As in the order of time, so likewise in the order of importance, Marathon stands first among the Battles of Destiny. Without Marathon there would have been no Thermopyl?, Salamis, Plat?a, Mycale; no Attic supremacy; no Age of Pericles: and would the world be just what it is today if these things had not been? Would Attica as a Persian satrapy ever have become Athens of the Acropolis crowned with the Propylaea-Erectheum-Parthenon: Athens bright star-night of the past glittering with deathless names?

Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia had risen and set; Rome subsequently rose and fell; France, Italy, Spain, England, Germany, and our own infantine experimental Republic of the West are advancing fatefully in the old circle: yet not one of these may boast as many eminent men, stars of first magnitude, glorious constellations—as little Greece might boast, that brief bright star-night of the past thick-studded with immortal names.
Callimachus, War Ruler.

Of the ten commanders of the ten Athenian tribes who assembled on the heights overlooking the plain of Marathon, five voted against battle with the invading Persians, five in favor of battle. Callimachus the War Ruler, influenced by the enthusiastic eloquence of Miltiades, gave the casting vote in favor of battle. On this so seeming slight chance hung Marathon.

Humanly speaking, it was madness for that little handful of Greeks to rush down upon the countless Persian hosts. The Persians themselves could not believe their own eyes when they[8] saw the Greeks running to battle; and half-heartedly, perhaps even jestingly, they prepared for a brief skirmish with madmen.

The Medes and Persians were at that time deemed invincible. Babylonia, Assyria, Asia Minor, the isles of the ?gean, the African Coast, the Euxine, Thrace, Macedonia had successively fallen before the soldiers of the Great King. The ?gean was a Persian Lake; from east, from south, from north approached the awful power of imperial Persia, ready irresistibly to absorb little Greece, to punish and obliterate Athens. Already the Eretrians, who together with the Athenians had aided in the Ionian revolt, were overtaken by the dread vengeance of Darius: their city had fallen and more than a thousand Eretrians were left bound on the island Egilia awaiting the return of the victorious Persian fleet from Marathon. Then together with the captive Athenians, the Eretrians were to be taken to Susa there to await the pleasure of the Great King, whose wrath had been new-kindled day by day with memories of burning Sardis by a court attendant whose sole duty was to repeat to Darius at each meal, “Sire, remember the Athenians.” Sardis would then be fearfully avenged.

Sardis was, indeed, avenged but not by Marathon. There is a justice exact even to the weight of a hair in all things of life; seen or unseen, known or unknown, acknowledged or unacknowledged, it is ever at work silently, forcefully, fatefully. Athens burns Sardis and desecrates the temples of the Persian gods; and some years later the Persians sack and devastate Athens, razing her temples to the ground leaving her site in smoking ruins.

“Behold there are Watchers over you, worthy Recorders, knowing what you do: and whosoever shall have wrought an ant’s weight of good shall behold it; and whosoever shall have wrought an ant’s weight of evil shall behold it.”—Koran.

History tells us that after the battle of Marathon, six thousand[9] four hundred Persians lay dead upon the battlefield and only one hundred and ninety-two Athenians. This seems incredible, yet it is equally incredible that the Greeks won. Ten thousand Athenians and one thousand Plat?ans had fought against one hundred thousand soldiers of the Great King, and—won. There was something wrong with that motley army of the Great King; some subtly retributive force was at work, some balancing Justice.
Miltiades.

Doubtless to Miltiades more than to any other man Athens and the world owes Marathon. It was his overpowering eloquence that weighed heavily in the balance against the honest fears of those who dreaded the encounter with Persia’s hitherto invincible warriors; the well founded fears of those who were secretly in sympathy with Hippias and hoped that a battle might be averted: and the prudent fears of those who dreaded defeat and the vengeance of the Great King and thought it wiser to wait until the promised help should come from Sparta. One man’s eloquent fearlessness outweighed all those fearful considerations and precipitated the mad descent from the hill, the onslaught, the unequal fight, the wonder-victory.

Yet had Miltiades rested after the momentous battle all might have been lost. For the sullen Persian fleet hastening from Marathon had turned its course towards undefended Athens. And so that very night, even with the departure of the last Persian ship from the shore, Miltiades led his battle torn veterans a distance of about twenty-two miles to Phalerum, the port nearest to Athens. And early the next morning when, indeed, true to Miltiades’ fears, the Persian fleet appeared off the coast of Phalerum, the men of Marathon stood awaiting their landing. They did not land.

[10]

Hippias, deposed tyrant of Athens, and guide and leader of the Persians was killed at Marathon. Callimachus, the polemarch, was killed, not in the battle proper, but on the shore as the defeated forces were confusedly seeking safety in escape to their ships, and the Greeks, following them even to the water’s edge, kept up the slaughter.

Surely Miltiades remained ever after the best beloved hero of Athens, and his years passed on amid ever vernal honors down the easy ways of old age, and the end was in peace!

But, alas! history tells us that Miltiades fell into disgrace, was banished from Athens, and a few years after Marathon, died of his wounds in prison.

Too bad that every crest-wave of human achievement hastily tumbles to a depression correspondingly low as the swell was high. Scipio, conqueror at Zama, triumph-crowned, and honored with the appellation Africanus, was, on that same day one year later on trial for his life. What a tumult of conflicting feelings must have raged in his heart when, disdaining to reply to the accusations made against him, Scipio said, turning to the fickle populace, “I would remind the men of Rome that this day one year ago I won the battle of Zama.” And then the tide turned in his favor and the young-world children wept because of their ingratitude, and clamorously acquitted Scipio. But depressive doubt succeeded crest confidence and Scipio went into exile. Ingrata Patria! (Ungrateful Native Land!) Scipio exclaimed, as death drew near and his tired eyes turned longingly towards Rome.

Coriolanus, Roman exile, torn to pieces by the Volscians; Hannibal, lone boast of Carthage, hater of Rome; Themistocles, hero of Salamis; Aristides the Just; Socrates; Miltiades are among the tragic figures on the historic stage whose dying heart-throbs may have reproachfully re-echoed Ingrata Patria.

[11]
All the Glory That Was Greece.

From Marathon (490 B. C.) clarion of the birth of Athens, to ?gospotami (405 B. C.) her knell of death, momentous history was made.

?gospotami knelled the fall of Athens; Leuctra, of Sparta; Mantinea, of Epaminondas-Thebes; and Ch?ronea, of all Hellas; but not all of Athens died at ?gospotami. Pericles, Aspasia, Phidias, Ictinus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, ?schylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon—have not died; they are effective forces in the world today.

Spartan military excellence, Spartan hardihood and endurance is a bubble that burst; it is no more: but Attic excellence of intellect endures imperishably—with Platonic wonder as freshly fair in college halls today as in the Academia and Lyceum of the old Athenian day. Mind is the only Conqueror.

Blue sky of Athens, white cliff Acropolis,—so unchanging amid change, so laughing fair among the ruins of the glory that was Greece!

Nature’s ever young irreverence towards the wreck of time is invigorating. It calls to the heart of man in language the heart understands, What’s Time!

“Men said, ‘But time escapes

Live now or never.’

“He said, ‘What’s time! Leave Now for dogs and apes—

Man has Forever.’”

—Browning.
Sparta.

The manner in which the news of the defeat of the Athenians at ?gospotami affected Athens is in striking contrast with the manner in which Sparta received word of the disastrous[12] Spartan defeat at Leuctra. When report of the naval disaster reached the Pir?us, it was quickly communicated to the thronging crowds within the Long Walls, and thence to the heart of the city. Consternation prevailed and all Athens mourned. “That night,” says Xenophon, “no one in Athens slept.”

The news of the defeat at Leuctra reached Sparta in the midst of a festive celebration. The magistrates heard of the defeat, and the death of their king, with countenances unmoved; they gave orders that the festival be uninterrupted; and they urged all who had lost relatives and friends in the battle of Leuctra to appear at the festivities in particularly gay attire and with smiling faces, while those whose relatives were among the survivors were ordered to put on mourning.

The spirit of Lycurgus, of Draco, and of Leonidas seems to have fused and chilled into the Laws of Sparta. No surrender; conquer or die; return with your shield or upon it; wounds all in front and faces grimly fierce even in death—such was the spirit of Sparta.

Whatever may be our admiration for the Spartan qualities in general, there can be but lament that they found expression in the Peloponnesian War. This fratricidal strife brought ruin to Hellas. Marathon, Thermopyl?, Salamis, Plat?a, Mycale were all undone by Syracuse and ?gospotami. Ch?ronea was made possible and the passing of the scepter of empire from Greece to Macedonia, from leaderless Hellas to Alexander the Great.