Mission to Marathon (5 page)

There was no danger now. The Persians had piled into their ships and fled. To Nycilla's relief they quickly ran into her other brothers and found them untouched, but of Lichas there was no sign. They all joined in the search with growing alarm.

Suddenly Philip spotted the Gorgon's head. His brother's horrific shield scowled at them from a little heap of bodies. ‘Lichas must be somewhere near,' he shouted. Hope and fear mingled in his voice.

Argus quickly removed the uncertainty. He leapt forward, tail wagging furiously and sniffing among the fallen Persians. They heard a feeble voice from somewhere: ‘Good dog!'

They found Lichas flattened under an immense Persian. ‘This brute tried to kill me,' Lichas explained as the young men released him, ‘but I got him first.' He was not really wounded and was quickly
himself again once the crushing weight was removed.

The casualties had been remarkably light. One hundred and ninety two Athenians had been killed. That number was later laid to rest in a special memorial tomb on the battlefield where they had died. Though the Persian dead had to be picked up and buried, it was done with less ceremony, for there were six thousand, four hundred of them.

On that day, however, there were more urgent things to think of. Thousands of other Persians had escaped in the ships. They would by now be sailing after the vessels that had earlier started for Athens with the horses.

Trumpets summoned the men on the battlefield to an instant roll call. They were told then that after a meal they would have to face an overnight march back to Athens. The danger to their city was still great. Because of his slight wound Callias was excused this, and he went back with Philip and their cousins to the Cave of Pan.

It was a brilliant scene, that noisy family gathering. The torches, the little oil lamps twinkled and danced as their reflections were caught in the graceful fingers of ice tapering from the arched roof of the cave. Everyone seemed to be laughing and shouting at once. The nightmare had ended. It was a long time before anyone could think of sleep.

An eventful week was almost over. Two thousand Spartans arrived a day or two later. They had come through Athens and brought reassuring news – the Persian fleet had duly arrived there but so had Miltiades and his victorious troops after their forced march. The Persians had put out to sea again without even attempting to land.

The Spartans inspected the battlefield, expressed compliments all round, and went home to Sparta.

Philip went back to Athens with Callias, and their father was able to finish the statue of Pan. People declared it was quite remarkable. A year or two later he made one of his niece as a nymph. And everybody thought Nycilla quite remarkably beautiful.

The Acropolis
      A fortified hill top at the centre of Athens. This was the most famous part of the city, where the important religious and secular buildings were located.

Cavalry
      Soldiers who fight on horseback.

Greaves
      Pieces of armour worn from the ankle to the knee.

Gorgon
      A monstrous woman in Greek mythology who had snakes for hair and turned anyone who looked at her into stone.

Infantry
      Soldiers who fight on foot.

Litter
      A bed or seat with two long poles on either side, on which people would carry a single passenger, especially someone sick or wounded.

Nymph
      A goddess or spirit of nature living in areas of natural beauty and traditionally regarded as a beautiful young woman.

Parthenon
      The chief temple of the goddess Athena built on the Acropolis at Athens between 447 and 432 BC. The most famous surviving building of ancient Greece.

Pedestal
      A base for a statue.

Persia
      An ancient empire that stretched from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to Pakistan.

Sparta
      An ancient Greek city-state famous for its military.

Strait
      A narrow channel of the sea linking two larger areas of sea.

Tunic
      A loose, sleeveless, knee-length item of clothing worn in ancient Greece.

The ancient Greeks lived in the lands around the Mediterranean Sea, reaching from Turkey to Italy. Ancient Greece was not one large empire but was made up of different city-states. The states guarded their independence and sometimes even went to war against each other.

The city-states were ruled in different ways and each had its own government, laws and money. However, they traded with each other and usually grouped together if one of them was attacked by a foreign army.

Although ancient Greek cities themselves were generally smaller than cities today, they also controlled the surrounding countryside. For example, Athens ruled over the region of Attika, which was fertile and rich in natural resources such as silver, lead and marble. This helped Athens to become one of the largest and most powerful states.

Athens was named after Athena, the goddess of wisdom. In 508 BC a new form
of government was invented in the city and Athens became the world's first democracy. This term comes from the Greek word
demokratia
, which means ‘rule by the people'. Any person with full citizen rights could take part in public debates and vote to decide how the city was run. This group of citizens was known as the Assembly. However, by no means all the population were invited to attend. A ‘citizen' was defined as a man who was born in Athens and who owned land there. Women, foreigners and slaves were not considered citizens and so could not take part in government. The Assembly met every ten days on a hill called the Pynx. It made decisions on every aspect of Athenian life: from street cleaning and taxation, to whether the city should go to war.

Another important city-state was Sparta, which was ruled by two kings and a small group of elders. Sparta was a military state with a very strong army. All Spartan boys were trained to be soldiers. So when Athens found itself under attack from the Persian Empire, it naturally turned to Sparta for help.

The Persian Empire controlled Asia Minor, Lydia, Judah, Mesopotamia and Egypt, and was a significant threat. When Darius the Great became Emperor he wished to expand his territory and conquered Macedon, just north east of Greece. In 490 BC he set out to conquer Greece itself, starting with Athens. Darius and his many troops landed in the Bay of Marathon, about 25 miles from the city.

The Athenian army was greatly outnumbered by the Persian one, so it sent out a messenger named Pheidippides to run the 140 miles to Sparta to ask for reinforcements. Messengers were also sent out to the other major city-states. However, these were unwilling to send troops as they were jealous of Athens' growing power. Then Pheidippides returned from Sparta with its reply – the Spartans were celebrating a religious festival and their troops would not arrive for nine days. Athens realised it was on its own.

On the face of it, the Athenian troops stood little chance; they were outnumbered about three to one by the Persians.
However, the Athenian troops were well trained and also had one major advantage – the Athenian general, Miltiades, had once been a soldier in the Persian army and knew its tactics. The Persian force was poorly organised and expected individual, hand-to-hand fighting. Under Miltiades' command the Athenians made a sudden mass charge at the unsuspecting Persians. The Persians were encircled by the Athenians and were almost literally driven into the sea.

After the battle, the Persians counted 6,400 dead soldiers and many more captured. The Athenian dead totalled only 192. Supposedly the messenger Pheidippides ran the 25 miles back from Marathon to Athens to announce their victory. According to legend he reached the city, said, ‘Rejoice, we conquer' and fell dead from exhaustion. This famous story has given us the name of the modern marathon race, which is the same length as the distance from Marathon to Athens.

The Battle of Marathon is perhaps the most important battle in Greek history. Had the Athenians lost, all of Greece would most
likely have ended up under the control of the Persian Empire. The Athenians saw the battle as one of their greatest achievements. From then on they began to think of Athens as the centre of Greek culture and Greek power, and this is the way people still perceive ancient Athens today.

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