6.94.2
He dismissed from command Mardonius, who had fared so badly on his expedition, and appointed other generals to lead his armies against Athens and Eretria, Datis, a Mede by birth, and his own nephew Artaphrenes son of Artaphrenes; the order he gave them at their departure was to enslave Athens and Eretria and bring the slaves into his presence.
ch. 95
6.95.1
When these appointed generals on their way from the king reached the Aleian plain in Cilicia, bringing with them a great and well-furnished army, they camped there and were overtaken by all the fleet that was assigned to each; there also arrived the transports for horses, which in the previous year Darius had bidden his tributary subjects to make ready.
6.95.2
Having loaded the horses into these, and embarked the land army in the ships, they sailed to Ionia with six hundred triremes. From there they held their course not by the mainland and straight towards the Hellespont and Thrace, but setting forth from Samos they sailed by the Icarian sea and from island to island; this, to my thinking, was because they feared above all the voyage around Athos, seeing that in the previous year they had come to great disaster by holding their course that way; moreover, Naxos was still unconquered and constrained them.
ch. 96
6.96.1
When they approached Naxos from the Icarian sea and came to land (for it was Naxos which the Persians intended to attack first), the Naxians, remembering what had happened before, note fled away to the mountains instead of waiting for them. The Persians enslaved all of them that they caught, and burnt their temples and their city. After doing this, they set sail for the other islands.
ch. 97
6.97.1
While they did this, the Delians also left Delos and fled away to Tenos. As his expedition was sailing landwards, Datis went on ahead and bade his fleet anchor not off Delos, but across the water off Rhenaea. Learning where the Delians were, he sent a herald to them with this proclamation:
6.97.2
“Holy men, why have you fled away, and so misjudged my intent? It is my own desire, and the king's command to me, to do no harm to the land where the two gods note were born, neither to the land itself nor to its inhabitants. So return now to your homes and dwell on your island.” He made this proclamation to the Delians, and then piled up three hundred talents of frankincense on the altar and burnt it.
ch. 98
6.98.1
After doing this, Datis sailed with his army against Eretria first, taking with him Ionians and Aeolians; and after he had put out from there, Delos was shaken by an earthquake, the first and last, as the Delians say, before my time. This portent was sent by heaven, as I suppose, to be an omen of the ills that were coming on the world.
6.98.2
For in three generations, that is, in the time of Darius son of Hystaspes and Xerxes son of Darius and Artaxerxes son of Xerxes, note more ills happened to Hellas than in twenty generations before Darius; some coming from the Persians, some from the wars for preeminence among the chief of the nations themselves.
