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The campaign of Marathon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

F. Maurice
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Extract

All modern commentators are agreed that the account of the campaign of Marathon left us by Herodotus is often inconsistent, and that as often it is difficult to reconcile it with probabilities. In seeking to disentangle fact from fable in the story of Marathon we have a harder task than in the case of the story of Xerxes' invasion of Greece, for we have much less material at our disposal, and the dilemma of deciding what to accept and what to reject of Herodotus' story is very real. There are, however, some guides through this dilemma. Herodotus wrote with the greater event of Xerxes' invasion between him and the campaign of Marathon. Persia had ceased to be the terror to Greece which she had been in the year 491 B.C., and the memory of Athenian fears and hesitations had been obliterated by pride of achievement. It is some guide in the process of selection from Herodotus' story to imagine the kind of tales of Marathon he would be likely to have heard, when making his inquiries, and the kind of event which would be forgotten or concealed.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , 1932 , pp. 13 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1932

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References

1 I have to acknowledge the kind assistance of Mr. A. W. Gomme in the preparation of this paper.

2 I have recently come across a letter written five days after the battle of Mons and describing that battle, from an officer on the staff of our 1st Corps, who was in close touch with Sir Douglas Haig. In this letter he mixes up the events of the first and second days of the battle (23rd and 24th August, 1914).

3 Hellenistic Military and Naval Developments.

4 Owing to the deportation of the surviving Eretrians after the fall of the town, he would have had difficulty in getting reliable information of what had happened in Euboea.

5 CAH. iv, 238.

6 There is about 3500 yards of sandy beach opening on to a good depth of water between the mouth of the Charadra and Kynosoura promontory; this would allow 14 yards for each of 250 triremes, or sufficient space to allow the fleet to get to sea quickly.

7 I allow the Persians 30 inches' front per man in the first line, and the Greeks with their shields 36 inches. An allowance is made for small intervals between units.

8 I find the fact that the Persians took no such steps to be an additional reason for supposing that no cavalry was landed, for in that case one would suppose that the first care of the Persians would have been to obtain control of the whole of the plain in order to be certain of having a supply of forage.

9 Zur Topographie von Marathon, AM. 1876, p. 88.

10 The distance between the fronts of the opposing forces, in this event, would probably have been considerably less than 1000 yards. The distance from the mouth of the Vrana defile and from the broken ground at the foot of Kotroni to the shore is 2300 yards. The Greeks with their column formation on the wings would hardly have required a lesser depth than 1000 yards, nor the Persians a lesser depth than 750 yards between their front and the sea. The Persian archers would then only have had to advance a few hundred yards to disturb the Greek formation.

11 It is generally agreed that the Greek force numbered about 10,000, which would give an average of some 900 to the Plataeans and to each of the ten Athenian tribes.