The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

So rapid a method of advance was unparalleled, so Herodotus says, in Greek warfare up to that time. The Greek hoplite seems to have been incapable of rapid movement. In his equipment everything was sacrificed to the effectiveness of his defensive armour. He was indeed the product of a country in which the extremely limited extent of cultivable land rendered it necessary for the citizens of each state to fight on behalf of their annual produce. Cf. H. viii. 9(2). Hence in ordinary Greek warfare the slow-moving, heavy-armed hoplite could always force a battle on ground suited to his offensive tactics,—the alluvial plain,—and had to be met with a force similarly equipped.

That the Greek advance was not altogether expected by the Persians may well have been the case; they may even have thought, as Herodotus says, that they were rushing upon their destruction. But when the historian adds that the Athenians were the first Greeks to face the Medes and their strange dress, he is obviously quoting the exaggerated Athenian tradition of Marathon.

THE BATTLE.

H. vi. 113.

The battle was fierce and stubborn, and lasted a long time. The weak Athenian centre gave way before the best troops of the enemy, the Persians and the Sakæ, who were opposed to them.

Such an eventuality must have been foreseen by the Greek generals; it seems, indeed, almost certain, from the subsequent development of the fight, that the falling back of the centre was a pre-arranged feature in the tactics of the battle. Herodotus, drawing his account largely from popular tradition, and not finding any reference to such a design in the sources of his information, represents the retreat of the centre as a reverse, whereas it was the essential preliminary to that movement which decided the battle.

The strong Athenian wings defeated, not without a severe struggle, the troops opposed to them; but, being kept well in hand, refrained from pursuing them. They wheeled round and assailed the victorious (sic) Persian centre on either flank. The deliberate checking of the pursuit of the wings points clearly to the fact that the falling back of the Greek centre was an essential feature of the plan of battle. As has been already said, that retreat was almost certainly a deliberate act, which had been provided for in the orders given to the officers of the wings before the battle began. It would have been difficult to check the pursuit of a victorious citizen force, had not its officers been aware beforehand that this formed an essential part of the whole design of the battle.

It was in this fight that the Persians must have sustained their severest losses, if the term fight can be applied to what, if the numbers of the slain given by Herodotus be near the truth, must have soon degenerated into a massacre.

Such of the Persian centre as escaped,—they cannot have been many in number,—fled to the ships. On reaching the shore, the Greeks called for means of setting fire to the vessels. As the fugitives from the Persian wings must have already reached the shore, and had, no doubt, hauled a large number of the ships into deep water, the success here attained by the Greeks was not great. The enemy seem to have fought with the courage of desperation to save their sole means of escape, and the Athenian losses at this stage of the fight, if not large numerically, included the polemarch Kallimachos and Stesilaos, one of the generals. Other prominent citizens fell in the same combat.

Paus. i. 32. 7.