Battle of Marathon

Battle of Marathon
The plain of Marathon today.
Date September, 490 BC Location Marathon, Greece Result Athenian victory
Belligerents
Athens and Plataea	Persia
Commanders and leaders
Miltiades Callimachus†	Darius I of Persia, Artaphernes
Strength
10,000 Athenians 1,000 Plataeans	20,000-60,000 by modern estimates 1
Casualties and losses
192 Athenians dead 11 Plateans dead	6,400 dead 7 ships captured
1 Ancient sources give numbers ranging from 200,000 to 600,000, however, these numbers cannot be taken as completely accurate as ancient historians are believed to exaggerate when giving Persian numbers.

The Battle of Marathon (490 BC) was the culmination of King Darius I of Persia's first major attempt to conquer the remainder of the Greeks and add them to the Persian Empire, thereby securing the weakest portion of his Western border. We mostly know of this battle from Herodotus.

Darius first sent Mardonius in 492 BC overland to Europe in order to strengthen Persian domination in Thrace and Macedon that had been weakened by the Ionian Revolt. Although successful in those tasks, this force fell in a storm off Mount Athos and the remains were forced to return to Asia, suffering losses along the way. In 490 BC Datis and Artaphernes were sent in a purely maritime operation to force the Cyclades islands in the central Aegean to submit to Persia and punish Eretria and Athens for the help they had sent to the Ionian revolt. Eretria was sieged and fell, and then the fleet landed in Marathon bay. There the army was met by a small force of Athenian and Plataean hoplites and defeated, despite the Persian numerical advantage. The run by a dayrunner with news of the successful outcome of the battle to Athens proved the inspiration for the sport of the marathon race that was first run in the 1896 Olympic Games.

Historical Sources

The main historical source is Herodotus, who talks about the events in Book VI, paragraphs 102–117. Herodotus, however, was born a few years after the battle and is believed to have written his book after the Peace of Callias (449 BC/448 BC). Also true to his style, he includes in the description of the battle the following wondrous events that in his opinion had a major impact on its outcome: the appearance of the god Pan to Pheidippides on his way to Sparta to ask for help, Hippias' dream that foretold the disaster of the Persians and the tale of the Athenian Epizelus who was blinded by a ghost during the battle. All other important historical sources that have survived are from even later times. They are Pausanias who gives important information over the final phase of the battle (the chase), the 10th century AD Byzantine Suda dictionary which includes information from sources now lost such as Ephorus, whose surviving fragments are also an important source.

Background

Miltiades, leader of the Athenian/Platean Army

Hippias, tyrant of Athens, had been expelled in 510 BC by his people, with the assistance of Cleomenes I, King of Sparta. He fled to the court of Darius to seek assistance.

With the failure of the Ionian Revolt (499 BC–494 BC), which had been helped by Athens and Eretria, Darius was intent on subjugating the Greeks and punishing them for their part in the revolt. In 492 BC Darius dispatched an army under his son-in-law, Mardonius. This army reduced Thrace and compelled Alexander I of Macedon to submit his kingdom again to Persia. However, in attempting to advance into Greece much of the fleet was wrecked in a storm on Cape Athos and Mardonius' army was forced to retreat to Asia. On the way back his army suffered serious losses from attacks by Thracian tribes.

Darius learned through Hippias that the Alcmaeonidae, a powerful Athenian family, were opposed to Miltiades and ready to help reinstate Hippias. They were also ready to bow to Persian demands in exchange for being excused for their role in the Ionian Revolt and political dominance in Athens. Darius wished to take advantage of this situation to take Athens, which would isolate Sparta and hand him the remainder of the Greeks. In order for the Athenians to revolt, two things would need to happen: the populace would need encouragement to revolt, and the Athenian army would have to leave Athens.

Darius decided to send a purely maritime expedition led by Artaphernes, son of a satrap of Sardis, and Datis, a Median admiral (Mardonius had been injured in the prior campaign and had fallen out of favor) with the intention to punish Naxos (whose resistance to Persian attack in 499 BC led to the Ionan revolt) and force Eretria and Athens to submit to the Great King or be destroyed.

Size of participating forces

Modern drawing of a phalanx. In reality hoplites were not uniformly equipped because each soldier would buy his own arms and decorate them at will.

The Persian fleet numbered according to Herodotus 600 triremes. No number is given for transport ships but for comparison the 1,207 ships that were sent during Xerxes' invasion in 480 BC were accompanied by 3,000 transports, again according to Herodotus. Some modern historians claim the whole fleet, triremes and transportation ships numbered 600, split between 300 triremes and 300 transports.[1] However 10 years earlier 200 triremes failed to subdue Naxos. Thus a 300 trireme fleet would probably be inadequate to complete all three objectives.

The size of either of the two armies is not given by Herodotus. For the Persian army he only mentions that it was a large infantry that was well packed . Simonides, another near-contemporary, says that the campaign force numbered 200,000, while among later writers, Cornelius Nepos gives 200,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry, Plutarch and Pausanias both independently give 300,000, Plato and Lysias claim 500,000, and Justinus 600,000. As Kampouris has noted , if the 600 ships were warships and not transport ships then with 30 epibates soldiers (the ships' foot soldiers that formed and defended from boarding parties during the sea battles) in each ship (typical for Persian ships after the battle of Lade; this was how many they had during Xerxes' invasion), a number of 18,000 troops is reached. But since the fleet did have transport ships it carried at the very least the Persian cavalry. While Herodotus claims the cavalry was carried in the triremes, the Persian fleet had dedicated ships for this job, and according to Ephorus, 800 transports accompanied Xerxes' invasion fleet 10 years later. Estimates for the cavalry are usually in the 1,000–3,000 range though as noted earlier Cornelius Nepos gives 10,000.

The size of the Athenian army is another subject of debate. Some recent historians have given around 7,000–8,000, while others favor 10,000. Those favoring the 10,000 number do it on the following basis: Herototus tells that at the battle of Plataea the Athenians sent 8,000 hoplites. This was probably the size of the entire Athenian army that could be moved out of the limits of the state at that time (which had been reduced somewhat by losses at the battle of Salamis). Also Thucydides tells that in 431 BC, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War the Athenian army numbered 26,400 hoplites (and 1,000 horsemen), of which 3,900 (about 15% of the whole army) could not be moved outside the state limits because they were under 20 or over 50. Assuming a similar ratio for 479 BC the whole army would have numbered 9,400 men. Since there was little change in the population of Athens in these 11 years, and there were further losses of soldiers during the war between Athens and Aegina which took place during that decade between the invasions, the number is rounded to 10,000. Pausanias noticed in the trophy of the battle the names of former slaves who were freed in exchange for military services. Also it is possible that metoikoi, non-Athenian Greeks residing in Athens, were drafted since they had military obligations to Athens in times of great emergency (for example in 460 BC). However, for Marathon this is not mentioned by any surviving source and their number in Athens was not as significant in 490 BC as it became later in the century when Athens became head of the Delian League.

Athens at that time could have fielded at least four times the force it did had it chosen to also send light troops consisting of the lower classes, since ten years later at the battle of Salamis it had a 180 trireme fleet that was manned by 32,000 rowers, and had lost some 60 ships earlier in the battle of Artemisium. Why this did not happen has been subject to speculation. Kampouris, among others, notes that the political leanings of the lower classes were unreliable. After the Ionic revolt had shown the general unreliability of tyrants to the Persian empire, Artafernes in 494 BC had changed the regime of the Ionian city-states from tyranny to democracy, thus setting an example that was later copied, among others, by the Second Athenian Alliance and Alexander the Great. There the power rested on the poor with the Persian army in place to reign in any move that threatened Persia's position. Some of the poor who remembered Pesistratus well since he had given them jobs probably hoped for a victory of the Persians and a change in regime to give them more power, which is one of the reasons Hippias ordered the landing in Marathon where the vast majority of local inhabitants were from these social classes. On the other hand, the Persian army hoped for an internal revolution in Athens so as to have an easy victory as in Eretria.

Datis and Artaphernes' campaign before Marathon

After one year of preparations the expeditionary force first gathered on Cilicia in the spring of 490 BC. The army boarded the Persian transports, escorted by the fleet, sailed to Samos and from there to Naxos. After a fruitless campaign there (the Naxians fled to the mountains of their island and the Persians became masters of a deserted city) it sailed for Carystus on the south coast of Euboea, which quickly surrendered. From there they sailed up the Euboean channel to Eretria, where their aims became clear to the Greeks.

The Eretrians sent an urgent message to Athens for help. The Athenians agreed, but realized they needed more help. They sent the courier Pheidippides to the Spartans and probably messengers to other cities. Only the Plataeans eventually showed up. Pheidippides arrived in Sparta on the next day, the ninth of the month. The Spartans agreed to help, but, according to Herodotus, being superstitious, said that they could not march to war until the Carneian festival ended on the full moon (September 9). Some modern historians have that the Spartans set out late because of a helot revolution, claiming this was the time of a revolution that is mentioned by Plato.

As to what happened next there is disagreement among modern historians. Some claim that Artaphernes took part of the Persian army and laid siege to Eretria, while the remainder of the army crossed with Datis and landed in the Bay of Marathon. Others claim that the events happened consecutively: at first Eretria was besieged and fell, and later the whole army landed at Schinias beach. Herodotus reports that there was a council of the 10 tribal Strategoi, with five voting for moving to confront the enemy and five voting against it, with Callimachus, the Polemarch, casting the deciding vote in favor of attack after a very dramatic appeal by Miltiades. Thus an Athenian army made of hoplites, numbering probably 10,000, under Callimachus the polemarch marched to the north and east from Athens to meet the enemy near the landing site.

The army encamped near the shrine of Heracles, where they blocked the way to Athens in an easily defendable position. The position also permitted intervention in Athens had any revolution taken place. One thousand Plataeans joined him there. The army was composed of men from the aristocracy—the upper and upper-middle classes—since armament in ancient Greece was the responsibility of the individual and not of the state (even in Sparta), so men armed themselves for battle with whatever they could afford. Before Ephialte's constitutional reforms in 457 BC, most power rested on these social classes since many positions of significant political power in the regime were reserved for those who had significant property.

Before the battle

For eight days the armies peacefully confronted each other, hoping for developments, with the Athenian army slowly narrowing the distance between the two camps. Since time worked in favor of the Athenians, eventually the Persian army decided to move. On the ninth day (either 12 September or possibly 12 August 490 BC reckoned in the proleptic Julian calendar) Artaphernes decided to move and attack Athens. Herodotus informs us that two Ionian defectors informed the Athenians that the cavalry was gone. Where and why, along with the Persian battle plan, has been a matter of debate. Several historians have supposed that this was either because the cavalry had boarded the ships, that it was inside the camp since it could not stay in the field during the night , or because it was moving along with the whole army among the northern route to reach the walls of Athens . It should be noted that Herodotus does not mention that the army was boarding the ships. Some light is given by the "χωρίς ἰππεῖς" (=without cavalry) entry of the Suda dictionary. It states: "The cavalry left. When Datis surrendered and was ready for retreat, the Ionians climbed the trees and gave the Athenians the signal that the cavalry had left. And when Miltiades realized that, he attacked and thus won. From there comes the above-mentioned quote, which is used when someone breaks ranks before battle".

According to Herodotus, by that point the generals had decided to give up their rotating leadership of the army in favor of Miltiades, who decided to move against the Persians very early in that morning. The distance between the two armies had narrowed to "a distance no less than 8 stadia" or about 1500 meters, which they covered running, much to the surprise on the Persians who were wondering if they were mad, rushing so early in the morning to their death. It is also a matter of debate whether the Greek army ran the whole distance or marched until they reached the limit of the archers' effectiveness, the "beaten zone", or roughly 200 yards, and then ran towards the ranks of their enemy. Proponents of the latter opinion note that it is very hard to run that large a distance carrying the heavy weight of the hoplitic armor. Proponents of the former opinion note the following arguments: the ancient Greeks--as indicated by the surviving statues--were in very good physical condition, the hoplite run had recently become an Olympic sport, and if they had run the entire distance it would have been covered in about 5 minutes whereas if they had marched it would have probably taken 10--enough time for the Persians to react, which they did not.

Composition and formation of Persian forces

The bulk of Persian infantry were probably Takabara lightly armed archers. Several lines of evidence support this. First of all Herodotus does not mention a shield wall in Marathon, that was typical of the heavier Sparabara formation, as he specifically mentions in the battle of Plataea and the battle of Mycale. Also in the depiction of the battle of Marathon in the Poikele Stoa that was dedicated a few years later in 460 BC when most veterans of the war were still alive, that is described by Pausanias, only Takabara infantry are depicted . Finally it seems more likely that the Persians would have sent the more multipurpose Takabara soldiers for a maritime operation than the specialized Sparabara heavy (by Persian standards) infantry . The Takabara troops carried a small woven shield, probably incapable of withstanding heavy blows from the spears of the hoplites. The usual tactic of the Persian army was for the archers to shoot volleys of arrows to weaken and disorganise their enemy while their excellent cavalry destroyed the enemy. On the other hand the ὄπλον (hoplon), the heavy shield of the hoplites (which gave them their name) was capable of protecting the man who was carrying it (or more usually the man on his left) from both the arrows and the spears of its enemies.

The initial positions of the troops before the clash. The Greeks (blue) have pulled up their wings to bolster the corners of their significantly smaller centre in a ]] shape. The Persian fleet (red) waits some way off to the east. This great distance to the ships played a crucial role in the later stages of the battle.

During the Ionian revolt the phalanx was seriously weakened by the arrows of the Persian archers before it reached hand to hand combat with them (where it excelled) because it moved slowly in order to maintain formation. This is why Miltiades who had great experience with the Persian army since he was forced to follow it during its campaign in Scythia in 513 BC ordered his army to run. This could have meant that they could end up fighting in disordered ranks. Herodotus however mentions in the description of the battle that the retreat of the center happened in order, meaning that the formation was not broken during the initial rush. This is supported by the fact that there were few casualties in that phase of the battle. The Greek center was reduced to four ranks, from the normal eight. The wings maintained their eight ranks. If Miltiades only wanted to extend the line and prevent the Persian line from overlapping the Greeks, he would have weakened uniformly the whole army so as not to leave weak points. But Herodotus categorically states that it was a conscious decision by Miltiades to strengthen the sides.

The front of the Greek army numbered 250 × 2 (for the center tribes) plus 125 × 9 (for the side tribes and the Plateans) = 1,625 men. If the Persians had the same density as the Greeks and were 10 ranks strong then the Persian army opposing the Greeks numbered 16,000 men . But if the front had a density of 1 meter compared to 1.4 meters for every Greek and had a density of 40 to 50 ranks as was the maximum possible for the plain (the Persian army had even fought in 110 ranks), then the Persian army numbered 44,000 to 55,000 . If the Persian front numbered 2,000 men and they fought in 30 ranks (as Xenophon in Cyropaedia claims) they numbered 60,000. Kampouris suggests it numbered 60,000 since that was the standard size of a major Persian formation equivalent to a modern day army corps. Generally modern Greek (and some non-Greek like Bussolt and Glotz ) historians consistently give the Persians numbers ranging from 20,000 to 60,000, or about five times the Athenian/Platean army [2] [3] [4] [5]. An army this size was big enough to produce the feelings of futility and imminent defeat that gripped the Athenians when it landed on the plain of Marathon. On the other hand non-Greek historians like Bengtson claim numbers much lower (even less than 20,000), in many cases without saying how they came up with this number [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]. If the Persian army was this small then the Eretrians, combined with the Athenians and Plateans could match it, and possibly have sought battle outside Eretria. Naxos alone could field "8,000 shields" in 500 BC and with this force successfully defended against the 200-ship Persian invasion 10 years earlier.

The enemies engage in hand to hand combat

The Greek wings (blue) envelop the Persian wings (red) while their strategically-thinned centre filled the gap made between them.

As the Greeks advanced, their strong wings drew ahead of the center, which retreated according to plan. The retreat must have been significant since Herodotus mentions that the center retreated towards Mesogeia, not several steps. However ranks did not break since the overall casualties were low and most were sustained during the last phase of the battle. The Greek retreat in the center, besides pulling the Persians in, also brought the Greek wings inwards, shortening the Greek line. The result was a double envelopment, and the battle ended when the whole Persian army, crowded into confusion, broke back in panic towards their ships and were pursued by the Greeks. The sides were left open so that the Persian ranks would break, since even a desperate army that maintained numerical advantage after a battle could still defeat its enemy. Some, unaware of the local terrain ran towards the swamps, where they drowned.

Herodotus records that 6,400 Persian bodies were counted on the battlefield, and it is unknown how many perished in the swamps. Also seven Persian ships are mentioned captured though none are mentioned sunk. The Athenians lost 192 men and the Plateans 11, most during the final chase when their heavy armor proved a disadvantage. Among dead was Kallimachus. A story is given to us about Kynaigeirus, brother of the poet Aeschylus who was also among the fighters. He charged into the sea, grabbed one Persian trireme and started pulling it towards shore. A member of the crew saw him and cut off his hand. He then grabbed it with his other arm, which the Persian also cut off. Then he bit the ship with his mouth and continued trying to pull it towards shore. At this point he was decapitated, thus dying.

Aftermath

As soon as Datis had put to sea, the two center tribes stayed to guard the battlefield and the rest of the Athenians marched to Athens. A shield had been raised over the mountain near the battle plain, which was either the signal of a successful Alcmaeonid revolution or (according to Herodotus) a signal that the Persian fleet was at Phaliro. There they met the freshly arrived Spartan army, which had covered the 220 kilometers in only 3 days. Some modern historians doubt they traveled so fast. Nevertheless they arrived in time to prevent Artaphernes from securing a landing. Seeing his opportunity lost, Artaphernes turned about and returned to Asia. The Spartans toured the battlefield at Marathon, and agreed that the Athenians had won a great victory.

The Greek upset of the Persians, who had not been defeated on land for many decades (except by Samagaetes and Scythes, both nomad tribes), caused great problems for the Persians. The Persians were shown as vulnerable. Many subject peoples revolted following the defeat of their overlords at Marathon. Order was not restored for several years.

Simonides captured the feeling on his famous epigram

Ελλήνων προμαχούντες Αθηναίοι Μαραθώνι

χρυσοφόρων Μήδων εστόρεσαν δύναμιν

which means

For the Athenians, the victory gave confidence to the people. Two years later ostracism was exercised for the first time.

Conclusion

Marathon was in no sense a decisive victory over the Persians. However, it was the first time the Greeks had bested the Persians on land, and "their victory endowed the Greeks with a faith in their destiny that was to endure for three centuries, during which western culture was born." (J.F.C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World). John Stuart Mill's famous opinion is that the Battle of Marathon was more important an event for British history than the Battle of Hastings. Kampouris sees the battle as a failure of purely maritime operations, due to their inherent weaknesses.

The longest-lasting legacy of Marathon was the double envelopment. Some historians have claimed it was random rather than a conscious decision by Miltiades. As they say, was it really Cannae before Cannae? . In hoplitic battles the two sides were usually stronger than the center because either they were the weakest point (right side) or the strongest point (left side). However before Miltiades (and after him until Epaminondas) this was only a matter of quality, not quantity. Miltiades had personal experience from the Persian army and knew its weaknesses. As his course of action after the battle shows (invasions of the Cyclades islands), he had an integrated strategy on defeating the Persians, hence there is no reason he could have not thought of a good tactic. The double envelopment has been used ever since, e.g. the German Army used a tactic at the battle of Tannenberg during World War I similar to that used by the Greeks at Marathon.

Date of the battle

Herodotus mentions for several events a date in the lunisolar calendar, of which each Greek city-state used a variant. Astronomical computation allows us to derive an absolute date in the proleptic Julian calendar which is much used by historians as the chronological frame. August Böckh in 1855 concluded that the battle took place on 12 September 490 BC in the Julian calendar, and this is the conventionally accepted date. However, this depends on when the Spartans held their festival and it is possible that the Spartan calendar was one month ahead of that of Athens. In that case the battle took place on 12 August 490 BC. If the battle really occurred in August, temperatures in the area typically reach over 30 degrees Celsius and thus make the marathon run event less plausible. See D.W. Olson et al., "The Moon and the Marathon", Sky & Telescope Sep. 2004, pp. 34—41.

Marathon run

According to Herodotus, an Athenian runner named Pheidippides ran from Athens to Sparta to ask for assistance before the battle. This event was later turned into the popular legend that Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Athens. The traditional story relates that Pheidippides, an Athenian herald, ran the distance between the battlefield by the town of Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory over Persia in the Battle of Marathon (490 BC) with the word "Νενικήκαμεν!" (Nenikékamen, We were victorious!) and died on the spot. Most accounts incorrectly attribute this story to the historian Herodotus, who wrote the history of the Persian Wars in his Histories (composed about 440 BC). The story first appears in Plutarch's On the Glory of Athens in the 1st century AD, who quotes from Heracleides of Pontus' lost work, giving the runner's name as either Thersipus of Erchius or Eucles. Lucian of Samosata (2nd century AD) also gives the story but names the runner Philippides (not Pheidippides).

Another point of debate is which way the runner took. There are two exits from the battlefields. One is towards the south that follows modern-day Marathonos avenue leading through Pikermi over the pass of Stavros Agias Paraskevis and down modern day Messogeion avenue to Athens, which is 40.8 kilometers (25.3 miles) long. (Following the ancient roads, the modern road has been lengthened somewhat to accommodate vehicular traffic to and from Mesogeia). The other is towards the north, over the modern village of Vranas, up the relatively high mountain pass towards modern day Dionyssos and the northern suburbs of Athens, which is 34.5 kilometers (21.4 Miles) long. It is more likely that the runner followed the safer, shorter but more tiring northern route than the longer but unsafe southern route. For the first modern marathon during the 1896 Olympics the southern route was chosen, probably because it was the main modern route between Marathon and Athens. That event was won by the Greek Spyros Loues who, being a local, knew that he had to conserve energy to pass the Stavros Agias Paraskevis pass, unlike his foreign competitors who were unaware of the terrain and were abandoned there. The race today is run over a distance of 42.195 km (26.2 miles). This length was set during the 1908 Olympics because the royal family wanted to see the runners starting from the balcony of the palace.

Evidence that the runner did exist and did run is given by the following popular legend first recorded by Andreas Karkavitsas in the 19th century and also Linos Politis On the plain of Marathon there was once a big battle. Many Turcs⁽¹⁾ with many ships came to enslave the land and from there pass to Athens... The blood turned into a river, and reached from the roots of Vranas until Marathon on the other side. It reached the sea and painted the waves red. Lots of lamentation and evil took place. In the end the Greeks won... Then two run to bring the news to Athens. One of them went on horseback and the other on foot and in full gear. The rider went towards Halandri and the one on foot towards Stamata. Swift-footed he went up Aforesmos and down towards the village. As women saw him they run towards him:

Stamata, they shouted, stamata (=stop). They wanted to ask what happened in the battle. He stopped a moment to catch his breath and then took the road again. Finally he reaches Psychico. There he was almost near death (pige na ksepscyhesei) , his feet were shaking, he felt like falling down. But he composed himself, took a deep breath, continued and finally reached Athens.

We won he said, and immediately he fell down and died. The rider has yet to come. But there where the foot runner stopped and took a breath is named after his act. The first village is called Stamata and the second Psychico.

Footnotes

1. Turks, like Persians, also came from the east and in great numbers which is why they are confused in Greek popular culture

References

External links

• Read contemporary Greek historian Herodotus's account of events at Marathon
• Discovery article about Marathon date controversy and Pheidippides' death
• Livius, Battle of Marathon by Jona Lendering
• black and white photo-essay of Marathon