Quick questions on The Ionian Revolt and the Battle of Marathon: HSC Ancient History

The Greek cities of Ionia had been Persian subjects since 546 BC. Persian rule was administered through Greek tyrants installed by the satrap at Sardis. The tyrants were unpopular: they ruled in Persian interest and were the principal beneficiaries of Persian protection.

The appeal for help (498 BC). Aristagoras visited Sparta. King Cleomenes refused after Aristagoras admitted that Susa was three months' march from the coast (Herodotus 5.50). Aristagoras then visited Athens, which voted 20 triremes, and Eretria, which sent five. Herodotus (5.97) calls this Athenian vote "the beginning of evils for Greeks and barbarians."

Mardonius, Darius's son-in-law, led an expedition through Thrace and Macedonia to bring them firmly into the empire. The fleet was wrecked rounding Cape Athos (Herodotus 6.44): 300 ships and 20,000 men lost. The land army suffered Thracian attacks. The expedition retreated.

Darius sent heralds to the Greek cities demanding "earth and water" (the tokens of submission). Most islands and several mainland states gave them. Athens threw the heralds into a pit; Sparta threw them down a well, telling them to fetch earth and water for the king (Herodotus 7.133).

Darius sent a fleet-borne expedition under Datis (a Mede) and Artaphernes (Darius's nephew), with the exiled Athenian tyrant Hippias as adviser.

Athenian response. The Assembly voted to march out, on the motion of Miltiades (one of the ten elected generals, formerly tyrant of the Thracian Chersonese, with personal knowledge of Persian methods). The Athenian army of around 9,000 hoplites moved to the plain. Plataea sent 1,000 hoplites in solidarity.

After the battle the Persian fleet sailed for Phaleron to land at the Athenian port. The Athenian phalanx force-marched back to Athens, around 40 km, and arrived in time to deter a Persian landing. Datis withdrew. Athens commemorated the dead with a polyandreion (mass grave mound) on the battlefield and an annual festival, the Marathonomachoi.

Tactics. Miltiades's thinning of the centre and his use of the run across the killing ground to close before the Persian archery told.

Herodotus, Histories 6.94 to 117. The major source. Written in the 440s and 430s BC, drawing on Athenian oral tradition.

Tyrant of Miletus, deputising for his father-in-law Histiaeus (held at the Persian court). In 500 BC Aristagoras led a Persian expedition against Naxos that failed. Fearing punishment, he raised revolt in 499 BC, deposed the tyrants of the Ionian cities, and proclaimed isonomia (equal political rights).

Herodotus (5.35) reports that Histiaeus, at Susa, encouraged the revolt by tattooing the message on the shaved head of a slave, which grew back hair to conceal it.

The tribute burden under Darius's reorganisation (the Ionian cities paid 400 talents annually), Persian interference in succession at the tyrannies, and the loss of trade outlets after Persian campaigns in Thrace and Scythia.

Aristagoras visited Sparta. King Cleomenes refused after Aristagoras admitted that Susa was three months' march from the coast (Herodotus 5.50). Aristagoras then visited Athens, which voted 20 triremes, and Eretria, which sent five.

The Ionian and Athenian force marched inland from Ephesus and seized Sardis, the capital of the Lydian satrapy. The lower city burned, including the temple of Cybele. The Persian garrison held the acropolis.

Persian armies systematically recovered Ionia and Caria. The decisive battle was at Lade (494 BC), off Miletus, where the Persian fleet (mostly Phoenician) defeated a Greek fleet of around 350 triremes. Miletus was sacked.