territorial resources of the two states whose armies were now about to
come into conflict, the immense preponderance of the material power of
the Persian king over that of the Athenian republic is more striking
than any similar contrast which history can supply. It has been truly
remarked that, in estimating mere areas Attica, containing on its whole
surface only seven hundred square miles, shrinks into insignificance if
compared with many a baronial fief of the Middle Ages, or many a
colonial allotment of modern times. Its antagonist, the Persian, empire,
comprised the whole of modern Asiatic and much of modern European
Turkey, the modern kingdom of Persia and the countries of modern
Georgia, Armenia, Balkh, the Punjaub, Afghanistan, Beloochistan, Egypt
and Tripoli.
Nor could a European, in the beginning of the fifth century before our
era, look upon this huge accumulation of power beneath the sceptre of a
single Asiatic ruler with the indifference with which we now observe on
the map the extensive dominions of modern Oriental sovereigns; for, as
has been already remarked, before Marathon was fought, the prestige of
success and of supposed superiority of race was on the side of the
Asiatic against the European. Asia was the original seat of human
societies, and long before any trace can be found of the inhabitants of
the rest of the world having emerged from the rudest barbarism, we can
perceive that mighty and brilliant empires flourished in the Asiatic
continent. They appear before us through the twilight of primeval
history, dim and indistinct, but massive and majestic, like mountains in
the early dawn.
Instead, however, of the infinite variety and restless change which has
characterized the institutions and fortunes of European states ever
since the commencement of the civilization of our continent, a
monotonous uniformity pervades the histories of nearly all Oriental
empires, from the most ancient down to the most recent times. They are
characterized by the rapidity of their early conquests, by the immense
extent of the dominions comprised in them, by the establishment of a
satrap or pashaw system of governing the provinces, by an invariable and
speedy degeneracy in the princes of the royal house, the effeminate
nurslings of the seraglio succeeding to the warrior sovereigns reared in
the camp, and by the internal anarchy and insurrections which indicate
and accelerate the decline and fall of these unwieldy and ill-organized
fabrics of power.
It is also a striking fact that the governments of all the great Asiatic
empires have in all ages been absolute despotisms. And Heeren is right
in connecting this with another great fact, which is important from its
influence both on the political and the social life of Asiatics. "Among
all the considerable nations of Inner Asia, the paternal government of
every household was corrupted by polygamy: where that custom exists, a
good political constitution is impossible. Fathers, being converted into
domestic despots, are ready to pay the same abject obedience to their
sovereign which they exact from their family and dependents in their
domestic economy."
We should bear in mind, also, the inseparable connection between the
state religion and all legislation which has always prevailed in the
East, and the constant existence of a powerful sacerdotal body,
exercising some check, though precarious and irregular, over the throne
itself, grasping at all civil administration, claiming the supreme
control of education, stereotyping the lines in which literature and
science must move, and limiting the extent to which it shall be lawful
for the human mind to prosecute its inquiries.
With these general characteristics rightly felt and understood it
becomes a comparatively easy task to investigate and appreciate the
origin, progress and principles of Oriental empires in general, as well
as of the Persian monarchy in particular. And we are thus better enabled
to appreciate the repulse which Greece gave to the arms of the East, and
to judge of the probable consequences to human civilization, if the
Persians had succeeded in bringing Europe under their yoke, as they had
already subjugated the fairest portions of the rest of the then known
world.
The Greeks, from their geographical position, formed the natural
van-guard of European liberty against Persian ambition; and they
preëminently displayed the salient points of distinctive national
character which have rendered European civilization so far superior to
Asiatic. The nations that dwelt in ancient times around and near the
northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea were the first in our continent
to receive from the East the rudiments of art and literature, and the
germs of social and political organizations. Of these nations the
Greeks, through their vicinity to Asia Minor, Phoenicia, and Egypt, were
among the very foremost in acquiring the principles and habits of
civilized life; and they also at once imparted a new and wholly original
stamp on all which they received. Thus, in their religion, they received
from foreign settlers the names of all their deities and many of their
rites, but they discarded the loathsome monstrosities of the Nile, the
Orontes, and the Ganges; they nationalized their creed, and their own
poets created their beautiful mythology. No sacerdotal caste ever
existed in Greece.
So, in their governments, they lived long under hereditary kings, but
never endured the permanent establishment of absolute monarchy. Their
early kings were constitutional rulers, governing with defined
prerogatives. And long before the Persian invasion, the kingly form of
government had given way in almost all the Greek states to republican
institutions, presenting infinite varieties of the blending or the
alternate predominance of the oligarchical and democratical principles.
In literature and science the Greek intellect followed no beaten track,
and acknowledged no limitary rules. The Greeks thought their subjects
boldly out; and the novelty of a speculation invested it in their minds
with interest, and not with criminality.
Versatile, restless, enterprising, and self-confident, the Greeks
presented the most striking contrast to the habitual quietude and
submissiveness of the Orientals; and, of all the Greeks, the Athenians
exhibited these national characteristics in the strongest degree. This
spirit of activity and daring, joined to a generous sympathy for the
fate of their fellow-Greeks in Asia, had led them to join in the last
Ionian war, and now mingling with their abhorrence of the usurping
family of their own citizens, which for a period had forcibly seized on
and exercised despotic power at Athens, nerved them to defy the wrath of
King Darius, and to refuse to receive back at his bidding the tyrant
whom they had some years before driven out.
The enterprise and genius of an Englishman have lately confirmed by
fresh evidence, and invested with fresh interest, the might of the
Persian monarch who sent his troops to combat at Marathon. Inscriptions
in a character termed the Arrow-headed, or Cuneiform, had long been
known to exist on the marble monuments at Persepolis, near the site of
the ancient Susa, and on the faces of rocks in other places formerly
ruled over by the early Persian kings. But for thousands of years they
had been mere unintelligible enigmas to the curious but baffled
beholder; and they were often referred to as instances of the folly of
human pride, which could indeed write its own praises in the solid rock,
but only for the rock to outlive the language as well as the memory of
the vainglorious inscribers.
The elder Niebuhr, Grotefend, and Lassen, had made some guesses at the
meaning of the cuneiform letters; but Major Rawlinson of the East India
Company's service, after years of labor, has at last accomplished the
glorious achievement of fully revealing the alphabet and the grammar of
this long unknown tongue. He has, in particular, fully deciphered and
expounded the inscription on the sacred rock of Behistun, on the western
frontiers of Media. These records of the Achæmenidæ have at length found
their interpreter; and Darius himself speaks to us from the consecrated
mountain, and tells us the names of the nations that obeyed him, the
revolts that he suppressed, his victories, his piety, and his glory.
Kings who thus seek the admiration of posterity are little likely to dim
the record of their successes by the mention of their occasional
defeats; and it throws no suspicion on the narrative of the Greek
historians that we find these inscriptions silent respecting the
overthrow of Datis and Artaphernes, as well as respecting the reverses
which Darius sustained in person during his Scythian campaigns. But
these indisputable monuments of Persian fame confirm, and even increase
the opinion with which Herodotus inspires us of the vast power which
Cyrus founded and Cambyses increased; which Darius augmented by Indian
and Arabian conquests, and seemed likely, when he directed his arms
against Europe, to make the predominant monarchy of the world.
With the exception of the Chinese empire, in which, throughout all ages
down to the last few years, one-third of the human race has dwelt almost
unconnected with the other portions, all the great kingdoms, which we
know to have existed in ancient Asia, were, in Darius' time, blended
into the Persian. The northern Indians, the Assyrians, the Syrians, the
Babylonians, the Chaldees, the Phoenicians, the nations of Palestine,
the Armenians, the Bactrians, the Lydians, the Phrygians, the Parthians,
and the Medes, all obeyed the sceptre of the Great King: the Medes
standing next to the native Persians in honor, and the empire being
frequently spoken of as that of the Medes, or as that of the Medes and
Persians. Egypt and Cyrene were Persian provinces; the Greek colonists
in Asia Minor and the islands of the Ægean were Darius' subjects; and
their gallant but unsuccessful attempts to throw off the Persian yoke
had only served to rivet it more strongly, and to increase the general
belief that the Greeks could not stand before the Persians in a field
of battle. Darius' Scythian war, though unsuccessful in its immediate
object, had brought about the subjugation of Thrace and the submission
of Macedonia. From the Indus to the Peneus, all was his.
We may imagine the wrath with which the lord of so many nations must
have heard, nine years before the battle of Marathon, that a strange
nation toward the setting sun, called the Athenians, had dared to help
his rebels in Ionia against him, and that they had plundered and burned
the capital of one of his provinces. Before the burning of Sardis,
Darius seems never to have heard of the existence of Athens; but his
satraps in Asia Minor had for some time seen Athenian refugees at their
provincial courts imploring assistance against their fellow-countrymen.
When Hippias was driven away from Athens, and the tyrannic dynasty of
the Pisistratidæ finally overthrown in B.C. 510, the banished tyrant and
his adherents, after vainly seeking to be restored by Spartan
intervention, had betaken themselves to Sardis, the capital city of the
satrapy of Artaphernes. There Hippias--in the expressive words of
Herodotus--began every kind of agitation, slandering the Athenians
before Artaphernes, and doing all he could to induce the satrap to place
Athens in subjection to him, as the tributary vassal of King Darius.
When the Athenians heard of his practices, they sent envoys to Sardis to
remonstrate with the Persians against taking up the quarrel of the
Athenian refugees.
But Artaphernes gave them in reply a menacing command to receive Hippias
back again if they looked for safety. The Athenians were resolved not to
purchase safety at such a price, and after rejecting the satrap's terms,
they considered that they and the Persians were declared enemies. At
this very crisis the Ionian Greeks implored the assistance of their
European brethren, to enable them to recover their independence from
Persia. Athens, and the city of Eretria in Euboea, alone consented.
Twenty Athenian galleys, and five Eretrian, crossed the Ægean Sea, and
by a bold and sudden march upon Sardis, the Athenians and their allies
succeeded in capturing the capital city of the haughty satrap who had
recently menaced them with servitude or destruction. They were pursued,
and defeated on their return to the coast, and Athens took no further
part in the Ionian war; but the insult that she had put upon the Persian
power was speedily made known throughout that empire, and was never to
be forgiven or forgotten.
In the emphatic simplicity of the narrative of Herodotus, the wrath of
the Great King is thus described: "Now when it was told to King Darius
that Sardis had been taken and burned by the Athenians and Ionians, he
took small heed of the Ionians, well knowing who they were, and that
their revolt would soon be put down; but he asked who, and what manner
of men, the Athenians were. And when he had been told, he called for his
bow; and, having taken it, and placed an arrow on the string, he let the
arrow fly toward heaven; and as he shot it into the air, he said, 'Oh!
supreme God, grant me that I may avenge myself on the Athenians,' And
when he had said this, he appointed one of his servants to say to him
every day as he sat at meat, 'Sire, remember the Athenians.'"
Some years were occupied in the complete reduction of Ionia. But when
this was effected, Darius ordered his victorious forces to proceed to
punish Athens and Eretria, and to conquer European Greece, The first
armament sent for this purpose was shattered by shipwreck, and nearly
destroyed off Mount Athos. But the purpose of King Darius was not easily
shaken, A larger army was ordered to be collected in Cilicia, and
requisitions were sent to all the maritime cities of the Persian empire
for ships of war, and for transports of sufficient size for carrying
cavalry as well as infantry across the Ægean. While these preparations
were being made, Darius sent heralds round to the Grecian cities
demanding their submission to Persia. It was proclaimed in the
market-place of each little Hellenic state--some with territories not
larger than the Isle of Wight--that King Darius, the lord of all men,
from the rising to the setting sun,[44] required earth and water to be
delivered to his heralds, as a symbolical acknowledgment that he was
head and master of the country. Terror-stricken at the power of Persia
and at the severe punishment that had recently been inflicted on the
refractory Ionians, many of the continental Greeks and nearly all the
islanders submitted, and gave the required tokens of vassalage. At
Sparta and Athens an indignant refusal was returned--a refusal which was
disgraced by outrage and violence against the persons of the Asiatic
heralds.
[Footnote 44: Æschines.]
Fresh fuel was thus added to the anger of Darius against Athens, and the
Persian preparations went on with renewed vigor. In the summer of B.C.
490, the army destined for the invasion was assembled in the Aleian
plain of Cilicia, near the sea. A fleet of six hundred galleys and
numerous transports was collected on the coast for the embarkation of
troops, horse as well as foot. A Median general named Datis, and
Artaphernes, the son of the satrap of Sardis, and who was also nephew of
Darius, were placed in titular joint-command of the expedition. The real
supreme authority was probably given to Datis alone, from the way in
which the Greek writers speak of him.
We know no details of the previous career of this officer; but there is
every reason to believe that his abilities and bravery had been proved
by experience, or his Median birth would have prevented his being placed
in high command by Darius. He appears to have been the first Mede who
was thus trusted by the Persian kings after the overthrow of the
conspiracy of the Median magi against the Persians immediately before
Darius obtained the throne. Datis received instructions to complete the
subjugation of Greece, and especial orders were given him with regard to
Eretria and Athens. He was to take these two cities, and he was to lead
the inhabitants away captive, and bring them as slaves into the presence
of the Great King.
Datis embarked his forces in the fleet that awaited them, and coasting
along the shores of Asia Minor till he was off Samos, he thence sailed
due westward through the Ægean Sea for Greece, taking the islands in his
way. The Naxians had, ten years before, successfully stood a siege
against a Persian armament, but they now were too terrified to offer any
resistance, and fled to the mountain tops, while the enemy burned their
town and laid waste their lands. Thence Datis, compelling the Greek
islanders to join him with their ships and men, sailed onward to the
coast of Euboea. The little town of Carystus essayed resistance, but
was quickly overpowered.
He next attacked Eretria. The Athenians sent four thousand men to its
aid; but treachery was at work among the Eretrians; and the Athenian
force received timely warning from one of the leading men of the city to
retire to aid in saving their own country, instead of remaining to share
in the inevitable destruction of Eretria. Left to themselves, the
Eretrians repulsed the assaults of the Persians against their walls for
six days; on the seventh they were betrayed by two of their chiefs, and
the Persians occupied the city. The temples were burned in revenge for
the firing of Sardis, and the inhabitants were bound, and placed as
prisoners in the neighboring islet of Ægilia, to wait there till Datis
should bring the Athenians to join them in captivity, when both
populations were to be led into Upper Asia, there to learn their doom
from the lips of King Darius himself.
Flushed with success, and with half his mission thus accomplished, Datis
reëmbarked his troops, and, crossing the little channel that separates
Euboea from the mainland, he encamped his troops on the Attic coast at
Marathon, drawing up his galleys on the shelving beach, as was the
custom with the navies of antiquity. The conquered islands behind him
served as places of deposit for his provisions and military stores. His
position at Marathon seemed to him in every respect advantageous, and
the level nature of the ground on which he camped was favorable for the
employment of his cavalry, if the Athenians should venture to engage
him. Hippias, who accompanied him, and acted as the guide of the
invaders, had pointed out Marathon as the best place for a landing, for
this very reason. Probably Hippias was also influenced by the
recollection that forty-seven years previously, he, with his father
Pisistratus, had crossed with an army from Eretria to Marathon, and had
won an easy victory over their Athenian enemies on that very plain,
which had restored them to tyrannic power. The omen seemed cheering. The
place was the same, but Hippias soon learned to his cost how great a
change had come over the spirit of the Athenians.
But though "the fierce democracy" of Athens was zealous and true
against foreign invader and domestic tyrant, a faction existed in
Athens, as at Eretria, who were willing to purchase a party triumph over
their fellow-citizens at the price of their country's ruin.
Communications were opened between these men and the Persian camp, which
would have led to a catastrophe like that of Eretria, if Miltiades had
not resolved and persuaded his colleagues to resolve on fighting at all
hazards.
When Miltiades arrayed his men for action, he staked on the arbitrament
of one battle not only the fate of Athens, but that of all Greece; for
if Athens had fallen, no other Greek state, except Lacedæmon, would have
had the courage to resist; and the Lacedæmonians, though they would
probably have died in their ranks to the last man, never could have
successfully resisted the victorious Persians and the numerous Greek
troops which would have soon marched under the Persian satraps, had they
prevailed over Athens.
Nor was there any power to the westward of Greece that could have
offered an effectual opposition to Persia, had she once conquered
Greece, and made that country a basis for future military operations.
Rome was at this time in her season of utmost weakness. Her dynasty of
powerful Etruscan kings had been driven out; and her infant commonwealth
was reeling under the attacks of the Etruscans and Volscians from
without, and the fierce dissensions between the patricians and plebeians
within. Etruria, with her _lucumos_ and serfs, was no match for Persia.
Samnium had not grown into the might which she afterward put forth; nor
could the Greek colonies in South Italy and Sicily hope to conquer when
their parent states had perished. Carthage had escaped the Persian yoke
in the time of Cambyses, through the reluctance of the Phoenician
mariners to serve against their kinsmen.
But such forbearance could not long have been relied on, and the future
rival of Rome would have become as submissive a minister of the Persian
power as were the Phoenician cities themselves. If we turn to Spain; or
if we pass the great mountain chain, which, prolonged through the
Pyrenees, the Cevennes, the Alps, and the Balkan, divides Northern from
Southern Europe, we shall find nothing at that period but mere savage
Finns, Celts, Slavs, and Teutons. Had Persia beaten Athens at Marathon,
she could have found no obstacle to prevent Darius, the chosen servant
of Ormuzd, from advancing his sway over all the known Western races of
mankind. The infant energies of Europe would have been trodden out
beneath universal conquest, and the history of the world, like the
history of Asia, have become a mere record of the rise and fall of
despotic dynasties, of the incursions of barbarous hordes, and of the
mental and political prostration of millions beneath the diadem, the
tiara, and the sword.
Great as the preponderance of the Persian over the Athenian power at
that crisis seems to have been, it would be unjust to impute wild
rashness to the policy of Miltiades and those who voted with him in the
Athenian council of war, or to look on the after-current of events as
the mere fortunate result of successful folly. As before has been
remarked, Miltiades, while prince of the Chersonese, had seen service in
the Persian armies; and he knew by personal observation how many
elements of weakness lurked beneath their imposing aspect of strength.
He knew that the bulk of their troops no longer consisted of the hardy
shepherds and mountaineers from Persia proper and Kurdistan, who won
Cyrus's battles; but that unwilling contingents from conquered nations
now filled up the Persian muster-rolls, fighting more from compulsion
than from any zeal in the cause of their masters. He had also the
sagacity and the spirit to appreciate the superiority of the Greek armor
and organization over the Asiatic, notwithstanding former reverses.
Above all, he felt and worthily trusted the enthusiasm of those whom he
led.
The Athenians whom he led had proved by their newborn valor in recent
wars against the neighboring states that "liberty and equality of civic
rights are brave spirit-stirring things, and they, who, while under the
yoke of a despot, had been no better men of war than any of their
neighbors, as soon as they were free, became the foremost men of all;
for each felt that in fighting for a free commonwealth, he fought for
himself, and whatever he took in hand, he was zealous to do the work
thoroughly," So the nearly contemporaneous historian describes the
change of spirit that was seen in the Athenians after their tyrants were
expelled; and Miltiades knew that in leading them against the invading
army, where they had Hippias, the foe they most hated, before them, he
was bringing into battle no ordinary men, and could calculate on no
ordinary heroism.