an Athenian captain, son of Cypselus. He obtained a victory in a chariot race at the Olympic games. He led a colony of Athenians to the Chersonesus. The causes of this appointment are striking and singular. The Thracian Dolonci, harried by a long war with the Ablynthians, were directed by the oracle of Delphi to take for their king the first man they met in their return home, who invited them to come under his roof and partake his entertainments. This was Miltiades, whom the appearance of the Dolonci, with their strange arms and garments, had struck. He invited them to his house, and was made acquainted with the commands of the oracle. He obeyed; and when the oracle of Delphi had approved a second time the choice of the Dolonci, Miltiades, Ionici, he departed for the Chersonesus, and was invested by the inhabitants with sovereign power. The first measures he took were to stop the further incursions of the Abysynthians, by building a strong wall across the isthmus. When he had established himself at home, and fortified his dominions against foreign invasion, he turned his arms against Lampsacus. His expedition was unsuccessful; he was taken in an ambuscade, and made prisoner. His friend Croesus king of Lydia was informed of his captivity, and procured his release. He lived few years after he had recovered his liberty. As he had no issue, he left his kingdom and possessions to Stefagoras the son of Cimon, who was his brother by the same mother. The memory of Miltiades was greatly honoured by the Dolonci, and they regularly celebrated festivals and exhibited shows in commemoration of a man to whom they owed their greatness and preservation.

son of Cimon, and brother of Stefagoras mentioned in the preceding article, was some time after the death of the latter, who died without issue, sent by the Athenians with one ship to take possession of the Chersonesus. At his arrival Miltiades appeared mournful, as if lamenting the recent death of his brother. The principal inhabitants of the country visited the new governor to console with him; but their confidence in his sincerity proved fatal to them. Miltiades seized their persons, and made himself absolute in Chersonesus. To strengthen himself, he married Hegesipyla, the daughter of Olorus the king of the Thracians. His triumph was short. In the third year of his government, his dominions were threatened by an invasion of the Scythian Nomades, whom Darius had some time before irritated by entering their country. He fled before them; but as their hostilities were of short duration, he was soon restored to his kingdom. Three years after, he left Chersonesus; and set sail for Athens, where he was received with great applause. He was present at the celebrated battle of Marathon; in which all the chief officers ceded their power to him, and left the event of the battle to depend upon his superior abilities. He obtained an important victory over the more numerous forces of his adversaries. Some time after, Miltiades was intrusted with a fleet of 70 ships, and ordered to punish those islands which had revolted to the Persians. He was successful at first, but a sudden report that the Persian fleet was coming to attack him, changed his operations as he was besieging Paros. He raised the siege, and returned to Athens. He was accused of treason, and particularly of holding correspondence with the enemy. The falsity of these accusations might have appeared, if Miltiades had been able to come into the assembly. But a wound which he had received before Paros detained him at home; and his enemies, taking advantage of his absence, became more eager in their accusations, and louder in their clamours. He was condemned to death; but the rigour of his sentence was retracted on the recollection of his great services to the Athenians, and he was put into prison till he had paid a fine of 50 talents to the state. His inability to discharge so great a sum detained him in confinement; and his wounds becoming incurable, he died a prisoner about 489 years before the Christian era. His body was ransomed by his son Cimon; who was obliged to borrow and pay the 50 talents, to give his father a decent burial.—The accusations against Miltiades were probably the more readily believed by his countrymen, when they remembered how he made himself absolute in Chersonesus; and in condemning the barbarity of the Athenians towards a general, who was the source of their military prosperity, we must remember the jealousy which ever reigns among a free and independent people, and how watchful they are in defence of the natural rights which they see wrested from others by violence. Cornelius Nepos has written the life of Miltiades the son of Cimon; but his history is incongruous and unintelligible, from his confounding the actions of the son of Cimon with those of the son of Cypselus. Greater reliance is to be placed on the narration of Herodotus, whose veracity is confirmed, and who was indubitably better informed and more capable of giving an account of the life and exploits of men who flourished in his age, and of which he could see the living monuments. Herodotus was born about six years after the famous battle of Marathon; and C. Nepos, as a writer of the Augustan age, flourished about 450 years after the age of the father of history.

Milton, John, the most illustrious of the English poets, was descended of a genteel family, seated at a place of their own name, viz. Milton, in Oxfordshire. He was born December 9, 1608, and received his first rudiments of education under the care of his parents, assisted by a private tutor. He afterwards passed some time at St Paul's school, London; in which city his father had settled, being engaged in the business of a scrivener. At the age of 17, he was sent to Christ's college, Cambridge; where he made great progress in all parts of academical learning; but his chief delight was in poetry. In 1623, he proceeded bachelor of arts, having performed his exercise for it with great applause. His father designed him for the church; but the young gentleman's attachment to the Muses was so strong, that it became impossible to engage him in any other pursuits. In 1632, he took the degree of master of arts; and having now spent as much time in the university as became a person who determined not to engage in any of the three professions, he left the college, greatly regretted by his acquaintance, but highly displeased with the usual method of training up youth there for the study of divinity; and being much out of humour with the public administration of ecclesiastical affairs, he grew dissatisfied with the established form of church government, and disliked the whole plan of education practised in the university. His parents, who now dwelt at Horton, near Colnbrook, in Buckinghamshire, received him with unabated affection, notwithstanding he had thwarted their views of providing for him in the church, and they amply indulged him in his love of retirement; wherein he enriched his mind with the choicest stores of Grecian and Roman literature; and his poems of Comus, l'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and Lycidas, all wrote at this time, would have been sufficient, had he never produced anything more considerable, to have transmitted his fame to the latest posterity. However, he was not so absorbed in his studies as not to make frequent excursions to London; neither did so much excellence pass Milton was unnoticed among his neighbours in the country, with the most distinguished of whom he sometimes chose to relax his mind, and improve his acquaintance with the world as well as with books. After five years spent in this manner, he obtained his father's permission to travel for farther improvement. At Paris he became acquainted with the celebrated Hugo Grotius; and from thence travelling into Italy, he was everywhere cared for by persons of the most eminent quality and learning.

Upon his return home, he set up a genteel academy in Aldergate street. In 1641, he began to draw his pen in defense of the Presbyterian party; and the next year he married the daughter of Richard Powell, Esq., of Forest Hill in Oxfordshire. This lady, however, whether from a difference on account of party, her father being a zealous royalist, or some other cause, soon thought proper to return to her relations; which so incensed her husband, that he resolved never to take her again, and wrote and published several tracts in defense of the doctrine and discipline of divorce. He even made his addresses to another lady; but this incident proved the means of a reconciliation with Mrs Milton.

In 1644, he wrote his Tract upon Education; and the restraint on the liberty of the press being continued by act of parliament, he wrote boldly and nobly against that restraint. In 1645, he published his juvenile poems; and about two years after, on the death of his father, he took a smaller house in High Holborn, the back of which opened into Lincoln's-Inn Fields. Here he quietly prosecuted his studies, till the fatal catastrophe and death of Charles I.; on which occasion he published his Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, in justification of the fact. He was now taken into the service of the commonwealth, and made Latin secretary to the council of state, who resolved neither to write to others abroad, nor to receive any answers, except in the Latin tongue, which was common to them all. The famous Exon Basilicon coming out about the same time, our author, by command, wrote and published his Iconoclastes the same year. It was also by order of his masters, backed by the reward of 100l. that in 1651 he published his celebrated piece, entitled Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio; "A Defence of the people of England, in answer to Salmasius's Defence of the King;" which performance spread his fame over all Europe. He now dwelt in a pleasant house with a garden in Petty France, Westminster, opening into St James's Park. In 1652 he buried his wife, who died not long after the delivery of her fourth child; and about the same time he also lost his eye-sight, by a gutta serena, which had been growing upon him many years.

Cromwell took the reins of government into his own hand in the year 1653; but Milton still held his office. His leisure hours he employed in prosecuting his studies; wherein he was so far from being discouraged by the loss of his sight, that he even conceived hopes this misfortune would add new vigour to his genius; which in fact seems to have been the case.—Thus animated, he again ventured upon matrimony: his second lady was the daughter of Captain Woodstock of Hackney: she died in childbirth about a year after. On the deposition of the protector, Richard Cromwell, and on the return of the long parliament, Milton being still continued secretary, he appeared again in print; pleading for a farther reformation of the laws relating to religion; and, during the anarchy that ensued, he drew up several schemes for re-establishing the commonwealth, exerting all his faculties to prevent the return of Charles II. England's destiny, however, and Charles's good fortune prevailing, our author chose to confine his safety, and retired to a friend's house in Bartholomew Clove. A particular prosecution was intended against him; but the just esteem to which his admirable genius and extraordinary accomplishments entitled him, had raised him so many friends, even among those of the opposite party, that he was included in the general amnesty.

This storm being over, he married a third wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Mr Minshall a-Cheshire gentleman; and not long after he took a house in the Artillery Walk, leading to Bunhill Fields. This was his last stage: here he fat down for a longer continuance than he had been able to do anywhere; and though he had lost his fortune (for every thing belonging to him went to wreck at the Restoration), he did not lose his taste for literature, but continued his studies with almost as much ardour as ever; and applied himself particularly to the finishing his grand work, the Paradise Lost; one of the noblest poems that ever was produced by human genius.—It was published in 1667, and his Paradise Regained came out in 1670.—This latter work fell short of the excellence of the former production; although, were it not for the transcendent merit of Paradise Lost, the second composition would doubtless have stood foremost in the rank of English epic poems. After this he published many pieces in prose; for which we refer our readers to the edition of his Historical, Poetical, and Miscellaneous Works, printed by Millar, in 2 vols. 4to, in 1753.

In 1674, this great man paid the last debt to nature at his house in Bunhill Fields, in the 66th year of his age; and was interred on the 12th of November, in the chancel of St Giles's, Cripplegate.—A decent monument was erected to his memory, in 1737, in Westminster Abbey, by Mr Benson, one of the auditors of the impress.—Milton was remarkably handsome in his person; but his constitution was tender, and by no means equal to his incessant application to his studies.—Though greatly reduced in his circumstances, yet he died worth 1500l. in money, besides his household goods.—He had no son: but left behind him three daughters, whom he had by his first wife.