Battle of Marathon

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{{Infobox Military Conflict |conflict=Battle of Marathon |partof=the Persian Wars |image=Image:Ac.marathon.jpg|caption=The plain of Marathon today. |date=September, 490 BC |place=Marathon, Greece |result=Athenian victory |combatant1=Athens and Plataea |combatant2=Persia |commander1=Miltiades, Callimachus† |commander2=Darius I of Persia, Artaphernes |strength1=About 10,000 Athenians and 1,000 Plataeans |strength2=20,000 by modern estimates, Herodotus claims 26,000 |casualties1=192 dead |casualties2=6,400 dead }} Template:Campaignbox Greco-Persian Wars 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. Our main historical source is Herodotus who talks about the events on book VI paragraphs 102-117. True to his style he includes in the description 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's dream that foretold the disaster of the Persians and the tale of the Athenian Epizelus who was blinded by a ghost during the battle. The other important historical sources 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 like Ephorus, whose surviving fragments are also an important source.

1 Background
2 Battle
3 Aftermath
4 Conclusion
5 Date of the battle
6 Marathon run
7 References
8 External links

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Background

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 again to Persia. However, in attempting to advance into Greece much of the fleet was wrecked in a storm on Cape Athos and Mardonius, whose army was forced to retreat to Asia, and on the way back his army suffered serious losses from 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. The agreed sign that the Alcmaeonidae had taken over the city was to be the raising of a shield over the walls.

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 attack and has 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.

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's invasion in 480 BC were accompanied by 3000 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. 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 any of the two armies is not given by Herodotus. For the Persian army he only mentions that is was a large infantry that was well packed. Simonides who, like Herodotus,was a near-contemporary says the campaign force numbered 200,000 while among later writers Plato claims 500,000, Justinus 600,000 and Pausanias 300,000. As Kampouris has noted <ref> Η Μάχη του Μαραθώνα, το λυκαυγές της κλασσικής Ελλάδος = The battle of Marathon, the dawn of classical Greece, Πόλεμος και ιστορία = War and History magazine, issue 26 January 2000, Communications editions, Athens </ref> if we accept that the 600 were warships and not transport ships (as some have suggested) then with 30 soldiers as organic infantry in each (typical for Persian ships after the battle of Lade) we reach a number of 18,000 troops. But since the fleet did have transport ships that carried at the very least the Persian cavalry which was probably 1,000 - 3,000 strong (though Cornelius Nepus claims it was 10,000 men strong) <ref> Ιστορία του Ελληνικού Έθνους = History of the Greek nation volume Β', Athens 1971 </ref>.

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 Persian became masters of a deserted city) it sailed for Carystus on the south coast of Euboea. 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 9th of the month. The Spartans agreed to help, but being superstitious, said that they could not march to war until the Carneian festival ended on the full moon (September 9).

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 though claim that the events happened consecutively: at first Eretria was sieged 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 voted against it, with Callimachus, the Polemarch, casting the deciding vote in favor of attack, after a very dramatic appeal by Miltiades. Thus an Athenians army mado of hoplites, numbering probably 10,000, under Callimachus the polemarch marched to meet the enemy on the near the landing site to the north and east from Athens. The army encamped near the shrine of Heracles, where he 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 manned by men from the aristocracy, the upper and upper-middle classes since in ancient Greece armament was the responsibility of the individual and not of the state (except in Sparta), so men armed themselves for battle with whatever they could afford. Before Ephialte's constitutional reforms most power rested on these social classes since many postion of significant political power in the then regime were reserved for those who had significant property.

Athens at that time could field at least 4 times the force it did had it chosen to also send light troops manned from it lower classes, since ten years later at the battle of Salamis it had a 200 trireme fleet, that was thus manned by 34,000 rowers. Why this did not happen has been subject to speculation. Kampouris <ref> ibid ref 1 </ref> among others, notes that the political standings 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 tyrany 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 excesses. Some of the poor who remembered well Pesistratus since he had given them jobs probably hoped for a victory of the Persians and a change in regime to give them more power. On the other hand the Persian army, as noted earlier, hoped for an internal revolution in Athens so as to have an easy victory as in Eretria. Thus 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 who were expecting the Spartans, eventually the Persian army decided to move.

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Battle

Image:Battle of Marathon Initial Situation.png

Image:Battle of Marathon Greek Double Envelopment.png

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 it had boarded the ships or that it was inside the camp since it could not stay in the field during the night <ref> ibid ref 2 </ref> or because it was moving along with the whole army among the northern route to reach the walls of Athens <ref> ibid ref 1 </ref>. It should be noted that Herodotus does not mention that the army was boarding the ships. 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 for the limit of the archer's effectiveness, the "beaten zone," or roughly 200 yards, and then run 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 that the ancient Greeks, as proven by the surviving statues were in very good physical condition as also proven by that the hoplite run had recently become an olympic sport and that if they run the entire distance it would have been covered in about 5 minutes while if they marched it would have taken probably 10, enough time for the Persians to react, which they did not.

The bulk of Persian infantry were probably Takabara lightly armed archers. This is supported by several lines of evidence. 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 <ref> Garoufalis N. Demetrios Η Μάχη του Μαραθώνα, Η δόξα της οπλιτικής φάλαγγας = The battle of Marathon, the glory of the hoplitic phalanx, Στρατιωτική Ιστορία = Military History magazine, issue 13, September 1997, Perisopio editions, Athens </ref>. Finally it seems more likely that the Persians would have sent the more multipurpouse Takabara soldiers for a maritime operation than the specalized Sparabara heavy (by Persian standards) infantry <ref> ibid ref 1 </ref>.

During the Ionian revolt the phalanx was seriously weakend before it reached hand to hand combat with the Persian archers (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 it's campaign in Scythia in 513 BC ordered his army to run. This could have meant 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 concientous decision by Miltiades to strengthen the sides. The front of the Greek army numbered 250 x 2 (for the center tribes) plus 125 x 9 (for the side tribes and the Plateans) = 2,625 men. If the Persians had the same density as the Greeks and were 10 ranks strong then the Persian army opposing the Greeks numbered 26,000 men <ref> ibid ref 1 </ref>. But if the front had a density of 1 meter compared to 1,4 for every Greek and had a density of 40 to 50 ranks as was the maximum possible for the plain (the Persian army had fought even in 110 ranks) then the Persian army numbered 44,000 to 55,000 <ref> ibid ref 2 </ref>, a number strong enough to produce feelings of imminent defeat.

As the Greeks advanced, their strong wings drew ahead of the center, which following the plan retreated. 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 attained 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 maintained empty according so that the Persian ranks would break, since a desperate army that maintained even after the battle numerical advantage could have defeated the Greek army.

Herodotus records that 6,400 Persians bodies were counted on the battlefield, and it is unknown how many perished in the swaps. 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. Acording to Pausanias among the Athenian dead were several slaves. Another dead was Kallimachus who had fought on the right side, the side of honor. A story given to us is about Kynaegeirus, 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 gloriously.

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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. They arrived in time to prevent Artaphernes from securing a landing. Seeing his opportunity lost, Artaphernes set about and returned to Asia. The Spartans arrived the next day according to Herodotus having thus covered the 220 kilometers between the cities in only three day. Some modern historians have also doubted that they managed to cover it so fast. They 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, caused great problems for the Persians. Seeing that the Persians were not invincible, many people subject to their rule rose up following the defeat of their overlords at Marathon and order was not restored for several years.

The common enemy of Persia helped provide some solidarity to the disunited Greek city-states. The victory helped solidify the view that Greeks were "civilized" and Asians were merely "Barbarians."

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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 which 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.

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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 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 Celcius and thus make the marathon run event less plausible. See D.W.Olson et al., Sky & Telescope Sep. 2004 pp.34..41

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Marathon run

According to the Greek historian Herodotus, who was born in the year of the battle, an Athenian soldier named Pheidippides ran from Athens to Sparta to ask for assistance. 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 42 km (26 miles) from 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!" (Nenikèkamen, 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 International Olympic Committee estimates the distance from the Marathon battlefield to Athens as 34.5 km (21.4 miles). There is no historical evidence for this popular version of the legend, which first appears in Plutarch's On the Glory of Athens in the 1st century AD. The story became the basis for the modern marathon athletics event. The race is run over a distance of 42.195 km (26.2 miles).