This last seems, at any rate, to have been the plan which they attempted to carry out. It may or may not have existed in whole or in part at the time of the landing at Marathon.
The Persian did not want to fight at Marathon, though he was prepared to do so in case the Athenians decided to attack on ground of his own choosing.[70]
His great object was to get the Greek army as far as possible from Athens, and, if possible, to keep it there.
The fact that the Persians did not, in spite of their knowledge of the treachery within the town, attempt a direct assault on Athens, points to the same conclusion, which is suggested by other considerations, namely that the expedition was not on a very large scale. It was, indeed, formed, and it acted throughout, upon the assumption that it would receive a large measure of assistance from Athens itself.
H. vi. 103.
On hearing that the Persians had landed at Marathon, the Athenian army marched to that place.
Before leaving the city, the generals had despatched a professional despatch runner named Philippides[71] to Sparta, to summon assistance. H. vi. 106. He made a marvellously quick journey, for he is stated to have arrived at Sparta on the day after leaving Athens; and if, as would be presumably the case in a matter so urgent, he communicated his message immediately to the Spartan authorities, he arrived there on the 9th day of the month, and thus left Athens on the 8th.[72]
ATTITUDE OF SPARTA.
H. vi. 106.
It is unnecessary to insist on the verbal accuracy of the message which is put into his mouth by Herodotus; but the matter of it contains what are, no doubt, the historic facts:—