The First Clash: The Miraculous Greek Victory at Marathon and Its Impact on Western Civilization

by Jim Lacey

  Offering earth and water to Darius was recognized as the symbolic submission to Persian rule. Although Herodotus explains away the envoys’ decision as something they decided on their own, it is virtually inconceivable that Cleisthenes thought the Persians would give him an alliance or march to Athens’s aid unless the city submitted to Darius. This is almost surely an incorrect version of events developed during the five or six decades intervening between the event and his collecting the tale; in the wake of the victorious war with Persia and the great victories at Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea, the charge of Medizing (submitting to Persia) had become the worst epithet one city could lay upon another.20 After such tremendous achievements, it did not suit the legend Athens had created about its own involvement in these events for it to be known that it had been the first to invite the Persians into Greek affairs. In all likelihood, the envoys had instructions from Cleisthenes to offer earth and water if necessary. He probably assumed that by the time they arrived back in Athens, there would be a Spartan army in the field and the Athenians would welcome help from any source, regardless of the price. That the envoys were rebuked upon their return reflects the fact that the situation in Attica was very different from what anyone could have predicted when they had left for Sardis.

  In the spring of 507 BC, Cleomenes, probably with Isagoras in tow, led out the Spartan army and the full might of the Peloponnesian League against Athens. At the same time, the Thebans invaded Attica and seized the frontier demes of Oinoe and Hysiae, while the Chalcidians marched into Attica from the northeast. Neither the Thebans nor the Chalcidians felt themselves in much danger, as the Athenian army had massed itself against the main threat, Cleomenes and his Spartan hoplites. For its part, the Peloponnesian army got as far as Eleusis, where it did some damage but then halted. Before them, the Athenians, ignoring the Theban army that was ravaging their northern frontier, lined the ridge separating the Thriasian Plain from the Plain of Athens. If the Athenians could not halt the Spartans along this line, Athens would fall.

  Heavily outnumbered, the ranks of Athenian hoplites waited for the inevitable assault. They could not have felt good about their chances, but still, they were prepared to offer stout resistance against the foreign invader. And then, to the Athenian hoplites, something of a miracle took place. Without a fight, the Peloponnesian army began to break up and march home. According to Herodotus, Cleomenes had not informed his allies of their objective when they had marched out, and when the Corinthians learned they were to make war against Athens, they first hesitated and then refused. Herodotus tells us that they considered it an unjust act, but it was probably more a matter of good policy. Corinth was a great trading city, whose principal rivals were Aegina and Megara, both sworn enemies of Athens. If Athens was destroyed or humbled, the full resources of these two cities would be free to turn on Corinthian interests.

  With that, Demaratus, Sparta’s other king, quarreled with Cleomenes about the practicality of continuing the invasion. When the rest of Sparta’s allies witnessed the Corinthians marching home and learned that the Spartan kings were not in agreement, they too began to break camp and march away. As the Athenians held a strong position, even the Spartans hesitated before attempting an assault alone.21 Their entire power in the Peloponnesus was based on the strength of their army. Any reverse, or even a victory that cost them heavy losses, might endanger that position or give the helots enough confidence to revolt. With no other choice, Cleomenes turned the Spartan army around and marched back to Sparta. As a result of this debacle, Sparta passed a law that forbade both kings from being with the main army at the same time. They would not tolerate such dangerous dissension again.

  As the Spartans marched away, the Athenians turned on their other two tormentors with a vengeance. We have no details of the fighting, except that they first fell upon the Thebans, who were trying to link up with the Chalcidians. All that Herodotus tells of the battle is that vast numbers of Thebans were slaughtered and seven hundred were taken alive. Immediately after mauling the Theban army, the Athenians, apparently on the same day, crossed over to the island of Euboea and routed the Chalcidian army. Herodotus states that the chains that held the Theban and Chalcidian prisoners were still available for him to view at the Acropolis, hanging from charred walls.22 In time, the prisoners were ransomed for the standard two hundred drachmas each, and four thousand Athenian colonists (cleruchs) were established on Chalcidian territory.23

  It is now about seventeen years before the Battle of Marathon, and we must closely examine the sparse evidence left to us by Herodotus to determine what these battles may predict about the future course of the war with Persia. First, they provide one more counter to the widespread contention that when the Persians arrived, the Athenians were amateurs in war. Without allies, they had stood alone along a ridge with the entire might of the Peloponnesian League arrayed to their front. Whatever their qualms, they did not waver and their courage did not fail. Athens’s hoplites were fully prepared to follow the Spartan poet’s advice “to bite their lips and hold,” no matter what force was sent against them. Whether they could have won is not as important as the fact that they had the confidence to stand. That tells us something about their preparations. As every Athenian knew from the moment of Cleomenes’ humiliation at the Acropolis, in the next campaigning season a Spartan army was certain to march upon them. It stands to reason that they would have spent the intervening months training and preparing for the expected assault.

  Only a decade before, the Athenians had vanquished the Theban army that had marched on Plataea, and most of these veterans were still in the battle line. These Athenians knew what hoplite warfare was and would have taken the lead in preparing the army for the coming trial. Having humiliated a Spartan king, the Athenians could not have been under any illusion that retribution would not be harsh. While accepting Isagoras back might have been open to negotiation, it is doubtful that anyone in Athens believed it would be all that Sparta would demand. So throughout the fall and winter, the Athenians trained. They trained with the strength and determination of desperate men. I would contend that by spring there would not have been much real difference between the quality of the Athenian army and that of the Spartans. If the Athenian force had given any impression it was not ready or less than a fully professional fighting force, the Spartans would have attacked. I further contend that this display of professionalism played no small part in the Corinthians’ decision not to participate any further in the campaign and was decisive in the Spartans’ final decision to march off.

  What happened next also buttresses the case that the Athenians were a highly professional and well-disciplined force. With the Spartans out of the fight, they marched across the breadth of Attica and went into an immediate assault on a well-trained and disciplined Theban army. Moreover, it appears they denied themselves a rest and attacked straight from the march. Then, without pause, the exhausted Athenians marched to the coast, boarded ships, made an amphibious landing, and engaged in another major battle in short order. As their future foes the Persians counted on the cavalry to win their battles, it should be noted that the Chalcidians possessed the most celebrated cavalry force in Greece. It did not matter, as their horsemen went down quickly under the rush of disciplined hoplites.

  There is one last key point to make. The Athenians clearly possessed a military genius. Herodotus makes no mention of who commanded the Athenian army, his name is lost to us, but it is hard to believe that any of the above could have happened unless the Athenians possessed a soldier of rare talent. It is a well-known military maxim that an army is only as good as its leader, and the Athenian army was very good. Someone kept them at their tasks all winter, maintained their fighting spirit in front of the Spartan host, propelled them in what must have been an arduous forced march across Attica, and finally led them in two major battles possibly within twenty-four hours. Without putting too fine a point on it, no army could have accomplished this without a truly inspiring leader�
��one who possessed enough tactical brilliance to stymie a much larger Peloponnesian army and then decisively defeat two other armies while suffering apparently insignificant losses. Moreover, he had enough foresight and operational ability to keep his army concentrated, even under almost unendurable stress. He held his army in place before the Spartans even as Athens’s northern provinces were being ravaged, although many of his hoplites must have had property and family to the north. Finally, he was enough of a master of warfare to plan the logistics required to move and fight an army on two widely dispersed fronts and also order that ships be on hand for an immediate amphibious assault.

  So who was this genius, until now lost to history? It can only be a matter of speculation, but one strong possibility is Callimachus, the polemarch (Athenian commander) at the Battle of Marathon. He was almost certainly of the right age during this time, and when the Persians arrived he was placed in charge of the Athenian army, when that city was facing the greatest threat in its history. We must not underestimate this point. Every Athenian in 490 BC believed that their very survival was at stake. In such dire circumstances, they would naturally have turned to the man who had stared down the Spartans before destroying two other armies. That they would have given ten untested generals command on alternating days, as Herodotus would have us believe, so strains credulity that it must be discounted. An army with ten equal commanders would shortly rip itself apart. No army can long survive with divided leadership, and a city with Athens’s experience in war would never make such a foolish mistake. From this point forward, it is best to think of the influence of the ten tribal generals along the lines of a council with no powers of command, although they may have alternated responsibilities as officer of the day, under the guiding hand of the polemarch.

  Although Herodotus gives the bulk of the credit for the victory at Marathon to Miltiades, we must ask a couple of simple questions that the Athenians would also have asked themselves when they were deciding on a commander. There is nothing in the ancient sources to indicate that before Marathon Miltiades had ever stood in the battle line against an organized army. He was probably with the Persians when they marched into Scythia and may have even witnessed the Persians in battle. However, this qualifies him to be an adviser, not commander of an army. Is it likely that after two decades of continuous war the Athenians would give command of their army to an inexperienced and untested soldier?

  Furthermore, very few Athenians trusted Miltiades. In fact, upon his arrival in Athens, he was put on trial for his life as a tyrant and suspected supporter of the Persians in the past. Although these charges were probably politically motivated, his trial would still have made a tremendous impression on the hoplites. They would know nothing of political maneuvering but would be all too aware of the fact that Miltiades was accused of being in league with the Persian enemy (which he most definitely once was). It must be judged as highly unlikely that the Athenians would give supreme command of their army to a man who had been absent from the city for twenty years and had spent all of that time as a close ally of the Persians.

  So why was the polemarch Callimachus mostly forgotten by Herodotus? Foremost among the reasons was that Callimachus was killed during the Battle of Marathon and therefore was not there to ensure the survival of his place in history. On top of this, Miltiades was fortunate to have a son, Cimon, who would later rise to the pinnacle of power in Athenian politics. Cimon spent most of his adult life burnishing the reputation of his father and ensuring his place in history, even if that meant making sure history was written to his liking. When Herodotus was in Athens earning a living by reciting his histories, Cimon was already powerful (sharing power with Pericles). It would not have been wise for Herodotus to present a history that was markedly different from what Cimon wanted peddled. That of course assumes that after years of Cimon’s patient remaking of history there was even an alternative viewpoint available to Herodotus.

  Furthermore, Callimachus was from an area of Attica that had always been loyal to Pisistratus and his clan. By the time of Herodotus, the Pisistratidae were held in low repute, and there were probably few persons for the historian to interview who were willing to give a favorable report on any of that clan. In any event, Herodotus has very little to say about the man who was given command of the Athenian army at Marathon. Given his propensity to favor those whose descendants agreed to interviews and slight those whose descendants snubbed him, it may be assumed that this oversight was deliberate.

  The most remarkable thing we note upon returning to Athens in the immediate aftermath of the defeat of Thebes is that Cleisthenes disappears from the pages of history. Historians have often remarked on a very weak tradition that he was a victim of ostracism and died in exile, while others note that he died of old age (he was about sixty-four). I discount these traditions as Pausanias, in his description of Greece, mentions he saw Cleisthenes’ tomb among Athens’s honored war dead.24 There is no reason to doubt this, as many of the tombs of the period were undisturbed when Pausanias visited the location in the second century AD.25 It is therefore likely that he was killed during the war with Chalcis and Thebes, for if he had survived these engagements, it is doubtful Herodotus would have failed to mention him again.26 With or without Cleisthenes, the war with Thebes and the rest of their Boeotian allies continued, despite their shattering defeat in battle. In 506 BC, the Thebans asked the Aeginetans, longstanding enemies of Athens, for assistance but received only sacred images that were supposed to aid them in battle. Inspired by the images, the Theban army with its Boeotian allies marched once more against Athens. Again, Herodotus presents us with no details except to say that the Thebans were roughly handled. Disappointed with the mystical powers of the images, the Thebans returned them and asked Aegina for more practical support.

  In answer, the Aeginetans sent their fleet against the Attic coast, burning the Athenian port at Phaleron to the ground and damaging many coastal demes. Before deciding on how to respond to this “unheralded war,” the Athenians consulted the Delphic oracle and were told to wait thirty years before avenging themselves on Aegina. They were further informed that they might win if they attacked before that time, but only after a long war and much suffering. The oracle’s answer was not to Athens’s liking, and it immediately began preparing to inflict vengeance upon Aegina. Preparations were well along when word came that Sparta was once again preparing for war, and Athens turned from Aegina to face its most dangerous enemy.

  Herodotus relates that the Spartans had only recently learned that Cleisthenes had bribed the Delphic oracle to convince the Spartans to march against their good friend Hippias. This, however, is likely another fabrication presented to justify Sparta’s intention to pursue an offensive war. For as was already noted, Sparta maintained extremely close relations with the priestesses at Delphi, and it is implausible that leading Spartans would not have known of these bribes at the time. Assumedly, Cleomenes, still burning with the humiliation of his surrender at the Acropolis and now with a failed previous campaign against Athens, was using the claim as propaganda to stir up the Spartans and Peloponnesian masses. Moreover, many other leading Spartans were beginning to see that a powerful democratic Athens was not in their best interest, and they conveniently forgot what Hippias had done to anger them in the first place. Sparta, apparently without Cleomenes taking the lead, asked Hippias to leave Sigeum and join them for a conference of the Peloponnesian League. As far as Sparta and Cleomenes were concerned, the conference was a failure, as once again the Corinthians took the lead in opposing plans to attack Athens. So another threat to Athens dissolved.

  It needs to be noted that Athens had just won another major battle against Thebes and was preparing, with great confidence, for war with Aegina. Furthermore, they turned from this plan to prepare for war with Sparta without any indication of the fear such an encounter had filled them with the previous year, when Cleisthenes was so worried that he sent for Persian help. For all practical purposes, Athens, during thi
s period, was just as much a nation in arms as Sparta. Herodotus attributes the wondrous improvement in Athens’s fighting capabilities to democracy, telling us that men fight harder and better for themselves than they will for any tyrant. For the more practically minded, the improvements could be accounted for by increased training and superb generalship.

  Hippias did make one final plea before the Peloponnesian allies, asking them to come to his aid and return him to Athens. When the plea fell on deaf ears, he gave up and returned to Sigeum. Soon afterward, though, he traveled to Sardis and enlisted the support of the satrap, Artaphrenes, in his quest to return to Athens as its tyrant. Athens, upon hearing that Hippias was at Sardis, sent its own envoys to Artaphrenes to request that he ignore the supplicant. Instead, the envoys were told to accept Hippias back or prepare to suffer Persian wrath. When the envoys returned, the request was summarily dismissed and Athens became an enemy of the Persian Empire.

  It was at this juncture that an Ionian Greek named Aristagoras arrived in Athens asking for support for the Ionian revolt then racking the Persian Empire. The angry Athenians, despite the Spartans’ having turned Aristagoras away, offered to help, and soon thereafter they boarded hoplites on twenty ships and sailed to confront the awesome might of Persia.

  PART III

  PRELIMINARY MOVES

  Chapter 10

  PERSIA’S RETURN TO WAR

  In 513 BC, Darius the “shopkeeper” returned to his true avocation—war. By doing so, he brought a halt to Persia’s economic expansion, almost lost Persia’s main field army, and set in motion the tide of events that would lead to war with Greece just two decades later. Historians have long debated what was behind Darius’s invasion first of Thrace and then, more disastrously, of Scythia. The best explanation is that Darius had long looked toward the west as the next arena for Persian expansion. Now, with the empire’s internal affairs finally settled and its other borders secured, it was time to prove he was every bit the conqueror Cyrus was. Moreover, Darius probably viewed Thrace as a secure base in Europe to support further Persian expansion to the west. Once Thrace was conquered, the march into Scythia seems a typical example of the mission creep that has found its way into almost every victorious campaign in history.