Datis

Median admiral who, with Artaphernes the nephew of Darius, commanded the punitive fleet Darius sent against Eretria and Athens in 490 BC. Datis crossed the Aegean by island-hopping south, sacked Eretria on Euboea after a six-day siege and deported its population to Susa, then made the short crossing to Marathon on the Plataean tyrant Hippias's advice. After the defeat he re-embarked the surviving Persians and rowed around Cape Sounion toward the undefended Athenian city — the phantom-signal-of-the-shield episode in Herodotus — but Miltiades's army force-marched back from Marathon and Datis, finding the city not undefended, withdrew to Asia.

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