Authors: Jim Lacey
The First Clash (32 page)
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s I mentioned at the start of the previous chapter, the reconstruction of the battle is mine alone and is based on rather sparse evidence.
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The following questions are not my own. They are culled from the dozens of reconstructions of Marathon written by the greatest classical scholars of the past century.
Where Was the Persian Cavalry?
The Persians considered their cavalry the decisive force on any battlefield. However, Herodotus never mentions the use of cavalry at Marathon, causing historians to debate the presence of cavalry at the battle for at least the past two centuries. What we know from Herodotus is that Darius ordered the construction of special vehicles to carry horses and that these horses were unloaded at Eretria.
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However, he never discusses this cavalry being moved to the Greek mainland, although he does state that one of the reasons the Persians selected Marathon as their landing site was its suitability for cavalry operations.
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In the absence of evidence, historians have speculated widely. Some claim the horses had not yet crossed over from Eretria. Others feel they were off grazing to the north of the Great Marsh and were unable to return in time for the battle.
For my part, I believe the cavalry was at Marathon. My reasons are simple. First, the cavalry was the dominant Persian military arm and held the central place in their battle doctrine. The Persians were horse warriors and simply did not fight without cavalry present unless there was no way to avoid it. Next, Herodotus states that Datis brought cavalry on the expedition.
Therefore I believe it is unlikely that he would have gone through the tremendous bother of carting unwieldy horses across the Aegean only to leave them behind on another island when he was face-to-face with the Athenian army. It is just possible that with fodder running short, and grazing area sparse on the Plain of Marathon, Datis may have sent the cavalry north of the Great Marsh. However, protecting them from Athenian light infantry when they were so far from his main base would likely have presented an insurmountable problem. Besides, it is hardly feasible that the cavalry could not have returned the couple of miles from their grazing point to the battle in time to have made an impact.
Although the literary evidence for cavalry being at Marathon is lacking, and what does exist was written centuries after the battle, there is archaeological evidence that tilts the balance in favor of the cavalry being present. Soon after the battle ended, the Athenians commissioned a painting of the battle—the
Stoa Poikile
. Although this painting no longer exists, archaeologists are almost certain they have found copies of portions of it on a Roman sarcophagus, displayed at Brescia’s Santa Giulia Museum, and on one of the friezes of the Nike Temple atop the Acropolis.
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Both depict a vicious fight near the Persian ships, in which cavalry is clearly present.
Given that evidence, I believe it is certain that cavalry was present during the battle, and the reason Herodotus never mentions it is that his audience was well aware of this fact. They did not require a reminder. In the reconstruction presented in the previous chapter, the cavalry enters the battle near the ships, as this follows the tradition clearly visible in the extant archaeological evidence of the battle. Earlier, I built a case around the proposition that it was Persian preparations to depart from Marathon that propelled the Athenians to attack when they did. It is only a small logical leap from that point to state that the Persians would have loaded the horses first. Anyone who has witnessed a horse race knows that it requires some expertise just to lead a horse into the starting gate. In many cases, a skittish horse absolutely refuses to enter or hurts itself in a panic. One could imagine how much harder it would have been to load a thousand or more horses over an open beach or in shallow water by trying to coax them up narrow gangplanks.
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Once the Athenian attack began rolling, one easily pictures the cavalrymen rushing to organize what horses were still left on the beach, while still others pushed horses overboard into the shallow water. They must have raced to assemble a force sufficiently large to make a difference, but by the time that was done, the Persian flanks had collapsed. Moreover,
Datis, knowing that cavalry was useless against an unbroken phalanx, would have held them back for the last stand near the ships.
There is one more possibility that cannot be ignored, although it is not part of my reconstruction. The Persians and the Saka were the finest cavalry Darius possessed, and both hailed from the far eastern regions of the empire. Herodotus tells us that Datis left Darius’s presence for Ionia with a large force, probably these very same Persian and Saka troops. One can argue that both Datis and Darius wanted a core of Persian infantry with the attack. However, would he have converted the Saka, who knew only how to fight from horseback, to an unaccustomed role as infantrymen, in which they would have been much less effective? Further, why go through the trouble and great expense of marching this Saka “infantry” across the length of the empire when, in the wake of six years of war, there was plenty of infantry available in Ionia?
Given this analysis, it is possible that Herodotus does tell us that cavalry participated in the battle. When he states that the Persians and Saka were in the center of the Persian line, his audience may have taken it for granted that he was speaking of the cavalry. However, as the surviving representations of the
Stoa Poikile
show the cavalry fighting by the ship, my reconstruction has discounted this interpretation. If the cavalry was at the Persian center, it is possible that a number of cavalry cut their way out of the closing jaws of the Athenian trap and were available for the fight at the ships. It should also be noted that it was Persian practice to place their cavalry on the flanks, not in the center. It is possible, however, that they thought it best to keep the horses clear of the sea and away from the hills, from which light troops could descend with little warning.
If the Persian cavalry was in the line that day, what difference would it have made to the battle or its outcome? The answer is probably very little. First, Callimachus would have known it was present and would have made plans to deal with it. Light troops carrying brush, or
abittis
, would have protected the flanks, and here torches would have been invaluable. Herodotus does tell us that when the hoplites reached the Persian ships, they began shouting for “fire.” One might assume, therefore, that there were men with lit torches nearby. Also, no matter how brave the cavalrymen, a horse will not stand its ground once soldiers begin stabbing at it with spears. It would have taken only a short time for the phalanx to throw the Persian cavalry, which had no room for maneuver on the small plain, into confusion. Moreover, as long as the phalanx held its cohesion, there was nothing the cavalry could do to make an impression on it.
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How Far Can a Hoplite Run?
Herodotus states that when the Athenians started their attack, they were eight stadia from the Persian line, or just a little less than a mile. He further states that when the Athenians attacked, they ran the entire distance. Virtually every historian who has studied Marathon has dismissed Herodotus’s account of the run, stating that it was physically impossible for hoplites in full panoply to run that distance and still have the energy to fight. Those who have not dismissed it out of hand have moderated the historians’ version along the lines that they may have advanced at a quick pace and then picked it up toward the end.
It is worth looking at the exact words of Herodotus before we go further:
The lines were drawn up, and the sacrifices were favorable; so the Athenians were permitted to charge, and they
advanced on the Persians at a run
. There was not less than eight stades between the two armies. The Persians, seeing them coming at a run, made ready to receive them; but they believed that the Athenians were possessed by some very desperate madness, seeing their small numbers and their
running
to meet their enemies without support of cavalry or archers. That was what the barbarians thought; but the Athenians, when they came to hand-to-hand fighting, fought right worthily.
They were the first Greeks we know of to charge their enemy at a run.…
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Clearly, Herodotus thought the run was a remarkable event worthy of special notice, as it was the only time he was aware of the Greeks attacking in such a fashion. Remember, he would have been reading his work in front of Athenians who had grown up hearing the story of Marathon repeated ad nauseam. In fact, no small number of the “Marathon Men” would still have been alive to hear his recitation. For them, the memories of such a run would be seared in their minds. This observation leads to several questions, starting with how reliable are battlefield memories. Science provides a partial answer. It turns out that a rush of adrenaline imprints a clear memory of events that will last a lifetime.
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This is why people forget the mundane moments of their past but tend to remember every detail of a traumatic event, no matter how distant. As any veteran will tell you, there is nothing like hostile fire to release just such a surge of adrenaline.
Still, that does not mean the memory is a correct one. I experienced this myself when interviewing many dozens of soldiers on their combat experiences during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I conducted these interviews an average of eighteen months after the event, but in many cases I had transcripts of interviews a number of these soldiers had given within days of capturing Baghdad. Interestingly, there were often divergences in the stories that different participants had of the same event, which reflected their individual perspectives on the fighting. However, where a soldier was describing events he had participated in, there was no difference between his first version and what he recounted more than a year later.
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Given the imperative to close the distance before the Persians could fully prepare to meet the attack, and the extra impetus of getting through the kill zone of the archers as rapidly as possible, it is clear the Athenians had every reason to run. It should therefore be judged a certainty that if ten thousand hoplites “remembered” running toward the Persians, they did.
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Hoplites running into battle, from a vase dating from the sixth century BC. A number of historians have doubted Herodotus’s claim that the Athenians charged at a run at Marathon. This contemporary vase shows the hoplites running into battle. It leaves open the questions of how far they would run and how fast
. The Art Archive/Musée Archéologique Naples/Gianni Dagli Orti
One question remains: Can men outfitted in full armor and carrying heavy shields run close to a mile? At least one paper claims this is a physical impossibility based on tests run at Pennsylvania State University.
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Researchers there took physical education majors, outfitted them like hoplites, and had them run a mile. They failed. However, this is hardly convincing proof. As every athlete knows, exercise is specific. If you want to do a lot of push-ups, you have to practice doing push-ups. All the weight lifting in the world is not going to prepare you for a push-up contest. Furthermore, if you were to take a well-conditioned physical education major and place him with a U.S. Marine or 101st Airborne Division squad in Iraq or Afghanistan, he would collapse of exhaustion inside of an hour doing what those young men do all day, every day. Hours of conditioning in the gym or on a track just cannot prepare an individual to go out in 125-degree heat on a combat patrol while carrying a hundred-pound combat load.
Here, I would like to fall back on personal experience. When I arrived at the 82nd Airborne as a twenty-two-year-old second lieutenant, I was chagrined to find out that my battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Frank Akers, thought it great fun to take his officers on formation runs with full rucksacks that ended with a series of sprints up and down the stairs at the local stadium. I can assure you, based on that miserable experience repeated many times over two years, it is quite possible to keep up a pretty brisk pace for five or more miles carrying a heavy load.
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And for those who argue that men cannot run any great distance with a shield, I have often witnessed units running in close order carrying rifles at port arms for mile after mile. Is it easy? No. But for men trained to the task, it can be done.
If we keep in mind that the Athenians at Marathon were a nation in arms for most of the previous decade, then we can assume that they took training seriously.
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And did they train to run at the enemy? Well, they had an Olympic event for just that—a sprint in full hoplite panoply with shield. However, I will relent on one matter: A mile sprint, while just barely possible, would wreck the cohesion of the phalanx and leave the hoplites too winded for immediate combat. What the Athenians remembered as a run was probably a double time for most of the distance, followed by a real run once they were within range of the archers. In their minds, there would have been no difference between the two. As I remember
it, we did not go very fast when Lieutenant Colonel Akers took us out for some exercise with rucksacks, but among ourselves, we always described them as runs.