The Battle of Marathon
The Persian Empire and the Greek City-States
By the end of the sixth century BC, the Persian Empire had grown into the largest power the ancient world had ever seen. Under King Darius I, Persia controlled territories stretching from Egypt and Asia Minor in the west to India in the east. A number of Greek city-states along the coast of Asia Minor — Ionia — had come under Persian rule, and in 499 BC they rose in revolt against their Persian overlords. Athens sent ships to support the revolt. When it was crushed, Darius resolved to punish Athens. Note that Marathon is not one of the prescribed battles (Thermopylae and Salamis are), so treat this lesson as context for the Persian Wars rather than as a source-based topic in its own right.
The first major Persian expedition against mainland Greece came in 490 BC. The Persian fleet crossed the Aegean, attacked the island of Euboea, and then sailed to the bay of Marathon on the coast of Attica, roughly forty kilometres north-east of Athens. The choice of landing site was deliberate: Marathon offered a broad coastal plain suitable for the large Persian cavalry force. The Persians expected that either the Athenians would not dare fight, or that the cavalry would scatter any infantry foolish enough to engage in the open.
The Athenian Decision
Athens faced an existential crisis. The Persian army — estimates vary, but ancient sources suggest tens of thousands of infantry and cavalry — was far larger than the Athenian force of roughly nine or ten thousand hoplites. Athens sent a runner, Pheidippides, to Sparta to ask for military aid. The Spartans said they would help but could not march until the Carneia — a sacred festival of Apollo during which Spartan law forbade warfare — was over. They arrived too late to take part in the battle. Only the small city of Plataea sent a contingent, around a thousand hoplites, to stand alongside the Athenians.
The Athenian commanders debated what to do. The ten elected generals were divided: five voted to fight, five to wait. The tie was broken by the polemarch Callimachus, who sided with those who favoured action. The general most associated with the battle’s outcome was Miltiades, a man with first-hand experience of Persian methods of fighting, having served a Persian-controlled Chersonese on the Hellespont (the strait bordering the Gallipoli peninsula) before returning to Athens.
At Marathon in 490 BC, the Athenian generals were deadlocked five-to-five. Polemarch Callimachus cast the deciding vote to attack. General Miltiades, who had first-hand knowledge of Persian fighting methods from his time commanding the Chersonese on the Hellespont, devised the tactic that won the battle.
The Battle: Miltiades’ Tactic
Miltiades took a calculated risk. He deliberately thinned the Athenian centre to the minimum number of ranks needed to hold the line, while strengthening the wings on either side. His hoplite line was roughly a mile wide, matching the Persian deployment, but much weaker in the middle than a standard phalanx would be.
The Greeks charged at a run. Ancient sources describe the hoplites covering the distance at pace — about a mile, though this has been questioned — to close quickly with the Persians and reduce the time during which they were exposed to Persian archery. The Persians, who had expected a slow advance that their archers could pick apart, were surprised by the speed and weight of the Greek attack.
The plan worked as Miltiades intended. The thinned Greek centre was pushed back by the stronger Persian centre, but the stronger Greek wings drove their Persian opponents from the field. Rather than stopping to pursue the fleeing Persians on the flanks, the Greek wings then wheeled inward and attacked the victorious Persian centre from both sides at once. Caught between two closing lines of hoplites, the Persian centre collapsed. Many Persians were driven back to their ships on the shore; others were killed in the marshes at the edge of the plain.
After the Persian retreat, the victorious Athenian army faced a further danger. The Persian fleet had not been destroyed: it sailed around the Attic coast towards Athens, apparently in the hope of taking the city before the army could return. The hoplites marched back to Athens — in full armour, after a major battle — and arrived in time to man the walls before the Persian fleet appeared. The Persians, seeing that surprise was impossible, withdrew. According to later tradition, a herald ran ahead of the army to bring the news of victory: this is the origin of the modern marathon race, though the ancient version of the story attributes the run to Pheidippides, the man sent earlier to Sparta.
Visual Evidence: the Red-Figure Kylix
A red-figure kylix painted by the Triptolemos Painter — now in the collections of a major museum — shows a Greek and a Persian in single combat. The Greek figure is depicted in the distinctive equipment of a hoplite: round shield, spear, close-fitting helmet. The Persian figure wears clothing characteristic of eastern dress as the Athenians imagined it: a sleeved tunic, trousers and a soft Phrygian cap. The contrast is deliberate and loaded with meaning.
The kylix presents the conflict between Greece and Persia as a contest between two completely different kinds of fighter and, by extension, two different ways of life. The hoplite stands straight, well-armoured, visually ordered; the Persian is being pushed back, his posture less stable. Athenian vase painters returned to this theme repeatedly in the decades after Marathon and Salamis, reinforcing the ideological message that Greek courage and Greek equipment had triumphed over Persian numbers and eastern tyranny.
The red-figure kylix by the Triptolemos Painter shows a Greek hoplite and a Persian warrior in single combat. The visual contrast — armoured hoplite versus eastern-dressed Persian — was ideologically charged, presenting the Persian Wars as a victory of Greek order and courage over eastern tyranny.
Marathon mattered far beyond its immediate military result. Athens had stood alone against the greatest empire in the world — without Spartan help, with only the small Plataean contingent alongside — and had won. The psychological impact was enormous. Athenians who fought at Marathon were known as the Marathonomachai, the “Marathon fighters”, and for generations the battle was held up as proof of Athenian courage, discipline and democratic virtue.
The victory also shaped Athenian political confidence. It gave the democratic city-state, still relatively young in 490 BC, a founding military narrative: Athens had saved Greece when others would not. This narrative was deployed repeatedly in the fifth and fourth centuries to justify Athenian leadership of the Greek world. The burial mound of the Athenian dead — the soros — stood on the plain of Marathon and was a pilgrimage site for later generations.