Miletus

“ Attack of Miletus. Complete conquest of the Ionian Greeks. This victory of Lade enabled the Persians to attack Miletus by sea as well as land; the siege was prosecuted with vigor, and the city shortly fell. The adult male population was slain, while the women and children were sent as slaves to Susa. The Milesian territory was devastated and stripped of its inhabitants. The other States hastened to make their submission, and the revolt was crushed, B.C. 496, five years after its commencement. ”

“ Illustrious persons, natives of Miletus, were Thales, one of the seven wise men, the first person who introduced among the Greeks physiology and mathematics; his disciple Anaximander, and Anaximenes the disciple of Anaximander. Besides these, Hecatæus the historian;35 and of our time, Æschines the orator, who was banished for having spoken with too great freedom before Pompey the Great, and died in exile.
Miletus shut her gates against Alexander, and experienced the misfortune of being taken by storm, which was also the fate of Halicarnassus ”

“ But quite contrary to this, you will find, O Athenians, all ready to assist me, who have corrupted and injured their relatives, as Miletus and Anytus say. For those who have been themselves corrupted might perhaps have some reason for assisting me; but those who have not been corrupted, men now advanced in life, their relatives, what other reason can they have for assisting me, except that right and just one, that they know that Miletus speaks falsely and that I speak the truth. ”

“ Miletus was a maritime town of Ionia, not far from Ephesus; but there was another Miletus, in Crete, which some learned men think to be intended here. It appears that St. Paul went from Macedonia to Corinth, where he left Erastus; from Corinth he proceeded to Troas, where he lodged with Carpus: from Troas he went to Ephesus, where he visited Timothy; from Ephesus he went to Miletus, where he left Trophimus sick; and having embarked at Miletus, he went by sea to Rome. See Calmet. It is most likely, therefore, that the Miletus of Ionia is the place intended. ”

“ Of all the Ionians these two states alone, rather than submit to slavery, forsook their fatherland. The others (I except Miletus) resisted Harpagus no less bravely than those who fled their country, and performed many feats of arms, each fighting in their own defence, but one after another they suffered defeat; the cities were taken, and the inhabitants submitted, remaining in their respective countries, and obeying the behests of their new lords. Miletus, as I have already mentioned, had made terms with Cyrus, and so continued at peace. ”

“ With this power the barbarians advanced upon Miletus. Most, if not all, of the Ionian states prepared themselves for the struggle—delegates met at the Panionium—it was agreed to shun the Persians upon land—to leave to the Milesians the defence of their city—to equip the utmost naval force they could command—and, assembling in one fleet off the small isle of Lade, opposite to Miletus, to hazard the battle upon the seas. Three hundred and fifty triremes were provided, and met at the appointed place. The discipline of the navy was not equal to the valour of the enterprise ”

“ And Miletus and the force with him came from Crete fleeing from Minos the son of Europa. And the Carians, who had settled earlier in the neighbourhood of Miletus, admitted the Cretans to a joint share with them. But now when the Ionians conquered the old inhabitants of Miletus, they slew all the males except those that ran away from the captured city, and married their wives and daughters. And the tomb of Nileus is as you approach Didymi, not far from the gates on the left of the road. ”

“ HECATAEUS OF MILETUS (6th-5th century B.C.) , Greek historian, son of Hegesander, flourished during the time of the Persian invasion. After having travelled extensively, he settled in his native city, where he occupied a high position, and devoted his time to the composition of geographical and historical works. When Aristagoras held a council of the leading Ionians at Miletus, to organize a revolt against the Persian rule, Hecataeus in vain tried to dissuade his countrymen from the undertaking (Herodotus v. 36, 125) . ”

“ Theirs were the cities of Myus, and Priene, Colophon, Ephesus, Lebedus, Teos, Clazomene, Erythrae, Phocae, and Miletus:—in the islands of Samos and Chios were two cities of the same name as the isles themselves. The chief of the Ionian cities at the time on which we enter, and second perhaps in trade and in civilization to none but the great Phoenician states, was the celebrated Miletus—founded first by the Carians—exalted to her renown by the Ionians (Naval dominion of Miletus commenced B. C. 750) . Her streets were the mart of the world ”

“ In this year the inhabitants of Miletus joined the Lacedæmonian party against Athens. When the Athenians heard of this, they voted the expenditure of a thousand talents, which, in more prosperous times, they had deposited in the citadel, under the sanction of a decree of the senate and people, to reserve it for an occasion of the utmost danger. This enabled them to recruit their [Pg 13] fleet; and having secured the fidelity of the Lesbians, they endeavoured to recover their authority in Miletus.
Lysander of Lacedæmon acted a great atrocity at Miletus. ”

“ Miletus was no longer secure, and the vengeance of Darius was gathering rapidly around them. After some consultation they agreed to repair to that town and territory in Thrace which had been given by Darius to Histiaeus [267] . Miletus was intrusted to the charge of a popular citizen named Pythagoras, and these hardy and restless adventurers embarked for Thrace. Aristagoras was fortunate enough to reach in safety the settlement which had seemed so formidable a possession to the Persian general ”

“ Thus accordingly he did; and as soon as ever the hair was grown, he despatched the man to Miletus, giving him no other message than this- "When thou art come to Miletus, bid Aristagoras shave thy head, and look thereon." Now the marks on the head, as I have already mentioned, were a command to revolt. All this Histiaeus did because it irked him greatly to be kept at Susa, and because he had strong hopes that, if troubles broke out, he would be sent down to the coast to quell them, whereas, if Miletus made no movement, he did not see a chance of his ever again returning thither. ”

“ Its harbours, once protected by Lade and the other Tragasaean islands, were gradually silted up by the Maeander, and Lade is now a hill some miles from the coast. Ephesus took its place as the great Ionian harbour in Hellenistic and Roman times. Miletus became the seat of a Christian bishopric and was strengthened by a Byzantine castle (κάστρον τῶν Παλατίων) built above the theatre ”

“ And they all betook themselves to Miletus. But when they were enervated by pleasure and luxury, all the valiant character of the city disappeared, as Aristotle tells us; and indeed a proverb arose from them,—
Once on a time Milesians were brave."
Heraclides of Pontus, in the second book of his treatise on Justice, says,—"The city of the Milesians fell into misfortunes, on account of the luxurious lives of the citizens, and on account of the political factions; for the citizens, not loving equity, destroyed their enemies root and branch. ”

“ This is pretty nearly all that we know of Anaximenes. So far as the few known facts reveal him, we can hardly say that except as supplying a step towards the completer development of the motive [22] idea in being, he greatly adds to the chain of progressive thought.
IV. HERACLITUS.—Although not a native of Miletus, but of Ephesus, Heraclitus, both by his nationality as an Ionian and by his position in the development of philosophic conceptions, falls naturally to be classed with the philosophers of Miletus. ”

“ Mr. Clinton compresses inconveniently the latter portion of the interval,—that portion which elapsed between the siege of Milêtus and the battle of Marathon. And the very improbable supposition to which he is obliged to resort,—of a confusion in the language of Herodotus between Attic and Olympic years,—indicates that he is pressing the text of the historian too closely, when he states, “that Herodotus specifies a term of three years between the capture of Milêtus, and the expedition of Datis:” see F. H. ad ann. 499. He places the capture of Milêtus in 494 B. C. ”

“ Neleus, of a Pylian family, founded Miletus. The Messenians and Pylians pretend that there is some affinity between them; in reference to which later poets say that even Nestor was a Messenian, and that many Pylians accompanied Melanthus, the father of Codrus, to Athens, and that all this people sent out the colony in common with the Ionians. There is also to be seen on the promontory Poseidium an altar erected by Neleus. ”

“ Miletus: a city of Ionia, subject in a measure to Athens, revolted in 412 B.C. The next year the Lacedæmonians, or Spartans, who were the enemies of Athens, sent over a fleet to aid the people of Miletus. Tissaphernês, the Persian satrap, desiring to see the power of Athens completely overthrown, promised to pay the Spartan soldiers (of whom Klearchus was one) , but afterwards made up his mind not to do so, and left them to fight at their own expense.
[33] Arcadian: an inhabitant of Arcadia, a district of the Peloponnesian peninsula, Greece. ”

“ The third physical philosopher produced by Miletus, seemingly before the time of her terrible disasters suffered from the Persians after the Ionic revolt between 500-494 B.C., was Anaximenes, who struck out a third hypothesis. He assumed, as the primordial substance, and as the source of all generation or transmutation, Air, eternal in duration, infinite in extent. He thus returned to the principle of the Thaletian theory, selecting for his beginning a known substance, though not the same substance as Thales. ”

“ In wealth and in population, Miletus, at the epoch of the Persian conquest, must have been far ahead of any city of European Greece. Sybaris, in Magna Graecia, can have been its only rival outside Ionia. There were two respects, however, in which the comparison was in favour of the mother-country. In warfare, the superiority of the Spartan infantry was unquestioned; in politics, the Greek states showed a greater power of combination than the Ionian. ”

“ The Greeks assembled a fleet, but a spirit of insubordination manifesting itself they were defeated at sea in the battle of Lade in 495. Next year Miletus fell but was treated with mercy. At Athens the news caused the greatest consternation; a dramatic poet named Phrynichus ventured to stage the disaster; the people wept and fined him a thousand talents, forbidding any similar presentation in future. Stamping out the last embers of revolt in Asia the Persians coasted along Thrace; before their advance the great Athenian Miltiades was compelled to fly from the Dardanelles to his native city. ”

“ After his defeat he fled to Mytilene, and from there to Asia Minor. In the attempt to make his way to Armenia he was taken prisoner by Antony’s troops, and put to death at Miletus. Like his father, he was a brave soldier, but a man of little culture. ”

“ Anaximander of Miletus, born 611-546, was a celebrated geometrician, astronomer, philosopher and geographer. He was the author of a book on natural phenomena, drew the first map of the world on metal, and introduced into Greece a kind of clock which he seems to have borrowed from the Babylonians. He supposes a primary and not easily definable Being, by which the whole world is governed, and in which, though in himself infinite and without limits, everything material and circumscribed has its foundation. ”

“ Richard Charnock, F.A.S.L., more correctly defines Milesian fables to have been originally 'certain tales or novels, composed by Aristides of Miletus'; gay in matter and graceful in manner. 'They were translated into Latin by the historian Sisenna, the friend of Atticus, and they had a great success at Rome. ”

“ After this, seeing that Alyattes would not give up the Scythians to Cyaxares at his demand, there was war between the Lydians and the Medes for five years; each won many victories over the other, and once they fought a battle by night. They were still warring with equal success, when it chanced, at an encounter which happened in the sixth year, that during the battle the day was suddenly turned to night. Thales of Miletus had foretold this loss of daylight to the Ionians, fixing it within the year in which the change did indeed happen. ”

“ Instead of a hundred, two hundred shall be at thy disposal when the spring comes. But the king himself must first approve the undertaking."
When Aristagoras heard this he was greatly rejoiced, and went home in good heart to Miletus. And Artaphernes, after he had sent a messenger to Susa to lay the plans of Aristagoras before the king, and received his approval of the undertaking, made ready a fleet of two hundred triremes and a vast army of Persians and their confederates. ”

“ People are right when they say that Millet has painted pictures of more strength and meaning than this. The Angelus nevertheless has a musical charm of its own. Millet meant the sounds of a country evening, the distant chime of bells, to be heard in it. He deeply felt and has expressed the melancholy poetry of the hour when man's struggle with the earth passes into peace, and the august grandeur of the simple lonely prayer in the vast deserted plain at twilight. ”

“ Strong as a young Hercules, with a dignity which never forsook him, his studies won at least the success of attention. When a favorite pupil of the master remonstrated that his men and women were hewed from stone, Millet replied tranquilly, "I came here because there are Greek statues and living men and women to study from, not to please you or any one. Do I preoccupy myself with your figures made of honey and butter?" ”