1.163.1
Phocaea was the first Ionian town that he attacked. These Phocaeans were the earliest of the Greeks to make long sea-voyages, and it was they who discovered the Adriatic Sea, and Tyrrhenia, and Iberia, and Tartessus, note
1.163.2
not sailing in round freightships but in fifty-oared vessels. When they came to Tartessus they made friends with the king of the Tartessians, whose name was Arganthonius; he ruled Tartessus for eighty years and lived a hundred and twenty. note
1.163.3
The Phocaeans won this man's friendship to such a degree that he invited them to leave Ionia and settle in his country wherever they liked; and then, when he could not persuade them to, and learned from them how the Median power was increasing, he gave them money to build a wall around their city.
1.163.4
He gave it generously: for the circuit of the wall is of not a few stades, and all this is made of great stones well fitted together.
ch. 164
1.164.1
In such a manner the Phocaeans' wall was built. Harpagus marched against the city and besieged it, but he made overtures, and said that it would suffice him if the Phocaeans would demolish one rampart of the wall and dedicate one house.
1.164.2
But the Phocaeans, very indignant at the thought of slavery, said they wanted to deliberate for a day, and then they would answer; but while they were deliberating, Harpagus must withdraw his army from the walls, they said. Harpagus said that he well knew what they intended to do, but that nevertheless he would allow them to deliberate.
1.164.3
So when Harpagus withdrew his army from the walls, the Phocaeans launched their fifty-oared ships, embarked their children and women and all their movable goods, besides the statues from the temples and everything dedicated in them except bronze or stonework or painting, and then embarked themselves and set sail for Chios; and the Persians took Phocaea, left thus uninhabited.
ch. 165
1.165.1
The Phocaeans would have bought the islands called Oenussae from the Chians; note but the Chians would not sell them, because they feared that the islands would become a market and so their own island be cut off from trade: so the Phocaeans prepared to sail to Cyrnus, note where at the command of an oracle they had built a city called Alalia twenty years before.
1.165.2
Arganthonius was by this time dead. While getting ready for their voyage, they first sailed to Phocaea, where they destroyed the Persian guard to whom Harpagus had entrusted the defense of the city; and when this was done, they called down mighty curses on any one of them who should stay behind when the rest sailed.
1.165.3
Not only this, but they sank a mass of iron in the sea, and swore never to return to Phocaea before the iron should appear again. But while they prepared to sail to Cyrnus, more than half of the citizens were overcome with longing and pitiful sorrow for the city and the life of their land, and they broke their oath and sailed back to Phocaea. Those of them who kept the oath put out to sea from the Oenussae.
