Battle of Marathon

The Battle of Marathon was fought in 490 BCE on the plain of Marathon northeast of Athens, when an outnumbered Athenian army, joined by a small force from Plataea, defeated a Persian invasion force sent by King Darius I to punish Athens and Eretria for their support of the Ionian Revolt against Persian rule. Under the command of the Athenian general Miltiades, the Greek hoplites employed a deliberately weakened center and reinforced flanks to envelop and rout the Persian infantry, inflicting what the ancient historian Herodotus records as roughly 6,400 Persian dead against only 192 Athenian losses, figures modern historians treat as broadly indicative of a lopsided victory even if not precisely reliable. The victory, achieved without Spartan assistance, which arrived too late after a religious festival delayed their march, became a defining moment of Athenian civic pride and is traditionally associated with the legend of a messenger who ran to Athens to announce the victory before collapsing, the origin of the modern marathon footrace. The battle ended the first Persian invasion of Greece, though Darius's son Xerxes I would launch a much larger invasion a decade later.