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Battle of Marathon
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BackgroundIn 511 BC, with the aid of Cleomenes I, King of Sparta, the Athenian people expelled Hippias, the tyrant ruler of Athens. With Hippias' father Peisistratus, the family had ruled for 36 out of the previous 50 years and intended to continue Hippias' rule. Hippias fled to Sardis to the court of the nearest Persian satrap, Artaphernes, and promised control of Athens to the Persians if they were to restore him. When the Athenians demanded he be expelled, the satrap suggested they restore him to power. This gave assistance, in the form of 20 boats, to the Ionian cities embroiled in the Ionian Revolt (499 BC–494 BC). Hippias had probably fled to the court of King Darius during the revolt.
The city of Eretria had also given assistance to the Ionians.
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BackgroundIn 511 BC, with the aid of Cleomenes I, King of Sparta, the Athenian people expelled Hippias, the tyrant ruler of Athens. With Hippias' father Peisistratus, the family had ruled for 36 out of the previous 50 years and intended to continue Hippias' rule. Hippias fled to Sardis to the court of the nearest Persian satrap, Artaphernes, and promised control of Athens to the Persians if they were to restore him. When the Athenians demanded he be expelled, the satrap suggested they restore him to power. This gave assistance, in the form of 20 boats, to the Ionian cities embroiled in the Ionian Revolt (499 BC–494 BC). Hippias had probably fled to the court of King Darius during the revolt.
The city of Eretria had also given assistance to the Ionians. Though the assistance sent by the two cities was not very effective, it alarmed Darius and he wished to punish the cities. In 492 BC, he dispatched an army under the command of his son-in-law, Mardonius, to Greece. Mardonius conquered Thrace and thus compelled Alexander I of Macedon to relinquish his kingdom again to Persia. However, while in route south to the Greek city-states, the Persian fleet was wrecked in a storm in Cape Athos, losing 300 ships and 20,000 men. Mardonius was forced to retreat to Asia. Attacks by Thracian tribes inflicted losses on the retreating army.
Darius learned, perhaps through Hippias, that the Alcmaeonidae, a powerful Athenian family, were opposed to Miltiades, who at the time was the most prominent politician of Athens. While they were not ready to help reinstate Hippias (they had helped overthrow him), they probably believed a Persian victory was inevitable and wanted to secure a better position in the new political regime that was to follow the Persian conquest of Athens. Darius wished to take advantage of this situation to conquer Athens, which would isolate Sparta and, by handing him the remainder of the Greeks in the Aegean, would consolidate his control over Ionia. In order for the Athenians to revolt, two things would need to happen: the populace would need to be encouraged to revolt, and the Athenian army would have to leave Athens so that they could not crush the revolt.
Darius decided to send a purely maritime expedition led by Artaphernes, son of the satrap to whom Hippias had fled 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 Ionian revolt) and force Eretria and Athens to submit to Darius or be destroyed.
Before the battleFor five days, the armies peacefully confronted each other, hoping for developments, with the Athenian army slowly narrowing the distance between the two camps, with pikes cut from trees covering their sides against cavalry movements. Since time worked in favor of the Athenians, it probably was the Persian army that decided to move. On the sixth day, when Miltiades was the prytanevon general, a rather bureaucratic rank consistent with the duty officer of modern armies—either September 12 or possibly August 12 490 BC reckoned in the proleptic Julian calendar—Artaphernes decided to move and attack Athens. The Athenians came to know from two Ionian defectors that the Persian 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 "????? ?ppe??" (=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 as prytanevon generals in favor of Miltiades. He chose the day his tribe was leading, for the attack, perhaps because he wanted to bear the full responsibility for the battle. He decided to move against the Persians very early in that morning. He ordered two tribes that were forming the center of the Greek formation, the Leontis tribe led by Themistocles and the Antiochis tribe that was led by Aristides, to be arranged in the depth of 4 ranks while the rest of the tribes in the sides were in 8 men ranks. The distance between the two armies had narrowed to a distance not less than 8 stadia or about 1,500 meters, which they covered running shouting their war cry, "??e?e?! ??e?e?!" (Eleleu, Eleleu), much to the surprise on the Persians who "in their minds they charged the Athenians with madness which must be fatal, seeing that they were few and yet were pressing forwards at a run, having neither cavalry nor archers." 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 meters, 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, estimated at 32 kilograms (70.5 pounds). 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 forcesThe bulk of Persian infantry were likely 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 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 long 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, then their excellent cavalry moved in to deliver the coup de grace. On the other hand, the ?sp?? , the heavy shield of the hoplites, 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 Persians were also at a severe disadvantage due to the size of their weapons. Hoplites carried much longer spears than their Persian enemies, extending their reach as well as protecting them. Persian armies would usually have elite Iranian troops in the center and less reliable soldiers from subject peoples on the sides of the formation. It is confirmed by Herodotus that this is how the Persian army was arrayed in the battlefield.
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 to strengthen the sides probably in order to have a strong force to defeat the weaker-in-quality Persian sides.
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.]]
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 gap of 1.4 meters between soldiers compared to 1 meters for every Greek and had a density of 40 to 50 ranks as seems to be 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.
The enemies engage in hand to hand combat
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 the dead was the polemarch Callimachus and the general Stesilaos. One story documents that Kynaigeirus, brother of the playwright Aeschylus who was also among the fighters, charged into the sea, grabbed one Persian trireme, and started pulling it towards shore. A member of the crew saw him, cut off his hand, and Kynaigeirus died.
It seems that Aeschylus considered that his participation in Marathon was his greatest achievement in life (rather than his plays) since in his gravestone there was the following epigram:
- This tomb the dust of Aeschylus doth hide,
- Euphorion's son and fruitful Gela's pride
- How tried his valor, Marathon may tell
- And long-haired Medes, who knew it all too well.
According to Ctesias, Datis was slain at Marathon. Herodotus, however, has him alive after the battle returning a statue of Apollo to Delos that had earlier been removed by his army, though he does not mention him after the remnant of the army returned to Asia.
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 moving towards Phaliro. They arrived in time to prevent Artaphernes from securing a landing. Seeing his opportunity lost, Artaphernes turned about and returned to Asia. On the next day, the Spartan army arrived, having covered the 220 kilometers (136.7 miles) in only three days. Some modern historians doubt they traveled so fast. 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.
The dead of Marathon were awarded by the Athenians the special honor of being the only ones who were buried where they died instead of the main cemetery of Athens in Kerameikos. On the tomb of the Athenians this epigram composed by Simonides was written:
- ??????? p??µa????te? ????a??? ?a?a????
- ???s?f???? ??d?? est??esa? d??aµ??
which means
- The Athenians, as defenders of the Hellenes, in Marathon
- destroyed the might of the golden-dressed Medes
(translation by Major General Dimitris Gedeon, HEAR)
The tomb was excavated in the 1880s by German archaeologists. The team, however, did not include any anthropologists, and were therefore unable to determine the number of bodies in the tomb. The same team also found a ditch containing large numbers of hastily buried human bones which was identified as the burial place of the Persians.
For the Athenians, the victory gave confidence to the people. Two years later ostracism was exercised for the first time, its first victim being a friend of Peisistratus.
ConclusionMarathon 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 upon 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, such as when 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 battleHerodotus 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 11 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 11 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.
Marathon runAccording 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 "Nenikekamen!" 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). It should be noted that in some medieval codices of Herodotus the name of the runner between Athens and Sparta before the battle is given as Philippides and in a few modern editions this name is preferred.
Another point of debate is the path taken by the runner. 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 abandoned the race there. The race today is run over a distance of .
A popular legend about the battle and the run was recorded by Andreas Karkavitsas in the 19th century and also Linos Politis
SourcesPrimary sources- Herodotus (484 BC-425 BC?), ?st????? ?p?de???? (The histories), Book VI
- Thucydides (ca 460 BC-ca 400 BC, ?????af? (The Peloponnesian Wars)
- Isocrates (436 BC-338 BC), ?p?tafe??? t??? ??????e???? ß?????? (Funeral Oration)
- Plato (428 BC/427 BC–ca. 348 BC/347 BC), ?e???e??? (Menexenus)
- -??µ?? (Laws)
- Xenophon (c. 427 BC–355 BC), ????? ???ßas?? (Anabasis)
- Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC), ?T??a??? ????te?a (The Athenian Constitution)
- Cornelius Nepos (ca. 100 BC- 24 BC), De Viris Illustribus (Lifes of the eminent commanders)
- Plutarch (46-127 AD), ???? ?a?a?????? (Parallel Lives), Theseus, Aristeides, Themistocles
- - ?e?? t?? ???d?t?? ?a????e?a? (On the malice of Herodotus)
- Lucian (ca. 120 - ca. 180 AD), ?p?? t?? ?? t? p??sa???e?se? pta?sµat?? (A slip in the tongue of salutation)
- Pausanias (2nd century AD), ???ad?? ?e?????s?? (Description of Greece)
- Marcus Junianus Justinus (3rd century AD), Historiarum Philippicarum (Epitome of the Phillipic History of Pompeius Trogus)
- Photius c.820 - 893 AD, ?????ß?ß??? (Bibliotheca or Myriobiblon): Epitome of ?e?s??? (Persica) by Ctesias (4th century BC)
- Suda Dictionary (10th century AD)
Secondary sources- Peter Green, The Greco-Persian Wars
- Dr. Manousos Kampouris, ? ???? t?? ?a?a???a, t? ???a???? t?? ??ass???? ????d?? = The battle of Marathon, the dawn of classical Greece, ???eµ?? ?a? ?st???a = War and History magazine, issue 26 January 2000, Communications editions, Athens
- Christian Meier, Athen. Ein Neubeginn der Weltgeschichte, Berlin 1993
- Busolt D. Griechichse Geschichte bis zur Schlacht bei Chaeroneia, vol I, Gotha 1893
- Glotz G., Roussel P., Cohen R., Histoire Grecque vol. I-IV, Paris 1948
- Bengtson H., Griechische Geschichte Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft III, 4. München 1969
- Lex. Hist. Staetten s.v. Marathon 48
- Nikos Giannopoulos, ?a?a???a? 490 p? (Marathon 490 BC) in St?at??t??? ?st???a, ?e???e? ???e?, ?a?a???a? 490 p.? (Military history, Great Battles, Marathon 490 BC),Periskopio editions, Athens March 2006
- Garoufalis N. Demetrios ? ???? t?? ?a?a???a, ? d??a t?? ?p??t???? f??a??a? = The battle of Marathon, the glory of the hoplitic phalanx, St?at??t??? ?st???a = Military History magazine, issue 13, September 1997, Perisopio editions, Athens
- Christodoulou Demetrios, ? st?at??t??? ?st???a t?? a??a?a? ????d??, µ?a ???? p??s????s? (=The military history of Ancient Greece, another point of view), St?at??t??? ?st???a (=Military history) magazine, issue 20 April 1998, Periscopio editions Athens
- I. Kakrides, ?? a??a??? ?????e? st?? ?e?e??????? ?a??? pa??d?s? (=The Ancient Greeks in modern Greek popular traditions), Athens 1989
- Martin, Thomas R. (2000). Ancient Greece from prehistoric to Hellinistic times. New Haven, New England: Yale University Press.
- UT, Knoxville (2007). Ancient Greece and Rome in battle modes.Love and romance
External links- by Jonathan Webb
- , by Jona Lendering
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