BATTLE OF MARATHON

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 63, 6 September 1940, Page 8

BATTLE OF MARATHON

(490 B.C.): The first of the European tribes or traces to establish some semblance of national unity were the Greeks. The old civilisations had been magnificent edifices in their prime, but all had depended upon the personality of despotic Tulers, Learning and inquiry had flourished only at the pleasure of the despots. Around the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean, around the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, unity had been built up; but only at the points of spear and sword. Inevitably, as the emphasis of the different rulers changed or deteriorated, learning was either ignored or twisted to serve the single purpose of increasing power. It degenerated into cults and superstitions. With the Greeks, learning for the first time became a general currency. The Greek tribes were not always united. Within Greece as we know the boundaries now, there was often dissension, often war. But inside the walls of the rival cities the same spirit of inquiry flourished and nourished itself upon the first forme of the democratic ideal. In Athens it came to its brightest flowering, and to Athens came the task, in 490 B.C., of stemming the aggressions of the Medes and Persians, Datis landed a great army at Marathon, a plain by the coastline of Greece,

close to Athens. The small Greek army held the heights. It was mainly Athenian, reinforced by a small body of Plaeteans. Persuaded by Miltiades, the Greek generals resolved to attack the superior numbers of the, Medes. They won, and so began the tradition of European dominance which ever since has made the Dardanelles a boundary between Order and Confusion,