The Bay of Marathon

Earth and water

In 491 the King's heralds asked the Greek cities for earth and water, the sign of submission. Many gave it. Athens threw the heralds into a pit and Sparta down a well.

Herodotus 6.48-49, 7.133

Delos spared

Datis spared the holy island of Delos and burned three hundred talents of frankincense on Apollo's altar. The Persians honoured the god while they punished his worshippers' cities.

Herodotus 6.97

Eretria

Eretria held for six days until two citizens betrayed it. Its temples were burned in revenge for Sardis and its people carried off to Ardericca near Susa, where Herodotus says they still lived in his day.

Herodotus 6.100-101, 6.119

Hippias's tooth

Hippias, the old tyrant of Athens, guided the Persians to Marathon. He sneezed and lost a tooth in the sand, and said it was all of Attica that would be his.

Herodotus 6.102, 6.107

The runner

Herodotus says Pheidippides ran to Sparta, about 240 km, in two days; the Spartans would not march before the full moon. The run from Marathon to Athens with news of victory first appears in Plutarch and Lucian, five centuries later. The modern race comes from that legend.

Herodotus 6.105-106; Plutarch, Moralia 347c; Lucian, A Slip of the Tongue 3

The charge

The Athenians, Herodotus says, were the first Greeks to charge at the run, for eight stades. The Persian centre broke through, but the Greek wings won and closed on it. Herodotus counts 6,400 Persian dead and 192 Athenian.

In the game: Marathon's hoplites alone keep their sprint: they came on at the run.

Herodotus 6.109-117

At the ships

The Greeks chased the Persians to the beach and seized seven ships. Cynegirus, brother of the playwright Aeschylus, had his hand cut off gripping a stern. The rest of the fleet got away.

In the game: Hold the camp at the ships: the fight at your town.

Herodotus 6.113-115

The shield on the mountain

A shield flashed from the heights, and the fleet sailed round Cape Sunium for Athens. The Athenians marched home in time. Who signalled was argued in Athens; Herodotus defends the Alcmaeonid family that was blamed.

Herodotus 6.115-124

The Soros

The Athenian dead were buried on the field under a great mound, the Soros, still about nine metres high. When it was dug in 1890 it held ash, bone and pottery of about 490.

Thucydides 2.34; V. Staïs, excavation of 1890