WARS and BATTLES
From Ancient Greece - to modern day.
Every free Greek was trained to military duty; and, from the incessant border wars between the different states, few Greeks reached the age of manhood without having seen some service. But the muster roll of free Athenian citizens of an age fit for military duty never exceeded thirty thousand, and at this epoch probably did not amount to two thirds of that number. Moreover, the poorer portion of these was unprovided with the equipments, and untrained to the operations of the regular infantry. Some detachments of the best-armed troops would be required to garrison the city itself and man the various fortified posts in the territory; so that it is impossible to reckon the fully equipped force that marched from Athens to Marathon, when the news of the Persian landing arrived, at higher than ten thousand men. With one exception, the other Greeks held back from aiding them. Sparta had promised assistance, but the Persians had landed on the sixth day of the moon, and a religious scruple delayed the march of Spartan troops till the moon should have reached its full. From one quarter only, and that from a most unexpected one, did Athens receive aid at the moment of her great peril. Some years before this time the little state of Plataea in Boeotia, being hard pressed by her powerful neighbor, Thebes, had asked the protection of Athens, and had owed to an Athenian army the rescue of her independence. Now when it was noised over Greece that the Mede had come from the uttermost parts of the earth to destroy Athens, the brave Plataeans, unsolicited, marched with their whole force to assist the defense, and to share the fortunes of their benefactors. The general levy of the Plataeans only amounted to a thousand men; and this little column, marching from their city along the southern ridge of Mount Cithara, and thence across the Attic territory, joined the Athenian forces above Marathon almost immediately before the battle. The reinforcement was numerically small, but the gallant spirit of the men who composed it must have made it of ten-fold value to the Athenians; and its presence must have gone far to dispel the cheerless feeling of being deserted and friendless, which the delay of the Spartan Succors was calculated to create among the Athenian ranks.
This generous daring of their weak but truehearted ally was never forgotten at Athens. The Plataeans were made the civil fellow-countrymen of the Athenians, except the right of exercising certain political functions; and from that time forth in the solemn sacrifices at Athens, the public prayers were offered up for a joint blessing from Heaven upon the Athenians and the Plataeans also. After the junction of the column from Plataea, the Athenian commanders must have had under them about eleven thousand fully armed and disciplined infantry, and probably a larger number of irregular light-armed troops; as, besides the poorer citizens who went to the field armed with javelins cutlasses, and targets, each regular heavy-armed soldier was attended in the camp by one or more slaves, who were armed like the inferior freemen. Cavalry or archers the Athenians (on this occasion) had none; and the use in the field of military engines was not at that period introduced into ancient warfare Contrasted with their own scanty forces, the Greek commanders saw stretched before them, along the shores of the winding bay, the tents and shipping of the varied nations who marched to do the bidding of the king of the Eastern world. The difficulty of finding transports and of securing provisions would form the only limit to the numbers of a Persian army. Nor is there any reason to suppose the estimate of Justin exaggerated, who rates at a hundred thousand the force which on this occasion had sailed, under the satraps Datis and Artaphernes, from the Cilician shores against the devoted coasts of Euboea and Attica. And after largely deducting from this total so as to allow for mere mariners and camp followers, there must still have remained fearful odds against the national levies of the Athenians.
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