The First Marathon

“Master, remember the Athenians!”

After his victory at Lade, Darius began to take steps to punish the insolent Athenians who had burnt Sardis once and for all. Two options were open to him. The only land route was to the north, across the narrow straits of the Hellespont, and then across barbarian lands in Thrace and down through Macedonia. It was long, difficult, and dangerous. The alternative was an island-hopping path directly across the Aegean. It was shorter, but no way to transport a large army. Darius decided on a land invasion first. 

In Athens, the populace was in a state of panic. The sack of Miletus was shown in a popular play that summer. The men were slaughtered, the women raped, the boys castrated, the girls sold into slavery and carried deep into Persia. Adding to the chaos and confusion, Miltiades, the tyrant of the Hellespont, who had advocated betraying Darius more than 15 years before when he campaigned over the Danube, narrowly escaped the conquest of his home. Slipping by the skin of his teeth past a Persian naval squadron sent to intercept him, he was pursued across the Aegean, slipping into the Athenian harbor of the Piraeus just ahead of his pursuers. He brought news that the next year Darius would send army through Thrace, to descend upon Greece from the north. To make matters worse, the Argives, eager to recover the position they had lost half a century before, allied with Persia. They hoped to see mighty Sparta crushed and burned, like Miletus.

Cleomenes, still attempting to save face since his humiliation at Athens the decade before, did not take too kindly to this measure. He led an army north, to Argos. His seers informed him that an Argive river god would doom his army if he dared cross his waters. The Spartan king snorted, “How very patriotic of him,” and led his army by another route. He then pinned the Argive army in a grove sacred to Apollo, and then lured them out, one by one, with the promise of ransom and safety, only to betray each in turn and execute them. When the survivors caught on, and refused to come out, Cleomenes callously ordered the grove to be burnt, his hoplite calmly dispatching each survivor that ran out. Faced with this horrific act of sacrilege, Argos meekly surrendered. Culled of an entire generation, the city was left so enfeebled that even tiny Mycenae, the old kingdom of Agamemnon, the famous leader of the expedition to Troy, was able to reassert its independence after centuries. Thus ever to cities that supported the barbarian. 

During this time, the first Persian expedition to punish Athens had departed, under a man by the name of Mardonius. They marched quickly through Thrace, and descended upon Macedonia, which quickly surrendered and became a Persian client state. However, a few weeks later, the Persian camp was ravaged by a horde of Thracian barbarians and Mardonius himself was wounded. When nearly the entire fleet was destroyed in a storm off of Mount Athos a few days later, the Persians abandoned the expedition for the year and withdrew.

“Master, remember the Athenians!”

The next year, however, the Persians began laying the groundwork for their next expedition. All through the year of 492 BC, Persian messengers travelled up and down Greece, demanding earth and water from each city as a token of their submission. Only two cities denied this request: In Athens, the messengers were dragged before the Assembly of the people, tried, and executed on bogus charges. In Sparta, Cleomenes threw the messengers down a well, telling them before they drowned, “You’ll find plenty of both there.” It is not reported whether or not he kicked them while doing so. 

Darius now knew who his opponents were. He needed only an opening. The sea route could only support a limited number of troops – he could not fight both Athens and Sparta at once. But one, then the other…yes, that was feasible. 

His chance came in 491. Sparta’s king, Cleomenes, in a power struggle with her other king, Demaratus (the Laws of Lycurgus had instituted a dual monarchy, so that one king could serve as a check on the other), and was able to bribe the Oracle at Delphi into declaring Demaratus illegitimate. However, while his successor was still getting used to the reins of power, Cleomenes’ bribe was discovered, and in the ensuing scandal the king was driven out of Sparta. He threatened to raise an army amongst Sparta’s subject states, and reinstate himself forcibly, and the terrified Spartan assembly invited him back in – where he was quickly tried for insanity and imprisoned in the stocks. When his badly mangled body was discovered the next morning, the cause of death was ruled to be suicide. 

Darius did not miss this moment. As the new Spartan king, Leonidas, replaced Cleomenes, the Persian host gathered. Over the great roads of the Persian Empire – the finest in the world, used only by officials of the Great King – came soldiers from every nation. Medes, Bactrians, Sogdianans, Persians, Lydians, Arabs, Egyptians, and countless others marched into Sardis, where they found the fleet waiting for them. To most of these men, Athens was nothing more than a name. But Datis, the commander of the expedition, knew the truth. The Athenians were a terrorist state, responsible for an unprovoked attack on Persia. They were clearly enthralled by the Lie (what sort of Oracle spoke only in riddles?). Their only hope for salvation was for them to be purged with the holy flame. 

And so, after months of preparation, in the summer of 490 the great fleet of the Persian sailed. At first, observed by the Ionians on the coast, it seemed to be sailing northwards. Another expedition to Thrace, then? Suddenly, the fleet swung to the west. The Ionian Greeks gasped in horror. The only place the fleet could be sailing to the west was to rebellious Athens, and the mainland. 

All through that long, terrible summer, news trickled into Athens, daily increasing the terror and panic over the approach of the army of Datis. Naxos, the city which ten years before had successfully resisted the Persian attack and so had precipitated the entire business, was stormed and put to the torch. The island of Delium, the holy birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, was captured by Datis, who showed leniency to the inhabitants and sacrificed at the temple of Apollo. The smoke of the sacrifice, and the smoke of Naxos, cast a long shadow westward over the sea as the armada drew ever closer. One by one, the free islands in the Aegean fell. If a particularly educated Athenian had possessed a map, he could have traced the progress of the fleet as it drew inexorably closer. 

At last, late in August, after months at sea, the army of the barbarian arrived. Datis had decided to strike at Eretria on the island of Euboea first, securing his rear before he moved on the primary target of Athens itself. The army landed unopposed. Datis must have breathed a sigh of relief – his army was its most vulnerable disembarking. The Eretrians would try to make a fight of it from the walls. The Persians duly obliged.

For five days, the fighting was terrible, as the Persian horde came on at the walls of Eretria and the inhabitants bravely repulsed them. On the sixth day, the most terrible and insidious Persian weapon of all proved victorious. A pair of citizens, paid off by Persian gold from the limitless coffers of Darius, opened the gates and allowed the barbarian to flood in. The city was burnt to the ground, the males executed, and the women and children carted off into slavery, dragged in chains onto the Persian vessels. Watching the spectacle was a familiar face: Hippias the Pisistratid.

The old tyrant, now over eighty years of age, had not seen his homeland in two decades. He had fled to the court of the Great King in Persepolis, and now served as an advisor to Datis in his punitive expedition. Hippias thought to win his throne back, and so now he was a traitor, guiding the Persians straight to his old home. 

He would have advised Datis of an excellent landing ground, 26 miles north of Athens: A beautiful crescent shaped harbor, with a wide plain to encamp the army, and two roads running south around the mountains straight to Athens. The harbor of Marathon. It was there, nearly half a century before, where he had landed with his brother and his father in Pisistratus’s third and final attack on the city. Now Datis would use Marathon to mount his own attack on the city. 

Athens was thrown into a state of uproar at the approach of the King’s punishment. Two options stood before the citizenry: Did they make their stand at the walls, as the Eretrians had, or did they march out and meet the invaders in the field? They were not pretty options. Could Athens, as riven with factionalism and infighting as it was, hope to hold out against a siege when it had taken but two Eretrian citizens to betray that city to the hands of the barbarian? But, to meet the Persians in the field…In the half-century the two sides had been in contact, not once had a Greek force beaten a Persian in open combat. Not once. Indeed, since the time of Cyrus, Persian arms had never been defeated by any power, great or small. Any army the democracy fielded would be horrendously outnumbered. 

It was Miltiades, the famous Mede-fighter, who carried the day. Athens could hold the invader at the beachhead, he argued – if they had the assistance of the Spartans. It was decided. The army of democracy would hold the roads leading from Marathon to Athens long enough for the Spartan army to take the field against the foe. And so, while 10,000 hoplites rushed to Marathon, one lone runner, Philipides, rushed the other direction, towards Sparta. 

In two days, Philipides raced 170 miles into the Peloponnesus. Late in the evening the second day, he would have begun descending into the valley of Laconia, and there, sprawled before him, would stand the group of villages known as Sparta. The sight would have been much different from grim Athens. Sparta was in the height of her annual religious festival. It was quite impossible, the elders informed Philipides, for the Spartan army to march for at least a week. Adding in the three day march from Sparta to Marathon, and the Athenian army had to hold out ten days without Spartan aid. Old Cleomenes would have snorted in contempt at the religious restrictions, and moved out anyways. But not these new kings. They were not yet established, and besides, after all the sacrilege of Cleomenes, look what he had come to! No, no aid for Athens yet. The democracy would have to hold.

And so back to the north ran Philipides. He arrived in Athens soon enough. The city was intact. The citizens were fearful, since they had had no news from the front, but morale was holding. No one would betray the city to the Mede yet, at least. But, were the Persian fleet to appear while the army was away…The city might yet be lost. Philipides ran on, to Marathon, and the waiting armies.

He arrived to find the situation a stalemate. So quickly had the Athenians moved that they had managed to secure both exits to the plain of Marathon, and had quickly dug in. The hoplites’ flanks were well protected, and the tiny city of Plataea had sent 800 hoplites to reinforce their allies. This gesture, though of little material aid when the Greeks were outnumbered at the very least 3 to 1, was a tremendous morale booster to the Athenians. 

The Persians were encamped on the other end of the plain, near the beach. Datis could not risk a frontal attack on the dug-in hoplites, the only way to break out of the plain. However, neither could he delay. Every day he waited, the Spartan army would grow closer and the Greeks would be able to attack. 

When Philipides at last arrived at the battlefield, he was able to inform the Athenian generals that they had but a week to wait. A week. They could hold for a week. Probably. They couldn’t risk an attack on the Persians – not with their numbers, and especially not with the Persian cavalry, which would quickly outflank and decimate the phalanx. And so the two sides sat, and stared at each other for five days. The Persian cavalry would ride right up to the Athenian lines, taunting them, daring them to battle, but would not venture further, nor would the hoplites venture to attack. And daily the Spartans’ arrival drew closer. The Athenians were terrified. What if Datis simply left part of his army there to pin the Athenians, and with his fleet he slipped around via the sea, to take the city in the rear? The army of democracy might hold here but return to find their city in ruins. 
At last, on the fifth night, a pair of Ionian deserters broke out from the Persian camp. They carried frightening news with them: The cavalry has embarked! Datis was making his move.

A hurried council of war was convened. Should the army withdraw to Athens, and meet the Persians at the walls? Then they would be in the same situation as before. Should they attack? Miltiades, one of ten generals with the army, argued so. Even though the Persians had never been beaten, even though the Greeks were outnumbered many times, they could not miss this chance. This was their one chance to strike the Persians with no cavalry! Now, if ever, an attack would succeed. He swayed 4 of his 9 fellow generals. 5 disagreed. The deciding vote now lay with Callimachus, an old, tough soldier who served as commander-in-chief. He decided to trust the only man who had experience with the Persians. He voted to attack. 

Quietly, in the pre-dawn darkness, the army of democracy deployed. On the left stood the Plataeans. In the center were Themistocles and Areistides, two rising stars in the democracy, serving with Callimachus. On the right, the place of honor, Miltiades was in command. Miltiades, fearful of being outflanked and overwhelmed by the superior numbers of the barbarian, had broken standard practice and thinned out his center to half the normal depth of fighting men, focusing on the wings, so that the length of the small Greek army would match the length of the Persian one come morning. 

The sun dawned that bright autumn day, and the Persian army, looking across the plain, would have at last seen the Greek phalanx descending from the mountains and moving out to fight. Stunned, disbelieving, and gleeful that the cowardly servants of the Lie would at last fight them, the Persians would have begun reaching for their bows and slings, exchanging excited, hungry, looks. 

And the Athenian army began to charge.
_

Fully outfitted, a hoplite weighs about seventy pounds. He is almost completely encased in bronze. Bronze greaves protect the thighs, a bronze breastplate for the torso, and a helmet that nearly totally engulfs the head, topped with a fearsome plume, a Greek warrior armed for battle looks almost more machine than man. In his right arm he carries an eight-foot heavy ashwood spear, on his left hangs the mighty hoplon, or shield, from whence the hoplite drew his name. He was the most heavily armed and armored fighter in the ancient world.

In battle, the hoplites would form a phalanx. It was simple enough. Arrayed eight deep, the hoplites would present their shields to the enemy, and through the gaps protruded their spears. This formation, perhaps the most famous in history, was more than simple shield wall. The shield of each hoplite did not protect its wielder, but rather the man to his left. Thus, the men in the phalanx were dependent on each other, not on themselves, for protection. It bound the entire force tightly together, and so discipline and firmness were emphasized, not courage and great acts of killing. 

Panic was the greatest enemy of a hoplite army. If one’s comrade broke the phalanx, one would be exposed to the enemy. Entire phalanxes could dissolve and the men in them slaughtered. To combat this, and to help the men maintain formation on the charge, different cities instituted various war cries or music. The Spartans, for example, advanced in perfect silence but for the playing of a flute to keep them in time, terrifying their more boisterous enemies. The Thebans let loose a wild, whooping yell. And the Athenians possessed a terrifying, ululating cry that rose up as they crashed into a foe: “Elelelelele!”

Now that cry, bursting from ten thousand throats, echoed over the field of Marathon. 

The phalanx crashed right through the storm of arrows and bolts the Persians threw at them, their heavy bronze easily defeating the attacks. The Persians were shocked – no one had ever made it through that intact before! They frantically began to scramble to erect their defenses, but it was too late. The Athenians plowed into the Persian army before it was ready. 

The army of Persia was an amalgamation of all the various nations within the empire. Each fought with its own style – archery, perhaps, like the Medes, or the great axes and metal caps of the Saka, or the long spears of the Persians themselves. They had one thing in common, though: They wore almost no armor. In the East, where cavalry was king, what good was it? Armored men were slow, easily outmaneuvered by quick horsemen. Armor was a liability. Easterners fought with shields of wicker, and leather jerkin or cotton armor. Enough to stop an arrow, or perhaps a slingstone.

Not enough to stop a phalanx head on.

The Athenian army crashed into the first ranks of the Persian force, and immediately plunged several ranks deeper. Their heavy spears, instead of shivering as in a collision of phalanxes, where both sides struggled against the other’s heavy bronze armor, plunged through wicker and leather easily, chewing through flesh in an instant. The barbarians were ground up, unable to make a scratch in the armored wall of bronze now bearing down upon them. Many weren’t even struck with weapons, but were simply crushed by the enormous weight of the Greeks striding ever forward. 

Pressed backwards, unable to gain ground to regroup, the Persians on the flanks began to break off and flee backwards towards the ships. In the center, however, where the phalanx was only four rather than eight ranks thick, where the more disciplined Persian spearmen stood, where the wild Saka possessed axes capable of cleaving through a hoplite breastplate, the advance stalled, and the Greeks began to lose ground. However, the men on the flanks, watching their foes flee before them, wheeled inwards, and took the remaining invaders in the flank. The Persians fought on for a while, then also broke, and ran for the ships. 

Realizing the battle was not yet won, the Greek generals led their men in pursuit. If the Persian army was able to embark, they could sail to Athens before the army could return, and all would be for naught. The fighting here was more intense than at any other time in the battle. The Greeks fought in amongst the beached ships, stabbing upwards with their spears, defending against missiles hurled from above, all semblance of order gone. The Persians fought desperately to escape, fending men off their ships, thrusting down, attempting to push off. Callimachus, the old general, was killed here. The brother of a man who in later years would become famous as the playwright Aeschylus, Cynaigeirus, was killed when he laid his hand upon a trireme to stop it escaping, and had it struck off with an ax. In the end, seven ships of the Persian fleet of more than six hundred were taken. 

No time to rest. It was not yet ten in the morning, but the Persian cavalry had departed several hours before. Athens was not yet safe. The army turned and began to race back over the mountain to get to their city ahead of the Persians. But would they make it in time? What if the city was betrayed, as Eretria was, before the hoplites returned?

The story goes that the Athenians sent famous Philipides on one last run, to stop anyone from selling their city to the barbarians. Philipides raced back over the 26 miles to Athens, after his earlier epic run to Sparta, after his run to the battlefield, after having fought in the battle. Exhausted, stumbling, he reached the city and was met by several elders of the assembly. Collapsing before them, breathless, he gasped out a single word:

“Victory!”

And he died. 

The rest of the army, marching hard, was able to arrive several hours later. Bare minutes after their arrival, the first Persian ships glided into the harbor at Phalerum, only to be greeted by an assembly of the entire army of hoplites that had so recently slaughtered their comrades at Marathon. Artaphernes, in command now that Datis had been slain on the field, realized he could not take the city. The Persian fleet sat and stared in disbelief. Hippias the tyrant looked one last time upon his homeland. Then the fleet turned and rowed back out to sea, thence homewards.

In the aftermath of the battle, the Spartans came hurrying up from the Peloponnese, only to be crushingly disappointed that they had missed the entire affair. They marched out to the battlefield to inspect the Persian dead, however. What they saw would have encouraged them. Such weakly armed barbarians would never stand up to Spartan steel! 

Marathon was a sea-change for Greece. The battle had cost the Athenians 192 dead, out of their force of 10,000. They were given an honor unprecedented in Athenian history: Rather than being brought back to the city for burial, the 192 were given a magnificent memorial on the field itself. The 6400-odd Persian did were ignobly shoved into a pit and buried en masse. Could men who had lived as slaves all their lives really expect any better? The survivors were heroes in Athens, and would dominate Athenian politics for decades to come. Before, the Mede had always been talked of in tones of hushed fear or awe. Now, after the great victory, men spoke the word “barbarian” with a sneer of contempt. Good Greek men would always be able to beat such effeminate trouser-wearers. Now, for the first time Greeks began to conceive as themselves as inhabiting a continent separate from Asia, one that it seemed natural Greece should rule. From hence, they would define themselves even more than in the past as a people apart, a people special. The consequences of this development would forever shape the succeeding millennia. This was the dawn of Western culture. This was the dawn of the Greek Golden Age. Marathon was the birth cry of Europe.