42.195 Kilometers

In 492 BC, Persian King Darius I was not a happy man. Seven years earlier, a number of Persian satrapies in Ionia (modern-day west coast of Turkey) revolted. With the support of the mainland Greek city-states of Athens and Eretria, the Ionian Greeks set fire to the regional capital of Sardis. Both Athens and Eretria withdrew their forces shortly thereafter, leaving the Ionians to their fate against the might of the Persian Empire.

Herodotus of Halicarnassus wrote of Darius' reaction:

"[W]ord reached Darius that Sardis had been burned by the Athenians and Ionians and that the man who led these combined forces and had designed its course of action was Aristagoras of Miletus. It is said that when Darius first heard this report, he disregarded the Ionians, since he knew that they at least would not escape punishment for their revolt; but he inquired who the Athenians were, and after he had been told, he asked for a bow. He took the bow, set an arrow on its string, and shot the arrow toward the heavens. And as it flew high into the air, he said: 'Zeus, let it be granted to me to punish the Athenians.' After saying this, he appointed one of his attendants to repeat to him at least three times whenever his dinner was served: 'My Lord, remember the Athenians.'" (Histories 5.105)

Needless to say, Darius did not forget and in 492 BC, he launched a series of military campaigns against Greece culminating with a showdown against Athens on the fields of Marathon...



The Athenians had plenty of time to prepare for the Persian forces. On the way to Athens, Persian commander Datis had taken the liberty of sacking two other supporters of the Ionian revolt: Naxos and Eretria. Athens needed to gather allies if it was going to survive.

Pheidippides was dispatched to Sparta to request assistance. Herodotus claims that the Spartans were anxious to get into the fight, but were held back because of a religious festival. A similar fate would befall the Spartans in 480 BC when Xerxes threatened to invade Greece. Another theory that might explain the Spartans' reluctance to involve themselves in major land battles is the threat of a helot revolt. The helots were the people from the areas conquered by Sparta in the Peloponnese, typically Messenia (southwest corner of the Peloponnese). They were a poorly-treated slave caste that also constituted a majority of the population under Spartan control. Every so often, discontent or outright rebellion would stir the helots and the Spartan army would be called in to ensure/restore order.

The only other Greek city-state that sent troops to aid Athens was Plataea (a bit under 50 miles northwest of Athens). All together, the Athenians and Plataeans deployed around 10,000 hoplites for the battle while the Persians brought about 19,000 infantry along with 1,000 cavalry. Oddly enough*, Herodotus doesn't spend much time discussing the number of troops involved with this battle, so the numbers are a rough average from a number of estimations delivered by scholars.

The armies spent a couple days on opposite sides of the plain before the ten Athenian polemarchoi (generals) finally agreed to attack. When Miltiades' turn as commander arrived, he gave the order to attack...



In an attempt to match the length of the Persian line, Miltiades stretched the middle ranks to only a couple rows of depth, but concentrated his phalanxes on the flanks.

One of the great questions still unanswered about this battle is why the Persian cavalry did not play a significant role. The plains of Marathon are wide and flat, making it perfect terrain for lightning-fast cavalry maneuvers. Some scholars have speculated that the Persian cavalry had been loaded back onto the ships in preparation to move, or the Persians did not bring more than a token contingent to serve as scouts. Despite the heavy armor and long reach of Greek hoplites, they were no match for a cavalry force that could out-flank them and run them down. The Persian infantry would get their first taste of well-trained, massed hoplite warfare...



Herodotus writes:

"After the troops were in position and the sacrifices had proven favorable, when the Athenians were let loose and allowed to advance, they charged at a run toward the barbarians. The space between the two armies was about a mile." (Histories 6.112)

Herodotus had a penchant for exaggeration. Hoplites, despite what you might have seen in the film 300, were heavily armored. Standard equipment was a large (three feet in diameter), round shield made of wood and bronze (held at chest level and away from the body), a bronze helmet, bronze greaves, a bronze breastplate (solid or scaled lamellar in construction), a nine-foot spear with bronze head and butt, and a small sword. One can easily imagine that hot and cold days made the work of a hoplite very difficult. In his book, The Western Way of War, Victor Davis Hanson also mentions that modern testing of Herodotus' claim shows that an average hoplite could only make it 200 yards or so at a 5-6 mile per hour pace. One of the tactical challenges that hoplite armies faced against one another was timing the charge so that you hit your opponent's line with more momentum without overly exhausting your troops.

When the Greek and Persian lines met, the center of the Greek line was quickly broken. However, on the flanks, the superior equipment and tactics of the Greek heavy infantry routed the Persians.

With the Persian flanks in full retreat, the triumphant Greek flanks stopped pursuing and turned to the Persian center. Suddenly under threat from two sides, the Persian center collapsed and began a hasty retreat to their ships.



Now filled with the excitement of victory, the Greeks mercilessly pursued the Persians to their ships and drove them into the sea. Herodotus states that the Persians lost 6,400 men in the battle while the Greeks suffered only 192 losses. For once, Herodotus' numbers seem reasonable considering the initial dispositions of the armies and the course of the battle.

The legendary Pheidippides was sent to Athens to proclaim the victory. About 40 kilometers later, Pheidippides arrived, announced the victory, and quickly succumbed to exhaustion. For those of us keeping count, he ran 240 kilometers from Athens to Sparta, ran back to Athens, marched with the army to Marathon, fought in the battle, then ran 40 kilometers from Marathon to Athens - all in the span of about a week.


A bare-assed Pheidippides finally gets to deliver some good news.

The Spartan army showed up with 2,000 troops a few days later to see the carnage, give the Athenians a pat on the back, then return home.

The Battle of Marathon wasn't the last chapter of the First Persian War. The fleet sailing from Marathon attempted to round the southern tip of Attica and attack Athens before the Athenian army could return to the city, but were unable to outrun the army. The Persians laid anchor not far from Athens for a few days before abandoning the expedition and returning to Asia Minor.

Though this battle wasn't particularly decisive as far as convincing the Persian Empire to avoid the Greeks, it did demonstrate, for the first time, the superiority of Greek heavy infantry over Persian infantry. It's worth noting that the wealth and resources of the Persian Empire was many times that of the Greek city-states. Though the Persians did deploy some Ionian hoplites in later conflicts, their army was heavily invested in light infantry, cavalry and archers. The Greeks likely realized their fortune of not having to face cavalry at Marathon. In later encounters with Persia, the Greeks became highly adept at choosing their battles in order to deny the Persians the advantages that their diversity provided.


*Later in his Histories, Herodotus spends a very long time giving descriptions of the forces arrayed for battles. To someone who has read Herodotus, it seems downright bizarre that he would give up an opportunity to weave an overwrought tale concerning the state of two opposing forces.

Update: I felt a little guilty not fully citing all the sources I used for this post, so here are the credits. For creating the maps, I used the fantastic illustrations from Robert Morkot's Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece and Simon Anglim's [et al] Fighting Techniques of the Ancient World as starting points. The artwork is an 1869 piece done by Luc-Olivier Merson titled The Soldier of Marathon. I also feel the need to mention that the edition of Herodotus' Histories that I used is quite possibly the best version available. The Landmark Herodotus edited by Robert Strassler is not only an excellent translation, but it comes highly annotated, illustrated and contains a great series of appendices.

Muster the Hoplites, Alcibiades!

I've been pondering some ideas for a new blog post. Back in late September I was going to write about the Roman disaster in the Teutoburg Forest which occurred exactly 2000 years ago (in September) and how that marked the end of Roman expansionism even though the Empire would continue to thrive for centuries. Unfortunately, that post will have to wait for the next anniversary.

Since there were a lot of interesting news stories today, I felt that a blog post of miscellany would be appropriate.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced on Friday that once again, America would be a nation ruled by laws. Ten of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay will have their day in court. However, I might be giving the AG and the Obama Administration a little too much praise. True, criminal charges and trials are long overdue and I'm glad to see that the Justice system finally found the WD-40 to get the gears turning. The fact remains that Guantanamo Bay remains an open wound in America's credibility and a rallying cry for Muslim extremists.

Furthermore, I still have doubts that the prisoners at Guantanamo will receive fair trials. Are confessions or evidence given under duress really admissable in a court (military or civilian)? Granted, the current Administration is in a tough situation that they themselves didn't create, but the fact remains that no fair, legal structure exists to deal with this situation. Five of the prisoners mentioned by Mr. Holder will be tried in a civilian court while the others will face a military court. Who determines which prisoner is tried where?

I definitely do not envy what the Administration has on its plate. I won't even touch the issues of the executions likely to result from these trials or the irrational fear of just keeping these prisoners on U.S. soil instead of limbo.

About a month ago, NASA smashed a probe into the south pole of the Moon to see if there was anything interesting (water). Apparently, they found a fair bit of water. This is an interesting discovery, but not terribly surprising and does very little to convince me that the Moon is a prime location for colonization. The fact remains that the Moon is a very dead and unexciting place. The Moon would be a great location for the second human colony or a huge observatory. If NASA/America wants to push manned exploration, Mars remains the most promising destination. It has an atmosphere and liquid water and low gravity which make it far more interesting that the Moon. Propellant can be produced on site and the low gravity makes Mars an ideal hub for human exploration (it's easier to get from Mars to the Moon than from the Earth to the Moon).

Unfortunately, the American space program is having an identity crisis, Russia and Europe are content with low orbit and China is looking for a nationalistic statement with their prospective Moon mission. Meanwhile, the weaponized Ebola and Von Neumann machines are desperate to make us regret not having a backup planet.

This week I started reading a book called "Tides of War" by Steven Pressfield. It's a bit of historical fiction about Alcibiades and the fateful Sicilian Expedition. Naturally, whenever I read it, I am reminded of the Sicilian Expeditions undertaken by the latest Bush Administration and continued by the current Administration. I will be the first to admit that the historical parallels between the Peloponnesian War and today are fairly weak, but the lesson is no less relevant.

Athens was on the rebound during the Peace of Nicias which ended the war against Sparta (low level conflicts continued elsewhere, but they were proxy wars at worst). The depleted treasury began to recover and the plague subsided when Atticans returned to their towns and farms. Then some backwater town in Sicily with loose ties to Athens called for help and a demagogic Athenian named Alcibiades decided to use this as an opportunity to expand the Athenian Empire. Three years, thousands of talents, hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of troops later, the Sicilian Expedition was over and, for all practical purposes, annihilated.

Athens went in with no regional allies, a crooked, hubristic leader and emerged poorer, weaker and at war with Sparta once more. Alcibiades was tried, in absentia during the campaign, for holding sacreligious parties and decided to switch sides. Command of the expedition fell into the hands of one of the few Athenians who opposed Alcibiades adventurism, Nicias. Prior to the beginning of the ill-fated campaign, he pleaded with the Athenian assembly to reconsider. Once Athens was committed, no one thought to call the ships back when things went awry.

Athenians learned the truth about national exceptionalism the hard way. Probably a lesson about the limits to imperial expansion in there, too (Teutoburg Forest is another good one). For the folks averse to "irrelevant" ancient history, the Soviet Union learned this lesson not even 30 years ago in an all too familiar setting.

Peace through Fear

I am usually a fan of Time magazine. Their stories are typically decent and usually display a sliver of wisdom and enlightenment. Then I read one of their stories today about nuclear weapons and the Nobel Peace Prize. As I mentioned in my last blog post, nuclear policy reading can be downright chilling simply because of the necessity of level-headed discourse. This story completely blind-sided me with its callous ignorance of fact, history and humanity.

Mr. Von Drehle does accurately point out that following World War Two, the number of people killed in conflicts across the world declined sharply. Industrialized warfare, most notably in the First and Second World Wars, produced unprecedented body counts even if you take out those killed in Stalin's purges or the Holocaust. The rise of nuclear weaponry and the bipolar world order of the Cold War created stability through fear.

Though I may disagree with those that characterize Cold War nuclear strategy through the over-simplistic notion of M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction), the consequences of even a limited nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and U.S. would have been nothing short of catastrophic. Plus, the assumptions that damage reports would easily distinguish a limited strike from an urban/industrial strike and that cooler heads would prevail in the midst of a nuclear war are specious, at best. Tens of millions would dead in less than a few hours and more would perish in the following months and years due to radiation exposure, starvation, and the violence that would be created by the collapse of society. Fear of a nuclear holocaust kept the safeties on and the silos sealed.

Imagine, for a moment, that U.S. and British efforts to halt Germany's nuclear program during World War Two had been unsuccessful. Would Hitler and Roosevelt have been able to stay their hands under an existing state of total war? Truman was obviously unable.

What message does one send by suggesting that nuclear weapons are a tool of peace? One legitimizes the repugnant attitudes and ideas of men like Douglas MacArthur and Curtis LeMay and gives credence to people like Commander Eugene Tatom who infamously said, "You could stand in the open at one end of the north-south runway at the Washington National Airport, with no more protection than the clothes you now have on, and have an atom bomb explode at the other end of the runway without serious injury to you."

I also find it immensely disrespectful to the 200,000+ people that died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 to suggest that nuclear weapons are tools of peace. Are the people who died in the years after 1945 due to cancers caused by atmospheric nuclear tests victims of peace?

In today's mono- trending towards multi-polar world, nuclear weapons are tools of instability. As inheritors of Cold War arsenals, the U.S. and Russia have and must continue to tirelessly strive to disarm and minimize proliferation. Regimes in Iran and North Korea are unsurprisingly interested in nuclear weapons. Iran is sandwiched by heavy concentrations of U.S. ground troops and has an ongoing rivalry with unofficial nuclear state, Israel. North Korea is still technically in a state of war with the U.S. If India and Pakistan were to go to war, what would stop them from using nuclear weapons to preserve their sovereignty.

Many (Mr. Von Drehle included) say that advocates of disarmament are naive to think that a nuclear-free world is possible. Indeed, getting countries like Israel, Pakistan and India to disarm will not come easy. However, I must ask why the U.S. still needs nuclear weapons. Russia is not our enemy anymore nor do they want to be. China's economic ties to the U.S. are too valuable to waste on nuclear rivalry. Were Iran or North Korea to acquire an adequate means of delivering a nuclear strike on the U.S. homeland or military assets, why would they risk the overthrow of their government via the massive conventional retaliation delivered by everyone that hates seeing nuclear weapons used (a.k.a. everyone)? If a terrorist group were to acquire a nuclear device and detonate it in London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, or New York how could those respective nations respond in kind with their "deterrent"?

If, through some cruel twist of fate, a post-nuclear weapons America needed nuclear weapons again, we have all the pieces we need to build a new nuclear arsenal.

I would rather see President Obama undeservedly win the next 50 Nobel Peace Prizes than see Mr. Von Drehle's irresponsible viewpoint vindicated.

That's No Moon...

The big rumor circling around the internet is that Lucasarts (the software developer for Star Wars games) is going to announce a reboot of the X-wing/TIE Fighter space sim series. Anyone who has dabbled in the space sim genre knows that TIE Fighter is one of the best, if not THE best space sim ever made.

I was searching for some more info on the rumors this afternoon, when I found this fantastic op-ed piece. As the author notes, there is no shortage of cultural metaphors and analogies referring to the American Empire past and present. However, the similarities between the TIE Fighter world and the post-9/11 world are uncanny. Media, even emergent media like video games, has a stunning ability to alter perspectives in truly brutal fashion. Blasting the good guys in X-wings out of the sky feels like the right thing to do at every turn.

As a just a game, TIE Fighter is immensely fun. As a specimen of how media can drastically affect the way we think and act, it is a powerful, if not slightly disturbing, experience.

The Long Lost Ally

After 40 years, France has rejoined NATO military command. This closes one of the more interesting chapters of French history and opens a new one. I'm not going to go into much of a discussion of this because I think this BBC article does a fantastic job of outlining the background of France-NATO split.

After reading that article, I had a few quick thoughts.

First, I think President Sarkozy is doing a great job. He has taken steps towards making France more involved and productive, domestically and internationally. Since I'm not a French citizen, I can't pass judgement on Sarkozy either way, but I definitely think he is a step up from previous French heads of state/government.

Reading the news and looking at history, I understand the relationship between France and the U.S., but I can't help but feel baffled by the whole thing. France and the U.S. are so closely linked by history, culture and conviction that any kind of ideological divergence seems impossible. However, I believe America would react similarly if it were in France's position post World War Two. On a more abstract level, I think the same case could be made for the Iraq-U.S. relationship. Few ties exist between the U.S. and Iraq, but, if you will excuse the cheesy colloquialism, Americans and Iraqis are kindred spirits. Americans, the French and Iraqis are more similar than they want to admit.

The Economist had an interesting infographic on their website today which is somewhat related to the NATO-France relationship.


Economist.com

If that graph does not illustrate the point well enough, the U.S. Navy currently has 11 aircraft carriers in service, the rest of the world's navies have 10 (average U.S. carrier tonnage > 100,000 tons, everyone else average carrier tonnage <<< 100,000 tons); plus, the only active 5th generation fighter aircraft and long-range stealth bombers are flown by the U.S. Air Force. Supremacy seems like an understatement. On a less serious, and completely unrelated, note, I found this cool demographic map on wikipedia.


Words fail me...

Update:

On the military spending graph, the U.S. Department of Defense released a report today on China's military. You can see a summary and link to the report on BBC.com. The DoD presents different spending estimates than the Economist (see page 44 of the report), who appear to be using official estimates from the Chinese government. If you are trying to decide who's numbers are correct, good luck. Both governments clearly have some agendas at work, but whether China spends $120 billion or $60 billion, that U.S. column in the graph from the Economist still towers above the others. Still, the DoD report is a good read for those of you interested in these sorts of things; I imagine a Chinese government report on the U.S. military would be equally fascinating.

Load up on guns...

Human civilization is at a curious stage of evolution and development where we hold an unprecedented ability to solve immense problems and the threats to our survival. We can build structures that survive earthquakes, develop medicines and treatments to the deadliest diseases and even detect and possibly deflect incoming asteroids or comets. However, the unfortunate side-effect of all these wonderful abilities is our unprecedented ability to completely annihilate ourselves in a mind-boggling number of ways.

So, I'm not going to talk about the amusing spike in gun sales following the election of President Obama. Instead, a report funded by the U.S. Navy has finally said what everyone has been thinking since the military first put a missile on an unmanned aircraft.

First off, I'm relieved that someone at the top is actually thinking about these things. I often feel subjects like this (asteroid defense, epidemic behavior altering diseases/pathogens i.e. zombies, rampant A.I., etc.) get tossed into the government "LOL pile" because of the sheer volume of myth and popular culture involved.

Back to the article, the one most surprising factoid was the Congressional mandate to have one-third of a ground combat vehicles to be unmanned by 2015. Now I assume they mean that the vehicles will be controlled remotely and not that the U.S. will fight wars with lots of empty tanks. Two benefits come out of the American alliance with automated warriors: fewer humans in harm's way and fewer humans needed to fight wars. Up to now, every robotic participant in American wars has had a human at the helm. At this rate, this policy will have to shift in favor of more self-sufficiency for the robots.


BAE Systems Semi-autonomous Black Knight Armored Combat Vehicle (DailyTech)

The U.S. military and government need to take a few precautions in order to prevent something catastrophic. Note: "catastrophic" doesn't necessarily mean the apocryphal events of Terminator - a friendly-fire incident against an ally that still fields human armies or an unwarranted attack on a rival currently at peace would qualify as catastrophic missteps. Firstly, it might soon be time to get the President a second briefcase which holds the self-destruct codes for this army of automatons. Lastly, and most importantly, the government needs to take its time in implementing these mandates. The U.S. already holds huge advantages in military technology and the rush to run up the score is foolhardy (after all, militaries are not rated by the BCS). The cost of mistakes at this developmental stage are immense and grow larger with every corner cut and every overworked and underpaid programmer.

After all, the Europeans have already deployed Skynet military communication satellites. Clearly, we already tread upon thin ice.