The Battle of Marathon: An Essay in Historical Detection

The legend of the Battle of Marathon is secure. It inspired Byron’s dreams of a Greece that might still be free, and provided the subject of the first in time, and almost the first in significance, of the once widely read Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World. From the beginning of the fourth century before Christ, until little more than a hundred years ago, when Colonel Leake visited the field, Marathon connoted an engagement in which 10,000 Athenians repulsed with enormous losses an invading Persian army ranging in numbers from a grudging 200,000 (Cornelius Nepos) to a more generous 600,000 (Justin),¹ and vindicated the liberties of Europe against Asia.