The Historians' History of the World 03

Granting the importance, then, of the victory to its fullest extent, it cannot but make for truth to realise how little the Greeks knew all they were doing, how selfish and mutually jealous they were, and in what a humble manner they accomplished so much more than they dreamed or desired.a

The realism of this glorious feat could not be more vividly phrased than by Prof. J. P. Mahaffy in his Rambles and Studies in Greece

:

“Byron may well be excused for raving about the liberty of the Greeks, for truly their old conflict at Marathon where a thousand ill-disciplined men repulsed a larger number of still worse disciplined Orientals, without any recondite tactics,—perhaps even without any very extraordinary heroism,—how is it that this conflict has maintained a celebrity which has not been equalled by all the great battles of the world, from that day down to our own? The courage of the Greeks was not of the first order. Herodotus praises the Athenians in this very battle for being the first Greeks that dared to look the Persians in the face. Their generals all through history seem never to feel sure of victory, and always endeavour to harangue their soldiers into a fury. Instead of advising coolness, they specially incite to rage—ὀργῇ προσμίξωμεν, says one of them in Thucydides—as if any man not in this state would be sure to estimate the danger fully, and run away.

“It is, indeed, true that the ancient battles were hand to hand, and therefore parallel to our charges of bayonets, which are said to be very seldom carried out by two opposing lines, as one of them almost always gives way before the actual collision takes place. This must often have taken place in Greek battles, for, at Amphipolis, Brasidas in a battle lost seven men; at a battle of Corinth, mentioned by Xenophon—an important battle, too—the slain amounted to eight; and these battles were fought before the days when whole armies were composed of mercenaries, who spared one another, as Ordericus Vitalis says, ‘for the love of God, and out of good feeling for the fraternity of arms.’ So, then, the loss of 192 Athenians, including some distinguished men, was rather a severe one. As to the loss of the Persians, I so totally disbelieve the Greek accounts of such things, that it is better to pass it by in silence.

“Perhaps most readers will be astonished to hear of the Athenian army as undisciplined, and of the science of war as undeveloped, in those times. Yet I firmly believe this was so. The accounts of battles by almost all the historians are so utterly vague, and so childishly conventional, that it is evident these gentlemen were not only quite ignorant of the science of war, but could not easily find any one to explain it to them. We know that the Spartans, the most admired of all Greek warriors, were chiefly so admired because they devised the system of subordinating officers to one another within the same detachment, like our gradation from colonel to corporal. So orders were passed down from officer to officer, instead of being bawled out by a herald to a whole army.

“But this superiority of the Spartans who were really disciplined, and went into battle coolly, like brave men, certainly did not extend to strategy, but was merely a question of better drill. As soon as any real strategist met them, they were helpless. Thus Iphicrates, when he devised Wellington’s plan of meeting their attacking column in line, and using missiles, succeeded against them, even without firearms. Thus Epaminondas, when he devised Napoleon’s plan of massing troops on a single point, while keeping his enemy’s line occupied, defeated them without any considerable struggle. As for that general’s great battle of Mantinea, which seems really to have been introduced by some complicated strategical movements, it is a mere hopeless jumble in our histories. But these men were in the distant future when the battle of Marathon was being fought.