Dios’ prosperous eastern Aegean home of Chios, or 'Χίος', was located just off the coast of Asia Minor and geographically formed part of Ionia. The region, which was at the time mainly inhabited by Greeks, also included the religious centre of Mycale and the cities of Colophon, Ephesus, Miletus and Phocaea on the mainland, plus other islands such as Samos.

Chios, serenely located in the sky-blue Aegean Sea, was hilly but fertile and attractive. The many magnificent local scenes included pleasant cities, towns and villages, possessing splendid temples and other municipal buildings. There was also much greenery and colourful flora, as well as sand and pebble beaches and spa sulphur springs.

Chios’ prosperity emanated from the island’s successful agriculture and industry. Copious amounts of citrus fruits, figs, nuts and olives were harvested. Large quantities of goats and sheep were husbanded, and quarries produced lignite and marble. There was a substantial fishing fleet. Carefully supervised vineyards and woods also yielded the goods for which the island was perhaps most famous, namely Chian wine, which was stored in locally manufactured wax-sealed amphorae, and mastic.

Levkonion on the south coast, which had sadly lost much importance by Dios’ era because of the growth of other cities on Chios, especially the eponymous capital in the east, had once rivalled Troy on the nearby mainland of Asia Minor in significance. However, the temple of Athena on the local acropolis, which was almost two centuries old, was still the centre for many of the island’s main religious festivals.

Chios was rumoured to be the birthplace of Homer, although this probably inaccurately stemmed from the presence for centuries on the island of a school of epic poets called the ‘Homeridae’. There was also a similar establishment for architects and sculptors, which was the inspiration behind the Ionic order of architecture and was famed throughout the Greek world, as was the local system of constitutional government and law, which actually pre-dated that of Athens.

Solon of Athens used the Chian constitutional and legal model as the basis for his own relevant and highly significant reforms in his great Attica city. Chios could therefore perhaps lay better claim to being the cradle of democracy.

Fatefully for Dios and Capros, however, Greek Asia Minor and neighbouring islands, including Chios, were also renowned in the eyes of their Persian overlords for other human attributes. These concerned the beauty of the local children.

The whole of Asia Minor and many nearby islands, including Chios, had now been subject to the suzerainty of the Persians for 4½ decades, ever since the reign of Cyrus the Great, who had established the biggest empire the world had yet known. However, the local inhabitants had originally been

This development on Chios, which displayed no regard for local political customs, institutions and personalities, had fatefully caused a lot of resentment, much more than that incurred by the earlier more nominal subjection to Persian suzerainty. There had previously even been a popular view that being part of a vast, prosperous and currently peaceful empire was beneficial for the island, as the situation opened up many more potential lucrative trading markets.

Darius II was also known to some as the ‘Great’, but to others he was the ‘Bastard’, a title that to them did not just reflect his birth status. This king still reigned and was now about to anger the people of Chios even more by the nature of the addition to his latest demand for annual tribute, which invariably consisted of both cash and kind.

The expenses of Persian kings were heavy. Regal magnificence had to be retained, including the construction and maintenance of vast luxurious palaces and the keeping of many wives, large harems and enormous retinues of servants. There was also the management of the empire and the upkeep of the relevant civil and military infrastructures to consider. Annual tribute from subject states therefore needed to be substantial, especially when there was an additional need for large reserves to be set aside to pay the costs of any future wars.

Tribute basically consisted of taxes and gifts. Levies of about 20% of retail value were imposed on agricultural produce, as well as on the products from other industries, such as fishing, mining and manufacturing. Payment was made in gold and silver talents, each of which weighed 30 kilograms [66 pounds].

Gold talents were worth thirteen times as much as those of silver and were divided for currency purposes into 60 minas and 360 shekels or 100 drachmas. Each of the latter weighed 4 grams [0.14 ounce].

The poorer provinces, such as Arachosia, which paid only about 170 silver talents annually, naturally contributed the least. Meanwhile, the equivalent Indian satrapy contrastingly forfeited approximately 360 similar units of gold dust per year.

Such tributes were not entirely spent on royal extravagance or imperial administration. Darius II’s treasuries at Ecbatana, Susa and Persepolis managed, after defraying annual costs and other out-goings, to store the net equivalent of about 15000 silver talents per year.

When Alexander the Great ended the Persian Empire, over 170 years in the future from this present time, he found 380,000 silver talents in the Ecbatana treasury alone. That was after the last king, Darius III, had spent much of his reserves fighting the invading Macedonians.

Significant non-perishable gifts in kind, generally representative of the source, were also expected to form part of the annual tribute. For example, Arabs gave 3,000 kilograms [6,600 pounds] of frankincense, and the Egyptians 1500 horses, 2,000 mules and 50,000 sheep. Chios’ presents normally consisted of many amphorae of local wine, plus large quantities of lignite, marble and mastic. However, on this occasion, the currently unknowing islanders, along with some other Greek subjects of Darius II, were also to be required to supplement a rather grim part of Babylon’s yearly contribution.

The satraps were responsible for the collection of tribute, from which they took an agreed and generous cut to finance their own expenses and those of the subordinate tyrants. Chios formed part of a province combining the regions of Ionia, Lydia and Caria, the capital of which was at Sardis on the mainland of Asia Minor.

This satrapy had first been established by Darius II twelve years prior to the present date. The same reorganisation of the king’s domains in Asia Minor had also introduced the local tyrants.

Meanwhile, the same landward breeze that currently cooled Dios and Capros, as they happily played without care on the sandy beach because summertime meant no schooling, also unfortunately heralded potential personal disaster. The first foreboding sign of such trouble was the disturbance of the previously indiscernible eastern horizon by tiny black forms. These gradually grew larger, gaining shape and colour in the process to reveal themselves eventually as the expected small flotilla of Phoenician biremes and merchant ships, making their annual expedition to the Chios to collect the tribute for the Persian king.

The narrow high-speed biremes were warships with two banks of oars and single red and blue striped sails. The vessels were about 30 paces long by 5 wide and possessed massive battering rams of wood-covered bronze on extravagantly curved bows, as well as decorative poops, abruptly bent and shaped like a scorpion’s tail. They were also externally adorned with colourful round shields affixed to the side.

The merchant ships possessed similarly ornate bows and poops. However, compared to the biremes, they were more cumbersome, having less oars and thereby being more reliant for motion on the single brown rectangular sails on their low masts, whose colour came from the leather quilt covering affixed as strengthening. The boats’ hulls were shallow but could nevertheless hold considerable amounts of goods for transport, supplemented in respect of the most valuable consignments by using the spare space on the upper decks. Here, garish red tenting at the stern provided the crew and any passengers with some shelter in inclement weather. As the vessels were expected to play a potential military role in times of war, their fronts were also fitted with battering rams and the lower planking was reinforced with metal protection in case of impact with the enemy.

The bows of both biremes and merchantmen displayed large painted eyes, a decoration which, like on similar Greek ships, had been adopted from sacred Egyptian practice. The depictions were supposed to help the vessels find their way. Some prows also exhibited carvings of deities and animals.

The majority of those who currently occupied the open upper decks of the arriving biremes were actually passengers rather than crew, as was indicated by the fact that they wore warrior uniforms and were heavily armed. They were also not Phoenicians, as most were instead Persian soldiers voyaging on hired ships.

The commercially-minded Phoenicians, of whom the Carthaginians were an off-shoot, were considered at this time to be the best seafarers of the ancient Mediterranean world. The famous cedar trees covering the slopes of the mountains of their native land, now called the Lebanon, had in fact first encouraged them to trade by water rather than land. The local timber was a perfect construction material for robust ships.

The Phoenicians then made important contributions to marine science. They designed state-of-the art ships, and cleverly adapted and developed the latest navigational technology, being credited in the process with the division of a circle into 360 degrees and establishing reliable celestial reference points.

The Phoenicians regularly hired out their seafaring expertise, and their merchant and war vessels, to foreigners. Given that their homeland was currently under the suzerainty of the Persian Empire, there was also at this time a particular reason why these efficient maritime mercenaries gave their present loyalty to one nation in particular.

The ancient Persians were not mariners and possessed no seagoing ships of their own. They relied instead entirely on mercenaries, such as the Phoenicians, as well as hired Greeks.

One exception to the presence of crew and soldiers on the upper decks of the biremes was what the locals would consider a very effeminately clothed and adorned, and unusually unshaven, young man in his early 20s, who was standing on the flotilla flagship. However, he was in Persian eyes exceedingly handsome and well-dressed, as befitted a former highly favoured catamite of their king.

His previous position had now led Aspamites to be appointed to his current important post. He was a ‘spasaka’, or one of the trusted ‘eyes of the king’, temporarily despatched from Darius II’s large and luxurious summer palace at Ecbatana to oversee the local collection of tribute.

The presence of someone like Aspamites was considered necessary to ensure that the provincial satrap and tyrant of Chios, and their local officials, did not cream off more of the largesse than their entitlement. However, the specific identity of this particular spasaka had more to do with the special commission with which he had also been charged by Darius II’s main court administrator, the Lord High Chamberlain.

For the same reason, Aspamites was accompanied by a native of Chios, who was to become notorious throughout Ionia, Lydia and Caria for his specialist profession, which he practised with clear personal satisfaction. The Chian’s name was Panionius.

Dios and Capros watched in fascination, as the Phoenician flotilla came closer, whilst clearly making for the harbour of Chios’ eponymous capital, which was situated further north on the island’s eastern coast from the beach on which the boys were currently standing. Of course, neither child appreciated that for one of them the appearance of the ships would not just mean the loss of some of their island’s material riches.

Chios would soon be additionally impoverished through the sad loss of, to some people at least, other far more precious goods.

(Pedasa, Caria, Asia Minor, same time)