I. MARATHON
“IN the reigns of Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes,” says Herodotus, “Greece suffered more sorrows than in twenty generations before.”1 The Greek nation had to pay the penalty of its development; spreading everywhere, it was bound sooner or later to come into conflict with a major power. Using water as their highway, the Hellenes had opened up a trade route that extended from the eastern coast of Spain to the farthest ports of the Black Sea. This European water route—Greco-Italian-Sicilian—competed more and more with the Oriental land and water route—Indo-Perso-Phoenician; and thereby arose a lasting and bitter rivalry in which war, by all human precedents, was inevitable, and in which the battles of Lade, Marathon, Plataea, Himera, Mycale, the Eurymedon, the Granicus, Issus, Arbela, Cannae, and Zama were merely incidents. The European system won against the Oriental partly because transport by water is cheaper than transport by land, and partly because it is almost a law of history that the rugged, warlike north conquers the easygoing, art-creating south.
In the year 512 Darius I of Persia crossed the Bosporus, invaded Scythia, and, marching westward, conquered Thrace and Macedon. When he returned to his capitals he had enlarged his realm to embrace Persia, Afghanistan, northern India, Turkestan, Mesopotamia, northern Arabia, Egypt, Cyprus, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, the eastern Aegean, Thrace, and Macedonia; the greatest empire that the world has yet seen had overextended itself to include and awaken its future conqueror. Only one important nation remained outside this vast system of government and trade, and that was Greece. By 510 Darius had hardly heard of it outside Ionia. “The Athenians,” he asked—“who are they?”2 About 506 the dictator Hippias, deposed by revolution at Athens, fled to the Persian satrap at Sardis, begged for help in regaining his power, and offered, in that event, to hold Attica under the Persian dominion.
To this temptation there was added in 500 a timely provocation. The Greek cities of Asia Minor, under Persian rule for half a century, suddenly dismissed their satraps and declared their independence, Aristagoras of Miletus went to Sparta to enlist its aid, without success; he passed on to Athens, mother city of many Ionian towns, and pleaded so well that the Athenians sent a fleet of twenty ships to support the revolt. Meanwhile the Ionians were acting with a chaotic vigor characteristic of the Greeks; each rebel city raised its own troops, but kept them under separate command; and the Milesian army, led with more bravery than wisdom, marched upon Sardis and burned the great city to the ground. The Ionian Confederacy organized a united fleet, but the Samian contingent secretly made terms with the Persian satrap, and when, in 494, the Persian navy met the Ionian at Lade, in one of the major sea battles of history, the half hundred ships of the Samians sailed away without fighting, and many other contingents followed their example.3 The defeat of the Ionians was complete, and Ionian civilization never quite recovered from this physical and spiritual disaster. The Persians laid siege to Miletus, captured it, killed the males, enslaved the women and children, and so completely plundered the city that Miletus became from that day a minor town. Persian rule was re-established throughout Ionia, and Darius, resentful of Athenian interference, resolved to conquer Greece. Little Athens, as the result of her generous assistance to her daughter cities, found herself face to face with an empire literally a hundred times greater than Attica.
In the year 491 a Persian fleet of six hundred ships under Datis struck across the Aegean from Samos, stopped on the way to subdue the Cyclades, and reached the coast of Euboea with 200,000 men. Euboea submitted after a brief struggle, and the Persians crossed the bay to Attica. They pitched their camp near Marathon, because Hippias had advised them that in that plain they could use their cavalry, in which they were overwhelmingly superior to the Greeks.4
All Greece was in turmoil at the news. The Persian arms had never yet been defeated, the advance of the Empire had never yet been stopped; how could a nation so weak, so scattered, so unused to unity, hold back this wave of Oriental conquest? The northern Greek states were loath to resist so monstrous a power; Sparta hesitatingly prepared, but allowed superstition to delay its mobilization; little Plataea acted quickly, and sent a large proportion of its citizens by forced marches to Marathon. At Athens Miltiades freed and enlisted slaves as well as freemen, and led them over the mountains to the battlefield. When the rival armies met, the Greeks had some twenty thousand men, the Persians probably one hundred thousand.5 The Persians were brave, but they were accustomed to individual fighting, and were not trained for the mass defense and attack of the Greeks. The Greeks united discipline with courage, and though they committed the folly of dividing the command among ten generals, each supreme for a day, they were saved by the example of Aristides, who yielded his leadership to Miltiades.6 Under this blunt soldier’s vigorous strategy the small Greek force routed the Persian horde in what was not only one of the decisive battles, but also one of the most incredible victories, of history. If we may accept Greek testimony on such a matter, 6,400 Persians, but only 192 Greeks, fell at Marathon. After the battle was over the Spartans arrived, mourned their tardiness, and praised the victors.