by Jim Lacey
19. N. G. L. Hammond makes the case that the Greeks took this route, but given the military disadvantages such a route would have encumbered them with, I do not find his reasoning convincing. See N. G. L. Hammond, “The Campaign and the Battle of Marathon,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 88 (1968): 13–57. Norman Doenges agrees with him, but his reasoning is also suspect, as it places the three-mile difference in the route at the center of his argument. However, in this case, a three-mile-shorter route does not equate to less marching time. The longer route, being a much better road over flat ground, would have allowed the Athenians the fastest approach to Marathon. See Norman A. Doenges, “The Campaign and Battle of Marathon,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 47, no. 1 (1998), 1–17.
20. The location of the Grove of Herakles was a matter of great dispute for a number of years but has now been definitively located by Eugene Vanderpool, in the southeast corner of the Plain of Marathon. See Eugene Vanderpool, “The Deme of Marathon and the Herakleion,” American Journal of Archaeology 70, no. 4 (October 1966): 319–323.
21. Herodotus, 6.109.
22. Ibid.
23. Herodotus, 6.110.
24. Even though this is not certain.
25. And if he had been dead or infirm, they would have turned to someone else who had distinguished himself in these earlier fights.
26. A possible answer to the question of why Miltiades got so much of the credit for victory if Callimachus was the real hero of the day is given in chapter 11.
27. His son Cimon later had a statue erected in honor of his father’s “victory” at Marathon, which is notable as the first work of Athens’s greatest sculptor, Phidias.
28. Nicholas Sekunda, Marathon 490 BC: The First Persian Invasion of Greece (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2002), p. 10. For an excellent discussion of the memorial and the breakthrough 1940 discovery that allowed it to be understood, see A. E. Raubitschek, “Two Monuments Erected After the Victory of Marathon,” American Journal of Archaeology 44, no. 1 (January–March 1940): 53–59.
29. Cornelius Nepos in his brief biography of Miltiades confirms some of this: “The next day, having set themselves in array at the foot of the hills opposite the enemy, they engaged in battle with a novel stratagem, and with the utmost impetuosity. For trees had been strewed in many directions, with this intention, that, while they themselves were covered by the high hills.” The trees could only be abittis, designed specifically to impede cavalry. One can easily picture the hoplites moving forward while hundreds of light troops or slaves move along the flank, placing abittis in depth to stop the Persian cavalry from sweeping into the Greek rear—or, alternatively, making sure that greater Persian numbers could not easily overlap the undefended flank of the phalanx. The reliability of Nepos has come into question, as he was writing five hundred years after the event. However, for a source he probably used Ephorus (who was writing much closer to the Battle of Marathon); and besides, the Greeks had used abittis in the past, and it made good sense to use them now. For anyone who wants Nepos’s short biography, an English translation may be accessed at: http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/nepos.htm#Miltiades/. For an interesting essay on the reliability of Nepos and his sources, see W. W. How, “Cornelius Nepos on Marathon and Paros,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 39 (1919): 48–61.
Chapter 19: THE DAY BEFORE
1. There is a weak tradition that states that spies in the Persian camp (possibly Ionians) approached the Greek camp and signaled that the cavalry was away. Unfortunately, the source (The Suda, authored by Suidas) is a Byzantine text, written over fifteen hundred years after the event, and it gives no source for this information.
Chapter 20: BATTLE
1. Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World.
2. Pritchett, Greek State at War, presents some colorful examples from lead pellets discovered by archaeologists at various sites.
3. Ancient Greeks rarely ate much for breakfast (a piece of bread dipped in wine or honey). Moreover, nervous soldiers are always disinclined to eat, not least because of an awareness that food in the stomach made belly wounds much worse than they would be otherwise—though such wounds were always a bad thing.
4. Aristides, Plutarch’s Lives.
5. There are several reconstructions of the order of the Greek line as it formed to meet the Persians. I have accepted that of Raubitschek, as it is listed by Sekunda (Marathon 490 BC).
6. I imagine the pursuit could not have halted on its own and would require a signal. Bugle calls were common in Greek armies, and only a bugle could be heard over the din of battle.
7. Philip Sabin has presented a new look for what a Roman battle must have looked like at the level of the individual soldiers. I have found his reconstruction convincing and believe that the battle in the center probably played out in close approximation to what Sabin lays out. Given the evidence presented by Herodotus, I do not believe his reconstruction of ancient battles applies to what took place on the flanks during the Battle of Marathon. See Philip Sabin, “The Face of Roman Battle,” Journal of Roman Studies 90 (2000): 1–17.
8. This probably counts only Athenian hoplites and excludes Plataean losses as well as slaves and light troops.
9. Plutarch, Moralia, 347C; and Lucian (Pro Laspu 3; a translation is available at http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/luc/wl2/wl204.htm).
10. F. Frost, “The Dubious Origins of the Marathon,” American Journal of Ancient History 4 (1979): 159–163.
11. It is odd that Herodotus does not make any mention of this fleet (or that of Eretria) in his account of Marathon or its preliminaries. The Athenians may have considered that their seventy ships were not sufficient to make much if any impression upon the overwhelming Persian naval force.
12. Nepos, Miltiades, VII.
13. Probably enough to pay for one summer’s campaign for the Athenian fleet.
14. Herodotus, 6.133.
Chapter 21: THE GREAT DEBATES
1. For an interesting essay on the difficulty of reconstructing Marathon or any other ancient battle, see N. Whatley, “On the Possibility of Reconstructing Marathon and Other Ancient Battles,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 84 (1964): 119–139.
2. Herodotus, 6.95 and 6.101.
3. The only ancient literary source stating the cavalry was definitely present is Nepos, Miltiades.
4. See Evelyn B. Harrison, “The South Frieze of the Nike Temple and the Marathon Painting in the Painted Stoa American,” Journal of Archaeology 76, no. 4 (October 1972): 353–378; and Gordon Shrimpton, “The Persian Cavalry at Marathon,” Phoenix 34, no. 1 (spring 1980): 20–37.
5. I will assume the Persians had no idea how difficult it would be, as they probably had the use of docks in Ionia and Eretria, when they previously loaded the horses aboard ships.
6. See the Battle of Pharsalus for an example of how Caesar took three thousand men from the veteran triarii cohorts and used them to rout many times their number of cavalry.
7. Herodotus, 6.112.
8. For a list of scientific papers on the topic by the research scientist who discovered this phenomenon, James L. McGaugh (research professor, neurobiology, University of California–Berkeley), see http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:cTT1sGQMxVoJ:www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm%3Ffaculty_id%3D2140+James+McGaugh,+a+professor+of+neurobiology+at+the+University+of+California&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us/.
9. These interviews were conducted for my book Takedown: The 3rd Infantry Division’s Twenty-one Day Assault on Baghdad (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2007). After Baghdad’s fall, participants in the heaviest fighting were taken back to the location of those fights and filmed as they described events. This was done in front of their compatriots, which kept the level of exaggeration to a minimum, as others who were present in the fight were on hand to question anything they thought was inaccurate. A copy of all these tapes has been donated to the Military History Institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
10. Charging at the run was not unknown in Greek war, an
d in fact, despite Herodotus’s claim that he knows of no other case (remember that Herodotus was not a soldier and had no personal experience in battle), many examples are known to historians. Pritchett (Greek State at War, part 4, p. 73) says, “It was disadvantageous to remain stationary and receive the onset of the enemy,” and then presents some examples of when the Athenians had charged at the double. As we have already looked at Pharsalus as an example of how cavalry was no match for unbroken infantry, it is worth noting that Caesar sent his men into the attack (about the same distance that the Athenians had to cover at Marathon) on the run and fully expected Pompey’s legion to meet him the same way.
11. Walter Donlan and James Thompson, “The Charge at Marathon: Herodotus 6.112,” Classical Journal 71, no. 4 (April–May 1976): 339–343.
12. Despite this level of conditioning, which included running ten or more miles day after day, I still recall when the boss brought in an aerobics instructor to conduct physical training one morning. Within half an hour, every paratrooper involved was panting and close to death. As I said, exercise is specific.
13. Pritchett (Greek State at War, vol. 2, p. 211) gives examples from Xenophon and Socrates lamenting the sorry state of military training in Athens. However, we cannot assume this was the case during this period, when the threats were many and immediate.
14. N. G. L. Hammond, “The Campaign and the Battle of Marathon,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 88 (1968): 28. A brilliant, if flawed (in some places), essay. His footnote listing of each of the major historians who have rejected one or more of these events in their entirety, without much (if any) analysis and without presenting any evidence, is particularly valuable.
15. For an excellent essay on this topic, see Harris Gary Hudson, “The Shield Signal at Marathon,” American Historical Review 42, no. 3 (April 1937): 443–459.
16. For an excellent analysis of the voyage and especially how long it would take to complete, see A. Trevor Hodge, “Marathon: The Persians’ Voyage,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 105 (1975): 155–173.
17. The Persians had collected the Eretrians from an island they had left them on when they landed at Marathon. They were later taken to Darius in Susa, “who did them no further harm and instead settled them in the land of the Kissians … about twenty-three miles from Susa” (Herodotus, 6.119).
18. Although the loss of the Persian core of the army might have raised a few eyebrows.
Conclusion
1. Aristophanes, The Acharnians. A copy can be viewed online at: http://classics.mit.edu/Aristophanes/acharnians.html/.
About the Author
JIM LACEY was an active-duty military officer for twelve years in the 82nd Airborne Division and the 101st Airborne Division. Lacey is currently a professor of strategy, war, and policy at the Marine War College, and an adjunct professor in the Johns Hopkins National Security Program. He also works as a consultant on a number of projects for the United States military. Lacey has written for several publications, including the New York Post and The New York Sun, appears regularly in Military History magazine, and was an embedded journalist for Time magazine during the invasion of Iraq.
