Chapter IV · PERSIAN OPERATIONS IN EUROPE: B.C. 493–490. MARATHON. (continued 2)

Marathon has, and must always have, a great place in history. It made a great and immediate impression on those who were its contemporaries. Its story would certainly, in any age of the world, have gained by exaggeration. It is only possible at the present day to surmise the lengths to which that exaggeration went; but chance references in later authors show that it went very far. Little of the exaggeration is found in Herodotus. That honest old historian has winnowed out nearly all the chaff from the crop of legends; though it cannot be doubted that in the process he has cast away some of the good grain also.

The loss may have been unavoidable. The machinery for historical criticism was in his day in its most primitive stage; and the good grain in the material to be dealt with was smothered in valueless dust.

One, and, historically speaking, the most important side of the exaggeration of after-time, must be mentioned. The Greek world, thanks no doubt to the Athenian presentment of the tale, regarded Marathon as a defeat inflicted on the full strength of Persia. It has been shown that such cannot have been the case.

Marathon was sufficiently glorious to its victors to render any exaggeration of the success attained superfluous. For the first time in history the Greek had beaten the Persian on his own element, the land. The army of a little state, possessed of no military reputation worth speaking of, had defeated a superior force of the conquerors of a continent. The Greek had shown himself able to face the best soldiers of his age; and the consciousness of this fact, rapidly permeating through the whole of the Hellenic world in Europe, gave the Greek confidence,—nay, even rendered him all but callous and careless,—in face of the great danger which threatened him ten years later.

Marathon was a greater Vimiero in that war which was to be fought out in the Greek peninsula.