Battle of Marathon
The battle of Marathon
All the year 491 av. J. - C. is devoted to the military and diplomatic preparations of this offensive. Many Greek cities receive ambassadors requiring their tender. Some are carried out, but Athens as Sparte refuse and put at dead (according to Hérodote) the Persian ambassadors, without however taking true measures to precede the future offensive.
The Persian army, directed by the generals Artapherne (Army) a nephew of Darius and Datis (fleet), directly crosses this time the Aegean Sea, right on the Eubée and the Attique, after however having taken with the passage control Naxos and Délos (490). There is 100 000 with 200 000 Persian soldiers according to the versions, but the contemporary Historiens estimate that the real figure lies between 25 000 and 50 000, which is already considerable for the time. On the whole the Persian fleet undoubtedly represents 600 trières. It reaches the southernmost point of Eubée, devastates Carystos, which refused to open its doors, then Érétrie, given up by its Athenian allies, destroyed and whose population is off-set in Ardéricca close to Suse, thus marking the first stage of the revenge on the Large King.
The Persian army unloads, on the councils of Hippias, the former tyrant of Athens, at the beginning of September 490 on the beach of approximately 4 kilometers which borders the plain of Marathon to forty kilometers of Athens. The Athenians do not await the enemy behind their ramparts but led by the Stratège Miltiade, the Hoplite S Athenians and platéens, approximately 10 000 men, go to the meeting Persians. The September 13rd Persians decide to attack Athens by ground and sea. Part of the Persian troops, including the cavalry, re-embarks, with for objective unloading with Phalère in order to reach the Acropole quickly. Remaining troops, about 21 000 soldiers, cross then Charadra, the small brook which crosses the plain of Marathon before being lost in littoral marshes, in order to prevent the return of the Athenian troops towards the city.
Those, with their allies of the city of Foundations, occupy two small heights, the Pentélique and the Parnès and await the reinforcements promised by Sparte, reinforcements which delay. In front of the evolution of the situation, the Athenians do not have any more the choice: it is necessary to beat Persians in the plain of Marathon then to precede the enemy ships and to gain Athens to protect it. Miltiade, one of the ten Athenian strategists knows the weakness of the Persian army to have fought with them at the time of the offensive against the Scythians. Indeed this army is made up soldiers of different origins, not speaking the same dialects and not being accustomed to fighting together. Moreover the Persian armament, with shields in wicker and short spades, does not allow the engagements the body with body.
On the contrary the armament of the Greeks is that of a heavy infantry, the hoplites, protected by a helmet, a shield, an armor, leggings and arm-bands out of bronze. Are added to it a sword, a long lance and a shield of skin and sheet metal. Finally the hoplites fight in tight rows (phalange) their shields forming in front of them a wall. Miltiade decides Callimaque Polémarque to extend the line of the Greek soldiers, in order not to be submerged by the number, and to reinforce the wings with the detriment with the center. Indeed Persians lay out their best troops with the center and it is thus a question of wrapping them.
The Athenians thus charge as soon as they arrive at range of arrow. It is indeed improbable, within sight of the heaviness of the equipment of the hoplites, that those carry out a load of more than 1500 meters as the historians of the time affirm it. As envisaged the wings of the Persian army, made up of scattered troops raised in the empire or of Ionian little justified, are relaxed and gone up in panic aboard ships. But the center of the Greeks is inserted and yields. The Greek troops laid out on the wings give up continuing the Persian troops diverts some and are folded back on the center of the Persian army in a perfect operation of clipper. This one crumbles in its turn.
On the whole approximately 6400 Persians are killed, the majority drowned while fleeing, and seven ships are destroyed, while the Athenians lose approximately 200 citizens. Such a difference does not have anything extraordinary, even if the figure of the Persian losses is undoubtedly exaggerated. Indeed one frequently notes a ratio of one killed among Greeks with 20 or 30 for the Eastern armies in the various battles the opponent with the people of Asia.
But it is necessary to prevent the second offensive of Persians with the attack of the best elements of their army which had re-embarked before the battle of Marathon. The Persian fleet needs ten hours to double the Cape Sounion and to reach Phalère. By a forced march of seven or eight hours, with a battle in the legs, the Greek hoplites arrive approximately an hour before the enemy fleet. Persians seeing the failure of the operation give up unloading. Thus the first medic war is completed. This strategic victory became symbolic system for the Greeks and conferred a great prestige on Athens. In fact for Persians it is especially of a missed unloading and a minor failure. Their forwarding succeeded in subjecting all the islands, in any case a great number, Aegean Sea with the capacity of Darius Ist.
According to the tradition (That Hérodote challenges), it is on this occasion that a messenger in the name of Philippidès ran to announce the victory with the inhabitants of Athens. He died of exhaustion while arriving on the Agora, with the foot of the Acropole, after four hours of race. He had just had time to pronounce only one word before crumbling: " Nenikamen" (or Nenikikame), " We have gagné". Its memory would be at the origin of the test of the Olympic Games modern, the marathon. However, that the episode of Philippidès is veracious or not, the sporting exploit here is collective with the forced march of the Athenian hoplites in order to prevent the Persian unloading with Phalère.
The reaction of Darius to this defeat is from the start to prepare its revenge and a new forwarding. It is impossible for the sovereign of such an empire to remain on a defeat. But a revolt bursts then in Egypt, directed by the Aryandès satrap and occupies the last months of Darius. This one dies in -486 and his/her son Xerxès I to him {{er}} succeeds.
External bonds
- Description of the battle with ''' graphic '''
See too
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