What is the significance of the battle of marathon

Sometime around the year B. The ancient games, which took place in The so-called golden age of Athenian culture flourished under the leadership of Pericles B. Pericles transformed his The Athenian philosopher Plato c. In his written dialogues he conveyed and expanded on the ideas and techniques of his teacher Socrates.

The Academy he Although inspired by the ancient Greeks, the Olympic marathon is a thoroughly modern invention. The classical period was an era of war and conflict—first between the Greeks and the Persians, then between the Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. How the Troubles Began in Northern Ireland. Boston Marathon Bombing. Battle of Guadalcanal. Battle of Saratoga.

Peloponnesian War The two most powerful city-states in ancient Greece, Athens and Sparta, went to war with each other from to B.

However, while en route south to the Greek city-states, the Persian fleet was wrecked in a storm in Cape Athos, losing ships and 20, men. Mardonius was forced to retreat to Asia. Attacks by Thracian tribes incurred losses to the retreating army. Darius learned, perhaps through Hippias, the Alcmaeonidae, a powerful Athenian family, were opposed to Miltiades, who at the time was the most prominent politician of Athens. While they were not ready to help reinstate Hippias they had helped overthrow him , they probably believed a Persian victory was inevitable and wanted to secure a better position in the new political regime that was to follow the Persian conquest of Athens.

Darius wished to take advantage of this situation to conquer Athens, which would isolate Sparta and, by handing him the remainder of the Greeks in the Aegean, would to consolidate his control over Ionia. In order for the Athenians to revolt, two things would need to happen: the populace would need to be encouraged to revolt, and the Athenian army would have to leave Athens so that they could not crush it.

Darius decided to send a purely maritime expedition led by Artaphernes and Datis, a Median admiral—Mardonius had been injured in the prior campaign and had fallen out of favour—with the intention to punish Naxos whose resistance to Persian attack in BC led to the Ionian revolt and force Eretria and Athens to submit to the Great King or be destroyed.

Size of opposing forces. This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia with only minor checks and changes see www. He was not to be put off however, and two years later another powerful force, under his brother Artaphernes and and admiral Datis, set sail. This time, rather than going for Greece through the north, the fleet headed due west through the Cyclades, finally conquering Naxos along the way before arriving on mainland Greece in mid-summer.

The command of the Athenian army, meanwhile, was entrusted to ten different generals — each representing one of the ten tribes that made up the citizen body of the city-state — under the loose leadership of the Polymarch Callimachus. It is the general Miltiades, however, who emerged out of Marathon with the greatest fame.

After defeat, he had been forced to flee and take his military skill to Athens, where he was more experienced at fighting the Persians than any other leader. This helmet, inscribed with the name of Miltiades, was given by him as an offering to the God Zeus at Olympia to give thanks for victory.

Help did come from an unexpected source, the tiny city-state of Plataea, which sent another men to reinforce the Athenians, who then sent Pheidippides, the best runner in the city, to contact the Spartans, who would not come for another week, by which time their sacred festival of the Carneia would be done. Meanwhile, an uneasy stalemate prevailed in the bay of Marathon for five days, with neither side wanting to begin the battle. The size of their army is harder to guess, but even the most conservative of modern historians place it at around 25,, skewing the odds in their favour.

They were, however, more lightly armed than the Greeks, who fought in armour and wielding long pikes in a tight phalanx formation, while Persian troops put more of an emphasis on light cavalry and skill with the bow. On the fifth day, the battle began, despite the lack of Spartan help.

There are two theories why; one is that the Persians re-embarked their cavalry to take the Greeks in the rear, thus giving Miltiades — who was always urging Callimachus to be more aggressive — an opportunity to attack while the enemy were weaker. The other is simply that the Persians tried to attack, and when Militiades saw them advancing he ordered his own troops forward in order to wrestle back the initiative.

The two are not mutually exclusive, and it is also possible that the Persian infantry advance was planned in tandem with the flanking move of the cavalry.