The Battle of Marathon

Abstract

Military history proper must begin with the battle of Marathon; it is the first battle of which history preserves for us even a moderately detailed account in respect of the relative numbers and equipments of the contending armies, the precise situation and local peculiarities of the conflict, the positions of the armies before the battle, the circumstances of the actual collision, and the decisiveness of the result. There are uncertainties as to the maps which should illustrate the far later battles of Pharsalus and Philippi, that determined the fate of the empire of the world, but we have a perfectly satisfactory ground-plan, from the country as it still exists, of the first great collision of Hellenic and Asiatic power on the western coast of the Aegean. Herodotus, to whom we are chiefly indebted for an account of it, was not a contemporary, having been born about six years later, 484 B.C. His account, no doubt, is meagre where information would be most valuable, and he is anything but a skilful military critic, and, like many others of the most successful historians, he neglects details that might be dry to make room for others not rigidly authenticated that are pointed and picturesque. Still, even so he supplies us with many circumstances which he might value simply for the sake of sparkle, but that enable us by comparison with other stray notices to divine some very critical facts about the battle, which he himself either did not fully know, or, not duly appreciating, failed to set down. If after study of all subsidiary information duly compared and combined it seems possible to recover a very fairly authentic account of the battle, it will be no doubt at the cost of some reduction of what is most marvellous in the account of Herodotus; but the story will still be sufficiently romantic, no moderate remainder of marvel will be left, and there is full compensation for the sacrifice in certified credibility and historical instruction.