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The battle of Marathon (12 September 490)
was the decisive battle during Darius I of Persian's campaigns against the
Greeks, and saw the Persians defeated by a largely Athenian army at Marathon in
north-eastern Attica (Greco-Persian Wars). The Persian Empire had appeared on
the international scene rather rapidly after the conquests of Cyrus II the
Great (r.550-530). Amongst his conquests was the Kingdom of Lydia in Asia
Minor, and with it the Greek cities of Ionian and other parts of the Asian
coast. 499 saw the outbreak of the Ionian Revolt, an attempt by those cities to
win their independence. Athens and Eretria offered limited support to the
rebels, and once the uprising was put down Darius began to prepare to punish
the Greeks for their intervention.
Darius's first attempt to punish the Greeks involved sending a land army around
the coast of Thrace, commanded by his son-in-law Mardonius, in 492. This
expedition restored Persian command of Thrace and gained control over
Macedonia, but the fleet was then destroyed in a storm off Mt. Athos, and
Mardonius was forced to retreat. The next Persian attack came in 490. Darius
raised a new army, and put it under the command of Datis the Mede and his
nephew Artaphernes the Younger (son of Artaphernes the Elder, a key Persian
leader during the Ionian Revolt). This time the Persians decided to come by
sea. They left Asia Minor at Samos, and crossed the Aegean via Icaria, Naxos
and Delos. They then landed on Euboea, where they successfully besieged the
eastern city of Carystus and then captured Eretria after a battle reported by
Herodotus as lasting for six days. The city was destroyed and the people
enslaved.
The Persians rested for a few days, and then moved south, landing at Marathon
in the north-east of Attica. This landing point had been suggested by Hippias,
the deposed tyrant of Athens, who had been living in exile in Persia. According
to Herodotus Hippias had been confident that he would return to Athens after
dreaming of his mother, but soon after landing at Marathon he lost a tooth in a
sneezing fit, and lost his confidence, claiming that the area covered by the
tooth was all of Attica he would ever possess. Herodotus never gives a figure
for the size of the Persian army. He gives a total of 600 triremes for the
fleet, and describes the army as large and well equipped. The near contemporary
poet Simonides of Ceos (c.556-468) gave a figure of 200,000 men. Later sources
tended to increase the number of men, reaching up to 500,000 in Plato. Modern
estimates are much lower, giving the Persians around 25,000 infantry, just over
40 infantry per trireme. This wasn't an especially large Persian army, but the
cavalry was strong, and the Greeks were still outnumbered by at least
two-to-one.
The Athenian army was commanded by ten elected generals, each of whom held
command of the army for one day in turn. An eleventh official, the polemarchos,
or commander in chief, also had a vote if the ten couldn't agree. In 490
Callimachus
was polemarchos, but the most important of the generals was
Miltiades the Younger (554-489), a member of a
wealthy Athenian family who had been forced to flee from his semi-independent
principality in the Chersonese in 493, after taking part in the
Ionian Revolt against
the Persians. When the Persians landed at Marathon there were two schools of
thought in Athens. One, led by Miltiades, wanted to advance to Marathon with
the 10,000 Athenians and 1,000 Plataeans then available, to prevent the
Persians from advancing into open ground where their cavalry would be
dangerous. The other wanted to wait at Athens. Miltiades was able to convince
the Assembly to vote in favour of an advance to Marathon. As the army moved to
face the Persians a runner was sent to Sparta to summon help. The Spartans
replied that they couldn't begin to move for six days, until the end of a
religious festival.
There was now a debate between those generals who wanted to wait for the
Spartans, and those, again led by Miltiades, who wanted to attack at the first
suitable moment. Miltiades was able to win over Callimachus, and his casting
vote decided the issue. Miltiades's four supporters then gave him their days in
command, so he held command for five days out of ten. The Greeks took up a
position on the hills surrounding the Persian beachhead at Marathon, waiting
for the right time to attack. Callimachus commanded on the right, with the rest
of the army organised into the Athenian tribes, and the Plataeans on the right.
Their chance eventually came when Ionian deserters reported that the Persian
cavalry was away, although we don't know why. Miltiades ordered the army to
attack. After advancing for a mile the heavy Greek hoplites smashed into the
Persian infantry.
The battle was won by an enveloping manoeuvre. The Greeks were strong on their
flanks and weak in the centre. The best Persian troops were in their centre,
where they held and then began to defeat the Greeks. However on the wings the
Greeks were victorious, and they then turned inwards to attack the Persian
centre from both sides. The Persians broke and fled back to their ships. The
Athenians followed them and captured seven ships, but the rest of the fleet got
away. The enveloping manoeuvre may not have been deliberate - it is possible
that it was an accidental result of the Persian formation, with the more easily
defeated lighter troops on the flanks and the stronger troops in the centre.
According to Herodotus the Greeks lost 192 dead, the Persians 6,400. This may
seem high, but if most of the casualties happened after the flank attacks and
during the pursuit then it might not be too far from the truth. Amongst the
dead were Callimachus, Stesilaus son of Thresylaus and Cynegeirus son of
Euphorion. The Persians might have been defeated, but their morale clearly
hadn't been broken. Once the survivors were back on their ships they sailed
around the coast, hoping to reach Athens before the Greek army. The Greeks
carried out a forced march back to Athens, and arrived just in time to prevent
the Persian attack. After this second setback the Persians abandoned the
invasion and sailed back to Asia Minor.
In the following year Miltiades led an expedition against a number of islands
that had supported the Persians. He suffered an accidental wound during this
failed expedition, and was then put on trial after his return to Athens, found
guilty and fined 50 talents, a poor reward for his key contribution to the
Greek victory at Marathon. Soon afterwards he died of his wounds. A number of
famous Greeks fought at Marathon. Amongst them was the Aeschylus, the first
great Athenian writer of tragic plays, who may have been wounded in the battle.
He later went on to fight at Artemisium and Salamis. The battle later gave rise
to the famous race of the same name. According to legend a runner was sent from
the battlefield to Athens, a distance of about 25 miles, to report the victory,
and died on his arrival. However Herodotus records a rather more impressive
run.
The messenger, various given as Pheidippides, Phidippides or Philippides, was
sent from Athens to Sparta before the battle to call for help and covered 150
miles in two days. The Persian defeat at Marathon may have helped trigger a
revolt that broke out in Egypt after the death of Darius I in 486, by reducing
the prestige of Persian arms. It was the first major Greek victory over a
Persian army, and was thus a great boost to Greek confidence in future
conflicts with the Persians.
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