It was the Athenian practice when a council of generals, as in the present instance, was appointed, that each should command for a day in turn. A more inconvenient arrangement could not well be devised, and it furnishes some proof of the simplicity of the military operations of those times, that it was found at all practicable.[5] On the present occasion, however, its inconvenience was much diminished by the conduct of the generals themselves; for when the concurrence of the polemarch in the opinion of Miltiades had determined its adoption, all the generals who had voted for battle gave up their days of command to Miltiades. According to Plutarch, Aristides was the first to do so, and the account agrees well with his disinterested patriotism: its credit, however, is impaired by the additional statement that all the generals followed his example, for Herodotus, a much better authority, confines the sacrifice to those who had originally wished for an engagement. Miltiades, however, although he accepted the power yielded to him, waited till his regular turn of command came round before he gave the signal for battle.
The scene of action was a narrow plain, bounded by the sea eastward and the hills westward, and closed at the northern side by a marsh, on the southern by mountains sweeping down to the sea. The Athenians were ranged in the order of their tribes, beginning from the right wing, where Callimachus, the polemarch, was stationed, a post of honour which he held by virtue of his office.[6] At the opposite extremity, at the very end of the left wing, were placed the Platæans, and they did such faithful service that it became the usage of the Athenians at the great feast and assembly which they held every five years, that a herald should make a solemn prayer “for all good both to the Athenians and Platæans.” The great strength of the army was collected in the two wings. They were necessarily distant from each other, that the Persians might not outflank them; and the consequence was that the centre of the line, where Themistocles and Aristides, according to Plutarch, were stationed, was thinly manned, and weaker than any other part of it.
Every great undertaking was preceded, among the Greeks, by sacrifice, less from a feeling of religious obligation than for the auguries to be deduced from the inspection of the victims. These were pronounced favourable, and the Athenians were immediately let loose, and charged the enemy running. The distance between the two armies was not less than eight stadii (about a mile). The Persians therefore prepared to receive the attack, and expected an easy victory; “for they thought it madness in them, and madness of the most deadly kind, thus to charge, few as they were, and those few without cavalry or archery;” two descriptions of force in which they were themselves strongest, and to which, after their long course of success, they naturally attributed peculiar importance. “But when the Athenians came to close quarters with the barbarians, they fought right worthily of notice. For they were the first of all the Greeks, as far as we know, who ran to charge the enemy, and they were the first who stood firm when they saw the Median dress, and the men who wore it; for until then it was a terror to the Greeks even to hear the name of the Medians.” The battle lasted long, and with various fortune. The best troops of the enemy, the Persians themselves, and the Sacæ,[7] were opposed to the weak centre of the Athenians, which they broke, and pursued the fliers into the inland country. On each wing, however, the Athenians and Platæans were victorious: and instead of pursuing the enemies to whom they had been opposed, they united, set upon the body who, having broken their centre, were now separated from the rest of the Persian army, and routed them. They then pursued the defeated forces with great slaughter to the sea, where they took to their ships. The conquerors rushed to seize them, and captured seven after a severe struggle, in which was slain Cynægeirus, brother of the poet Æschylus, and of Ameinias, whom we shall find acquiring high distinction at the battle of Salamis. His right hand was severed by the blow of a battle-axe as he grasped the upper part of a vessel’s stern,[8] and endeavoured to detain it; a mode of capture which may furnish some notion of the kind of shipping in use at that time. The anecdote is not striking enough for Justin and other compilers, who add, that when his right hand was struck off, he renewed the grasp with his left, and losing that also, seized the ship with his teeth, and hung upon it to his last breath. The whole Athenian loss is said to have been 192 killed, but among these were Callimachus the polemarch, Stesileos one of the generals, and many other men of name. Of the Persians there fell about six thousand four hundred.[9] The remainder got on board their vessels, and endeavoured to surprise Athens by sailing round Cape Sunium. The vigilance of the Athenians, however, prevented them: they returned to their capital by a forced march, and when the barbarians were in the offing, they found the victorious army encamped and ready to receive them. This was not the purpose of their expedition; and, after a little hesitation, they set sail and returned to Asia. The dead were buried on the field of battle: a vast tumulus was raised over the Athenian citizens, and other monuments were erected to the Platæans and the slaves, who on this emergency were allowed, contrary to Grecian usage, to serve in the heavy-armed foot. The people of Marathon worshipped the slain as heroes. Around their tombs, says Pausanias, is to be heard throughout the night the neighing of horses and the noise of combatants. They have never indeed manifested themselves to those who have gone there purposely to see them, but such as have passed casually, and in ignorance, have met with no token of the anger of the gods.[10]
Warfare is so well calculated to develop all the energies, and among them some of the virtues of mankind, that its details frequently excite intense interest, even when we see and reprobate most distinctly the thousand evils consequent on an appeal to arms. There is something spirit-stirring in the narrative of personal hardihood, which carries us along in despite of our sober judgment, and enlists our sympathy, often in opposition to the dictates of reason and morality. Few men exist whose blood will not beat higher at a well-devised tale of gallant adventure: much more when the fictions, the extravagances of romance are realized in history. “It is fearful, it is magnificent, to see how the arm and heart of one man may triumph over many.” But we can seldom enjoy this pleasure unrestrained by some apprehension that we are indulging the imagination at the expense of the judgment. It is only in cases of clear and unjustifiable oppression, where power has been exerted to the utmost to crush right, where men careless of death in comparison of oppression, weak in numbers, and confident only in the strength of their arms and the goodness of their cause, have met and overthrown the numerous forces of their enemy, that we can fully sympathize with the victor’s triumph. These conditions were fulfilled at Marathon. The Persian was the aggressor: he had interfered with the domestic government of the Athenians by endeavouring to force upon them a prince whom they had rejected; he followed up his mandate to restore Hippias by sending into their territory an apparently overwhelming force. A short-sighted policy would have counselled submission: but, it never was the interest of a small state to yield tamely to a powerful enemy. Resistance, even if unsuccessful, will cause it to be feared: a prompt submission delivers it over to be trampled upon. The Athenians met their enemy fearlessly, and beat him thoroughly, and they were rewarded for it by obtaining an eminence in war, in literature, in art, and in glory, unequalled and incomparable, considering their population and extent of land. Those more especially who fought and fell in this battle, have their reward in the deathless fame which waits upon their victory. It would be needless and endless to dwell on the testimonies to their deserving which later ages have produced. We shall therefore merely refer to the period of Athenian grandeur to observe, that it was from the Persian wars, and especially from Marathon, the battle which first showed the Persians not invincible, that the vain but high-spirited Athenians drew their most cherished recollections, their orators the themes of panegyric most grateful to the national pride of the assembled people.
In time of war it was customary to solemnize, every winter, a public funeral at Athens, in honour of those who had fallen in the preceding campaign. The manner of the ceremony was this:—”Having set up a tent, they put into it the bones of the dead three days before the funeral, and every one bringeth whatsoever offerings he thinks good, in honour of his own relations. When the day comes of carrying them to their burial, certain cypress coffins are carried along in carts, for every tribe one, in which are the bones of the men of every tribe by themselves. There is likewise borne an empty hearse covered over, for such as appear not, nor were found among the rest, when they were taken up. The funeral is accompanied by any that will, whether citizen or stranger; and the women of their kindred are also by at the burial, lamenting and mourning. They then put them into a public monument, which standeth in the fairest suburb of the city (in which place they have ever interred all that died in the wars, except those that were slain in the fields of Marathon, who, because their virtue was thought extraordinary, were therefore buried on the spot), and when the earth is thrown over them, some one, thought to exceed the rest in virtue, wisdom, and dignity, chosen by the city, maketh an oration, wherein he giveth them such praises as are fit; which done, the company depart.”[11] Two specimens of this style of oratory, by two of the first names in Grecian literature, remain: the celebrated speech, written by Thucydides, in the name of Pericles, and one ascribed to Socrates by Plato. The reader will not be displeased to see in what terms the Athenian philosopher speaks of his countrymen’s deeds in the Persian war.
“Our fathers, and the fathers of these men deceased, and they themselves, being honourably born, and nurtured in all freedom, have individually and as a people done many noble deeds in sight of all men, conceiving that in the cause of freedom it was their duty to fight with Greeks in behalf of Greeks, and with barbarians in behalf of the whole Grecian race. The time would fail me to relate as the subject merits, how they repelled Eumolpus, and the Amazons, and other invaders earlier than those, and how they supported the Argives against the Thebans, and the Heraclidæ against the Argives; and the poets who have hymned their valour in verse, have already made it known to all men. Were I then to attempt to set forth the same things in prose, I should but prove my own inferiority. I will therefore pass these matters, for they already have their due. Those deeds on which, worthy as they are, no poet has yet founded a worthy name, those yet uncelebrated are the theme on which it befits me to dwell, praising them myself, and wooing others to weave them into songs and other poetry, in a manner honourable to the men who acted them. First then of the things which I refer to, the children of this land, our ancestors, checked the Persian, when, at the head of Asia, he was in the act of enslaving Europe; wherefore it is just and fit that we should call them first to mind, and celebrate their valour. He, however, who would praise it fitly, must carry back his mind to that time when all Asia bowed before the third of the Persian kings: the first of whom, Cyrus, having liberated the Persians, his countrymen, by his own high spirit, enslaved their masters, the Medes, and ruled the rest of Asia as far as Egypt. His son, Cambyses, reduced such parts of Egypt and of Libya as were accessible; and the third, Darius, by land extended the boundary of his empire to Scythia, and with his fleet commanded both the sea and the islands, so that no man deemed himself equal to contend with him. The very minds of all men were enslaved, so many, so great, and so warlike nations had the Persian empire subdued.
“Darius accusing us and the Eretrians of the attack on Sardis, on that pretext sent five hundred thousand men in long ships and transports, and three hundred long ships, and ordered Datis, their general, as he would save his head, to bring the Athenians and Eretrians back with him. Datis sailed to Eretria, against men reputed then among the most warlike of the Greeks, not few in number, and overcame them in three days, and carefully searched their whole land, that none should escape. His soldiers marched to the boundary of the country; they formed a line along it from sea to sea; they joined hands, and thus passed over the whole of it, that they might tell the king that none had escaped.[12] With the same design they sailed from Eretria to Marathon, as to a ready prey, thinking to carry off the Athenians enyoked with the Eretrians in the same fated evils. These things then being in part accomplished, and the rest in progress, no Greek succoured the Eretrians, none but the Lacedæmonians marched to Athens, and they arrived not till the day after the battle. The rest, stupified with alarm, remained at home, content with present safety. By this a man may appreciate the courage of those who met the power of the barbarians at Marathon, and chastised the insolent presumption of all Asia, and there first erected trophies over the barbarians; becoming thus examples and masters to prove the might of Persia not invincible, and show that all multitude and riches yield to valour. I say then that those men were the fathers not only of our bodies, but of our freedom, and the freedom of all on this mainland; for, by looking to that action, the Greeks took courage to venture other battles for safety, becoming pupils of the men of Marathon. The first prize of valour, then, we must bestow on them: the second on those who fought at Artemisium, and round the Isle of Salamis.”[13]
The battle of Marathon marks an important crisis in the history of Greece, and of the civilized world. The later contests of the Persian war at Thermopylæ and Salamis and Platæa, important as they were, were not played for so deep a stake; for the chief of the Grecian nations were then pledged to the war, and were besides encouraged by knowing the Persian power not insuperable. The panegyric of Plato is not overcharged. We have given the frank confession of Herodotus, that up to that time the very name of the Medes was a terror to the Greeks; and if the Athenians had yielded to this panic, or had been defeated, European as well as Asiatic Greece would probably have become a province of the Persian empire. The contest, therefore, was that of liberty against despotism; of mental activity against the unimproving and unreflecting apathy in which the greatest part of Asia has slept, from the commencement of history; and a more important object has never been at hazard, unless where the cause of religion has depended on an appeal to arms.
Christianity is now so closely connected with the idea of superiority in knowledge, wealth, and war, that many readers may be surprised to hear of its having been seriously endangered by an external enemy since its first triumph and establishment. To our ancestors, however, the unparalleled rapidity and success with which the followers of Mahomet extended their religion and their empire, was a subject of serious and just alarm. Within fifty years of the prophet’s expulsion from Mecca, Constantinople itself, the metropolis of the Christian world, was besieged by the Caliph, the successor to his temporal authority: within a hundred years the Saracenic empire extended from the confines of India to the Pyrenees. In the year 714, scarcely three years from the first invasion of Spain, Musa, the victorious lieutenant of the Caliph, prepared to pass that mountain barrier, to extinguish the kingdoms of the Franks and Lombards, and to preach the doctrines of Mahomet in the church of the Vatican. He proposed to conquer the barbarians of Germany, to follow the Danube to the Euxine Sea, to overthrow the Constantinopolitan empire, and thus unite the eastern and western dominions of the Saracens. His ambitious progress was checked and himself recalled by the jealousy of his master; but in the year 731 Abderahman resumed the bold projects of his predecessor. Gascony and Languedoc were already subject to the sovereign of Damascus, when, in 732, that enterprising soldier led a vast army to complete the subjection of France. He had already advanced unchecked to the banks of the Loire, when Charles Martel, the mayor of the palace, in name a household officer, but in authority the sovereign of France, collected his forces, and advanced to the deliverance of Europe. For six days the armies confronted each other, making trial of each other’s strength in skirmishes: on the seventh, one Saturday in the month of October, 732, the final battle, that of Tours,[14] took place which was to decide whether Europe should remain Christian, or the Cross sink under the Crescent. The light and active Saracens, whose defensive armour was merely a quilted jacket, and their weapons arrows and javelins, rushed fiercely to the attack; but they made little impression on the solid battalions of the Franks, bristling with spear-points, and protected by their close-locked shields. The latter were no match for their assailants in agility of manœuvring, but the weighty arm and steady foot made up for this deficiency. The Saracen cavalry charged up to their ranks in vain; they were compelled to rein their horses round, and when wearied and broken by their fruitless efforts, the Christians advanced and routed them with great slaughter. In the heat of the battle, Eudes, Duke of Aquitaine, led his troops round upon the enemy’s camp, overthrowing all before him, and contributed greatly to the victory by the tumult and confusion thus produced. “Then was Charles first called by the name of Martel (a sort of battle-axe); for as the martel crushes iron, steel, and all other metals, even so he broke and pounded his enemies and all other nations. Great wonder was it that, of all his host, he lost in this battle only 1500 persons.”[15] Abderahman sought in vain to rally his troops, and fell while fighting valiantly. Night separated the armies, and the Infidels profited by it to retreat, leaving their camp, their furniture, and their booty at the disposal of the victor. Charles did not pursue them, from which we may infer that his own loss was severe. This disaster terminated the course of Arab conquest.
Contemporary authors have preserved scarcely any particulars of this battle; it is not till the close of the century that Paulus Diaconus, the Lombard historian, informs us that 375,000 Saracens were left dead on the field, their whole number being estimated by later authors at about 80,000. It is singular that, of the Frankish annalists, almost all content themselves with the bare statement that, in 732, a great battle was fought between the Saracens and Charles Martel: none pretend to give any circumstantial account of an occurrence so gratifying to national pride. Were our information fuller, the method of warfare adopted by the French in that age, and the difference between the European and Asiatic arms and tactics, would form interesting subjects for illustration. One thing we learn—that the French fought chiefly on foot, and were inexpert in the mounted service, and trusted little to their cavalry; from which it is evident that the usages of knighthood had made little progress at this period. In the want of this information we give a passage, in which the features of Christian and Moorish warfare, in a later age, are described with much spirit and minuteness by a contemporary author. Though not very closely connected with the subject, it is worth attention for its poetical merits, and is besides somewhat of a literary curiosity, being taken from the oldest narrative poem, as we believe, preserved in any living language. We speak of the “Poëma del Cid,” the history of the celebrated Ruy Diaz of Bivar, generally known by the name given to him by the Moors of Cid, or Lord; which is thus spoken of by Mr. Southey: “Sanchez is of opinion that it was composed about the middle of the twelfth century, some fifty years after the death of the Cid; there are some passages which induce me to believe it the work of a contemporary. Be that as it may, it is unquestionably the oldest poem in the Spanish language. In my judgment it is as decidedly, and beyond comparison, the finest.”[16]