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Showing posts with label Marathon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marathon. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 17, 2024

The Road to Thermophylae: Empire Strikes

While the Battle of Thermopylae gained legendary status almost immediately and became popularized in this century through the film "300," too few people living today know the history leading up to it. 
Thermopylae was not an isolated event but part of a chain of events, and while the Spartans were famously absent from the Battle of Marathon, yet the Spartan policies ten years later culminating in the Battle of Thermopylae cannot be understood without remembering what happened at Marathon.


Darius had vowed to punish the independent Greek Cities, Athens and Eretria, for aiding the Ionian rebels. He did not consider them important enough or dangerous enough, however, to warrant a major campaign under his personal command. Instead, he sent a sizable (but not enormous) expeditionary force under Mardonios, who had orders to obtain submission from these two cities. Mardonios was the son of Darius' sister, while one of his sisters was one of Darius wives, and one of Darius' daughters was one of Mardonios' wives -- incest was not frowned upon by the Persian elite. 

Mardonios left Susa in the spring of 492 and assembled his fleet and land forces in Cilicia before proceeding up the Ionian coast deposing Greek tyrants and re-establishing democracies, presumably -- and intelligently -- as a means to increase the loyalty of these cities to the Persian empire. He also conquered remaining outposts of independence such as the strategic island of Thrasos, before advancing deep into Macedonia, which submitted to Persia and was absorbed into the satrapy of "Thrace." The Persian land army continued to advance as far as Thessaly, closing in inexorably on Athens and Eretria from the north.

But the expedition ran into trouble when the fleet tried to round Mount Athos and encountered a violent contrary gale. Allegedly, 300 ships and 20,000 men were lost in this catastrophe. While possibly an exaggeration, the violence of Mediterranean storms should never be underestimated and still sink ships today. Without a fleet and with Mardonios wounded in an engagement that the Persians had won, the campaign of 492 ended. 

Darius needed to rebuild his fleet (that is order ships built in the various shipyards of his empire from Phoenicia to the newly subdued Ionian islands), so the next expedition was set for 490. Mardonios was evidently still disabled by his wounds, since a new commander was named for the next expedition, namely Datis. Although his exact origins are unknown, he was a "Mede" rather than a Persian and certainly not a member of the ruling family. This underlines the fact that Darius did not expect any particular trouble subduing the Athenians. He was annoyed that they had dared to support a revolt against him; he did not particularly respect them. His orders were for Datis to bring the Athenians and Eretrians back to him in chains -- slaves.

Datis' strategy (or the strategy dictated to him) was to strike directly across the Aegean, rather than taking the long way around over the Hellespont as Mardonios had done. The expeditionary force again gathered in Cilicia, and this time the entire army with their horses (in special horse transports) embarked on what Herodotus says was 600 ships. Modern historians have tried to calculate how many man and horses might have been transported by these ships and come up with an estimate a maximum of 24,000 troops and 36,000 crew (sailors) while others, based on the water resources at Marathon that sustained the Persian army for a whole week suggest the maximum number was closer to 16,000. 


Whatever its exact size, the Persian army struck across the water at Rhodes. Here the population took refuge in their city of Lindos and when they had just five days of water left, they asked the Persians for a truce for five days, promising to surrender at the end of that time "if nothing happened to rescue them." Datis allegedly laughed but generously granted the peace. The next day, unexpected, torrential rains (very unusual in the Mediterranean in summer) refilled the cisterns of Lindos. The Persians duly made a treaty of "friendship" with the Rhodians and dedicated gifts at the local temples before sailing onwards. Unclear is just what this "friendship" entailed, but historians suspect Rhodes accepted a kind of subject status that left them nominal independence in exchange for token tribute. 

The Persians struck next at Naxos, evidently taking the island by surprise. Rather than offer resistance, the population fled into the hills. The Persians duly burned the city and enslaved those individuals they could capture before sailing for Delos. Here Datis found the population fled from their tiny island altogether, taking refuge on a nearby island. Datis sent word to them, saying he had orders from the "Great King" (Darius) to honor the sanctuary of Apollo and do the residents no harm. He duly made more gifts to the temple after the people returned to witness his generosity. The message was clear: the Persians demanded political loyalty but respected religious diversity. It was a potent combination designed to reduce resistance to their rule, but it was also an enlightened policy that should not be disparaged. It was also largely successful, bringing the rest of the Cyclades into the Persian camp. 

Datis' expeditionary force arrived on the southern tip of Euboea next and quickly subdued the city of Karystos and proceeded to Eretria itself. Eretria chose resistance, and the Persians chose assault. In six days of bitter fighting, there were heavy casualties on both sides -- until two traitors betrayed their city. The details are lacking, but the descendants of the traitors were encountered a century later, their ancestors having received land elsewhere. Eretria itself was "put to the sword." The Temples were looted and burned, the city sacked and the surviving population (said to be just 780 people including old men, women, and children) were sent to Persia as slaves. 

At last, Datis could focus his attention on the main enemy: Athens. While resting his troops (and cleaning up) he gave Athens a last chance to surrender peacefully. He pointed out that not a single Eretrian had survived in freedom. Meanwhile, the Athenian pleas for help had produced only two positive responses: from Plataea and Sparta. The latter, however, could not deploy immediately. (See: https://spartareconsidered.blogspot.com/2017/07/marathon-and-sparta.html) Nevertheless, Athens had an estimated 10,000 hoplites plus 600 more from Plataea, and prospects of another 5,000 Spartans showing up within a fortnight. All three cities had an unknown number of light troops, which may have numbered between 8,000 - 12,000 more men. Given that the Persian army had now sustained some losses, the imbalance of forces was not really so overwhelming even if we take the higher number of 60,000, while it might have been smaller than the Athenian army if it was really only 16,000 strong. In addition, the Athenians would be fighting on their own territory for their own city and way of life. They chose defiance.

Datis sailed his expeditionary force across the narrow straits to land on the north shore of the Attican coastline, roughly 40 kilometers or 26 miles north of Athens. As soon as the Athenians learned where the Persians had come ashore, they sent word to the Spartans and Plataeans, mustered their own men, and deployed to the southern side of the plain of Marathon, blocking the roads to Athens. The two armies now faced one another across the plain of Marathon separated by roughly three miles.

The Athenians had ten generals and one supreme commander ("polemarchos"); one general from each of the Athenian "tribes" or demes, and a more honorary than effective "supreme" commander with no real authority. Once the Athenians had deployed there was a war council to decide what to do next and this proved divided equally between those who wanted to attack and those who wanted to remain on the defensive and force the Persians to attack them. One of the Greek generals, Miltiades, a man with experience fighting with the Persians, argued passionately for attack and convinced the "supreme commander" Kallimachos to cast the deciding vote in favor of an attack. Yet, still the generals rotated the actual command, and Miltiades had to await his "turn" before his day to command came.

Many historians have found hints that the Persians, seeing the entire Athenian army in front of them, concluded that it would be easier to take Athens from the figurative "back door" -- ie via Peireius. That is, if they could sail around the peninsula of Sounion and sail into Peireius harbor, they would by-pass the Athenian army at Marathon and would be able to march straight into Athens unopposed. To do that, however, they needed to keep the Athenian army pinned down at Marathon. This dictated a division of their force, keeping half at Marathon and sending the remainder around the peninsula to take Athens from the rear. 

Although some historians dispute this, the thesis is supported by evidence that there were traitors in Athens (supporters of the deposed tyrant Hippias, who was with the Persians advising them), and by the fact that the Persian fleet appeared in Peireius harbor the day after Marathon -- something physically impossible if the ships had remained in Marathon until the end of the battle, then taken on the exhausted troops. The division of the Persian force into two, with one half remaining in position at Marathon while the other half sailed around Sounion to reach Peireius would also explain, why Militiades chose to attack without awaiting the Spartans, who were, by then, already on the march.

Whatever the reason, on a certain day (we don't know the exact date since modern calendars were not in use), Miltiades chose to attack. The two biggest advantages of the Persians were their cavalry and their archers. If the Greeks could get in close, their better armor gave them an advantage in hand-to-hand combat. The Persian cavalry appears to have camped closer to the springs and pastures on the fringe of the Persian force and it took time to catch, tack, and deploy it. By attacking early, the Greeks stood a chance of getting to grips with the Persian infantry before the cavalry could intervene. The faster they deployed, the greater the advantage of surprise. (They could assume the Persians would be surprised; Greeks did not usually attack Persians.) That left the archers to deal with, but the faster the Greeks advanced the more they could reduce the amount of time they were exposed to a barrage of arrows. 

This translated into a "run" for what Herodotus describes as 8 "stadia" (lengths of the Olympic stadium), or -- in modern terms -- roughly a mile. Indeed, Herodotus makes the claim that the Greeks at Marathon were the first Greeks to run simultaneously into battle. Yet the run has been a point of controversy ever since. Early historians claimed it was a "physical impossibility" to "run" for a mile in full Greek hoplite panoply -- and still be fit to fight in a life-and-death struggle on arrival. This lead many to conclude that the Athenians didn't actually run but march "at the double." 

Recent historians have pointed out that early estimates of the weight of Greek panoply were hugely exaggerated. Modern military experience seems to bear out the plausibility of the run. Soldiers in condition can "jog" for a mile (or indeed more) carrying 30 pounds of equipment, or roughly what a Greek hoplite did. It would have taken them roughly 12 minutes to cover those 8 "stadia" and engage the Persian line -- which, taken by surprise and not particularly worried, was still forming. 

During the course of this run, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the wings became stronger and the center weaker. This should have been disastrous because the Persian center was held by their stronger (read Persian and Medan) troops, while the wings were held by various allied troops of less reliability and skill. This resulted in the Greeks pushing the Persian wings back while the Persian center stopped the momentum of the Greek center. Some versions suggest the Greek center broke, but the wings either joined and attacked the Persians center from the rear or turned toward the center and crushed the Persians between them. Everyone agrees it was a fierce and brutal fight that lasted several hours.

At some point, the Persian forces cracked, panic set in, men started running for their ships.  The Greeks pursued, cutting down many of the Persians as they struggled through the shallows desperate to board a ship.  Ultimately, the Greeks captured seven of those ships. Out of a possible 600 (or if the fleet had indeed been divided -- 300) ships that would hardly have been noticeable from the Persian perspective. What was far more remarkable was that the Persians allegedly left 6,400 dead upon the field of Marathon compared to just 192 Athenian and a handful of Plateans.

It was a great victory for Athens -- and Plataea. The Athenians made much of it -- and the Athenians were very good at telling a good story, particularly one to their credit. Plays were written. Pottery, painting, and sculpture commemorated the victory. Men bragged about participating in the battle on their tombstones. But the 4th century Chian historian Theopompos warned that "the battle of Marathon did not happen  as everyone celebrates it, nor did any of the other  things that the city of Athens brags about and uses to deceive the Greeks." (Fake news!) [Peter Krentz, The Battle of Marathon, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010) 12.]

More important, it didn't reslove anything. Indeed, it only made Darius more anxious to subdue the pesky mainland Greeks. The campaign as a whole had been a success, bringing Rhodes, Naxos, Delos, and Euboea into the Persian sphere of influence. Now only Athens, Thebes, Sparta, Corinth and some lesser cities of Southern Greece remained. In short, no sooner had the bulk of the troops and ships returned than planning for the next campaign could begin. That next campaign would lead to Thermopylae.

Next month I look at the commander of that expedition, Xerxes. Meanwhile....



Spartans and their unique culture are depicted as realistically as possible in all my Spartan novels:


    

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Friday, November 15, 2019

"Athens discards her heroes..."

Great as the victory at Marathon had been, it was not decisive. The Persian capacity to launch a new campaign was undiminished and the Persian determination to do so increased. The Spartans knew what was coming, and in this excerpt from A Heroic King, Leonidas is in Athens trying to assess the willingness and ability of Athens to withstand a new assault.


Rain, driven by a strong wind, swept in from the east. The sky darkened dramatically and the clouds hung low, reaching out ephemeral yet ominous hands toward the rooftops. The temperature dropped abruptly and men clutched capes and cloaks more tightly around their shoulders, even before the first heavy drops of rain fell from the hostile sky. The torrent that followed pelted the open squares so violently that the drops jumped up again like millions of tiny fountains, while the rooftops reverberated. The rush of water overwhelmed the gutters and fell in sheets from the roofs, to join the rivulets cascading over the paving stones and sweeping refuse down the alleyways.

Leonidas and his companions dived for cover under the nearest roof and found themselves in the shopfront of a shoemaker. Belts hung from hooks hammered into the plaster wall, and pairs of sandals were lined up in neat rows. The man and his two apprentice sons looked up astonished from their workbenches as four armored men suddenly burst into the humble shop.

One of the boys gaped with an open mouth, but the older man, sitting astride his workbench and pushing a thick needle with thread through the sole of a sandal, got to his feet and came forward, bobbing his head. “My lord, what an honor!” His words were directed not to the Spartan king, whom he did not recognize, but to young Kimon, who had offered to help Leonidas negotiate with the outraged landlord about the damages allegedly done by the Minotaur’s crew.

“Ah―” Kimon took a moment to remember the name, and then it came to him. “Demeas! What a surprise! How are you?” Before the man could answer, he added, “This is King Leonidas of Sparta.” The shoemaker dutifully bobbed his head to Leonidas, while Kimon continued with the introductions. “Demeas fought with my father at Marathon.”

“Indeed! What a day that was! Look!” the shoemaker ordered the Spartan king, “I got this wound there!” He turned slightly sideways and lifted his short, rough chiton to reveal an ugly scar that ran down the side of his thigh. “And there hangs my hoplon!” He pointed deeper into the darkness of the shop, where a battered hoplon hung beside a sword in its baldric.

“Are you well, Demeas?” Kimon asked the shoemaker with apparent interest. “I heard you were ill.”

“No, not really, but business is bad.” He shook his head. “Too many cheap wares fl flooding the market from Thessaly these days. They have cheap leather up there because they have room for huge herds of cattle. The workmanship is crap, but people aren’t willing to pay for quality anymore. All they care about is the price! If it’s cheap, they’ll buy it even if the straps break in a fortnight. Then they run back and buy another pair of cheap sandals, rather than investing in good wares like these!” He grabbed a pair and held them out to Kimon as if he expected him to inspect them.

Kimon nodded politely and remarked, “I’m sorry I have not sent my steward around to buy for the household as my father used to do. I just can’t afford it.”

“I know, my lord―not after the fines the Assembly leveled on your good father. I voted against it! You can be sure many of us did.”

“I know, Demeas,” Kimon assured him. “I was there, even if I wasn’t old enough to vote.”

“They drove your father to his grave, they did―Xanthippos and the others.”

Kimon drew a deep breath but answered with restraint, sad rather than angry: “My father was seriously wounded, Demeas. There was little hope for his recovery.”

“But these ungrateful wretches! If you’d but seen him at Marathon. No one fought better than he did―but they would not even let him put up a monument to himself!”

“But it is true, Demeas, that he could not have won the battle without the others―without you.”

“Well said,” Leonidas remarked, prompting Kimon to add, “In Sparta, no living man is allowed a monument―isn’t that right, Leonidas?”

“Yes. Not even Olympic victors,” Leonidas agreed.

Demeas looked surprised, but not particularly taken with the idea. “But why not? If a man has done something noteworthy, why should he have to die before it is commemorated?”

“Perhaps because too much praise can go to a man’s head―and a man who is top-heavy tends to fall down,” Leonidas explained.

Demeas liked that and laughed heartily, but then he turned to Kimon again and asked, “Is it true, my lord, that we’re all to get ten drachma apiece from the silver mines?” 

“That’s the proposal of the Council,” Kimon assured him. 

“I could use ten drachma!” Demeas admitted. “There’s a break somewhere in the drainage pipe from our latrine, and I need to have the whole thing dug up and replaced. Besides, my daughter’s almost twelve, and I’ll need a dowry for her soon.”

“Ten drachma won’t last for long, though, will it?” a deep voice growled as another man entered the little shop. The newcomer was stocky with a burly chest and a thick, short neck. His short-cropped curly beard and short hair were wet with rain. His chiton came to mid-calf, an awkward length that had neither the elegance of the long robes worn by the rich nor the practicality of the knee-length clothes of workmen and slaves. His nose was rather flat in his broad face, but his eyes were sharp and seemed to glint even in the poor light. They focused directly and pointedly on Leonidas. “King Leonidas, if I’m not mistaken?”
“You are not mistaken, and with whom do I have the honor?”
“Themistocles, son of Neocles.”

“Ah!” Leonidas recognized the name. He had heard much about this man already. But to be sure he was not mistaken, he added, “The man who wanted to build a wall around Piraeus?”

“Yes, that’s me,” Themistocles agreed, his eyes still inspecting Leonidas intently. Abruptly he broke eye contact with Leonidas and turned on the poor shoemaker. “So, Master Shoemaker, you could use ten drachma, but what happens after the ten drachma are used up?”

Demeas shrugged, “At least I’ll have a fixed drainage pipe.”

The others laughed, but not unkindly. Themistocles clapped him on the shoulder and declared, “Indeed, so you would. But what would you say to money that comes in year after year? Not just once, but with every summer?”

“Is there that much silver in the mines?”

“No. That’s the point. The silver won’t go on forever. But if we invest the silver in something that makes Athens strong―really strong―we could multiply the benefits many-fold and keep the money coming in for years into the future.”

“How?” the shoemaker wanted to know.

“You’ll hear about it at the Assembly tomorrow,” Themistocles promised. “But remember what I said. My proposal will put money in the hands of Athens’ poor for generations to come.” Then, without even drawing a new breath, he pointed to a pair of sandals and declared, “Those look about my size.”

Demeas hastened to hand them to him. Themistocles inspected the sandals closely, pulling expertly at the places where they were most likely to come apart, then sat down on the nearest bench, removed the muddy sandals from his feet, and tried on the new pair.

Meanwhile, Kimon, noting that the rain had let up, suggested to Leonidas that they continue….[Outside, Kimon explained Themistocles plan to build 100 triremes, adding] “Themistocles is a brilliant man. My father mistrusted him yet warned me never to underestimate him. Themistocles seems to have an uncanny ability to anticipate developments. Certainly, if Themistocles’ walls had been finished in time, we would have had no need to fear the Persians during the last invasion. Can a navy replace walls? Can it defeat an enemy like Persia before it lands? I don’t know. But I certainly doubt whether even Themistocles can convince the Athenian Assembly―men like Demeas―to give up their ten drachma for the sake of a navy.”
“But the navy would put money in their pockets, too. That was his point,” Eurybiades entered the conversation. “He’s trusting that men much poorer than Demeas will see the advantages of a standing fleet that needs more than seventeen thousand oarsmen―year after year.”

“Yes, that’s what he’s counting on,” Kimon agreed. “But triremes don’t last forever. They ream from beaching too often or grow barnacles from being too long at sea. And once they start taking on water or can’t keep up with the others, they will be discarded like a pair of old shoes. Who will pay then for the new ships? Go down to Piraeus and count the number of hulks rotting on the shore―all once-proud triremes.”

“Athens discards her heroes when they no longer serve her,” Leonidas reflected sadly, adding softly, “Like your father.” Kimon sighed and looked away, not meeting Leonidas’ eyes. “Why do you stay? With the money you paid to an ungrateful Assembly, you could have founded a colony somewhere else. My brother did.”

“I can’t leave,” Kimon admitted, helplessly gesturing to the city around him. “Athens isn’t Aristides and Xanthippos―much less Kallixenos or Pheidon! It’s not even Themistocles or my father. It’s Demeas and all the men like him: men without any particular politics or vision, yet a dogged determination to be themselves. Demeas can’t afford his panoply, and he is certainly no trained soldier like you Spartans, but when the Persians landed at Marathon, he was there with that battered hoplon and his cheap sword, and he stood for six hours with blood gushing from his thigh against the onslaught of an army twice our size.” Kimon shrugged. “I can’t explain it, but it has to do with something in the air here. Freedom―despite the stink of broken latrines.” He paused and turned to look at Leonidas. “And, I promise you, they will fi ght for it as they did at Marathon. They will fight when the Persians come, by land or by sea. They will die fighting rather than surrender their freedom. You can count on that, Leonidas. On us.”




Friday, December 1, 2017

The Impact of Spartan Piety on the Spartan Army


According to Herodotus, in 490 BC Sparta agreed to send troops to assist Athens repel the Persian forces at Marathon, but said they “could not take the field until the moon was full.” Since the Spartans did respond vigorously when the time came, historians have puzzled for millennia about why exactly the Spartans “could not take the field.” 

There have been persistent attempts to find evidence of a helot revolt, for example, and W. P. Wallace (“Kleomenes, Marathon, the Helots, and Arkadia,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 74 (1954), pp. 32-35) came up with a theory of Arkadian discontent and intrigues. I myself have suggested a command crisis, which I explained in detail in my blog entry on Sparta and Marathon. Yet the bottom line is that all these theories are essentially the product of dissatisfaction with the notion of a religious festival. 


However, we ought to admit to ourselves that we know very little about Spartan religious festivals. Most especially, we do not how they affected the readiness of the Spartan army. The assumption that a religious festival might delay departure of the army simply because of pious scruples may be entirely wrong.

What if, for example, the Spartan Army was given leave during religious festivals, or reduced to a skeleton of “duty officers” for each unit? Such a procedure would be perfectly normal in most societies because religious festivals, in all cultures over all times, are fundamentally family occasions. Why should Sparta have been any different? The very fact that there is no mention of how “odd” the Spartans were in this regard suggests that their behavior conformed to that of other Greeks and so elicited no comment.

If, as elsewhere, religious holidays in Sparta were celebrated in the family, then most likely the young men were exempt from sleeping in barracks and all men exempt from dining at their messes. Again, the fact that this is not explicitly mentioned is no evidence that it was not the case. There is no mention of men being exempt from duty and collective dining to participate in the Olympic Games either, but Spartan athletes were very prominent at the Olympics and they had to train in Elis for a month before the events just like all the other competitors. Likewise, Spartan spectators at the Games could not be eating and sleeping in Sparta while they were at Olympia. In short, the rules about living in barracks and eating at the messes were for “ordinary” days. The Olympics, war, and, arguably, religious festivals were “extraordinary” or “exceptional” days.

We know, further, that Spartans all had at least a state kleros, while wealthier Spartans had more extensive estates. Without knowing the yield of an acre of land using contemporary agricultural methods, I have no way of estimating just how large a kleros would have been, and without know how large each kleros was, I cannot estimate how many could have been located within easy walking/riding distance of Sparta’s barracks and messes. However, I think it is fair to say that not all 8,000 – 9,000 kleroi could have been within easy reach of the heart of Sparta. It is far more likely, that many kleroi were more than a half-day away from Sparta. Some may even have been located in Messenia, on the far side of Taygetos, or on Kythera. Reaching these estates to check up on things and to collect rents would have taken Spartans away from Sparta for days on end.

The requirement to be present in Sparta most of the time, meant that most of the time the estates were left in the hands of helots, perioikoi overseers or wives. Yet the fact that Spartiates were absent from their estates most of the time only reinforces the need for them to be present some of the time. Particularly if Spartiate/Helot relations were as bad as most commentators suggest, no Spartan would have risked leaving his kleros entirely in the hands of his helots or even perioikoi overseers. It would have been essential for every Spartiate to periodically check up on things at his kleros or risk having it so mismanaged that he could not meet his syssitia (and, if he had sons, agoge) fees. If a kleros was left to a wife, the desire to visit periodically would have been even greater, particularly if she had the couple’s young children with her.

In short, Spariates would have periodically traveled to their distant kleroi and while doing so they would have been excused both from their military duties and exempted from eating at their syssitia. Probably, any man could apply for leave to go to his estates whenever he felt it necessary. Possibly, it was traditional for men to go to their estates during holidays, when men were given leave to be with their families in any case.

For the wealthier Spartiates from the so-called “better” families, the 400-500 families that made up Sparta’s elite, the need to visit estates would have been even more acute than for the poorest with only one kleros. The elite would have had multiple estates to look after, not to mention horse-farms, kennels, orchards etc. They would have needed to be away from Sparta more often than the others as a result. And it was this elite that, at least in the later years of the 5th century BC, occupied most of the positions of authority and power in the Spartan state.

So if I am right and many citizens spent major (particularly long) holidays like the Karneia at their estates, then Pheidippides may have arrived in a Sparta when the army was dispersed and the commanders scattered about Lacedaemon on their distant estates. The ephors would have needed to recall at least the members of the Gerousia and the officers of the army as well as cancel leave for those units they wanted to send to Athens. The ephors could, I suspect, calculate pretty accurately how long it would take messengers to reach the lochagoi and other senior officers, and how long they would need to call up their troops and get them ready to march. That time frame alone – and nothing so impenetrable as piousness, helot revolts, foreign policy considerations, or even command uncertainties – might have determined the earliest possible day on which the Spartan army was able to march out for Marathon. 

In my novel, A Heroic King, I hypothesize an different reason for the delay, also plausible. 

Saturday, July 15, 2017

Marathon - An Excerpt from "A Heroic King"



There is a tendency to forget that, while Marathon was a great Athenian-Platean victory, it was in fact only half a victory: half the Persian army and fleet had already departed Marathon when Miltiades made the brilliant decision to attack the rest. It is likewise usually forgotten that Eukles ran the original "Marathon" from Marathon to Athens not merely to bring word of a victory but to warn about the other half of the Persian army that was approaching Athens by sea -- while all her fighting men were miles away, victorious but exhausted, at Marathon. That Athens was not seized by the Persians is one of those little, forgotten mysteries of history.

In the excerpt below, the only fighting men left in Athens -- the ephebes (youths not yet citizens) and old reservists -- prepare to defend Piraeus against the massive force aboard a Persian fleet. Among them is Kimon, son of Athen's commander at Marathon, Militiades.



Persian ships were clogging the narrows at the mouth of the harbor. "And something is going on out there too! A trireme arrived from the west, and now there is activity aboard every ship. They are preparing something. Look!" Kimon's commander pointed to the coastline to the west. "Do you see?"

Kimon shook his head.

"Something's moving along the coastal road. Either the Persians have landed troops to our west -- or the Spartans are coming."

"It's too soon for the Spartans," Kimon protested.

"Well, I sure the hell don't like the alternative!" the old man snapped back. "Instead of just sitting there on that fancy horse of yours, why don't you take your ass over there and find out?"

Kimon drew a deep breath to protest such language, but the man had already turned away. Kimon swallowed his protest and turned his colt around to start working his way through the maze of streets toward the western road.

Finding his way occupied so much of his attention that it was only after he'd left the congested part of the port that Kimon could focus on his task. Since there was no way the Spartans could be here in less than three days, he was pre-occupied with the idea of riding to warn his father that the Persians had landed to the west.

He drew up and looked along the coast, squinting in an effort to see better. He could see nothing -- except the sunlight glittering on the blue waters of the bay, heat waves shimmering upward from the nearest fields, and dust drifting off to the north. The dust must have been stirred up by men on the road.  He better find out more before he reported back to his father, he decided, and kept riding. After another quarter hour, he was convinced that a large body of troops was indeed approaching. Wasn't that enough information? How much further should he go?

With shock, Kimon recognized that he was afraid. He did not want to go any closer. He wanted to gallop in the opposite direction, and it was precisely this realization that made him urge his colt forward, his lips pressed together unconsciously. He kept his eyes on the coastal road until they watered from the strain. Then he blinked and wiped sweat from his eyes with the back of his naked arm. Keep riding, he ordered himself, reminding himself that his colt was the direct descendant of one of the four mares with which his grandfather won the Olympic chariot race three times. The colt would bring him to safety. 

But what if the colt stumbled? Or was killed by an arrow?

Or could it really be the Spartans?

It penetrated Kimon's terrified brain that there were no mounted officers with the approaching troops. Persian noblemen never walked. These troops could be neither Persian nor Mede. Ionian allies of the Persians? But how could the Persians trust them not to join the Athenians? Certainly if they were Ionains, it would be worth appealing to their patriotism. Kimon urged his horse forward a little more hopefully.

Abruptly he caught a wisp of what sounded like singing. He pulled up and held his breath, his ear cocked. When the wind fell away, it came again: men's voices raised in song. The approaching troops were singing as they marched.

Spartans! Only Spartans sang as they marched!

He started cantering forward in relief. 


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