (PerseusDL grc2): "a clever and formidable Greek" is "ἀνδρὶ Ἕλληνι δεινῷ τε καὶ σοφῷ" (5.23.2); timber, oar-wood and silver is "ναυπηγήσιμος ἄφθονος καὶ πολλοὶ κωπέες καὶ μέταλλα ἀργύρεα" (same section); "send for him gently" is "τρόπῳ ἠπίῳ μεταπεμψάμενος" and "see to it that he never goes to the Greeks" is "ποιέειν ὅκως μηκέτι κεῖνος ἐς Ἕλληνας ἀπίξεται" (5.23.3); "no man more devoted to me" is "οὐδένα σεῦ ἄνδρα εὐνοέστερον" (5.24.1); "the most precious of all possessions is a friend…" is "κτημάτων πάντων ἐστὶ τιμιώτατον ἀνὴρ φίλος συνετός τε καὶ εὔνοος" (5.24.3); "eating at my table and sitting in my council" is "ἐμός τε σύσσιτος ἐὼν καὶ σύμβουλος" (5.24.4); "remember what he was sitting on" is "μεμνῆσθαι ἐν τῷ κατίζων θρόνῳ δικάζει" (5.25.2); "kept" is "κατεῖχε" (5.30.2) and "detention" is "κατοχήν" (5.35.4). The Paeonian woman "with a jar on her head, a horse on her arm, spinning flax" is "ἄγγος ἐπὶ τῇ κεφαλῇ ἔχουσαν καὶ ἐκ τοῦ βραχίονος ἵππον ἐπέλκουσαν καὶ κλώθουσαν λίνον" (5.12.2); the platform on the lake is "ἴκρια ἐπὶ σταυρῶν ὑψηλῶν" (5.16.1).

4. Names: Histiaeus (Ἱστιαῖος), Darius (Δαρεῖος), Megabazus (Μεγάβαζος), Myrcinus (Μύρκινος), Edonians (Ἠδωνοί), Strymon (Στρυμών), Coes (Κώης), Mytilene (Μυτιλήνη), Pigres (Πίγρης), Mantyes (Μαντύης), Paeonians (Παίονες), Siriopaeones (Σιριοπαίονες), Paeoplae (Παιόπλαι), Lake Prasias (Πρασιὰς λίμνη), Pangaeum (Πάγγαιον), Doberes (Δόβηρες), Agrianes (Ἀγριᾶνες), Odomanti (Ὀδόμαντοι), Orbelus (Ὄρβηλος), Artaphrenes (Ἀρταφρένης), Otanes (Ὀτάνης), Sisamnes (Σισάμνης), Cambyses (Καμβύσης), Aristagoras (Ἀρισταγόρης), Hecataeus (Ἑκαταῖος), Pythagoras (Πυθαγόρης), Thucydides (Θουκυδίδης), Amphipolis (Ἀμφίπολις), Nine Ways (Ἐννέα ὁδοί), Brasidas (Βρασίδας).

5. Commentary: How and Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1912; OCR text of the archive.org scan commentaryonhero0002wwho), notes on 5.11, 5.23-27 and 5.124-126. Main points: the Myrcinus district was rich in timber, gold and silver; it later fell to the Edonians, who still held it in 424 BC (citing Thucydides 4.107), and it is not the same place as Amphipolis though in the same district (note on 5.11); Histiaeus, and Aristagoras after him, probably hoped to turn the district's natural advantages to account, but the idea of a Graeco-barbarian power in Thrace strong enough to endanger Persia the commentators find "strange" (note on 5.23); to share the king's table was "a great honour at the Persian, as at other Eastern courts" (note on 5.24); flaying, as in the Sisamnes story, was an Assyrian practice taken over by the Persians (note on 5.25); for the death of Aristagoras, the date that best suits Herodotus' narrative is 497 BC, fixed by Thucydides 4.102, who puts the Athenian founding of Amphipolis (437-436) sixty years after Aristagoras' attempt, and the town Herodotus has Aristagoras besiege is "almost certainly" Nine Ways (note on 5.126). The commentators also say that Herodotus consistently depreciates the Ionian revolt and its leaders, which is the setting for his remark on Aristagoras' lack of courage in 5.124. The OCR text has misreadings; passages quoted were checked against their context.

6. Other versions (set side by side, not adjudicated): (a) Aristagoras' end: Herodotus 5.126.2 says he went out from Myrcinus to besiege a town, and he and his army were killed by Thracians who had been willing to leave under truce; Thucydides 4.102.2 says only that he, "fleeing from King Darius," once tried to settle the site of later Amphipolis and was driven out by the Edonians, and does not say where he died. How and Wells read the two together (see note 5). (b) Myrcinus: Thucydides 4.107.3 calls it "an Edonian city" and says it went over to Brasidas after the Edonian king Pittacus was killed. (c) The Pleiades gazetteer entry for Myrkinos (501520) says it was given to Histiaeus in 513 BC; Herodotus gives no year, and the text does not adopt this.

7. Date: the map time is "about 512 BC," meaning the time after Darius returned from Scythia to Sardis, when he received Histiaeus and asked him to come to Susa. Herodotus gives no year; this series puts Darius' crossing of the Ister at about 513 BC, and How and Wells speak of discontent in western Asia Minor "since 512 BC" (note on 5.126), so about 512 BC is taken here, with low confidence, to be checked. The deportation of the Paeonians, Megabazus' speech, the Sisamnes story, Aristagoras' death (about 497 BC, after How and Wells) and the Athenians' loss of Amphipolis (about 424 BC, from the same) have no map time of their own.

8. Geography: Sardis is placed at Pleiades 550867 ("Sardis/Hyde?") and Myrcinus at Pleiades 501520 ("Myrkinos"); both are indicative only (the Myrkinos coordinates come from DARMC and the site is not confirmed). Susa (Pleiades 912936), the Strymon, Mount Pangaeum, Lake Prasias, Amphipolis/Nine Ways (Pleiades 501412), Miletus, Naxos and Leros appear only in the narrative or have no fixed date or place, and are not on the map.

9. Narrator's boundaries: "the words the king sent" in the opening summarizes 5.24.1-2; "the man who heard it" is Histiaeus, and "building the walls" follows 5.23.1 (he was "already fortifying" when Megabazus heard). "Soon afterwards someone else would set the reasons out in a list" in the first section is the narrator's link to 5.23; Herodotus does not say why Histiaeus chose Myrcinus. "Years later they were living in a village in Phrygia" (section two) is from 5.98.1; after 5.12 Herodotus does not mention Pigres and Mantyes by name again. "Some years afterwards" in the sixth section refers to the Naxian exiles of 5.30 (How and Wells: 499 BC); Herodotus does not give the interval. In the last section "Herodotus himself offers support elsewhere" refers to 7.112.1, which speaks of Mount Pangaeum, not of Myrcinus itself; "more than seventy years later, around 424 BC" is reckoned from the dates in How and Wells, since Thucydides gives no BC year; he is speaking of Amphipolis, which is not at Myrcinus. The last sentence of that section, setting the general's list beside the Athenians' fear, is the narrator's association, not Thucydides' words. No dialogue or inner thoughts have been added.

10. Rights: the ancient texts and Godley's translation are public domain; the Greek was checked in short ranges against the public PerseusDL TEI edition. How and Wells (1912) is public domain in the United States. Thucydides was read in short passages only, in the PerseusDL Greek, and paraphrased. The Chinese and English stories are new contemporary retellings by the editor. Coordinates come from the Pleiades gazetteer; Wikipedia and Wikidata were not used as authority for facts.