The Battle of Marathon

This battle took place in the year 490 B.C. It was a conflict between Athens and Persia. This conflict, or rather the first invasion of Greece by Persia, was Persia’s response to Athens’s involvement in the Ionian Revolt.

Before the battle had started, Athens had sent a runner to Sparta to request her aid against the invading force. Unfortunately, because they were in the middle of a religious festival, the Spartans could not come to the aid of the Greeks until at least ten days later.

As the two opposing sides clashed, there was a vast difference in the size of the troops. For Athens, according to Cornelius Nepos, a Roman biographer, and Plutarch, a Greek historian, there were 9000 Athenians and around 1000 Plataeans. As for  the Persians, their numbers varied between 200,000 and 600,000, though 200,000 was the only number repeated twice, by both Cornelius Nepos and Simonides, where they speculated that only half that amount was at Marathon, while the other half were part of the fleet that went on to try and attack Athens directly. However, modern historians place the Persian force somewhere around 20,000-100,000 men. Basically, if the Athenians had been defeated at Marathon, there would have been some serious problems.

When the Athenians launched an attack, the Persians were surprised, because up until now the mere mention of the Medes would send the Hellenes into a panic, and now here they were, charging in, toughing out the sight of the enemy in their dress in order to defeat them.

The battle ended when the Persians panicked, turned and ran, with the Athenians nipping at their heels. Because they did not have much knowledge of the area (really, if I was sending troops into enemy area, I would make sure to find out what kind of terrain I would send them into), an unknown number of them drowned in nearby swamps. Herodotus wrote that, in the end, 6400 Persian bodies were counted, while only 192 Athenians and 11 Plataens were counted.

So, what sorts of communication can one find by examining this battle?  Well, there was definitely a case of mediated communication, when Athens sent a runner to Sparta to request her aid in the upcoming battle. Usually, when one thinks of a media, a phone or a computer will probably come to mind. But they did not have those items back then, so they had to use runners, which, considering they were delivering a message and bringing back a reply, I would say counts as a media.

You can also find a case of miscommunication. This is easily seen in the Persians’ surprise at the Athenians’ charge. The Persians believed their opponents to still be afraid of them, so I bet they were completely shocked to see them charging. Clearly, no one had told them things would be different so close to one’s home turf.

According to Straw, words are a representation of reality and not reality itself. If words indeed represent reality, then could it mean that what we think of the details of The Battle of Marathon, could either be worse or even better than they really are? Translation is always a tricky business; some words could be merely misspelled or their meaning could be totally different…