Ancient Greece
Lesson 2: Herodotus and the Persian Wars
The Battle of Marathon
Darius now decided that he had to teach the Athenians and the Eretrians a lesson.
He accordingly gave orders for a Persian force to cross the Aegean Sea and punish the two city-states for having dared to give help to the Ionian rebels. The Persian forces were commanded by a Median commander named Datis, who was accompanied by one Artaphernes, a nephew of Darius.
According to Herodotus, the Persian forces had at their disposal six hundred triremes. As will be seen later, Herodotus’ figures are not always reliable.
We have no definite information as to what sources Herodotus used in coming up with his estimates. If he simply used the Athenians own estimates of the numbers of their opponents, then it is possible that these figures may have been wildly exaggerated.
Thucydides, who wrote about the later Peloponnesian War, records that the great Sicilian expedition launched by the Athenians in 415 BC, which he describes as ‘the most costly and finest-looking Hellenic force…ever’, numbered no more than 150 ships.
The Persian expeditionary force set sail across the Aegean, put in briefly at Delos, where Datis ‘burned three hundred talent-weight of frankincense’ at the temple of Apollo, and finally reached Eretria.
The Eretrians had already asked for help from the Athenians and received four thousand men from them. They defended their city for six days, but eventually, the Persians got the upper hand. Eretria was taken, and its temples were burned to the ground.
Datis now took his forces across to the mainland.
The Persians landed their army at a place called Marathon. Here they were met by the Athenian army, commanded by ten generals, one of whom was an able strategist named Miltiades.
Herodotus tells us that the Athenians had petitioned the Spartans for aid. The Spartans, however, were late in arriving, and the battle was joined without them.
The Persian army was thoroughly defeated by the Athenians.
According to Herodotus, only 192 Athenian casualties were sustained, whereas 6400 Persian were killed.
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