In the order of battle the Athenians placed themselves according to the official order of the phylæ. At their head as leader of the right wing, stood the polemarch Callimachus, with the phyle Æantis, to which he himself, as an Aphidnæan, belonged. The Platæans received a place on the extreme left. The front of the Athenians was turned to the northeast. The left wing was covered by the slope of Kotroni and the trees which fringed it; the right was not very far from the shore. The ground permitted Miltiades to make the line of battle the same length as that of the enemy, in order to protect himself from a flank movement. The wings had to be strong enough both to repel an attempt to surround them and to effect a charge; he therefore ranged the centre only a few lines deep, whilst the wings were relatively strong. The attack was not unexpected by the Persians; they had time to form in order of battle with a centre including their picked troops, Persians and Sacæ, while the cavalry seem to have been kept in reserve behind the hills. They were, however, astounded by the manner of the attack. According to Herodotus the space between the two lines of battle amounted to eight stadia. The serried ranks of the Athenians covered this distance at a run (in some nine minutes) chiefly to avoid the chance that the cavalry might fall upon them by the way, and in order to get as quickly as possible past the hail of Persian arrows and come to a hand-to-hand combat. For the Persians began their battles with a fight at a distance, and their army was essentially a defensive army, to which Hellenic hoplites were superior in a struggle of man against man. Moreover the speed of the forward movement must have added force to the charge of the heavy-armed infantry. The shock of meeting probably took place between the Charadra and the Brexisa; the Persian foot stood firm and the fight lasted a long time. Finally the Athenians and Platæans with great force threw back the enemy, on either wing, although their centre was pierced by the Persians and Sacæ and pursued inland. In consequence, the victorious wings left the vanquished to fly, wheeled inwards and turned their united front against the Persians and Sacæ. A new fight ensued, which ended in the total defeat of the barbarians. Many of them were driven, in their flight, into the great swamp of Kato Suli, and there perished.
In the meantime, the Persian wings which had been vanquished in the onset, had had some time in which to launch a number of ships and get first on board. In especial, the embarkation of the cavalry, which had probably remained behind the wings, must have been effected. This cannot have required very much time, since the horse-transports were flat-built vessels. When the Athenians wished to follow up the pursuit of the Persians and Sacæ by the shore, they attempted to take or set fire to such ships as were still within reach. Thereupon there ensued a hot fight in which fell many men of name, such as polemarch Callimachus, the strategus Stesilaus, and Cynægirus, brother of the poet Æschylus. The Athenians succeeded in gaining possession of only seven ships; with the others the Persians got away and then made for the islet of Ægilia, to take on board the Eretrians they had left there.
The Persians were already in their ships, when it was noticed in the Athenian camps that a signal had been made by a shield, set up apparently upon the height of Pentelicus. It was believed that it had been given by the traitors in the town. Apparently on the morning after the battle the Persian fleet left Ægilia and steered its course for Cape Sunium. As soon as the Athenians observed the direction taken, the strategi could no longer doubt that it was the town which was aimed at. Forthwith they started with the army, and, by a rapid forced march, succeeded in reaching Athens before the enemy, and there set up a camp on the Heracleum, at the southern foot of Lycabettus, in Cynosarges. The Persian fleet soon showed itself above the height of Phalerum, yet made no attack, but only anchored for a time and then sailed back to Asia.
Presumably Datis did not venture on a landing in sight of the Athenian army after the experience of Marathon. The defeat was not indeed a crushing one, but had been by no means insignificant, for the Persians had lost 6400 killed, to which a considerable number of wounded is to be added. Of the Athenians, 192 citizens had fallen in the battle. The town bestowed on them the peculiar honour of a common burial on the battle-field itself. Close by, a tropæum of white marble and a monument to Miltiades were erected. With the tithe of the spoil, the Athenians erected, amongst other things, a bronze group at Delphi. Every year, on the sixth of Bœdromion, the festival of Artemis Agrotera, a great goat sacrifice was offered to that goddess for the crowd of defeated enemies, in fulfilment of a vow of the polemarch, before the battle.
Pan, who had thrown his terror amongst the barbarians, received a sanctuary in the grotto on the northwest side of the rock-citadel. To him also an annual sacrifice was offered and a torch-race instituted. The memory of the victory which the Athenians, as advance guard of the Hellenes, had achieved always filled them with special pride. Poets and orators could not refer to it often enough.
The day of the battle cannot be determined with precision. Only this much is certain, that the fight took place at the time of the full moon, in one of the last months of the summer of the year 490. For after the full moon two thousand Lacedæmonians marched hastily from Sparta and made every effort to reach Athens in time. On the third day they arrived in Attica, but the battle had already been fought. After having viewed the scene of the Persian overthrow they started on their return march spreading eulogies on the Athenians.[g]
In an article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies (1898), J. A. R. Munro[h] declares that the reason the Persians chose so disadvantageous a field as Marathon, was purely to lure Miltiades and the troops out of Athens while the plot was maturing by which the supporters of Hippias should open the gates and admit the Persians by way of Phalerum. But as usually happens, something hung fire, the Spartans approached and, before the signal of the shield could be raised, Miltiades had routed the land forces with undreamed success and was hastening back to Athens.
In this view, the strategy of the Persians becomes somewhat less contemptible and the march of the Spartans seems not so useless.[a]