battlefields have ever shown. Heroism and determination on the part
of the Athenians, supported by the small but ever noble band of
Platæans who came to their aid; who can read the repulse of the
Persians on this ever memorable plain without experiencing a thrill
of admiration and delight at the achievement? The whole world since
that battle has looked upon it as a victory of the under dog. Many
of the great engagements of modern times have been likened unto it.
For long it has been the synonym of brave despair; the conquering
of an enemy many times superior in numbers to its opponent.
This attempt of the Persians on the Greeks was not the first
against them, That took place B.C. 493 under Mardonius. This
commander had reduced Ionia, dethroned the despots, and established
democracy throughout the land. After this he turned his attention
to Eretria and Athens, taking his army across the straits in
vessels. But the ships of war and transports were wrecked by a
mighty headwind as they rounded Mount Athos. Many were driven
ashore, about three hundred of them were totally lost, and some
twenty thousand men perished in the catastrophe.
All the trouble between the Persians and Greeks arose over the
capture of Sardis by the Ionians, B.C. 500. The city was burned,
and then the Ionians retreated. It was to avenge this that Persia
determined on a punitive expedition against the Greeks. The Ionians
and Milesian men were mostly slain by the Persians, the women and
children led into captivity, and the temples in the cities burned
and razed to the ground.[40]
[Footnote 40: The year following the fall of the Ionic city of
Miletus the poet Phrynichus made it the subject of a tragedy. On
bringing it on the stage he was fined one thousand drachmae for
having recalled to them their own misfortunes.--SMITH.]
In the battle of Marathon, which succeeded these events, we have a
vivid picture presented to us in Creasy's glowing words:
Two thousand three hundred and forty years ago a council of Athenian
officers was summoned on the slope of one of the mountains that look
over the plain of Marathon, on the eastern coast of Attica. The
immediate subject of their meeting was to consider whether they should
give battle to an enemy that lay encamped on the shore beneath them; but
on the result of their deliberations depended, not merely the fate of
two armies, but the whole future progress of human civilization.
There were eleven members of that council of war. Ten were the generals
who were then annually elected at Athens, one for each of the local
tribes into which the Athenians were divided. Each general led the men
of his own tribe, and each was invested with equal military authority.
But one of the archons was also associated with them in the general
command of the army. This magistrate was termed the "Polemarch" or
War-ruler, He had the privilege of leading the right wing of the army in
battle, and his vote in a council of war was equal to that of any of the
generals. A noble Athenian named Callimachus was the war-ruler of this
year, and, as such, stood listening to the earnest discussion of the ten
generals. They had, indeed, deep matter for anxiety, though little aware
how momentous to mankind were the votes they were about to give, or how
the generations to come would read with interest the record of their
discussions. They saw before them the invading forces of a mighty
empire, which had in the last fifty years shattered and enslaved nearly
all the kingdoms and principal cities of the then known world. They knew
that all the resources of their own country were comprised in the little
army intrusted to their guidance. They saw before them a chosen host of
the great king, sent to wreak his special wrath on that country and on
the other insolent little Greek community which had dared to aid his
rebels and burn the capital of one of his provinces. That victorious
host had already fulfilled half its mission of vengeance.
Eretria, the confederate of Athens in the bold march against Sardis nine
years before, had fallen in the last few days; and the Athenian generals
could discern from the heights the island of Ægilia, in which the
Persians had deposited their Eretrian prisoners, whom they had reserved
to be led away captives into Upper Asia, there to hear their doom from
the lips of King Darius himself. Moreover, the men of Athens knew that
in the camp before them was their own banished tyrant, who was seeking
to be reinstated by foreign cimeters in despotic sway over any remnant
of his countrymen that might survive the sack of their town, and might
be left behind as too worthless for leading away into Median bondage.
The numerical disparity between the force which the Athenian commanders
had under them, and that which they were called on to encounter, was
hopelessly apparent to some of the council. The historians who wrote
nearest to the time of the battle do not pretend to give any detailed
statements of the numbers engaged, but there are sufficient data for our
making a general estimate. Every free Greek was trained to military
duty; and, from the incessant border wars between the different states,
few Greeks reached the age of manhood without having seen some service.
But the muster-roll of free Athenian citizens of an age fit for military
duty never exceeded thirty thousand, and at this, epoch probably did not
amount to two-thirds of that number. Moreover, the poorer portion of
these were unprovided with the equipments, and untrained to the
operations of the regular infantry. Some detachments of the best-armed
troops would be required to garrison the city itself and man the various
fortified posts in the territory, so that it is impossible to reckon the
fully equipped force that marched from Athens to Marathon, when the news
of the Persian landing arrived, at higher than ten thousand men.[41]
[Footnote 41: The historians, who lived long after the time of the
battle, such as Justin, Plutarch, and others, give ten thousand as the
number of the Athenian army. Not much reliance could be placed on their
authority if unsupported by other evidence; but a calculation made for
the number of the Athenian free population remarkably confirms it.]
With one exception, the other Greeks held back from aiding them. Sparta
had promised assistance, but the Persians had landed on the sixth day of
the moon, and a religious scruple delayed the march of Spartan troops
till the moon should have reached its full. From one quarter only, and
that from a most unexpected one, did Athens receive aid at the moment of
her great peril.
Some years before this time the little state of Platæa in Boeotia, being
hard pressed by her powerful neighbor, Thebes, had asked the protection
of Athens, and had owed to an Athe man army the rescue of her
independence. Now when it was noised over Greece that the Mede had come
from the uttermost parts of the earth to destroy Athens, the brave
Platæans, unsolicited, marched with their whole force to assist the
defence, and to share the fortunes of their benefactors.
The general levy of the Platæans amounted only to a thousand men; and
this little column, marching from their city along the southern ridge of
Mount Cithæron, and thence across the Attic territory, joined the
Athenian forces above Marathon almost immediately before the battle. The
reënforcement was numerically small, but the gallant spirit of the men
who composed it must have made it of tenfold value to the Athenians, and
its presence must have gone far to dispel the cheerless feeling of being
deserted and friendless, which the delay of the Spartan succors was
calculated to create among the Athenian ranks.[42]
[Footnote 42: Mr. Grote observes that "this volunteer march of the whole
Platæan force to Marathon is one of the most affecting incidents of all
Grecian history." In truth, the whole career of Platæa, and the
friendship, strong, even unto death, between her and Athens form one of
the most affecting episodes in the history of antiquity. In the
Peloponnesian war the Platæans again were true to the Athenians against
all risks, and all calculation of self-interest: and the destruction of
Platæa was the consequence. There are few nobler passages in the
classics than the speech in which the Platæan prisoners of war, after
the memorable siege of their city, justify before their Spartan
executioners their loyal adherence to Athens.]
This generous daring of their weak but true-hearted ally was never
forgotten at Athens. The Platæans were made the civil fellow-countrymen
of the Athenians, except the right of exercising certain political
functions; and from that time forth in the solemn sacrifices at Athens,
the public prayers were offered up for a joint blessing from Heaven upon
the Athenians, and the Platæans also.
After the junction of the column from Platæa, the Athenian commanders
must have had under them about eleven thousand fully armed and
disciplined infantry, and probably a large number of irregular
light-armed troops; as, besides the poorer citizens who went to the
field armed with javelins, cutlasses, and targets, each regular
heavy-armed soldier was attended in the camp by one or more slaves, who
were armed like the inferior freemen. Cavalry or archers the Athenians
(on this occasion) had none, and the use in the field of military
engines was not at that period introduced into ancient warfare.
Contrasted with their own scanty forces, the Greek commanders saw
stretched before them, along the shores of the winding bay, the tents
and shipping of the varied nations who marched to do the bidding of the
king of the Eastern world. The difficulty of finding transports and of
securing provisions would form the only limit to the numbers of a
Persian army. Nor is there any reason to suppose the estimate of Justin
exaggerated, who rates at a hundred thousand the force which on this
occasion had sailed, under the satraps Datis and Artaphernes, from the
Cilician shores against the devoted coasts of Euboea and Attica. And
after largely deducting from this total, so as to allow for mere
mariners and camp followers, there must still have remained fearful odds
against the national levies of the Athenians.
Nor could Greek generals then feel that confidence in the superior
quality of their troops, which ever since the battle of Marathon has
animated Europeans in conflicts with Asiatics, as, for instance, in the
after struggles between Greece and Persia, or when the Roman legions
encountered the myriads of Mithradates and Tigranes, or as is the case
in the Indian campaigns of our own regiments. On the contrary, up to the
day of Marathon the Medes and Persians were reputed invincible. They had
more than once met Greek troops in Asia Minor, in Cyprus, in Egypt, and
had invariably beaten them.
Nothing can be stronger than the expressions used by the early Greek
writers respecting the terror which the name of the Medes inspired, and
the prostration of men's spirits before the apparently resistless career
of the Persian arms. It is, therefore, little to be wondered at that
five of the ten Athenian generals shrank from the prospect of fighting a
pitched battle against an enemy so superior in numbers and so formidable
in military renown. Their own position on the heights was strong and
offered great advantages to a small defending force against assailing
masses. They deemed it mere foolhardiness to descend into the plain to
be trampled down by the Asiatic horse, overwhelmed with the archery, or
cut to pieces by the invincible veterans of Cambyses and Cyrus.
Moreover, Sparta, the great war state of Greece, had been applied to,
and had promised succor to Athens, though the religious observance which
the Dorians paid to certain times and seasons had for the present
delayed their march. Was it not wise, at any rate, to wait till the
Spartans came up, and to have the help of the best troops in Greece,
before they exposed themselves to the shock of the dreaded Medes?
Specious as these reasons might appear, the other five generals were for
speedier and bolder operations. And, fortunately for Athens and for the
world, one of them was a man, not only of the highest military genius,
but also of that energetic character which impresses its own type and
ideas upon spirits feebler in conception.
Miltiades was the head of one of the noblest houses at Athens. He ranked
the Æacidæ among his ancestry, and the blood of Achilles flowed in the
veins of the hero of Marathon. One of his immediate ancestors had
acquired the dominion of the Thracian Chersonese, and thus the family
became at the same time Athenian citizens and Thracian princes. This
occurred at the time when Pisistratus was tyrant of Athens. Two of the
relatives of Miltiades--an uncle of the same name, and a brother named
Stesagoras--had ruled the Chersonese before Miltiades became its prince.
He had been brought up at Athens in the house of his father, Cimon,[43]
who was renowned throughout Greece for his victories in the Olympic
chariot-races, and who must have been possessed of great wealth.
[Footnote 43: Herodotus.]
The sons of Pisistratus, who succeeded their father in the tyranny at
Athens, caused Cimon to be assassinated; but they treated the young
Miltiades with favor and kindness and when his brother Stesagoras died
in the Chersonese, they sent him out there as lord of the principality.
This was about twenty-eight years before the battle of Marathon, and it
is with his arrival in the Chersonese that our first knowledge of the
career and character of Miltiades commences. We find, in the first act
recorded of him, the proof of the same resolute and unscrupulous spirit
that marked his mature age. His brother's authority in the principality
had been shaken by war and revolt: Miltiades determined to rule more
securely. On his arrival he kept close within his house, as if he was
mourning for his brother. The principal men of the Chersonese, hearing
of this, assembled from all the towns and districts, and went together
to the house of Miltiades, on a visit of condolence. As soon as he had
thus got them in his power, he made them all prisoners. He then asserted
and maintained his own absolute authority in the peninsula, taking into
his pay a body of five hundred regular troops, and strengthening his
interest by marrying the daughter of the king of the neighboring
Thracians.
When the Persian power was extended to the Hellespont and its
neighborhood, Miltiades, as prince of the Chersonese, submitted to King
Darius; and he was one of the numerous tributary rulers who led their
contingents of men to serve in the Persian army, in the expedition
against Scythia. Miltiades and the vassal Greeks of Asia Minor were left
by the Persian king in charge of the bridge across the Danube, when the
invading army crossed that river, and plunged into the wilds of the
country that now is Russia, in vain pursuit of the ancestors of the
modern Cossacks. On learning the reverses that Darius met with in the
Scythian wilderness, Miltiades proposed to his companions that they
should break the bridge down and leave the Persian king and his army to
perish by famine and the Scythian arrows. The rulers of the Asiatic
Greek cities, whom Miltiades addressed, shrank from this bold but
ruthless stroke against the Persian power, and Darius returned in
safety.
But it was known what advice Miltiades had given, and the vengeance of
Darius was thenceforth specially directed against the man who had
counselled such a deadly blow against his empire and his person. The
occupation of the Persian arms in other quarters left Miltiades for some
years after this in possession of the Chersonese; but it was precarious
and interrupted. He, however, availed himself of the opportunity which
his position gave him of conciliating the good-will of his
fellow-countrymen at Athens, by conquering and placing under the
Athenian authority the islands of Lemnos and Imbros, to which Athens
had ancient claims, but which she had never previously been able to
bring into complete subjection.
At length, in B.C. 494, the complete suppression of the Ionian revolt by
the Persians left their armies and fleets at liberty to act against the
enemies of the Great King to the west of the Hellespont. A strong
squadron of Phoenician galleys was sent against the Chersonese.
Miltiades knew that resistance was hopeless, and while the Phoenicians
were at Tenedos, he loaded five galleys with all the treasure that he
could collect, and sailed away for Athens. The Phoenicians fell in with
him, and chased him hard along the north of the Ægean. One of his
galleys, on board of which was his eldest son Metiochus, was actually
captured. But Miltiades, with the other four, succeeded in reaching the
friendly coast of Imbros in safety. Thence he afterward proceeded to
Athens, and resumed his station as a free citizen of the Athenian
commonwealth.
The Athenians, at this time, had recently expelled Hippias the son of
Pisistratus, the last of their tyrants. They were in the full glow of
their newly recovered liberty and equality; and the constitutional
changes of Clisthenes had inflamed their republican zeal to the utmost.
Miltiades had enemies at Athens; and these, availing themselves of the
state of popular feeling, brought him to trial for his life for having
been tyrant of the Chersonese. The charge did not necessarily import any
acts of cruelty or wrong to individuals: it was founded on no specific
law; but it was based on the horror with which the Greeks of that age
regarded every man who made himself arbitrary master of his fellow-men,
and exercised irresponsible dominion over them.
The fact of Miltiades having so ruled in the Chersonese was undeniable;
but the question which the Athenians assembled in judgment must have
tried, was whether Miltiades, although tyrant of the Chersonese,
deserved punishment as an Athenian citizen. The eminent service that he
had done the state in conquering Lemnos and Imbros for it, pleaded
strongly in his favor. The people refused to convict him. He stood high
in public opinion. And when the coming invasion of the Persians was
known, the people wisely elected him one of their generals for the year.
Two other men of high eminence in history, though their renown was
achieved at a later period than that of Miltiades, were also among the
ten Athenian generals at Marathon. One was Themistocles, the future
founder of the Athenian navy, and the destined victor of Salamis. The
other was Aristides, who afterward led the Athenian troops at Platæa,
and whose integrity and just popularity acquired for his country, when
the Persians had finally been repulsed, the advantageous preëminence of
being acknowledged by half of the Greeks as their imperial leader and
protector. It is not recorded what part either Themistocles or Aristides
took in the debate of the council of war at Marathon. But, from the
character of Themistocles, his boldness, and his intuitive genius for
extemporizing the best measures in every emergency--a quality which the
greatest of historians ascribes to him beyond all his contemporaries--we
may well believe that the vote of Themistocles was for prompt and
decisive action. On the vote of Aristides it may be more difficult to
speculate. His predilection for the Spartans may have made him wish to
wait till they came up; but, though circumspect, he was neither timid as
a soldier nor as a politician, and the bold advice of Miltiades may
probably have found in Aristides a willing, most assuredly it found in
him a candid, hearer.
Miltiades felt no hesitation, as to the course which the Athenian army
ought to pursue; and earnestly did he press his opinion on his brother
generals. Practically acquainted with the organization of the Persian
armies, Miltiades felt convinced of the superiority of the Greek troops,
if properly handled; he saw with the military eye of a great general the
advantage which the position of the forces gave him for a sudden attack,
and as a profound politician he felt the perils of remaining inactive,
and of giving treachery time to ruin the Athenian cause.
One officer in the council of war had not yet voted. This was
Callimachus, the War-ruler. The votes of the generals were five and
five, so that the voice of Callimachus would be decisive.
On that vote, in all human probability, the destiny of all the nations
of the world depended. Miltiades turned to him, and in simple soldierly
eloquence--the substance of which we may read faithfully reported in
Herodotus, who had conversed with the veterans of Marathon--the great
Athenian thus adjured his countrymen to vote for giving battle:
"It now rests with you, Callimachus, either to enslave Athens, or, by
assuring her freedom, to win yourself an immortality of fame, such as
not even Harmodius and Aristogiton have acquired; for never, since the
Athenians were a people, were they in such danger as they are in at this
moment. If they bow the knee to these Medes, they are to be given up to
Hippias, and you know what they then will have to suffer. But if Athens
comes victorious out of this contest, she has it in her to become the
first city of Greece. Your vote is to decide whether we are to join
battle or not. If we do not bring on a battle presently, some factious
intrigue will disunite the Athenians, and the city will be betrayed to
the Medes. But if we fight, before there is anything rotten in the state
of Athens, I believe that, provided the gods will give fair play and no
favor, we are able to get the best of it in an engagement."
The vote of the brave War-ruler was gained, the council determined to
give battle; and such was the ascendancy and acknowledged military
eminence of Miltiades, that his brother generals one and all gave up
their days of command to him, and cheerfully acted under his orders.
Fearful, however, of creating any jealousy, and of so failing to obtain
the vigorous coöperation of all parts of his small army, Miltiades
waited till the day when the chief command would have come round to him
in regular rotation before he led the troops against the enemy.
The inaction of the Asiatic commanders during this interval appears
strange at first sight; but Hippias was with them, and they and he were
aware of their chance of a bloodless conquest through the machinations
of his partisans among the Athenians. The nature of the ground also
explains in many points the tactics of the opposite generals before the
battle, as well as the operations of the troops during the engagement.
The plain of Marathon, which is about twenty-two miles distant from
Athens, lies along the bay of the same name on the north-eastern coast of
Attica. The plain is nearly in the form of a crescent, and about six
miles in length. It is about two miles broad in the centre, where the
space between the mountains and the sea is greatest, but it narrows
toward either extremity, the mountains coming close clown to the water
at the horns of the bay. There is a valley trending inward from the
middle of the plain, and a ravine comes down to it to the southward.
Elsewhere it is closely girt round on the land side by rugged limestone
mountains, which are thickly studded with pines, olive-trees and cedars,
and overgrown with the myrtle, arbutus, and the other low odoriferous
shrubs that everywhere perfume the Attic air.
The level of the ground is now varied by the mound raised over those who
fell in the battle, but it was an unbroken plain when the Persians
encamped on it. There are marshes at each end, which are dry in spring
and summer and then offer no obstruction to the horseman, but are
commonly flooded with rain and so rendered impracticable for cavalry in
the autumn, the time of year at which the action took place.
The Greeks, lying encamped on the mountains, could watch every movement
of the Persians on the plain below, while they were enabled completely
to mask their own. Miltiades also had, from, his position, the power of
giving battle whenever he pleased, or of delaying it at his discretion,
unless Datis were to attempt the perilous operation of storming the
heights.