The three decades from 508-478BC were possibly the most consequential in all of ancient history. In this episode and the next, we tell the story of the Greco-Persian Wars through the eyes of Themistocles, the Athenian mastermind who guided the Greeks to victory.
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Episode Transcript
It’s hard to think of a thirty year period in history that was more consequential than the three decades from 510 – 480 BC. During that brief interval, a series of astonishing and unlikely events happened that changed the world forever. And we still feel their effects today on a daily basis. The first of these unlikely events was that democracy was born in 507 BC in ancient Athens. The second unlikely event was that this newborn democracy survived despite a host of challenges and attacks. The third event was that, around that time, the Persian Empire – largest empire the world had ever seen – decided to conquer Greece, which of course would have extinguished this political experiment in its infancy. And the fourth (and possibly most) unlikely event of all, is that the Greeks somehow won the war with Persia. And democracy not only thrived in the following centuries but is once again today the main political ideal across most of the world.
So, how did all this happen in such a short period of time? Was it just coincidence? Or, when you dig down into the details, do these outcomes start to appear inevitable given the historical trends that were unfolding? Or, did the actions of individual people in these geopolitical games bend the arc of history in accordance with their will? That’s what we’re going to discuss today.
As I’m gearing up to take a bunch of you to Greece for the upcoming “Persian wars“ tour, I thought it might be useful and interesting to do a couple of episodes on that topic – a primer if you will summarizing the Greco-Persian conflict. You’re probably thinking, yeah, right, Jack. It’s taking you like 20 episodes to get through Plato’s Republic, but now you’re gonna cover the entire Persian wars in just a couple?
Well, challenge accepted. And just to make my life a little more difficult I thought why not also throw in a biography of the most important statesman on the Greek side.
Cause it’s one thing to hear about a series of battles and how they impacted the fate of Empires. But what was it like to live through that? Isn’t that more interesting? Especially if we look at the events through the eyes of someone who helped shape them.
So, in the next 50 minutes or so, you’re going to get two topics for the price of one: a synopsis of the Persian Wars and the life of the Athenian statesman Themistocles.
Now, Themistocles is one of my favorite figures from all of ancient Greek history. Not only was he arguably the architect or mastermind of the Greek victory against the Persians, but he’s also arguably the guy who turned Athens into a superpower. He was a very clever, even sneaky guy, very enigmatic, hard to understand. Seems almost Macchiavellian in some ways, and yet apparently motivated to do good for his city. He’s almost like a benign version of Alcibiades. Like, if you ever wondered, what could someone accomplish if he had the off-the-charts charisma, ingenuity, charm, cleverness, sneakiness, talent for political intrigue, and actual battlefield prowess of Alcibiades without the corruption, treachery, and disloyalty, that’s Themistocles. At least that’s the image presented by most of our surviving sources.
Of course he has his critics too. Plato for one faults Themistocles for making Athens great while neglecting to make the Athenians themselves better – more virtuous, better citizens, better humans. But on the whole, his legacy is a positive one. And the ancient historian Diodorus even seems to suggest that he might have been a greater historical figure than Alexander the Great. I’ll let you decide if there’s any truth to that.
What we can say is that Themistocles came of age right as democracy was bursting onto the world stage, and he rode the ensuing wave of populism to the utmost pinnacle of power. The story of his career has always been both a source of inspiration for ambitious people who want to rise to the top, as well as a cautionary tale that offers lessons on the strengths and weaknesses inherent in a democratic system.
Part 1: Childhood and the Athenian Revolution
Historians estimate that Themistocles was born in around 524 BC. At which time Athens was still a tyranny. Plutarch, who is the main ancient source we have on his life, tells us that Themistocles’ father was kind of a middle-class dude, and his mother was a foreigner. Which means Themistocles was by no means part of the elite, and had few prospects of achieving any kind of political career.
However, during his childhood, things started to change rapidly. When he was ten years old, the tyrant’s brother and co-regent, who effectively shared the throne, was assassinated at a festival. After that, the tyrant Hippias became understandably paranoid and started using foreign mercenaries to keep the populace fearful and obedient. But that didn’t go over too well. And seven years later, the Athenian revolution happened. We would need several episodes to dissect that whole set of upheavals. But in short, Themistocles, now aged 17, would have seen Spartan armies invade his city twice, both times attempting to set up a government subservient to Spartan interests. Cause remember, at this early stage Sparta was still the undisputed top dog in mainland Greece and routinely interfered in the affairs of other states.
But in this case, the second invasion backfired. Not only was it successfully repelled by the Athenians but it ended up solidifying the power of the Athenian reformer Cleisthenes, who was the architect of a new democratic constitution. So, ironically, in attempting to install a pro-Spartan oligarchy, the Spartans unintentionally helped cement the world’s first democratic government.
The birth of democracy undoubtedly opened up new prospects for someone like Themistocles. Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like he had no prospects under the tyranny. And if you’ll allow me a superquick digression here, this is a myth that I feel compelled to bust. Because I’ve seen it repeated in countless popular books and YouTube videos and even college courses. Which is this idea that Athens was a totally average and undistinguished city-state before – boom! –the democratic revolution gave it a major boost and the Persian Wars an even bigger boost, and then it was suddenly a major power. That’s not true. Athens was rapidly growing in both prosperity and power even under the tyranny. How do we know this, given that there’s hardly any sources that survive from that time period? Well, through a bunch of proxies that indicate growing influence. For example, under the tyranny the Athenians were already taking control of and sending settlers to what we call the Gallipoli Peninsula, which is way across the Aegean and controls the narrow strait that leads to the Black Sea. Which shows that the Athenians were already engaging in a kind of imperialism to open up or protect trade routes for their goods, such as pottery. Which is another important proxy because throughout the 500’s BC, again before the democracy, we can see from archaeological finds that Athens becomes the main producer and exporter of fine pottery in the Mediterranean, which is a hugely important industry and would have been bringing in a lot of money to Athens. Meanwhile, the Athenian tyrants created new festivals that attracted poets to Athens and made Athens a cultural hub, which again speaks to a burgeoning economy and growing cultural prestige. So, lots of indications that Athens was an up-and-coming power already before it made the switch to democracy.
Ok, end of digression, my point is that even under the old regime in Athens, a middle-class, half-foreign dude like Themistocles could still make it big, whether in commerce or even as a military commander. And we see him as a boy already showing remarkable ambition that, again, suggests he lived in a society where upward mobility was possible.
For instance, when he was a boy, one of his teachers noticed that during recess between lessons, while the other boys would play games and horse around, Themistocles would go stand in a corner somewhere and make up mock speeches and legal arguments. Impressed by his ambition, his teacher is reported to have remarked, “you, my boy, will grow up to be something great, whether for good or for evil.”
My favorite anecdote about his youthful ambition is the following: he grew up in a crummy neighborhood outside the city center and was not allowed to work out in the fancy gymnasia downtown where the elites hung out, possibly because he was only a half-blood Athenian. But he wanted to gain access to that social circle. So he came up with an ingenious plan. He started bragging to the elite kids downtown that he and his half-blooded bros in the suburbs could whip their butts in wrestling. The elite kids felt compelled to prove him wrong, so they started going out to the burbs to wrestle with Themistocles and his gang. And Themistocles managed to keep this rivalry going for quite a while. The result was that the elite kids were spending more time in his wrestling gym than they did in their own. Through this ingenious move, Themistocles first of all got to know all the elite kids and, by making them come to him, he effectively evened out the playing field and undermined the class distinctions that separated them.
In sum, even under the old regime, he seemed destined for success. He just had no chance of being CEO under that system. With the switch to democracy, that door was now open. And Themistocles was determined to take it.
Part 2: Democracy’s Early Challenges
Every good revolution has a few downsides. One of them is that you often get attacked by your neighbors. This happened to France after the French Revolution, it happened to Russia after the Russian Revolution. And likewise, it happened to Athens after the Athenians switched to democracy. Almost immediately, Sparta and two of her allies invaded Attica from three separate directions in an attempt to overthrow the new government.
But just as in the case of France and Russia the new citizen brigades of Athens, fueled perhaps by revolutionary fervor and excitement, successfully repelled those attacks. And so this newborn democracy lived to fight another day. But the Athenians were worried that that day would come sooner rather than later.
Which brings us to the second downside of successful revolutions, which is the steep learning curve that the new government has to ride if it is to survive. For example, it's not easy to find good diplomats when you’ve exiled or in some cases killed off the entire previous government. ’Cause diplomacy requires experience.
Now, the Athenians, fearing that a new invasion was imminent, and desperate for a strong ally, dispatched emissaries to none other than the Persian empire asking for an alliance. You heard that right. The Athenians went to the Persians first and asked for help. When the emissaries reached Sardis, which was the closest regional capital, and asked the local ruler for protection he was like,“sure, no problem, we have a standard policy for requests like yours. Just give us a bit of earth and water as a symbolic gesture, and we got your backs, bro. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some serious business to attend to. Just let my assistant here know when you’re ready to perform the ritual.”
And these rookie emissaries look at each other and are like, “Crap. What do we do?” Now, it’s possible they did not fully understand the significance of this symbolic gesture. Or perhaps they did but saw that their only other option was to go home empty handed having failed in their mission, and they didn’t want to do that. So they performed the ritual.
They then go back to Athens and say to the assembly, “there’s nothing to fear from Sparta anymore because the Persians now have our backs, woohoo.” And the citizens are like, “Oh great. What did you have to do? Like, what did they want in return?” “Oh, it was super easy. We just had to give them like a handful of dirt and a cup of water. And that was it.”
And the Athenians are like, “What?! Do you realize what you’ve done? In offering earth and water to them you’ve signified that, as Athenians, “our earth and our water is now theirs.” You’ve just made us into a client state of Persia!”
Now, obviously I’m being creative in my retelling here. We don’t have any contemporary accounts from this period. But later historians like Herodotus report that those emissaries were severely punished for their misstep. In any case, it didn’t really matter because, in the eyes of the Persians, the deed was done. The Athenians had knocked on their door, asked for help, and placed themselves under Persian hegemony. So far so good for Persia, right? I mean this Athenian diplomatic blunder was advantageous to them. But in what happened next, it is arguably the Persians who miscalculated and that would have far-reaching and devastating consequences.
While all this was happening, the exiled former tyrant of Athens had made his way to Persian territory. This, by the way, is a running theme throughout ancient Greek history, and one could even say all of history. Which is that when a powerful leader is ousted, he often goes into exile in a rival state, in this case Persia, and waits there for an opportunity to make a comeback, often with help or funding from that rival state. Keep this in mind later when we get to Themistocles’ eventual fate.
Anway, Hippias, the former tyrant of Athens is now in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) and he is pulling every string he has to get the Persians to help him return to Athens and resume the throne. And of course he promises that, once restored, he will be a faithful servant of Persian interests.
So, the Athenians catch wind of this and they send another delegation to Sardis, asking them, “Can you please not listen to this former tyrant and not support him? We already offered you guys earth and water. So, we’re cool, right?”
Wrong. Artaphernes, the local Persian ruler, decides to back Hippias. And he tells the Athenian envoys, “If you know what’s good for you, you’re going to take this guy back. Immediately.”
That effectively nullifies the previous Atheno-Persian alliance. ’Cause the Athenians are thinking, “You know, the whole point of us asking the Persians for protection was to defend our democracy against Sparta. If they now want to impose tyranny on us, screw it. We’ll have to just live with Persia being our enemy from now on.”
Once again, Athens is left without any strong allies. But by this point the Athenians are starting to feel a little more confident with their new system. They repelled the first attacks. And the Spartans don’t seem to be preparing any fresh invasion. So the Athenians start to think, maybe we can get by on our own.
But now we get to the third downside of the Athenian switch to democracy, which is the danger of demagoguery.
Part 3: The Demagogue
One day, a surprising visitor appears in Athens. He claims to be the local ruler of Miletus, one of the richest Greek cities already under Persian rule. And keep in mind there are dozens of Greek cities at this point within the Persian Empire in a region we refer to as Ionia, which is the western coast of Asia Minor, i.e. modern Turkey. And this guy, Aristagoras, tells the Athenians that all of those Greeks of Ionia are about to revolt against the Great King. And, “could you guys maybe help out? Nothing major, of course. Like, maybe just send a couple thousand soldiers on a few dozen ships across the sea to a land hundreds of miles away to attack the largest empire in all of history. What do you guys say? Could you do that?
What do you think the Athenians’ response was? Obviously, if they told the guy to get lost, we wouldn’t be talking about it today, so of course they agreed. The question is why?
Ironically, the name Aristagoras means “excellent speaker.” And there’s an old Latin proverb I like which says “nomen est omen,” which means “your name is your omen or “your name is your destiny.” And I’m not saying it’s always true, but it was true in this case. This guy really did a number on the Athenians with his powers of oratory.
Before coming to Athens, he had actually gone first to Sparta to ask for help, Sparta being the preeminent power in Greece at the time. And he had obtained an audience with King Cleomenes, the same guy who had invaded Attica and tried to put down the Athenian democracy. In his one-on-one discussion – his tete-a-tete – with Cleomenes, Aristagoras tries to get him to help with the Ionian Revolt. And Cleomenes’s response after studying a map that Aristagoras brought with him showing how just far away Persia is, Cleomenes’ response is, “Get the hell out of my house and don’t let me ever see you again.”
Then, Aristagoras makes his way to Athens and speaks before the entire Athenian assembly and manages to convince them. So, why was Aristagoras successful in Athens when he had failed in Sparta?
Part of the reason may be that he could make use of an argument in Athens that was not available to him in the case of Sparta, which is that the Athenians, unlike the Spartans, were actually related to the Ionians. Of all the dialects of Greek, Ionian is the closest to Athenian aka Attic Greek. And that’s because Ionia seems to have been colonized largely by settlers from Attica way back in the Greek dark age that followed the Bronze Age collapse, or perhaps even earlier. No one really knows.
So there’s that. And, I mean, that might have moved the needle a little bit. But I don’t think that’s the reason the Athenians said yes. There must be a better explanation.
And I think Herodotus, in attempting to explain Aristagoras’ surprising success, hits the nail on the head with one sentence. He writes, “Apparently, it is easier to deceive a multitude than an individual” (Hdt. V. 97). Mic drop.
I’m gonna pause there and let you ponder that for a second, ’cause I think it is so profound. And it’s been borne out time and time again, even in recent years. I mean, how many propaganda campaigns have fooled entire groups of people into believing something that would be impossible to defend in a rational one-on-one conversation? One of the fundamental principles of the art of rhetoric that the Greeks discovered thousands of years ago is: you don’t target the individual, you work the crowd. You literally get them worked up. You make them cheer and boo and laugh and cry and get angry in unison. And every time they experience a strong, synchronized emotion you activate the hive mind, which overrules individual critical thinking. We’re all susceptible to this. No one is immune. It’s human nature.
So, demagoguery has always been and likely always will be a danger to democratic systems. And in this case, the Athenians, still trying to figure out this new political system, didn’t know what hit them. According to Herodotus, Aristagoras used every trick in the book on them and promised them the moon in order to convince them. And it worked.
Thus, in 498 BC, when Athenian democracy was just ten years old, Athens and another polis nearby named Eretria sent ships and troops to aid in the Ionian revolt. And Herodotus here has another of his great one-liners. He says, “These ships were the beginning of evils for Greeks and Barbarians” (Hdt. V. 97).
Let’s pause our narrative for a moment and consider two questions that some of you may be thinking. First, if Herodotus’ hypothesis is true, that the reason Athens sent ships was the susceptibility of Athenian democracy to demagoguery, then what about Eretria, the other polis that sent ships? Wouldn’t Eretria have to be a democracy too? Otherwise, that would kind of debunk Herodotus’ theory, right?
This struck me as an obvious question when I was writing this episode. And then I realized that this never came up in any of my classes ever. None of my professors ever mentioned this. And Herodotus doesn’t tell us what kind of government Eretria had at this time. So, I became curious to find out?
Now, where do you look to find such information? ’Cause you're not going to find it in Wikipedia or any other encyclopedia. Here's a pro research tip for any students out there or history enthusiasts. Whenever you want to find information like this, you go to a big fat book called An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis by Hansen and Nielsen. I’ve mentioned it before, but I can't mention it enough because it is so important. It’s over a thousand pages long and catalogs all 1100 poleis for which we have any records at all, including what kind of government system they had at what time.
So I opened up the inventory and went to the chapter on Euboia, the island where Eretria is located, and I found the entry for Eretria. And sure enough it was a democracy at the turn of the fifth century. Which I thought was really cool because it might not confirm Herodotus, but it’s another data point in his favor, and it shows that he wasn’t making sloppy inferences. He was being careful. And again, no one talks about Eretria. So I thought I would share that with you. And btw, on my upcoming Persian Wars tour, we’re going to be visiting Eretria of course.
The second question that might have occurred to some of you is, where was Themistocles when all this was happening? The short answer is, we don’t know. None of our sources tell us.
But, again, I have some thoughts about this that I’d like to share with you. Because I’d like to suggest that this was a formative moment in Themistocles’ life. And here’s why. We know that Themistocles would have been about 25 years old when Aristagoras came to town. And we know that Themistoces had political ambitions from his earliest years. So, I think we can say with great confidence that he was there when Aristagoras spoke. There's no way he would have missed that.
We don’t know if Themistocles spoke up at the assembly. We don’t know which way he voted. My hunch is that he probably didn’t speak because he was still young and relatively unknown and was probably still watching the bigshots talk and taking notes. But I would guess that he voted against this motion. Given how perceptive he proved to be in every other episode of his life, I find it hard to believe that he could have looked at Aristagoras and not seen him for what he was: a con artist proposing a terrible, ruinous idea.
’Cause the thing is that Aristagoras really was a sleazeball. He didn’t care about the plight of the Greeks under the Persian yoke. He didn’t care about liberating them. He had risen to power helping the Persians. He had even tried to increase his power by helping them conquer new territory – new Greek territory. And when that failed, he saw that the Persians were unhappy with him and would probably demote him. And rather than giving up his position, he decided to create a massive war where thousands would undoubtedly die, in order to hold onto power just a bit longer. That kind of happens a lot in history, doesn’t it?
Anyway, I opened this episode with the question, did individual actors bend the arc of history? And Aristagoras is one of those figures that makes you wonder. What would history have looked like without him? Would the Ionian Revolt not have happened? And therefore, would the Persian Wars not have happened? And therefore, would Athens not have become a major power leading a panhellenic alliance, which brought in all kinds of money, which fueled the cultural renaissance that we today appreciate? The literature, philosophy, theater, and art. Would all of that not have happened? We will revisit that question later. I just wanted to plant that seed for you to think about.
Now back to Themistocles. How was he affected by Aristagoras’ performance in Athens? Well, I can’t prove it of course. But I think that it was likely a pivotal, if not life-changing, experience for Themistocles. In that he realized that in order to make great things happen - great movements of people, entire armies, resources, expeditions – you need to convince the crowd. And the best tools – the most effective tools – for convincing the crowd are not honesty and prudence. And so in subsequent years he went on to do a lot of great things for Athens. Really great things. things that served the interest of the people who voted for them. But! He almost always tricked them into making those decisions. That’s another seed I wanted to plant in your mind. Now let’s continue with our story.
Part 4: The Ionian Revolt
As you've probably guessed, the Ionian Revolt was a disaster for the Greeks. Now, in the beginning, they did quite well. Because it's like stepping on the tail of a dinosaur. It's going to take quite a while for the dinosaur to notice and turn around before he smacks you, or snacks on you. The various Greek States and other Ethnic groups who revolted initially took over plenty of garrisons, towns, fortifications. And interestingly, the Athenian and Eretrean troops were part of a force that marched on Sardis, the local Persian capital. And they burned the whole thing down – by accident. Herodotus says that all of the buildings in this city – houses, temples, public buildings – they had thatched roofs. So when one of them caught fire, perhaps unintentionally, the entire city went up in flames. This fire did not help the Greeks, however. Because it forced all of the inhabitants of Sardis to get out of their homes and gather in open spaces. In other words it brought them together into groups who could then collectively fight off the attackers. So, the Greeks had to retreat to the coast, where many of them were killed in the ensuing battle of Ephesus. But it seems like most of the Athenians were able to make it back home safely.
The revolt actually continued for several more years. But in due time, the large armies of the Great King crushed the rebellion everywhere. Miletus in particular was severely punished for instigating the revolt. Herodotus claims that many men were slaughtered, the women and children were taken and sold in slavery, and the flower of youth of Ionia – thousands of young men – were castrated. The devastation was profound.
Now, what were the Athenians thinking back home in the safety of their city 200 miles across the sea when all this was going down? This was before the age of mass media, right? There was no way for them to feel and see this devastation the way that we today can witness war by turning on the TV, right?
Wrong. As mentioned before on this show, the ancient Greeks did have a form of mass media. The theater. which at this time was a new invention – only a couple decades old. Thanks to this new architectural innovation, for the first time in human history, thousands of people could sit in the same place and follow the same storyline, and thus all download the same audio-visual information into their brains at the same time. And in the main theater of Athens, a playwright named Phrynichus put on a tragedy called the Sack of Miletus, which brought to life, as it were, the death visited upon that city by the Persians.
And according to our sources, as the Athenians sat there watching the suffering and destruction dramatized before their eyes, they were absolutely devastated. They were crying, groaning, and tearing their hair out. They were so distressed by this tragedy that they punished Phrynichus. They imposed a hefty fine on him for causing them such anguish.
Nevertheless, it’s one thing to see war on a screen or dramatized in a theater. It’s quite another thing to experience war first hand. And the Athenians, despite the vicarious suffering they may have felt upon seeing the fate of their Ionian cousins, had yet to feel the brunt of Persian wrath themselves.
However, this was soon to change. After the burning of Sardis, Darius, the king of Persia, swore revenge against the Athenians and Eretrians for supporting the rebellion. According to Herodotus, he even instructed one of his servants to tell him every day, “Sire, remember the Athenians,” until he punished them. And three years after the Ionian revolt was put down, which would have been ten years after Aristagoras had come to town and 18 years after democracy was born, the Athenians heard terrible news. A large Persian fleet had sailed across the sea and landed at Eretria. That city now lay in ruins. Many of its people were killed or enslaved. And many more had been rounded up and were being deported en masse to the depths of asia. And now that Persian fleet was sailing towards Athens.
Part 5: Marathon
The territory of Athens, called Attica, is a peninsula that juts out of mainland Greece into the Aegean Sea like a finger pointing eastward. Thus, it has a northern coast from which you can see the island of Euboea, where Eretria is, and a southern coast, from which you can see the islands of Salamis and Aegina, as well as the Peloponnese. And the thing that surprises people about Attica is that it’s really big.
Side note: One thing I like to do on my tours is to spend a full day driving with the whole group around Attica to give people a sense of the scale of the Athenian state. It’s usually the most exhausting day of the tour. And I do it because I want to get rid of this notion that “city-state” equals city. It doesn’t. And that’s why some historians, like Paul Cartledge, don’t even use the term “city-state” but rather translate the Greek term polis as “citizen-state.” Because most poleis have a city, but they also have a territory. And in the case of Athens, that territory is bigger than Long Island in New York State.
Anyway, my point is that Attica is pretty big with a very long coastline. So, the Persians had several options for where to land. The closest point to the city would’ve been the southern coast, where the main harbor is. But in order to get there, the Persians would’ve had to sail around the entire peninsula, which would give the Athenians a lot of time to observe them and prepare their defense. They chose instead to land at Marathon on the northern coast for a number of reasons. First, it’s close to where they were coming from, so they could land there quickly before the Athenians had time to react. Second, it has beaches where troops can land and a large plain where they can assemble their troops and make use of their cavalry in the event of a battle. And as far as the northern coast goes, it’s one of the closer spots to the main city, though it’s still 26 miles away.
Now, you might be wondering, how did they know all of this – like, how did they have such good intelligence – about a region they had never been to before?
Remember Hippias, the former tyrant of Athens? Well, surprise! He was on one of the Persian ships. This was supposed to be his grand return to Athens. It was he who advised them to land at Marathon. And he may have had another motivation to pick that spot, which is that he thought the locals there would be happy to see him.
You see, every ousted, exiled, or overthrown government, no matter how unpopular or disgraced, always has at least a few remaining supporters back home. And in this case, Marathon was in the region of Attica that traditionally supported the tyrants. So Hippias may have been hoping that the local people near Marathon would act like a fifth column and welcome him back. As it turns out, the locals don’t exactly welcome the invaders, but they also don’t oppose them. So, the Persians make their landing unhindered and assemble their forces in the plain of Marathon and make camp.
The Athenians immediately scramble their forces in response. You can imagine pretty much every able-bodied man grabbing his shield and a spier from his closet and running to the scene. And they make their camp a few miles from the Persians.
But the fighting doesn’t start right away. For several days, each side is sending scouts and sizing up the enemy without making a move. And if you think about it, neither side really has an incentive to fight right away. From the Athenian perspective, fighting a pitched battle is very risky. Cause what happens if you lose? As a defender on your own land with plenty of food, provisions, and knowledge of the territory, it makes sense to delay and maybe fight limited engagements over a prolonged period of time, in an attempt to starve out your opponent.
The Persians, who only had whatever food they brought with them, had more incentives to want a pitched battle sooner rather than later. But even they had reasons not to rush into it. For one, they probably still wanted to see if they could get local support.
Because in the case of Eretria, that is what ultimately allowed them to conquer the city so quickly. The city was betrayed from the inside by members of one political faction who hated the ruling faction so much they preferred to betray the whole city to a foreign enemy rather than endure the horror of watching their political opponents in power. Remember the concept of stasis – or factional strife – that we talked about in earlier episodes? That seems to be the Achilles’ heel of democracies. And the Persians, with Hippias at their side, were looking to see if they could replicate their Eretrian feat.
Another reason for the Athenians to delay was to try and get help from other Greeks, because they were outnumbered by the Persians. Already before the Persians landed, the Athenians had sent their fastest courier, a man named Philippides in some accounts and Pheidippides in others, to Sparta to ask for help. Philipides managed to run the entire distance of 150 miles from Athens to Sparta in less than two days, which is incredible. Here’s how Herodotus narrates what happened:
“[Pheidippides] reached Sparta the day after he left Athens and delivered his message to the Spartan government. ‘Men of Sparta’ (the message ran), ‘the Athenians ask you to help them, and not to stand by while the most ancient city of Greece is crushed and subdued by a foreign invader; for even now Eretria has been enslaved, and Greece is the weaker by the loss of one fine city.’ The Spartans, though moved by the appeal, and willing to send help to Athens, were unable to send it promptly because they did not wish to break their law. It was the ninth day of the month, and they said they could not take the field until the moon was full. So they waited for the full moon, and meanwhile Hippias, the son of Pisistratus, guided the Persians to Marathon” (Hdt. VI. 106, tr. De Sélincourt).
Now, it might seem like the Spartans were making up excuses and perhaps secretly hoping that the Athenians would get screwed. After all, they had been frustrated in their attempts to install a pro-Spartan regime in Athens not that long ago. However, I tend to think they genuinely wanted to help. Because they did send troops as soon as the full moon came. And historians conjecture that this was during the Spartan month of Carneius when they had a religious festival in honor of Apollo and really did have a law that they could not field an army until that festival was over.
Anyway, Pheidippides or Philippides runs the 150 miles back to Athens (again in less than two days) and reports to the Athenians that the Spartans cannot send help right away, but they will come later, if there is a later. Meanwhile, reinforcements do arrive from a small polis named Plataea, northwest of Athens. But even so, the combined Athenean and Plataean forces remain outnumbered. Modern historians estimate that the Persian forces numbered at least 25,000 while the Athenians and Plataeans combined had 10-11 thousand men.
If you were the Athenian general in this case, what would you do? Do you attack the Persians while being outnumbered more than two to one? Or do you wait for the Spartans to arrive?
This dilemma paralyzed the Athenians. They actually had ten generals representing the ten tribes of Athens and half of them wanted to fight and half of them wanted to wait. So there was a stalemate.
Among the ten generals, there was only one who had experience with Persian warfare. His name was Miltiades. Remember how I said earlier that Athens was an up-and-coming power even before democracy, and how they were already colonizing the Gallipoli Peninsula in the mid 500’s BC? Well, this Miltiades was the nephew of Miltiades the Elder, who was the guy who first colonized that area. And the present Miltiades himself had been engaged in important military operations in that area as well. Amazingly, he had not only fought against the Persians during the Ionian Revolt, but years earlier when relations with Persia were good, had been part of a Persian Military expedition. So he was intimately familiar with their military capabilities and tactics.
He wanted to fight without delay. Part of that might have been because he knew how the Persians fought and was confident that the Athenians could handle them. But equally, if not more, important in his reasoning was the fear of political division – of stasis – among the Athenians. He thought the longer they waited, the greater the likelihood that some political faction or other would cut a deal with the Persians, as happened in Eretria. So, Miltiades goes to the polemarch of Athens, who is the magistrate who casts the tie-breaking vote when the generals are split fifty-fifty, and he entreats him to vote for battle. Here’s what he tells him, as reported by Herodotus:
“Never in our history have we Athenians been in such peril as now. If we submit to the Persians, Hippias will be restored to power – and there is little doubt what misery must ensue: but if we fight and win, then this city of ours may well grow to preeminence amongst all the cities of Greece… If we refuse to fight, I have little doubt that the result will be bitter dissension (the Greek term here is stasis); our purpose will be shaken, and we shall submit to Persia. but if we fight before the rot can show itself in any of us, then, if God gives us fair play, we can not only fight but win. Yours is the decision; all hangs upon you; vote on my side, and our country will be free - yes, and the first city of Greece. But if you support those who have voted against fighting, that happiness will be denied you – you will get the opposite” (Hdt. VI. 109, tr. De Sélincourt)
Miltiades’ argument persuades the polemarch, and he casts the tie-breaking vote in favor of battle.
Quick comment about this. Years ago I did a full episode on stasis on this podcast because I was amazed that nobody talks about it. Like, in my 10 years of classics seminars, lectures, conferences, I never heard the topic discussed a single time. And it wasn't until I started looking for ancient parallels to today's polarization that I became familiar with the concept. And as soon as I became aware of it, I started seeing it everywhere. and I'm more convinced now than ever that stasis really is the most important political issue underlying almost the entirety of ancient Greek literature. And I mean the philosophers the playwrights The Poets and the historians. and that's because stasis really is the fundamental problem of constitutional government. and it's a shame that classicists don't talk about it more because as a result of that silence people today don't realize that this problem happened so many times before and it was discussed by so many great minds in the past. we're not the first to deal with polarization. okay sorry for the rant let's continue.
Part 6: “Rejoice! We are victorious!”
On the day of the battle, the two armies lined up, separated by 8 stades, which is a little under a mile.
In order to match the Persian line, which was very long because they had a lot of troops, Miltiades had to spread the Greek force very thin. But he did something very clever. He made the center of the line the thinnest and concentrated the strength of his forces at the two ends. As a result, when the two armies clashed, the Persians initially smashed through the center of the Greek line. But this was part of Miltiades’ plan. Because the two ends of the line did well against the Persians and held their ground. And so, as the bulk of the Persian forces pushed through the center, thinking that they were winning, they were unwittingly getting themselves encircled by the Greeks. As the day progressed, the flanks of the Greek army prevailed over their counterparts and then turned inward to complete the encirclement of the Persians at the center of the line. And at this point, the entrapped Persians realized they were done. The Athenians obliterated them, while a part of their army chased the rest of the Persians to their ships, where they even captured or sank 7 of them.
In the end, the Greeks lost about 200 men that day. The Persians lost 6400, according to Herodotus. Some modern historians dispute that, but even they place the figure at over 4000, which is insane. That means over 20 Persians were killed for each Athenian dead.
Legend has it that when the Athenian victory was assured, a courier was sent to Athens to tell the women, children, and elderly who had taken refuge on the Acropolis the good news. The courier ran the 26 miles from Marathon to the citadel, after already being exhausted by fighting in the battle, and he excitedly uttered two words before collapsing of exhaustion and dying on the spot. The two words were “Χαίρετε! Νικῶμεν” which means, “Rejoice! We are victorious!
A lot of historians doubt that that ever happened because it’s not mentioned by Herodotus and only appears in later sources. So they think it might have been a later, romanticized addition to the story. But in any case, it is in honor of that courier’s feat, whether real or imagined, that the modern Marathon race was instituted, which is 26 miles, the distance between Marathon and Athens.
The Persians still had a lot of troops remaining after the battle and they did try to sail around Attica and land on the southern shore, but when they saw how quickly the Athenians marched south and took up defensive positions there, they gave up on that plan and sailed back to Persia. Then the Spartans arrived and were like, “hey we’re here to help.” And the Athenians were like, “Thanks! But problem taken care of.”
Needless to say, this victory had profound consequences not just for Athens but for all of Greece. First of all, it was the first time that a Persian army was soundly defeated by a Greek one. So it signaled to all of Greece that, hey, the Persians are actually not invincible! Second, it made clear that Athens was a force to contend with. Within Athens it provided a huge boost of morale, enthusiasm and confidence in their young democratic system. And on the Persian side, it made king Darius all the more determined for revenge.
Once again, you may be wondering, whatever happened to Themistocles? I realize now that he hasn’t figured all that much in this episode. But he will be the star of the next one.
In 490BC when the Battle of Marathon took place, he would have been 34 years old. Which means he definitely took part in the battle. Later sources claim that he was one of the ten generals, but scholars disagree on whether that information is reliable.
What we do know is that the experience of Marathon and the glory that Miltiades received after the victory had a profound effect on Themistocles. For a long time after the battle, his friends and acquaintances noticed that something was amiss. He looked troubled, absent-minded, he wasn’t himself. Finally, someone asked him, “dude, what’s wrong? You look different.” And he replied with a phrase that has become very famous in history but is a bit awkward when translated into English. He said, “the trophy of Miltiades won’t let me sleep.” In order words, “I can’t sleep because I keep thinking of the glory that Miltiades had won.”
You see, Themistocles wanted that kind of glory. His life ambition was to do something great for Athens and be honored in return. The question was, would he get his chance?
I can just imagine the guy. He’s 34 years old, he’s worked all his life to gain the respect of his fellow citizens and make a name for himself, despite being a half-blood from relatively humble origins. His parents and teachers all recognized his incredible talent, perseverance, and intelligence. But he’s still a nobody.
There are many ambitious people around him. And they’re doing better than he is. They are holding high office and gaining honor, unlike him. But there is one thing that he has that the other guys don’t have. And that is foresight.
In the aftermath of their victory at Marathon, most Athenians thought that the threat of Persia had been dealt with once and for all. But Themistocles foresaw that that battle was just the prologue of a larger epic contest. It might take two years or ten or twenty. But the Persians would be back. And that would be Themistocles' moment to shine.
But there were three major problems with this plan. For one, Themistocles knew that the next invasion would be bigger and more carefully planned by the Persians. And the only hope for little Athens would be for them to waste no time in preparing for that showdown. The second problem was that Themistocles needed to become one of the preeminent political figures in Athens. Otherwise, how would he guide the Athenians to victory? What good would his unusual foresight be without power?
And the third problem was that the first two problems seemed to be at odds with each other. Because at this point, nobody wanted to think of a second Persian invasion. If Themistocles started pushing that issue in the assembly, people would be like, dude, stop being such a party pooper. We literally just won. Can’t we enjoy that for a while before freaking out about some imagined threat that’s years down the line and not even guaranteed to happen?
So he couldn’t push the issue that mattered most, because then he would be unpopular and wouldn’t gain power. And if he focused on gaining power by doing what was popular with the people, then he would be neglecting what really mattered for Athens’ survival.
So what could he do? How could he simultaneously achieve both of these goals that seemed mutually exclusive? I’ll leave you today to ponder that question.
Join us next time to learn how King Xerxes, the son of Darius, attempted to avenge his father and Conquer Greece with the largest military force the world had ever seen. and how the cunning and Ingenuity of Themistocles led the Greeks to one of the most surprising victories in the history of warfare.
Also, as a reminder, if you're interested in coming to Greece with me this January to explore all of the major sites of the Persian Wars together and meet a bunch of fellow history Geeks and fans of ancient Greece, then check out the tour announcement at Greece podcast.com/tour the link of course is in the show notes.