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.
