Battle of Marathon (490 BC): How Athens Stopped Persia

The Battle of Marathon was fought in 490 BC on the plain of Marathon, north-east of Athens, between the Athenians with their Plataean allies and an invading army sent by the Persian king Darius I. Against expectations, the Greek hoplites routed the Persians and forced them to withdraw. The victory ended the first Persian invasion of Greece and became one of the most celebrated moments in Western history.

Background: Persia and the Greeks

By the late 6th century BC, the Achaemenid Persian Empire stretched from the Aegean to the Indus valley. It included the Greek cities of Ionia, on the western coast of modern Turkey.

Athens at this time was a young democracy. Its last tyrant, Hippias, had been expelled in 510 BC and had taken refuge with the Persians, while the reforms of Cleisthenes in 508/507 BC gave ordinary male citizens a direct say in government. The Athenian army was a citizen militia, organised by the ten tribes Cleisthenes had created, each with its own elected general.

In 499 BC these Ionian cities rebelled against Persian rule. Athens and Eretria sent ships to help, and in 498 BC the rebels burned the city of Sardis, a regional Persian capital. After crushing the revolt in 494 BC, Darius resolved to punish Athens and Eretria and to extend his power into mainland Greece. Herodotus tells a famous story that Darius ordered a servant to remind him of the Athenians three times every day at dinner, though this may be literary embellishment.

A first expedition under his son-in-law Mardonius in 492 BC reasserted Persian control in Thrace and Macedonia, but much of its fleet was wrecked in a storm off Mount Athos. In 491 BC Darius sent heralds to the Greek cities demanding earth and water, the traditional tokens of submission. Many islands agreed, but Athens and Sparta refused and, according to Herodotus, put the heralds to death.

The Persian expedition of 490 BC

In 490 BC a Persian fleet commanded by Datis and Artaphernes crossed the Aegean. Herodotus says it numbered 600 warships, though modern historians treat ancient figures with caution. The Persians took Naxos and then besieged Eretria, which fell after a few days through betrayal. In revenge for Sardis they burned its temples and, according to Herodotus, deported many of its people, who were later resettled by Darius in the Persian heartland.

They then landed at the bay of Marathon, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Athens. They were guided by Hippias, the former tyrant of Athens, who hoped to be restored to power. The plain offered good ground for cavalry and a sheltered beach for the fleet.

The Greek response

Athens sent its army, usually estimated at about 9,000 to 10,000 hoplites (heavily armed citizen soldiers), to block the roads from Marathon. The small city of Plataea sent its whole force of perhaps 1,000 men. Before the battle the Athenians sent a runner, Pheidippides, to Sparta to ask for help. Herodotus says he reached Sparta the day after leaving Athens, a journey of roughly 240 kilometres (150 miles). The Spartans agreed but said religious law forbade them from marching until the full moon.

The Athenians camped at a sanctuary of Heracles at the edge of the plain, where they blocked the routes towards Athens. For several days neither side attacked. The Greeks had no cavalry or archers to speak of and were reluctant to fight on open ground, while the Persians may have been waiting for supporters inside Athens to betray the city.

The size of the Persian army is uncertain. Modern estimates commonly range from about 20,000 to 25,000 fighting men, but some historians suggest more or fewer.

The battle

Command of the Athenian army was shared among ten generals, with the polemarch (war archon) Callimachus holding a deciding vote. Herodotus says the generals were split on whether to fight, and that Miltiades, an experienced commander, persuaded Callimachus to vote for battle.

Miltiades knew the Persians well. He had ruled the Thracian Chersonese (the Gallipoli peninsula) as a vassal of Darius, but fled to Athens in 493 BC after the Ionian Revolt failed, and was tried there for his time as a tyrant before being acquitted. The Persian commanders were Datis, a Mede who had served in the suppression of the Ionian Revolt, and Artaphernes, a nephew of Darius and son of the satrap of Sardis.

Herodotus describes the Greek order of battle. Callimachus, as polemarch, led the right wing, the place of honour, while the Plataeans held the far left. The ten Athenian tribal regiments stood in between, and the line was stretched to match the length of the Persian front.

After several days of stand-off, the Athenians attacked. Miltiades thinned the centre of the Greek line and strengthened the wings. Herodotus writes that the Greeks advanced at a run across the plain to reduce the time they were exposed to Persian arrows. He gives the distance as eight stades, about 1.5 kilometres; many modern historians think the hoplites, carrying heavy shields and armour, could only have run the final stretch.

Why the Athenians chose that moment is debated. One theory, based on a much later Byzantine reference, suggests that the Persian cavalry was away, perhaps being loaded onto ships for an attack elsewhere. Herodotus does not mention cavalry in the battle at all, and the question remains open.

The Persians broke through the weak Greek centre, but the stronger Greek wings defeated the troops facing them and then turned inwards, attacking the Persian centre from both sides. Persian soldiers fled to their ships, and the Greeks captured seven vessels. Callimachus was among those killed, as was Cynegirus, the brother of the playwright Aeschylus, who also fought in the battle.

According to Herodotus, about 6,400 Persians died, against 192 Athenians. The Athenian dead were buried on the battlefield beneath a large mound, known as the Soros, which still stands. This was an unusual honour, since Athenians who died in war were normally brought home for burial in the city. A separate mound, thought by its excavators to be the grave of the Plataean dead, has been identified nearby.

Aftermath

The surviving Persian fleet sailed around Cape Sounion towards Athens, hoping to find the city undefended. Herodotus reports a rumour that a shield was flashed as a signal to the Persians from the hills, and that some Athenians suspected traitors in the city, though he himself doubted who was responsible. The Athenian army marched back quickly and arrived first, and the Persians sailed home. A force of 2,000 Spartans arrived after the battle, viewed the battlefield and praised the Athenians.

Miltiades won great fame but died soon afterwards. A failed expedition against the island of Paros left him wounded, and he was put on trial in Athens and heavily fined; he died of his injury before he could pay. Ten years later, Darius’s son Xerxes launched a far larger invasion, leading to the battles of Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea.

The Athenians honoured the battle for generations. The men who fought there, the Marathonomachoi, became a byword for courage and civic virtue. A painting of the battle decorated the Painted Stoa in the Athenian agora, and the playwright Aeschylus, who died decades later, was remembered by an epitaph that mentioned his service at Marathon rather than his plays.

Myths and facts

Myth: a runner carried news of victory from Marathon to Athens and then dropped dead. Herodotus, the earliest source, says nothing of this. The story appears centuries later in writers such as Plutarch and Lucian, and the runner’s name varies; the run Herodotus does describe is Pheidippides’ journey to Sparta before the battle.

Myth: the Spartans fought alongside the Athenians. The only Greek allies at Marathon were the Plataeans. The Spartans arrived after the fighting was over.

Myth: a tiny Greek force beat a Persian army of hundreds of thousands. Some later ancient writers gave hugely inflated Persian numbers. Modern estimates of the Persian fighting force are far smaller, commonly about 20,000 to 25,000, so the Greeks were outnumbered perhaps two to one rather than ten to one or more.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 499 BC: The Ionian Revolt against Persian rule begins.
• 498 BC: Ionian rebels, aided by Athens and Eretria, burn Sardis.
• 494 BC: Persia crushes the Ionian Revolt.
• 490 BC, summer: A Persian fleet under Datis and Artaphernes takes Naxos and Eretria.
• 490 BC, August or September: The Athenians and Plataeans defeat the Persians at Marathon.
• 480 BC: Xerxes invades Greece; battles of Thermopylae and Salamis.
• 1896, April: The first Olympic marathon race is held in Athens, inspired by the legend.

Why it matters

Marathon showed that Greek hoplites could defeat a Persian army, boosting Athenian confidence in the early years of its democracy. Later Greeks, and many in modern Europe and North America, saw it as a defining moment for Greek independence. Through the marathon race, its name lives on worldwide, much as later battles such as Hastings became shorthand for turning points in history.