Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE BATTLE OF MARATHON
For the Athenians, victory in the
Battle of Marathon
set the seal on their democracy and
marked the start of a new self-confident era. And indeed, it was the most remarkable of victories.
The Athenian army, with their allies the Plataeans, fearful of the Persians' superior numbers
and of their cavalry and archers, held a defensive position astride the mountain pass leading
into the plain of Marathon for five days, waiting for Spartan reinforcements. On the fifth day
the Persians gave up hope of joining battle at Marathon and embarked their cavalry to
advance on Athens by sea, sending their infantry forwards to cover the operation. With the
Persian forces divided, Athenian general
Miltiades
saw his opportunity, Spartan help or no,
and sent his hoplites racing downhill to get quickly under the hail of Persian arrows and
engage their infantry in close combat. The Athenian centre was kept weak while the wings
were reinforced, so that when the Persians broke through the centre of the charging line, the
momentum of the Greek wings soon engulfed them on either side and to the rear. The
Persians panicked, fell into disorder, and were beaten into the marshes and the sea. Seven
ships were lost and 6400 Persians killed. The 192 Athenian dead were buried on the spot, and
covered by a mound that can still be seen today.
The remainder of the Persian force sailed round Cape Sounio to land within sight of the
Acropolis, but Miltiades had brought the army back to Athens by forced march and stood
ready to meet the enemy again. That astonishing burst of energy - 10,000 men marching 26
miles in full armour after fighting one battle to fight, if need be, another - overwhelmed the
Persians' morale, and their expedition returned to Asia.
and Greece was inevitable, and he had the genius to recognize that Athens' security and
potential lay in its command of the sea. Thus he began in 493-492 BC to develop
Piraeus
(Pireás) as the harbour of Athens. Though his initial pretext was the hostility of
the island of Aegina (Égina), his eyes were always on the more distant but far greater
Persian danger.
When the Persians marched into Attica in the late summer of 480 BC, the oracle at
Delphi told the Athenians to trust in their wooden wall. Many took that to mean the
wooden wall around the citadel of the Athenian Acropolis, but Themistocles argued
that it referred to the Athenian fleet. Determined to fight at sea, Themistocles warned
his Peloponnesian allies against retreating to the Isthmus where they too had built a
wall, threatening that if they did the entire citizenry of Athens would sail to new homes
in southern Italy, leaving the rest of Greece to its fate. On the eve of the Battle of
Salamis, as the Persians stormed the Acropolis, slaughtering its defenders and burning
down its temples, the taunt came back from the Peloponnesians that Athens had no
city anyway. Themistocles replied that so long as the Athenians had 200 ships they had
a city and a country.
he naval victory at Salamis that he masterminded cut the Persians' maritime lines of
supply and contributed to their defeat at Plataea the following year. It gave Athens and
its allies command of the sea, ensuring their eventual victory throughout the Aegean.
For his pains the Athenians later drove Themistocles into exile.
The rise of the Athenian Empire: 478-431 BC
The first consequence of the Greek victory against the Persians was not, as might have
been expected, the rise of
Sparta
, the pre-eminent Greek military power, whose soldiers
480 BC
480 BC
480-323 BC
479 BC
Persians sack and burn
Athens.
Battle of Salamis; the
Persian fleet is destroyed
and supply lines cut.
Classical Period.
Persians defeated at the
Battle of Plataea and are
forced out of Greece.
