by Jim Lacey
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.
Prologue
THE MOMENT OF BATTLE
At 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.
The Athenian hoplites began to pick up the pace, first to a fast walk and then to a trot. The hoplites crushed together, shoulder to shoulder and shield to shield, as each tried to cover as much of his exposed right side behind his neighbor’s shield as possible. Dread and fear melted away now that the army was advancing. Men who had soiled themselves in the line drew strength from the surging men surrounding them. At six hundred yards’ distance, the mass of men began to scream their fierce and nerve-shattering battle cry: Alleeee!
Hastily, the Persian commanders aligned their troops. Men holding wicker shields went to the front as thousands of archers arrayed themselves behind them. The Persian army showed no panic. They were professional soldiers, victors of a hundred bloody battles. In another moment, the archers would release tens of thousands of deadly bolts into the sky. The spearmen would wait for the arrows to decimate their foe and then advance to slaughter the shattered remnant.
But the Persians had never before faced an army like this one. Athenian hoplites learned the art of war against other hoplites, and their kind of war was not decided by a hail of arrows. It was settled by a collision of wooden shields and deadly iron-tipped spears, wielded by heavily armored men. It was a horrible and terrifying confrontation of pushing, screaming, half-crazed men who gouged, stabbed, and kicked at their opponents until one side could bear the agony no longer and broke. The victors would then launch a murderous pursuit of their defeated foes as the bloodlust propelled them forward.
This was the kind of war charging down on the Persians, and it arrived at almost incomprehensible speed, for at two hundred yards’ distance the Athenian trot became a sprint. Finally, the Persian archers let fly, but to no effect. Never having seen such a rapid advance, they mistimed their shots and most of the arrows flew harmlessly over the charging hoplites. Hastily, the archers reloaded and the shield bearers uneasily began inching backward as ten thousand metal-encased killers were almost upon them.
In a shuddering instant, hoplites smashed into the lightly protected Persians and convulsed their defensive line. Then the killing began.
PART I
AN EMPIRE
MADE IN WAR
Chapter 1
AN EMPIRE RISES
In 547 BC, Croesus, the king of Lydia, had reason to feel satisfied. To his west, where the Greek cities of Ionia dotted the Aegean coastline, a long, costly war had finally ended. These often troublesome Greeks were presently awed by Lydian power and were now paying him annual tribute. To the north, from which the terrifying Scythian horsemen in previous generations had swept down in devastating raids, it had been quiet since his father, Alyattes II, broke the back of Cimmerian power decades before.1 To the south, Babylonia remained a strong and dependable ally, a state of affairs that was unlikely to change as long as mighty Babylon felt threatened by the power of the Medes, who occupied the lands east of both Lydia and Babylon.
Since the crushing of the Cimmerians and the demise of the dreaded Assyrian Empire in 613 BC, the Medes had been Lydia’s most serious threat. For five bloody years, during the reign of Alyattes II, Lydia fought an exhausting war to halt Median expansion. Herodotus reports that the war ended only when in the midst of a great battle both sides withdrew in terror as a solar eclipse darkened the field.2 Whatever the influence of the eclipse, the truth is that the war so exhausted both sides, they willingly allowed Babylon to arbitrate an end to the fighting.
The “Peace of the Eclipse” lasted a generation. In that time, Lydia, the first state to create a standardized coinage, grew rich. So rich, in fact, that even today Croesus’s name is synonymous with vast wealth and riches. However, the Medes, while not as rich as Lydia, had also grown powerful and ever more threatening. So it was with a certain amount of contentment that Croesus had watched the Medes spend the recent years engaged in a bloody civil war with their cousins the Persians. But by 547, that war had ended and a new Persian-Median king, Cyrus, was solidifying his hold on power. For Croesus this was a troubling development, as the combined power of the Medes and Persians was a dire threat and the youthful Cyrus appeared restless. To forestall a Persian invasion of Lydia, Croesus determined to wage a preemptive war before Cyrus could complete his consolidation of power. But first he had to determine if the gods would bless his enterprise.
According to Herodotus, prior to starting his war with the Persians, Croesus sent envoys to determine the accuracy of each of the major oracles used by the Greeks to foretell the future. After putting each to the test, Croesus decided that the oracle of Delphi was the most accurate. He sent envoys bearing rich gifts to inquire as to the outcome of a war between the Lydians and the Persians. He was much cheered by the Delphic oracle’s promise that if the Lydian army marched against the Persians, a great empire would be destroyed. Unfortunately for Croesus, it did not occur to him to ask another important question: Which great empire would be destroyed? He interpreted the oracle’s words as it best suited his desires and forwarded immense gifts to Delphi, and to several other temples, to secure the full support of the gods.
When the threat Cyrus presented first arose, Croesus also began a
period of active diplomacy in an attempt to assemble allies for the coming fight. This resulted in promises of support from Babylonia, Egypt, and even Sparta. If only he had waited for these forces to gather at his capital, the Persian state might well have died in infancy. But believing immediate action was necessary and buoyed by Delphi’s promise of success, Croesus determined to strike out with only his own forces on hand. Beyond the promises of Delphi, Croesus’s confidence rested on the fact that Lydia possessed what was probably the most formidable army in the Near East. It consisted of heavy armored infantry (much of it from the Greek cities along the Aegean) and a formidable host of local levies. However, the mainstay of the Lydian army was its elite heavy cavalry, universally feared for its expert use of lances from horseback.
With the gods propitiated by numerous gifts of gold, the Lydian army launched itself against King Cyrus. In 547 BC, the Lydians marched into Cappadocia, which had been under Median lordship since Assyria’s collapse. After crossing the Halys River, which had been set as the Median-Lydian boundary by the Peace of the Eclipse, Croesus captured the supposedly strongly fortified city of Pteria and devastated the surrounding country, while waiting to see how Cyrus would react to the provocation. He did not have long to wait. Cyrus, apparently forewarned of the attack, was ready to move immediately after receiving information as to the direction of the Lydian offensive. Moving rapidly from his new capital at Ecbatana, Cyrus gathered further recruits along his line of march, and in what must have been a matter of a couple of weeks, the Persians pitched their camp within striking distance of the Lydian army. Herodotus indicates that the battle that took place was fierce and that many fell on both sides. However, when the fighting ended, at the onset of darkness, there was still no victor. Croesus, who must have been shocked by the speed and strength of Cyrus’s response, blamed his lack of success on the Persians’ greater numbers and determined to fall back on his capital, Sardis, and await the arrival of his allies.
