The Persian Wars: Darius, Athens and the Battle of Marathon

490 BC. On the plains of Marathon, Athens faced down a mighty army of the Persian Empire - the superpower of the time It was an underdog clash that would echo throughout history. But how did it all begin? In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes kicks off an epic two-parter on the Persian Wars with experts Dr Roel Konijnendijk and Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones. From the rise of the Persian Empire to the Ionian Revolt and the showdown at Marathon, uncover how this legendary clash became a turning point Greece, Persia and the wider ancient world. Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

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• 0:32Speaker 01

  I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone and I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh. Anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody, listen up. Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade in needed and the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.

• 1:02Speaker 02

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• 1:36Tristan Hughes?

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• 2:18Tristan Hughes?

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• 2:59Tristan Hughes?

  490 B.C. On the plain of Marathon, an Athenian army stands ready to do battle. A sizable Persian force stands across from them, having sailed across the Aegean from Anatolia, intent on punishing the Athenians for a past foray into their lands, supporting an anti-Persian revolt. This battle would mark the climax of the first Persian invasion of Greece and become immortalised through the ages as the day Athens defied the superpower. It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. Today, we're releasing the first of a series of episodes exploring the Persian Wars with not one but two leading experts in the field: Dr.

• 3:44Tristan Hughes?

  Rul Knine-Nyndike from Lincoln College, Oxford University, and Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones from Cardiff University. In this first episode, we are covering the story of the first Persian war: think the Battle of Marathon of 490 B.C. We'll explore the run-up to the conflict, the emergence of the Persian Empire and how it came into contact with the Greek world in western Turkey. We'll explore how the Persians viewed the Greeks and vice versa, before ultimately getting to the narrative of Marathon itself, preserved in the writings of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, known as the father of history. You'll hear Herodotus's name quite a bit in today's chat. Every once in a while, we release special episodes with two interviewees, as we know

• 4:28Tristan Hughes?

  how much you enjoy them. With Rul and Lloyd being fan favourite guests of the podcast, brilliant experts, and with this being such an interesting topic, well, it felt like an easy winner. And, boy, did they not disappoint. Enjoy.

• 4:45Tristan Hughes?

  Rul, Lloyd, it is a pleasure to have you both on the podcast. What a treat.

• 4:50Speaker 04

  Well, thank you very much indeed. It's great to be here.

• 4:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's wonderful to be part of it.

• 4:54Tristan Hughes?

  Now, this is quite a big topic, the Persian Wars. It feels straight away to highlight, doesn't it, with both of you, that it's much more complicated than Greeks versus Persians?

• 5:05Speaker 04

  Yes, I think that that kind of simple narrative has disappeared in scholarship. You know, it used to be played that way, it really did. And I think doing that has been particularly harmful, even for the way in which we name these wars, you know, the Greco-Persian Wars. That's a bit of a stretch in itself, I would say.

• 5:25Speaker 05

  That traditional idea that this is some kind of clash of civilizations, or a replay of something that keeps on happening throughout history, that is really not the way that historians like to look at these events. I mean, they are much more contingent, they are much more complex, they have all these different layers to them. We really wouldn't want to gloss over that.

• 5:42Tristan Hughes?

  But if we start with the background, what should we be imagining in around, let's say, 500 B.C.? What does the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern, Central Asian world, what does it look like at this time?

• 5:54Speaker 05

  That's a pretty big question. In terms of the Eastern Mediterranean, I mean, the big factor is the rise of the Persian Empire, right? So this has happened fairly recently. This is two generations ago, this empire suddenly emerged, within a very short period of time, conquered the entire Middle East. And so by this point, they've already conquered Cyprus and Egypt as well. And so they are sort of, the entire eastern half of the Mediterranean is dominated by a single new political entity, which is ruled by Darius the Great. And this is the Persian Empire, of course. All the other societies in that region obviously have had to deal with them in some way, either because they faced conquest and other other forms of sort of violence, but also because this is just the new the new big player. And there's a superpower in the world all of a sudden. And obviously, everybody has to has to kind of adapt to that.

• 6:37Speaker 05

  Meanwhile, the Greek world is is not in any sense political unity. It's incredibly fragmented collection of small city states that and and regional federations and groups that are scattered about not just mainland Greece and the islands, but also sort of all around the Mediterranean because they've been settling around everywhere they could for centuries. There's Greek city in Egypt, there's Greek city in Libya, but also especially in southern Italy, Sicily, into Spain, France. Obviously, you know, you've heard from Owen Rees about Greek settlements in the in the north of Black Sea. So the Greeks are everywhere, but they're not united. They're all quite small states. And the main thing I think to know about this period is that in fairly recent memory, they have become larger and wealthier than they've ever been before.

• 7:19Speaker 05

  So this is a collection of states that are doing for the time being quite well for themselves. They're becoming better at political organisation, they're becoming more economically integrated. A lot of their economies are shifting to sort of market model. So there is quite a bit of vitality in that world. There's obviously a lot of interconnectivity. These people travel everywhere, trade everywhere, move everywhere. Their populations are growing, their cities are becoming more recognisable, like ancient cities, like the way we imagine them, more and more of them have city walls, things like that, big temples, public spaces, public buildings. That's all fairly recent in the Greek world. I think a lot of that is is still developing, but it is a different Greek world from the one that was there even fifty years ago, let alone a hundred, two hundred years ago.

• 8:02Tristan Hughes?

  And it's quite interesting there, Lloyd, so I mean, imagining the Persian Empire at a say five hundred B.C., maybe in Greek eyes as well, is this seen as quite a new phenomenon, a new power emerging onto the stage? Or has it been there for some time as this kind of superpower idea?

• 8:15Speaker 04

  I think in the in the Greek mind, it's something that's very new and something that has to be dealt with. There's a really interesting little fragment we have of a of a of a poem, which must have been written around about probably four ninety, maybe four eighty. But he looks back on the formative years of the Persian Empire. And the fragment says, basically, you know, there's a guy who's at home, an old guy, sort of an old war veteran, sitting there, and a visitor comes in to see him. And the questions he must put to the visitor are, where are you from? And how old were you when the Persians came? So there's there's something in the Greek memory about this new onslaught, you know.

• 8:57Speaker 04

  And I think for them, the fall of Sardis, which was, of course, a great Greek-speaking centre in Asia Minor, was probably their kind of nine eleven, really. It was a huge wake-up call that that something drastic was going on on the fringes of their world. And it's really interesting, around about five twenty, five hundreds in Athens, we have the first attempts at visualizing the Persians. Not many people had seen Persians in Greece at that point. And so we have one Black Figure vase from about five twenty five BCE, which shows a kind of composite Persian created by some Athenian artist.

• 9:38Speaker 04

  And the conspicuous thing is that they kind of look quite Greek, apart from the fact that they're wearing trousers. It's the trousers, isn't it? Yeah, it's always it's always in the trousers, right? It's the thing that the Greeks really can't get their heads around at all. And and from there on in, really, the Persians do not stop being the the subject of attention for for the Greeks. Around about five hundred BCE, we get our very first attempt at writing a persica, a sort of like a Persian things, you know, a sort of manual for what the Persians are. I mean, it's full of fantasy. But there there we see, you know, a group of people trying to understand. What it is they're coming up against, what we don't have unfortunately, is anything

• 10:21Speaker 04

  from the Persian point of view, thinking, you know, I wonder who these islanders and people on the sort of far flung part of the world are. We don't have any speculation on that. I'm sure those speculations were being made, but nothing survives.

• 10:34Speaker 05

  We have just the three distinctions in the Persian royal reliefs, right? So there's the Yawna, the Ionians, who are the Greeks as we know them, but they just classify them as those who live by the sea and those who live beyond the sea.

• 10:46Speaker 04

  That's right. And sometimes they get a bit more specific as those who are wearing sun hats.

• 10:50Speaker 05

  Oh, the sun hats. It's trousers one way, it's sun hats the other way. Love that. But it sounds like there, I know Lloyd, that you were involved in that exhibition at the British Museum recently, Persia and Greece, and you've done work on figures like Kritisias. So even during the sixth century B.C., was there a lot of contact or contact and trade between Greek cities and the Persian Empire?

• 11:13Speaker 04

  Well, at this point, you know, 500 into late sixth century into early fifth century, Persia is still sort of cranking up, okay? And it's taken advantage of the places it's conquered or the places who have, you know, sort of, you know, come over to them. So I don't think there's any yet, any sense of like, direct trading with the empire as it were, but trade with the conquered peoples is still going on without a doubt, you know, that's all there. And I suppose really, it's the use of these middlemen really, as traders, that would have grounded both the Persians and the Greeks in knowledge of one another. They, you know, it must have been passed through by them. I think it's hard at this

• 11:55Speaker 04

  particular stage to say, oh, there is a specific sort of Persian look or a Persian kind of artefact that is desirable in mainland Greece. That does develop by the middle of the fifth century, definitely, you know, silverware and all this kind of thing is being either directly imported or being copied in cheap materials, knockoffs. And likewise with Persian textiles and all of this as well. But maybe at the beginning of this period, less so.

• 12:22Speaker 05

  I mean, I think it's important, even though I just said like, there's a big sort of political entity that covers the entire East Mediterranean, that we don't think of this as a sort of monolith. I mean,

• 12:29Speaker 04

  No, not at all.

• 12:30Speaker 05

  A very loose administrative structure placed on top of a lot of pre-existing peoples who of course were already interacting with the Greeks in all sorts of ways. And were probably much more integrated into the Greek world than into the empire that ruled them. So you have People like Lycians and Carians and Lydians and Phrygians, who know the Greeks for centuries and obviously trade with them, interact with them, mingle with them, share languages and places to live. And the Persians are just kind of the newcomers in that picture. So the Greeks don't just suddenly stop trading with these areas or moving to these areas just because the Persians are in charge now. So you really have to kind of, on the ground, you have to kind of pull back on this idea that we imagine that, oh, once you colour the map, this region changes its nature.

• 13:12Speaker 05

  It actually is still just the same place, except that now they're paying tribute to some guy far away in Iran.

• 13:18Tristan Hughes?

  Well, that important tribute word there, isn't it? Yeah, go on, Lloyd.

• 13:21Speaker 04

  Absolutely. No, that's absolutely right. And I think that, you know, one thing we can say is that by and large, the Persians had a very laissez-faire attitude to their conquered peoples. You know, if it wasn't broken, they didn't try to fix it. And they did certainly never imposed on their conquered peoples anything that, you know, we could see as a kind of real sort of heavy-handed imperialism of the kind that we see, you know, in the Roman Empire or the British Empire for that means. So, you know, local languages just continued, local cults continued. There was no attempt ever to force a Persian identity on other peoples. If they could merge, so much the better. If they didn't and didn't cause any trouble, well, that was fine by the great kings as well.

• 14:07Tristan Hughes?

  Now, Raul mentioned there in passing Lycians, Carians, so like Pamphilians, Lydians. So these were all peoples and regions in Western Asia Minor, Monde, Anatolia, Western Turkey. So, Raul, is it therefore not surprising, if we go back to Lloyd's previous comment about this place of Sardis almost being a 9/11 equivalent for the Greeks, that for the beginning of the Persian Wars, should we be looking at Western Turkey and this interaction point between these various peoples, including Greeks and the Persian Empire? What's the story about how this is involved in ultimately the breaking out of the First Persian War?

• 14:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, so Herodotus is our main account for this, right? And he's very straightforward about it. I mean, there are Greek cities in Asia Minor, so in western Turkey, which are part of the Lydian Kingdom. So they have been ruled from Sardis for some time by a king who is not Greek, but who has, obviously has been part of this sort of cluster of interacting peoples for a very long time. They are paying tribute to the Lydians and the Persians just come in and take that kingdom whole, which means that these Greek cities are now subject to the Persians.

• 15:08Tristan Hughes?

  And so you mentioned Lydian there, and that's like famously, it's like King Creusus, wasn't it?

• 15:11Speaker 05

  That's right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:12Tristan Hughes?

  Rich Creusus.

• 15:13Speaker 05

  So that's a kingdom that covers sort of the western half of the Anatolian peninsula. So it's quite a large kingdom, quite a powerful kingdom, which is how you get the expression richest Creusus is because he was the wealthiest king. The Greeks knew, right? This is the biggest power that they were directly in contact with beyond a place like Egypt perhaps. And the Persians just sort of gobble that up essentially as part of a much, much larger territorial empire. And so for the Greeks, suddenly this is the arrival of something even greater, wealthier, more powerful than anything they've ever encountered. And that is a big shift in their perception of where they are in the world, essentially.

• 15:45Tristan Hughes?

  So what happens then? Why does it ultimately result in conflict breaking out between like the Persians arriving on the scene and then the Greeks in Asia Minor, but I guess also other Greeks getting involved too?

• 15:57Speaker 04

  Well, again, I mean, our main source is Herodotus. And as you know, I am always a little suspect about just using him. Because I think, you know, if we were to look at, you know, Rolls Royce, I mean, the way that Herodotus creates this, you know, we have this kind of Greek interest in Anatolia, right? But I'm not sure that Cyrus the Great, when he invades Anatolia in that way, when he invades Lydia, would have seen that at all. I don't think he was going for, you know, a Greek city at all. Anatolia was part of the ancient Near East. And I think he just, Cyrus would have just seen it as the next step in Near Eastern conquest, really. You know, we can see Creusus if we want to see him.

• 16:42Speaker 04

  As, you know, a Greek-inspired king operating in this world of the Mediterranean, sending out messages to Delphi and so forth. But also, of course, he was absolutely intimately locked into the Near Eastern traditions of kinship too. He was, after all, the brother-in-law of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and so forth, you know. So I don't think Cyrus went into this thinking, ah, I'm gonna get some Greeks now, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get me some Westerners. I just think it was all about, really, this is a logical continuation of my policy to subsume other Near Eastern kingdoms into, into what I am building here.

• 17:24Speaker 05

  Sorry, I just thought of those stories in Herodotus where he kind of stresses that the Persians don't know who the Greeks are and

• 17:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 17:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:31Tristan Hughes?

  Sorry, who?

• 17:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, no, literally, I mean, the Spartans send them an embassy when they take the cities of Asia Minor and they say like, you should let these people be free or else we're coming for you.

• 17:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:42Speaker 05

  And Cyrus's response apparently is just, who the hell are you?

• 17:45Tristan Hughes?

  Sorry, who dis? Lost number, yeah.

• 17:47Speaker 05

  Exactly, yeah. New empire, who dis?

• 17:50Speaker 04

  You know, if you think about it in so many ways for the Persians who are building an empire and building vast wealth, you know, they're, you know, the next thing they do is Babylon, for goodness sake, that's what they take, you know, not, not the Western shores of Greece. What has Greece got to offer? Stones and olives. That's all it's got, you know, and that's of no interest whatsoever to the Persians.

• 18:09Tristan Hughes?

  So, and either of you, whoever wants to go first with this now, let's explore the story of the Ionian revolt then, because I feel we do need to tell this. What is then the story of this Ionian revolt and this early conflict before, I guess you could say, the main Persian wars?

• 18:21Speaker 05

  Actually, really hard to know. This is one of the classic essay questions. What is going on here? So the Ionian cities, so the cities of the Greeks in Asia Minor, they initially thought that the Persian conquest was an opportunity for them to throw off this sort of foreign rule, so they rebelled, but the Persians subjected them. And they apparently had to do this twice over. But at that point, for several generations, they are just a part of the Persian Empire, and that seems to be going fine until very suddenly in 499, they decide to to mount a general rebellion. And this is not just the cities of Ionia. Caria joins them, parts of the northern, so further north, the coast of Asia Minor join them. Cyprus joins them. So there's really quite an extensive stretch of the western fringe of the Persian Empire that joins together in rebelling against the Persians for reasons

• 19:05Speaker 05

  that we cannot figure out, because the only account we have is Herodotus, and Herodotus is obsessed with the idea that this is just Aristagoras of Miletus, who decides that we should have a rebellion, and everybody thinks it's a great idea for essentially no motivation whatsoever. And so it's very difficult for us to understand why this is happening at that time. But the important point historically is that Aristagoras then goes to Greece and says, I'm doing this thing. Do you want to help me? Because then we can we can defeat the the Persians, or at least push back their their control. He goes to the Spartans initially, they turn him down. Then he goes to Athens, and they say, yeah, okay, we'll help you. He also goes to Eretrea and a couple of other places. He gets help from Eretrea and Athens, these two two cities that have quite strong naval interest in the

• 19:48Speaker 05

  Aegean anyway. And they are the ones who send some support to to back this revolt, or at least its initial campaign. So they do a bit of looting, they burn Sardis, or at least the outskirts of the city. And then the Athenians and the Eretrians are like, that's great. And we got our loot, we're going home. But of course, at that point, they've already been involved, and the Persians know this. And that's how, according to this story, the Greeks sort of get involved in the objectives of the Persian Empire. Because at that point, the Persians basically sort of come in, crush the revolt over several years. And afterwards, they have this sense of like, okay, there are clearly these Greeks across this sea, the Aegean, who are potentially a cause of destabilization of our western frontier. I mean, this is basically what they've done, is they've said, oh, we can

• 20:31Speaker 05

  meddle in this, we can try and do do something to arm Persian control of this region. And obviously, that's something that's not going to, they're not going to be able to let go.

• 20:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think what we see growing there is this sense of, yeah, of Greek infringement onto the western coast, of course. And if you think about how far away the west coast of Asia Minor is from the center of Iran, where the great king and his court are based, you know, then it does become something of a problem. And of course, you know, as happens throughout history, the the more an empire expands. And the more remote its borders get from the epicentre itself, the more troublesome they can be. What we don't get unfortunately is an understanding of what's going on in the eastern borders of the Persian Empire at the same time. But I get the feeling that

• 21:19Speaker 04

  the border zones are always problematic. And I think that, you know, another one of the kind of myths that we get therefore about these great Greco-Persian wars is that the Persians put all of their thought into quelling these Greeks over the seas. I don't think that could ever have been the case at all, because they had much bigger fish to fry as well. Babylon was in a constant state of rebellion and was just far too important to lose. And so so many, so much of the king's time and the troops, you know, were actually stationed in and around there, Egypt as well. And I really do think way, way off in Bactria, modern day Pakistan, Afghanistan, which was a huge satrapi as well, that was probably

• 22:01Speaker 04

  equally as problematic. And we see that because the satraps who were installed in Bactria are usually kings' brothers or kings', you know, uncles or something. They send, you know, major members of the royal family to look after these places. So I think if we put all of the border zones into perspective, then Greece is just one more irritating zone of contact, but not this grand, you know, narrative.

• 22:30Speaker 05

  Although I think you're right to say like borders are always a problem, but then borders are also to the imperial centre sometimes so usefully unruly, right?

• 22:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, oh yes, absolutely, absolutely. And a little blurring of a border, it never does anybody any harm, right?

• 22:44Speaker 05

  Right. And in fact, the Greeks themselves are already aware of the idea that although they see later Persian military actions against the Greeks as revenge, I mean primarily they think of it as motivated by this, you know, avenging what the Greeks had done.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 22:58Speaker 05

  They also recognise that as a pretext, you know, even Ischylus, who's writing in the 470s, is already thinking that actually this is all about conquest and they're just using this as an excuse. So there's already this understanding that, you know, it's useful for an empire if somebody goes and provokes them at the border, which is in fact how the conquest of Lydia supposedly happened in the first place.

• 23:18Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 23:26Speaker 01

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• 24:31Speaker 06

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• 25:28Tristan Hughes?

  I also find it so interesting, just a quick note from me, how so much of the action or important parts of that action that you guys have described there with the so-called Ionian revolt revolve around Sardis, which was such a prestigious city, wasn't it? Lloyd, we've talked in a previous episode how the Persian royal road ultimately it will end at Sardis. At one point, you can still see a bit of it today. I've talked about the birth of money in the past and how some of the earliest coinage was from Sardis. So I guess when the Athenians and the Etraeans, when they hear that the Persians have retaken Sardis, and Lloyd, is that what you were referring to, is this kind of 9/11 equivalent moment or a shock moment? Do they think, back in Greece, do they think that the Persians will make that next step of crossing the Aegean to them? Or do they think they'll get away with it?

• 26:12Speaker 04

  I don't think, I don't think that really crosses their mind at this point. I don't think they, they say, oh, invasion is imminent, you know, it's not that. But it's just the, you know, the, the name Sardis must have been so evocative for them. It, and it just evoked the, the end of something, you know, something had collapsed and, and couldn't be again. I think that's the feeling that, that we get. I'm not, no, I, I wouldn't maintain that suddenly on the Greek mainland, there was this, this flurry to, to, to get the arms together and to make sure that they could defend themselves. There's no sense of that whatsoever. It's, it's just like the end of days, basically, is what the fall of Sardis was all about for them. And that's why it's commemorated in that kind of way in things

• 26:57Speaker 04

  like popular poetry and in, in sayings, you know, how, how old were you when the Persians came?

• 27:03Tristan Hughes?

  So, Rul, how do the Persians, I mean, why do they then decide to launch an invasion? Or should we say expedition across the Aegean? And, and what do they do?

• 27:12Speaker 05

  We've talked about this a little bit, but it's basically, there's multiple different reasons why this happens. And even in Greek sources, which is basically what we rely on, we don't really have good Persian sources for any of this. Just in general, we, we understand how the Persians sort of saw themselves, but we don't really know why they took specific actions like this. And so we're relying on Greek sources, but the Greek sources already massively over-determined the invasion of Greece in the sense that they give more reasons than we need. So they have this revenge motive, right? Because they supported, there's some Greeks supported the Ionian revolt. They have the expansion motive. They think the Persians just want more and that it never ends. They have the legitimization motive, which is that each new Persian king needs to kind of justify and legitimize his rule by, you know,

• 27:54Speaker 05

  performing well militarily, so to to launch some kind of campaign. They're also driven by sort of the fates, essentially. They're being driven on, in the Greek mind, by this idea that they must commit, you know, the crime that will undo them, which is this very tragic pattern that exists in in Herodotus, where, you know, Xerxes, when he's planning his campaign, he gets prophetic dreams and things like that about it. So there's all sorts of ways in which they try to establish this. I think modern historians are much more inclined to think of this partly in terms of this strategic motivation that I've mentioned. The Greeks are a problem. They are destabilizing the Western frontier.

• 28:33Speaker 05

  If you want to settle that situation, you can either sort of heavily garrison and fortify your Western frontiers, which is something they do later on, or you can decide to go over to cross that sea yourself and go and settle the business. And so that is, seems to be what they're doing. And there's some, you know, reasoning that resources might have something to do with it. I mean, especially the northern Balkans, very rich in timber, very rich in mines. This is all great. The Greeks, mainland Greece itself doesn't have much to offer in that sense, but those things are obviously very valuable. And you also have the, although the Greeks themselves are very small and not a credible threat to the Persian Empire, there is the fact that, for instance, locally, regionally, places like Athens have a really long-established strategic interest in the Hellespont.

• 29:16Speaker 05

  And so they are likely to keep on meddling in in Persian affairs in that region, which is one of the things that might pull the Persians across the sea. And so that's what they start planning, almost immediately as as soon as the Ionian revolt is suppressed.

• 29:30Speaker 04

  And it's not just in warships and things as well. I mean, there's also diplomacy that goes on across the Aegean as well. And I really do find that of interest. And I think more and more attention is being paid to that in scholarship now. So for instance, you know, the the strategy that the Persians took in in Macedon is very interesting. And, you know, Macedon essentially became a kind of Non-authorized satraps, you know, I mean, the Persianization of Macedon was really quite substantial. I'm always aware that, you know, when we look at Alexander the Great and his life, you know, he grew up in a court that was heavily Persianized. You know, with Persian speakers there and with Persian customs and everything. And this had been going on for almost 200 years, really.

• 30:14Speaker 04

  The loyalty, actually, that the Macedonians showed to Persia during the conquest of Xerxes, for instance, was really notable. As was Biocia as well, you know, as we're pushing down into central Greece itself, you know, the Biocians were more than happy to give their allegiance to the Persians as well.

• 30:33Tristan Hughes?

  So that city tastes like Thebes, isn't it?

• 30:35Speaker 04

  That's right, yeah, where great Thebes is, absolutely. So, you know, the Persians dealt with that difficulty of the Greek world in diverse ways. And part of it was through diplomacy, talking and bringing them into the empire.

• 30:49Speaker 05

  But actually, the point about diplomacy, another reason that the Greeks are also very keenly aware of is that there are many Greeks who essentially see the Persian Empire as an opportunity, right? They want to change the way things work in their own states and they see Persia as the most powerful ally they could possibly find in order to achieve what they want to achieve, regime change or the overthrow of their enemies or something similar. And so you have many Greeks whose first recourse, when they get thrown out of their own state or when they lose a political battle or something like that, is to flee to the Persian Empire, go to the court and say, can you help me fix this? At which point multiple of these advisors or courtiers effectively or hangers-on are pulling the Persians into the Greek world.

• 31:30Tristan Hughes?

  And do you have exactly that with the Persian expeditionary force that is assembled that will almost island hop across the Aegean to first target Eritrea in Euboea, the under Euboea, and then land just north of Athens? Do you have a similar case there?

• 31:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, so this is the second attempt they make to cross the Aegean. So the first one with Mardonius, it doesn't get very far, it's destroyed in Thrace and by a storm around Mount Athens. This will be important later, but basically the first attempt in 492 doesn't work, but then in 490 they try again, they gather a big army in Cilicia and then they sail across into the Aegean, so they go island hopping, they take Naxos and Delos. And the reason why the Athenians are nervous about this is that in that fleet is is the tyrant Hippias that has been thrown out twenty years earlier by the twenty two years earlier by the Spartans. So they know they have gotten rid of their tyrants a little while ago with foreign help. But this guy's still alive and he is one of those people who just went to Asia Minor,

• 32:29Speaker 05

  started talking to the local powers that be and tried to garner support, to be reinstated. Obviously, for the Persians, this would be a great opportunity because if you have this guy who owes you, who whose position relies on your support, then you have a reliable agent in in the Greek mainland. So they want to reinstate Hippias the tyrant over the Athenians and the Athenians obviously are not too keen. This is one of those examples where the Persians are being guided into Greece by an agent who is who is Greek and who wants Persian help to reestablish himself in Greece.

• 33:00Speaker 04

  But for the Persian kings and satraps to work in that way was absolutely the Persian system, you know, that's what they were comfortable with always. And essentially, when they conquered parts of, you know, their empire, wherever it was, Egypt, Akria, whatever, their aim was always to work with the local rulers, never really to to displace them at all. So what was going on in several of these city-states in Greece at the time actually rang very true, you know, it made a lot of sense to the Persians that this is actually the the proper way to to have a foothold within this this area. I'm not sure very often how much the Greeks themselves realized that, you know, that this they were actually playing into the hands of the Persian. But certainly from the Persian point of view, this this seems to make sense to them.

• 33:44Tristan Hughes?

  It's also interesting, isn't it? You mentioned the word, I mean, satraps there, Lloyd. So with this Persian expeditionary force, shall we be imagining is is the great king there as well or has he kind of almost given this to subordinates to deal with?

• 33:56Speaker 04

  From this point, I think it's it's to do with diplomats. The the Achaemenids had the tendency to use high-ranking members of the royal family or else those who were adjacent to the throne, so the nobles of Persia. I can't see the great king getting involved in this himself just now. It's a little bit too early for that. So certainly sending out satraps or diplomats, you know, the the people that we hear called the great the great king's eyes or the great king's ears, that's the kind of people that went over, the kind of individuals that later get lampooned in the plays of Aristophanes and so forth. It was speaking kind of pigeon Greek and all of this sort of thing.

• 34:36Speaker 05

  Well, you're very right to point out, I mean, this idea that they are always sort of close relatives, because I mean, the, the, I don't know if it was you Lloyd or somebody else, we compared the Persian Empire to a family business. I mean, it's very-

• 34:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. It was. It really was. Family-run enterprise, you know, and that-

• 34:50Speaker 05

  And so that first expedition, four nine two, is led by Mardonius, who's obviously, he was cousin of Darius or cousin of Xerxes and also-

• 34:57Speaker 04

  Cousin of Xerxes, wasn't he? Yeah.

• 34:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:59Tristan Hughes?

  He'll come back later, won't he? Yeah.

• 35:00Speaker 05

  Yeah. And then the campaign to that Enzim marathon was led by Artaphrenes and Darius. And Darius, I don't think we know very much about, but Artaphrenes was also like a brother-in-law of the king or something like that.

• 35:11Speaker 04

  That's right. That's right. Absolutely. They, they used the extended family particularly well, in fact. So, you know, if, if a king was keen to bring a good noble or, or somebody who had a good reputation in war or a good reputation in diplomacy, then marriage to one of the royal women was a really good way of bringing them in to the orbit of the Achaemenid family itself. So, yeah, I think the more we can think of the empire itself as a, as a, as a family firm, the better it gets, really. The, the squabbling, of course, goes within the family itself, but it kind of doesn't get rid of the firm at all, you know. So I think that's one of the reasons why there was, why the empire lasted for so long, really.

• 35:49Tristan Hughes?

  I remember playing as Darius in Datusphrenes in Age of Empires two, although that is many years ago. But Rul mentioned the word there, marathon, which I'm sure many people will know the name marathon. But, I mean, Rul, let's start with you. So the Persians do eventually make it to the Greek mainland and, and marathons, that's north of Athens and, and Attica. With the Battle of Marathon, before we get into it, what should we be imagining? What, what should we be seeing? Do we think we should be seeing on the Persian side in regards, numbers, if we know, I mean, troops? And, and what should we be seeing on, on the Greek side? Do we have any idea whatsoever? You're shaking your head. I guess we, do we not quite know?

• 36:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, I mean, numbers of the Persian side are never known. I mean, this is really just, just a big question mark, because the Greeks are, are, are only source for it and the Greeks are not honest about it. Like, they want to portray every Persian army as this sort of world conquering horde. It's very stereotypical, becomes a trope in literature early on and it never, never goes away. I mean, even the most sober historians, the ones that we tend to think of as like the good historians of Alexander, for instance, Arian, I mean, he gives the largest number for the, for the Persian army of, of Galgemela. So you have, they imagine, they like to imagine hundreds of thousands or even millions. We don't buy that, but we don't have anything to replace it with. So our problem is we only have numbers we can't believe and we don't have anything good to put in their place.

• 37:07Speaker 05

  So for Persians, we don't have numbers. We do know they landed on this coastal plain at Marathon because Hippias guided them there, partly because it was an old Pisistor tid heartland, so they had a lot of local support or they were hoping they might get some. And partly because it was good terrain for cavalry. So much of Attica is rocky and uneven, but that plain would have allowed the Persians to to use their cavalry to their advantage. So that was that was sort of dual benefit of that space. So the Persians land there, they encamp there and the Athenians march out in full force to try and stop them. So they have their Plataean allies with them, who is a small town from Boeotia near Thebes. There's about a thousand of them and later sort of say about nine thousand Athenian hoplites.

• 37:47Speaker 05

  So there's a grand army of 10,000 plus whoever else would have been drawn into this force, you know, by by necessity. I mean, once there is an emergency great enough, the entire male population is essentially subject to military service, which means that very many people who couldn't afford necessarily any good armour and weapons would still be required to come along and do what they could. So this is potentially a much larger army, but it's the 10,000 number that is the only one that we can say reasonably fits what we know of other other moments in this in this period when the Athenians go to war.

• 38:21Tristan Hughes?

  And Lloyd, I know it's a battle. We don't need to focus too much on it, but of course it's an important part of the First Persian War or what is known as the First Persian War. So what what happens during this battle and what does it end up with? Why is it? Why do people know the name Marathon now today?

• 38:39Speaker 04

  Well, they know it now because it's been the most integral part of of Greek mythmaking, really. I mean, as Roy says, as to the the size of armies, as to the tactics. As to the event, we're really much, pretty much at a loss, you know, I mean, there is a narrative provided, but whether this is a true narrative, we just can't get close to at all. But in a way, we know the result, right? Or at least we know something of the result. And we know more about the myth that grew around it. And in a way, I'm far more interested in the myth than I am in what we can piece together of the battle itself.

• 39:19Speaker 04

  So for instance, in 330 BCE, a vase was painted or created or shipped to southern Italy, where it was unearthed in the 1830s. And it shows, it's a huge red figure vase, we call it the Darius vase. And it shows the Persian great king gearing from a messenger about the failure of Marathon. And we know that because there are gods in the register above, Zeus is there for instance, and Athena, obviously representing Athens is there. And the figure of Helas herself, Greece, is being upheld by the personification of retribution with a flaming torch and so forth.

• 40:03Speaker 04

  And below the scene, underneath Darius and his court, we have a group of Persians who are clearly terrified at the news that's been brought to them. Now, this vase is 150, 200 years almost after the events of Marathon itself, but it is still being activated in the Greek mind, you know, in the Greek popular consciousness. It's no coincidence that that vase about the overthrow of Persia was created at the time when Alexander himself was going into Persia as well. So, you know, this is history being used, again revamped, you know, are we going to have another, a second marathon here? So, you know, I mean, I never, I've never claimed to be a battle historian anyway,

• 40:48Speaker 04

  but I'm far more interested in the impact of the myth of Marathon than I am of the real thing. Raul, you know a bit more about the events themselves.

• 41:00Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah, would you like to do a little bit on that, Raul?

• 41:02Speaker 05

  Please. Is this my chance to be boring for a little bit?

• 41:04Tristan Hughes?

  Boring, never boring, we love it.

• 41:07Speaker 05

  I completely agree with Lloyd. I mean, it is a very sort of tainted narrative. It's very propagandistic and it only survives from a source that was interviewing people two generations after the fact, when it had already become this huge thing in the mind of the Athenians in particular.

• 41:21Speaker 04

  I mean, sorry, Raul, can I just, just to make that point, you know, which is a really good point, we wouldn't take a Second World War narrative of, say, you know, what happened on Dunkirk from one side only, you know, where it's glorified. So why are we prepared to do this with the Battle of Marathon or any other of the Greek wars, you know, which we've been so kind of tuned in to do, it's just not right. Let's treat it for what we can, as a light, constructive, propagandistic narrative with a big myth that went behind it. Sorry, Raul.

• 41:55Speaker 05

  No, no, you're just completely right to make that point. I think historically, if even if you're a battle historian, Marathon, it's so irrecoverable what really happened that it's really not that interesting. What's interesting about it is that it is the first battle in Greek literature that is described, the first historical battle.

• 42:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:12Speaker 05

  So we don't have any accounts of actual events. We have accounts of fighting in poetry and Homer, obviously, in Terteus, but we don't have an account of an actual battle that happened. And so in that sense, it's really interesting because the Herodotus is doing something that no other Greek has done before, which is to try and describe to us how a battle was won. And even if the ways in which that has happened are... Very difficult to believe. We are still dealing with something that is interesting from a literary perspective and interesting from a historical perspective. In many ways, this is the beginning of, you know, what I do as a historian. There are obviously earlier accounts of battles from the Near East in particular. I mean, the Battle of Kadesh is famously the first one to be described in any way. But at this point, the Greeks are

• 42:55Speaker 05

  starting to do something that other traditions haven't done, which is to try and say, you know, not for the further glory necessarily of some king and describing how many people he personally killed, but rather to say, you know, okay, we understand that we all went into battle as a group, but how did we pull this off essentially?

• 43:11Speaker 04

  I've never thought of that. So do you think, is Herodotus creating a language of battle narrative in that case?

• 43:18Speaker 05

  Absolutely. Yes, yes. This is obviously, it fits into an emerging tradition in the later 5th century, when people are starting to write manuals and philosophical treatises and things like that. So people are starting to try and write sort of causal analysis in all sorts of different fields, and he is very drawing on that. But he is the pioneer of the idea of a battle description. People often blame him for not being very precise, but you have to credit him for just trying to do it in the first place.

• 43:42Speaker 04

  I suppose then we think about that in performance, right? So this is being, you know, read out to a group of people. Then I suppose it must have been pretty gripping in that way, mustn't it?

• 43:53Speaker 05

  And it's, so Marathon, the narrative of Marathon, more than other battle accounts, and certainly more than the later standard of battle accounts that you get from Thucydides and Xenophon and Polybius and all the others, it's very sort of littered with these cool anecdotes of things that are exciting and bloody and weird. So he has the story of Epizellos, right? Who was blinded in battle when he saw this giant hoplite come at him. Or we have the story of Calymachus, the polymark, who was stuck so full of javelins that he couldn't fall down when he died. And things like this, where you're just like, this is a movie scene, right?

• 44:24Tristan Hughes?

  Wasn't there someone who, one person decides to hold on to one of the ships?

• 44:28Speaker 05

  And his arm gets chopped off. Rotheravisclis, I think, the playwright?

• 44:33Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah.

• 44:33Speaker 05

  So another famous, like, he would have been a prominent Athenian, right? So that's why the story survives, presumably, because, you know, maybe Ischylis or somebody else was telling this story, that his brother had his hand cut off when he tried to grab onto a ship.

• 44:46Speaker 04

  That's right, yeah.

• 44:47Speaker 05

  So these kinds of stories, and, you know, the glorification of Miltiades, the commander. But so some of this is obviously very homeric. That's the model that they're working with. If you're talking about a battle, you're talking about heroes, you're talking about scenes in which something exciting happens that you can tell a story, that you can tell an anecdote.

• 45:02Tristan Hughes?

  But he's also at the same time trying to start figuring out what this battle looked like in a sort of bird's eye view, which you don't really get in anything else in earlier Greek writing.

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• 46:18Tristan Hughes?

  Very, very roughly, and I'm trying to remember when I studied the Basque Marathon at university, is that the center, even though the Persians have more numbers, but the center is a bit weaker, but the Athenians have more troops on the flanks and they push the flanks of the Persians and then they kind of encircle whilst the center holds. Is that the rough idea?

• 46:37Speaker 05

  Well, the center breaks, actually.

• 46:39Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, the center does break, does it?

• 46:40Speaker 05

  The Persians crushed the center, but the wings overwhelmed the Persian wings and they sort of fold inwards and then crush the remains of the victorious part of the Persian army. And that is what we are told. And then the big question for a military historian is, was that the plan or did that just kind of happen?

• 46:55Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah.

• 46:56Speaker 05

  And I'm very much inclined to think, even though, you know, the protestations of the Athenians were obviously meant to do that, the thing is, they never do anything like that ever again. There is no other battle plan in Greek history that looks anything like this. And so even if it was something that happened because they thought that they might try it that way, I find that very implausible. I think it's very likely that what they ended up doing was, as a group, they sort of ran forward, right? And Herodotus is very adamant that they ran. And this is something that comes back in Aristophanes and other traditions as well. There's a very important part of marathon is that they were running into battle for a long, long stretch, a long distance. That maybe they're just kind of filling up the plane, so people are moving to the side to make sure they can't get outflanked. And as they do so, more people are going to the side than staying in the middle.

• 47:39Speaker 05

  And the army just kind of turns into two big blobs that are moving slightly away from each other.

• 47:44Speaker 04

  But maybe even less deliberate than you're suggesting. I mean, maybe just haphazardly, you know, clumping together, really.

• 47:50Speaker 05

  Absolutely. No, I'm always, I'm always a big advocate of seeing Greek warfare, especially in this very early stage, as being much more primitive than we assumed that it was. I mean, to be very, very simple, no one has sort of very clear direction in what they're doing. Herodotus can't tell us, you know, the number of ranks in this formation, presumably because it didn't have any kind of fixed order until later, when the Greeks actually start to think seriously about this. And so we have to imagine this as a sort of mobs charging forward and, you know, locally overwhelming by sheer force.

• 48:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:22Speaker 05

  Parts of the Persian army, but other parts, the Persians managed to, to maintain control and, and break through.

• 48:26Speaker 04

  And here's the frustration as well, isn't it? I mean, we have no Persian perspective on this.

• 48:30Speaker 05

  Nothing.

• 48:31Speaker 04

  Whatsoever, you know, and, and as you know, I mean, Persian military is one of the least understood and least studied aspects of, of, of Persian history, which is a, a great shame. I mean, more work is being done on it now by Sean Manning and, and your good self than ever before, but we're way behind.

• 48:49Speaker 05

  The main thing we have to bear in mind is that the Ionian revolt has shown that the Persians do not have any trouble defeating Greek armies. In principle, they can do it. They have done it many times.

• 48:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:59Speaker 05

  And so this is not a foregone conclusion that is based on technology or tactics or anything like that. The Greeks can lose, and they know this, right? Herodotus praises the Athenians for even just standing their ground, you know, being willing to fight, when every other army previously that had faced the Persians had been terrified and had fled because the Persians have conquered the world. How do you have the hubris of thinking that you can beat them, you know?

• 49:22Speaker 04

  And Herodotus also says that the Athenians were the first Greeks to endure the sight of Persian trousers.

• 49:28Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly. That's the biggest thing. That was the biggest thing of the day.

• 49:32Speaker 04

  That's how hard they were.

• 49:33Speaker 05

  Those trousers, man.

• 49:35Speaker 04

  That's real Andrea, that's real manliness.

• 49:37Speaker 05

  That's it.

• 49:38Tristan Hughes?

  That's why the Spartans were still at home. They were, one, they were just really annoyed and just that the Persians had never answered their messages. And two, because of the trousers.

• 49:46Speaker 04

  But you know, you're absolutely right in saying that, you know, the Persian Empire so far had encountered a myriad of different fighting styles and a myriad of different kinds of armies and had coped brilliantly with all of them to great success, obviously. You know, the Egyptians went against them by sea and by land, no problem whatsoever. You know, Cambyses basically marches in unopposed. So you're absolutely right. I mean, you know, the Greeks shouldn't be seen as anything more difficult than any other army they encountered.

• 50:14Speaker 05

  And in that sense, I mean, since we don't have Persian sources, we really are sort of grasping for straws. But one of the things that's really a strong theme in very small pieces of Persian iconography, so you have a couple of these tomb paintings as well as seals, so seal impressions from the Persian Empire.

• 50:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 50:29Speaker 05

  That show just Persian warriors killing hoplites. That's a common motif. And even though that doesn't, it doesn't tell a story, right? It's not actually something that we can extrapolate to battles or something. But at the very least, we know that Persian grandees like to see and imagine themselves destroying Greeks as a particular way of expressing, you know, what made them powerful. They, they could, they, they like to visualize that, right? So.

• 50:54Speaker 04

  Most definitely. And in fact, we can now date a whole corpus of these seals from the middle of the, of the fourth century, actually, as well. So commemorative editions and all of this kind of stuff coming out. And you're right. I mean, sometimes we see Persian nobles fighting trouser wearing nomads, but very often we see them fighting Greek hoplites, which is the complete antithesis of what we see, of course, on so many vase paintings from Greece, isn't there? You know, with the defeated Persians slumping into the corner of the dish. But here we see the roles reversed quite clearly.

• 51:25Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 51:26Tristan Hughes?

  I tell you what, Lloyd, you mentioned the Darius vase a little while ago, and I remember seeing that when at the Naples Zoological Museum, and it is absolutely stunning.

• 51:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:33Tristan Hughes?

  In one of the best galleries of the museum, I'd say the Magna Greca or Magna Greca gallery. But I would like to actually go back to the point you mentioned, Ruud, about the kind of, you've got these epic stories within the Herodotus narrative of Marathon, and evident in the battle, as you've highlighted. But my mind will also naturally think today of the Marathon, the great run, 26 miles, isn't it? And the figure of Phidippides. This story, is that also attached in Herodotus about this runner going from Marathon to Athens to alert them? Or was it from Athens to Sparta? I mean, what's the story of Phidippides?

• 52:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, so Phidippides is, so there is a story of the run from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens, which is only in later sources. And there is a story in Herodotus of this messenger called Phidippides, who ran from Athens to Sparta to ask for help. And those two things often get conflated because we assume that Herodotus would have told us the story that we know, but he actually tells us a different story about a long run. Obviously, the distance from Athens to Sparta is something like 250 kilometers, so it's significantly further, which is why that's now like a super marathon or something like that. I don't know exactly.

• 52:36Tristan Hughes?

  An Ironman or even more than that, yeah, yeah.

• 52:38Speaker 05

  Right. But the point is that those are separate stories of people doing incredible feats of endurance. That man, Phidippides, is also described by Herodotus as a Hemerodromos. He's a day runner. So there's apparently a function in Greek society of people who can run very far, most likely because, you know, over rough terrain, over long distances, without a sort of series of organized way stations, it's faster than a horse. A human being will travel faster than a horse over that kind of terrain, unless there is some kind of infrastructure in place to support a messenger system like the Persians had. And so that is a separate story where he tried to call on the Spartans to come and help them because they thought they wouldn't be able to hack it alone. And then after the battle,

• 53:21Speaker 05

  because they were obviously fighting at Marathon, which is, surprise, surprise, a marathon away from Athens, 42 kilometers. After the battle, they were afraid that the remaining Persians who'd fled onto their ships and sailed off would sail around Cape Sunion and attack Athens by sea while the army was away. And so the army had to march as quickly as it could from the battlefield back to Athens to essentially garrison the city. And so that is why there is that story as well of the rush to get back home. But later on, there is another story in which there is a messenger running from the battlefield of Marathon back to the city to alert them that they had won, but that the Persians might be coming by sea.

• 53:57Tristan Hughes?

  To essentially just warn them, and that is the story of the marathon that is more famous, and that's given the name to Marathon as a race.

• 54:03Speaker 04

  And this is where you see, I mean, the legacy of the battle, isn't it? You know, it's the myth-making process that we see in Operation there. Obviously, you know, Herodotus' version is not the only version, you know, and there were probably many dozens of smaller versions of this doing the rounds as well with more sort of localized heroes, localized action, all of this going on. And what we see in the second account of the run to Athens is an elaboration, a counter-narrative to Herodotus' original.

• 54:32Tristan Hughes?

  My mind also immediately goes to that famous painting, isn't there? And it shows Thaddeus basically, that late story of him at his last breath when he gets to Athens and he shouts and he says Nike, Nike, victory, victory. Hence why you have the Nike shoe brand. And then, then he dies on the spot, isn't it? That's another part of the great myth-making of the Marathon story.

• 54:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, that's the story that I don't remember which source this is. Is this also one of those things that's like illusion or something?

• 54:55Tristan Hughes?

  This is something like this, is that I know this story.

• 54:57Speaker 04

  It's much, much later, definitely.

• 54:59Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, some of these stories, I mean, the Achilles heel, I mean, this is only in Roman, Roman versions of the Trojan War story. And we just take it completely for granted that that's always been part of the story.

• 55:09Speaker 04

  Right.

• 55:09Speaker 05

  But it comes in very, very late, and it's just sort of embellishments, which is fine, you know, obviously, everybody does that all the time with all the stories that they know. But we have to recognize that for the Greeks, when they were telling the story of Marathon, this would not have featured.

• 55:22Tristan Hughes?

  So the Persian force has been defeated at Marathon, and then the Athenians stop them from taking Athens, if we believe that account from Herodotus. Shall we do a quick mention of the Spartans here? So let's say they've got over the fear of the trousers and the Persian king not replying to their text messages. Is it that they do ultimately visit the battlefield, but only once all the Persians are dead?

• 55:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, they send an army out, but of course, I mean, Sparta is not next door, as we've said, 250 kilometers. I mean, with a couple of thousand men marching along with their baggage train and their support, it's not going to be, you know, five minutes we're there. So they just, they do show up, but they've been delayed by a religious festival. They were celebrating the Carnea, which is in the middle of the campaign season, very practical for the Spartans. So they can't go out and fight during that period. They leave as soon as they can afterwards, or so we're told, but they arrive like two or three days late. And then they survey the battlefield. They do go and see it, which is another day's march. So fair use to them. But they go and see it and they are they're very amazed, we're told. And then they go home. And that's essentially it. But if it's into this general, I think, herodity and pattern, right? If people go and see things because they want to see, you know, the amazing feats

• 56:27Speaker 05

  of others and the amazing achievements of the world.

• 56:29Speaker 04

  Absolutely. I think on that point, it enters into something that we we call Pausma literature, isn't it? Amazement literature, you know, that seeing is believing kind of thing, which is herodotus is all about after all, you know, I have seen with my own eyes. This is what he likes to say. So I think it's part of that motif.

• 56:46Tristan Hughes?

  It's an extraordinary narrative and and story that you guys have told, but also the archaeology too, and why we need to be cautious when exploring the story of of the first Persian war, of this expedition to Greece, and also what happens before and contacts between the Persian world and the Greek world. You both have kind of talked about this already with the mythologizing of Marathon, but I would like to ask it again now as we kind of wrap up this first big engagement. How significant would you both say the first invade the first Persian invasion of Greece is? Both to Greece, then to Persia, but also then, of course, the later legacy of it? It's a massive question, I know.

• 57:24Speaker 05

  We can be brief about the Persians. I mean, they would have thought that this campaign was a stunning success. I mean, they took all the islands. They took Euboea. The only thing they failed in doing was subjecting Attica, which is already perhaps a bridge too far for the forces that they dispatched. I mean,

• 57:38Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, they could paint it as a victory. They could paint it as a success.

• 57:41Speaker 04

  Without a doubt, without a doubt. Absolutely. I agree, Rul, completely. I think the only thing that would have niggled the great king is that he'd had to send much of his force to the west when he could have used it far more profitably, you know, subduing India. So the Indian campaign kind of had to stop. They still got North India. But I think that was the only thing that, you know, really kind of annoyed Darius. But otherwise, yes, this is a this is a success.

• 58:09Speaker 05

  It's a great thing. And in fact, I mean, if we recognize that the the Ionian revolt began because the Persians under with the sort of advice of Aristagoras failed to take the island of Naxos, which is very wealthy at this time, they they did it this time. They just sort of went in and took it. So in a lot of ways, they've sort of made up for previous previous failures. And so they're very happy with it, I'm sure. And so as for their as far as they're concerned, it's all good. For the Greeks, I think this is this is a radical moment of self reassessment. I mean, especially for the Athenians, this is a moment of like, oh, we we can actually beat them like we can win, which is a huge deal for them. I mean, there's a there's a variation of the verb. So kindunein, which means to take risks, is a verb that they use for for fighting battles. And they specifically make an adaptation of this verb, pro kindunein,

• 58:53Speaker 05

  to be in front, taking risks, to take risks before others, which the Athenians deploy in order to express what they had done in the Persian Wars. They had done this before anyone else. They had actually managed to achieve a victory before the others even got involved. They were already out there fighting and winning against the Persians. So they completely revise what it means to exist in a world with Persians. Which is no longer just a story of terror and submission, or even just sort of using the Persians to inevitably sort of encroach on on the Greeks in exchange for whatever favors they might do you. But instead you see the idea that, oh, actually, if we get together and resist them, this might actually work.

• 59:33Tristan Hughes?

  And do they do they link that to democracy as well? If you had hippias in the Persian ranks, is kind of a is a win for democracy over tyranny? Or like their version of democracy, their new way of government? Do they try to link that together too?

• 59:46Speaker 04

  Well, certainly Herodotus reflects on that question himself and kind of incorporates it into a very well-known passage in in Book Three, where we have Darius and his counselors kind of sitting together and thinking of what kind of government could we possibly be? Could we be, should we be an oligarchy? Should we be a democracy? Nah, not for us, but nice idea. Or should we be an absolute monarchy? Yes, that sounds like our thing. So I think that, you know, if if at the time, democracy was not really being upheld as as part of the marathon experience, as the marathon myth.

• 1:00:25Speaker 04

  I think it starts to be built up in that way.

• 1:00:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it is in some ways, it's also one of the first occasions where we actually see some of the institutions of the democracy in action. So you see the Board of Generals, for instance, acting for the first time at Marathon. So some of these institutions are new and the Athenians have clearly attached them to the Marathon story. They're very prominently involved in that. And the tribal arrangement of the army. So the reorganization of the state that followed from democracy is is integral to the Marathon story. But I wouldn't necessarily think that they are saying, oh, it's because democracy we managed to do this. I don't think there is any source that specifically says that. It's just a broad association with Athens has become more effective at organizing its resources for war, which is something that Herodotus says, not only in in in that, in the constitutional debate,

• 1:01:10Speaker 05

  but especially in Book Five, when he's talking about the rise of democracy. So suddenly everybody's got a stake in this. And so they're much more inclined to do their best.

• 1:01:19Tristan Hughes?

  One last thing else I must mention as well. Is there also this interesting, it could well be a fantastical story, and whoever wants to answer this, please do, of someone whispering in Darius's ear, the great king's ear, to remember the Athenians and to come back. Or there's this foreboding thing that the Persians will return.

• 1:01:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's one of those great Herodotian set pieces, isn't it? You know, every night before Darius dines, one of his, you know, right hand men will come in and say, sire, remember the Athenians. And of course, you know, Darius then nearly chokes on his piece of, you know, sweetened honeyed lamb. And kind of says, damn them, I'll get them next time. Of course, only the Athenian, only Herodotus could have written such a thing. I don't think the Athenians were much on the mind of Darius or any other Persian after this.

• 1:02:12Speaker 05

  I think this is very much to do with what I mentioned earlier, this idea that for the Greek mind, this is all about revenge, right? That's how they frame it. And so they have to have this kind of narrative that, oh, it really mattered to the Persians, like it was a big thorn in their side. I mean, if you did this to Darius, you'd probably been like, firstly, who are the Athenians? And secondly, why are you so close to me? I don't think I gave you permission.

• 1:02:33Tristan Hughes?

  Guys, this has been absolutely fantastic. And this is also kind of teeing up that the Persians will return. This is the first Persian invasion of Greece, and there is a second one that we we will cover in time. But for the moment, I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast together.

• 1:02:48Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 1:02:49Speaker 04

  You're very welcome.

• 1:02:53Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was Dr Rul Khananidhyke and Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones discussing the First Persian War, the first episode with these two experts on the Persian Wars. The next episode will be dropping next week, where we explore the Persian Return with King Xerxes in 480 B.C. and legendary battles such as Thermopylae and Salamis. Stay tuned for that one coming very soon. In the meantime, thank you for listening to this episode of The Ancients. Please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. If you want more Ancient History videos and clips in the meantime, then be sure to follow me on Instagram at @AncientsTristan. Don't forget, you can also

• 1:03:37Tristan Hughes?

  listen to us and all of History Hits podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 1:03:55Speaker 08

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