The First Clash (23 page)

Miltiades’ father, Cimon, was a powerful member of the Philaidae clan who apparently got involved in the succession struggle following the death of Pisistratus. It appears that he was a dangerous enough rival to warrant assassination, probably on the orders of Hippias. However, Hippias, after securing a firm hold on power, treated Cimon’s son Miltiades well and even had him sworn in as an archon in 525/524 BC. In 516 BC,
he sent Miltiades to rule the Chersonese, after the murder of his brother Stesagoras during a war with Lampsacus. Miltiades seized power in the Chersonese in a coup and then secured it by marrying the daughter of a Thracian king and surrounding himself with five hundred mercenaries. Although he apparently did his best to protect Athenian interests, the expansion of Persian power into the region circumscribed his ability to act independently. In 514 BC, he led a contingent in support of Darius’s Scythian expedition and according to his personal testimony was a key participant in the debates over whether to destroy the bridge over the Danube and leave the Persian army trapped in Scythia. As noted earlier, the role he presented for himself was likely a fabrication. At some point during the Ionian revolt, Miltiades took advantage of Persia’s distraction to seize the Persian-held islands of Lemnos and Imbros in Athens’s name.
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When the Ionian revolt finally collapsed, Persia rewarded those who had remained loyal (or cut a deal during the war, as the Carians apparently did) and punished the others. Owing to his seizure of the two islands, Miltiades was definitely on the list of those who no longer enjoyed Darius’s favor. As a result, as Mardonius pushed north with the Persian fleet, recently victorious at the Battle of Lade, Miltiades prepared his escape. After loading four ships with his personal goods and treasure, Miltiades fled. The Persians overtook one of the ships and captured Metiochos, one of Miltiades’ sons. Metiochos was taken to Darius’s court, where he was kept in honorable condition as a “guest” of Persia for the remainder of his life.
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Athens did not greet the tyrant of the Chersonese warmly. In fact, his arrival precipitated a political crisis. Although Cleisthenes was no longer on the scene, his Alcmaeonidae clan still controlled the government. Now, Miltiades—a Philaidae and a relative of Isagoras, whom Cleisthenes had deposed—was in their midst and making a grab for power. Miltiades’ family connections and social rank made him a favorite of the nobility, while his advocacy for expanded trade made him attractive to tradesmen and merchants. On the other side, the government (Alcmaeonidae) could count on the multitudes of farmers and the previously disenfranchised for support. Moreover, when he arrived, Athens was in the throes of a great debate as to whether to submit to Persia or resist. Miltiades was firmly in the camp of the resisters, while the Alcmaeonidae government was tilting toward submission. In any event, Miltiades won election as a general of his own tribe, Oeneis, and began to increase his power base.

Those who were comfortable with the status quo and saw no place within it for Miltiades now put him on trial for his life. They charged him
with being a tyrant in the Chersonese, but it is hard to see how this was a capital offense in Athens or even how it was a crime to rule over Thracians. In all likelihood, as a Thracian tribe (the Dolonci) had invited him back after the Scythians had driven him off, he could legally have been viewed as a Thracian tyrant ruling over Athenian colonists. Fortunately, Themistocles, the future hero of Salamis and the man who rallied Greece to resist Xerxes in 480, was the archon that year. As he came to wealth and power as a result of the reforms of Pisistratus, he was considered a “new man.” He was also rabidly anti-Persian. For him, Miltiades’ political allegiance was secondary to the fact that he was reliably anti-Persian.
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With Themistocles’ strong support and influence, the Athenians acquitted Miltiades.

It was not a moment too soon, for the great Persian invasion force was already weighing anchor and heading for Greece. When they arrived, they would find both of their Greek allies, Argos and Aegina, humbled by Spartan and Athenian arms. Moreover, both Sparta and Athens, after a long period of brutal political infighting, had at the last moment achieved a tenuous alliance.

WAYS OF WAR

GIANT VS. LILLIPUTIAN

I
n the fifth century BC, Persia was the sole superpower. Its landmass covered 7.5 million square miles, reaching from the Aegean to India, and its population was probably in excess of 40 million. Measured against that standard, Athens was feeble.
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All of Attica consisted of less than 4,000 square miles, and in 490 BC probably only about 150,000 citizens lived on this land.
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No wonder so many historians considered Athens’s stand a hopeless cause and its victory akin to a miracle. What is therefore no less remarkable is that Athens, with a full understanding of Persian power, still decided to stand against the titan. Or did Athens know something that has been overlooked by later commentators?

The first thing to understand about ancient empires is that the latent power that appears available from a cursory examination is, in fact, illusory. Not discounting the organizational achievements of Darius, it is fair to say that the Roman Empire centuries later possessed a superior organization. Despite this, Rome, even at the height of its power, normally maintained less than 2 percent of its empire’s total population under arms and could sustain only 3 percent mobilization for limited periods of time.
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It is safe to assume that because of its inferior organization, the Persian Empire would strain to maintain 2 percent of its population under arms. Moreover, throughout most of history, at least until the Industrial Revolution, the bulk of the population survived at the barest subsistence level; even the slightest change in conditions could bring on famine. These societies required every hand in the fields, and only a small proportion were available for military uses.
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Two percent of the population of Persia still equates to eight hundred thousand men. But this is a high estimate of
Persian capabilities, and there is reason to believe that the Persians failed to approach these levels.

Darius, who had come to power by way of a military coup, knew better than anyone the danger of maintaining large standing forces without an external enemy to hold their attention. Therefore Persia’s permanent military establishment was always small and depended on local levies in the event of war. One has only to look at how long it took to mobilize sufficient forces to crush the Ionian revolt, or the expectation of all involved that the Persian Empire would collapse if it lost its field army in Scythia, to see how dependent it was on local levies.

This was not the end of Persia’s problems, though, as its frontiers were not secure. Thrace remained restive, and beyond the Danube, the Scythians were still waiting for opportunities to attack the empire, while their kin on Persia’s northeastern borders were always ready to sweep down on the empire’s fertile plains. Keeping these enemies in check required well-garrisoned fortresses as well as a mobile field force large enough to effectively counter any major incursion. Moreover, all the other frontiers of the empire also required permanently stationed troops. Furthermore, the Ionian revolt was a reminder, if one was needed, that a number of subject peoples within the polyglot empire were looking for any sign of weakness to make their own bid for independence. To forestall this, Darius had to keep numerous large royal garrisons in major cities and at key geographic locations.

Finally, one must never lose sight of the cost and logistical difficulties of sending an expeditionary army far from the center of power. Again, the Roman example is instructive. When Caesar began the conquest of Gaul, he had only six legions, with probably an equal number of auxiliaries, for a total force of about 35,000 men. It is doubtful that he ever had more than 50,000 legionnaires during the entire war. Similarly, Crassus, when he set out to conquer the Parthian Empire, led out only 45,000 legionnaires. Even the more resilient and aggressive early republic had great difficulty sending substantial forces far from Italy. Although republican Rome could maintain over 100,000 troops facing Hannibal in Italy for sixteen years, it strained every resource to maintain a mere 30,000 in nearby Africa for the decisive campaign that finally vanquished Hannibal at the Battle of Zama. In summary, if the most efficient and warlike empire of the ancient world could sustain only 50,000 troops on distant campaigns, can one reasonably expect the Persians could do much better? That they managed to double this number for Xerxes’ 480 BC campaign reflects the
fact that the Persians spent almost half a decade preparing and that they expected this to be a lightning campaign, which would allow for the demobilization of most of the army in a short period of time.
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More than any other factor, the inability of Persia to maintain a large expeditionary force for more than a single campaigning season accounts for Xerxes’ departure with probably half the army before it had suffered any major setback on land.

When judging how much power Darius could throw against Greece, one must never lose sight of the fact that the Persian Empire had just finished crushing the Ionians, after enduring what must be judged as catastrophic costs. Victory had taken over half a decade, and in the process Persia had lost two fleets and probably had one more extensively damaged at the Battle of Lade. Furthermore, the Carians had annihilated one field army, and thousands more Persians must have fallen in other operations. On top of this, a substantial part of the empire—previously the richest portion—lay in ruins. As it was from this region (Ionia) that the Persians expected to draw the bulk of the matériel support required for an invasion of Greece, its ruin was a severe drag on preparations.

On the other side of the equation, the Persians could probably forgo the calling up of new and untried levies. The veterans of the Ionian campaigns (probably with a number of defeated Ionians among them) and Mardonius’s campaign in Thrace were still available, and Athens offered rich booty. As very few of these men would have been survivors of the Carian disaster, this army would have never tasted defeat. Inured to hard conditions and familiar to combat, these men represented a formidable foe.

Given all this, and extrapolating from the best available estimates as to the size of Persian armies during the campaigns in Thrace and Ionia, a supreme Persian effort could have fielded at best forty thousand troops and possibly as many or a bit more sailors for a campaign in 490 BC.
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It is almost inconceivable that the Athenians—living in the period, having experienced personally the difficulties of campaigning, and having a number of citizens (not least of whom was Miltiades) with substantial experience with the Persian army—were not aware of these factors and limitations. Still, forty thousand troops and a similar number of sailors was a huge force. In fact, it was several times larger than the entire hoplite class of Attica. Thus the great question remains: What advantages did Athens have that convinced its citizens that making a stand would be more than a forlorn hope?

The most important factor was that Athens was going to fight this war on its home ground and would therefore be able to mobilize a far higher percentage of its population than Persia. If we accept a total population of Attica of 150,000, that would mean there were approximately 30,000–35,000 men of combat age.
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Of these, Athens could probably afford to equip 14,000 of them as hoplites, possibly a few thousand more, depending on the amount of war booty they had collected in previous years. Consequently, the fact that there were only 9,000 Athenian hoplites at Marathon requires an explanation. Most probably the hoplites at Marathon did not represent all who were available to Athens, although they may have been the best of them. Moreover, the road from Marathon, guarded by the bulk of the Athenian army, was indeed the easiest route to Athens, but not the only one. Other roads and even paths (the Persians proved at Thermopylae that access to a goat path was enough for them to inflict a nasty surprise on an enemy) required strong garrisons. The same was true of key positions along the coast, in order to prevent the Persians from making an amphibious end run around the Athenian encampment.