A runner sent 140 miles to Sparta to beg for help — and told he must wait for the moon
Pheidippides ran to Sparta in about two days; the Spartans were observing the festival of the Carneia and could not march until the full moon.
History · Ancient world
The Battle of Marathon
490 BC
First Persian invasion of Greece
An Athenian citizen army, with its only allies a small contingent from Plataea, defeated the far larger expeditionary force sent by Darius I of Persia on a plain north-east of Athens. The victory ended the first Persian invasion of Greece, gave the young Athenian democracy enormous confidence, and became the founding legend of Athens' golden age.
How to spot them
- ▸Clue patterns: a plain 26 miles from a Greek city, a thinned centre and strengthened wings, a burial mound over the dead
- ▸The Spartans arrived only after it was over, delayed by a religious festival
- ▸A modern athletics event takes its name and its distance from the aftermath
- ▸Herodotus gives the casualties as 6,400 to 192
What happened
The thinned centre that let the enemy break through, so the wings could close behind them
The classic double-envelopment, credited to the general who urged the Athenians to attack.
6,400 dead on one side, 192 on the other, according to the historian who first recorded it
Herodotus, Book VI. The figures are almost certainly propaganda, but they stuck.
The Soros — a burial mound still standing on the plain over the cremated Athenian dead
About 9 metres high; excavated in the 1890s.
A playwright who fought here and had it, not his tragedies, carved on his tombstone
Aeschylus; his epitaph mentions only that he fought the Persians.
The run that gave a modern race its name — and, in a later telling, its 26-mile distance
The story of a messenger dying after crying 'we have won' is a late Roman embellishment by Plutarch and Lucian, not in Herodotus.
Quick-fire facts
- •It was fought in 490 BC on the plain of Marathon in Attica, about 25 miles north-east of Athens.
- •The Persian force was sent by Darius I and commanded by Datis and Artaphernes; the exiled Athenian tyrant Hippias was with them.
- •Miltiades the Younger persuaded the Athenians to fight; the polemarch Callimachus held formal command and was killed.
- •Herodotus reports 6,400 Persian dead against 192 Athenians; the Athenian dead were buried in the mound called the Soros.
- •Athens' only ally was Plataea, which sent about 1,000 men; the Spartans were delayed by the Carneia festival and arrived after the battle.
- •Pheidippides (or Philippides) ran to Sparta for aid before the battle; the famous run to Athens with news of victory is a later legend.
- •The modern marathon was created for the 1896 Athens Olympics; the distance was fixed at 26 miles 385 yards at London in 1908.
- •Darius' son Xerxes I returned ten years later, leading to Thermopylae and Salamis.
- •The playwright Aeschylus fought at Marathon, and his epitaph commemorates that rather than his plays.
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Sources
- Herodotus — The Histories, Book VI The primary ancient narrative of the campaign and battle.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Battle of Marathon
- Peter Green — The Greco-Persian Wars