The First Clash (3 page)

Still, Athens’s victory over the tremendous power of Persia both startled and amazed the other Greek cities. It is a safe assumption that the Persian Empire was equally surprised. For the Greeks, the example of Marathon stiffened spines and gave them the confidence to face the even more powerful Persian invasion of 480 BC. For the captive states within the Persian Empire, it gave hope that they might one day throw off the Persian yoke. Here was positive proof that Persian arms were not invincible. In fact, soon after Marathon, Egypt rose in a revolt that was suppressed only after a massive Persian military effort. Egypt’s revolt and growing unrest within the empire drove home the point that the Great King of Persia could not let the decisive judgment of Marathon stand. Although Persia prevailed, the Egyptian sacrifice gave the Greeks time to prepare for the second invasion all knew was coming.

Had Athens’s hoplites failed at Marathon, however, a second invasion would never have been necessary. The Persians would have destroyed Athens, and a reinforced Persian army would likely have conquered or forced the submission of the remainder of Greece during the next campaigning season. With Athens lost and the remainder of Greece absorbed into a great Eastern Empire, Western civilization would have been smothered in its cradle. No wonder, then, that when Sir Edward Creasy wrote
The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World
in 1854 he began with the story of Marathon.
³
In the more than 150 years since Creasy wrote his work, the world has been racked by two great world wars and almost innumerable other conflicts, yet his judgment still holds. As far as the future of Western civilization is concerned, no battle was as important, or as decisive, as that fought at Marathon twenty-five hundred years ago.

For historians, the Greco-Persian conflicts and above all the Battle of Marathon hold a unique importance, as they represent the first major clash between a nascent Western civilization and the already old civilizations
of the East. The cultural fault line between East and West determined by the Greco-Persian wars has remained a focal point for civilizational conflict over the subsequent twenty-five hundred years.

As important as Marathon was to the survival of the political and cultural aspects of Western civilization, for the student of military history Marathon has special appeal, as it is the first military engagement of antiquity for which we have a detailed contemporaneous record of the battle, its antecedents, and its aftermath. While our primary source, Herodotus, is called the “Father of Lies” almost as often as he is called the “Father of History,” the assembled evidence, taken as a whole, shows that his account of the battle is remarkably accurate.
⁴
Unfortunately, Herodotus himself admitted that he was interested only in relating the “great” deeds of the Greeks (rather than all of the details), and his account consists of a few short paragraphs that present just the highlights of the battle.
⁵
Worse, he apparently never served in the battle line as a hoplite, and therefore his descriptions of battles and military affairs are always suspect. This, in turn, has led to a small cottage industry among ancient historians, as each vies to present the most original interpretation of what Herodotus states.

Unfortunately, too many of the great classicists tried to interpret Herodotus as history when they would have been on firmer ground if they had examined his writings as works of biased journalism. Too many have forgotten that Herodotus earned his living by reading his material in front of Athenian audiences, who paid him for the privilege. As his prosperity rested on the happiness of the Athenians listening to him, Herodotus rarely relates facts that would have angered his audience. Moreover, like any good journalist, Herodotus treated his sources well. Those who talked to him came across favorably, while those who shunned him often saw their ancestor’s place in history trashed. Herodotus was not above fabricating conversations to bring his stories to life and make them appear more factual. Furthermore, while those scholars who have made careers of studying Herodotus were great classicists, few of them were ever soldiers or had any particular interest in or knowledge of military history.
⁶
Over the years, this has caused them to write a number of questionable arguments about the nature and character of warfare and battles, particularly the Battle of Marathon.

Still, all historians are only as good as their sources, and for historians of the Greco-Persian wars, Herodotus remains the most important ancient
source. As such, volumes have been written on his reliability, starting with Plutarch’s attack in
On the Malice of Herodotus
and continuing to the present day.
⁷
The key problem historians face when trying to judge Herodotus’s reliability is dealing with the dearth of other material from the period with which to compare his work. Undoubtedly, there are times when Herodotus says things so outlandish that it is impossible to take him seriously. However, as it concerns the main phases of the Greco-Persian wars and in particular the run-up to the Battle of Marathon, what the great historian has to say appears plausible. In fact, where there is other extant evidence from the period, Herodotus comes off very favorably. His history of events in Persia sits comfortably alongside the information provided in the Persian Behistun inscription and the Babylonian Chronicles.
⁸
Moreover, each new archaeological find tends to confirm the essence of what Herodotus reports.

In short, although a historian needs to be careful when dealing with Herodotus, as he must with any single source, it is never wise to stray too far from what the “Father of History” has to say on any particular event. Of course, many historians have ignored this caution. In their search for an alternative to Herodotus, many have seized upon an alternative narrative produced approximately a hundred years after the Battle of Marathon by Ctesias, a Greek in Persian service. Many of the well-known classical historians of the nineteenth century put great store in Ctesias’s version of events. Unfortunately for these historians, the later decipherment of contemporaneous Persian sources proved that Ctesias was at a minimum an unreliable narrator. Despite his proven unreliability, many historians still uncritically use him as a source. As A. R. Burn states, “The name of Ctesias still lurks with distressing frequency in the footnotes of modern works on the Persian Wars.”
⁹
To this, I also must plead guilty. I too have used Ctesias’s work in this book, but have done so sparingly and always with a great deal of circumspection.

There are of course a number of other minor sources that present some added information about the Battle of Marathon, but they must all be used with caution. There is, for instance, Cornelius Nepos, a first-century Roman chronicler who may have had access to a more ancient work by Ephorus.
¹⁰
Several generations of authors have used his testimony as it was retold in a Byzantine
Suda
, a thousand years after his death, as proof that the Persian horses were landed at Marathon but were away grazing on the day of the battle. However, one must be careful about giving too much
weight to a story written five hundred years after the battle and retold in a source further removed from the original author than we are from the height of the Byzantine Empire.

The same must be said of Plutarch, who presents us with biographies of two Athenian generals at Marathon—Aristides and Themistocles. He was also writing several centuries after the events of Marathon and, along with another historian of the period, Diodorus Siculus, shows signs of contamination by the writings of Ctesias. Still, where Herodotus is silent, historians can glean useful knowledge from these sources, as they often still had available to them the writings of contemporary historians that have long been lost to us.

While the work of the great classicists provides an excellent foundation, only a deep knowledge of military history, the nature of war, and the realities of close bloody conflict can allow one to create an accurate reconstruction of a battle whose true dimensions have long eluded historians. It is also crucial to understand the development of the Persian and Greek military systems, along with those elements of state power that bear on the ability of both parties to wage war. Only by placing Marathon within this larger historical and institutional context is it possible to understand the outcome of the battle.

For almost two centuries, historians have marveled over how a supposed bunch of hurriedly collected rustics beat a professional battle-hardened Persian army. For most of them, the lopsided result—sixty-four hundred Persians dead for fewer than two hundred Athenians—is one of the many unfathomable mysteries of history. However, given the facts, what is truly remarkable is not that the Greeks won, but rather that any Persians left the Plain of Marathon alive.

This leads us to consider one of the greatest debates still raging among military historians: Is there a definable way of Western warfare that is superior to that of any other culture? Victor Hanson, who started this debate, marks the Battle of Marathon as the first indication of a discernible difference between Western and Eastern methods of war. Because Professor Hanson (on this topic, at least) has abandoned the intellectual battlefield, historians have begun increasingly to doubt the existence of the “Western way of war” and its alleged superiority to other methods of warfare. In no uncertain terms, this book declares them wrong and picks up the cudgels Professor Hanson has let fall. Although I have taken issue with some of what Hanson has written, on this central issue he is correct.

Writing this book has been a venture of discovery. It is my sincere wish
that the synthesis of scholarship and experience offered here sparks a fresh debate on not only the Battle of Marathon, but also the entire field of ancient military history. The final word on the Greco-Persian wars has not yet been written. In all likelihood, it will never be written. Unless the future brings us a major find that forces a reexamination of our current evidence, historians must make use of the limited sources that exist today. I contend that the problem a student of the Battle of Marathon confronts is that this evidence has been so misused or misinterpreted by several generations of historians that the true events of the battle have been lost. What follows is my interpretation of the evidence. I expect that it will spark a large amount of serious debate, and I look forward to engaging in it.

THE MOMENT OF BATTLE

A
t the dawn of the fifth century BC, Persia stood triumphant. For over five decades, her warriors had crushed all who opposed them. In that time, no city had ever withstood a Persian siege, and all the armies of the known world’s most powerful civilizations had met their ruin trying to halt Persia’s inexorable march of conquest. On their near invincible warriors, Persian kings built the world’s first global empire, stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to India, destroying, in the process, a dozen smaller empires and absorbing the people of a hundred races.

In 490 BC, the mighty Persian king Darius looked west, toward two insignificant Greek city-states that had insulted his empire. Tiny Sparta had sent emissaries to the Persian capital warning the “Great King” to cease his attacks on the Greek cities in Asia; more insulting, Athens had summoned the audacity to send troops onto Persian soil and to burn a Persian city, Sardis, before scurrying home to safety. Tiring of the insults, King Darius sent emissaries to Athens and Sparta demanding the gifts of submission—earth and water. In answer, the Spartans threw the king’s messengers into a well and told them to help themselves to all the earth and water they desired, while the Athenians simply put the messengers to the sword.

Enraged, Darius ordered his army to destroy Athens and to enslave the survivors. However, trouble within the empire forced Darius to delay retribution. Eight years after Athens had reduced Sardis to ashes, the dreaded Persian army finally arrived in Greece and mustered its strength on the Plain of Marathon, a scant two dozen miles from Athens. For nine days, ten thousand Athenian hoplites watched the Persian army prepare for battle and wondered how they would be able to resist an army of professional
warriors three times their number. Some prayed for the gods to intervene, while others hoped the Persians would delay just a day or two longer. For every Athenian present at Marathon knew that the Spartan army, boasting the best warriors in the world, was marching hard to their aid.

On September 12, 490 BC, the waiting ended. The Persians were moving, and Athens, in mortal danger, could wait no longer. Spartans or no Spartans, Athenian commanders prepared to attack. Before dawn, ten thousand hoplites formed up in columns and waited for the trumpets to signal the order to advance. Eight men deep on the flanks and four deep in the center, the phalanx of bristling spear points and blazing shields began its slow, inexorable march toward the enemy. At first, the Persians could not believe their eyes and wondered how such a meager force could ever hope to break their lines. Some thought it was just a demonstration and would be followed by a hasty retreat. Others simply thought the Greeks mad.