The Battle of Marathon

Nowadays marathons are a popular pastime for health buffs across the world, but how did they get started? The origins of the marathon date back to the fifth century B.C., when Greeks depended on messengers to carry news. Tune in to learn more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Farah Dowdy. And this week
I really wanted to do something on Darius the Great.
He's been suggested a lot, he's been on our list.

(00:22):
I think he's so great. He's great. He's been on
our list since the Porous and Alexander of the Battle
of the Hydasp. Yeah. So I was looking over Darius's
life trying to figure out something cool, and I found
this historical coincidence that was just too good to pass up.
Just last month was the two thousand, five hundredth anniversary

(00:44):
of the Battle of Marathon. How how great is that?
Probably most of you have heard about the Battle of Marathon.
Here's the legend again if you need a little bit
of a refresher. After the Greek city state of Athens
defeats the Persians at Marathon, the run our Fidipities is
dispatched to deliver the news to Athens. He runs approximately

(01:05):
twenty five miles at top speed, delivers his message, and
then collapses on the spot and dies. And it's the
birth of the twenty six point two mile marathon. And
interestingly enough, we have a running store in Atlanta named
after Fidipoties. That's where I've always gotten my running shoes,
so I think that's probably where I first heard this

(01:26):
the big running company. Girl, I will fight you, well,
you're missing out on your Greek history then at least.
But we've also been editing marathon content, so I really
had to go with this. Yeah, lots of it for
the site. As you know, we work for how stuff
works dot com and we did this huge suite on
marathon content, so we were reading it for weeks, all

(01:46):
this running stuff. I think I've even had the Fidipities
myth pop up in an article. So anyways, that's what
we're gonna be talking about today. But there's a lot
more to the Battle of Marathon than that little Fidipity story.
And because the topic was inspired by Darius, I thought
it's only right for us to start with the Persians
and Cyrus the Great. So the Persians under Cyrus the

(02:10):
Great had created this enormous empire, but you couldn't rule
it centrally because it was so huge, So they had
these governors called say traps. And speaking of huge. This
empire eventually covers Asia Minor southwest Asia, even as far
as the eastern boundaries of Europe. So try to get
this in your mind for a minute, just to understand

(02:30):
the scope and the stakes of what we'll be talking
about exactly. So in five two b c. Darius the First,
who's later Darius the Great, succeeds Cyrus, and he's not
supposed to. It's not like he's his Air or something.
And the story behind this is a little sketchy and
kind of up in the air. There's definitely some revisionist

(02:51):
history at play about what really happened. But according to
the history by Herodotus, who also gives us our first
existing account of the Battle of Marathon, we'll be talking
about him later. Darius was suspected of plotting as a youth,
so he was sent out, and after Cyrus's son and

(03:11):
Air dies, he comes back to town. You know, there's
this power vacuum and he's hoping that he'll be the
guy to fill it. Supposedly, he kills Cyrus's other son, Bardia,
who had himself usurped the throne. So try to keep
all this straight. Then Darius defends the murder by saying
that Bartia wasn't really Bartia. He like this, he was

(03:34):
this impost. Royal impostors keep popping up, usually royal impost
so it's nice to have it with the Persians as well.
So Darius is essentially making the claim, well, I was
killing an impostor, and really I'm just restoring the royal
dynasty back to power, because you know, I'm from this
minor branch of the family. I think we call that spin, Yeah,

(03:57):
I think so. But what a great story. So anyway,
now Darius has a hard place to run this giant empire.
There are lots of revolts throughout it, even revolts in
Persia itself with another man who's claiming to be Bardia.
Lots of royal posters, but Darius and the generals suppress
all of them in Babylon and in Egypt. But now

(04:20):
he needs to strengthen these frontiers and make sure that
everything is capacetic with the nomad. So he's got to
cover a huge area to do this. To the Caspian
seed in this valley, he can't chase the European Scythians
very far because they've already torn up the countryside and
there aren't any supplies to do so, and there's also

(04:40):
some expansion. Yeah, so I mean at a certain point,
you can't just once you've stabilized your existing empire, you
need to start making it bigger because he again, Yeah,
if you're going to support for Steplis and that whole empire,
you need more cities and more territory and more tribute
money pouring in. So Darius is casting his eyes about

(05:02):
looking for places to expand, and it's Greece seems like
the natural place to go because all the approaches are
already in Persian hands. The Black Sea is in Persian control,
and it just seems like the natural buffer to Europe,
or maybe even more than a buffer, a good way
to get to Europe. Plus, it's kind of the only

(05:23):
viable option because to the east was Indian Asia, and
that was just a little too risky and unknown for
Darius to go. You know, it's a good way to
over extend yourself, go invade Asia. To the west was
the Libyan desert, which not being convading the desert kind
of hard going. And to the north we had those
crazy Scythians, so uh, tearing up the land. Greece seems

(05:48):
like the best way to go. But Greece is sort
of messing up Darius's plans because it's made of all
these independence loving city states which really do not want
to become part of the Persian Empire. So let's go
back to that stay trap setup. We think it goes
without saying that some of these local governors were complete tyrants,

(06:09):
but of course you'd almost have to be if you
wanted to enrich your own person and still squeeze out
a tribute for Darius from your people. And it's also
not surprising that some of the Greek cities of Asia Minor,
who are ruled by Persian stay traps, might envy Athens
because they have their famous social experiment just starting up.

(06:29):
So the first ascent comes from the island of Naxis
in five O two b C. And the Naxians end
up drawing in this other city, the Ionian city of
my leaders. And it's not quite in the way you
would expect, though. It's not two cities working out this
nice deal with each other. They want help from my
lead us as despotic ruler. But he's a sneaky guy

(06:52):
and he thinks that he can maybe play the Naxians
and still be loyal to the Persians. So the ruler agrees,
but he really plans to let this rebellion play out,
see what happens, and then take the island for himself
when it's all done. So to to further that goal,
to make it happens, he unlist the help of Darius's

(07:14):
own brother, who's the satrap of Lydia, which is Turkey today,
but then everything falls apart from him. The plot fails,
the double playing doesn't work out. He's left owing Darius,
and Darius's brother promises that he can't deliver anymore. He
has one option, and that's to rebel himself. So his

(07:36):
revolt starts a whole chain of revolts, which is very
annoying for the Persians and for Darius, and Athens gets
drawn in in b C when it, along with Eritrea,
starts meddling in all of these Ionian revolts. So Athens
is a target now, and after the rebellions are squashed,
Darius gives his son in law command of his fleet

(07:57):
to go sack Athens and Eritrea, but the fleet is
lost in a freak storm near Mount Athos in four two,
so they have to send out a second fleet. In
four ninety they managed to see times, they managed to
sack Eritrea and enslave all of its citizens, and Darius
figures that the other Greek cities probably won't want to

(08:20):
meet with this same fate. They're not going to want
to face off with the Persian forces, so he sends
his emissaries to ask them to surrender, and plenty of
them can see most of northern Greece and Macedonia, but
Athens will not, and neither will Sparta, who actually kill
the emissary sending a bold message. So okay, then Athens

(08:41):
is next on the list, and the Persians get ready
to fight. They've come over in six hundred ships, and
their strong suit is cavalry, so they want to pick
a place where their cavalry can really shine, and they
select the Plane of Marathon, which is about twenty five
miles outside of Athens, as we mentioned in the Fidipites intro.

(09:03):
But it's this wide open space, you know, the perfect
place for a cavalry to to charge. And the Athenians
sent a runner to Sparta to get help because they're thinking, okay,
this is about to go down miles outside of the city.
We need to get some reinforcements quickly. So this is

(09:24):
where fidipities actually comes in. He does a hundred and
fifty miles in two days by his own account. Pan
stops him on the way and asks, you know why
as in the god. Pan stops him and asks why
hasn't Athens been honoring him like they should? And he says, okay,

(09:44):
I promise you know, if this all works out, will
really take care of you Pan. But I'm wondering if
this is maybe hallucinations from an ultramara ultramarathon fidipities. I
don't know. The Spartans say that they'll help, but only
after their religious festival is over, and unfortunately for the Athenians,
this is a multi day religious festival. It's going to

(10:06):
keep going and going. The answer is basically no, we
won't help. Yes, but only when it's convenient for us.
So our Athenians have three choices. They can meet the
Persians at Marathon, they can try to defend the pass
at Paulini, or they can stay and defend their city.
They choose Marathon. Yeah, and that's because the Athenian navy,
despite its later reputation is not that strong at this point.

(10:30):
It never could have matched Persia's and a siege of
Athens probably wouldn't have worked out very well for them either,
because it would have been quite easy for Persia to
cut off the food supplies. You just would be left
to starve within the city walls. So Marathon is actually
looking like a pretty good option. I mean, as far
as their options go. The Persians have their backs to

(10:52):
the water and the Athenian flanks are protected by swamps,
so you can't, you know, come around behind them and
get them. There's just one thing that can't happen. The Athenians,
who are mostly hop light infantrymen, can't attack while the
Persian calorie is in place. They will absolutely be crushed.
So as long as they can avoid that, they have

(11:12):
a fighting chance. So we should probably give you a
little explanation of what a hap light is before we
go too much further, since they're the key to this
whole thing. It's pretty much what you'd imagine from a
movie with Greek soldiers. Their infantrymen with nine foot spears.
They have swords, they have a big breast plate and

(11:34):
huge shields that, in this case are emblazoned with Pegasus,
which sounds like the makings of a pretty good Halloween costume.
And they're grouped in these phalanxes of men eight by eight,
and these are very maneuverable and strongly defended on all sides,
so they can link their shields together. You've got a
pretty good thing area. So after the Athenians get to Marathon,

(11:57):
both of these camps wait and wait and wait for
nine days, which again reminded us of the king Porus
battle the Battle of Hydaspes. So if you're wondering why
we're waiting for nine days, the Persians don't think that
they have anything to lose, so the longer they stay
looking intimidating, the more frightened the Greeks will become. You know,
psychological warfare can always doubt exactly. And the Athenians are

(12:21):
hoping that the Spartans will show up, because the Spartans
are pretty darn scary and in a reputation for it
even in Persia exactly, they might frighten the Persian So
both sides are hoping to scare the dickens out of
each other. But Greece might also lose more cities while
everyone is just sitting around, so they do have something
to lose, and they have a meeting. Should be attack

(12:42):
or should we wait? And the ten Athenian generals votes
straight down the middle for fighting versus waiting. So someone
has to make a decision, okay, So the general Miltiades
puts the decision to Klimachus, who's a civil official, and
he votes to attack. So for General's hand over their
command to Miltiades, and we're gonna go. There's going to

(13:04):
be a fight. The Athenians are going to charge, So
we're gonna give you some numbers before we start. And
there's a wide discrepancy um the Athenians ten thousand half
lights plus a thousand non Athenians who have come in
to help the Persians. The number in some places as

(13:26):
as high as forty eight thousand or just fifteen thousands,
so it depends on who's who's talking there. Um. But
before dawn on September, the Greeks learn that the Persian
cavalry is absent from the field. And remember it's the
cavalry that they just absolutely cannot face, at least not

(13:48):
without the help of the Spartans. But we don't know
why No, that's kind of weird. We don't know why
the cavalry is gaunt where they are, and then the
boats are they off, you know, maybe re embarked for
a possible attack on Athens some other reason, but whyever,
you know, whatever the reason is, that they're gone, they're gone,

(14:10):
and now is the time to attack. According to Herodotus,
the Greeks advance at a run there, I'm not a
mile away. The Persians get ready, but it's clear that
the Athenians will be there soon, much sooner than they
were planning on them arriving. It seems kind of like
a suicidal mission on the Athenia. They're running straight at us,
are you kidding? But then the Persians are starting to realize, oh,
actually they're going to be here really soon, and judging

(14:33):
by later excavations of the Athenian dead, the Persians were
showering arrows at the running infantry um but not many
of them are hit. Yeah. So the Athenian commanders also
have a very good understanding of Persian battle techniques, and
Maltiatis even fought in the Persian army, so they know

(14:54):
that the Persians around their fighters with the very best
guys the true citizens in the middle, and then they
put their conscripts on the edges on the flanks. So
these are people from the states they've conquered, probably not
terribly invested in the fight, maybe just trying to get
out of it alive. Key point for you. So the

(15:16):
Greeks put their best half lights on the flanks and
thin out towards the middle, because of course they don't
have enough guys to have a universal coverage across the field,
so putting all theirs on the edge, so they'll be
fighting all the conscripts exactly. So the Persian center, which
is its strongest point, comes through cutting down these thinned

(15:38):
Greek forces, thinking this is gonna be so easy, not
hard at all. Meanwhile, the heavy Greek flanks, where all
the best guys are and the most guys are, are
tearing through those Persian flanks of conscripts, and the conscripts
at this point are starting to break formation and flee,

(15:59):
trying to get out while they can. And instead of
pursuing these fleeing conscripts, the Greeks turn in to help
their men in the middle. So the Persians are now
surrounded on three sides. Think of the Greeks, creating a
sort of pocket. Persians have just fallen into the pocket,
and the Persians completely panic. Their best weapon, bow and arrow,

(16:19):
is useless in close combat. Their wicker shields have nothing
on the Pegasus shields, and they start fleeing to their ships.
Some Athenians get into the ships. They're killing the Persians aboard.
They pull in the ships from the They pull them
in like with ropes them okay, And at the end

(16:40):
of the day, we have six thousand, four hundred dead
Persians and only one d Athenians have perished. And finally
the Spartans show up, and after everything's over, they're not
even completely convinced that the Athenians have won. They tore
the battle field and they realized that the Athenians did win.
Their Oh, great, guys, good work, thanks for the help Sparta.

(17:05):
So the Athenians, though, can't just rejoice in this triumphant victory.
They've got to get moving to defend Athens. So they
march double time back to the city, get there before
the Persian ships, and we have Athens coming out on top.
And they turn this victory into a major propaganda They

(17:26):
put it in every available news outlet. They can find
um just sort of building it to mythical proportions almost immediately.
They even used the spoils of the battle to build
the Athenian Treasury at Delphi. But the wind allows them
to continue this little political experiment that they started not

(17:49):
that long before, and it also makes them a lot
more confident, probably a little too confident in the resulting history.
But when it's pretty obvious at the Persians are going
to come back, They're not going to be defeated in
this one battle and then stay away forever. But their
third expedition is delayed for about ten years as a

(18:09):
rebellion in Egypt. Darius dies and that gives Greece plenty
of time to get ready. And we also have some
random facts on Darius. Since we're not doing a biography
this time, we're talking about an actual event, we had
some things we didn't quite know where to stick in.
Darius was known as being quite the administrator. That's probably

(18:30):
his best reputation, even though he did help expand the
empire quite a bit. But he standardized the coinage and
the weights and measures for the empire, and lots of
exploration on new trade routes and actually before these Greek
invasions even started, he had sent out ships to thoroughly
scout the coastline, so you know, he hoped he knew

(18:52):
what he was getting into. And then another interesting point
about him. He did respect native religion, so it's not
like coming in and forcing everyone to be Persian. You
still have to pay your tribute. But he was cool
if you worshiped your Egyptian gods. He went as far
as to build a temple to the god amen Um
and helped restore other religious sites in Egypt. And he's

(19:14):
the one who authorized the building of the temple at Jerusalem.
Has come up in a couple of podcasts at least,
and as our last note on the Battle of Marathon,
the Carlos Museum at Emory University hosted a marathon through
campus to commemorate the anniversary. Apparently, Sarah and I both
sent the link to Candice Keener, who used to host
the podcast, but there was no respondent. Very unenthusiastic, I thought,

(19:39):
but for the rest of you, you know, maybe and
you can send us your marathon stories. I had thought
about doing a half last year and then realized I
can barely run a mile, so we're postponing that goal
for a little bit. I've done one half it was fun,
wait and one at me Sarah, Well, I don't think.
I don't think i'd ever go for a full and

(20:00):
definitely not the real fidipities length of hundred and fifty miles.
Maybe next lesson. It's in a car. You can work
up to it, Sarah. So if you have some story
where you can manage to tie in history and marathon
a personal story, one will be really proud of you,
and two will read it. Email us at History podcast

(20:20):
and how Stuff Works dot com. But that brings us
to our listener mail for today. Today's listener mail is
highly unusual in that it speaks if you want to
listen to it, and we have been hitting this in
the office, some might say a little too much, like

(20:42):
our editorial area is usually pretty quiet, lots of writers
and editors hard at work, except for Jonathan Strickland the
text stuff, who is very loud. And except for the
no button, which yeah, it's this little red button and
you push it and it has several varieties of no.
It's perfect for editorial meetings maybe podcasts Sarah suggests. Something
I don't like I think so. So we got this

(21:04):
from Amy and Vinnie in Connecticut, and I think they
manufacture these no buttons. But um, they mentioned that they've
thought of some good times when the no button would
have come in handy and history, you know, just times
when it would have been best for someone to say no.
And I can think of maybe a few just from
this episode here, like how about Spartan, you want to

(21:26):
come come help us fight the Persians? We don't have
a maybe later button. I think they suggested a few
of their own that didn't they they did. Um, let's
see abe. I hear that there's a good show playing
at the Ford Theater tonight. Want to go No? No
goes on like that. You got to change the course

(21:47):
of history, and perhaps you can imagine how our day
went on all the examples we've been thinking of. So
what are your best no responses that would have changed
the course of history? Email us at history pot has
to how stuff works dot com. We're also on Twitter
at missed in History, and we have a Facebook hand page,
And if you'd like to pretend your fidipities for a

(22:09):
little bit, We've got an article called how ultramarathons work
that you can search for on our homepage at www
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