The First Clash (25 page)

As the Persians never expected to fight a hard, close battle, they would be at a decisive disadvantage once the hoplite battle line was upon them. The Persians themselves, at least, wore some scaled armor for protection. But most of their polyglot army did not have even this much. There were the Sagartians, who fought with lassos; some of the Indians went into battle carried on donkeys; the Colchians wore wooden helmets and carried short spears; the Thracians wore fox on their heads and fawn pelts on their feet; and so it went for the entire army. It was a mark of Persian military genius that they could weld these disparate troops into something approaching a coherent force.

In any case, the protection provided by scaled armor paled in comparison with that offered by the Greeks’ bronze breastplates. And there was no comparison between the heavy Greek shield and the wicker of the Persians. These Persian shields, apparently constructed of sticks threaded through a wet shield of leather, were almost the height of an average man and just a bit wider than the human frame.
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They may have sufficed to stop or slow an arrow, but against a charging hoplite they were close to useless, as they could not stop a spear thrust.

Much worse for the Persians was the fact that as they expected to be fighting an already shattered infantry, they had no training on how to handle a formation that fought as a single unit. A Greek phalanx was a single fighting formation, and if still intact on impact, it would have no trouble cutting its way through any Persian force to its front. As Herodotus relates about the Battle of Plataea:

In head-to-head combat during this era, the only thing that could hope to halt a Spartan or Athenian phalanx was another phalanx.

However, the most formidable weapon the Persians had was the cavalry,
mounted on superb Nesaian horses. As Paul Rahe states: “For control of their realms, vast plains and steppes, the Achaemenids depended less on their archers and charioteers [and infantry] than on their cavalry—the last including horse archers capable of firing volley after volley as they circled the enemy, knights in light armor who hurled javelins into the enemy ranks, and shock cavalry equipped with spears and sabers.”
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Caught in the open, a Greek phalanx would have found itself doomed against such a force, unless it could find a way to keep the cavalry at arm’s length. This it usually accomplished by the employment of slingers, archers, peltasts, and its own cavalry—or, as Alexander did at Gaugamela, by placing heavy infantry in reserve to cover an exposed flank.

It is important to note that the Greek phalanx possessed an overwhelming advantage on a narrow front in a battle fought in a box—a perfect description for the Plain of Marathon. For there is one thing that a horse will not do: It will not run head-on into a wall of spear points. Some historians make much of the fact that medieval knights often ran down infantry. This is the case only because the infantry wasn’t disciplined, unbroken, or armed with pikes. Even as late as Waterloo, the allies gained victory only because even the most courageous of French horses would not throw themselves on a bayonet. So when the British troops formed squares with bristling bayonets facing in every direction, they became impervious to the swirling masses of French cavalry.
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When it comes to cavalry charging a phalanx, human bravery counts for nothing. It was the courage of the horse that mattered, and in this case Persia’s fabled Nesaian mounts proved no braver than any other horse.

Through recent popular books and movies such as
300
, the Persians, and particularly their rulers, have entered the public imagination as a collection of particularly obnoxious effetes. As a result of Greek writers such as Xenophon and orators such as Isocrates, who in the decades after Marathon fed their audiences a constant diet of tales of Persian feebleness, even the ancient Greeks believed the Persians were inferior warriors. If the Persians did lose some of their warlike character in the later days of the empire, it certainly was not the case in the empire of Darius and his immediate successors. As Herodotus describes, “From the age of five to the age of twenty, they teach their sons just three things: to ride horse, to shoot the bow, and to speak the truth.…”
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The Persian forces that the Greeks fought at Marathon and then again, a decade later, at Thermopylae and Plataea were not soft. They were seasoned warriors within a culture that prized warriors above all else. The example began with Darius
himself, who despite his undoubted achievements in consolidating the administrative infrastructure of the empire was most proud of the fact that he was a king on horseback—a true warrior.
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It is important to understand that the Persian army the Greeks faced at Marathon was considerably different from the typical Persian force generally depicted. First of all, it was a veteran army, inured to hardship and the terror of battle by six years of fighting in Ionia and Thrace. While no Persian army ever approached Greek levels of tactical integration, this one probably came the closest. Six years of war would have seen to that. Over time, national differences within the army eroded, as common experiences and the natural adaptation that takes place on the battlefield brought about a convergence of fighting methods and equipment. Furthermore, this force was superbly disciplined and probably possessed a high level of tactical flexibility as a result of training and fighting together over a long period of time. The only time Persians may have ever seen massed hoplites was when the Milesians marched to the assistance of the Carians, and the Persian army possessing that experience was massacred in a later ambush.

It was also predominantly an infantry force, although the Persians appear to have brought a thousand or so cavalry to Marathon. Still, it would have used the typical Persian methods of battle as outlined earlier. This was because at no time during the Ionian revolt did this force face an organized hoplite army. It therefore never found it necessary to make any of the adaptations required to face a phalanx.

The army sent to Marathon was a supremely confident force that had never suffered defeat. It was a skilled force, capably led, with overwhelming numbers, and full of confidence. This was not the soft Persian force typical of later generations. It was a veteran army, slimmed down for war. It was a force to reckon with and could not be taken lightly. No one in Greece could have liked the Athenians’ chances in the upcoming fight.

HOPLITE WARFARE

U
p until 650 BC, warfare had been the job of aristocrats, as only they could afford the implements of war, particularly horses. However, as Greece recovered from the collapse of the Bronze Age, the population grew at a steady rate (probably approaching 3 percent a year).
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This growth in turn led to dramatic changes in agriculture as the Greeks converted land from pasture to farming. Moreover, as the population continued to rise, this farming became progressively more intense. As the population continued to expand, increasing food requirements pressed marginal land into agricultural service, and even the poorest tracts of territory were now worth defending.
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As farming intensified, large tracts were divided into small family-owned plots, which came to dominate the landscape. These two transitions, in turn, had led to the development of a unique style of conflict—hoplite warfare—by 650 BC.
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Now that farmers needed to protect their holdings and could do that only as part of a collective, the concept of a hoplite was born. In turn, this collective action came to be centered around the polis, or city-state.

No one has ever figured out how this took place in practice, but medieval history may provide a clue, as it had a strikingly similar developmental curve. As in ancient Greece, the mounted warrior (the aristocrat) had been the dominant military force. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, town-centered economic changes whittled away at the political dominance of the knight. Unwilling to cede their hold on power, the mounted nobility fought to hold their gains. In one notable instance, the French king sent an army to subdue what amounted to a revolt of townspeople in Flanders. The resulting Battle of Courtrai pitted heavily armored mounted
knights against an infantry formation.
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Similar to a Greek phalanx, the Flemish townsfolk were well disciplined, closely packed, and eight deep, with spears extending to the front. Against them came the flower of French chivalry. When the battle was over, the flower of French chivalry was reduced to “dung and worms.”
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Western Europe was on the edge of a technological revolution that was about to radically change the character of war, if not its nature. However, had technology and gunpowder not intervened, this steady Flemish infantry would have been well on its way to establishing a military order very similar to that of the Greek phalanx.
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While a spear stuck in the ground or protruding forward was sufficient to stop a charging horse, it was insufficient against a similarly armed force of infantry. As each city-state developed a phalanx, its rivals were forced to follow suit, as there was no other way to hold one’s own in a pitched battle. As the character of war changed from aristocrat centered to crowded fields of massed men rushing at one another with extended spears, it quickly became apparent that the better-protected and better-drilled force had a distinct advantage. To further protect themselves from opponents stabbing at them with spears, these warrior farmers progressed to adding breastplates, greaves, and the distinctive
hoplon
shield to their panoply.
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Similarly, the difference in quality of men who drilled together over those who refused to practice soon made itself felt, and regular drilling became a requirement in many cities.
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As small city-states could not typically afford to maintain a standing army, the most practical and efficient means of defense was to have a large body of men with a vested interest in defending their soil on immediate call to rush to the city’s defense.
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As these part-time soldiers had many other concerns and commitments, war tended to become a ritualized process, and rules developed over time.
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These rules can be summarized as follows: One side would declare war and march its phalanx into the territory of another; its opponent would mobilize its phalanx; and finally, both sides would agree on a level place on which to fight. After the proper sacrifices were made, each side made straight for the other and a climactic crash ensued. It was all over in a morning or afternoon, and one side or the other would retreat off the field. Both sides accepted the verdict of the battlefield, and the losers either gave up the strip of land claimed or (if the aggressors lost) gave up their claims and marched home. Rarely were battles costly in terms of personnel losses, nor would wars continue past this climactic engagement.
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For the past century, historians followed the ancient evidence and what appeared to be common sense. The poor land of Greece could barely sustain the population in good times. Thus no city could afford to hole up behind its walls while an invader laid waste to its lands, as that would mean economic ruin and famine. Moreover, farmers practicing intensive agriculture could not afford to be away from their farms for prolonged periods, either sheltering behind walls or besieging them. Considering these circumstances, each side in a conflict had a strong interest in ending a war as rapidly as possible. The climactic head-to-head hoplite battle appeared to fit everyone’s needs.

However, by the time of Marathon, the whole ritualized system was breaking down. For example, Sparta in its battle of annihilation against the Argives at Sepeia, and Athens in the decades prior to Marathon, appear to have fought with the intention of winning decisively enough to change the political landscape permanently. By the time of the Peloponnesian War, all that was left of the former system of warfare was the phalanx itself.

This Greek way of war made little sense to the Persians. Herodotus quotes the thoughts of the Persian general Mardonius on the matter: “The Hellenes are in the habit of starting wars without the slightest forethought, out of obstinacy and stupidity. For whenever they declare war on one another, they seek out the finest and most level land and go there to fight, so that the victors depart the battlefield only after much damage has been done [to themselves], and I won’t say anything at all of the defeated, as they are completely destroyed … if they must wage war against one another, they should seek out the place where either of the two sides would be the most difficult to subdue and try to fight there. Thus the Hellenes do not employ intelligent strategies.”
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