A History of Ancient Greece
Battle Of Marathon
Author: Creasy, Sir Edward Shepherd
Part I.
B.C. 490
Introduction
Marathon! A name to conjure up such visions of glory as few battlefields
have ever shown. Heroism and determination on the part of the Athenians,
supported by the small but ever noble band of Plataeans who came to their aid;
who can read the repulse of the Persians on this ever memorable plain without
experiencing a thrill of admiration and delight at the achievement? The whole
world since that battle has looked upon it as a victory of the under dog.
Many of the great engagements of modern times have been likened unto it. For
long it has been the synonym of brave despair; the conquering of an enemy many
times superior in numbers to its opponent.
This attempt of the Persians on the Greeks was not the first against
them. That took place B.C. 493 under Mardonius. This commander had reduced
Ionia, dethroned the despots, and established democracy throughout the land.
After this he turned his attention to Eretria and Athens, taking his army
across the straits in vessels. But the ships of war and transports were
wrecked by a mighty headwind as they rounded Mount Athos. Many were driven
ashore, about three hundred of them were totally lost, and some twenty
thousand men perished in the catastrophe.
All the trouble between the Persians and Greeks arose over the capture of
Sardis by the Ionians, B.C. 500. The city was burned, and then the Ionians
retreated. It was to avenge this that Persia determined on a punitive
expedition against the Greeks. The Ionians and Milesian men were mostly slain
by the Persians, the women and children led into captivity, and the temples in
the cities burned and razed to the ground. ^1
[Footnote 1: The year following the fall of the Ionic city of Miletus the poet
Phrynichus made it the subject of a tragedy. On bringing it on the stage he
was fined one thousand drachmae for having recalled to them their own
misfortunes. - Smith.]
In the battle of Marathon, which succeeded these events, we have a vivid
picture presented to us in Creasy's glowing words:
The Battle Of Marathon
Two thousand three hundred and forty years ago a council of Athenian
officers was summoned on the slope of one of the mountains that look over the
plain of Marathon, on the eastern coast of Attica. The immediate subject of
their meeting was to consider whether they should give battle to an enemy that
lay encamped on the shore beneath them; but on the result of their
deliberations depended, not merely the fate of two armies, but the whole
future progress of human civilization.
There were eleven members of that council of war. Ten were the generals
who were then annually elected at Athens, one for each of the local tribes
into which the Athenians were divided. Each general led the men of his own
tribe, and each was invested with equal military authority. But one of the
archons was also associated with them in the general command of the army. This
magistrate was termed the "Polemarch" or War-ruler. He had the privilege of
leading the right wing of the army in battle, and his vote in a council of war
was equal to that of any of the generals. A noble Athenian named Callimachus
was the war-ruler of this year, and, as such, stood listening to the earnest
discussion of the ten generals. They had, indeed, deep matter for anxiety,
though little aware how momentous to mankind were the votes they were about to
give, or how the generations to come would read with interest the record of
their discussions. They saw before them the invading forces of a mighty
empire, which had in the last fifty years shattered and enslaved nearly all
the kingdoms and principal cities of the then known world. They knew that all
the resources of their own country were comprised in the little army intrusted
to their guidance. They saw before them a chosen host of the great king, sent
to wreak his special wrath on that country and on the other insolent little
Greek community which had dared to aid his rebels and burn the capital of one
of his provinces. That victorious host had already fulfilled half its mission
of vengeance.
Eretria, the confederate of Athens in the bold march against Sardis nine
years before, had fallen in the last few days; and the Athenian generals could
discern from the heights the island of Aegilia, in which the Persians had
deposited their Eretrian prisoners, whom they had reserved to be led away
captives into Upper Asia, there to hear their doom from the lips of King
Darius himself. Moreover, the men of Athens knew that in the camp before them
was their own banished tyrant, who was seeking to be reinstated by foreign
cimeters in despotic sway over any remnant of his countrymen that might
survive the sack of their town, and might be left behind as too worthless for
leading away into Median bondage.
The numerical disparity between the force which the Athenian commanders
had under them, and that which they were called on to encounter, was
hopelessly apparent to some of the council. The historians who wrote nearest
to the time of the battle do not pretend to give any detailed statements of
the numbers engaged, but there are sufficient data for our making a general
estimate. Every free Greek was trained to military duty; and, from the
incessant border wars between the different states, few Greeks reached the age
of manhood without having seen some service. But the muster-roll of free
Athenian citizens of an age fit for military duty never exceeded thirty
thousand, and at this epoch probably did not amount to two-thirds of that
number. Moreover, the poorer portion of these were unprovided with the
equipments, and untrained to the operations of the regular infantry. Some
detachments of the best-armed troops would be required to garrison the city
itself and man the various fortified posts in the territory, so that it is
impossible to reckon the fully equipped force that marched from Athens to
Marathon, when the news of the Persian landing arrived, at higher than ten
thousand men. ^1
[Footnote 1: The historians, who lived long after the time of the battle, such
as Justin, Plutarch, and others, give ten thousand as the number of the
Athenian army. Not much reliance could be placed on their authority if
unsupported by other evidence; but a calculation made for the number of the
Athenian free population remarkably confirms it.]
With one exception, the other Greeks held back from aiding them. Sparta
had promised assistance, but the Persians had landed on the sixth day of the
moon, and a religious scruple delayed the march of Spartan troops till the
moon should have reached its full. From one quarter only, and that from a
most unexpected one, did Athens receive aid at the moment of her great peril.
Some years before this time the little state of Plataea in Boeotia, being
hard pressed by her powerful neighbor, Thebes, had asked the protection of
Athens, and had owed to an Athenian army the rescue of her independence. Now
when it was noised over Greece that the Mede had come from the uttermost parts
of the earth to destroy Athens, the brave Plataeanns, unsolicited, marched
with their whole force to assist the defence, and to share the fortunes of
their benefactors.
The general levy of the Plataeans amounted only to a thousand men; and
this little column, marching from their city along the southern ridge of Mount
Cithaeron, and thence across the Attic territory, joined the Athenian forces
above Marathon almost immediately before the battle. The reenforcement was
numerically small, but the gallant spirit of the men who composed it must have
made it of tenfold value to the Athenians, and its presence must have gone far
to dispel the cheerless feeling of being deserted and friendless, which the
delay of the Spartan succors was calculated to create among the Athenian
ranks. ^1
[Footnote 1: Mr. Grote observes that "this volunteer march of the whole
Plataean force to Marathon is one of the most affecting incidents of all
Grecian history." In truth, the whole career of Plataea, and the friendship,
strong, even unto death, between her and Athens form one of the most affecting
episodes in the history of antiquity. In the Peloponnesian war the Plataeans
again were true to the Athenians against all risks, and all calculation of
self-interest: and the destruction of Plataea was the consequence. There are
few nobler passages in the classics than the speech in which the Plataean
prisoners of war, after the memorable siege of their city, justify before
their Spartan executioners their loyal adherence to Athens.]
This generous daring of their weak but true-hearted ally was never
forgotten at Athens. The Plataeans were made the civil fellow-countrymen of
the Athenians, except the right of exercising certain political functions; and
from that time forth in the solemn sacrifices at Athens, the public prayers
were offered up for a joint blessing from Heaven upon the Athenians, and the
Plataeans also.
After the junction of the column from Plataea, the Athenian commanders
must have had under them about eleven thousand fully armed and disciplined
infantry, and probably a large number of irregular light-armed troops; as,
besides the poorer citizens who went to the field armed with javelins,
cutlasses, and targets, each regular heavy-armed soldier was attended in the
camp by one or more slaves, who were armed like the inferior freemen. Cavalry
or archers the Athenians (on this occasion) had none, and the use in the field
of military engines was not at that period introduced into ancient warfare.
Contrasted with their own scanty forces, the Greek commanders saw
stretched before them, along the shores of the winding bay, the tents and
shipping of the varied nations who marched to do the bidding of the king of
the Eastern world. The difficulty of finding transports and of securing
provisions would form the only limit to the numbers of a Persian army. Nor is
there any reason to suppose the estimate of Justin exaggerated, who rates at a
hundred thousand the force which on this occasion had sailed, under the
satraps Datis and Artaphernes, from the Cilician shores against the devoted
coasts of Euboea and Attica. And after largely deducting from this total, so
as to allow for mere mariners and camp followers, there must still have
remained fearful odds against the national levies of the Athenians.
Nor could Greek generals then feel that confidence in the superior
quality of their troops, which ever since the battle of Marathon has animated
Europeans in conflicts with Asiatics, as, for instance, in the after struggles
between Greece and Persia, or when the Roman legions encountered the myriads
of Mithradates and Tigranes, or as is the case in the Indian campaigns of our
own regiments. On the contrary, up to the day of Marathon the Medes and
Persians were reputed invincible. They had more than once met Greek troops in
Asia Minor, in Cyprus, in Egypt, and had invariably beaten them.
Nothing can be stronger than the expressions used by the early Greek
writers respecting the terror which the name of the Medes inspired, and the
prostration of men's spirits before the apparently resistless career of the
Persian arms. It is, therefore, little to be wondered at that five of the ten
Athenian generals shrank from the prospect of fighting a pitched battle
against an enemy so superior in numbers and so formidable in military renown.
Their own position on the heights was strong and offered great advantages to a
small defending force against assailing masses. They deemed it mere
foolhardiness to descend into the plain to be trampled down by the Asiatic
horse, overwhelmed with the archery, or cut to pieces by the invincible
veterans of Cambyses and Cyrus.
Moreover, Sparta, the great war state of Greece, had been applied to, and
had promised succor to Athens, though the religious observance which the
Dorians paid to certain times and seasons had for the present delayed their
march. Was it not wise, at any rate, to wait till the Spartans came up, and
to have the help of the best troops in Greece, before they exposed themselves
to the shock of the dreaded Medes?
Specious as these reasons might appear, the other five generals were for
speedier and bolder operations. And, fortunately for Athens and for the
world, one of them was a man, not only of the highest military genius, but
also of that energetic character which impresses its own type and ideas upon
spirits feebler in conception.
Miltiades was the head of one of the noblest houses at Athens. He ranked
the Aeacidae among his ancestry, and the blood of Achilles flowed in the veins
of the hero of Marathon. One of his immediate ancestors had acquired the
dominion of the Thracian Chersonese, and thus the family became at the same
time Athenian citizens and Thracian princes. This occurred at the time when
Pisistratus was tyrant of Athens. Two of the relatives of Miltiades - an
uncle of the same name, and a brother named Stesagoras - had ruled the
Chersonese before Miltiades became its prince. He had been brought up at
Athens in the house of his father, Cimon, ^1 who was renowned throughout
Greece for his victories in the Olympic chariot-races, and who must have been
possessed of great wealth.
[Footnote 1: Herodotus.]
The sons of Pisistratus, who succeeded their father in the tyranny at
Athens, caused Cimon to be assassinated; but they treated the young Miltiades
with favor and kindness and when his brother Stesagoras died in the
Chersonese, they sent him out there as lord of the principality. This was
about twenty-eight years before the battle of Marathon, and it is with his
arrival in the Chersonese that our first knowledge of the career and character
of Miltiades commences. We find, in the first act recorded of him, the proof
of the same resolute and unscrupulous spirit that marked his mature age. His
brother's authority in the principality had been shaken by war and revolt:
Miltiades determined to rule more securely. On his arrival he kept close
within his house, as if he was mourning for his brother. The principal men of
the Chersonese, hearing of this, assembled from all the towns and districts,
and went together to the house of Miltiades, on a visit of condolence. As
soon as he had thus got them in his power, he made them all prisoners. He
then asserted and maintained his own absolute authority in the peninsula,
taking into his pay a body of five hundred regular troops, and strengthening
his interest by marrying the daughter of the king of the neighboring
Thracians.
When the Persian power was extended to the Hellespont and its
neighborhood, Miltiades, as prince of the Chersonese, submitted to King
Darius; and he was one of the numerous tributary rulers who led their
contingents of men to serve in the Persian army, in the expedition against
Scythia. Miltiades and the vassal Greeks of Asia Minor were left by the
Persian king in charge of the bridge across the Danube, when the invading army
crossed that river, and plunged into the wilds of the country that now is
Russia, in vain pursuit of the ancestors of the modern Cossacks. On learning
the reverses that Darius met with in the Scythian wilderness, Miltiades
proposed to his companions that they should break the bridge down and leave
the Persian king and his army to perish by famine and the Scythian arrows.
The rulers of the Asiatic Greek cities, whom Miltiades addressed, shrank from
this bold but ruthless stroke against the Persian power, and Darius returned
in safety.
But it was known what advice Miltiades had given, and the vengeance of
Darius was thenceforth specially directed against the man who had counselled
such a deadly blow against his empire and his person. The occupation of the
Persian arms in other quarters left Miltiades for some years after this in
possession of the Chersonese; but it was precarious and interrupted. He,
however, availed himself of the opportunity which his position gave him of
conciliating the good-will of his fellow-countrymen at Athens, by conquering
and placing under the Athenian authority the islands of Lemnos and Imbros, to
which Athens had ancient claims, but which she had never previously been able
to bring into complete subjection.
At length, in B.C. 494, the complete suppression of the Ionian revolt by
the Persians left their armies and fleets at liberty to act against the
enemies of the Great King to the west of the Hellespont. A strong squadron of
Phoenician galleys was sent against the Chersonese. Miltiades knew that
resistance was hopeless, and while the Phoenicians were at Tenedos, he loaded
five galleys with all the treasure that he could collect, and sailed away for
Athens. The Phoenicians fell in with him, and chased him hard along the north
of the Aegean. One of his galleys, on board of which was his eldest son
Metiochus, was actually captured. But Miltiades, with the other four,
succeeded in reaching the friendly coast of Imbros in safety. Thence he
afterward proceeded to Athens, and resumed his station as a free citizen of
the Athenian commonwealth.
The Athenians, at this time, had recently expelled Hippias the son of
Pisistratus, the last of their tyrants. They were in the full glow of their
newly recovered liberty and equality; and the constitutional changes of
Clisthenes had inflamed their republican zeal to the utmost. Miltiades had
enemies at Athens; and these, availing themselves of the state of popular
feeling, brought him to trial for his life for having been tyrant of the
Chersonese. The charge did not necessarily import any acts of cruelty or
wrong to individuals: it was founded on no specific law; but it was based on
the horror with which the Greeks of that age regarded every man who made
himself arbitrary master of his fellow-men, and exercised irresponsible
dominion over them.
The fact of Miltiades having so ruled in the Chersonese was undeniable;
but the question which the Athenians assembled in judgment must have tried,
was whether Miltiades, although tyrant of the Chersonese, deserved punishment
as an Athenian citizen. The eminent service that he had done the state in
conquering Lemnos and Imbros for it, pleaded strongly in his favor. The
people refused to convict him. He stood high in public opinion. And when the
coming invasion of the Persians was known, the people wisely elected him one
of their generals for the year.
Two other men of high eminence in history, though their renown was
achieved at a later period than that of Miltiades, were also among the ten
Athenian generals at Marathon. One was Themistocles, the future founder of
the Athenian navy, and the destined victor of Salamis. The other was
Aristides, who afterward led the Athenian troops at Plataea, and whose
integrity and just popularity acquired for his country, when the Persians had
finally been repulsed, the advantageous preeminence of being acknowledged by
half of the Greeks as their imperial leader and protector. It is not recorded
what part either Themistocles or Aristides took in the debate of the council
of war at Marathon. But, from the character of Themistocles, his boldness,
and his intuitive genius for extemporizing the best measures in every
emergency - a quality which the greatest of historians ascribes to him beyond
all his contemporaries - we may well believe that the vote of Themistocles was
for prompt and decisive action. On the vote of Aristides it may be more
difficult to speculate. His predilection for the Spartans may have made him
wish to wait till they came up; but, though circumspect, he was neither timid
as a soldier nor as a politician, and the bold advice of Miltiades may
probably have found in Aristides a willing, most assuredly it found in him a
candid, hearer.
Miltiades felt no hesitation as to the course which the Athenian army
ought to pursue; and earnestly did he press his opinion on his brother
generals. Practically acquainted with the organization of the Persian armies,
Miltiades felt convinced of the superiority of the Greek troops, if properly
handled; he saw with the military eye of a great general the advantage which
the position of the forces gave him for a sudden attack, and as a profound
politician he felt the perils of remaining inactive, and of giving treachery
time to ruin the Athenian cause.
One officer in the council of war had not yet voted. This was
Callimachus, the War-ruler. The votes of the generals were five and five, so
that the voice of Callimachus would be decisive.
On that vote, in all human probability, the destiny of all the nations of
the world depended. Miltiades turned to him, and in simple soldierly
eloquence - the substance of which we may read faithfully reported in
Herodotus, who had conversed with the veterans of Marathon - the great
Athenian thus adjured his countrymen to vote for giving battle:
"It now rests with you, Callimachus, either to enslave Athens, or, by
assuring her freedom, to win yourself an immortality of fame, such as not even
Harmodius and Aristogiton have acquired; for never, since the Athenians were a
people, were they in such danger as they are in at this moment. If they bow
the knee to these Medes, they are to be given up to Hippias, and you know what
they then will have to suffer. But if Athens comes victorious out of this
contest, she has it in her to become the first city of Greece. Your vote is
to decide whether we are to join battle or not. If we do not bring on a
battle presently, some factious intrigue will disunite the Athenians, and the
city will be betrayed to the Medes. But if we fight, before there is anything
rotten in the state of Athens, I believe that, provided the gods will give
fair play and no favor, we are able to get the best of it in an engagement."
The vote of the brave War-ruler was gained, the council determined to
give battle; and such was the ascendency and acknowledged military eminence of
Miltiades, that his brother generals one and all gave up their days of command
to him, and cheerfully acted under his orders. Fearful, however, of creating
any jealousy, and of so failing to obtain the vigorous cooperation of all
parts of his small army, Miltiades waited till the day when the chief command
would have come round to him in regular rotation before he led the troops
against the enemy.
The inaction of the Asiatic commanders during this interval appears
strange at first sight; but Hippias was with them, and they and he were aware
of their chance of a bloodless conquest through the machinations of his
partisans among the Athenians. The nature of the ground also explains in many
points the tactics of the opposite generals before the battle, as well as the
operations of the troops during the engagement.
The plain of Marathon, which is about twenty-two miles distant from
Athens, lies along the bay of the same name on the northeastern coast of
Attica. The plain is nearly in the form of a crescent, and about six miles in
length. It is about two miles broad in the centre, where the space between
the mountains and the sea is greatest, but it narrows toward either extremity,
the mountains coming close down to the water at the horns of the bay. There
is a valley trending inward from the middle of the plain, and a ravine comes
down to it to the southward. Elsewhere it is closely girt round on the land
side by rugged limestone mountains, which are thickly studded with pines,
olive-trees and cedars, and overgrown with the myrtle, arbutus, and the other
low odoriferous shrubs that everywhere perfume the Attic air.
The level of the ground is now varied by the mound raised over those who
fell in the battle, but it was an unbroken plain when the Persians encamped on
it. There are marshes at each end, which are dry in spring and summer and
then offer no obstruction to the horseman, but are commonly flooded with rain
and so rendered impracticable for cavalry in the autumn, the time of year at
which the action took place.
The Greeks, lying encamped on the mountains, could watch every movement
of the Persians on the plain below, while they were enabled completely to mask
their own. Miltiades also had, from his position, the power of giving battle
whenever he pleased, or of delaying it at his discretion, unless Datis were to
attempt the perilous operation of storming the heights.
If we turn to the map of the Old World, to test the comparative
territorial resources of the two states whose armies were now about to come
into conflict, the immense preponderance of the material power of the Persian
king over that of the Athenian republic is more striking than any similar
contrast which history can supply. It has been truly remarked that, in
estimating mere areas Attica, containing on its whole surface only seven
hundred square miles, shrinks into insignificance if compared with many a
baronial fief of the Middle Ages, or many a colonial allotment of modern
times. Its antagonist, the Persian, empire, comprised the whole of modern
Asiatic and much of modern European Turkey, the modern kingdom of Persia and
the countries of modern Georgia, Armenia, Balkh, the Punjaub, Afghanistan,
Beloochistan, Egypt and Tripoli.
Nor could a European, in the beginning of the fifth century before our
era, look upon this huge accumulation of power beneath the sceptre of a single
Asiatic ruler with the indifference with which we now observe on the map the
extensive dominions of modern Oriental sovereigns; for, as has been already
remarked, before Marathon was fought, the prestige of success and of supposed
superiority of race was on the side of the Asiatic against the European. Asia
was the original seat of human societies, and long before any trace can be
found of the inhabitants of the rest of the world having emerged from the
rudest barbarism, we can perceive that mighty and brilliant empires flourished
in the Asiatic continent. They appear before us through the twilight of
primeval history, dim and indistinct, but massive and majestic, like mountains
in the early dawn.
Instead, however, of the infinite variety and restless change which has
characterized the institutions and fortunes of European states ever since the
commencement of the civilization of our continent, a monotonous uniformity
pervades the histories of nearly all Oriental empires, from the most ancient
down to the most recent times. They are characterized by the rapidity of
their early conquests, by the immense extent of the dominions comprised in
them, by the establishment of a satrap or pashaw system of governing the
provinces, by an invariable and speedy degeneracy in the princes of the royal
house, the effeminate nurslings of the seraglio succeeding to the warrior
sovereigns reared in the camp, and by the internal anarchy and insurrections
which indicate and accelerate the decline and fall of these unwieldy and
ill-organized fabrics of power.
It is also a striking fact that the governments of all the great Asiatic
empires have in all ages been absolute despotisms. And Heeren is right in
connecting this with another great fact, which is important from its influence
both on the political and the social life of Asiatics. "Among all the
considerable nations of Inner Asia, the paternal government of every household
was corrupted by polygamy: where that custom exists, a good political
constitution is impossible. Fathers, being converted into domestic despots,
are ready to pay the same abject obedience to their sovereign which they exact
from their family and dependents in their domestic economy."
We should bear in mind, also, the inseparable connection between the
state religion and all legislation which has always prevailed in the East, and
the constant existence of a powerful sacerdotal body, exercising some check,
though precarious and irregular, over the throne itself, grasping at all civil
administration, claiming the supreme control of education, stereotyping the
lines in which literature and science must move, and limiting the extent to
which it shall be lawful for the human mind to prosecute its inquiries.
With these general characteristics rightly felt and understood it becomes
a comparatively easy task to investigate and appreciate the origin, progress
and principles of Oriental empires in general, as well as of the Persian
monarchy in particular. And we are thus better enabled to appreciate the
repulse which Greece gave to the arms of the East, and to judge of the
probable consequences to human civilization, if the Persians had succeeded in
bringing Europe under their yoke, as they had already subjugated the fairest
portions of the rest of the then known world.
The Greeks, from their geographical position, formed the natural
van-guard of European liberty against Persian ambition; and they preeminently
displayed the salient points of distinctive national character which have
rendered European civilization so far superior to Asiatic. The nations that
dwelt in ancient times around and near the northern shores of the
Mediterranean Sea were the first in our continent to receive from the East the
rudiments of art and literature, and the germs of social and political
organizations. Of these nations the Greeks, through their vicinity to Asia
Minor, Phoenicia, and Egypt, were among the very foremost in acquiring the
principles and habits of civilized life; and they also at once imparted a new
and wholly original stamp on all which they received. Thus, in their
religion, they received from foreign settlers the names of all their deities
and many of their rites, but they discarded the loathsome monstrosities of the
Nile, the Orontes, and the Ganges; they nationalized their creed, and their
own poets created their beautiful mythology. No sacerdotal caste ever existed
in Greece.
So, in their governments, they lived long under hereditary kings, but
never endured the permanent establishment of absolute monarchy. Their early
kings were constitutional rulers, governing with defined prerogatives. And
long before the Persian invasion, the kingly form of government had given way
in almost all the Greek states to republican institutions, presenting infinite
varieties of the blending or the alternate predominance of the oligarchical
and democratical principles. In literature and science the Greek intellect
followed no beaten track, and acknowledged no limitary rules. The Greeks
thought their subjects boldly out; and the novelty of a speculation invested
it in their minds with interest, and not with criminality.
Versatile, restless, enterprising, and self-confident, the Greeks
presented the most striking contrast to the habitual quietude and
submissiveness of the Orientals; and, of all the Greeks, the Athenians
exhibited these national characteristics in the strongest degree. This spirit
of activity and daring, joined to a generous sympathy for the fate of their
fellow-Greeks in Asia, had led them to join in the last Ionian war, and now
mingling with their abhorrence of the usurping family of their own citizens,
which for a period had forcibly seized on and exercised despotic power at
Athens, nerved them to defy the wrath of King Darius, and to refuse to receive
back at his bidding the tyrant whom they had some years before driven out.
The enterprise and genius of an Englishman have lately confirmed by fresh
evidence, and invested with fresh interest, the might of the Persian monarch
who sent his troops to combat at Marathon. Inscriptions in a character termed
the Arrow-headed, or Cuneiform, had long been known to exist on the marble
monuments at Persepolis, near the site of the ancient Susa, and on the faces
of rocks in other places formerly ruled over by the early Persian kings. But
for thousands of years they had been mere unintelligible enigmas to the
curious but baffled beholder; and they were often referred to as instances of
the folly of human pride, which could indeed write its own praises in the
solid rock, but only for the rock to outlive the language as well as the
memory of the vainglorious inscribers.
The elder Niebuhr, Grotefend, and Lassen, had made some guesses at the
meaning of the cuneiform letters; but Major Rawlinson of the East India
Company's service, after years of labor, has at last accomplished the glorious
achievement of fully revealing the alphabet and the grammar of this long
unknown tongue. He has, in particular, fully deciphered and expounded the
inscription on the sacred rock of Behistun, on the western frontiers of Media.
These records of the Achaemenidae have at length found their interpreter; and
Darius himself speaks to us from the consecrated mountain, and tells us the
names of the nations that obeyed him, the revolts that he suppressed, his
victories, his piety, and his glory.
Kings who thus seek the admiration of posterity are little likely to dim
the record of their successes by the mention of their occasional defeats; and
it throws no suspicion on the narrative of the Greek historians that we find
these inscriptions silent respecting the overthrow of Datis and Artaphernes,
as well as respecting the reverses which Darius sustained in person during his
Scythian campaigns. But these indisputable monuments of Persian fame confirm,
and even increase the opinion with which Herodotus inspires us of the vast
power which Cyrus founded and Cambyses increased; which Darius augmented by
Indian and Arabian conquests, and seemed likely, when he directed his arms
against Europe, to make the predominant monarchy of the world.
