490 BC and vengeance has come for the Athenians. Hungry to repay a previous affront, a large Persian force has landed at Marathon. Its goal, to capture Athens – the birthplace of democracy. One force however, stands between the invaders and this goal, ready to defend that city to the last.

Outnumbered, relatively untrained and going into battle against the forces of the greatest empire of the time; the chances of victory look stacked against these Athenian farmers. Yet the outcome of this battle is to determine the future of Greece: A future of freedom or subjugation.

Background: The Greek World 500 BC

If someone asks you what were the greatest cities of the Ancient Greeks, anyone would forgive you for instantly thinking of famed places such as Sparta, Athens or Corinth. Indeed, these city-states would go on to represent the zenith of Greek power for much of antiquity. In 500 BC, however, this was not the case.

Back then, the most powerful of these cities – stretching from Ampurias in Eastern Spain to the Crimea – were, funnily enough, not situated in Greece at all. Instead you must look further east, to the coastline of Western Turkey.

The ‘beating heart’

On these shores, multiple Hellenic-cities had prospered for centuries, establishing trade and connections with both the East and West. Rich rewards and splendour duly followed. Many famous ‘Greeks’ of the period would originate from this area; people such as Thales, Sappho and Homer. It was these cities that, at that time, represented the ‘beating heart’ of the Greek World.

It would be on this shoreline that the critical event that lead to the Battle of Marathon occurred.

Instability in Ionia

In 500 BC, radical change was seizing this prominent area. No longer were these powerful cities free and independent, able to easily increase their wealth. Instead, they had fallen under the rule of the greatest superpower of the Age: Persia.

Naturally, the previously supreme Greek cities in Anatolia were reluctant to accept the authority of this new overlord. They had been free and autonomous for so long that subjugation was alien to these people. The possibility of revolt was always there – it was only a matter of time.

Tensions snap: The Ionian Revolt 499 – 493 BC

In 499 BC, relations finally boiled over. Although instigated by one man’s desire to maintain power, quickly, a desire for liberty seized many of the Hellenic cities; no longer would they be dictated to by another. The revolt had begun.

The task this revolt faced was a momentous ask. These cities had not united against some other upstart city-state, but the greatest power of the time. They desperately needed help if their struggle was to succeed. They looked to Greece.

The call for help

Although many of the prestigious mainland cities such as Sparta and Corinth refused the call, one city agreed. A city that had only recently began to extend its power, yet who’s ambition was far-reaching: Athens. This was the opportunity its citizens had been waiting for; an opportunity to finally put their city firmly on the world stage.

Quickly, Athens – along with the neighbouring large city of Eretria – brought together a fleet and set sail for Ionia. Their presence however, was short-lived. After suffering one damaging defeat these two cities deserted the revolt, leaving the Ionians to their fate. Hardly the most dependable of allies!

Defeat then became only a matter of time for the uprising. Sure enough these Ionians soon after suffered another crushing defeat at Lade, its result spelling disaster for their cause. Miletus and Chios – the two greatest Greek city-states of the time – fell to the Persians; their men slaughtered and women and children sent into slavery. The revolt was at an end.

Vengeance

Athens and Eretria had played very little part in the Revolt, of that there is little doubt. Yet their initial eagerness to join it put them at odds with the most powerful man in the world: the Great King of Persia, Darius I. He would not forget.

Following his complete victory over the Ionian Greeks, Darius began plotting his revenge on those two cities. They had dared to aid his Empire’s enemies; enemies who had succeeded in burning one of Persia’s most prestigious cities in Anatolia to the ground. It was only recompense that Athens and Eretria be given the same treatment. From there, he intended to conquer the entire Greek mainland, removing their cherished liberty for good. The world’s great superpower was now coming for Greece with one thing on its mind: vengeance.

The Persian Expedition: 490 BC

Although an initial invasion across land failed, Darius remained undeterred. Readying a fleet of 600 ships filled with men, horses and supplies, a new force soon set off from Samos. Never before had such a large amphibious invasion been attempted. Quickly they made their way across the Aegean, ‘island-hopping’ across the numerous isles that dot the centre of that sea.

Being caught completely unaware, island after island rapidly fell to this Persian Armada. Soon – and without much resistance – it had reached the shores of Greece itself. There the Athenians could only watch as, after a brief fight, Eretria fell to the invaders; the city destroyed and its population deported back to Persia. Athens’ only ally in the Ionian Revolt was now out of the war. A similar fate awaited the Athenians. They knew they were next.

Marathon

The Persian expedition wasted no time in moving to their main goal of destroying Athens. Quickly they landed their forces at a plain near the town of Marathon – barely 26 miles from the glorious city.

Disembarking there, however, this expedition quickly realised that they were not the only force present on that lowland. Blocking their path stood 10, 000 men. Athens would not go down without a fight. Battle was imminent.

Forming a battle-plan

Having been joined by 1,000 men from the nearby town of Plataea, the Athenian generals were at loggerheads as to what they should do next. Sparta had said they would send reinforcements yet they would not arrive for at least a week. Should they wait for the Spartans and defend their position? Or should they attack?

Thanks to the persistence of the Athenian general, Miltiades, the latter was decided. It was a risky strategy; their foe far outnumbered them in not only size but also troop diversity (having archers, cavalry, axemen and spearmen). Timing such an aggressive decision would therefore be crucial.

The hoplite

Miltiades knew his army had both strengths and weaknesses. Almost all his force consisted of Athenian and Plataean citizens equipped for a style of fighting that would epitomise Greek warfare for centuries: The hoplite.

These men were unique to world history – heavily-armoured infantrymen that fought in tight phalanx formations with spear and shield. Although only part-time soldiers, these men were more than a match for their counterpart’s lightly-cladded infantry. Yet the Persians had strengths of their own.

Speed and firepower

Of all its army, the Persian cavalry was that expedition’s most deadly asset. Highly mobile and devastatingly effective, these horsemen had already proven their worth fighting hoplites in Ionia. There, their swiftness had wreaked havoc on those less-flexible heavy footmen. The threat they posed, Miltiades likely realised, was the greatest his men faced.

Archery too, was another strong point for the Persians. Their sheer number would be expected to deal heavy damage to their opponent before the battle even commenced. In turn, the cavalry would quickly finish off any enemies that managed to survive the deadly barrage.

It is no hidden fact that the Persian infantry was relatively poor; but usually they were never expected to play a decisive role. The speed of their cavalry and the great firepower of their archers: that was where Persia’s great strengths lay.

To attack this Persian force was therefore a daunting prospect for any Greek army – especially one lacking both archers and cavalry of its own! Miltiades knew this. He had to wait for the right time that allowed these crucial strengths of his foe to be made as worthless as possible. It was a big ask. Do the opposite, however, and attack would almost certainly lead to defeat; their army massacred by missiles and unable to counter the harassing tactics of the skilled cavalry. And so Miltiades waited.

The right time

A few days after the decision to attack was taken, Miltiades awakened to see the golden opportunity he so desperately needed. The Persian cavalry – his biggest problem with launching an attack on a wide open plain – had disappeared.

Where the cavalry had gone, no-one exactly knows. What is likely however, is that – due to some blunder or other – this force was split-off from the Persian army that morning. This was the chance Miltiades had been waiting for.

Having arranged his forces, Miltiades prepared to attack. Yet, even without cavalry support, the opposing forces still far outstretched his own troops (the Persians outnumbered the Athenian army by that much!). To counter this, that Athenian general then decided on one of the riskiest strategies in antiquity.

To match the length of the Persian line, Miltiades stretched the centre of his force very thin (only a few ranks deep). His wings, however, he bolstered with more hoplites. It was there that he made his army strongest. Yet the centre, albeit under strength, had to hold if the plan was to succeed.

Marching down to give battle to the Persians, Miltiades then realised his next problem: The Persian archers. He could not allow his army to be peppered by these units – his weakened centre would collapse before the battle had even begun. He therefore came up with a simple-but radical decision. Just before getting into bow-shot range of the foe (about 150-200 metres), Miltiades gave the command for his forces to charge.

The charge

So why was this such a radical order? Did not most armies charge into battle? Well, with hoplites, their greatest strength was cohesion, each soldier fighting ‘in tune’ as one unit. To charge such a distance under heavy arrow fire would inevitably put that cohesion at severe risk – each man wanting to close with the enemy as quickly as possible. They were, after all, only barely trained citizen-soldiers, hardly comparable to the later professional armies of Alexander and Rome.

Although running 200 metres into battle does not seem that impressive, we must remember the context. Not only were these soldiers wearing heavy, bronze, body armour, but also a helmet that seriously limited their vision. Now combine that with the fact they were running towards a type of enemy unlike any they had previously encountered: men that wore long trousers and head-scarfs, who fought in complete silence.

For the Greeks, this was bizarre. Charging towards the Persians at Marathon would thus not only have been physically tiring, but also mentally frightening.

Straight away, however, the charge paid dividends. Within no time at all and having barely suffered any casualties from Persian missiles, the two infantry lines clashed. The battle had begun.

The Battle of Marathon 490 BC

The fight, at first, could not have been closer as very quickly, the strengths and weaknesses of Miltiades’ plan became apparent. On the flanks, his strengthened forces were pushing their foe back. The battle in the centre, however, was a completely different story. There, the sheer numbers of the Persians gradually began to overwhelm the weakened Athenian line. Victory would be decided on where the line buckled first.

Herodotus recalls that critical moment,

On each wing the Athenians and Plataeans prevailed… and (having achieved this) brought their wings together to fight those who had broken through in the centre.

{Hdt. 6. 113}

With such an act, the Persian centre – that, up to that point had been prevailing against Miltiades’ diminished line – now found itself surrounded on three sides. Slaughter naturally followed for the Persians.

Only then would that force’s elite cavalry return. Yet they would be too late to change the outcome of the battle. The Athenians were victorious. What remained of the Persian force – after failing to reach Athens by sea before Miltiades and his army returned – sailed home disheartened. They would return 10 years later with a new invasion, determined to right this humiliation. For now, however, Greece was safe.

Their finest hour

In this one battle, Athens achieved its goal of putting itself on the world stage. It had faced off against the current superpower and won!

Not only had they won, but they had won well. Of the 10,000 Athenians, only 192 had fallen – mostly, one would expect, in the weakened Athenian centre. There, they buried the dead where they had fallen, the mound still being visible to this day. As for the fallen Plataeans and slaves that fought alongside the Athenians, the victors buried them also in a separate tomb on the plain.

As for the 6,400 Persian dead, there would be no such formalities; their lifeless bodies left as a visual spectacle for any wishing to know what these Easterners looked like. Although most of the expedition had survived the battle, to lose so many men in return for just 192 Athenians would have been a bitter pill to swallow. These Athenian farmers had succeeded in crushing the greatest army of the time.

‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’ Although Churchill’s speech after the Battle of Britain was not in any way supposed to relate to Marathon, you can imagine the Athenians saying similar words to their children about the heroism of their city that day.

This battle, like that one in 1940, would be presented by the victors as one of the greatest in that nation’s history; a battle for freedom against overwhelming odds.

Animosity

From then onwards, many Greek cities would view the Persian Empire as the worst of enemies. No longer would they them as a culture to learn from – as they had prior to events in Ionia – but a nation that directly opposed a keystone of their culture: liberty.

Mockery of their ‘barbaric’ culture thus began to appear in Athens and many other Greek cities. Their perfumed features, preference of bows and arrows and tyrannical king all became things that the Greeks would openly ridicule and distance themselves from for centuries. The start of a human desire to differentiate Eastern and Western cultures – that would continue for much of history – had begun.

What if?

Marathon would mark the start of a new dawn for Athens. Combined with their crushing defeat of a new Persian force 10 years later at Salamis, its power and prestige would only continue to grow for the next 70 years.

It would be these years that turned Athens into one of the greatest cities on the Greek mainland, toppling other esteemed metropolises such as Corinth and Argos. The ‘Golden Age’ of Athens had begun.

To imagine a world where the Athenians had lost the day at that defining battle is therefore fascinating to consider. That, however, could easily have been the case if the Persian cavalry had returned slightly earlier.

The Persian horsemen, remember, were that nation’s best weapon against the slow-moving and fatigued Athenian hoplites. Surrounding Miltiades and his already engaged force, they could easily have picked these outnumbered Greeks off one by one. An Athenian bloodbath would have quickly followed – Miltiades’ risky strategy backfiring spectacularly.

In such a scenario, rather than gaining a brilliant victory, the Athenians would have suffered a crushing defeat. Persia would have emerged victorious.

An open road to Athens

With the defeat of Miltiades and his men, destruction would have quickly followed for Athens. Nothing would now stand in the way of the Persians taking away that city’s freedom for good. Darius’ revenge would be complete.

It would not just be the Persians, however, that would celebrate this successful expedition. Many Greeks, hostile to Athens and its big ambitions, would also have welcomed the victory. For one Greek more than most, would this result have been ideal.

Hippias

Among the Persian ranks was an elderly man named Hippias. An Athenian by birth, it was his despotic rule that the Athenians had expelled almost 20 years prior to Marathon.

Desiring a fresh and ambitious new start, they established a new form of rule in his place; a form of rule that would go on to represent an early version of something we now cherish: democracy. Yet Hippias would not give up his claim on the city that easily.

Having allied himself with the Persians, their victory at Marathon would have restored him to power in Athens. Far from being independent, however, he would be a puppet of the Persian Empire – a ‘sub-king’ ready to obey when his master commanded. The famed democracy of Athens would have quickly come to an end.

Only the start

After taking control of Athens, it is unlikely that Darius would have stopped his Empire’s western expansion there. Instead, he would have viewed Athens as a base from where he could further extend his control into Greece. Sparta had already proven its hostility to Persia, agreeing to send help to Marathon. They would be next.

Inspiring playwrights such as Euripides and Aristophanes, famed philosophers like Socrates and Plato and builders of brilliant art and architecture namely Phidias and Polykleitos; all people that helped the Ancient Greeks reach their zenith in the aftermath of victory in the Persian Wars.

Yet without Marathon, this ‘Golden Age’ of Hellenic culture would never have come into being. Instead, rather than becoming one of the two great ‘Western’ cultures of antiquity, the Greek way of life would fade – becoming overshadowed by an Eastern influence.

The future prominence of many Greeks therefore relied on victory at Marathon. For this piece, however, I would like to focus on one man in particular; a man who himself actually served at that all-important battle.

Aeschylus

Regarded as the Father of Tragedy, the surviving works of Aeschylus have become invaluable to us. The Persians, Seven Against Thebes and his most famous work, The Oresteia; only a few of his plays that we consistently reproduce and study to this day.

Many would argue that these plays were his greatest achievement. Aeschylus himself, however, thought otherwise. His epitaph shows,

Beneath this stone lies Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, the Athenian,

who perished in the wheat-bearing land of Gela;

of his noble prowess the grove of Marathon can speak,

and the long-haired Persian knows it well.

On an obituary, you would usually label what the deceased considered their finest moment in life. Regarding Aeschylus, was it his popular tragedies or the huge fame that inevitably followed? No, for him it was the part he played – alongside Miltiades and his Athenians – that famed day at Marathon.

In a world where Marathon marked a crushing Persian victory, then that man could easily have lost his life during the fight. Rather than going on to represent the first great tragic poet we have surviving, his name and works would be lost to history. An utter tragedy , pardon the pun.

End

Athens achieved one of the greatest military achievements in antiquity at Marathon; this ambitious city-state had, almost single-handedly, defied the supreme power of the time. Although fighting against Persia would continue, it was this victory that triggered the Greek mainland into becoming such a central civilisation for the rest of the Classical Age.

To therefore imagine a world where the cavalry had returned earlier and spelled disaster for the Athenians is almost scary to think of. Would we have any form of democracy? Would we view Eastern and Western cultures as being so different? And, of course, how differently would we remember the Ancient Greeks today? All fascinating questions to consider in a world where Marathon marked the end for Greek freedom.

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Disclaimer: Marathon is one of the most difficult battles in antiquity to accurately reconstruct because of Herodotus’ lack of military detail. The order of battle I have put in this piece, therefore, is purely my own best interpretation of events after reading the evidence and various proposed theories.

For example: Herodotus claims the Athenians ran 1,500 metres into battle. This however, many have widely discredited nowadays in favour of 150-200 metres and is why I claim this here.

Further reading

Huge thanks to Johnny Shumate and Malay Archer for letting us use their stunning artwork.

Herodotus’ account of Marathon: 6.95-116 here

Plutarch: Life of Aristides here

Time Commanders: Battle of Marathon

Jstor

Doenges, N.A. 1998. ‘The Campaign and the Battle of Marathon’, Historia 47 (1): 1-17

Evans, J.A.S. 1993. ‘Herodotus and the Battle of Marathon’, Historia 42 (3): 279-307

Hammond, N.G.L. 2008. ‘The Expedition of Datis and Artaphernes’ in Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd Edition, Cambridge, 4: 506-17.

Murray, O. 2008. ‘The Ionian Revolt’ in Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd Edition, Cambridge, 4: 506-17.

Shrimpton, G. 1980. ‘The Persian Cavalry at Marathon’, Phoenix 34 (1): 20-37.

Author: Tristan Hughes Twitter Facebook

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