This is the month in which Marathon was probably fought, and so a good time to reflect on what happened there -- and what it meant for Sparta.
Marathon was an Athenian-Plataean
victory. Although Athens fielded her
maximum force and the Plataeans sent every available man, the Persians still
significantly outnumbered their combined strength. Yet when Miltiades finally
led the assault, the victory went to the Athenians and Plataeans. According to Herodotus, 6,400 Persian soldiers
lost their lives on the plain of Marathon, at the price of just 192 Athenians
and an unnamed, but certainly smaller, number of Plataeans. The Spartans were nowhere
to be seen.
And yet, Marathon is a
significant chapter in Spartan history.
First, the Athenian request is an indication that they believed halting
Persian incursions in Greece was sufficiently important to Sparta to override
any other considerations arising from their less than harmonious past relations.
Second, Sparta agreed to send help, although Persian wrath was directed
exclusively at Athens and Eretria at this point in time, and Sparta would have
been justified telling the Athenians to face the consequences of their support
for Aristagoras’ revolt alone. Yet Sparta
did nothing of the kind.
Sparta, according to Herodotus,
was “moved by the appeal [for help], and willing to send help to Athens,” but was
unable to respond immediately because they “did not wish to break their law. It
was the ninth day of the month, and they said they could not take the field
until the moon was full.” (Herodotus, 6:107).
Most historians interpret this to mean that Sparta was at the time
celebrating the Carneia, a ten-day festival, and could not march until it was
over.
That the promise was not empty
is evidenced by the fact that, again according to Herodotus, after the full
moon “two thousand Spartans set off for Athens.” They covered roughly 120 miles of in part
very rugged terrain to reach Athens on the third day after leaving Sparta – a
notable achievement for an army on foot. They arrived in Athens allegedly on
the day following the Battle of Marathon and continued on to Marathon to see
the bodies of the slain.
The fact that Sparta delayed
responding to the Athenian call for help has occupied historians for
generations. Given the urgency of the
request and the evidently genuine desire to help, modern readers find it hard
to believe the phase of the moon or a festival would have been allowed to get
in the way. Speculation about a possible
helot revolt has been particularly popular. Yet I find it hard to believe a
revolt could be of such a predictable nature that the Spartans could know in
advance it would be over by the full-moon -- and then in fact be so completely subdued that 2,000 men – the entire active
army by some accounts - could march out exactly on schedule. Hints of a revolt
prior to the major insurrection of 460 may be credible, but are insufficiently
precise to prove a revolt took place at exactly this point in history, in my
opinion.
Equally significant but, to my
knowledge, less frequently noted, is that Herodotus does not identify the
Spartan commander of the 2,000 Spartans that arrived in Athens too late. Up to this point, Sparta’s armies abroad were
commanded invariably by her kings jointly or, after the debacle of Cleomenes
and Demaratus quarrelling openly while campaigning against Athens at the end of
the previous century, by one of the kings.
It seems very odd, that suddenly, for such an important confrontation,
no king is mentioned.
The absence of a king is
particularly odd given the large numbers involved. Herodotus speaks of 2000 “Spartans.” While this need not necessarily mean
Spartiates and could, at a stretch, include perioikoi, it certainly excludes
Allies. Furthermore, based on the assumption that the force of 5,000 Spartiates
sent to Plataea represented the maximum strength of a citizen force including
15-20 age-cohorts of reservists, 2,000 men probably represents the size of
Sparta’s standing army, the citizens aged 21-30, at this time. Such a force
represented the very flower of Spartan manhood and would hardly be entrusted to
anyone less than a king.
But in the summer of 490,
Sparta was in the midst of a dynastic crisis. The Eurypontid Demaratus had been
denounced as a usurper and dethroned by a judgment of Delphi only a couple
years earlier. After being humiliated by his successor Leotychidas, Demaratus
fled Sparta, only for it to then come to light that Delphi’s judgment had been
bought by King Cleomenes. This cast grave doubts on the legitimacy of Leotychidas
in the eyes of most Spartans, yet it appears to have been impossible to recall
Demaratus. Meanwhile, Cleomenes himself
had gone mad and was in self-imposed exile.
Thus in the summer of 490, the Spartans literally had no king to whom they could entrust their army.
This situation might not have
been revealed to the outside world, if the Persians had not chosen to launch
their invasion of Attica at precisely this time. Under the circumstances, the Spartan
government recognized the need to confront the Persians, but, without a king to
take command, Sparta was in no position to respond at once. The Spartans first had to agree among themselves how to
deal with this unprecedented situation by appointing a non-royal commander. The
delay in responding can, therefore, best be explained by the time needed to find
a consensus candidate, which undoubtedly entailed debating the issue in the
Gerousia, drafting a bill for the ephors to present to the Assembly, and
calling an extraordinary Assembly. It was possible to calculate how many days
that would take, and easier to blame religion than confess to the Athenians
that the Spartans had a dynastic/leadership crisis. After all was said and
done, the Spartan army marched out under someone other than one of the kings.
Herodotus is silent on who led
the 2,000 men to Marathon. We will never know for sure. But one candidate
stands out as the most likely commander: Leonidas. Leonidas was an Agiad. He was heir to the
throne. He was a mature man, probably with considerable military experience by
this point in time. At a minimum, he would have fought at Sepeia against Argos
just four years earlier. It is hard to imagine that anyone else in Sparta at
the time could claim equal right to lead the Spartan army in the absence of her
ruling kings.
If Leonidas indeed led the
Spartan army that arrived in Athens one day too late for the Battle of Marathon,
it would have given him the opportunity for him to meet Athenian leaders – and
win their trust. This may in turn have been a contributing factor to Leonidas’
election as commander of the joint Greek forces in 480. Perhaps equally significant, arriving one day
too late for Marathon may have left a psychological scar that made Leonidas
determined not to come too late to Thermopylae.
In 480, Leonidas refused to await the end of the Carneia and took his advance
guard out of Sparta before the end of the festival. I think Leonidas was determined not to be
late again.
