To the Persians, the Ionian Revolt signified little more than a minor interruption in what for them was the irresistibly proceeding expansion of their empire. Each king since the death of Cyrus the Great in 529 BC had added to the empire. Cyrus’ son, Cambyses (529-522 BC), had added Egypt. For several years after his succession, Darius I had had to contend with various revolts, but after he and his allies had suppressed them all, he led an army across the Hellespont and conquered a large swath of Europe from the North Aegean up to the Danube (Hdt. IV 83-143). Additional minor campaigns brought numerous Aegean islands (such as Samos, Chios, and Lesbos) into the empire.
A History of Greece: 1300 to 30 BC, First Edition. Victor Parker.
© 2014 Victor Parker. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Following the Ionian Revolt, the Persians returned to setting their empire’s bounds wider still and wider. In the year after the revolt’s end, Mardonius’ fleet added the island of Thasos to the empire, and a campaign on land brought the Thracian tribe of the Bryges to heel. Alexander II of Macedon sent earth and water and thus surrendered his kingdom (Hdt. VI 44-45). Persian heralds went to most of the Aegean islands to demand submission. Various states made the required gesture - among them Aegina within sight of Athens (Hdt. VI 48-49).
The Athenians, since Aegina belonged to the Peloponnesian League, complained to Sparta. From one point of view it was the height of hypocrisy since Athens, a few years earlier, had committed the same crime as Aegina. Moreover, the person to whom the Athenians made their complaint, was none other than King Cleomenes whom they had humiliated when they had besieged him on the Acropolis (see chap. 8) and who had suffered an even greater humiliation the next year when his army dissolved before his very eyes as he led it against the Athenians (see chap. 9).
All the same, Cleomenes listened to the Athenians’ representations and then went to Aegina to order the Aeginetans to rescind their submission - a step, incidentally, which the Athenians had never undertaken. An Aeginetan, Crius, pointed out that Cleomenes’ colleague, Demaratus, had not come and that therefore Cleomenes had no right to give the Aeginetans orders (Hdt. VI 49-50; see also chap. 6). Cleomenes had no immediate answer to that, but upon his return to Sparta he contrived Demaratus’ deposition. Gossip about Demaratus’ birth and legitimacy was dredged up, and Cleomenes suborned the Delphic Oracle to confirm his colleague’s illegitimacy (Hdt. VI 61-66). Demaratus, thus deposed, eventually made his way to the Persians, who gave him two cities in the Troad as fiefdoms (Xen. Hell. III 1,6). He would stand at Xerxes’ side when the latter invaded Greece (Hdt. VII 101-105). In the meantime Cleomenes returned to Aegina with his new colleague, Laotychidas II, and forced the Aeginetans to repudiate their submission and to provide hostages against their future good behavior. These hostages Cleomenes turned over to the Athenians for safekeeping (Hdt. VI 73).
Cleomenes’ actions are perhaps best understood as a clear-sighted recognition of where the real danger was coming from and as an attempt to patch up a quarrel with Athens in advance. The Persians’ empire now extended to the border of Thessaly in the north and, in theory at least, to western Aegean islands such as Aegina. That the Persians would soon appear in Greece proper required no particular clairvoyance. In fact, the Athenians’ active rebellion, as it must have appeared to the Persians, during the Ionian Revolt and participation in the burning of Sardis made this a certainty. Cleomenes would not live to see it - he died in 491 (Hdt. VI 75) -, but he helped the Greeks prepare for it.
In 490 a Persian fleet crossed the Aegean with an army to punish Athens as well as Eretria which had also sent aid to the Ionians. The Persians sailed up the strait between Attica and Euboea and dealt with Eretria first (Hdt. VI 98, 100-101). The city they took and razed to the ground. Then they ferried their troops across the strait and landed in northern Attica near Marathon. With them came Hippias, by now extremely aged and infirm, but still eager to rule Athens once again (Hdt. VI 102-103). Marathon lay where the Peisistratids many years ago had had their regional support base (Hdt. I 59 and 62), and Hippias may have believed that he could rally the people living there to his standard once again.
The terrified Athenians had sent to Sparta for aid, but the Lacedaemonians could not march immediately since tradition obligated them to celebrate a festival first (Hdt. VI 106; the festival is the Carneia - see VII 206). This was no self-serving excuse - the Lacedaemonians were always punctilious in their observance of religious rites. The second the festival ended, the Lacedaemonians marched. Meanwhile the Athenians prepared to meet the Persians alone - or all but alone; the tiny Boeotian town of Plataea, just across the border from Attica, sent a handful of troops (Hdt. VI 108). The Athenians never forgot the gesture (Hdt. VI 111).
The Persian troops who had landed at Marathon outnumbered the Athenian army, albeit not by much. Moreover, the Persian strength lay in archery and cavalry. The Athenians in this period had no cavalry and relied, as did most Greek states, on heavily armed infantrymen, so-called hoplites (see Box 10.1). Bows are long-range weapons, and hoplites were vulnerable to arrow fire until they came to close quarters. Moreover, they were vulnerable to cavalry from behind and from the sides. Until the hoplites closed with the Persian archers, they were exposed to arrow fire; but if cavalry continually attacked them so that they kept having to wheel about to protect themselves, then they had little chance of closing with the archers.
The Athenians, however, learned that the Persians were brigading their cavalry separately - such that the Athenians might be able to attack before the Persians had the cavalry in position. Some Ionians with the Persians allegedly apprised the Athenians of this circumstance (Fornara, Nr. 48). Miltiades the Younger, who after his return to Athens from the Chersonese had procured his election as one of the ten tribal generals (see chap. 8), drew up a daring plan to take advantage of this unforeseen opportunity. His plan involved thinning out the Athenian center and strengthening the wings. Then, to minimize the amount of time the Athenians were exposed to arrow fire, he proposed to have the hoplites advance “at a run” (Hdt. VI 111-112). Given that a hoplite carried some forty pounds of armor, this was a harsh demand. It also meant that the hoplites would have to even up in the ranks and files of the phalanx under stressful conditions just before engaging with the enemy. Miltiades gambled that the hoplites would succeed in this.
Miltiades convinced four of his fellow tribal generals of his plan’s efficacy. The other five viewed the risks as too great. In such a deadlock, the Archon Polemarchus cast a deciding vote, and Callimachus, who held the post in this year, to the eternal glory of Athens voted with Miltiades (Hdt. VI 109), whose gamble in the event paid off handsomely. The Athenian hoplites rose to the physical challenge, evened up the phalanx quickly enough before engaging, and closed with the Persian troops. The strengthened wings pushed the opposing
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