Pod Insights The Rest Is History 669. Greece vs. Persia: The Battle of Marathon (Part 2) About this episode Why did the Battle of Marathon change the world so considerably? How did the battle itself unfold? And, could the Athenians really triumph over the indomitable Persian Empire…?
Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the terrible Battle of Marathon, and its aftermath.
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Transcript 12,162 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Tom Holland? This episode is brought to you by Lloyds, which has been backing British ambition for over 250 years. Now, when you think about it, every dynasty in history has boiled down to two important elements: aspiration and action. And a classic example of this from British history, the rise of the House of Wessex, the family of Alfred the Great and his heirs, who between them established the United Kingdom of England.
0:34 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, it's a great story, isn't it, Tom? A great lesson in leadership, I think, for anybody. So Alfred and his heirs, they marry idealism and pragmatism. They're brilliant at alliances, they're brilliant at managing power, they're brilliant, of course, at managing their money, which is a key part of political leadership. And of course, we are all reaping the rewards of their wisdom and foresight. When it's time to make your next move, you can bank on Lloyds to be ready when you are. Because from new businesses to new homes and new life chapters, backed by generations of hope and ambition, you can see, Tom, why 14 million people trust Lloyds to help make their dreams a reality.
1:17 Tom Holland? Based on Lloyds' internal customer data from March 2026.
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2:12 Dominic Sandbrook? This episode is brought to you by the Gates Foundation. We have touched on the fall of the Roman Empire a few times on this show, haven't we? But what our listeners may not know is that among the causes that historians talk about, it's not just barbarian invasions. There's also talk of a disease which people call Roman fever, which I believe we know now as malaria.
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2:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, so they're creating a new generation of bed nets that kill up to 90% of mosquitoes. That leads to a 50% drop in malaria, saving lives and protecting vulnerable communities. The Gates Foundation, partners of human potential. Search gatesfoundation.org/mosquito to learn more.
3:20 Dominic Sandbrook? Soon, as the Athenians crossed deeper into no man's land, the first arrows began to hiss down upon them. Then, raising the monstrous weight of their shields to protect their chests, the hoplites did at last begin to run. Simultaneously, as though the phalanx was some ferocious cornered creature stiffening its bristles as it turns to face its foe, those in the front three ranks lowered and aimed their spears in preparation for the coming collision. By now, with some 150 yards still to travel, a storm cloud of arrows and slingshot was breaking over them, thudding into their shields, bouncing off their helmets, striking the
4:04 Dominic Sandbrook? odd hoplite in the thigh or through the throat. But still, the Athenians, braving the black rain, only quickened their pace. Those of the enemy directly in their path had already begun scrabbling to erect wicker defences as they realised, to their horror, that the wall of shields and iron-tipped spears, far from providing easy pickings for their bowmen as they had at first imagined, was not going to be halted. 100 yards, 50, 20, 10.
4:35 Dominic Sandbrook? Then as the Athenians' war cry, a terrifying allulation, rose even above the thundering of their feet upon the dry earth, the cacophony of clattering metal and the screams of the panic-stricken enemy, the phalanx crunched into the Persian lines. So what a dramatic moment that is. That is the moment when the Athenian phalanx charges and smashes into the ranks of the invading Persians at the Battle of Marathon, as narrated by friend of the show, Dan Brown, in his book, Persian Fire. So rude. We are in the late summer of 490 B.C. Everything hangs in the balance and who better to tell the story than the man who wrote those
5:20 Dominic Sandbrook? words? Dan Brown himself, Tom Holland, is with us on the podcast. So, Tom, we advertised this at the end of the previous episode, where we did the build-up to the Battle of Marathon, the war between the Persians and the Greeks. We advertised this as one of the great showdowns, not just in ancient history, but in all history. It's a battle that proved a template for so many clashes to come, seen even today, especially, I think, in America, by historians who teach at military academies.
5:50 Tom Holland? Yeah.
5:51 Dominic Sandbrook? Will often say it's the great Titanic showdown between democracy and despotism. So you've got the Athenians on one side, and on the other, you have the most powerful man on earth, Darius the Great, the King of Kings, the Shah of Shahs, the Emperor of Persia. Why is this battle so celebrated?
6:11 Tom Holland? Well, I think there are a number of reasons. The first is that, I mean, it is the first battle in European history that we can kind of reconstruct.
6:20 Dominic Sandbrook? Right.
6:20 Tom Holland? So that is courtesy of Herodotus, who recounts it in considerable detail. There are gaps, and so there are various interpretations of the battle, and the interpretation you're going to hear today is mine. But I think on the fundamentals, people are pretty agreed what happened, and so that is a first. I think also, it has always been seen as one of history's most decisive battles. It really matters who wins in this clash. And this begins with the Athenians themselves, who, and it's a massive spoiler alert here, the Athenians win it. They've been massively outnumbered, they're facing an enemy that has never been defeated by Greeks before, but they've done it and they've saved Greece and...
7:02 Tom Holland? Decades, centuries, maybe even millennia, I mean, the Greeks still go on about it. This sense that they have, they have saved freedom is something that they never leave alone. And perhaps it's a little bit like the British going on about the Battle of Britain. There's a slight kind of similar quality to that, I think. But it's not just the Greeks who have said that the Battle of Marathon was decisive. So this is John Stuart Mill in the 19th century. The Battle of Marathon, he wrote, even as an event in English history, is more important than the Battle of Hastings. If the issue of that day had been different, the Britons and the Saxons might still have been wandering in the woods. And what he means by that is that the Battle of Marathon is the battle that enabled the
7:46 Tom Holland? West to become the West. It enabled Europe to become properly European. And by extension, it's the triumph of liberty over slavery and of democracy over despotism, as you said.
7:59 Dominic Sandbrook? But is it not the case that had the Persians won the Battle of Marathon, people in, in Britain would have been wearing trousers much earlier than they were?
8:07 Tom Holland? Yeah. And I think the, um, the notion of it being the victory of freedom is something that, as you say, is still current today. I think particularly, as you said, in right wing circles, perhaps in America. But it's not just, it's not just people on the right who have celebrated Marathon. So Byron, back in the beginning of the 19th century, who would end up dying for freedom, dying for Greece, um, kind of the prototype of the, the supporter of the struggle for self-determination. He visited, um, the Plain of Marathon at a time when Greece was being ruled by the Ottomans. And he then wrote kind of famous lines. "The mountains look on Marathon and Marathon looks on the sea. And musing there an hour alone, I dreamed that Greece might still be free.
8:52 Tom Holland? For standing on the Persian's grave, I could not deem myself a slave." So the question of whether, um, it really was decisive, whether it really was the triumph over something called the West, over something called the East, of freedom over despotism. I mean, these are important questions and we will come to them in due course. But I think- I think more pressing is the details of the battle itself, the kind of incredible heart-stopping drama of this incredible clash. So before we come to that, a reminder of what we covered in our previous episode. So Darius is the king of Persia, the king of kings, and he rules this immense empire which now stretches from Macedon, from
9:34 Tom Holland? the foothills of Mount Olympus, all the way to the Indus. Darius is committed to having his vengeance on the Athenians who had backed a revolt against Persian rule in Ionia, which is on the far side of the Aegean from Greece, so what is now Turkey. Darius had sent a naval expedition commanded by his nephew, a guy called Artaphernes, and by Datis, who is a mead who specializes in Greek affairs. He knows how to fight them, but he also knows how to negotiate with them, and he's probably the guy who's really in command. The Persian task force has sailed across the Aegean. It has already sacked
10:12 Tom Holland? the city of Eretrea, which had joined Athens in attacking Darius's empire, and now Eretrea has been burnt to the ground, its people have been taken as slaves, and it is the turn of Athens. But the task force, as it sails down the coastline of Attica, is heading not directly for Athens itself, but for the Bay of Marathon. And the reason for that, I think, is that Datis does not wish to attempt an opposed landing. That's always the most kind of difficult task for an amphibious force. And if he heads for Philerum, which is the port that serves Athens, then obviously that would be inevitable. That's what he
10:54 Tom Holland? would be facing. So for people who have only a vague sense of the geography of Attica, which is the kind of area of land dominated by Athens, if you think of it as the kind of, the head of a horse which is reaching down to drink from a trough, sticking out from mainland Greece, Marathon lies on the opposite eastern side of that peninsula from Athens.
11:17 Dominic Sandbrook? Right.
11:18 Tom Holland? And so there are good reasons for the Persian task force to head there. There's a very long beach onto which the Persian ships can be hauled up. There's a very long scimitar-shaped plain on which the Persians can make their base, and which crucially is perfect for the operation of their cavalry. And also from Marathon, it is possible to get to Athens. So there's a road which leads from the south of the plain up the foothills. It bifurcates and one road goes inland, one road goes along the coast, around the mountains that separate Marathon from Athens. And this is, it means that if the Persians can get onto that road, then they will be able to march on Athens without too much trouble.
12:01 Tom Holland? Now, what if the Athenians come out of Athens and advanced to Marathon to meet with the Persians in battle? Well, the Persians are very confident if that happens, that they will have the victory. As we said, they're strong in cavalry. The Greeks who rely entirely on heavy infantry have no cavalry at all. Marathon as a flat plain is ideally suited to the operation of cavalry. And not once in 50 years of Greco-Persian warfare has a Greek army been able to defeat the Persians in pitched battle. So the Persians have every reason to be confident.
12:36 Dominic Sandbrook? So why would the Athenians do that when they could stay? Surely if you're an Athenian commander, the obvious thing to do is to say, why don't we stay? Why don't we wait for the Persians to come? Bring them on? We'll stay in our city and withstand a siege and eventually they'll go home.
12:48 Tom Holland? Well, if they do that, then the Persians are confident as well that they will win because they are almost certain that the city will end up being betrayed. The Persians have a lot of experience of dealing with the Greeks. They know that they're a very fractious people, given to kind of violent class tensions, rivalries among their leading men, all kinds of things like that. And so it's very easy for the Persians to foster tensions. And it's already worked with Eretrea, the city that they have just sacked, because that city had been betrayed by two of the leading aristocrats. The gates had been opened. And so there is no reason to think that the same dirty tricks wouldn't work in Athens.
13:29 Tom Holland? Evidence of the fact that there are Athenians who are willing to work with the Persians is there in the in the form of the man who has actually led them to Marathon because he is an Athenian and he is the former Tiranos, the former autocratic strongman of the city, this guy called Hippieas, who had been expelled back in five ten, and he's now eighty years old and he hasn't been back to his native city for two decades now. He'd gone and taken refuge with the local Persian governor. The governor had demanded the Athenians take him back, and they had said, no way. Hippieas does not see himself as a traitor. He's convinced
14:11 Tom Holland? that the only way that Athens can be saved is if the Athenians can be brought to submit to the Persians. And so he sees himself as the person who's the kind of ideal middleman. And actually, the night before the Persian fleet set sail for Marathon, he dreams that he's sleeping with his mother, and this is a sign that he is going to be reunited with his homeland. I mean, I'm not sure Dr. Freud would agree with that interpretation perhaps, but this is the interpretation that the Greeks give it. And sure enough, the next day Hippieas is present when the Persian fleet draws up at Marathon, the keels of the ships are dragged up onto the sands, Hippieas steps down, he is back on attic
14:52 Tom Holland? soil, ready, as he sees it, to try and bring the Athenians into the light of the Persian king's favour.
15:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, you talk about the Athenians and the light. So in very Lord of the Rings, Return of the King style, the Athenians, as soon as they've heard the news, as soon as news has reached people on the coast that the Persians are landing, they've lit a giant beacon, haven't they, on Mount Pentelikon. So that's midway between Marathon and Athens to communicate the news. The beacons are lit, Athens calls for aid, great scenes. And presumably, I mean, this is an age where of rumour and exaggeration. So there must be the most tremendous rumours and.
15:35 Tom Holland? Yeah, mass panic.
15:36 Dominic Sandbrook? Paranoid fantasies about the size of the Persian army.
15:40 Tom Holland? Yeah, these terrifying Asiatic hordes who have landed on the sacred soil of Attica. And even though probably these reports are exaggerated, it is clear from the first reports that the Athenians are going to be significantly outnumbered, maybe two to one, maybe even three to one, we're not entirely sure. And so you're right, of course, there are people who say, this is mad, we can't go out and confront them, we should stay behind our walls. But actually, even before that beacon is lit, the decision has already been taken to go out and confront the invaders in the field. And the man who had pushed this course in the Assembly of the democracy and had it voted on and passed as an official resolution of the Athenian people is the city's most
16:23 Tom Holland? proficient campaigner against the Persians, the city's great mead fighter, as he's called, Miltiades, because he has fought with and against the Persians. He understands how they work, he understands how their military operations are conducted. And so his plan, the moment that the Persians have landed at Marathon, which is where Miltiades had expected they would land, is to march at top speed to that southern kind of mountain at the southern end of Marathon and to block the road that otherwise will enable the Persians to get to Athens from Marathon. And if they can get there in time, then they will be able to bottle the Persians up on
17:05 Tom Holland? the plain of Marathon and thereby stop the Persian cavalry from taking that road and fanning out across Attica. It's actually a little bit like Harold, you know, wanting to get to Hastings to stop the Norman cavalry from breaking out, it's kind of similar kind of strategy.
17:21 Dominic Sandbrook? So the beacon is lit, people see the flame, there's a tremendous scene, isn't there, they blow this great trumpet?
17:27 Tom Holland? Yeah.
17:28 Dominic Sandbrook? They summon men to the mustering ground, which is an sort of exercise ground, which has been dedicated to Apollo, it's outside the city. And Miltiades is just one of ten generals?
17:39 Tom Holland? Yes, so there's a board of ten generals.
17:40 Dominic Sandbrook? He's not the supreme commander, the supreme commander is a guy called Calymachus, the wararchon.
17:45 Tom Holland? The wararchon. So they've all been elected by public vote. The war archon, Calymachus, he's an overall command, but the generals, you had ten of them for each of the kind of the various tribes that the democracy has set up. So Miltades is commander of his tribe. And each of these ten commanders take it in turn to be Calymachus's subordinate, so to have the kind of overall control.
18:07 Dominic Sandbrook? And how many men are we talking about?
18:09 Tom Holland? Probably around 10,000 men.
18:11 Dominic Sandbrook? Okay.
18:12 Tom Holland? And they head off and they have slaves to carry their armour, they have pachanimals to carry their rations, and they take one of the two roads that leads from Athens to Marathon, and probably the coastal road, because although it's 26 miles against 22 miles, which is the other road, the other road takes you up into the mountains, so you're much more kind of vulnerable there. And also, it would leave the coastal road open to the cavalry. So I'm fairly confident that they take the coastal road. And they march at tremendous speed, and Athenians going at a tremendous speed is going to be a theme of this episode. And they arrive at the crest of the hill that overlooks Marathon from the south. And
18:54 Tom Holland? you mentioned Order of the Rings, this is kind of like the Riders of Rowan gazing down at the battlefield of Pelennor Fields, because what they see, I mean, is terrifying. The bay is black with ships. They can see these ships, you know, arms and provisions and horses being unloaded across this kind of great seaweed-matted bank beach. And presumably, there are already Persian outriders kind of raising dust across the plain, reconnoitering the limits of the plain. And it's these horsemen who most terrify the Athenians, because they know that they will be very, very vulnerable to attack by horsemen. They are kind of lumbering,
19:39 Tom Holland? heavy infantry. They would be sitting ducks if they were caught in the open by the horse.
19:44 Dominic Sandbrook? Just a question, Athenians have no horsemen at all?
19:46 Tom Holland? No, not really, because their force and their power comes from infantry. So even those who are very wealthy will generally fight on foot. And
19:57 Tom Holland? That kind of determines their strategy, basically that they have to hold their defensive position, they cannot afford to go down into the plain because otherwise it really would be curtains. But actually, they don't need to, to leave the heights, because they've arrived in time to block any Persian advance on Athens. And so to that extent, Miltiades' plan has worked. And there is, there's a shrine to Heracles on the heights, which has a kind of a grove in front of it, which provides a degree of screening. And so they, they fortify the, the temple of Heracles, they set up their lines along the road. And they are sufficiently strong there, I think, that it is going to be very, very difficult
20:37 Tom Holland? for the Persians to make a full frontal attack. So there is now a kind of stalemate. And this is promising for the Athenians, because it means that there might be time now for reinforcements to arrive. The Athenians are not generally very popular. They're a big city, they throw their weight around their industry, going on about how brilliant they are with their liberty and everything. Kind of other cities find them annoying. But they do have one city, which is completely committed to the Athenian cause. The city loves Athens. And this is a city called Plataea, very small city, which lies to the, the north
21:18 Tom Holland? west of Athens, in the sphere of influence of Thebes, which has always been the Athenians' traditional enemy. Although Hippias, the old Tyrrhenos, had, had had quite good relations with the Thebans. But when he'd been expelled, the Athenians had gone back to their old ways and kind of gone to war with the Thebans. And as a democracy, Athens had become Plataea's big brother, because Plataea is always being kind of menaced by the Thebans. And so the Athenians step in and say, well, yeah, we'll protect you, we'll look after you. And now it's the Athenians' hour of need. And so the Plataeans remember the debt. And even though they're a very small city, they only have, they can only raise about 800 men.
22:00 Tom Holland? They send all those 800 men to bolster the Athenian army and it's not a huge contingent, but obviously their arrival touches every Athenian heart. I mean, it's incredibly moving scene when they arrive.
22:14 Dominic Sandbrook? This is the little ships at Dunkirk moment.
22:16 Tom Holland? And the Athenians will never forget. They will never forget this moment.
22:19 Dominic Sandbrook? But there are of course two cities that have, two major cities that have stood against the Persians. So one is Athens and the other is Sparta. And the Athenians must be thinking, are the Spartans going to show up? We need the Spartans to join us.
22:36 Tom Holland? Right. And the Spartans, of course, are the most formidable military power in Greece. So to have, have the Spartans turn up would really tilt the balance in favour of the Athenians, I think. And because of that, even as the mass of the Athenian army is heading towards Marathon from Athens, there is one Athenian who is heading in the opposite direction and taking the road that will lead him to the Isthmus of Corinth and then down through the Peloponnese towards Sparta. And this is a man called Phidippides and he is celebrated as the greatest runner in the whole of Athens. And he covers the 140 miles that separate Athens from Sparta
23:15 Tom Holland? in two days. So an incredible feat. And on the second evening of this epic run, he arrives in the wallless plains of Sparta. And he brings his news, the Persians have landed at Marathon. And the Athenians have every hope that the Spartans will come. They are a very proud military power. Their prestige is at stake if they don't come to support the Athenians in their hour of need, I think. They have chucked Darius's messengers down a well and told them to get earth and water from there. You know, this is Sparta and all of that.
23:49 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
23:49 Tom Holland? And they've promised that they will come. And, you know, the Spartans don't give their word lightly. And so if Phidippides arrives, he's obviously, I'm imagining very much out of breath, but he pans it out. Oh, men of Sparta, the Athenians beg you for assistance. Do not, by looking the other way, allow the most ancient city in Greece to fall into bondage and the clutches of barbarians.
24:14 Tom Holland? Ah, but the timing is terrible because the Spartans are celebrating a great feast. This is the feast of the Carneia. It's sacred to Apollo and it is one of their holiest festivals. And it's a time of truce. The Spartans just cannot fight during the festival of the Carneia.
24:37 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, even if the Persians are attacking, they still can't, they've got important, you know, religious duties and they can't.
24:43 Tom Holland? No. And it's often been assumed that this is, you know, that they're scamming it, that they don't really want to come, that they're happy. I don't think this is true at all. The Spartans are, by our lights, madly superstitious. So we did an episode on the Battle of Thermopylae that takes place 10 years after Marathon and there's all kinds of shenanigans there because the Spartans can't send troops to Thermopylae because the festival Olympia, the Olympic Games is on. And I think it's exactly the same. They do, if they're going to go and fight the, the Persians, they don't want to annoy Apollo before they do it. I mean, that's mad. So I think that their, their inability to leave is entirely genuine. Their religious scruples are not just kind of invented.
25:27 Tom Holland? And so they say to Phidippides, "We're really sorry, we can't leave for another week." And then it will probably take us three or four days to get to Marathon. So that's 10 days in all. "We're really sorry, but we will, we will be with you in 10 days." So Phidippides is gutted by this, but I guess it's not, you know, a complete disaster. At least if the Athenians can hold their position, then the Spartans may arrive. He heads out of Sparta. He takes the mountain road that, that leads up through the highlands of central Peloponnese. And while he's up in the highlands, he meets someone who promises that he will be at Marathon with the Athenians, come what may. And this is a very unexpected apparition. It's a figure with the legs of a goat,
26:11 Tom Holland? two curling horns and an absolutely enormous phallus. And this is the god Pan. And he is a god who's so notorious for, for ambushing wayfarers like Phidippides, kind of lonely up in the mountain heights and filling them with terror, that that sense of terror has its own name in Greek, which derives from Pan, and the word is "panikon". From which we get our English word panic. And so that gives you a sense of what Pan may be offering to bring to the table when and if a battle is fought at Marathon. Because he tells Phidippides that he has a message for the Athenians. Why, when I am so fond of you, do you rebuff me?
26:53 Tom Holland? I have done you many favours in the past and will do so again in the future. So essentially Pan is saying, if you offer me the respect that I am due, you know, you give me sacrifices, celebrate me, give me festivals and things, then I will be at Marathon with you and I will fill the Persians with a sense of panic. And so if Phidippides banks this, he carries on on his way, he gets to Marathon and he passes on the message from Pan and he passes on the message from the Spartans, they're going to be there in 10 days' time.
27:24 Dominic Sandbrook? There's good news and bad news. The Spartans are going to be a bit delayed. On the other hand.
27:32 Tom Holland? I, you see, I, I think that the news of the Spartans, I mean, it's a bit of a downer, but it's not a complete downer, because they can afford to hold their positions and wait.
27:41 Dominic Sandbrook? Right.
27:41 Tom Holland? It is a problem for the Persians and the Persians have a very proficient espionage system. So it's almost certain that they would know the likely date of the Spartan arrival pretty soon after the arrival of Phidippides in the Athenian camp. And their situation is, is a tricky one. Because on the one hand, they can't really afford to attack the Athenians' defensive position. It, it, it's, it's too big an ask. On the other hand, you know, they need to get everything done and dusted before the Spartans arrive. So they have this kind of 10-day window.
28:13 Dominic Sandbrook? Right.
28:14 Tom Holland? So what are they going to do? Now, Miltiades is very familiar with their way of making war. And I think he has a very shrewd idea what the Persians will end up doing. And it's probably.
28:31 Tom Holland? You know, right from the beginning, what he's been expecting they are going to do. But only time will tell if he is right. So I'm not going to say what the Persians do, but we will see whether Miltiades is right or not. So a day passes and then another, and then another, and in time, there are four days left until the Spartans are due to arrive. And this deadlock holds, the Persians down in the plain, the Athenians blocking their exit from the plain on this crucial road. And four days before the Spartans are due to arrive, the sun sets behind the mountains that look on Marathon and the moon rises silver in the sky.
29:14 Tom Holland? And in distant Sparta, the Carnea is now over. The Spartans are mustering, they are getting ready to march. And meanwhile, in the Persian camp, as dusk is succeeded by the darkness of night, the Athenians hear this incredible commotion. And it's the sound of thousands of pairs of tramping feet moving towards the Athenian positions across the plain. And so the Athenians wonder what's going on, is this, is this a full frontal assault? Or is it a diversion or what's happening? And the answer to that question arrives very soon. And this is courtesy of Ionian conscripts who were with the Persian expedition
29:56 Tom Holland? and who've been recruited almost certainly by Miltiades, who would have had all kinds of contacts with the Ionians to serve the Athenians as spies. And they bring news so momentous that it is immediately brought to the Athenian high command. So that is Calimachus, who is the wararchon, the guy in overall command. Miltiades, the man who knows more about the Persian way of war than anyone else in Athens, and his fellow nine generals on the board of generals. And here is the news that the Ionians have brought. The tramping that the Athenians can hear is that of a holding force. It is not, it seems, an assault.
30:40 Tom Holland? It has been sent to distract them. And to distract them from what? Well, the fact that the Persian task force is being divided in two. And why has the Persian task force been divided in two? Because clearly, Datis has decided that with the Spartan arrival now imminent, he needs to trap the Athenians, if he possibly can, in a pincer movement. And so that means that he wants to send a portion of his forces around the back in transport ships down the Athenian coast to see if they can find an alternative landing spot. And then to march up the road towards the Athenians and kind of catch them in this pincer force.
31:25 Tom Holland? And which part of his force is he sending to do this? And this is the crucial detail. And it is given to the Athenian high command by the Ionian spies. It's the horsemen. So this famous phrase that the Ionians deliver, "The cavalry have left."
31:44 Tom Holland? They're leaving the plain. And here, if the Athenians can only dare to seize it, is their big, big opportunity. It is the chance to take on the Persians, who are the most lethal part of their task force. Their cavalry are absent from the field of battle. But of course, to do that will require the Athenians to leave their defensive positions and advance down into the plain. And so the huge question is, will the Athenians dare to seize this opportunity?
32:19 Dominic Sandbrook? What an unbelievable cliffhanger. Will the Athenians seize the moment? Find out after the break.
32:31 Speaker 02 On a rainy bridge over an Amsterdam Canal, bearded Dutchmen in black capes and white ruffs shake hands on deals that will change the world.
32:43 Speaker 03 This is the early 1600s and these men have created a company that in today's money is so wealthy that at its peak, it's more than twice the value of Apple and Nvidia combined.
32:58 Speaker 02 Hello, Rest is History listeners, I'm William Derimpel.
33:00 Speaker 03 And I'm Anita Arndt and we are the hosts of a fellow Goalhanger History podcast called Empire.
33:06 Speaker 02 On Empire this week, we are exploring the extraordinary story of the Dutch East India Company.
33:12 Speaker 03 It's a story of the very first corporate espionage, the colonisation of Indonesia and a swap that leads to the creation of New York City.
33:21 Speaker 02 How did a company become so powerful that it could kill and torture in the name of the spice trade?
33:27 Speaker 03 And how did the rivalry between the British and the Dutch end with the British East India Company with the most lucrative colony on earth and the Dutch East India Company completely bankrupt?
33:39 Speaker 02 You can access our mini-series today by searching Empire World History wherever you get your podcasts.
33:45 Speaker 03 And we've included a clip from the mini-series at the end of this episode for you to enjoy.
33:55 Speaker 02 This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Tom, as you know, I spent all my time working and in a dream world, I would clone a sort of Tom Holland who would do all the work for me. But sadly, technology has not advanced to that point. If it did, I wish there was a recruiting company that I could use to hire that clone for me.
34:16 Tom Holland? Well, Dominic, you are in luck because if you are hiring, then ZipRecruiter is the great time saver. You can try it free at ziprecruiter.com/history. It shows you qualified candidates almost instantly. So save time with ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.
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35:42 Dominic Sandbrook? Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Dawn has not yet broken on one of the most fateful days, not merely in Greek history, but perhaps in the history of the world. And we find ourselves in the tent of the war archon, Calymachus, where he and his captains are debating what to do. So Tom, tell us about who's on which side in this debate?
36:05 Tom Holland? Okay, on one side is Miltiades. And he has one particular advantage in making his case, which is that it is his turn to command the Athenians on this day of days. So that's an incredible slice of luck for him. He is pushing for the Athenians to advance from their defensive positions down into the plain and attack the Asiatic hordes, which are swarming down there. Because he can see with this, you know, the clarity of the seasoned enemy of the Persians that he is, that there is this precious but fleeting opportunity. And in fact, I think that this is what he had been expecting and waiting for.
36:47 Tom Holland? This is what he had been expecting the Persians would be forced to do. And he's recognised it as the one chance the Athenians have for victory. So his understanding of what Datis is up to, I think, is as follows. Datus does not want to wait for the Spartans to arrive, but he can't force the road that leads to Athens. And so his only real option then is to split his forces by loading some of them into transport ships and sending them down the coastline. And if he's going to do that, then it makes sense to send his cavalry, because they can then advance back up the road as fast as possible. And if the intelligence that has been brought to the Athenians by their spies in the Persian camp is accurate, then this is exactly what is happening. This Persian holding force has been sent to distract the Athenians,
37:31 Tom Holland? while far in the rear, the cavalry are being clandestinely loaded onto the transport ships and starting to sail away down the Attic coast. So the Athenians will never have a better chance of victory. The invaders' army is divided, and the cavalry have temporarily vacated the field. But this window of opportunity is going to close very fast. They have to seize their opportunity as soon as they possibly can. And four of Miltiades' fellow generals are convinced by this, but five are appalled by it. And I think it's important to emphasise just how terrifying the suggestion that Miltiades is making,
38:14 Tom Holland? that they are being asked to attack the Persians on open ground, which the Athenians have always known is the one place you don't attack the Persians, without archers, without cavalry, still outnumbered, even if the cavalry has gone. And just to reiterate, no Greek army has ever defeated the Persians in open combat. So you can see why there is opposition to Miltiades' plan. I mean, so much hangs in the balance.
38:41 Dominic Sandbrook? And they're evenly divided, aren't they? So the casting vote will go to the war archon, Calymachus. And which way will he side?
38:50 Tom Holland? He sides with Miltiades.
38:53 Dominic Sandbrook? Let's go for it.
38:54 Tom Holland? Yeah, the order is given. Battle is going to be joined at dawn. Messengers go throughout the camp. The Athenians start to wake up, and they are told the news that they are going to descend into the plain, and there will be a battle for the future of Athens fought that day.
39:12 Tom Holland? So they get up, they have their breakfast and then slaves bring them their equipment, hopla, so their shields, their helmets, their spears. And hopla is the word that gives us the name for a Greek heavy infantryman, hoplite. And the bare minimum that these hoplites would have is a helmet, a shield, a spear, a sword. And some of the Plataeans don't even have helmets, they just have leather caps which are called dog skins. So not everybody is kind of sheathed in bronze. But most Athenians, they do have corset, some of these corset are of bronze. Some are made of layers of cloth stuck onto a kind of leather jerkin.
39:54 Tom Holland? Some of these leather jerkins would have bronze scales sewn into them. And also you would put bronze greaves on your on your shins to protect your legs. And so the there's no uniformity in terms of kit. And the total weight is kind of estimated between thirty, seventy pounds. I mean, that's quite a lot. And the most heavily armoured of all, those who can afford the most armour. I mean, they are kind of fearsome automata of bronze. I mean, they are really, really very heavily clad. And by dawn, so as the sun is rising to the east over the Aegean, the hoplites are ready for battle. If they've got breastplates, they've put them on.
40:38 Tom Holland? If they've got greaves, they've strapped them on. They've got their shields, they've got their spears in their hands, they've got their helmets propped up on the back of their heads. And then, of course, they have to be arrayed for battle. And the customary Athenian practice is to line up a phalanx, the great kind of porcupine of spears that is formed by lines and lines of Greek infantrymen equipped with spears.
41:03 Tom Holland? Normally, an Athenian phalanx consists of eight lines. But Miltiades, he can see down into the plain now. There's a kind of grey light as the sun starts to rise. And he can see that the Persian lines, because they outnumber the Athenians so strongly, is much longer than if the Athenian phalanx was eight lines deep. And so he extends the Athenian line to match the Persian line. And he does this by thinning out the centre. So the centre is given to three of the generals, one of whom is a young general called Themistocles, who will have an important role to play in subsequent Athenian history. And he is stationed in the weakened centre. Climicus, the wararchon, he commands the right wing.
41:48 Tom Holland? That's the traditional place that the wararchon stands. And the Patians, in their leather helmets, are stationed on the left. So they are lined up.
42:00 Tom Holland? Sacrifices offered. The portents are good. Miltiades then stands where everyone can hear him. And he gives the command: "At them!" And there's a great shimmering of metal as the hoplites lower their helmets. They heft their shields and they shoulder their spears. And you can imagine how terrifying this moment must be. You know, you are a hoplite. Your head is now encased in metal. You are effectively cut off from all the sounds around you. The trumpets are braying to signal the start of the advance, but you can barely hear it through the bronze of your helmet.
42:42 Tom Holland? But what you do have is the kind of this great collective jolting of the Athenian line as your fellows on to your left and to your right start the descent. And so you have no choice, even... If you're an absolute coward, you still have to advance. I think everyone on that morning must have felt terror. But I think that people in that advance are kind of born on the intoxication as well as the dread of the moment. And, you know, we know that when Greeks advance into battle, there are those who wet themselves. There are those who void their bowels and streak their cloaks.
43:24 Tom Holland? But you advance because you feel yourself to be part of a collective. You are kind of one with your fellow citizens. And I think that Herodotus, in, you know, we read it in the previous episode, that sense that being part of a democracy probably does give a sense of fellowship to an Athenian phalanx that perhaps hadn't previously existed. So as you descend down that slope onto the plain of Marathon, I think you probably do feel that you are part of a body of freeborn men. I think that that it would not be wrong to say that that is part of what steals the Athenians to take this, you know, this incredible risk of marching down to meet an enemy who
44:09 Tom Holland? has never been defeated by a Greek army before. And they have a mile to cover and incredible stories in due course come to be told of this advance. It's said that the Athenians ran the whole way down towards the Persian lines. I mean, this is impossible. The weight of their kit is so heavy that they couldn't possibly have managed that and then fought a battle. But I think it's clear that as they near the enemy, they do start to run. And Herodotus is very, very precise about this. They were, he writes, "So far as we can tell, the very first Greeks anywhere to make use of running towards an enemy as a tactic, and the first not to cringe before the sight of Median dress, so Persian dress, and the men who wear it.
44:51 Tom Holland? Hitherto, Greeks had only had to hear the name of the Medes to be reduced to a state of terror." And they reach the Persian lines and they crash into the Persian lines and the impact is absolutely devastating. It's this great pulverizing smash up of metal into flesh and bone. And the Persian forces are much more lightly armored than the Greeks. Um, you know, they have probably quilted jerkins at best. And this means that when the Athenians smash into them and they're using their spears, the spears don't shiver as they would if they were crashing into another phalanx. And that means that the Persians can be skewered, um, and those who aren't skewered can be trampled underfoot
45:35 Tom Holland? by the sheer weight of all these bronze clad men. And then of course, Dominic, you, I think with your expression, you conveyed a certain sense of skepticism as to whether Pan with his curling goat horns and his enormous phallus was going to turn up.
45:50 Dominic Sandbrook? I was a little skeptical. Yeah.
45:52 Tom Holland? Well, he does turn up because the Persians are afflicted with a terrible sense of panic.
45:57 Dominic Sandbrook? Right.
45:58 Tom Holland? And on the wings, they turn and they flee and they start scuppering for the, uh, for the boats which are drawn up at the far end of the plane on the beach. And only in the center does the Persian force have the better of the fight because that's where the Athenian line has been weakened. And also it's where the best Persian troops are. So the Persians themselves and also the Saka, the Scythians, who have these kind of enormous cleaving axes, like the house curls at the Battle of Hastings. Um, and it looks briefly as though they might break through there. But the Athenian wings who have sent the Persian wings fleeing, they are able to kind of curl around and to catch the Persians and the Saka on their
46:38 Tom Holland? flanks. And the Persian center then starts retreating and then panicking as well. And they're all streaming across the plane, running for the, the ships to try and get away. So by this point, the battle is won, but it isn't yet over because of course the fighting now moves to the ships because the Athenians are as desperate to stop the Persians from getting away as the Persians are to make their escape. And the Persians have the advantage, of course, that on their wings, the men who have broken there have a head start. And so they are Able to start piling into the ships before the Athenians arrive. But once the Athenians get to the beach where all the Persian ships are drawn up, there is very, very desperate fighting. And this, I'm sorry to say, is where the wararchon dies, so Calymachus.
47:22 Dominic Sandbrook? You're right, because Athenians don't have this all their own way, do they? I mean, we don't want to, we don't want to give the impression that it's basically the Athenians completely wiping the floor with the Persians and the Persians doing nothing in response. I mean, they're fighting pretty ferociously too.
47:33 Tom Holland? Yeah, so it's, it's on the beaches that the Athenian casualties are heaviest. So we say Calymachus dies there, the wararchon, another of the 10 generals, he dies there. And there's a very famous story, the one Athenian reaches up to the prow of a ship that is pulling away to try and stop it. And there's a Persian with an axe who swings it down, chops off the Athenian's hand who collapses into the sea, blood spraying everywhere. And this Athenian is the brother of Ischylus, who is the first of the three great Athenian tragedians of the 5th century B.C. And Ischylus himself is also fighting at Marathon. And he has this famous epitaph, so when, when he dies, he doesn't mention any of his tragedies. He just said, you know, I was at Marathon, I fought against the long-haired mead.
48:18 Tom Holland? That was the one thing that he was proud of. So the Athenians do manage to capture some of the Persian ships to, to, to kind of burn them. But the mass of the fleet does manage to pull away. And so this is a problem for the Athenians because the question now is, well, where is it going to be heading? You know, Athens effectively stands defenceless. And there's an even more alarming question, what about all that cavalry that had embarked and sailed off? And then even as they're kind of, you know, worrying about these questions, something very, very alarming happens, which is that up on the heights of Mount Pentelikon, the mountain that stands between Marathon and Athens.
49:00 Tom Holland? There's a flashing from a mirror or a shield and it's clearly a pre-arranged signal that is being delivered from someone in Athens, a traitor in Athens, signalling out to the Persian admirals. And nobody knows who it is, nobody will ever know who it is. But it is evident that there is potential treachery afoot. And so the Athenian generals say, well, we cannot pause here. We can't, you know, rest on our laurels. We've got to get moving. And it's by now 10 o'clock in the morning. The Athenians are obviously exhausted. They're sweat soaked, they're wounded, covered in blood. But all of them are thinking about
49:41 Tom Holland? their families and homes back in Athens. And so they decide we are going to have to march as fast as we can from Marathon and get back to Athens. And there is of course a famous story that I'm sure most people will have heard, that they send Phidippides, the runner ahead of them, to run the 26 miles back to Athens. And he gets there in record time. And he proclaims, rejoice, we have won. And then he dies with the exhaustion and intoxication of the moment. Is this story true? It's not in Herodotus, it's in much later Greek sources. But of course, this is what inspires the famous marathon race in the 1896 Olympics.
50:26 Dominic Sandbrook? So it might not be true?
50:28 Tom Holland? Might not be true. I mean, I like to think it is. All these stories, I prefer to think that they are. And it means that the Battle of Marathon is the only battle to have an Olympic event. But what we know for sure from Herodotus, whether Phidippides has gone ahead of them or not, is that the Athenian army, I mean, to quote Herodotus, they raced back to the defence of their city as fast as their legs could carry them. And astonishingly, they arrived there by late afternoon. And it's just in the nick of time, because not long after they have turned up in Athens, the Persian fleet glides up towards Phalerum, which is the harbour that serves Athens. And so the Athenians march down to Phalerium, they draw themselves up in kind of great bronze lines. And the
51:09 Tom Holland? Persian fleet lie stationary off the entrance to the harbour at Phalerum. And then the sun sets, it's dusk, the Persian fleet raises anchor, swings round and sails eastwards into the night. And the threat of invasion is over and Athens is saved.
51:28 Dominic Sandbrook? But the question, I suppose, is how long? Is it saved for? Now, we haven't yet talked about the Spartans. So the Spartans arrive shortly after the battle, don't they? And they've been on the road for three days. So they must be pretty exhausted themselves.
51:42 Tom Holland? Yeah. So that's an impressive march from them.
51:44 Dominic Sandbrook? They're late, but they've, they've still, you know, they've, they've done well to get there.
51:49 Tom Holland? Yeah.
51:49 Dominic Sandbrook? So great scenes. They congratulate the Athenians. They go to the battlefield and they see there the 6,400 bodies of the fallen Persians. And they, it's an interesting scene, isn't it? Because the Spartans are very in, they're fascinated by what the Persians are wearing, what they, what kit they've got, what arms and armour. Because this is their first chance to look at what the most formidable people in the world have, what they've got.
52:18 Tom Holland? Yeah, it's a bit, it's a bit like, you know, we did the, the episode on the American attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran. And the helicopter crashes and it's, you know, the Iranians inspect the helicopter because it's, it's a way of trying to understand what the Americans can do. And I think the Spartans are exactly the same, that they're looking at the, you know, the armour and the arms and so on that the Persians have. And to be honest, they're not very impressed. They think, well, you know, we could, we could beat these any day. But equally, I think the fact that the Spartans are so concerned to go and make this inspection is a reflection of the fact, not just that they've now woken up to just how major a threat the Persians are, but also this kind of nagging anxiety
53:00 Tom Holland? that even if the Persians have been defeated now at Marathon, you know, they probably will be back. So we should try and, you know, get as much information on them as we possibly can.
53:12 Dominic Sandbrook? This raises an interesting question, doesn't it? Because to the Greeks, the Battle of Marathon is an event that will echo through the centuries. It's an absolutely seismic historical moment. But presumably to the Persians, you know, it's what a sideshow at best.
53:29 Tom Holland? Peripheral border skirmish, I think, is probably how they would have framed it.
53:34 Dominic Sandbrook? A border skirmish that didn't go the way that they had hoped, but such things happen when you're a superpower.
53:39 Tom Holland? I think they probably wouldn't even have mentioned Marathon. I mean, the thing is that the Persians don't write history in the way, say, that Herodotus does, so we don't have any Persian accounts of any of the wars against the Greeks at all. But Robert Graves, so as in I. Claudius, he wrote a fantastic poem called The Persian Version, in which he imagines how the Persians would have spun the defeat at Marathon. So just to quote from it, some of the lines, "Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon the trivial skirmish fought near Marathon. Despite a strong defence and adverse weather, all arms combined magnificently together." You know, superpowers never acknowledge the fact that they've been defeated.
54:20 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, is it not? I was thinking about this. It's the equivalent to them probably of a British defeat in Afghanistan or something in the 19th century. You know, sometimes these things happen on the frontier.
54:31 Tom Holland? I think it's even better than that because, don't forget, they have actually captured Naxos, they have captured Eretrea, and they do lead their armada safely back to the Asian mainland. Most of the ships have survived the Athenian attempt to destroy them. And when they get, when they land back on Asian soil, they then lead the Eretrian captives to the great king in Persia, as they'd been ordered to do. And to quote Herodotus on how Darius responds to the sight of these Eretrian prisoners, "Before they became the king's prisoners of war, the fury felt by Darius towards the Eretrians had been terrible, wronged as he had originally been by their unprovoked aggression." So you see, Herodotus agrees with the Persian perception that basically the Eretrians had been terrorists.
55:16 Tom Holland? But when Dara saw them led into his presence and utterly at his mercy, he inflicted no further miseries on them, but instead settled them in the land of Kisia. So this is a display of mercy, but it's not a pardon, because Kisia is a region of Iran that... It's not the most attractive reason, because it's full of oil wells. And Herodotus describes the oil as black and giving off a revolting stench. So it's one of the earliest descriptions in history of petroleum. And the Eretrians are settled there and there is no return home for them. And even centuries later, tourists would go and visit their descendants and some of them would still be speaking Greek. So, you know, for a Greek to be parted from his homeland is a terrible thing.
55:59 Tom Holland? And that might, of course, have the Athenians lost the Battle of Marathon, that might have been the fate of the Athenians. Their city burned, their sons castrated, the survivors exiled. And the fact that Athens had been spared that fate, it was a cause of enormous relief to them, obviously, but it is a cause of the most immense pride as well. Only 192 died at Marathon, most of them on the beaches. And the Athenians saw them as heroes of the city, men who had died for freedom. And so, for the first and only time in Athenian history, they are buried on the field where
56:41 Tom Holland? they had fallen and a great tomb is raised over the ashes of the 192 dead Athenians and it's adorned with marble slabs listing the fallen. And you can still visit the site of that mound to this day. It's a very moving place to visit. And on the Acropolis, a great new temple is begun, which effectively is designed as a colossal war memorial.
57:03 Dominic Sandbrook? But the big legacy is kind of cultural and ideological, isn't it? Which is that, you know, you said earlier, no Greek army had ever beaten the Persians in open battle. And so for the Athenians in particular, this is a transformative moment in their self-image, presumably, in their relationship with the superpower to the east.
57:22 Tom Holland? Yeah, because that sense, I think, of a kind of instinctive cringe before the Persians has gone. And although there remains fear of what the Persians might be able to do, that fear is now kind of tinged with a sense of contempt. And it's telling that in the wake of Marathon, the Athenians start applying a new word to the Persians that they hadn't previously used. And this is barbaroi or barbarians. And literally it means kind of the speakers of gibberish, people who don't speak Greek. And it conveys a sense of these gibberish speakers as kind of numberless, alien,
58:03 Tom Holland? jabbering, a reflection of what the Athenians had seen on the heights above Marathon when they looked down at the plain and gazed at the Asiatic hordes. And it's not just the Athenians who have had their confidence boosted. I think the whole of Greece has learnt an invaluable lesson, which is that the Persians aren't invincible, that the barbarians can be defeated, that the Colossus has feet of clay. You know, you defeat a superpower and inevitably it's going to convince you that even if the superpower comes back at you again, you might be able to see them off. And this, of course, is what duly happens because on one level plainly, the Battle of Marathon isn't decisive at all because 10 years later,
58:46 Tom Holland? in 480 B.C., the Persians are back and this time with a vastly greater force and led in person by their king, the son of Darius Xerxes. And this time the Athenians do not meet the Persians with their infantry. They meet them with a fleet at the Battle of Salamis. And they're commanded at Salamis by Themistocles, the young general who had been in command of his tribe at the centre of the weakened Athenian battle line at Marathon. And you could say that Salamis, because it's a great victory for Athens and for the Greeks, and it effectively destroys the hopes of the Persians of conquering Greece, that that's more decisive than Marathon.
59:29 Tom Holland? But I think Marathon does deserve to be seen as decisive and for two reasons. I think that...
59:37 Tom Holland? Had Athens been defeated, destroyed, burned, the Persians would have been back. And I think the Spartans might have resisted, but I don't think anyone else would have done. So I think that the victor at Marathon gives not just Athens, but all the cities of Greece that decide to resist the Persian invasion, it gives them the backbone to do that. And I do also think that had Athens been annihilated, as Melitus had been annihilated, as Eretrea had been annihilated, then that would have had profound consequences for the future. So its democracy would have been pretty much stillborn. Its cultural impact would have been immense. No Parthenon, no tragedy, no Thucydides.
1:00:19 Tom Holland? In fact, probably no Herodotus. Herodotus probably would not have been inspired to write his great history. And also, it would have had an incalculable impact on the development of philosophy. And I think particularly Plato, because it's very difficult to imagine the emergence of either Christianity or Islam without the legacy of Plato's influence. So to quote Volta Burkhardt in Greek religion, "Since Plato, there has been no theology which has not stood in his shadow. For many centuries, Platonism was simply the way in which God was thought of and spoken about in the West, as in the Islamic East." And so obviously, that sense, the fact that Athens is going to be a crucial influence on the lands of what become the Caliphate, as well as on Christendom, complicates any
1:01:04 Tom Holland? notion of Marathon, I think, as a binary conflict between West and East. And in fact, throughout these two episodes, the comparisons that we've been drawing, the modern comparison, has been between Persia and America. I mean, I think, I think America in the invading Afghanistan and in the Gulf Wars corresponds much more closely to Persia than to Athens.
1:01:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Agree completely, because it's the superpower, you know, acting against rogue states on the periphery. It's so funny that the self-image, I mean, you mentioned that the Battle of Marathon is very, very popular among American commentators on the right, often, kind of historically informed commentators. But they always see themselves as the Athenians, don't they? Never as the Persians.
1:01:48 Tom Holland? Right. And when George Bush talked about an axis of evil, that, I mean, that's language that would have meant nothing to the Athenians, but it would absolutely have meant everything to the Persians.
1:02:00 Tom Holland? Greece and Athens are obviously massive, massive influences on the West, but so too is Persia. It's just that the influence of Persia is so occluded.
1:02:09 Dominic Sandbrook? Surely the current president is much more a Persian figure than a Greek figure, isn't he?
1:02:14 Tom Holland? Yeah, on top of it. And I think also that the notion of it as a battle between despotism and liberty is also complicated because in due course, after the defeat of the second invasion, after the great Athenian victory in the naval battle at Salamis, Athens emerges from the Persian wars as a great power herself and as an imperial power. And many of the Greek cities who initially are freed from the great king's rule in the wake of the defeat of the Persian invasion by the Athenians, end up paying tribute to Athens herself. And that is what is used to fund the Parthenon, for instance. So the Parthenon is a great symbol of the Athenian democracy, but it's also a symbol of Athenian imperialism.
1:02:57 Tom Holland? And there is a case for saying that perhaps Greece would have been more peaceable had Athens been destroyed and had a kind of Pax Persica been established, had Greece been absorbed into the Persian Empire. Because the Persians knew how to run an empire. They would not have allowed the Peloponnesian War to break out and all the various other wars that ended up with Greece being conquered by Macedon.
1:03:23 Dominic Sandbrook? Interesting. So a quick question for you. If you had to do the sort of John Rawls experiments and take your chances, you don't know what you're going to be, you don't know how rich you're going to be or where you are going to fit on the social spectrum. If you had to take your chances in Athens, or indeed in Greece generally, in this period, or as a subject of the Persians, which would you choose?
1:03:45 Tom Holland? So if I was a Greek, I would probably opt for a Persian victory. I think my life would probably be better. But if I were an Athenian, I would vote for the Athenian victory because everything is in the balance for Athens. And I think that there is something heroic and noble about what
1:04:03 Tom Holland? The Athenians represented on the battlefield of Marathon, even with the the caveats that I've given.
1:04:09 Dominic Sandbrook? But if you were in one of the other Greek, the many other Greek cities, you would have, you would have wanted the Persians to win.
1:04:15 Tom Holland? So as a Greek ignorant of what is going to come, no, I wouldn't. I would have wanted the Persians defeated. Of course I would, you know, but looking ahead to what happens in the Peloponnesian War and all the horrors that are consequent on Athens's rise to greatness, I might perhaps, I don't know.
1:04:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Okay.
1:04:32 Tom Holland? But I think none of this is to diminish, I think, the glory of of what the Athenians achieved at Marathon. I think the admiration of the ages is justified. They were fighting for their liberty, if not necessarily for the liberty of Greece. And I think that their courage in going down that slope into the plain to meet with an enemy that no Greek army had ever defeated before, I think it is. I mean, if that's not heroic, then nothing is heroic. And so I think that their victory at Marathon, even though it is reductive to cast it as the victory of the West over the East, or of Europe over Asia, or of freedom over
1:05:11 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
1:05:11 Tom Holland? despotism, I think it is a battle that is both epic and glorious. And, you know, I've I've found it kind of a stirring narrative since childhood. And it still stirs me to this day, I have to say.
1:05:23 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, people who who want a a rip roaring, dramatic retelling of that story, they could read Herodotus, but they could also read Holland in your book, Persian Fire.
1:05:34 Tom Holland? Or they could read both.
1:05:35 Dominic Sandbrook? If they had to choose one, would you recommend yourself or Herodotus?
1:05:38 Tom Holland? I think I'd recommend myself.
1:05:40 Dominic Sandbrook? I'm glad you back yourself. That's definitely the vibe of this podcast.
1:05:44 Tom Holland? And Dominic, of course, we've talked about the, you know, this is a battle for freedom and liberty and it's heroic and everything. Not every war is heroic, is it? There are wars that are bogged down in mud and stalemate.
1:05:58 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, next week we will be in the First World War. We'll be in 1915. So we will be in the trenches as the first gas attacks, as the first gas drifts across the battlefield. We'll be in the mountainous borderlands between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire for the White War, and we'll be on the beaches of Gallipoli for one of the most infamous military disasters of the 20th century. So lots to come. But Tom, thank you very much for that stirring narrative. And I remind listeners that if you want to read more about the Battle of Marathon, about Athens and Persia, there is no better place to do it than in the pages of Dan Brown's Persian Fire. And I'm sure that there'll be more about
1:06:43 Dominic Sandbrook? this in the newsletter, won't there? Surely you'll be doing something about this in the newsletter.
1:06:47 Tom Holland? I imagine so.
1:06:48 Dominic Sandbrook? And actually, Rest is History Club members will be able to get lots of that First World War content before anybody else.
1:06:55 Tom Holland? Unbelievable value, isn't it? We keep saying it.
1:06:57 Dominic Sandbrook? All right. Thank you very much, Tom. Thank you, everybody. Bye bye.
1:06:59 Tom Holland? Bye bye.
1:07:12 Speaker 03 Hello, it's Anita again from Empire. And here's a clip from our mini series on the extraordinary story of the Dutch East India Company in the 1600s.
1:07:24 Speaker 03 And it revolves around this tiny dried seed that you might have seen in your kitchens. I mean, if you've ever made a beshamal sauce, or mulled wine, or pumpkin pie, or in India, very much use masala chai. I mean, a staple of everyday, nutmeg is your go to spice.
1:07:40 Speaker 02 Of course, masala chai's got nutmeg in it.
1:07:42 Speaker 03 Masala chai's got nutmeg. If it's a good masala chai, it will have cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon. You know, it was attributed, or it was credited with so many magical powers, Giles. I mean, I was looking up cure for flatulence, cure for dysentery, a hallucinogen, blood poisoning. I mean, was there anything they thought it didn't do?
1:08:03 Speaker 02 It did it all. It did it all.
1:08:06 Speaker 04 It cured the bloody phlox, as they said, the dysentery that they were all getting. But I think really, as you say, aphrodisiac, I mean, when you're trying to sell something for vast prices, you add all these properties onto it. And I suppose nutmeg in the 1600s was a cross between Viagra and cocaine, which you mentioned earlier. And this made it extraordinarily valuable, but particularly that physicians claimed it could cure the plague, the pestiferous pestilence, as it was called, which has caused, you know, cut a swathe through the population of London at the time. And so they claimed that if you had a bit of nutmeg stuffed into all these bizarre nasal caps that they wore, they used to breathe through this concoction of spices, of which
1:08:51 Speaker 04 nutmeg was the key ingredient.
1:08:52 Speaker 02 When you go to Venice and you see those beaks that they sell for Venetian outfits, that I think was also an anti-plague nutmeg holder.
1:09:04 Speaker 04 You're absolutely right. Those beaks were filled with spices and it was claimed that if you breathed through those spices, you wouldn't get the plague. Now, obviously, it was complete nonsense, but everyone believed it at the time. And that was the important bit because it meant that everyone wanted these spices, which meant that the prices remained extraordinarily high.
1:09:22 Speaker 03 And they had celebrity believers as well. I mean, Peeps is one of those people who swore by the stuff. He said, you know, this is the only thing that saved me while others have died around me.
1:09:30 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, there's a wonderful account in my book, actually, Peeps going down to the docks on a late one night and doing this backhanded deal in the darkness where he shoves a few gold coins into the hands of some sea dog and in exchange, he's given a small sack load of nutmeg. So, yeah, this was, you know, almost black market industry was going on in London at the time. Such was the value of this spice.
1:09:57 Speaker 02 We hope you enjoyed that clip. Listen to the mini series today if you did by searching Empire World History wherever you get your podcasts.
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