The First Clash: The Miraculous Greek Victory at Marathon and Its Impact on Western Civilization Read online

  Also by Jim Lacey

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  Copyright © 2011 by James Lacey

  Maps copyright © 2011 by Jeffrey L. Ward

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., for permission to reprint excerpts from The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories by Robert B. Strassler, translated by Andrea L. Purvis, copyright © 2007 by Robert B. Strassler. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Lacey, Jim

  The first clash: the miraculous Greek victory at Marathon and its impact on Western civilization / Jim Lacey.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-553-90812-1

  1. Marathon, Battle of, Greece, 409 B.C.—Influence. 2. Greece—Civilization—To 146 B.C. 3. Iran—History—To 640 A.D. I. Title.

  DF225.4.L33 2011 938′.03—dc22 2010046214

  www.bantamdell.com

  Jacket design: Christopher Sergio

  Jacket photograph: © National Museum of Scotland / The Bridgeman Art Library

  v3.1

  Dedicated to

  Ali and James

  The mountains look on Marathon—

  And Marathon looks on the sea;

  And musing there an hour alone,

  I dream’d that Greece might yet be free

  For, standing on the Persians’ grave,

  I could not deem myself a slave.

  —LORD BYRON,

  “THE ISLES OF GREECE”

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Maps

  Dramatis Personae

  Introduction

  Prologue: The Moment of Battle

  PART I

  AN EMPIRE MADE IN WAR

  Chapter 1: AN EMPIRE RISES

  Chapter 2: LOOKING TO THE WEST

  Chapter 3: EMPIRE AT LAST

  Chapter 4: THE RISE OF DARIUS

  Chapter 5: TRIAL BY FIRE

  Chapter 6: THE MIGHT OF PERSIA

  PART II

  THE RISE OF GREECE

  Chapter 7: THE RISE OF ATHENS

  Chapter 8: A STATE CREATED FOR WAR

  Chapter 9: SPARTA VS. ATHENS

  PART III

  PRELIMINARY MOVES

  Chapter 10: PERSIA’S RETURN TO WAR

  Chapter 11: IONIA REVOLTS

  Chapter 12: SPARTA SAVES GREECE

  PART IV

  WAYS OF WAR

  Chapter 13: GIANT VS. LILLIPUTIAN

  Chapter 14: PERSIAN WARFARE

  Chapter 15: HOPLITE WARFARE

  Chapter 16: THE WESTERN WAY OF WAR

  PART V

  BATTLE

  Chapter 17: THE PERSIANS SAIL

  Chapter 18: THE PLAIN OF MARATHON

  Chapter 19: THE DAY BEFORE

  Chapter 20: BATTLE

  Chapter 21: THE GREAT DEBATES

  Conclusion

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  About the Author

  Dramatis Personae

  Amasis—Egyptian pharaoh who took the throne by force and held it for forty-four years. He spent the last several years of his life preparing to meet an expected Persian offensive into Egypt. He died just before the decisive Battle of Pelusium, which saw the Egyptian army defeated by Cambyses II.

  Aristagoras—Tyrant of Miletus. He is credited with starting the Ionian revolt. After the revolt began, he traveled to Greece to gain Spartan support. Failing in that endeavor, he managed to enlist the limited support of Athens. The small force Athens sent to Ionia managed to burn the Persian city of Sardis before returning home. Persian enmity over Sardis’s burning was the direct cause of the 490 BC Persian invasion and the Battle of Marathon.

  Aristides—One of ten Athenian generals at Marathon and the leader of the Antiochis tribe. Several years after the Battle of Marathon, he lost a political struggle with Themistocles and was banished from Athens. He was recalled to help Athens fend off Xerxes in the 480 BC invasion and commanded the Athenian army at the decisive Battle of Plataea.

  Artaphrenes—Persian satrap of Lydia and Ionia during the Ionian revolt.

  Astyages—King of the Medes, overthrown by Cyrus and his Persian allies. Afterward, Cyrus claimed his throne and used the combined Persian and Median armies to build the greatest empire the ancient world had yet seen.

  Callimachus—Athenian polemarch (commander) at the Battle of Marathon. He was killed at the climax of the fighting.

  Cambyses II—Cyrus’s son and successor. After winning the Battle of Pelusium in 525 BC, he went on to conquer Egypt. He died, under disputed circumstances, in 522 BC, while returning to the heart of the empire to crush a revolt.

  Cimon—Son of Miltiades and a hero of the Second Persian War against Xerxes. He was politically powerful at the time Herodotus was reciting his history in Athens.

  Cleisthenes—Son of Megacles, a brilliant politician and the sworn enemy of Hippias. He was the driving force behind the establishment and defense of Athenian democracy.

  Cleomenes—Spartan king in the twenty years leading up to Marathon. This remarkable Spartan played kingmaker in Athens, annihilated an Argive army, and humbled Aegina. In no small measure, Cleomenes’ actions in the few years before the Persian invasion made the Greek victory at Marathon possible.

  Croesus—King of Lydia (560–546 BC) until he was defeated by Cyrus outside of his capital city of Sardis. His defeat saw the Lydian Empire overthrown and merged into the growing Persian Empire.

  Cylon—Athenian Olympic hero who, with the support of the city of Megara, made an early bid to become tyrant of Athens. The bid failed, and although he escaped, most of his followers were slaughtered after they surrendered. The killers were led by a member of the Alcmaeonidae clan. The “blood guilt” associated with this act persisted for over a century and was always a major influence on Athenian politics.

  Cyrus—Starting as the petty king of a small Persian kingdom, Ansan, he led a successful revolt against the Medes. Before his death, he had conquered the Lydian and Babylonian empires and incorporated them into the Persian Empire. Cyrus was the greatest empire builder the ancient world saw until Alexander the Great over two centuries later. He ruled from 559 BC to 530 BC.

  Darius—A Persian noble who along with seven other young nobles made a bid for the Persian throne after the death of Cambyses II. After a year of civil war, Darius eventually secured his hold on power. He proved himself a first-rate administrator and was responsible for building the infrastructure and institutions of the empire that allowed it to last for two hundred years. It was by Darius’s command that the Persian army was sent to destroy Athens in 490 BC.

  Datis—Persian commander at the Battle of Marathon.

  Demaratus—Sparta
n co-king with Cleomenes. After a strained relationship, Cleomenes engineered his removal. He later escaped to the Persian court and was an adviser to Xerxes during the Persian invasion in 480 BC.

  Gobryas—Babylonian general who went over to Cyrus with a substantial portion of the Babylonian army in 541 BC. He joined Cyrus in his conquest of Babylonia and was responsible for capturing the city of Babylon and holding it until Cyrus arrived.

  Harpagos—Median general who betrayed his king, Astyages, and brought a large segment of the Median army over to Cyrus’s side. Harpagos’s support of Cyrus was the decisive moment in Cyrus’s rise to ultimate power. He later became Cyrus’s most trusted general and was responsible for reducing the Greek cities of Ionia to submission to Persian rule.

  Hippias—Son of Pisistratus. He assumed the role of tyrant after his father’s death. Although competent, he was not as adept as Pisistratus at balancing the many threats Athens faced. He was deposed by Cleisthenes and went to reside within the Persian Empire. He was with the Persian army at Marathon, hoping for reinstatement as Athens’s tyrant in the event of a Persian victory.

  Histiaios—Tyrant of a Greek city within the Persian Empire. He was with the Persians during their invasion of Thrace and is credited with protecting the bridge over the Danube, allowing Darius’s army to escape destruction in Scythia. He was a key Greek leader in the later stages of the Ionian revolt.

  Isagoras—He opposed Cleisthenes and seized power with the support of the Spartan king Cleomenes. When the Athenian assembly resisted his bid for power, the Spartans withdrew their support and he was banished from Athens.

  Mardonius—Persian general instrumental in crushing the Ionian revolt. He was put aside by Darius after a failed expedition into northern Greece but was with Xerxes as his top military commander in the invasion of 480 BC.

  Megabazos—Persian general under Darius. After the failed attempt to conquer Scythia, he was left behind to complete the conquest of Thrace. It was his suspicion of Histiaios’s loyalty that led to that tyrant being ordered to Susa, where he could be watched more carefully.

  Megacles—Early ally of Pisistratus and later a sworn enemy. He is not to be confused with an earlier Megacles who killed Cylon (an Olympic hero who made an early bid to be tyrant of Athens) after promising him safe conduct.

  Miltiades the Elder—The first tyrant of the Chersonese, sent there by Pisistratus to help protect Athens’s access to grain. He was a close ally of Croesus and the uncle of one of the heroes of Marathon, the second Miltiades.

  Miltiades—Stepnephew of Miltiades the Elder. He also became the tyrant of the Chersonese but returned to Athens after the Ionian revolt and was one of the leaders of the Athenian army at Marathon.

  Nabonidus—King of Babylon from 556 BC to 539 BC. He was defeated in battle by Cyrus, who promptly added Babylon to his growing empire. Nobonidus had previously lost the support of Babylon’s powerful priestly caste and most of his people by refusing to properly honor the traditional Babylonian gods.

  Phanes—Greek mercenary general in the service of the Egyptians. He switched sides before the Persian attack on Egypt in 523 BC. He was instrumental in the successful Persian invasion and became one of Cambyses II’s most trusted generals.

  Pisistratus—First tyrant of Athens. He oversaw Athens’s rise to commercial and political power.

  Smerdis—Son of Cyrus and Cambyses’s brother. He was most likely murdered on Cambyses’s orders, either just before the Persian invasion of Egypt or soon thereafter. While Cambyses and the Persian army were in Egypt, a false Smerdis rose up within the empire and claimed the throne. This led to a civil war, which after many bloody battles saw Darius victorious and the new ruler of the Persian Empire.

  Solon—Athens’s great lawgiver. He provided Athens with the basic structure of its governance and legal system. He was also instrumental in rallying Athens to continue its war with Megara until the island of Salamis was conquered. Although there were setbacks, this event marks the start of Athens’s remarkable rise.

  Themistocles—One of ten Athenian generals at Marathon. He commanded the Leontis tribe during the battle. In 480 BC, he was the most powerful politician in Greece and the hero of the crucial Battle of Salamis.

  Xerxes—Darius’s successor as king of Persia. He led a failed second invasion of Greece ten years after the Battle of Marathon (480 BC).

  Introduction

  Since its inception over two and a half millennia ago, Western civilization has faced many threats, but none as dangerous as when Persia’s mighty army attempted to smash it in its infancy. It has lately become fashionable in the West to understate the threat Persia posed. After all, in the popular imagination the ancient East, particularly the Persian Empire, is viewed as a rather effeminate lot devoid of martial abilities.1 Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. In reality, the great empires of the East were built and maintained by war. Each, in turn, stood supreme for only as long as its army proved the most capable, fierce, and ruthless in the region. When a foe arose capable of overthrowing the military power of the ruling peoples, the vanquished went into rapid decline and a new people and empire ascended. In the sixth century BC, this process gave birth to the Persian Empire under their great conqueror Cyrus. Over a period of several decades starting in 559 BC, Cyrus’s Persian army swept all before it, creating an empire stretching from northern India to Egypt. For the next two hundred years, Persian arms reigned supreme over an area as vast as the Roman Empire at its height and would topple, finally, only under the successive hammer blows inflicted by Alexander the Great.

  During those two hundred years, Persia suffered only two major military setbacks. The first occurred against the Scythian nomads occupying the vast steppes of southern Asia. Persian forces marched against enemies who possessed no cities or fixed wealth requiring defense and who had a vast hinterland in which to retreat. Into this barren land, made even more desolate by foes who burned everything behind them, the Persian army marched endless miles in pursuit of an elusive enemy who refused battle. Frustrated and exhausted, the Persians could save themselves from ruin only by retreating back into the empire, with ferocious Scythian horsemen tearing at them all along their line home.

  The second military setback occurred when the Persian army marched against the Greeks, a very different kind of enemy from the Scythians. Persian kings thought the fractious city-states of Greece were an easy target, for the Greeks had little choice but to defend the cities on which their entire identity depended and therefore could not flee before Persian arms. Moreover, as far as the Persians could see, these cities spent most of their energies on continuous rounds of internecine warfare. There appeared little chance the Greeks could put aside their hatred and distrust of one another long enough to unify against a common foe. At the start of the fifth century BC, however, even a unified Greece probably would not have appeared as much of an obstacle to the “Great King” of Persia. As for the individual city-states, they must have appeared to the Persians as mere specks to be swept aside on the tide of conquest. In this analysis, Persia’s kings made two mistakes. The first was that in spite of a general dread of Persian military power, many Greek cities, led by Athens and Sparta, were ready to unify against an invader. The more fundamental error, however, was underestimating the fighting power even one city-state could bring to any battlefield where its soldiers could engage with an enemy in close combat.

  Twice the Persian armies came to conquer Greece. The first of these invasions ended when the Athenians wrecked a Persian army at Marathon. Because of its huge size, the second invasion in 480 BC—immortalized by the sacrifice of the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae—is the best known. Rarely is it noted that the Greeks found the will to resist this second invasion only because of Athens’s heroic stand at Marathon a decade before. For then, Athenian hoplites had stood almost alone on the Plain of Marathon, facing an overwhelming Persian army only two dozen miles from their home city.2 Feeling themselves unable to wait
for the assistance of a Spartan force already on the march and despairing of help from any other city, Athenian commanders ordered their hoplites to attack. Less than two hours later, the Persian force was wrecked and its disorganized survivors were retreating out to sea.

  In the two and a half millennia since the Battle of Marathon, a myth has arisen that the Athenian army was a conglomeration of rustics with little experience in war. Only the threat of an imminent Persian invasion had made it a matter of some urgency to put as many of these farmers and tradesmen as possible into hoplite armor. If this were true, then Athens’s victory at Marathon was indeed a miracle. In fact, that they would even hazard a battle to begin with was in itself a miracle or a case of mass insanity. As this book will make clear, although they would have preferred the backup of the Spartans, the Athenian army was far from being an amateur force. In fact, it was an experienced and battle-hardened army that shortly before Marathon had stood face-to-face against a Spartan army and had made the Spartans themselves blink.

  Still, Athens’s victory over the tremendous power of Persia both startled and amazed the other Greek cities. It is a safe assumption that the Persian Empire was equally surprised. For the Greeks, the example of Marathon stiffened spines and gave them the confidence to face the even more powerful Persian invasion of 480 BC. For the captive states within the Persian Empire, it gave hope that they might one day throw off the Persian yoke. Here was positive proof that Persian arms were not invincible. In fact, soon after Marathon, Egypt rose in a revolt that was suppressed only after a massive Persian military effort. Egypt’s revolt and growing unrest within the empire drove home the point that the Great King of Persia could not let the decisive judgment of Marathon stand. Although Persia prevailed, the Egyptian sacrifice gave the Greeks time to prepare for the second invasion all knew was coming.