Callimachus, War Ruler.
Of the ten commanders of the ten Athenian tribes who assembled on the heights overlooking the plain of Marathon, five voted against battle with the invading Persians, five in favor of battle. Callimachus the War Ruler, influenced by the enthusiastic eloquence of Miltiades, gave the casting vote in favor of battle. On this so seeming slight chance hung Marathon.
Humanly speaking, it was madness for that little handful of Greeks to rush down upon the countless Persian hosts. The Persians themselves could not believe their own eyes when they saw the Greeks running to battle; and half-heartedly, perhaps even jestingly, they prepared for a brief skirmish with madmen.
The Medes and Persians were at that time deemed invincible. Babylonia, Assyria, Asia Minor, the isles of the Ægean, the African Coast, the Euxine, Thrace, Macedonia had successively fallen before the soldiers of the Great King. The Ægean was a Persian Lake; from east, from south, from north approached the awful power of imperial Persia, ready irresistibly to absorb little Greece, to punish and obliterate Athens. Already the Eretrians, who together with the Athenians had aided in the Ionian revolt, were overtaken by the dread vengeance of Darius: their city had fallen and more than a thousand Eretrians were left bound on the island Egilia awaiting the return of the victorious Persian fleet from Marathon. Then together with the captive Athenians, the Eretrians were to be taken to Susa there to await the pleasure of the Great King, whose wrath had been new-kindled day by day with memories of burning Sardis by a court attendant whose sole duty was to repeat to Darius at each meal, “Sire, remember the Athenians.” Sardis would then be fearfully avenged.
Sardis was, indeed, avenged but not by Marathon. There is a justice exact even to the weight of a hair in all things of life; seen or unseen, known or unknown, acknowledged or unacknowledged, it is ever at work silently, forcefully, fatefully. Athens burns Sardis and desecrates the temples of the Persian gods; and some years later the Persians sack and devastate Athens, razing her temples to the ground leaving her site in smoking ruins.
“Behold there are Watchers over you, worthy Recorders, knowing what you do: and whosoever shall have wrought an ant’s weight of good shall behold it; and whosoever shall have wrought an ant’s weight of evil shall behold it.”—Koran.
History tells us that after the battle of Marathon, six thousand four hundred Persians lay dead upon the battlefield and only one hundred and ninety-two Athenians. This seems incredible, yet it is equally incredible that the Greeks won. Ten thousand Athenians and one thousand Platæans had fought against one hundred thousand soldiers of the Great King, and—won. There was something wrong with that motley army of the Great King; some subtly retributive force was at work, some balancing Justice.