herodotus

ut being deceived in his expectation, he took a casting-net andenclosed a great multitude of the fishes and drew them forth from thewater: and when he saw them leaping about, he said to the fishes:"Stop dancing I pray you now, seeing that ye would not come out anddance before when I piped." Cyrus spoke this fable to the Ionians andAiolians for this reason, because the Ionians had refused to complybefore, when Cyrus himself by a messenger requested them to revoltfrom Crœsus, while now when the conquest had been made they were readyto submit to Cyrus. Thus he said to them in anger, and the Ionians,when they heard this answer brought back to their cities, put wallsround about them severally, and gathered together to the Panionion,all except the men of Miletos, for with these alone Cyrus had sworn anagreement on the same terms as the Lydians had granted. The rest ofthe Ionians resolved by common consent to send messengers to Sparta,to ask the Spartans to help the Ionians.142. These Ionians to whom belongs the Panionion had the fortune tobuild their cities in the most favourable position for climate andseasons of any men whom we know: for neither the regions above Ionianor those below, neither those towards the East nor those towards theWest,[146] produce the same results as Ionia itself, the regions inthe one direction being oppressed by cold and moisture, and those inthe other by heat and drought. And these do not use all the samespeech, but have four different variations of language.[147] First oftheir cities on the side of the South lies Miletos, and next to itMyus and Priene. These are settlements made in Caria, and speak thesame language with one another; and the following are in Lydia,--Ephesos, Colophon, Lebedos, Teos, Clazomenai, Phocaia: these citiesresemble not at all those mentioned before in the speech which theyuse, but they agree one with another. There remain besides threeIonian cities, of which two are established in the islands of Samosand Chios, and one is built upon the mainland, namely Erythrai: nowthe men of Chios and of Erythrai use the same form of language, butthe Samians have one for themselves alone. Thus there result fourseparate forms of language.143. Of these Ionians then those of Miletos were sheltered fromdanger, since they had sworn an agreement; and those of them who livedin islands had no cause for fear, for the Phenicians were not yetsubjects of the Persians and the Persians themselves were not sea-men.Now these[148] were parted off from the other Ionians for no otherreason than this:--The whole Hellenic nation was at that time weak,but of all its races the Ionian was much the weakest and of leastaccount: except Athens, indeed, it had no considerable city. Now theother Ionians, and among them the Athenians, avoided the name, notwishing to be called Ionians, nay even now I perceive that the greater