The Battle of Marathon: How Athens Defeated the Persian Empire
The Battle of Marathon, fought on the plain of Marathon about 40 km northeast of Athens in September 490 BCE, was the first major land battle between the Greeks and the Persian Empire. A small Athenian and Plataean force defeated a much larger Persian army, and the victory sent shock waves through the Greek world. The Athenian victory at Marathon, the first major defeat of the Persian army, marked the beginning of the Greek ascendancy in the Aegean, gave Athens the confidence to build its democracy and its Acropolis, and laid the foundations for the Greek victory in the wider Persian Wars a decade later. The famous story of Pheidippides, the runner who carried the news of victory back to Athens, is the origin of the modern marathon race.
This page is a complete guide to the Battle of Marathon. It explains the strategic background, the battle itself, and the legacy. It links back to the Persian Wars cluster, the Battle of Thermopylae page, and the Ancient Athens cluster.
The Strategic Background
The Battle of Marathon was the result of a long chain of events that began with the Ionian Revolt (499–493 BCE). The Greek cities of Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor, had been conquered by the Persian Empire, and they revolted in 499 BCE, with the support of Athens and Eretria. Athens sent twenty ships and a small force, which helped burn the Persian regional capital of Sardis. The revolt was eventually crushed, but Athens and Eretria had now drawn the attention of the Persian king, Darius I.
In 490 BCE, Darius sent a punitive expedition across the Aegean. The Persian army, about 25,000 men, sailed from Cilicia to the bay of Marathon. Their first objective was to punish Athens and Eretria for their support of the Ionian revolt. The Persians took Eretria by storm, enslaved the population, and then crossed to Attica. The Persians were advised by the exiled Athenian tyrant Hippias, who hoped to be restored to power.
The Greek Force
The Athenians had about 9,000 hoplites available, drawn from the ten tribes of Attica. They were joined by 1,000 Plataeans, the only allies who came to their assistance. The Greek commander was the polemarch Callimachus, but the effective leadership came from the strategos (general) Miltiades, an experienced soldier who had spent years as a vassal of the Persians in the Thracian Chersonese and knew the Persian way of war.
The Greek force marched quickly to Marathon, taking up a position on the slopes of a hill overlooking the plain. The Greek camp was protected on its flanks by the mountains and the sea, and the Greek line was anchored on either side by difficult terrain. The Greek phalanx, however, was only about 1,000 meters long, while the Persian line was much wider.
The Battle
The battle was fought on a hot September day, probably in the late morning. The Persian army, composed of Persian and Median archers and infantry, deployed first, and the Greeks deployed opposite them, with their line stretched to match the Persian line. According to Herodotus, the Greek line was weak in the center (where the Athenian tribes of the Leontis and Antiochides held their ground in the usual way) but strong on the wings (where the Athenians and the Plataeans were massed in greater depth).
Miltiades, the Greek commander, made a key tactical decision: rather than waiting for the Persian attack, the Greeks advanced quickly across the plain, sprinting the last 200 meters or so before the Persian archers could find their range. The Greek wings, with their greater depth, broke the Persian wings and turned inward to attack the Persian center. The Persian center held its own for a time, but it was eventually overwhelmed.
The Persian army broke and fled to the ships, and the Greeks captured seven of the ships. The rest of the Persian fleet sailed away. The Greek losses were about 192 Athenians and 11 Plataeans; the Persian losses are not recorded, but they were heavy. The famous mound (the Sorós) on the plain of Marathon still covers the ashes of the Athenian dead.
The News of Victory
The most famous story about Marathon is the run of the herald Pheidippides, who is said to have carried the news of victory back to Athens, a distance of about 42 km (26 miles), and to have died of exhaustion on arrival. The story is probably embellished, but it is the origin of the modern marathon race, which was first run at the 1896 Athens Olympics and is now the most famous long-distance race in the world.
The run of Pheidippides is the second most famous run of Greek antiquity, after the run of the Spartan runner Philippides, who was sent to ask Spartan help against the Persian invasion and who is said to have run 240 km in two days. (The names Pheidippides and Philippides are sometimes confused, and the same story is sometimes told about both men.)
The Aftermath
The Greek victory at Marathon was a turning point in the history of the ancient world. The Persian army had been defeated, and the myth of Persian invincibility was broken. The Athenians, who had done most of the fighting, became the leading city of the Greek world. The Persian Wars were not yet over — Xerxes’ invasion was still a decade in the future — but the Greek victory at Marathon laid the foundation for the Greek victories at Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale.
The battle also had important consequences for the development of Athenian democracy. The Athenian hoplites who defeated the Persians at Marathon were ordinary citizens, not professional soldiers, and their victory gave them a new sense of political power. The political leaders of Athens in the years after Marathon (Themistocles, Aristides, and the young Pericles) were all veterans of the battle, and they used their new political authority to reform the constitution and to launch the great building program that would produce the Parthenon and the Acropolis of Athens.
The Legacy of Marathon
The Battle of Marathon has been one of the most famous battles in the history of the Western world. The victory of a small Greek force over the Persian Empire became a model of the struggle of freedom against tyranny, of the small state against the great empire, of the citizen-soldier against the barbarian horde. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the 440s BCE, used the battle as the centerpiece of his history of the Persian Wars, and the story of Marathon has been retold by every generation since.
The plain of Marathon is still a quiet agricultural region, and the Sorós, the burial mound of the Athenian dead, is still visible from the road. The site is a Greek national monument, and the modern Marathon, the long-distance race that commemorates the run of Pheidippides, is run every year in cities around the world.