Marathon, September 9, 490 BC
v.1.1 June 16, 2002

Ravi Rikhye

Sources:

http://www.omhros.gt/Kat/History/Greek/Id/Marathon.htm (Encyclopedia Britannica)
http://www.standin.se/fifteen1a.htm Poke’s 15 Decisive Battles
http://www.nrotc.tulane.edu/ Marathon: Amphibious Warfare Lesson 2

Marathon saw the first defeat of the previously invincible Persians and laid the basis of the expansion of Greece.  Conversely, it is possible that by stopping Persia at Marathon, the Athenians stopped Persian expansion further west into Europe: there was nothing to stop them from advancing to Central Europe.  As Poke says, the infant European kingdoms would then not have been able to develop, and the history of the world might have turned out quite differently. Ten years later, after extensive preparation, Xerxes, the son of Darius, invaded Greece again to avenge Marathon.  The Greeks defeated the Persians at the great naval battle of Salamis, and the Persian land forces were defeated at Plataea. Subsequently the Persians were to lose all their conquests in Europe.

The war leading to the Battle of Marathon represented Darius of Persia’s second attempt to take Greece.  The first had failed when storm wrecked the invasion fleet.  Darius prepared for ten years and attacked again. The Greek cities and principalities were small and fiercely independent; no combined Greek army existed.  Coalitions were made as possible even in the face of imminent battle, as always in the ancient and medieval worlds, betrayals and double-dealing were common. Darius’s first attempt to conquer Greece was frustrated in large part because of Athens and Sparta, so he had a score to settle. His forces overran territories enroute to Athens with relative ease.

It is as well to keep in mind that defeat in those days had terrible consequences for the losers.  Aside from the standard looting and pillaging, the inhabitants could be executed en masse for daring to resist; if lucky, their lives were spared so they could become slaves in distant lands.

For most, the Battle of Marathon is famous because of the legend that a runner sent from the battlefield to Athens to announce the Greek victory, covered the 40 km and gave the news before dropping dead of exhaustion. 

The Background to the Battle and the Choice of the Battlefield

For an excellent summary, we suggest the article by Tulane University’s Naval ROTC department.

Athenian Forces

These numbered 10,000 heavy infantry, divided into ten contingents of one thousand each.  A contingent came from  a tribe, and was led by its chief. The entire military potential of Athens at this time was thought to be 30,000 troops, of whom many were inadequately armed and others not available. Generally, an infantryman was accompanied by a lightly-armed slave who helped carry the equipment and supplies, and fought alongside his master if required. By the conventions of the day, these slaves or support troops on both sides were not counted. The Athenians had no cavalry at all.

Athens asked for Sparta’s help.  Sparta sent 2,000 spearmen – but only after a religious festival was over.  They arrived very quickly once they left Sparta, by some accounts covering the 250 km distance to Marathon in three days; by then, however, the battle had just finished.

The Plataeans, citizens of a tiny kingdom, and staunch allies of Athens, sent all they could, amounting to 1,000 troops.

Greek forces wore extensive armor, including helmet, breast-plate, and greaves, and were equipped both with a short sword and the long spear of 6-8 feet. They relied on mass shock action at hand-to-hand ranges.

Persian Forces

Some historians say that the Persians amounted to 100,000 troops, but most modern historians are inclined to dismiss this figure as an exaggeration to begin with.  Eliminating the naval crews, logistic troops, attendants and camp followers, it is likely the Persian forces were no more than 15,000, may be less.

Whereas Greek forces were ethnically cohesive, and trained to fight as a unified army, Persian forces were highly diverse, reflecting their empire.  This stretched from the Indus to Greece, and except for the Chinese empire, which minded its own business and had little or no contact with any outsiders, was the greatest empire of the time. The Persian army included:

-         a division of Persians

-         a division of Sacians (are these the same as the mountaineers? Editor)

-         Hyrcania mountaineers

-         Khoassan steppe horse

-         Ethiopian archers

-         Indian troops from the Indus region

-         Central Asian troops from the Oxus region

-         Troops from the Euphrates region

-         Egyptian and Sudanese troops from the Nile region

While the Persian Army "had no uniformity of language, creed, race, or military system” [Poke], they were led by a veteran general, and had never been beaten.  Conversely, whereas Greek soldiers were free men, much of the Persian army’s ranks were filled with men on compulsory service.

Persian troops were light cavalry and light infantry.  Their infantry had small, light shields, short spears, and light swords. The men wore little or no armor. This force exploited its mobility, and used archers in large numbers to engage enemy troops at a distance.

The Persian Cavalry

The Persian Cavalry was a formidable fighting force.  That day, however, it may have been absent. It appears that the Persians, not expecting the Greeks would seize the initiative, sent the cavalry to graze and collect fodder. The Greeks in any case, as we shall see, used special tactics to neutralize Persian cavalry. Further, the beachhead, though a good area to make an amphibious landing, was close territory and lacked space for Persian cavalry to maneuver. Its not clear that defeat could have been averted in the circumstances even if all the cavalry had been present.

The Commanders

In an extreme example of democracy, the Greeks elected their overall commander, the pole march, or the war ruler. Tactical command was rotated daily among commanders. Callimachus was appointed pole march; however, five of the ten field commanders voted to have Miltiades as the battle commander, so in actuality there was continuity of command for the Battle of Marathon.

Miltiades had been ruler of his own principality and had served in the Persian army. He left his seat when the Persians began their expansion, realizing that his little princedom had no chance of surviving the expected onslaught. He then settled in Athens. An experienced commander, he was a good choice for the Athenians to make because of his first-hand knowledge of the enemy.

 The Persian command was nominally joint between the land forces commander, Datis, and the naval commander, Artaphernes, son of the ruler of Sardis. Datis was a Mede, and would not have had high command had he not been an outstanding commander – the Medes had conspired to seize the throne of Persia just before Darius became king. It is assumed that since most of the fighting in this second expedition to subdue Greece was on land, Datis was the real commander in fact, if not in the organizational hierarchy.

Militiades Tactics

To begin, the Athenian commanders were divided on overall strategy. Some wanted to remain inside Athenian walls, and force the Persians to attack the fortifications. Militiades, however, argued that Athens had to seize the initiative. He won over the others, and so the Athenians marched out to meet the Persians at Marathon.

This is exactly what Datis wanted. With the Athenians lured out of their defensive positions, he planned to defeat them at Marathon and send his fleet in an outflanking move to seize the now presumably gravely weakened city. [It can be seen why Marathon is a must-study for students of amphibious operations - this was a wonderfully constructed one-two blow using sea power to influence a land campaign.

Miltiades, however, had his own ideas. With the army gone from the city, traitors in the city had less chance to do their work.  The site, Marathon,  had a powerful place in the psyche of the Greeks as a place where their mythical national hero Theseus had fought, and many desperate battles for the freedom of Athens had been conducted.

Miltiades had too few men to prevent Persian forces from outflanking both ends of his line.  Accordingly, he weakened his center, under Aristides and Themistocles, so as to extend his line which now could be anchored on natural obstacles. When the battle began, he did not advance at the usual slow, stately pace typical of the Greek infantry.  Instead, he charged down-slope across the one mile that separated the two armies. This unexpected behavior by heavy infantry threw the Persians off their stride.

The Persian cavalry had a lengthy, almost majestic routine involved in mounting up. Miltiades’s charge was intended to let him close with the Persian cavalry could come into play. It minimized the time the attackers were exposed to Persian archers.  Moreover, the Persian infantry did not have time to deploy to battle positions.

Though the Greeks crashed forcefully into the Persian center, the troops here were native Persians and the best fighters.  They quickly recovered, and pushed Aristides and Themistocles back. The further the Persians advanced, however, the harder it became for them because they were advancing up hill, whereas the easier it became for the Greeks to slow the Persians.  Meanwhile, the strong Greek wings, which had attacked simultaneous with the Greek center, had routed opposing forces, who in the tradition of the day were composed of weaker troops. They did not chase their opponents as the latter broke - and this was crucial.  Instead, they turned inward on the Persian center, trapping it in a three-way embrace as the Greek center troops now counterattacked.

At close range, the heavy armor and heavy weapons of the Greek infantry proved devastating against the lightly armored and equipped Persians. Further, the Greek infantry, drilled to maneuver in a solid, unbroken line while under attack, maintained their cohesion.   The Persians stood their ground even in these desperate circumstances. They kept counterattacking: however, Poke, relying on ancient sources, says that they would rush forward singly or in small groups while their archers kept up a continued fire from the rear. This tradition of the mighty and courageous individual was, of course, common to the armies of those days - accounts of the siege of Troy, fought three hundred years before Marathon, provide any number of examples. With the Greeks maintaining their solid line, however, it was doomed to fail.

Implicit in the accounts of the battle is that the Greek infantry must have been in much superior physical condition compared to the Persians. Any one who has lasted three rounds in the boxing ring knows how utterly exhausting those few minutes are, and at that the boxers get two breaks to sit and drink water. Here we have heavily armored men hacking away at each other in the September heat for hours on end: the stamina required of warriors before the arrival of firearms must have been nothing short of incredible.

As evening fell, the Persians fled and broke for their ships, pursued by the victorious Greeks. Here the tables were now turned: fighting with renewed strength and desperation, the Persians fought off Greek attacks: only seven Persian ships were fired. Most of the Greek’s 192 killed, including the pole march Callimachus who led one wing, and Stesilaus, a general, occurred in the fight on the beach. The Persians, leaving behind 6,400 dead, successfully reboarded their ships. The disparity in killed may seem absurd, but is quite possible given the heavy armor the Greeks wore and the light weapons the Persians carried. Shock action can make false the dictum that the attacker suffers three times the losses of the defender. Alexander the Great repeatedly inflicted much greater loss on this opponents by using shock.

The Persians now showed the stern material of which they were made. Instead of giving up, Datius now made by sea to Athens, planning to fall upon the unprotected city from the rear. The Greeks, however, also showed the material of which they were made: leaving one general, Aristides, to guard the Greek dead and the booty, Militiades now conducted a night-march back across the 40 km to Athens, arriving before the Persians. The latter now decided to accept defeat and set sail for home.

Source: University of Texas

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