Marathon: Freedom or Death

‘Arimnestos hasn’t heard the plan,’ Miltiades said. He glanced at me. ‘Will you do it?’

‘Do what?’ I asked.

‘We need a demonstration in front of the Persians — by men who can fight or run in the dark.’ He shrugged. ‘I can give you all the Athenian archers to go with you. I wouldn’t sacrifice you,’ he said, as if reading my mind.

‘Where will you be?’ I asked, but I was already smiling, because, by all the gods, I saw the whole plan as neatly as if it was stitched into leather. ‘The horses!’

‘Told you he was smarter than he looked,’ Miltiades said.

‘If we pull this off, the army will stay,’ Aristides said.

‘And if we fuck it up, we’ll be dead,’ Miltiades said. He shrugged. ‘I can’t take any more officers’ meetings.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ I said. ‘I can get a hundred men.’

‘Then take a hundred,’ Miltiades said. ‘The more you take, the more noise you’ll make. What can you do, though?’

I remember making a face. I remember laughing. ‘Have you noted that, while we sit here doing nothing, the Persians sit there doing nothing?’ I said.

They both nodded.

I raised my cup and poured a libation. ‘Ares — Zeus’s least favoured child. If they fear us at all — and they must — then they have to fear a night attack.’ I grinned. ‘So let’s feed them one. I’ll go for their ships.’

Ever been out for a walk at night?

Ever been out for a walk outside the city?

As joyously as we prepared to make our raid, the truth was that none of us had ever been in a night attack. There’s a reason why men don’t make night attacks on land.

At sea, it’s different. At sea, there’s always a little light — and not much to bump into, if you steer badly. But on land?

I roused my epilektoi as soon as I got back, but just preparing them to march took me too much time. By the time I’d led them to the base of the hill and out into the fields, the moon was high and we were late.

The Athenian archers were supposed to meet us opposite their camp — which turned out to be far too vague a direction on a dark night. I looked for them for as long as my heart could take it. Miltiades was long gone, heading up into the hills to get around the marsh and the Persian camp, and I needed to make noise to keep the enemy focused on me. I was taking too long. Everything was taking too long.

I gave up on the Athenian archers when I saw how far the moon had moved across the sky.

‘Where the fuck are they?’ I hissed at Teucer when I got back to my own men. The archer shrugged.

So we set off across the fields in the middle watch of the night, an hour late for our plan and moving too fast. We made a great deal of noise.

The hedgerows, which seemed to run straight by day, were like the maze of the Minotaur by night. I’d follow one for a distance and then realize that I had gone close to the sea rather than closer to the enemy — and time was passing. I could all but hear Clotho’s shears trimming the wick of Miltiades’ life.

When the Pleiades were high in the sky, I took my bearings like a sailor, found the north star and realized that, again, I was leading the long file of my men away from our camp and towards the sea — and not closer to the enemy encampment.

Resolutely I put my right shoulder to the sound of the sea — close now — and searched the next wall for a gate. I crossed, the rest of the men stumbling behind me and making enough noise for an army, which I guess was the idea, and found myself walking across a hayfield in the full light of the moon — towards the sea.

Of course, the beach curves — radically, in come places — and I’d simply missed my mark. Again.

My heart was pounding, my anxiety had reached a lethal intensity, my helmet burned my head and I was sweating through my armour — and we still weren’t within long bowshot of the enemy.

Idomeneus came up beside me. ‘You thinking we should go on the beach?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said. Because there was no cover at all on the beach. We’d be seen two stades away, even at night.

Of course, even as I thought that, I realized that being seen two stades away might be a fine thing.

‘Actually, yes,’ I said. ‘We’re going along the beach.’

Idomeneus laughed. ‘Good — I was worried you were lost.’

I chuckled — I remember the falsity of my laugh, how it caught in my throat. When you are the fearless leader, it is important to appear fearless — and knowledgeable. I thought of all the stupid things I’d seen other leaders do. Now I knew why they did it. Somehow, command on land was not like command at sea — too many choices, perhaps. Maybe it’s just that your men can simply walk away if they lose trust in you.

Down to the beach.

As soon as we reached the beach, I could see the enemy camp — the ships, drawn up as thickly as fleas on a dog, and the fires inland from the beach all the way past the marsh to the hills. We seemed incredibly close, although in reality we were five long stades from the ships — but because of the curve of the beach, we were looking at the ships across the water, and they were close.

As soon as we were down the dune, I hissed the order to form front by files. We were strung out, but the boys were fast and probably as eager to get formed up — to feel the comfort of the next man’s shield — as I was to get them formed.

Still no alarm. So we moved forward. Sand filled my sandals, and I had to remind myself that the beach was, despite the labour, easier on me, and easier on the lads, than tying to cross the farms of the Marathon plain.

After two stades, we seemed to be level with the first Persian ships — and still there was no alarm. I tried to reassure myself that if Miltiades were attacking, I’d hear something from him — the hills were visible as a loom of dark against the paler darkness of the sky to the north and west.

Another stade, and the ships were so close that it seemed we could swim to them. We were just two stades — less, I think — from the ships that were beached when a man on one of the anchored ships, a Greek, called out, asking who we were.

‘Men!’ I responded, but in Persian.

‘What?’ he asked, his voice echoing over the water.

‘Men!’ I called back again, this time in Greek.

And that satisfied him.

By such threads do empires hang.

Now we were running — stumbling more like — through the dark. I had a new notion — that I’d put fire into some of their ships. I’d done it before, at Lade, and it had done the trick, and there were plenty of fires near the ships.

Less than a stade — no alarm.

How the gods must have laughed.

We came to the first fires — a line of blazes long since burned down to coals — and my men broke ranks and began to slaughter the oarsmen at the fires without my orders. The whole situation slipped away from me in those moments — one second, I had a column of trained warriors running through the dark, and the next, there were screams and all my men had gone.

Or that’s how it seemed to me.

To my mind, killing the oarsmen was a complete waste of time, but as a diversion, it did well enough. The problem was that there were about a hundred of us, and almost sixty thousand oarsmen. With the best will in the world, my men couldn’t make a dent in them. And then they began to fight back.

It was chaos on the beach, and Tartarus, too — arrows falling from the sky as the Medes who had camped just to the north shot into the confusion, and the thousands of oarsmen, unable to believe there were so few of us, fell on each other — Phoenicians against Cilicians, Greeks against Aegyptians.

I pulled Idomeneus out of the fighting and dragged him clear the way you pull a dog out of a fight.

‘Order the rally!’ I remember shouting at him. He had a horn and I did not.

He looked at me with dull, lust-filled eyes. ‘I was fighting,’ he said reproachfully.

‘Order the rally!’ I said again.

He lifted the horn and sounded three long blasts.