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The Siege of Eretria took place
in 490, during the first Persian invasion of Greece. The city of Eretria, on
Euboea, was besieged by a strong Persian force under the command of Datis and
Artaphernes. The first Persian invasion was a response to Greek involvement in
the Ionian Revolt, when the Eretrians and Athenians had sent a force to support
the cities of Ionia in their attempt to overthrow Persian rule. The Eretrian
and Athenian force had succeeded in capturing and burning Sardis (the regional
capital of Persia), but was then forced to retreat with heavy losses. In
response to this raid, the Persian king Darius I swore to have revenge on
Athens and Eretria. Once the Ionian revolt was finally crushed by the Persian
victory at the Battle of Lade, Darius began to plan to subjugate Greece. In 490
BC, he sent a naval task force under Datis and Artaphernes across the Aegean to
subjugate the Cyclades, and then to make punitive attacks on Athens and
Eretria. Reaching Euboea in mid-summer after a successful campaign in the
Aegean, the Persians proceeded to put Eretria under siege. The siege lasted six
days before a fifth column of Eretrian nobles betrayed the city to the
Persians. The city was plundered, and the population was deported to the
village Ardericca in Susiana near the Persian capital. After Eretria, the
Persian force sailed for Athens, landing at the bay of Marathon. An Athenian
army marched to meet them, and won a famous victory at the Battle of Marathon,
thereby ending the first Persian invasion.
Background Main articles: Greco-Persian Wars, Ionian Revolt, and First Persian
invasion of Greece The first Persian invasion of Greece had its immediate roots
in the Ionian Revolt, the earliest phase of the Greco-Persian Wars. However, it
was also the result of the longer-term interaction between the Greeks and
Persians. In 500 BC the Persian Empire was still relatively young and highly
expansionistic, but prone to revolts amongst its subject peoples.[1][2][3]
Moreover, the Persian king Darius was a usurper, and had spent considerable
time extinguishing revolts against his rule.[1] Even before the Ionian Revolt,
Darius had begun to expand the Empire into Europe, subjugating Thrace, and
forcing Macedon to become a vassal of Persia.[4] Attempts at further expansion
into the politically fractious world of Ancient Greece may have been
inevitable.[2] However, the Ionian Revolt had directly threatened the integrity
of the Persian empire, and the states of mainland Greece remained a potential
menace to its future stability.[5] Darius thus resolved to subjugate and pacify
Greece and the Aegean, and to punish those involved in the Ionian Revolt.
[5][6] Darius I of Persia, as imagined by a Greek painter, 4th century BC The
Ionian revolt had begun with an unsuccessful expedition against Naxos, a joint
venture between the Persian satrap Artaphernes and the Miletus tyrant
Aristagoras.[7] In the aftermath, Artaphernes decided to remove Aristagoras
from power, but before he could do so, Aristagoras abdicated, and declared
Miletus a democracy.[7] The other Ionian cities followed suit, ejecting their
Persian-appointed tyrants, and declaring themselves democracies.[7][8]
Artistagoras then appealed to the states of Mainland Greece for support, but
only Athens and Eretria offered to send troops.[9]
The reasons that Eretria sent assistance to the Ionians are not completely
clear. Possibly commercial reasons were a factor; Eretria was a mercantile
city, whose trade was threatened by Persian dominance of the Aegean.[9]
Herodotus suggests that the Eretrians supported the revolt in order to repay
the support the Milesians had given Eretria in a past war against Chalcis.[10]
The Athenians and Eretrians sent a task force of 25 triremes to Asia Minor to
aid the revolt.[11] Whilst there, the Greek army surprised and outmaneuvered
Artaphernes, marching to Sardis and there burning the lower city.[12] However,
this was as much as the Greeks achieved, and they were then pursued back to the
coast by Persian horsemen, losing many men in the process. Despite the fact
their actions were ultimately fruitless, the Eretrians and in particular the
Athenians had earned Darius's lasting enmity, and he vowed to punish both
cities.[13] The Persian naval victory at the Battle of Lade (494 BC) all but
ended the Ionian Revolt, and by 493 BC, the last hold-outs were vanquished by
the Persian fleet.[14] The revolt was used as an opportunity by Darius to
extend the empire's border to the islands of the East Aegean[15] and the
Propontis, which had not been part of the Persian dominions before.[16] The
completion of the pacification of Ionia allowed the Persians to begin planning
their next moves; to extinguish the threat to the empire from Greece, and to
punish Athens and Eretria.[17] In 492 BC, once the Ionian Revolt had finally
been crushed, Darius dispatched an expedition to Greece under the command of
his son-in-law, Mardonius. Mardonius re-conquered Thrace and compelled
Alexander I of Macedon to make Macedon a client kingdom to Persia, before the
wrecking of his fleet brought a premature end to the campaign.[18] However, in
490 BC, following up the successes of the previous campaign, Darius decided to
send a maritime expedition led by Artaphernes, (son of the satrap to whom
Hippias had fled) and Datis, a Median admiral. Mardonius had been injured in
the prior campaign and had fallen out of favor. The expedition was intended to
bring the Cyclades into the Persian empire, to punish Naxos (which had resisted
a Persian assault in 499 BC) and then to head to Greece to force Eretria and
Athens to submit to Darius or be destroyed.[19] After island hopping across the
Aegean, including successfully attacking Naxos, the Persian task force arrived
off Euboea in mid summer, ready to fulfil their second major objective - to
punish Eretria.
Prelude:
When the Eretrians had discovered that the Persian task force was heading to
attack them, they had appealed to the Athenians to send reinforcements.[20] The
Athenians agreed to this, and instructed the 4,000 Athenian colonists from the
nearby Euboean city of Chalcis to aid the Eretrians.[20] These colonists had
been planted on Chalcidian land after Athens had defeated Chalcis some 20 years
previously.[21] However, when these Athenians arrived at Eretria, they were
told by a leading citizen, Aeschines, of the divisions amongst the Eretrians,
and he advised them to leave and save themselves.[20] The Athenians followed
Aeschines' advice and sailed to Oropus, thus avoiding the fate of the
Eretrians.[22] The Eretrians failed to come to a clear plan of action; in
Herodotus's words "it seems that all the plans of the Eretrians were
unsound; they sent to the Athenians for aid, but their counsels were
divided". There were three competing plans - one group wanted to surrender
to the Persians, seeking to profit thereby, others wanted to flee to the hills
above Eretria, whilst others wanted to fight.[20] However, when the Persians
landed in their territory, a consensus was reached not to leave the city but to
try to withstand a siege, if possible.[22]
Opposing forces:
Eretrians:
Herodotus does not estimate numbers for the Eretrians. Presumably, the majority
of the citizen body would have been involved in the defence of the city, but
the population of Eretria at the time cannot be clearly established.
Persians:
For a full discussion of the size of the Persian invasion force, see First
Persian invasion of Greece § Size of the Persian force.
The trireme, the main type of ship used by the Greeks and Persians According to
Herodotus, the fleet sent by Darius consisted of 600 triremes.[23] Herodotus
does not estimate the size of the Persian army, only saying that they were a
"large infantry that was well packed".[24] Among ancient sources, the
poet Simonides, another near-contemporary, says the campaign force numbered
200,000; while a later writer, the Roman Cornelius Nepos estimates 200,000
infantry and 10,000 cavalry, of which only 100,000 fought in the battle, while
the rest were loaded into the fleet that was rounding Cape Sounion;[25]
Plutarch[26] and Pausanias[27] both independently give 300,000, as does the
Suda dictionary.[28] Plato and Lysias assert 500,000;[29][30] and Justinus
600,000.[31] Modern historians have proposed wide-ranging numbers for the
infantry, from 20,000–100,000 with a consensus of perhaps
25,000;[32][33][34][35] estimates for the cavalry are in the range of 1,000
[32]
Siege The Eretrian strategy was to defend their walls, and undergo a siege.[22]
Possibly this was the only plan that could be agreed on, or became the default
option when no plan was agreed. At any rate, since the Persian army had only
suffered two defeats in the last century, and since a Greek army had never
successfully fought the Persians, this was probably a sensible strategy.[36]
Since the Persians arrived by ship, it is probable they had little siege
equipment, and indeed, they had already been foiled in the siege of Lindos
earlier in the expedition.[37] The Persians landed their army at three separate
locations, disembarked, and advanced towards Eretria.[22] The Persians then
began besieging the city.[22] Rather than passively besieging the city, the
Persians seemed to have vigorously attacked the walls.[22] Herodotus reports
that the fighting was fierce and both sides suffered heavy losses.[22] However,
after six days of clashes, two eminent Eretrians, Euphorbus and Philagrus,
opened the gates for the Persians.[22] Once inside the city, the Persians
plundered it, burning temples and sanctuaries in revenge for the burning of
Sardis.[22] Those citizens who were captured were enslaved, as Darius had
ordered.[22]
Aftermath Main article: Battle of Marathon After staying at Eretria for a few
days, the Persians made their way down the coast towards Attica.[38] The
Persians dropped the captured Eretrians off on the island of Aegilia, before
landing at the bay of Marathon in Attica.[38][39] The Persians' next target was
Athens. However, the Athenians had marched out from Athens to meet the
Persians, and blocked the exits from the plains of Marathon.[40] After several
days of stalemate, the Athenians finally resolved to attack the Persians,
winning a famous victory at the ensuing Battle of Marathon.[41] After the
battle, the remaining Persians fled to their ships, picked up the Eretrians
from Aegilia,[41] and then sailed back to Asia Minor, thereby ending the
campaign, and the first Persian invasion of Greece.[42] When the Persian fleet
arrived in Asia Minor, Datis and Artaphernes took the Eretrians before Darius
in Susa.[43] The Eretrians were not harmed by Darius who decided to settle them
in the town of Ardericca in Cissia.[43] They were still there, using their own
language and customs, when Herodotus wrote his history,[43] and were
encountered by Alexander the Great during his conquest of Persia a further
century later.[44] In the meantime, Darius began raising a huge new army with
which he meant to completely subjugate Greece; however, in 486 BC, his Egyptian
subjects revolted, indefinitely postponing any Greek expedition.[3] Darius then
died whilst preparing to march on Egypt, and the throne of Persia passed to his
son Xerxes I.[45] Xerxes crushed the Egyptian revolt, and very quickly
restarted the preparations for the invasion of Greece.[46] The epic second
Persian invasion of Greece finally began in 480 BC, and the Persians met with
initial success at the battles of Thermopylae and Artemisium.[47] However,
defeat at the Battle of Salamis would be the turning point in the campaign,[48]
and the next year the expedition was ended by the decisive Greek victory at the
Battle of Plataea.[49]
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Bibliography:
Ancient sources:
Herodotus, The Histories Perseus online version Ctesias, Persica (excerpt in
Photius's epitome) Diodorus Siculus, Biblioteca Historica. Thucydides, History
of the Peloponnesian War Cicero, On the Laws Cornelius Nepos, Miltiades
Plutarch, Moralia Pausanias, Description of Greece Suda Dictionary (unknown
author) Plato, Menexenus Justin, epitome of Trogus Pompeius's Philipic History
Lysias, Funeral Oration
Modern sources:
Holland, Tom. Persian Fire. London: Abacus, 2005 (ISBN 978-0-349-11717-1)
Lloyd, Alan. Marathon:The Crucial Battle That Created Western Democracy.
Souvenir Press, 2004. (ISBN 0-285-63688-X) Green, Peter. The Greco-Persian
Wars. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970; revised ed., 1996
(hardcover, ISBN 0-520-20573-1); 1998 (paperback, ISBN 0-520-20313-5). Lazenby,
JF. The Defence of Greece 490–479 BC. Aris & Phillips Ltd., 1993 (ISBN
0-85668-591-7) Fox, Robin Lane. Alexander the Great. Penguin, 1973 (ISBN
0-14-008878-4) Fehling, D. Herodotus and His "Sources": Citation,
Invention, and Narrative Art. Translated by J.G. Howie. Leeds: Francis Cairns,
1989. Finley, Moses (1972). "Introduction". Thucydides – History
of the Peloponnesian War (translated by Rex Warner). Penguin. ISBN
0-14-044039-9. Higbie, C. The Lindian Chronicle and the Greek Creation of their
Past. Oxford University Press, 2003. Roisman, Joseph; Worthington, Ian (2011).
A Companion to Ancient Macedonia. John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 978-1-44-435163-7.
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