Miltiades the Younger

Military leader and politician

Born: c. 554 b. c.e.; Attica, Greece Died: 489 b. c.e.; probably Athens, Greece Category: Military; government and politics

Life A member of the powerful family of the Philaidai, Miltiades (mihl-Tl-uh-deez) the Younger was elected archon in 524/523 b. c.e. In about 516 b. c.e., the Athenian tyrant Hippias sent him to the Thracian Chersonese to replace his murdered brother, Stesagoras. There Miltiades contracted an alliance with the Thracian king Olorus by marrying his daughter and became a sort of Athenian viceroy in the region. He accompanied the Persian king

Miltiades the Younger.

(F. R. Niglutsch)

Darius the Great on his Scythian expedition in about 513 b. c.e. and later reported that he had unsuccessfully urged his fellow Greeks to destroy Darius’s bridge across the Danube. In 493 b. c.e., he was driven from the Chersonese by Persian forces and returned to Athens, where he was unsuccessfully prosecuted by political enemies and subsequently elected general every year until his death. In 490 b. c.e., he urged the Athenians to meet the Persian army at Marathon and is generally recognized as the architect of that spectacular victory. Riding a wave of popularity, he led an expedition against Naxos in 489 b. c.e. but failed to capture the city and was severely wounded. He was subsequently tried for “deceiving the people” and fined fifty talents but died from his wound, leaving the debt to his son, Cimon.

Influence Miltiades was responsible for the victory at Marathon, which provided the Athenians and other Greeks the boost in morale they needed to resist the invasion of Xerxes I ten years later.

Further Reading

Bott, D. H., ed. A Nepos Selection: Miltiades, Themistocles, Alcibiades, Atticus. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1970.

Burn, A. R. Persia and the Greeks: The Defense of the West, 546-478 B. C.

Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1984.

Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Robin Waterfield. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Sekunda, Nicholas. Marathon, 490 B. C.: The First Persian Invasion of Greece. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2005.

Richard M. Berthold

See also: Athens; Cimon; Hippias of Athens; Marathon, Battle of.