Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Battle of Marathon (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. In the year 490 BC, one of the most pivotal battles in world history took place. Just north of the city of Athens, Persian and Greek forces clashed in what was to become the first Persian attempt to invade Greece. Despite being outnumbered over two to one, the Greeks managed to win a decisive victory that had long-lasting ramifications. Learn more about the Battle of Marathon, its causes, and its outcome on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

Starting point is 00:00:59 And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. To understand why the Battle of Marathon took place, we have to understand the events that led up to it. Even a cursory inspection would show that a clash between Greece and Persia was pretty much inevitable. But first, let's start with Greece. Ancient Greece wasn't a singular uniform entity. There was no Greek empire, although there would be a Macedonian empire later on. The Greeks can be better thought of as a civilization, a collection of city-states that often fall with each other,

Starting point is 00:01:38 but were united under common linguistic, cultural, and religious practices. The Greeks didn't just inhabit the area that makes up modern-day Greek. They had spread out, establishing satellite colonies around the coast of the Mediterranean, Black, and Aegeancies. For the purpose of this episode, this included many Greek communities that existed in modern-day Turkey, especially in the area along the Bospra Strait and in the Agenc. The Persians were very different from the Greeks. The Persian Empire had expanded rapidly and conquered many lands with different people who had different cultures and languages. The Persian Empire, and if you remember back to my previous episode on this subject, I'm talking about the

Starting point is 00:02:15 Himented Empire, or the First Persian Empire, was the largest in the world at this time. As the empire expanded westward, it eventually bumped into Greek cities located on the Asian side of the Aegean. These cities became dominated by the Persians, and the Persians sent rulers to govern these cities. And this didn't sit well with the Greeks. Each Greek community had its own set of rules, but for the most part they did things their own way, and the Persian overlords had no clue about Greek customs and norms. This friction between the Greeks and Persians eventually came to ahead in the early 5th century BC. From 499 to 493 BC, several Greek communities along the Aegean and Bosphorus revolted against Persian rule. These were known as the Ionian revolts.

Starting point is 00:02:59 The Persians managed to put down the revolts, but not before the cities of Athens and Eritrea had given the rebellious Greek city's aid. In fact, Athens sent troops to assist the city of Sardis in the year 499 BC. This angered the Persian king Darius I, who, after the rebellions were put down, sought to seek revenge against the Greek cities who conspired against him. The Ionian revolts were

Starting point is 00:03:22 not the first interaction between Greeks and Persians. Darius had extended the Persian empire across the Bosphorus into a region known as Thrace, which includes the modern-day parts of European Turkey, Bulgaria, and northern Greece. These northern parts of the Greek cultural area were also under the dominion

Starting point is 00:03:38 of Darius and had become vassal state. In 491 BC, Darius sent envoys to Athens requesting their submission to Darius. The Athenians executed the envoys and proceeded to create a defensive pack with the city of Sparta in the event of a Persian invasion. In the year 490 BC, Darius decided to launch a punitive expedition against the Greek city states that had supported the rebellious cities in the Ionian revolts. He built an armada of ships and island hopped their way across the Aegean, conquering islands such as Naxos, which had previously resisted Persian advance. chances. The fleet probably carried close to 90,000 people in total, of which 25,000 were believed to have been warriors. Most of the Persian troops were archers and cavalry. The Persian forces were commanded by an admiral by the name of Datus. The first target was the city of Eritrea, one of the two

Starting point is 00:04:29 cities that aided the rebels. Arritrea isn't technically on the mainland, but rather is on the island of Ubeah. Still, it's literally only 40 meters from the mainland at its closest point and several bridges cross the Strait today. The Persians landed nearby, laid siege to the city, sacked it, and enslaved the survivors. The next stop was to take care of the Athenians. It wasn't actually that far away. They just had to sail up the Attica Peninsula, which Athens is located on, and that Eritrea was only a few hundred meters from. In September 490 BC, the Persian forces landed about 27 kilometers or 17 miles northeast of Athens in a place called the Plains of Marathon. The decision to land in Marathon was made by an exiled Athenium by the name of Hippaius, who was once a tyrant who ruled

Starting point is 00:05:13 the city. The Athenians were aware of what the Persians were doing. They were not being subtle, and they had advanced knowledge from what happened in Eritrea. The Athenians assembled an army and headed north. One of their leaders was a man by the name of Miltides. Miltides was a former ruler of a Greek colony in Thrace that was a vassal of the Persians. He had tried to sabotage a Persian advance into Skithia, what is today modern-day Romania, by burning a bridge across the den, that would have stranded the Persian army. He later helped with the Ionian revolts and was selected as the leader because he had the most experienced fighting the Persians.

Starting point is 00:05:47 Miltides was one of 12 generals who represented the Athenian tribes. In theory, they were supposed to rotate command every day, but every day, the new leader just seated his command to Miltides. Miltides led a group of about 10,000 Athenian Hopolites to Marathon to block the passage that led out of the plains. The Hopalites were infantry units that fought in tight ranks, using a shield, heavy armor, and a very long spear. Meanwhile, a runner was sent from Athens to contact Sparta to ask for their assistance

Starting point is 00:06:17 and to honor their end of the defensive pact that they made with Athens. The Athenians sent their best runner, a man by the name of Piapides. He ran the distance between Athens and Sparta about 240 kilometers or 150 miles in just two days. When Fiatis arrived in Sparta, the Spartans were celebrating their feast of Karnia. The Spartans were warriors, and through and through and loved a good fight. However, as seriously as they took war, they took their religion even more seriously. The Spartans were not allowed to wage war during Karnia. They told Fiatis that they would send help, but they couldn't do so until the next full moon,

Starting point is 00:06:53 which wasn't for another 10 days. The only Greek city that sent help was the small town of Plataia, which sent about a thousand Hopalites. The assistant sent by Plataa wasn't much, but it ended up being a huge morale boost for the Athenian soldiers and for the Athenian citizen Back in Marathon, the Persians and the Athenians stared each other down for several days. The Athenians were situated between two groves of trees so they couldn't be easily outflanked. The weight benefited the Athenians. The longer they could hold out, the closer they got to the arrival of the Spartans. However, after several days, the Athenians eventually attacked. It isn't exactly clear why they did this without the Spartans. The leading theories that the Persian

Starting point is 00:07:34 cavalry had left the field and Miltides was taking advantage of the situation. It could be that the Persians may have decided to get the horses aboard their ships to take them around Athens to attack while the main army was occupied in the marathon. The Athenian forces lined up for battle in an odd way. The center of the Athenian lines were only four men deep, but the flanks of the Athenian lines were eight men deep. This formation has been debated by military historians for centuries. Some think that this was an attempt at a double envelopment of the Persians. The center would hold while the flanks would try to encircle the Persians, similar to what Hannibal and and the Carthaginians would do to the Romans 250 years later at the Battle of Caney.

Starting point is 00:08:12 Others think that this was just an attempt to strengthen the Athenian flanks so they wouldn't get outflanked by the Persians. The two sides started out about a kilometer and a half or a mile away from each other. The records of the battle, which were all written well after the event, say that the Athenians sprinted the entire distance to the Persian lines. More probable is that they marched until they were within distance of the Persian archers, of which there were many, and then sprinted the last 200 or so meters to lessen the time they would have to spend under Persian arrows. They were mostly able to protect themselves from arrows by their armor and shields.

Starting point is 00:08:47 Once the Athenians clashed with the Persian infantry lines, they had the advantage. Without any Persian cavalry and with the Persian archers now mostly neutralized, they were able to deal with the thin Persian infantry lines. The Athenian center was pushed back as expected, given how thin it was. but the Athenian flanks were able to have their way with the Persian flanks, which, as Miltides probably knew, was where the Persians put their weakest soldiers. Once the Persian flanks collapsed, the center soon collapsed, and then the route was on. The Athenians pushed the Persians all the way back to their ships.

Starting point is 00:09:19 The archers, once confronted with armored infantry, were no match. The Greek historian Herodotus reported the bodies of 6,400 Persian soldiers were counted on the battlefield. The Athenians lost only 192 men, and the Palatians only 11. In the process, the Athenians also captured seven Persian ships. This, however, was not the end. Despite the heavy losses incurred by the Persians, they still had a numerical advantage over the Athenians.

Starting point is 00:09:48 They sailed their ship south to attempt to attack Athens directly while the Athenian forces were still north in Marathon. The Athenians knew the threat to Athens wasn't over, and immediately marched most of their troops back to the city. They managed to block any Persian landing and force the Persians to retreat back across the Aegean to Asia. After the Athenians had left a marathon, the Spartans showed up a day later, only to realize that the battle had already taken place, and the Athenians had won. The entire Spartan army managed to make the entire 240-kilometer or 150-mile trip in just three days on foot. Darius had every intention of assembling a new army and heading back to Greece, but it never happened.

Starting point is 00:10:29 He had to attend to other rebellions and other parts of his empire and just never got around to it. That task was given to his son Xerxes, who later attempted an invasion of Greece, which the Spartans later thwarted at the Battle of Thermopyly, which I've covered in a previous episode. At this point, you must be noticing that I have completely ignored the one thing you probably think of when I say the word marathon, the running race that goes by the same name. According to legend, the runner Piapides ran the distance from Marathon to Athens, to tell everyone the results of the battle. When he arrived in Athens, he supposedly shouted,

Starting point is 00:11:04 Ni Niki Kaman, or we have won, and then promptly died. The problem is that there's no evidence for this story. It first appeared over 500 years after the battle took place. It appears to be a confusion of two elements of the story. Theopides run to Sparta and the march of the Athenian soldiers back to Athens after the battle. The Battle of Marathon wasn't the biggest or greatest battle in history. but it was an extremely important battle. It was a battle between two civilizations.

Starting point is 00:11:34 The result of the battle allowed for the creation of Athenian democracy, which became the basis for Republican politics and Western culture, as well as for the later development of Greek philosophy and the works of people like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Oakden and Cameron Kiefer. I want to thank everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, your support helps make this podcast possible.

Starting point is 00:12:05 I'd also like to thank all the members of the Everything Everywhere community who are active on the Facebook group and the Discord server. If you'd like to join in the discussion, there are links to both in the show notes. And as always, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you too can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Battle of Marathon (Encore)

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