What kind of Greeks could choose to ape monsters such as these? Clearly, critics of the nobility liked to imply, only those who were perverts and degenerates themselves. Lydia, like her notoriously expert whores, was both diseased and predatory; those who surrendered to her embraces deserved all the scorn they got. Strip away the veil of barbarian delicacies so prized by the aristocracy—the silken eroticism, the refinements, the displays of wealth—and the reality would be an infinitely sordid one: the court at Sardis could fittingly be portrayed as a prostitute “speaking Lydian,” kneeling in a back alley, thrashing her client’s testicles while shafting his dripping arse. “The passageway reeked. Clouds of dung-beetles came whirring after the stench.”9 A vile and shocking scene: fitting metaphor for a vile and shocking truth. The aristocracy were wallowing in shit—and tyrants, the worst offenders, were in it up to their necks.
Which left the tyrants themselves with an invidious choice: either to rule as traitors or to be lynched by angry mobs. If they were to be given the opportunity to strike a devastating blow against their overlords— even, perhaps, to finish off the King of Kings himself—what then? A fantastical hypothetical—except that, back in 513 BC, the question had suddenly become pressingly real.10 Darius, fresh from his triumphs in India, had rolled into Sardis with a vast army, crossed from Asia into Europe, and then vanished north into what is now the Ukraine on a great raid against the Scythians. The various Greek tyrants, ordered to play their part in the Persian war effort, had been sent with their squadrons into the Black Sea to build a pontoon bridge across the mouth of the Danube and await their royal master’s return. Among them, recently brought under the Persian yoke and not very happy about it, had been the Athenian aristocrat Miltiades the Philaid, tyrant of the Chersonese. Counting the weeks and watching the skies turn steadily more leaden and icy, he had conceived an audacious plan. What if the Greeks, by cutting the bridge, were to strand Darius and his army on the Danube’s freezing northern bank? Scythia was certainly no place to pass a winter. The snowstorms were appalling, and the natives partial to drinking human blood. Conceivably, just conceivably, it lay within the power of the Ionians to doom the Great King’s whole expedition. A dangerous, teasing thought—and by late autumn, with Persian outriders only days away, an increasingly urgent one, too. A conference of the tyrants had duly been convened. Miltiades had pressed his case. For a brief, intoxicating moment, the other Greeks had allowed themselves to be swayed; until reason, inglorious but pragmatic, had prevailed. After all, as every Ionian tyrant was perfectly aware, “there was not one of them but he owed Darius his position as head of state.”11 So they had voted to stay loyal and to keep the bridge afloat. Discreetly suppressing any mention of the treachery they had been contemplating, the assembled tyrants—Miltiades included—had duly welcomed back their master. The prospect of liberty might have been sweet, but not so sweet, it appeared, when weighed in the balance, as the reality of power.
And for one Greek in particular, a man as sensitive to the opportunities opened up to him by Persian rule as any Lydian or Mede, that power was especially precious. Histiaeus, the chief opponent of Miltiades’ braggadocio on the Danube, had spoken out as tyrant of the Aegean’s sole world city, the acknowledged “glory of Ionia,”12 Miletus. The birthplace of Thales, and of philosophy itself, the city was an economic as well as a cultural powerhouse. The port’s four magnificent harbors, thronged with a great bobbing forest of masts—those of grain ships from the Crimea, merchant ships from Syria, from Egypt, from Italy, warships, sleek and menacing, from the Great King’s own battle fleet—were unparalleled anywhere else in the Greek world as scenes of opulence and bustle. So prized was Miletus by the Persians, both as trading entrepôt and naval base, that she enjoyed, in comparison to the other Ionian cities, a uniquely privileged form of vassalage, one that enabled her to pretend almost to the rank of ally. While being sure never to let this status go to his head, Histiaeus had nevertheless relished the advantages it had given him over his fellow tyrants—and the opportunity, above all else, to establish a personal relationship with the world’s most powerful man.
On his return from Scythia, the Great King had duly rewarded Histiaeus for his stalwart support of the Persian expedition by summoning him to Sardis, and inquiring graciously of his Milesian bandaka if there were any gift that he had his eye on. Since the army that Darius had left behind in Europe was at that very moment advancing westward from the Chersonese into Thrace, painstakingly conquering the north coast of the Aegean and its interior, Histiaeus, greatly daring, had wondered if he might perhaps be gifted a portion of this splendid new satrapy? The Great King had inclined his head; the request had been granted; Histiaeus had found himself the owner of an area of Thrace named Myrcinus. It was no mean reward: situated on a broad river not far from the empire’s new border with the kingdom of Macedon, Darius’ gift came complete with silver mines and forests, excellent raw material for a fleet. Histiaeus, unsurprisingly, was delighted. No longer confined to Ionia, he dared to dream of greater things.
But already, even as he hurried to Thrace to found a city on his new property, eyebrows had begun to be raised among the Persian military. After much nervous clearing of throats, words had very respectfully been put to the royal ear. It had been suggested to Darius that Greeks, especially subtle and ambitious Greeks such as Histiaeus, were simply not to be trusted with too much power. It was out of the question, of course, for the Great King, having presented Histiaeus with a reward, to snatch it back; still less for him to admit that he might possibly have made an error. Instead, summoning the Milesian to Sardis, Darius had announced that Histiaeus was to be graced with yet further marks of high esteem: the magnificent title of “Royal Table-Companion,” and an official post as the king’s adviser on Greek affairs. Naturally, since Darius would shortly be leaving Sardis, Histiaeus would now have the supreme honor of accompanying his master on his travels. A fixed grin no doubt plastered on his face, Histiaeus had duly been obliged, in 511 BC, to pack his bags, turn his back on his homeland, and leave for Susa.
Even languishing in the gilded cage of the royal court, however, he did not abandon all his hopes of exploiting Persian dominance to establish an Aegean power base for his dynasty. Back in Miletus, Histiaeus’ stand-in as tyrant, his nephew Aristagoras, was soon proving himself a chip off the old block, and a keen student of his uncle’s methods. In 500 BC, he approached Artaphernes with a scheme that he trusted might prove to their mutual benefit. Why not, Aristagoras suggested smoothly to the satrap, send an expedition against the island of Naxos? It was a rare prize, lying midway on any likely invasion route across the Aegean to Greece, and ripe for the plucking. The island was riven by factions; class war was threatening; the aristocracy were positively begging for Persian intervention. Sardis could provide the ships; Aristagoras himself would provide contacts within the disgruntled Naxian aristocracy. Everyone would be a winner.