Note 647 — Chapter XXXVI · FROM THE IONIC REVOLT TO THE BATTLE OF MARATHON.

Justin (ii, 9) says that the total of the Persian army was six hundred thousand, and that two hundred thousand perished. Plato (Menexen. p. 240) and Lysias (Orat. Funebr. c. 7) speak of the Persian total as five hundred thousand men. Valerius Maximus (v, 3), Pausanias (iv, 25), and Plutarch (Parallel. Græc. ad init.), give three hundred thousand men. Cornelius Nepos (Miltiadês, c. 5) gives the more moderate total of one hundred and ten thousand men.

See the observations on the battle of Marathon, made both by Colonel Leake and by Mr. Finlay, who have examined and described the locality; Leake, on the Demi of Attica, in Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, vol. ii, p. 160, seq.; and Finlay, on the Battle of Marathon, in the same Transactions, vol. iii, pp. 360-380, etc.

Both have given remarks on the probable numbers of the armies assembled; but there are really no materials, even for a probable guess, in respect to the Persians. The silence of Herodotus (whom we shall find hereafter very circumstantial as to the numbers of the army under Xerxês) seems to show that he had no information which he could trust. His account of the battle of Marathon presents him in honorable contrast with the loose and boastful assertors who followed him; for though he does not tell us much, and falls lamentably short of what we should like to know, yet all that he does say is reasonable and probable as to the proceedings of both armies and the little which he states becomes more trustworthy on that very account,—because it is so little,—showing that he keeps strictly within his authorities.

There is nothing in the account of Herodotus to make us believe that he had ever visited the ground of Marathon.