Battle of Marathon (490 BC): Background, course, and legacy

The background of the Battle of Marathon can be described in terms of three major fields of conflict: a geopolitical, a Greek and an Athenian one. All three fields are interconnected in many ways.

The geopolitical situation in the eastern Mediterranean region

By the end of the 6th century BC, the Persian Empire had extended its political power to the Asia Minor coast of the Mediterranean, bringing in particular the Ionian poleis of Asia Minor and parts of the Aegean islands under its direct rule. Around 500 BC, however, the so-called Ionian Revolt began, which threatened Persia's rule over the Greek cities of Asia Minor in Ionia. The center of this revolt was Miletus and other important Ionian poleis. Emissaries from these cities sought military and political support in mainland Greece. While the envoys were unsuccessful with the Peloponnesian supremacy of Sparta, Athens, which had just shaken off Peisistratid rule (cf. below), pledged support and sent troops to Ionia, which took a major part in the destruction of the capital of the Persian satrapy, Sardeis. After the suppression of the Ionian revolt in 494 BC and the return of the Athenian troops, the Persian Great King Darius I began to punish the supporters. First he secured the northern flank by sending an expeditionary force led by his son-in-law Mardonios in 492 BC. His advance across Thrace and Macedonia was initially successful and probably aimed to incorporate these areas into Persian rule, but failed when the Persian fleet was destroyed in a storm at Mount Athos. Under the leadership of Datis, moreover, the Persian corps sailed first via Samos to Naxos and finally reached the island of Euboea (Polis Karystos). Finally it reached Eretria - there, according to an account by Plato, the entire population was enslaved. After this event, Datis advanced against the second supporter of the revolt: Athens. According to Herodotus, the expeditionary force went ashore in the bay of Marathon, according to Cornelius Nepos they marched on foot.

The Greek world before the Battle of Marathon

Towards the end of the Archaic period, the Greek settlement area was marked by the spread of Persian rule. The entire Ionian coast was subject to Persian rule, and the influence of the great empire became increasingly evident in the Aegean islands as well (Aigina). In the Peloponnese, Sparta was the hegemonic power at the head of a system of alliances that was still relatively loose at this time (Peloponnesian League). In the years around the Battle of Marathon, this was paralyzed by a significant internal political conflict: the deposition and death of the Spartan king Kleomenes I. In central Greece, Athens' new political order established itself (see below). Attempts by foreign powers (Sparta, Chalcis, Thebes) to prevent Athens' rise had failed by the end of the 6th century BC. Athens itself remained isolated within the Greek world of states and without allies. The relationship with the Peloponnesian superpower Sparta could be described as tense since the failed Spartan intervention.

Athens before the Battle of Marathon

Since the fall of the Peisistratid tyranny and the expulsion of Hippias, unstable conditions initially prevailed in Athens. From the struggle of rival noble factions (hetairia), the alcmaionide Kleisthenes finally emerged as the victor by carrying out a comprehensive internal political reform in Athens. The new system of isonomia developed further into democracy in the 5th century BC. This new order prevailed and held its own against a series of foreign military interventions in the years leading up to 508 BC. At the same time, Hippias had retreated into the Persian sphere of power, hoping for the possibility of a restoration of tyranny. In the course of the Persian punitive expedition, Datis took Hippias on board. In this respect, the aim of the Persian expedition also seems to have been a removal of the domestic political order of Isonomia responsible for its involvement in the Ionian revolt. The Persian force probably also landed in the bay of Marathon because it was hoped that it would attract old supporters of the Peisistratid tyranny, which traditionally had its strongest base in this region of Attica.

The controversy over Marathon's significance revived after the beginning of the 19th century. As a result of a growing fascination with antiquity and Europe-wide enthusiasm for the Greek revolt against Ottoman rule in 1821-1829, there was renewed interest in the Athenian victory, which was combined with a growing European sense of power and self-image as the culmination of civilizational development. Its inclusion as number one among The Fifteen Decisive Battles in World History by Edward Shepherd Creasy (1851) in a sense canonized the Athenian interpretation of the battle in the extended sense that if there had been a Persian victory, there would also have been no Attic democracy, no Greek classicism, and no Hellenistic world culture, then no Rome as a mediator of Greek spirit to the western and northern peoples, and finally no Renaissance, no humanism, and no modernity; the European world of states would have become a mere appendage of the victorious "Asiatic despotism." A critical evaluation of this marathon so interpreted would speak of an Orientalist construct.

This world-historical vision provoked further assumptions of counterfactual historiography, though the immediate consequences of a Persian victory are largely undisputed: In Athens, Hippias would have renewed the rule of the Peisistratids, and Greece would probably have become a Persian satrapy up to the edge of the Peloponnese. Alongside the possible further development already outlined are two others: The most likely alternative is the most unspectacular; Sparta, still independent and militarily extremely strong, would have instigated a general Greek revolt a few decades after Marathon, which would have been successful because of Greece's peripheral position and Persia's over-extension, so that history would essentially not have been much different. More interesting is the assumption that Persian rule would have left Greek democracy untouched as a state construct of its own, as was possible in Ionia; as a further consequence, Greek civil wars would have been absent and a west-east syncretism would have emerged as in Hellenism - but much earlier. On the further state development of Europe, however, a permanent expansion of Persia into Greece would have had no influence, since the ultimately decisive power in the Mediterranean region, the Roman Republic, developed its form of state out of its own traditions and needs.

One of the most important criticisms of these considerations is that the idea of a contrast between a "Greek freedom" and a "Persian despotism" can today be considered outdated: Many essential achievements of early Greek culture were attained not in the "free" motherland but in the Ionian Greek cities under Persian rule (such as Miletus). If Greece had come under Persian rule in 490 or 480, this would not necessarily have meant that classical Greek culture would not have emerged - however, Athens in particular, which was only able to rise to become one of the leading poleis and the head of the First League of the Sea because of its victories in the Persian War, would probably not have become such an important cultural centre in the event of defeat.