"The Battle of Marathon" Topic

"Give or take a few days, I write this review exactly 2500 years after one of history's greatest upsets, the Persian defeat at the Battle of Marathon. Due to such a well-publicized anniversary, there is much talk of Marathon about, though there has always been an acute fascination with this most evocative of battles. In his new book on the subject, Peter Krentz aims to provide an account that is at once comprehensive, critical, and accessible to the scholar and general reader alike. The result is the best treatment of the battle now available.

Krentz's most important argument is that Herodotus was right after all about the Greeks' mile-long charge against the Persian line, that the charge was part of a carefully formulated plan of the Athenian general Miltiades, and that it was undertaken to minimize the effectiveness of the Persians' deadliest arm, their cavalry. This thesis is supported by a number of scholarly excursuses, from a debunking of the standard view of the weight of hoplite equipment, to evidence that a charge of such a distance was well within the physical capabilities of 5th century Greek soldiers.

After an introduction in which he outlines the place of Marathon in Western culture and champions the possibility that the battle can be reasonably reconstructed, Krentz begins his account some twenty years before the battle itself. The situation in Athens following the expulsion of the Peisistratids is described in some detail, as are the threats faced by the fledgling democracy, notably Sparta and its interventionist king Kleomenes. Next, Krentz discusses Persia, the Mediterranean's only "superpower" at the time, providing useful details about the Persian army, particularly the kinetic power of Persian arrows and the fighting tactics of the cavalry. The crux of this discussion is the Athenian embassy to Sardis in 507/6 that offered the traditional tokens of submission, earth and water. According to Krentz, it was only the alliance gained by this submission that saved Athens from an invasion by Sparta and its allies in 506. Athens was thus in Persia's debt. At this point, Krentz embarks on a lengthy digression about Greek warfare in the late Archaic period, placing special emphasis on the evidence for the weight of hoplite equipment and what Greek writers actually meant by the word othismos, the apparent mass-shove of phalanx battle. The Ionian Revolt is then sketched, with the upshot being that by their participation in the burning of Sardis, the Athenians effectively reneged on their alliance with Persia in 506. A Persian assault on Athens thereby became inevitable…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Could be an interesting new take, I'll have to look for this book, thanks for the alert!

It's amazing how many thick volumes have arisen from what in Herodotus and other historians is a very, very brief account, sad to say. Modern writers have to delve deeply into background context and speculation to pad their books out to normal length.

A votre service mon ami!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Remerciements, mon vieux!