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BATTLE OF MARATHON

The Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. is one the most famous battles in ancient Greek history. Greek soldiers faced off against Persian invaders led by King Darius I. Persians navy ships carried 20,000 infantry and cavalry to Marathon to punish the Greeks for supporting the Ionians, who had revolted against the Persians.
The Athenian army, under the command of general Miltaides, was outnumbered six to one. The Athenian army consisted of about 10,000 Athenians, aided by 1,000 Plataeans, and included many aristocrats. The strength of the Persian Army was its archers.
Despite being outnumbered, the Greeks led a forward attack that caused the Persian army to panic and flee to their ships. More than 6,000 Persians were slaughtered — compared to less than 200 of the Greeks, according to Herodotus. The battle also gave rise to the story of Pheidippides, who supposedly ran the first marathon from Marathon to Athens to announce Greek victory, only to collapse dead after his arrival. [Source Tia Ghose, Live Science, January 22, 2014]
Websites on Ancient Greece: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; ; Gutenberg.org gutenberg.org; British Museum ancientgreece.co.uk; Illustrated Greek History, Dr. Janice Siegel, Hampden–Sydney College hsc.edu/drjclassics ; The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization pbs.org/empires/thegreeks ; Cambridge Classics External Gateway to Humanities Resources web.archive.org/web; Ancient Greek Sites on the Web from Medea showgate.com/medea ; Greek History Course from Reed web.archive.org; Classics FAQ MIT classics.mit.edu;
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Persian Wars
Between 499 to 479, Greece and Persia fought a series of wars that determined the balance of power in the Mediterranean. In 492 B.C., Persia was of one of the world's largest empires. It controlled a huge expanse of territory, including Greek cities in Asia Minor. Its expansion westward seemed inexorable. Greece, which consisted of bunch of disparate states that fought against one another more than they were united, seemed like an easy target.

The Persian Wars were triggered by a rebellion by Ionian Greeks in Asia Minor against their Persian lords and the Persian King Darius in 499 B.C.. Athens and Eretria supported the rebellions and Greeks sacked the important Persian city of Sardis. Darius was outraged. He asked “Who are these Athenians?” and then appointed a slave to remind him every day, “Master, remember the Athenians!” The Persians retaliated by destroying the Greek city of Miletos. Darius was further infuriated when he demanded symbolic tokens of “earth and water” from Athens and Sparta and the defiant Athenians threw the Persians envoy into a pit (“earth”) and the Spartans their envoy into a well (“water”).
Darius developed a plan to invade Greece and teach the Athenians a lesson they wouldn’t forget. The gods favored the Greeks during Darius’s first invasion. A fleet of 600 Persian ships crossed the Dardanelles and then was ravaged by storm off of Mount Anthos that destroyed half the fleet.
The military campaigns against the Greeks by Darius and, after his death, by his son Xerxes, constituted the largest military undertaking in history up to that time.
Aeschylus’ plays are the earliest accounts we have of the Persian Wars. The characters in his play “The Persians” are: 1) Atossa, widow of Darius and mother of Xerxes’ 2) a Messenger 3) Ghost of Darius; 4) Xerxes and 4) a Chorus of Persian Elders, who compose the Persian Council of State. The play begins at the Council-Hall of the Persian Kings at Susa. The tomb of Darius the Great is visible. The time is 480 B.C., shortly after the battle of Salamis. The play opens with the Chorus of Persian Elders singing its first choral lyric. [Source: University of Calgary]
Book: “The Persian Wars” by Herodotus
Herodotus on the Forming of the Greek Alliance Before the Battle of Marathon
On the Battle of Marathon during the first Persian invasion of Greece,Herodotus wrote in Book VI in “Histories” (430 B.C.): “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,1 "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.[Source: Herodotus “The History of Herodotus” Book VI on the Persian War, 440 B.C. translated by George Rawlinson, MIT]
Shekel coin with Darius I “The Athenians were drawn up in order of battle in a sacred close belonging to Hercules when they were joined by the Plataeans, who came in full force to their aid. Some time before, the Plataeans had put themselves under the rule of the Athenians, and these last had already undertaken many labours on their behalf. The occasion of the surrender was the following. The Plataeans suffered grievous things at the hands of the men of Thebes; so, as it chanced that Cleomenes, the son of Anaxandridas, and the Lacedaemonians (Spartans) were in their neighbourhood, they first of all offered to surrender themselves to them. But the Lacedaemonians (Spartans) refused to receive them, and said, "We dwell too far off from you, and ours would be but chill succour. Ye might oftentimes be carried into slavery before one of us heard of it. We counsel you rather to give yourselves up to the Athenians, who are your next neighbours, and well able to shelter you."
“This they said, not so much out of good will towards the Plataeans as because they wished to involve the Athenians in trouble by engaging them in wars with the Boeotians. The Plataeans, however, when the Lacedaemonians gave them this counsel, complied at once, and when the sacrifice to the Twelve Gods was being offered at Athens, they came and sat as suppliants about the altar and gave themselves up to the Athenians. The Thebans no sooner learnt what the Plataeans had done than instantly they marched out against them, while the Athenians sent troops to their aid. As the two armies were about to join battle, the Corinthians, who chanced to be at hand, would not allow them to engage; both sides consented to take them for arbitrators, whereupon they made up the quarrel, and fixed the boundary-line between the two states upon this condition: to wit, that if any of the Boeotians wished no longer to belong to Boeotia, the Thebans should allow them to follow their own inclinations. The Corinthians, when they had thus decreed, forthwith departed to their homes. The Athenians likewise set off on their return; but the Boeotians fell upon them during the march, and a battle was fought wherein they were worsted by the Athenians. Hereupon these last would not be bound by the line which the Corinthians had fixed, but advanced beyond those limits and made the Asopus the boundary-line between the country of the Thebans and that of the Plataeans and Hysians. Under such circumstances did the Plataeans give themselves up to Athens, and now they were come to Marathon to bear the Athenians aid.
“The Athenian generals were divided in their opinions, and some advised not to risk a battle, because they were too few to engage such a host as that of the Medes, while others were for fighting at once, and among these last was Miltiades. He therefore, seeing that opinions were thus divided, and that the less worthy counsel appeared likely to prevail, resolved to go to the Polemarch, and have a conference with him. For the man on whom the lot fell to be Polemarch at Athens was entitled to give his vote with the ten generals, since anciently the Athenians allowed him an equal right of voting with them. The Polemarch at this juncture was Callimachus of Aphidnae; to him therefore Miltiades went, and said:
“"With thee it rests Callimachus, either to bring Athens to slavery, or, by securing her freedom, to leave behind thee to all future generations a memory beyond even Harmodius and Aristogeiton. For never since the time that the Athenians became a people were they in so great a danger as now. If they bow their necks beneath the yoke of the Medes, the woes which they will have to suffer when given into the power of Hippias are already determined on. If, on the other hand, they fight and overcome, Athens may rise to be the very first city in Greece. How it comes to pass that these things are likely to happen, and how the determining of them in some sort rests with thee, I will now proceed to make clear. We generals are ten in number, and our votes are divided; half of us wish to engage, half to avoid a combat. Now, if we do not fight, I look to see a great disturbance at Athens which will shake men's resolutions, and then I fear they will submit themselves, but if we fight the battle before any unsoundness show itself among our citizens, let the gods but give us fair play, and we are well able to overcome the enemy. On thee therefore we depend in this matter, which lies wholly in thine own power. Thou hast only to add thy vote to my side and thy country will be free, and not free only, but the first state in Greece. Or, if thou preferrest to give thy vote to them who would decline the combat, then the reverse will follow."
“Miltiades by these words gained Callimachus; and the addition of the Polemarch's vote caused the decision to be in favor of fighting. Hereupon all those generals who had been desirous of hazarding a battle, when their turn came to command the army, gave up their right to Miltiades. He however, though he accepted their offers, nevertheless waited, and would not fight until his own day of command arrived in due course. Then at length, when his own turn was come, the Athenian battle was set in array, and this was the order of it. Callimachus the Polemarch led the right wing, for it was at that time a rule with the Athenians to give the right wing to the Polemarch. After this followed the tribes, according as they were numbered, in an unbroken line; while last of all came the Plataeans, forming the left wing. And ever since that day it has been a custom with the Athenians, in the sacrifices and assemblies held each fifth year at Athens, for the Athenian herald to implore the blessing of the gods on the Plataeans conjointly with the Athenians. Now, as they marshalled the host upon the field of Marathon, in order that the Athenian front might he of equal length with the Median, the ranks of the centre were diminished, and it became the weakest part of the line, while the wings were both made strong with a depth of many ranks.”

Darius Invades Marathon
In 490 B.C., Darius tried again. This time he sent a fleet of 600 ships across the Aegean Sea and landed with a force of 20,000 men on the Plains of Marathon, about 25 miles from Athens.
When the Athenians learned that the Persians had arrived, Pheidippides, an Athenian runner, ran 150 miles to Sparta to seek the help of Sparta in the battle against Persia. The Spartans didn't participate because they were holding a religious ceremony at the time. The Athenian army, which was camped out in the foothills on the edge of the Marathon plain, was forced to fight against the Persians without any help from the Spartans.
The legend of the Pheidippides provided the inspiration for French scholar Michael Breal to suggest adding a "marathon" race to the program of the 1896 Olympics to his friend Pierre de Coubertin. The marathon is an event run in the modern Olympics. It was not part of the ancient Olympics. It commemorates an event, though, that occurred in ancient Greece. The marathon story is based on an account of the “ Battle of Marathon in The Histories” by Heredotus. It was written about 50 years after the battle took place. See Marathon, Sports, Greeks
See Separate Article: DARIUS I (ruled 522-486 B.C.) factsanddetails.com
Fighting During the Battle of Marathon
Miltaides organized his forces so that its strength was in the wings. He ordered a small central force to advance. As expected they were pushed back. When the Persians let down their guard momentarily to water their horses. Miltaides ordered the Athenian wings to attack on a full run. Before the Persian archers had time to string their bows the Athenians charged them like madmen and fought them at close range, where the Persian bows and arrows were ineffective and where the Athenians, with their protective armor and deadly spears were able to sow maximum terror among the Persians while sustaining only minor casualties themselves.
The panic-stricken Persians retreated to their boats. Aeschylus later wrote that his brother was killed when his arm was cut off as he tried to stop a Persian ship from retreating. After Athens’ victory Pheidippides reportedly ran 26.3 miles from Marathon to Athens to announce the victory of the Greeks over the Persians and then fell dead after he gave the message: Rejoice! We conquer!" See Marathon, Sports, Greeks
But Darius had not given up yet and during the night he steered his boats to what he thought was an unguarded Athens. But Miltiades, who had marched his army 26 miles during the night to Athens, was waiting for the Persians on high ground and the Persians were routed again. According to Herodotus, 6,400 Persians were killed, while only 192 Athenians and 11 Plateans died. Breaking their tradition of carrying their dead back to their cities, the Greeks instead buried them in the battlefield and a erected grave mounds that are still visible today.
Darius return to Persia with a third of his army gone.. After the victory many Greek states united to defend against another Persian attack, with Sparta dominating the land and Athens controlling the seas.
Herodotus on the Greek Defeat the Persians at Marathon
Herodotus wrote in Book VI of “Histories”: “So when the battle was set in array, and the victims showed themselves favourable, instantly the Athenians, so soon as they were let go, charged the barbarians at a run. Now the distance between the two armies was little short of eight furlongs. The Persians, therefore, when they saw the Greeks coming on at speed, made ready to receive them, although it seemed to them that the Athenians were bereft of their senses, and bent upon their own destruction; for they saw a mere handful of men coming on at a run without either horsemen or archers. Such was the opinion of the barbarians, but the Athenians in close array fell upon them, and fought in a manner worthy of being recorded. They were the first of the Greeks, so far as I know, who introduced the custom of charging the enemy at a run, and they were likewise the first who dared to look upon the Median garb and to face men clad in that fashion. Until this time the very name of the Medes had been a terror to the Greeks to hear. [Source: Herodotus “The History of Herodotus” Book VI on the Persian War, 440 B.C.E, translated by George Rawlinson, MIT]
“The two armies fought together on the plain of Marathon for a length of time, and in the mid battle, where the Persians themselves and the Sacae had their place, the barbarians were victorious and broke and pursued the Greeks into the inner country, but on the two wings the Athenians and the Plataeans defeated the enemy. Having so done, they suffered the routed barbarians to fly at their ease, and joining the two wings in one, fell upon those who had broken their own centre, and fought and conquered them. These likewise fled, and now the Athenians hung upon the runaways and cut them down, chasing them all the way to the shore, on reaching which they laid hold of the ships and called aloud for fire.
“It was in the struggle here that Callimachus the Polemarch, after greatly distinguishing himself, lost his life; Stesilaus too, the son of Thrasilaus, one of the generals, was slain; and Cynaegirus, the son of Euphorion, having seized on a vessel of the enemy's by the ornament at the stern, had his hand cut off by the blow of an axe, and so perished; as likewise did many other Athenians of note and name.
“Nevertheless, the Athenians secured in this way seven of the vessels; while with the remainder the barbarians pushed off, and taking aboard their Eretrian prisoners from the island where they had left them, doubled Cape Sunium, hoping to reach Athens before the return of the Athenians. The Alcmaeonidae were accused by their countrymen of suggesting this course to them; they had, it was said, an understanding with the Persians, and made a signal to them, by raising a shield, after they were embarked in their ships. The Persians accordingly sailed round Sunium. But the Athenians with all possible speed marched away to the defence of their city, and succeeded in reaching Athens before the appearance of the barbarians, and as their camp at Marathon had been pitched in a precinct of Hercules, so now they encamped in another precinct of the same god at Cynosarges. The barbarian fleet arrived, and lay to off Phalerum, which was at that time the haven of Athens; but after resting awhile upon their oars, they departed and sailed away to Asia.
“There fell in this battle of Marathon, on the side of the barbarians, about six thousand and four hundred men; on that of the Athenians, one hundred and ninety-two. Such was the number of the slain on the one side and the other. A strange prodigy likewise happened at this fight. Epizelus, the son of Cuphagoras, an Athenian, was in the thick of the fray, and behaving himself as a brave man should, when suddenly he was stricken with blindness, without blow of sword or dart; and this blindness continued thenceforth during the whole of his after life. The following is the account which he himself, as I have heard, gave of the matter: he said that a gigantic warrior, with a huge beard, which shaded all his shield, stood over against him, but the ghostly semblance passed him by, and slew the man at his side. Such, as I understand, was the tale which Epizelus told.”
Marathon, 650 Years After the Battle
The traveler Pausanias wrote in “Description of Greece”, Book I: Attica (A.D. 160): “There is a parish called Marathon, equally distant from Athens and Carystus in Euboea. It was at this pointin Attica that the foreigners landed, were defeated in battle, and lost some of their vessels as they were putting off from the land. On the plain is the grave of the Athenians, and upon it are slabs giving the names of the killed according to their tribes; and there is another grave for the Boeotian Plataeans and for the slaves, for slaves fought then for the first time by the side of their masters. Here is also a separate monument to one man, Miltiades, the son of Cimon, although his end came later, after he had failed to take Paros and for this reason had been brought to trial by the Athenians. [Source: Pausanias, “Description of Greece,” with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D. in 4 Volumes. Volume 1.Attica and Cornith, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1918]
“At Marathon every night you can hear horses neighing and men fighting. No one who has expressly set himself to behold this vision has ever got any good from it, but the spirits are not wroth with such as in ignorance chance to be spectators. The Marathonians worship both those who died in the fighting, calling them heroes, and secondly Marathon, from whom the parish derives its name, and then Heracles, saying that they were the first among the Greeks to acknowledge him as a god. They say too that there chanced to be present in the battle a man of rustic appearance and dress. Having slaughtered many of the foreigners with a plough he was seen no more after the engagement. When the Athenians made enquiries at the oracle the god merely ordered them to honor Echetlaeus (He of the Plough-tail) as a hero. A trophy too of white marble has been erected. Although the Athenians assert that they buried the Persians, because in every case the divine law applies that a corpse should be laid under the earth, yet I could find no grave. There was neither mound nor other trace to be seen, as the dead were carried to a trench and thrown in anyhow.
“There is at Marathon a lake which for the most part is marshy. Into this ignorance of the roads made the foreigners fall in their flight, and it is said that this accident was the cause of their great losses. Above the lake are the stone stables of Artaphernes' horses, and marks of his tent on the rocks. Out of the lake flows a river, affording near the lake itself water suitable for cattle, but near its mouth it becomes salt and full of sea fish. A little beyond the plain is the Hill of Pan and a remarkable Cave of Pan. The entrance to it is narrow, but farther in are chambers and baths and the so-called "Pan's herd of goats," which are rocks shaped in most respects like to goats.”
Pheidippidesa and the Ancient Greek Marathon
When the Athenians learned that the Persians had arrived,Pheidippides, an Athenian runner, ran 150 miles to Sparta to seek the help of Sparta. The Spartans didn't participate because they were holding a religious ceremony at the time. The Athenian army, which was camped out in the foothills on the edge of the Marathon plain, was forced to fight against the Persians without any help from the Spartans
After the Persian army was routed the panic-stricken Persians retreated to their boats. This time Pheidippides ran 26.3 miles from Marathon to Athens to announce the victory of the Greeks over the Persians and then fell dead after he gave the message: Rejoice! We conquer!"
The Marathon to Athens run appears to be a myth. Herodotus described the 150 mile run to Sparta by Pheidippides but said nothing about running to Athens and dropping dead. After the Persians held Marathon they tried to attack Athens while it was unguarded but the Athenians returned home to repel the attack. The Pheidippides running to Marathon to Athens appears to be an embellishment of that story. If the story is true it means that Pheidippides about 325 miles in less than a week: 150 miles from Marathon to Sparta, 150 miles back to Marathon, where he likely participated in the battle, then ran to Athens. No wonder he dropped dead.
See Separate Article: FAMOUS ANCIENT OLYMPIC ATHLETES europe.factsanddetails.com
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum
Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Canadian Museum of History, Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; MIT Classics Online classics.mit.edu ; Gutenberg.org, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Live Science, Discover magazine, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Encyclopædia Britannica, "The Discoverers" and "The Creators" by Daniel Boorstin. "Greek and Roman Life" by Ian Jenkins from the British Museum, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP and various books and other publications.
Last updated September 2024