B.C. 490.] MARCH OF THE GREEKS TO MARATHON. 387 the Archon Polemarch, had to be tested for the first time in the presence of the whole force of Persia; and at the critical moment the generals were equally divided. But among them was one man who saved Athens by the ascendancy of his genius. Miltiades had retained his government of the Chersonese, either because his advice to destroy the bridge over the Danube was not betrayed, or because Darius chose a prudent magnanimity. He availed himself of the confusion of the Ionian revolt to subdue the islands of Lemnos and Imbros, with the aid of an Athenian force, a service never forgotten by his countrymen, and an act of open hostility to Persia. Then came the suppression of the revolt, and the appearance of the Phoenician fleet off the Hellespont. Hastily embarking his property and nearest friends, Miltiades fled, so hotly pursued that one of his five ships, carrying his son Metiochus, was taken before he reached a haven of safety in Imbros, whence the remaining four got safe to the port of Athens. Miltiades had now to stand his trial on the capital charge of tyranny, but his recent services procured him an honourable acquittal. His bold career had established his reputation at Athens,* and he was chosen the general of his tribe, in prospect of the Persian invasion. Among his colleagues was Aristides, and probably Themistocles, names which will soon fill their due space in our narrative.† Under such leaders the whole force of Athens marched out to meet the invaders, and beheld from the heights of Pentelicus the plain and bay of MARATHON crowded with their tents and ships. The story of the battle is told by Herodotus, who heard it from the men who fought there, with his usual fondness for striking incidents. But this brief account leaves several questions undecided, and it is entirely wanting in those details which enable a reader to look down upon a battle-field as if spread out beneath his sight, and so to understand the movements of the combatants. That unchanged aspect of the scene, on which the poet dwells in the lines at the head of this chapter, helps us to supply what the historian has left untold. At this day, just as twenty-three centuries and a half ago "The mountains look on Marathon, *Herod. vi. 132. + Themistocles was certainly at Marathon, though it is doubtful whether he was a general. He had been archon in B. C. 493. Eschylus, who himself fought at Marathon, throws some light upon the battle by allusions in his play of "The Persians," which was written to celebrate the victories of Salamis and Platea. Just below the great headland commanding the southern entrance to the channel which separates it from Euboea, the eastern coast of Attica is indented by a fine bay. It is enclosed on the north by the long rocky promontory, called, from its shape, Cynosura (the Dog's Tail), and on the south by a lesser spur of Mount Brilesus, or Pentelicus. The limestone hills sweep round from B.C. 490.] POSITION OF MARATHON. 389 cape to cape, leaving at their feet a plain of a crescent shape, about six miles in length and less than three miles wide in the centre. It was the ancient site of a tetrapolis, forming one of the twelve Attic districts before the time of Theseus; and one of its four villages was called, from a local hero, Marathon. The name occurs in Homer; the place was sacred to Hercules, and associated with some of the oldest Attic legends. Here Xuthus, the father of Ion, had reigned; and here the Athenians had helped the Heraclid refugees to defeat their persecutor Eurystheus. "The pleasant mead of Marathon," as it is called by Aristophanes, is a grassy level,* almost entirely free from trees, terminated at both ends by marshes, dry in summer, but flooded in the autumn, that on the north being much the larger. These marshes confined the ground available for an army to a length of between two and three miles; but a strip of firm land extends between the marshes and the sea, along the whole length of the beach, upon which the Persian galleys were drawn up, or, as some suppose, remained at anchor close to it. The ships of burthen and the horse-transports were anchored in the bay, and the Persian army lay encamped upon the plain. On the land side, the hills are crowned with cedars, pines, and olive-trees; and their lower slopes are covered with "the myrtle, arbutus, and the other low odoriferous shrubs that everywhere perfume the Attic air." Through the passes of these hills, three roads lead up to Athens. The central and most direct is that through Vrana, the supposed site of Marathon. The small Athenian army, on arriving at the heights, is presumed to have taken up its position so as to command this road; equally ready to fall back and meet the enemy behind the ridge, if they penetrated it by the more circuitous route through Enoë or, if the Persians attempted to pass to the left, over the spur of Pentelicus, the Athenians might have fallen on their exposed flank.† The position was alike strong for defence, and commanding for attack; and weighty arguments might be urged for either course. It is not easy to place ourselves in the position of the Athenian * As at Waterloo, the surface of the ground is now broken, though far more worthily, by the mound which was raised over the Athenian slain. In ancient warfare, an attack on the right flank was considered far more perilous than one on the left, because the left side was covered by the shield. This was one reason why the right of the line was the post of honour, as being the post of danger. generals. Our minds are dazzled by the glories of the event, and of the many similar victories down to the days of Plassy and Meeanee. With a small united band of disciplined freemen opposed to a host of Asiatic slaves, it would seem that the resolution to attack was at once the pledge of victory. One bold swift charge upon the unwieldy host, who are now paralysed with astonishment at the daring of their foes-one vain effort of resistance by their best troops-and then a confused scene of panic flight and fierce pursuit:—such is the conception often formed of Marathon and the like battles. But the Greeks who fought at Marathon could be sure of no such easy victory. The army before them was no mere horde of effeminate barbarians, whose very numbers ensured their confusion and defeat. They represented the power which, little more than half a century ago, had overthrown the three empires of Western Asia, subdued the Asiatic Greeks, and conquered Egypt;-the power which, newly organized by their present warlike king, had quelled the rebellions of Media and Babylon, extended the frontiers of the empire, crushed the revolt of Ionia, and subjected the islands of the Egaan. The Persians were the conquerors of Greeks, and not only of barbarians. Their unbroken course of victory had reached the shores of Hellas itself in the sad example of Eretria. The strangeness of their dress and arms had not yet come to be regarded as signs of weakness. The rhetorical exaggeration of Herodotus shows at least that the Persians were not an enemy to be despised. The Athenians, he says, (6 were the first of the Greeks who dared to look upon the Median garb, and to face men clad in that fashion. Until this time, the very name of the Medes had been a terror to the Greeks to hear."* It is one of the strange omissions of Herodotus, that he gives no account of the strength of either army, telling us only the numbers of the slain. Plato makes the Persians half a million; and other authorities vary from 200,000 to 600,000. A careful calculation, based on the known strength of the fleet, 600 triremes, seems to prove the last number to be not far from the truth.f The crews of the triremes are estimated at 120,000, and of the horse-transports at 40,000; the Persian and Sacian warriors, who were the flower of the army, at 30,000; the cavalry at 10,000; * Herod. vi. 112. + All these points of details are fully discussed in the following works :-Leake, Demi of Attica, pp. 99, foll.; Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles; Rawlinson's Herodotus, Notes to Book vi., and Appendix, Essay i. B.C. 490.] STRENGTH OF THE TWO ARMIES. 391 besides about 10,000 Greeks, pressed into the service, from the conquered islands. It is assumed that about half the crews would be required to remain on board; * and, making some allowance for the sick, the actual numbers on the field of Marathon would be from 100,000 to 120,000. Among these, the only heavy-armed troops were the 30,000 Persians and Sacians. Of the Athenian force we have no earlier enumeration than in the writers of the Augustan age, who make it 9,000 or 10,000 men. Looking at what we know of the number of the Athenian citizens, and the force they sent to the battle of Platæa, we may accept the 9,000 as the complement of heavy-armed soldiers, adding an equal number of light-armed slaves; for we know that great efforts were made to enrol this class.† But this little army was reinforced in a manner which forms one of the most affecting incidents of ancient history. They were already encamped on the heights above Marathon, when they were joined by the Platæans, who had marched out with their whole force, to requite the Athenians, in the hour of their extremity, for their protection against the tyranny of Thebes. For this noble act the Platæans were rewarded with a certain share of the Athenian citizenship, and they were henceforth included in the public prayers of Athens. The like attachment involved the destruction of their city in the Peloponnesian War; and to the latest age of Greek freedom it was told how the Platæans, alone of all the Greeks, had stood by the Athenians in the fore-front of the danger at Marathon. The total force of the Greeks was thus raised to 20,000 men ; and the disparity between the two armies was five or six to oneabout the same proportion as afterwards at Platæa. The heavyarmed, on whom the brunt of the battle would depend, were about three to one. Battles have often since been gained against even greater odds; but at Marathon the Persians were truly formidable as soldiers, and still more formidable from their unbroken course of victory. It was not, perhaps, impossible, by a bold advance, to have passed over the bodies of their foes along the road to Athens; but Hippias was there to tell the Persian generals how dear such a victory would be bought; and Darius had not sent them to purchase it by the blood of his best troops. He *This is on the assumption that the fleet remained at anchor. If the triremes were drawn up on the beach, nearly all their crews would be available as combatants. + Pausanias I., c. 32, § 3. The Athenians had neither cavalry nor archers. |