the son of a certain Sisamnes whom, being one of the royal judges, and having given unrighteous judgment for money, King Cambyses slew; and having slain him, he flayed off his skin, and cutting it into strips stretched them on the judgment-seat. And making the son of Sisamnes to be judge in his father’s room, he bade him remember on what manner of seat he sat.
In these days Miletus was the most prosperous of all the cities of Ionia, though it had been brought very low in the second generation before by strife among its citizens. This strife was healed after this fashion by the Parians, whom the men of Miletus chose out of all the Greeks to be judges in their case. These Parians went through the land of Miletus, and wheresoever they saw in the country, which was for most part desolate, any field well tilled, they wrote down the name of the master of the field. And when they had traversed the whole, and found not many such, so soon as they were come back to the city, they called an assembly, and made this award, that the men whose fields they had seen to be well tilled should bear rule, for they judged that such as managed well their own affairs would manage well the affairs of the State also. But now from this city of Miletus, and from the island of Naxos, which was the richest of all the islands, there came great damage to the men of Ionia. It happened on this wise. Certain of the rich men of Naxos, being banished by the commons, fled to Miletus, of which city one Aristagoras was lord in those days, being son-in-law to Histiæus. And when the exiles prayed him for help that they might come back to their own country, Aristagoras, thinking that if they should come back by his help, he should be lord of Naxos, said to them (and he had this pretext for helping them that they had been long time friends of his father in-law) “I cannot bring you back to Naxos against the will of the city, for I hear that they have eight thousand men at arms, and many ships of war. But I have a friendship with Otanes, that is brother to King Darius, and captain of them that dwell by the sea, and has many soldiers and ships. I will work with him that he shall do what ye wish.” To this the exiles agreed, saying