Marathon: Freedom or Death lw-2

by Christian Cameron

  As soon as we left the beach, we lost the Medes. I think they’d finally reached the end of their enthusiasm. My Plataeans must have put down twenty of them — perhaps as many as fifty. It’s never good when armoured men face unarmoured. And then the ambush by the archers probably dropped at least another thirty. Fifty dead is more like a bad day’s battle than a couple of skirmishes before breakfast.

  The Medes retired to lick their wounds. We carried on across the hayfields and wheat fields and fallow barley fields, jumping stone walls and avoiding hedgerows. We were about halfway to the sanctuary of Heracles when I felt the ground moving. I needed to stop — my lungs were white-hot with pain. Other men must have felt the same — as soon as my group stopped, all of them did.

  The feeling that the earth was trembling increased. I looked around — and saw the dust.

  ‘Cavalry!’ I panted. ‘Into the brush!’

  To our right was a fallow field with low stone walls and patches of jasmine and other low bushes. It was also full of rocks.

  We piled in, in no particular order.

  ‘Get to the wall. This one! You — stand there! Bows up!’ That was me — the orders flowed out of me as if I was channelling the power of Ares.

  Leonestes joined me. ‘Form a line — get your arse to that wall, boy! Bows up — you heard the man! Get a shaft on the string, you whoreson.’

  The cavalry was almost on us. But as is so often the case on a real battlefield, they hadn’t seen us. They had other prey.

  ‘The first volley will win or lose this,’ I said. My voice was calm. I remember how all the fear of the night raid had been replaced by my usual steady confidence. Why? Because in the dark I had no idea what I was doing, did I? Out here, it was just a ship-fight on land.

  Men on the flank of the galloping cavalry saw us, of course — but far too late to make any change of direction for the mass. But if Miltiades had raided the horses, he hadn’t had much effect, I remember thinking to myself.

  I glanced at Leonestes, because he was taking so long to give the order that I wondered if he was waiting for me to give it.

  He winked. Turned his head to the enemy — raised his bow.

  ‘Loose!’ he roared. ‘Fast as you can, boys!’

  The next shafts rose while the first flight were in the air. Rose and fell, and a third volley came up, far more ragged than the first two. Some of the Athenian archers were little more than guttersnipes with bows, while others had fine weapons and plenty of training — probably archers from ships.

  So among a hundred archers, there were maybe twenty real killers, another fifty halfway decent archers and thirty kids and makeweights.

  Same in the phalanx, really.

  The arrows fell on the cavalry and they evaporated. I remember that when I was a child snow fell on the farm — and then the weather changed and the sun came out, hot as hot, and the snow went straight to the heavens without melting. The cavalry went like that: a brief interval of thrashing horse terror, all hooves and blood, and some arrows coming back at me — a man took one and died just an arm’s length from me — and then they were gone, out of our range, and rallying.

  That fast.

  They slipped from their horses, adjusted their quivers — and came at us. A couple of dozen began riding for our right flank — the flank closest to the sea. They did this so fast that I think they must have practised it. For the first time, I understood the fear the men of Euboea had for the Persians. These were real Persians — high caps, scale shirts, beautiful enamelled bows.

  I ran across the ground to the men we’d just killed — the horses were still screaming. Six. Our brilliant little improvised ambush had put down only six men.

  I picked up two bows, scooped the big Persian quivers off their horses while arrows decorated the ground around me and ran back towards the thin line of Athenians.

  I got a fine bow — wood so brown that it seemed purple, or perhaps that was dye, and horn on the inside face of the bow, with sinew in between. There was goldwork on the man’s quiver, and a line of gold at the nocks on the bow.

  ‘Anyone who doesn’t have a Persian bow, get back,’ Leonestes shouted. ‘Way the fuck back, boys. A hundred paces.’

  The dismounted Persians in front of us — about fifty of them — walked confidently forward. Even as I watched, they stopped. Most of them planted arrows in the ground for easy shooting.

  The cavalry reaching around our right flank was making heavy going of it — they’d found the tangle of walls and hedgerows. Some of the younger Athenians began to drop shafts on them, as if it was sport. It’s always easier to be a hero when the enemy can’t shoot back, I find.

  The Persians to our front weren’t in any hurry. The cavalry gave up on our right flank — a poor, hasty decision and just the kind of thing that happens in war. They got low on their horses’ necks and rode across our front, and one of our archers with a Persian bow emptied a saddle as they crossed us — heading for our left flank, closer to the hills and the camp.

  In war, people make mistakes, just as they do in peace. A few minutes ago, these self-same Persians had been chasing someone across our right flank. We’d put a stop to that — and in the to and fro of combat, our Persian adversaries had forgotten their original foes.

  The cavalry rode hard to get around our left, and then suddenly they were fleeing, and they had empty saddles — and there were men behind them throwing spears, and other men with armour running at them.

  This transformed our fight — one moment, the Persians were exchanging slow, careful shafts with our best archers, and the next, they were running to get their mounts before our friends on the left captured the lot. It was close, but the Persians won the race and rode away.

  They rode about a stade, pulled up and were hit by an invisible hand that plucked a couple of them from their saddles and made all the horses scream — slingers. Only a dozen of them, as I later learned — but that was the final straw for the Persians, and they raced for their camp.

  That’s the part of the fighting that I saw. I stayed out there, with the archers, for an hour or more, and men came past us — little men, as I say — dozens of them, with javelins and bows and slings, and a few with nothing but a sack of rocks.

  No one will ever fully explain that morning. Word went out that Miltiades was in trouble, I guess. Or Themistocles asked them to go out and support the archers. Who knows? It wasn’t part of any master plan, that much I know. However it came about, a couple of thousand Greek freedmen and light-armed men — men too poor to have a panoply and fight in the phalanx, but citizens too proud to abandon Greece — flooded the fields and hedgerows and stone walls. I estimate that, with the Athenian archers added in, they might have killed three hundred of the enemy. Nothing, you might say.

  Nor was there any glory to it. When you are naked and have no weapon but a bag of rocks, you don’t go walking out in the open. No — you crawl along hedgerows and share the stone walls with the foxes and the tortoises, too.

  But the Persians and their allies simply didn’t have a horde of light-armed men to keep our light-armed men at bay, and they couldn’t afford the steady casualties it would have taken to clear the field. And our little men made those fields a nightmare.

  As the morning wore on, our light-armed began to take losses. If they were too bold, in their little groups, the enemy would cut them off and slaughter them. All told, I would bet that if the gods made a count, then the barbarians actually killed more Greeks than we killed barbarians that day.

  But again — as I keep saying — war is not about numbers. War is about feelings, emotions, fatigue, joy, terror.

  I got up the hill to our camp and was thronged by men who had to clasp my hand or slap my back.

  ‘We lost you!’ Idomeneus was weeping. ‘Oh, lord, I am ashamed.’

  I shook my head. Who would not be delighted by this display of loyalty?

  Teucer had it the worst. ‘I was right at your shoulder, lord,’ he said, c
learly unhappy. ‘And then I found that I was by another scaled shirt — and it was Idomeneus. I had lost you in the dark.’

  ‘All dirt comes out in a good wash,’ I said. ‘How many did we lose?’

  Idomeneus shook his head. ‘Too many, lord. Almost twenty. And your brother-in-law, and Ajax, and Epistocles, and Peneleos.’

  Ares, that hurt. Not Epistocles — his loss was Plataea’s gain. But the rest — Pen would kill me for losing her husband, and Peneleos. .

  ‘Maybe they’ll come in,’ Teucer said. ‘You did.’

  I lay down, my spirits low. It always happens after a fight, but this was worse. I hadn’t done anything except get my men lost — I had scarcely bloodied my spear. But I’d lost twenty of my best — irreplaceable men with heavy armour and fighting skills. Ajax was as good a spearman as I was — or he had been.

  I was lying in the shade, feeling bad, when Miltiades came.

  ‘You’re alive, then,’ he said. ‘Praise the gods.’

  That made me smile, because Miltiades so seldom invoked the gods — not in that voice.

  ‘I’m alive,’ I said. ‘And unwounded. But I lost a lot of men.’

  He still had his shield on his shoulder — you can reach a point of exhaustion where you simply forget to strip kit off. In fact, I was lying in my scale corslet. I clambered to my feet to embrace him. He was looking beyond me, back towards my camp.

  ‘I never got near their horses,’ he said, in disgust. ‘We waited for your diversion, and when it came, we struck whatever was nearest.’ He gave me a grim smile. ‘I missed their horse lines in the dark, and we were in among the Sakai. We killed a few, I suppose.’

  I had never seen Miltiades so down.

  ‘And Aristides?’ I asked. I was suddenly struck with fear. What if Aristides was dead?

  ‘He made it to the horse lines,’ Miltiades said bitterly. ‘But accomplished nothing, and lost twenty hoplites getting away. He may have killed twenty of their horses.’

  ‘But he lives?’

  Miltiades nodded heavily. ‘He lives.’ He shrugged. ‘It is chaos out in that field. Half the hoplites will have lost their shield-bearers before this debacle is over. Better if we’d fought a field battle.’ He stared at the ground. ‘How did it go so wrong?’

  I had my canteen, and I poured him a cup of water, and he dropped his shield and sat heavily. He had a gash on his leg — he wasn’t wearing greaves. I washed his leg myself, and when Gelon came up I sent him for an old chiton I could rip to shreds for wrapping.

  I didn’t want him to see that Miltiades was weeping.

  You can see, from the hindsight of forty years, that all was not lost — but trust me, thugater, while Miltiades sat on his aspis and wept, I felt like joining him. We had lost many good men — and to our minds, schooled in the war of the phalanx, we had accomplished nothing.

  We had not robbed the Persians of their cavalry, and we had not put heart into the phalanx with a bloodless victory.

  But while Miltiades wept, the light-armed started coming in from the fields — and the barbarians did nothing to stop them. Indeed, had I gone to the edge of the field, I’d have seen something that five thousand other Greeks saw — a stupid act of bravado that changed everything.

  One of the groups of psiloi had crawled quite close to the Persian camp and found no one to fight, so they grew bored. Before they could crawl back, one boy leaped up on a stone wall — in full view of both armies — and bared his behind at the Persians, sitting on their horses by their camp. He made lewd gestures, and waved, and fanned his buttocks.

  The Persian cavalry sat tight.

  Everyone saw this exchange — everyone but Miltiades and me, of course. And in those moments, our light-armed felt their power. The barbarians felt their power. Every thrown rock made our boys bolder and every empty saddle made the Persians more afraid.

  Before I limped back to camp — with my aspis on my shoulder and my helmet on the back of my head — we owned the fields of Marathon from the mountains to the sea, although I didn’t know it yet. And not because of our gentry and our hoplites.

  It is funny, is it not? We went to rescue the Euboeans, and in succeeding, we almost wrecked our army. And then, to retrieve that error, we mounted the raid on the Persian camp. We all got lost in the dark, and accomplished nothing — but as a consequence of our intention, the ‘little’ men came to our rescue, and flooded the plain with stones and arrows, and the barbarians felt defeated.

  Best of all, the elated little men came up the hill to the camp and bragged of their stone-throwing victories to their masters, the hoplites.

  Shame is a powerful tonic with Greeks. So is competition and emulation. And no gentleman wants to face the idea that his servant may be the better man. Eh?

  That was the day of the little men. Before it dawned, we were on the edge of defeat. After it, we had enough votes to stand our ground. And that, in many cases, was the margin.

  Listen, then. This is the part you came for. The Battle of Marathon. But remember that we only stood our ground because the little men won it for us.

  Wine for all of them, boys.

  The first sign of change came while Miltiades was drying his eyes and restoring his demeanour. I had bound his leg and he was using a scrap of my old chiton to wash his face.

  My brother-in-law walked up as if his appearance were nothing extraordinary. I wrapped him in an embrace that he still remembers, I’d wager.

  He looked sheepish. ‘We got lost,’ he said.

  That made me laugh. And laughter helps, too.

  I think that was the turning point. Antigonus came in with seven of our missing men — not a wound on them. They’d gone to ground at the break of day, but as our psiloi gradually drove the barbarians off the fields, his little party got bolder and managed to move from field to field. They’d even kept their shields.

  Ajax came in without his aspis and with a serious wound in his thigh, carried by a trio of Athenian freedmen who asked for payment.

  ‘Stands to reason, don’it, lord? We gave up lootin’ to carry your frien’, eh?’

  I could barely understand the man, but I gave him a silver owl and another to each of his friends, and then I got Miltiades to send his doctor. The arrowhead was still lodged deep in Ajax’s thigh. The doctor brought a selection of what appeared to be arrowhead moulds — long, hollow shafts with a hollow for the head of an arrow at the end. They split in half. He used them with ruthless efficiency — rammed the tool into the wound, got the little mould around the arrowhead, so that the barb of the arrow was neatly surrounded with smooth, safe metal, and pulled the shaft free. There was a great deal of blood, but Ajax stopped screaming as soon as the shaft came clear, and he managed a watery smile.

  ‘Ares’ cock,’ he grunted. ‘I think I’m fucked.’ His eyes rolled, and he panted, shaking with the exhaustion that only the panic of pain can cause.

  ‘Don’t be a whiner,’ the doctor quipped and shook his head. ‘Don’t try and run the stade for a few days,’ he added, and smiled. Then he poured raw honey — a lot of it — straight on the wound, and wrapped it so tight I saw his arms bulge with the effort.

  Miltiades watched, fascinated — all forms of making and craft fascinated him. By then, more and more of the psiloi were coming up the hill, and the camp had started to buzz.

  I heard laughter, and the unmistakable sound of a man bragging. And then more laughter.

  I looked at Miltiades. ‘They don’t sound beaten,’ I said.

  Perhaps it was the rest and the wine, but Miltiades, a man fifteen years older than me, leaped to his feet. He looked alive.

  He went out from the stand of trees, and the next I looked, he was standing in the middle of a group of the Athenian archers, with Themistocles, and they were laughing. Leonestes saw me and beckoned, and I went over.

  ‘Just telling our tale,’ Leonestes said. ‘How we rescued you. How you charged the Persians-’

  ‘Medes-’

  �
�Barbarians — all by yourself. Like a loon.’ He grinned.

  Miltiades raised an eyebrow. Then he stepped up on the dry stone of the sanctuary wall and peered out over the plain towards the Persian camp. ‘They aren’t stirring,’ he said. ‘I can see a line of mounted men, right close to their camp. Nothing else.’

  I think that’s when the light dawned on all of us.

  ‘I think they’re scared,’ I said.

  ‘They’re a long way from home,’ Antigonus added with a nod at their ships.

  Miltiades agreed. ‘It’s hard to put yourself in the enemy’s place, isn’t it?’ he said.

  Themistocles fingered his beard. ‘Have we won, do you think?’ he asked.

  ‘Won?’ Miltiades asked. ‘Don’t be silly. But we’ve pushed them off the ground, and our supplies can reach us. And maybe we’ve made them feel what we feel. But won?’ He looked at the cavalry far across the plain. ‘We won’t win until we put a spear into every one of them, Themistocles. These are Persians.’

  Themistocles was looking at their fleet. ‘We should never have let them land,’ he said. ‘But that’s for another day. What’s the plan now?’

  Miltiades laughed. He seemed ten years younger than he had a few minutes before. ‘First, we win the vote,’ he said. ‘Then, we fight.’

  By mid-afternoon, the vote was a foregone conclusion. The hoplites were shamed by their servants. There’s no other way to put it. Every gentleman needed to wet his spear, and that was that.

  There were more than three thousand men, by my reckoning, around the altar that evening as we gathered for the vote of the strategoi. They shouted for the vote and they demanded that the army make a stand.

  Leontus tried his best. First he demanded that I be excluded from the vote, as I was a foreigner. The polemarch allowed that. I thought that Miltiades would explode — but then the massed hoplites and not a few of their servants started to chant.

  Fight, fight, fight!

  Miltiades relaxed.

  But when it came to the vote, the result was a shock — five strategoi for fighting, and five for marching back to Athens.