by Jim Lacey
In ancient battles, this was where the bulk of the casualties were inflicted on the losing side. Panicked men on the run are incapable of any defense. In turn, their pursuers, propelled forward by an instinctual bloodlust, would almost always lose their formation as they rushed to cut down the fleeing enemy from behind. And for approximately a hundred yards, this was just what the Athenians did.
But then they did the impossible. At least it would be impossible, if the Athenian army had actually been a mass of unprofessional rustics as tradition posits.
Callimachus, seeing the Persian left routed, ordered the bugle blown.6 Instantly the Athenian right flank halted. For a moment the killing stopped, as the Athenians reordered their ranks and turned ninety degrees. Behind them swept a mass of light troops, armed similarly to the Persians but with the inestimable advantage of being in pursuit rather than running away in panic. These light troops would not be decisive, but they would keep the pressure on and protect the Athenian flank while Callimachus closed the jaws of his trap. For on the other flank another bugle was blown, and here too Greeks and Plataeans instantly began re-forming their ranks and turning toward the center of the battlefield. These actions cannot be passed over too easily. What the Athenian army had just accomplished could be done only by a professional force as part of a preset plan, so the men were prepared for the order to change directions when it came. Moreover, such a maneuver required the Athenians to possess an iron combat discipline found only in veteran units.
While the Athenian flanks carried all before them, things had not gone as well in the center. Here, the hoplites were arrayed only four deep, and the men of the Leontis and Antiochis tribes lacked the mass to overwhelm their opponents. They were also facing the more heavily armored and disciplined elite core of the enemy army, the Persians and Saka. The first impact had sent the Persians reeling, but after that, numbers told. After an exhausting charge, there was a limit to how long the front-rank Athenians could fight. To keep the pressure on, the Greeks did what they could to move fresher hoplites forward, but the press of the Persian counterattack made that difficult.7 The only advantage the Greeks in the center had was that Callimachus did not expect them to go forward, but simply hold. Even that was proving difficult.
Despite the exhortations of the intrepid Aristides and Themistocles, the Athenians were nearly fought out. Nearing exhaustion, they could no longer resist the weight of Persian numbers and began slowly stepping back. Under normal conditions, for a line as thin as the Athenian center, stepping back presaged disaster. But the Greek veterans did not rout. Rather, they fell back with deliberate slowness, still killing their enemies even in retreat. Behind the thin line ranged a mass of thetes, men too poor to purchase hoplite armor, throwing javelins and slinging stones into the Persian host.
As the Greeks bowed back, they entered the woods near their camp. The broken terrain caused the phalanx to lose its cohesion. Gaps opened between the shields, and hoplites began to fall. The men of Antiochus suffered heavily, and Aristides must have known his men were close to breaking. In another moment, the Athenians would be swept aside and the Persians would win the day.
Then, salvation.
Having reset their lines, the flanks of the Athenian army stepped off again. This time, they were aimed at the exposed flanks of the Persian center. An ancient battlefield was a confusing melee, filled with screaming, horror, and blinding dust. So it is likely that the Persians and Saka, locked in mortal combat with the hoplites to their front and sensing imminent victory, did not even see the looming threat.
When the crash came, it must have been a complete shock. Two steam-rolling killing machines now bore down on the exposed Persian center, snatching away the victory the Persians had glimpsed only a moment before. Any Persians who could, ran. Many, however, were trapped and died where they stood.
Datis could see what was happening to his center and must have cursed the fact that he did not have enough organized troops to launch a counterattack. But it was all he could do to collect stragglers with enough fight left in them to hold back Athenian light troops. Datis also knew that when the Athenian troops finished massacring the Persians and Saka, they would re-form and come at him again. He must have worried over how long his staggering men could hold the line against another phalanx charge. Behind him, thousands of panicked men were wading into the water, looking for any ship that could take them aboard. Datis needed to buy these men time. If he could get enough of them away, there might still be a chance to launch one more daring strike for victory.
Datis’s time ran out. The phalanx came on again. This time, the shine of the Athenian shields was obscured by collected dust, and the gleam of the spear points was dulled by drying blood. As for the men holding those spears, they were dirty, drenched in sweat, and splattered with blood. But despite their exhaustion, they knew they had won and were advancing with fresh determination. For Datis’s men, given what they had just been through, the sight must have been horrifying. But they knew there was no place to retreat, and through personal example, Datis held them to their duty.
This time, the tired Greeks came on with deliberate slowness. Spared the crashing shock of a phalanx impacting at a run, the Persian line did not immediately break. The battle near the ships became fierce as desperate men grappled at close quarters. Here is where Callimachus fell, mortally wounded, and Aeschylus saw his brother’s hand chopped off as he grabbed hold of a Persian ship. After a long, hard fight, the Persians gave way, and the Athenians swept across the narrow beach. But Datis’s line had held just long enough for most of his ships and surviving soldiers to escape. In the end, the Athenians were able to capture only seven ships as the surviving Persians moved out to sea.
As the Persians sailed into the Aegean, the Athenian hoplites rested while the light troops hunted down and killed any Persian stragglers left behind, particularly the mass of men hiding in the Great Marsh. When the Athenian generals took stock, they found that 192 Athenian hoplites lay dead.8 Most of these losses had been from among the men of the Antiochis tribe, who had been pressed hard in the center, and from the men of Aiantis, who had suffered serious losses in the desperate fighting near the ships. Still it had been a great victory, for over 6,000 Persian dead littered the battlefield.
With the victory won, a messenger, Pheidippides, was dispatched to Athens. According to the traditional story, he ran the entire distance in full armor, shouted, “Hail, we are victorious!” and promptly fell over dead. This is the historical legend on which today’s marathon races are based. Interestingly, Herodotus does not mention any messenger being sent from the battlefield and does not credit Pheidippides with the run. The first mention of any runner in the historical record is given by Plutarch approximately six hundred years later. Then it is not mentioned again for almost another hundred years, this time by Lucian.9 Plutarch says the runner’s name was either Therisippos or Eukles, while Lucian credits Pheidippides and has him exclaim, “Joy, we win!” as he drops dead. As both writers are further away from the Battle of Marathon than current readers are from the Spanish Armada, some historians have cast doubt as to whether the run ever took place.10 It is inconceivable, though, that after winning such a glorious victory, the Athenian hoplites would have failed to relay the news home. Back in Athens, the women, old men, and children were waiting for news. The Athenian commander surely did not keep them guessing for one minute longer than necessary. So while the true details of the story are lost in the mists of time, I believe it can be judged a certainty that someone was sent with the message from Marathon. As Athens had a corps of professional runners for just this purpose, it is also rather certain that the messenger ran the entire distance. So there almost certainly was a first Marathon run, although it was a bit less than the modern 26.2 miles. Who made that run remains anyone’s guess. However, by the time the Battle of Marathon was won, Pheidippides had had time to recover from his run to Sparta and back, and it is possible that he may have been given the honor of reportin
g the great victory to a waiting Athens. As far as the runner using his last gasp to announce a victory, we will never know for sure.
The Tumulus of Marathon, the burial mound of the 192 Athenians killed at Marathon. The mound was erected soon after the battle on the location where most of the Athenians fell. The Art Archive/Gianni Dagli Orti
As the messenger winged his way to Athens, exultant hoplites looked out to sea in horror. The Persian ships were heading south, and everyone realized the battle was not over yet. Athens was undefended, and the Persians would be landing on the beaches of Phaleron, just a couple of miles from the city, before the sun had set. For a few dazed moments the hoplites stared uncomprehendingly, wondering if the battle had been for nothing. Soon, though, a new leader, possibly Miltiades, took over for the dead Callimachus and began issuing orders.
All along the beach, exhausted hoplites steeled themselves for one more great effort. They hefted spears, shouldered their hoplon shields, and re-formed their regiments. The bloodied Antiochis regiment was left to secure the battlefield and the tremendous booty found in the wrecked Persian camp. The other nine tribal regiments set off on a race against time, for it was almost twenty-six miles to Athens and the Persians had a head start.
When Datis eventually arrived off the coast of Phaleron, he saw that through an almost superhuman effort, the Athenian hoplites had beaten him there. All along the ridge overlooking the beach were arrayed thousands of determined warriors ready to contest his landing. After suffering over six thousand losses and with his force still disorganized, Datis had had enough. The Persian ships turned back out to sea.
Athens had won.
The next morning, two thousand Spartans arrived. They had missed the fighting but still wanted to see the battlefield, probably wanting to confirm that the victory was as great as the Athenians claimed. Later in the day, after touring the battlefield, they praised the victors and marched for home.
With Callimachus dead, Miltiades was the hero of the hour. Making good use of his political ascendancy, he demanded that the Athenian assembly give him troops and control of Athens’s seventy-ship fleet for an expedition into the Aegean.11 Setting out almost immediately after Marathon, in fall 490 BC, he began a circuit of a number of Aegean islands. Most submitted on his approach, but several had to be taken by assault.12 All of them were ordered to pay an indemnity to Athens, to help offset the cost of the Persian War. It was not until he approached Paros, in the spring or summer of 489 BC, that he ran into trouble. Paros had sent a trireme to assist the Persians at Marathon, so Miltiades set a particularly high indemnity for them—one hundred talents.13 The Parians refused to pay and closed their gates.14
Miltiades laid siege to the city and had driven it to the point of capitulation when a forest fire started on the far side of the island. The Parians had previously sent for Persian assistance and now interpreted the distant glow as a signal from the Persians that they were on their way. Buoyed by this expected reinforcement, the Parians broke off surrender negotiations. Miltiades, suffering from a wound or severely broken leg, could not maintain the siege any longer and sailed for home.
He had been away too long, and upon his arrival he found his political enemies arrayed against him. His failure at Paros had given them their chance. Miltiades had promised success and treasure. Instead, he had given Athens a humiliating failure and drained the treasury. Once again, Miltiades found himself on trial for his life. Owing to his continued popularity with the mob, he managed to avoid a sentence of execution but was handed a ruinous fine of fifty talents. Not that it mattered to Miltiades, as the wound he had suffered on Paros had gangrened, and he died soon after the trial ended.
Chapter 21
THE GREAT DEBATES
As I mentioned at the start of the previous chapter, the reconstruction of the battle is mine alone and is based on rather sparse evidence.1 The following questions are not my own. They are culled from the dozens of reconstructions of Marathon written by the greatest classical scholars of the past century.
Where Was the Persian Cavalry?
The Persians considered their cavalry the decisive force on any battlefield. However, Herodotus never mentions the use of cavalry at Marathon, causing historians to debate the presence of cavalry at the battle for at least the past two centuries. What we know from Herodotus is that Darius ordered the construction of special vehicles to carry horses and that these horses were unloaded at Eretria.2 However, he never discusses this cavalry being moved to the Greek mainland, although he does state that one of the reasons the Persians selected Marathon as their landing site was its suitability for cavalry operations.3 In the absence of evidence, historians have speculated widely. Some claim the horses had not yet crossed over from Eretria. Others feel they were off grazing to the north of the Great Marsh and were unable to return in time for the battle.
For my part, I believe the cavalry was at Marathon. My reasons are simple. First, the cavalry was the dominant Persian military arm and held the central place in their battle doctrine. The Persians were horse warriors and simply did not fight without cavalry present unless there was no way to avoid it. Next, Herodotus states that Datis brought cavalry on the expedition. Therefore I believe it is unlikely that he would have gone through the tremendous bother of carting unwieldy horses across the Aegean only to leave them behind on another island when he was face-to-face with the Athenian army. It is just possible that with fodder running short, and grazing area sparse on the Plain of Marathon, Datis may have sent the cavalry north of the Great Marsh. However, protecting them from Athenian light infantry when they were so far from his main base would likely have presented an insurmountable problem. Besides, it is hardly feasible that the cavalry could not have returned the couple of miles from their grazing point to the battle in time to have made an impact.
Although the literary evidence for cavalry being at Marathon is lacking, and what does exist was written centuries after the battle, there is archaeological evidence that tilts the balance in favor of the cavalry being present. Soon after the battle ended, the Athenians commissioned a painting of the battle—the Stoa Poikile. Although this painting no longer exists, archaeologists are almost certain they have found copies of portions of it on a Roman sarcophagus, displayed at Brescia’s Santa Giulia Museum, and on one of the friezes of the Nike Temple atop the Acropolis.4 Both depict a vicious fight near the Persian ships, in which cavalry is clearly present.
Given that evidence, I believe it is certain that cavalry was present during the battle, and the reason Herodotus never mentions it is that his audience was well aware of this fact. They did not require a reminder. In the reconstruction presented in the previous chapter, the cavalry enters the battle near the ships, as this follows the tradition clearly visible in the extant archaeological evidence of the battle. Earlier, I built a case around the proposition that it was Persian preparations to depart from Marathon that propelled the Athenians to attack when they did. It is only a small logical leap from that point to state that the Persians would have loaded the horses first. Anyone who has witnessed a horse race knows that it requires some expertise just to lead a horse into the starting gate. In many cases, a skittish horse absolutely refuses to enter or hurts itself in a panic. One could imagine how much harder it would have been to load a thousand or more horses over an open beach or in shallow water by trying to coax them up narrow gangplanks.5
Once the Athenian attack began rolling, one easily pictures the cavalrymen rushing to organize what horses were still left on the beach, while still others pushed horses overboard into the shallow water. They must have raced to assemble a force sufficiently large to make a difference, but by the time that was done, the Persian flanks had collapsed. Moreover, Datis, knowing that cavalry was useless against an unbroken phalanx, would have held them back for the last stand near the ships.
There is one more possibility that cannot be ignored, although it is not part of my reconstruction. The Persians and the Saka were the fin
est cavalry Darius possessed, and both hailed from the far eastern regions of the empire. Herodotus tells us that Datis left Darius’s presence for Ionia with a large force, probably these very same Persian and Saka troops. One can argue that both Datis and Darius wanted a core of Persian infantry with the attack. However, would he have converted the Saka, who knew only how to fight from horseback, to an unaccustomed role as infantrymen, in which they would have been much less effective? Further, why go through the trouble and great expense of marching this Saka “infantry” across the length of the empire when, in the wake of six years of war, there was plenty of infantry available in Ionia?
Given this analysis, it is possible that Herodotus does tell us that cavalry participated in the battle. When he states that the Persians and Saka were in the center of the Persian line, his audience may have taken it for granted that he was speaking of the cavalry. However, as the surviving representations of the Stoa Poikile show the cavalry fighting by the ship, my reconstruction has discounted this interpretation. If the cavalry was at the Persian center, it is possible that a number of cavalry cut their way out of the closing jaws of the Athenian trap and were available for the fight at the ships. It should also be noted that it was Persian practice to place their cavalry on the flanks, not in the center. It is possible, however, that they thought it best to keep the horses clear of the sea and away from the hills, from which light troops could descend with little warning.
If the Persian cavalry was in the line that day, what difference would it have made to the battle or its outcome? The answer is probably very little. First, Callimachus would have known it was present and would have made plans to deal with it. Light troops carrying brush, or abittis, would have protected the flanks, and here torches would have been invaluable. Herodotus does tell us that when the hoplites reached the Persian ships, they began shouting for “fire.” One might assume, therefore, that there were men with lit torches nearby. Also, no matter how brave the cavalrymen, a horse will not stand its ground once soldiers begin stabbing at it with spears. It would have taken only a short time for the phalanx to throw the Persian cavalry, which had no room for maneuver on the small plain, into confusion. Moreover, as long as the phalanx held its cohesion, there was nothing the cavalry could do to make an impression on it.6