The Battle of Marathon

490 BC Marathon, Attica (Greece)

In short

The Persian king Darius sent a large army against Athens, which had helped the Greek cities that rebelled against him. The Athenians, helped by the small city of Plataea, faced the Persians on the plain of Marathon and won. According to legend, a messenger ran all the way to Athens to announce the victory and died as soon as he arrived. In his memory, the modern Olympics include the marathon, a race of more than 42 kilometres.

Why it matters It showed that the Persians, the greatest empire of the time, could be beaten.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Battle of Marathon”

See it on the line Era quiz Read the full card Printable worksheet

Illustration: The Battle of Marathon (Marathon, Attica (Greece)) — Illustration created with AI for Storiascopio

Where: Marathon, Attica (Greece)

Study card about 6 minutes of reading

The story

A revenge years in the making

The Battle of Marathon begins with a revolt. The Greek cities of Ionia, on the coast of present-day Turkey, were subject to the great Persian empire. Between 499 and 493 BC they rebelled, and Athens and Eretria, a city on the island of Euboea, sent ships to help them. The revolt was crushed, but the king of Persia, Darius I, did not forget the insult. In 490 BC he sent out a naval expedition under the generals Datis and Artaphernes, with the aim of punishing Athens and Eretria. Along the way the Persians took the island of Naxos and destroyed Eretria. Then they landed on the plain of Marathon, about forty kilometres from Athens by road.

The two armies

How many Persians were there? The historian Herodotus speaks of six hundred ships, but does not say how many soldiers landed. Later ancient sources give enormous figures, up to six hundred thousand men, but modern scholars think they are exaggerated. Today's estimates range from 20,000–30,000 infantry, plus cavalry, whose numbers are much debated. The Athenians were about 9,000–10,000 hoplites, the soldiers with shield and spear, helped by about a thousand men from Plataea, a small allied city.

The Athenian army was commanded by ten generals, one per tribe, and by the polemarch Callimachus, a magistrate with military duties. It was Miltiades, one of the ten generals, who got the decree to give battle approved. According to Herodotus, the deciding vote was that of the polemarch Callimachus.

The battle

For a few days the two armies stayed facing each other. Then the Athenians attacked. The exact date is not certain: it is August or September of 490 BC, and some scholars suggest 11 or 12 September. According to the most widely followed reconstruction, the Athenians drew up the centre thinner, four ranks deep, and the wings stronger, eight deep. The centre gave way, as planned, and the advancing Persians pushed into it. The two Athenian wings, meanwhile, had driven back the enemy at the sides; then they closed in like a pair of pincers on the Persian centre, which was surrounded. The Persians fled towards their ships.

Historians still argue about the details. One hypothesis holds that part of the Persian army, including the cavalry, had already been put on board before the clash, to move on Athens by sea. Another recalls a signal made with a shield, given by someone to warn the Persians; Herodotus reports it as a fact, but many modern scholars doubt it.

The dead were 192 Athenians and, according to Herodotus, 6,400 Persians, a number scholars consider uncertain. Among the Athenian dead was Callimachus. Then the Athenians had to move fast: the Persians, back on their ships, tried to reach Athens directly, but the Athenians ran back to the city and prevented a landing. The Persians gave up and returned to Asia.

Pheidippides and the marathon

Two very famous stories were born around Marathon. The first is that of the runner Pheidippides (or Philippides): before the battle the Athenians sent him to Sparta to ask for help. The distance between Athens and Sparta is about 220–240 kilometres, and the story says he covered it in a very short time. This is tradition, but the fact that a runner was sent to Sparta is already told by Herodotus.

The second story, the more famous one, says that a messenger ran from Marathon to Athens to announce the victory and that, as soon as he arrived, he died of exhaustion. Historians do not consider it a historical fact: it is told by Plutarch and then by Lucian of Samosata, centuries later, and it is probably the result of several old stories merging. Yet it gave its name to the longest race in athletics: the marathon.

Remembering the battle

The Athenians who fell were buried on the battlefield, under a great mound, the Soros, which can still be seen. According to one scholar, slabs with the names of the 192 dead, divided by tribe, were placed on top of the mound. The playwright Aeschylus fought at Marathon; on his tomb he wanted to be remembered only for this, and not for his tragedies. Tradition also told that the god Pan appeared in the battle to frighten the Persians: for this reason the Athenians dedicated a cult to him near the Acropolis.

Why it happened

The most immediate cause was the revolt of the Greek cities of Asia Minor against Persia. Athens and Eretria, by sending ships to help them, had set themselves against a huge empire, the largest of the time. For Darius I a punishment was necessary, to keep all the subject peoples under control.

But there was also a deeper reason. The Persian empire had already expanded westwards and the Greek coastal cities and the islands were under its rule. Athens, free and proud, was a dangerous example for those who were subject. For the Athenians, on the other hand, the challenge was to defend their freedom and their way of governing themselves, which with Cleisthenes had become more participatory.

What changed

The victory gave the Athenians great confidence in themselves. It showed that the Persians were not invincible, and that an army of free citizens could beat an empire. In Athens the feat was remembered for generations, in poems, paintings and speeches.

In fact the war did not end. Ten years later, in 480 BC, the new Persian king Xerxes came back with a much larger army, and the Greeks had to fight at Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea. But without Marathon perhaps Athens would not have had the strength to organise the resistance.

Marathon lives on in our sport too. In 1896 Michel Bréal proposed including in the first modern Olympics a race recalling the messenger's run, and Pierre de Coubertin supported it. The first Olympic marathon, in Athens, was won by the Greek Spyridon Louis. The official distance of 42.195 kilometres was only fixed in 1921.

Key people and places

People

Darius I: King of Persia who sent the expedition of 490 BC to punish Athens and Eretria.
Miltiades: Athenian commander who got the decision to give battle approved.
Callimachus: Polemarch of Athens, a military magistrate: he died at Marathon.
Pheidippides: Athenian runner sent to Sparta to ask for help; legend confuses him with the messenger said to have announced the victory.
Aeschylus: The great writer of tragedies: he fought at Marathon and had only that battle remembered on his tomb.

Places

Marathon: A plain on the eastern coast of Attica, about forty kilometres from Athens by road.
Eretria: City on the island of Euboea, an ally of Athens, destroyed by the Persians before the battle.
Plataea: A small city of Boeotia that sent about a thousand men to help the Athenians.
The Soros: The great mound on the battlefield, where the Athenian dead were buried.

Good to know

The Athenians who fell at Marathon were 192, and their names, divided by tribe, were placed on their tomb.
Pheidippides did not run from Marathon to Athens: the most reliable tradition sends him from Athens to Sparta, more than two hundred kilometres.
The official length of the marathon, 42.195 kilometres, was only set in 1921.
Aeschylus, the great writer of tragedies, wanted only the memory of having fought at Marathon on his tomb, not that of his tragedies.