But the Persians, with their slight wicker shields, destitute of body-armor, and never taught by training to keep the even front and act with the regular movement of the Greek infantry, fought at heavy disadvantage with their shorter and feebler weapons against the compact array of well-armed Athenian and Platæan spearmen, all perfectly drilled to perform each necessary evolution in concert, and to preserve a uniform and unwavering line in battle. In personal courage and in bodily activity the Persians were not inferior to their adversaries. Their spirits were not yet cowed by the recollection of former defeats; and they lavished their lives freely, rather than forfeit the fame which they had won by so many victories. While their rear ranks poured an incessant shower of arrows[1] over the heads of their comrades, the foremost Persians kept rushing forward, sometimes singly, sometimes in desperate groups of twelve or ten upon the projecting spears of the Greeks, striving to force a lane into the phalanx, and to bring their cimeters and daggers into play.[2] But the Greeks felt their superiority, and though the fatigue of the long-continued action told heavily on their inferior numbers, the sight of the carnage that they dealt upon their assailants nerved them to fight still more fiercely on.
At last the previously unvanquished lords of Asia turned their backs and fled, and the Greeks followed, striking them down, to the water's edge,[3] where the invaders were now hastily launching their galleys, and seeking to embark and fly. Flushed with
- ↑
Ἐμαχόμεσθ’ αὐτοῖσι, θῦμον ὀξίνην πεπωκότες,
Στὰς ἀνὴρ παρ’ ἄνδρ’, ὑπ’ ὀργῆς τὴν χελύνην ἐσθίων·
Ὑπὸ δὲ τῶν τοξευμάτων οὐκ ἦν ἰδεῖν τὸν οὐρανόν.Aristoph., Vespæ, 1082. - ↑ See the description in the 62d section of the ninth book of Herodotus of the gallantry shown by the Persian infantry against the Lacedæmonians at Platæa. We have no similar detail of the fight at Marathon, but we know that it was long and obstinately contested (see the 113th section of the sixth book of Herodotus, and the lines from the Vespæ already quoted), and the spirit of the Persians must have been even higher at Marathon than at Platæa. In both battles it was only the true Persians and the Sacæ who showed this valor: the other Asiatics fled like sheep.
- ↑
The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow;
The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear;
Mountains above, Earth's, Ocean's plain below,
Death in the front, Destruction in the rear!
Such was the scene.—Byron's Childe Harold.
