If all the theories about the method of commanding the Athenian army were argued here, they would occupy the rest of this book. It will be assumed that the ten strategi represented a kind of General Staff, each one in turn serving for a day as Chief of the General Staff to the Polemarch, who would have had the casting vote in any debate on action. Miltiades was general of the tribe called Oeneis. He had presumably taken advantage of his presidential day to secure the passing of his decree, and therefore he would not be president again until September 21st.

        Probably the army marching northward in column of route toward the Euripus strait in order to cross into Euboea had arrived somewhere near the modern village of Cephissia, when word came that the Persian fleet was disembarking troops in the bay of Marathon, the objects being to detain the Athenian army in Attica by threatening Athens from the east while Artaphernes proceeded with the reduction of Eretria. this strategic move can be attributed to the suggestion of Hippias, who may have chosen Marathon as a point of disembarkation on account of its suitability for cavalry, and we may surmise that when Datis and Hippias moved from Carystus to Marathon they expected Artaphernes to send the cavalry down from Eretria. On the hearing the news of the Persian landing, the Athenian army must have wheeled rapidly to the right and moved across the rocky mountain tracks round the north of Pentelicus until they reached the precinct of Heracles, in which they encamped.

        The bay of Marathon lies E.N.E. from Athens on the eastern coast of Attica. It was reached from Athens by two roads: the rough one by which the Athenian army had marched, and a better road practicable for cavalry running southward from the shore. A narrow promontory, then called the Cynosura or Dog's Tail, projects sharply southward for a mile from the northern extremity of the bay, giving good shelter and holding ground for ships. it was often use by Austrian and German submarines during the Great War. A specious and firm sandy beach runs round the bay for some six miles, behind which stretches a fertile alluvial plain about two miles broad, except at the north, where there is square mile of marsh impassable even at the driest season of the year. There is also a small marsh at the southerly extremity of the bay, which in the month of September would have been almost dry. the level plain has been formed by detritus from the mountains that overlook the sea. The widest of the glens shelters the modern village of Marathon, watered by the Charadra, a pleasant stream that now flows down into the sea about quarter of a mile further north than at the date of the battle. Scattered olives and vineyards were then, probably, as they are to-day, a feature of the landscape.

       The actual site of the battle is definite. East of the main road, about a mile from the mouth of the westerly running glen of Vrana and half a mile from the seashore, stands the great  tumulus, some thirty feet high, which was raised above the Athenian dead. In the days of Pausanias, ten columns stood upon it with names of the dead of the ten tribes engraved upon them. 

        The Persian camp was pitched presumably between the Charadra and the Great Marsh. I f we estimate the whole expeditionary force at about thirty thousand, and deduct the troops required to beleaguer Eretria,  the number engaged at Marathon would have been fifteen to twenty thousand. The strategic object of Datis must have been to hold the Athenians at Marathon until Artaphernes had finished off Eretria and could move southward round Cape Sunium to effect a landing at Phalerum, where it was to be expected that Athens, denuded of heavy-armed troops and probably a prey to faction, would offer no resistance.

        A day or two after the Athenian army reached Marathon, they were joined by the thousand hoplites of the little city of Plataea. If too often the annals of Hellenic history are stained by the treachery and ingratitude of individuals, of parties and of states, they are not less often gilded by supreme virtue. Athens had once befriended Plataea. The Plataeans repaid that Athenian generosity by marching from Mount Cithaerou to stand beside their friends against an enemy mightier far than seven-gated Thebes. The Athenians were profoundly affected by the loyalty of the little city, public prayers and acknowledged by a formal grant to the Plataeans of Athenian citizenship.

        For six days the Eretrians held out against the troops of Artaphenes while the two armies lay at Marathon; but upon the seventh the treason of two important citizens enabled the Persians to enter the city, which sacked and burnt. Those of the population that survived were taken of to the ships in order to obey the command of Darius that they were to be brought as slaves to Susa. The captives were put in charge of Hippias, who landed them on the small island of Aeglea until they could be transported across the Aegean. Possibly the incident of the lost tooth may have been discouraged Hippias from remaining at Marathon when the Persians first landed. The night before, he had dreamed he lay in his mother's arms, and supposed this meant he was to be restored to his tyranny. While he was acting as principal military landing officer at the disembarkation, the elderly ex-tyrant sneezed so violently that one of his many loose teeth came out and vanished in the sand. The omen affected Hippias unpleasantly, and turning to those near by, declared that the land would not be theirs, and that all his own share of it was the sand his tooth now possessed.

        By the morning of September 17th the Athenians generals at Marathon knew that Eretria had fallen, and it became imperative to decide what was to be done. A council of war was held. Five of the generals argued against risking battle; the other five, among whom was Miltiades, declared for fighting at once. The decision lay with the Polemarch, who, swayed by the fervour of Miltiades, gave his casting vote in favour of battle. Herodotus says that the generals who had voted for fighting gave up their days of command to Miltiades, and that he, though he accepted their offers, would not fight until his own day of command came around, which was on September 21st. Probably Miltiades did not wait for his day of command as such, but fought on his day of command because news had reached him that Artaphernes had embarked his troops in Euboea and was now sailing south to attack Athens. The story preserved by Suidas that some Ionians signalled to Miltiades the absence of cavalry may have been that the cavalry was being sent round to Phalerum for a dash on Athens instead of being disembarked at Marathon, where its presence on that level plain might have turned the day in favour of the Persians.

        When the Athenians army deployed at the mouth of the glen, the Polemarch's tribe Aeantis held the post of honour on the extreme right, and the Plataeans were on the extreme left.  The weakest part of the Greek line was the centre, which consisted of the two tribes Leontis, possibly commanded by Themistocles, and Antiochis, commanded by his great rival Aristides; but whether this disposition was due to the deliberate tactics of Miltiades or to the necessity of extending the inferior forces of the Greeks to equal the length of the Persian line, is not certain. After the sacrificial victims had been consulted and the omens found favourable, the Greeks charged the Barbarians at the double. It has been argued by many historians that heavy-armed troops could not have run for the whole of the mile that separated them from the Persians and fought effectively at the end of it. The present writer has accepted the modern reconstruction of Marathon often at the cost of discrediting Herodotus, but he cannot bring himself to abandon his belief that the Greeks did charge the Persians at the double. No ancient historian ever questioned that charge, which was extolled for its valour, not as a remarkable feat of athletics.

        The hand-to-hand fighting was fierce, and though the right and left wings of the Greeks were victorious, the weaker centre was driven back up the glen by the trousered Persians and Sacae. There have been many arguments about the position of Miltiades on the field. He was probably in command of his tribe Oeneis, which would have been on the right of the left wing, and we may imagine that he gave the signal to the right and left wings of the Greek army to close in behind the victorious centre of the Barbarians. the slaughter was heavy. The Persians troops in the centre turned back and fled, some attempting to reach the main body of the ships that were anchored off the Great Marsh and being lost in the morass, others being pursued and cut down at the water's edge. There was a Homeric fight to haul up the ships lining the shore; but only seven of them were captured. It was in the battle for the ships that the noble Polemarch Callimachus was slain. We may hazard that he and his tribe Aeantis on the extreme right fought their way through the Barbarians to the shore in the first charge, leaving Miltiades to deal with the Persian centre. Besides Callimachus, many notable Athenians were slain by the ships, including Cynaegirus, a brother Aeschylus, whose hand was severed by a Sacan battle-axe as he clung to the ornamented stern of a trireme.

        The Persians left six thousand four hundred dead upon the field, the Athenians a hundred and ninety-two. These numbers have never been disputed, and may be accepted as accurate. That being the case, they support the argument that the weakening of the Greek centre was deliberate tactics, because the chief losses of the Greeks were sustained in the fight for the ships. It is also an argument that the opening charge was made at the run, because otherwise the Persian archers would surely have taken a heavier toll.

        The battle was probably over before noon, and the first triremes of Artaphernes' squadron may have appeared round the Cynosura just as the retreating ships of Datis began to draw away from the fatal shore. This was the moment when a shield was said to have been flashed from the heights above Marathon as a signal to the Persians to make all haste to seize Athens. The Alcmaeonidae were accused of the signaling, and much controversy has been expended upon this incident, which experience of the late war will recognize as a typical piece of popular mythopoeics  like the vision of Theseus fighting for Athens in the crush of the battle. The present writer investigated without success over two hundred reports of signaling from the heights above Marathon to German submarines. No doubt the Alcmaeonidae were playing with the idea of a Peisistratid restoration as a lesser evil that a coup d'état by Miltiades. Herodotus' laboured defence of them against the charge of medizing must have been inserted to dispel a belief that was current sixty years later when he wrote his history. However, whether a shield was flashed or not, Miltiades was taking no risk of disaffection, for he wound up a day of glory by marching the army straight back to Athens, presumably on the afternoon of the battle. Some historians have denied the possibility of that twenty-six-mile march after such a fierce morning's work; but the nine Muse cry out from their dedications against the notion that in writing 'with aa possible speed,' Herodotus meant the next day. For what was Marathon fought except to check the Persian plan of a direct move against Athens in consultation with Hippias? It was not by sleeping where the dead lay that the victorious Athenian army, safely encamped in another precinct of Heracles below the hill Lycabettus, saw the Barbarians sail away to Asia 'after resting a while upon their oars' at Phalerum.

        On the day of the full moon two thousand Spartans had set out from Lacedaemon. Marching with extreme rapidity, they reached Attica in three days, and , anxious to see the Persian dead, marched right on to Marathon. After viewing the field they gave praise to the Athenians and marched back to Sparta,

        Marathon was one of the decisive battles of the world, not for its military achievement but for its moral effect. We are still under the sway of it, whether for good or for ill depends upon our view of humanity's purpose." (From the book entitled "Marathon and Salamis" written by Mr. Compton Mackenzie)  

        From this interesting explanation of "What is the "Battle of Marathon?",  I hope that you could know what it was like.

         Of course, you probably know, there was the background behind this battle, that is, the expansion to the east of the Persian Empire, which had become a world power at the time after they conquered the Babylonian Empire, is greatly related. In other words, it is the first major conflict between Western civilization and Eastern civilization in human history due to the expansion to the east of the Persian Empire. According to human history, until then, the peoples and tribes who had spread to each area, such as Middle East, Asia, Asia minor, Europe and so on, built cities and formed something like nation, in which national organizations who ha had a powerful military force for predation and conquest rather than defense repeatedly fought with neighboring tribes, cities and nations for the purpose of looting and conquering. And the looting and conquest led to the formation of a large organization like an empire. Of course, on the other hand, many tribes, cities, or country-like organizations were forced to fight against a hegemonic empire to protect themselves.  The "Battle of Marathon" is one of the defense battles for Greece, especially for Athenians.

        Then, what do the "battle of Marathon" and the "Ostraka" mean for us in human history just like a stormy sea?