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The barbarians were conducted to Marathon by Hippias. the son of
Pisistratus, who the night before had seen a strange vision in his
sleep. He dreamt of lying in his mother's arms, and conjectured the
dream to mean that he would be restored to Athens, recover the power
which he had lost, and afterwards live to a good old age in his native
country. Such was the sense in which he interpreted the vision. He
now proceeded to act as guide to the Persians; and, in the first
place, he landed the prisoners taken from Eretria upon the island that
is called Aegileia, a tract belonging to the Styreans, after which
he brought the fleet to anchor off Marathon, and marshalled the bands
of the barbarians as they disembarked. As he was thus employed it
chanced that he sneezed and at the same time coughed with more violence
than was his wont. Now, as he was a man advanced in years, and the
greater number of his teeth were loose, it so happened that one of them
was driven out with the force of the cough, and fell down into the
sand. Hippias took all the pains he could to find it; but the tooth
was nowhere to be seen: whereupon he fetched a deep sigh, and said to
the bystanders:
"After all, the land is not ours; and we shall never be able to
bring it under. All my share in it is the portion of which my tooth
has possession."
So Hippias believed that in this way his dream was fulfilled.
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