Persian Fire

by Tom Holland

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.