Marathon: Freedom or Death

Historical Afterword

As closely as possible, this novel follows the road of history. But history — especially Archaic Greek history — can be more like a track in the forest than a road with a kerb. I have attempted to make sense of Herodotus and his curiously modern tale of nation states, betrayal, terrorism and heroism. I have read most of the secondary sources, and I have found most of them wanting.

The Persians were not ‘bad’. The Greeks were not ‘good’. And since both cultures grew from the same roots, ‘Western’ civilization would probably have been much the same had the Persians remained the world empire. Or so I believe.

And yet, and yet. . the complex web of decisions, betrayals and conspiracies in Herodotus somehow gave birth to the first real attempt at democracy — at least, the first of which we know. I have done my best to make this element of the story as essential as the fighting — to try and show how the small men gained political power, despite the overwhelming power of landowners and an ancient aristocracy.

It is nothing but facile error to see Athenian democracy as bearing any resemblance to the United States, Great Britain or any other modern democracy except in the most general way. There were no ‘middle-class hoplites’ in the front ranks. Aristocrats led the demos in every walk of life, and at war they served in front, in their superior armour, with their superior training, and the evidence for this is on every page of the literature, and only the most pig-headed myth-making can ignore it. In the period of which I write, the ‘phalanx’ as we now imagine it was just being born. Indeed, one possible reading of Herodotus would suggest that the ‘phalanx’ was born at Marathon. Archers and light-armed men still served in the front lines, and heroic aristocrats still fought duels — or so the art and literature suggest, however the idea is disliked by current historians, especially ‘military’ historians.

In fact, there were few middle-class hoplites because our modern notions of class didn’t exist. A poor man, like Socrates, might still be an aristocrat to his finger ends. A rich man, like the former slave who gave a thousand aspides to support the rearming of Athens in the fourth century, remained a former slave. Unless the term ‘middle class’ has no other meaning than to stand as a group between the poor and the rich, it can’t be made to apply.

And finally, or perhaps first, it may be that only the veterans among my readers will know the truth that military historians often cannot stomach — that all races and breeds are equally brave or cowardly, regardless of government, loyalty, race, creed or sexual preference. That all men lose combat effectiveness with fatigue and confusion.

That only a few men are killers, and they are supremely dangerous.

Really, friends, it is all in the Iliad. And when my inspiration failed, I always went back to the Iliad, like a man returning to the source of pure water. I have enormous respect for the modern works of many historians, classical and modern. But they weren’t there.

I have seen war — never the war of the spear and shield, but war. And when I read the Iliad, it comes to me as being true. Not, perhaps, true about Troy. But true about war. Homer did not love war. Achilles is not the best man in the Iliad. War is ugly.

Arimnestos of Plataea was a real man. I hope that I’ve done him justice.