The battle of Marathon – more important than Hastings?

“For if you agree with me that we should fight, you make your country free and your city the best in all of Greece. But if you choose not to fight, we will lose it all”
(HERODOTUS 6.109)

So spoke the Athenian general Miltiades to his fellow general Callimachus, setting in motion one of the greatest military gambles in history.

The year was 490 BC. The place was Marathon. The mission: to repel the invasion of the Persian army – the largest fighting force ancient Greece had ever seen.

In early August that year, guided by the traitor Hippias, the exiled tyrant of Athens, Persian forces landed in the bay of Marathon, just 25 miles north of the city. Persian numbers were enormous. The ancient historian Herodotus stated that the Persians brought 600 triremes (fighting ships) full of men; the later historians Plutarch and Pausanias put the total Persian force at 300,000.

The Persians’ mission? Revenge. Their king, Darius, was furious that the Athenians and Eretrians