Battle of Marathon

Background

In 499 BC the Greek cities of Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor, rebelled against the Persian Empire, and Athens and Eretria sent ships to help them. The revolt was crushed by 494, and King Darius I resolved to punish the mainland cities that had supported it. In 490 BC a Persian fleet under the commanders Datis and Artaphernes crossed the Aegean, destroyed Eretria on the island of Euboea, and landed on the plain of Marathon, about 26 miles from Athens, on the advice of Hippias, the exiled former tyrant of Athens, who hoped to be restored. Athens sent the runner Pheidippides to ask Spartans for help, but the Spartans were celebrating a religious festival and would not march until it ended. The Athenians marched out alone, joined only by the small city of Plataea.

The Battle

For several days the two armies faced each other across the plain. The Athenian army was commanded by ten generals, among them Miltiades, who had served under the Persians and knew their methods, with the war-archon Callimachus holding the deciding vote. When the Greeks attacked, possibly because the Persian cavalry was absent or re-embarking, Miltiades lengthened his line to match the Persian front by thinning the center and deepening the wings. The hoplites advanced across the last stretch at a run to shorten the time under the arrows of the Persian archers. In the center the Persians and the Saka broke through and pursued, but on both wings the Greek hoplites routed their opponents and then turned inward against the Persian center. The Persians fled to their ships; the Athenians fought them at the water's edge and captured seven vessels. Callimachus was killed.

Weapons

Marathon was a contest between two ways of war. The Greek hoplite fought in a close formation with the Hoplite Dory, a long thrusting spear, and the heavy round Greek Aspis, protected by a bronze Corinthian Helmet and a cuirass of bronze or of the lighter Linothorax; a short Greek Xiphos was a secondary weapon. The Persian army relied on archers shooting from behind wicker shields, lighter infantry with short spears and the Persian Akinakes, and cavalry. Against a charging hoplite line at close quarters, the lightly armored Persian infantry were at a severe disadvantage.

Aftermath

The surviving Persians sailed around Cape Sounion toward Athens, but the Athenian army marched back in time to deter a landing, and the fleet returned to Asia. Two thousand Spartans arrived after the battle, viewed the field and praised the Athenians. The Athenian dead were buried in a mound, the Soros, that still stands on the plain. The legend of a runner carrying news of the victory to Athens, which inspired the modern marathon race, appears only in much later writers. Persia returned in force ten years later, at Battle of Thermopylae and Salamis, but Marathon had shown that Greek hoplites could defeat a Persian army.