[74] Ten thousand citizens armed as
hoplites camped before the Persians. The Athenians had ten generals,
having the command on successive days; of these Miltiades, when his
turn came, drew up the army for battle. The Athenians charged the
enemy in serried ranks, but the Persians seeing them advancing without
cavalry and without archers, thought them fools. It was the first time
that the Greeks had dared to face the Persians in battle array. The
Athenians began by turning both flanks, and then engaged the centre,
driving the Persians in disorder to the sea and forcing them to
reembark on their ships.
The victory of Marathon delivered the Athenians and made them famous
in all Greece (490).
=Second Persian War.=--The second war began ten years later with an
invasion. Xerxes united all the peoples of the empire, so that the
land force amounted, as some say, to 1,700,000 men.[75] There were
Medes and Persians clad in sleeved tunics, armed with cuirasses of
iron, bucklers, bows and arrows; Assyrians with cuirass of linen,
armed with clubs pointed with iron; Indians clad in cotton with bows
and arrows of bamboo; savages of Ethiopia with leopard skins for
clothing; nomads armed only with lassos; Phrygians armed with short
pikes; Lydians equipped like Greeks; Thracians carrying javelins and
daggers.
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