Читать книгу Art of War - Sun-tzu - Страница 12

The Greeks had established colonies all along the coasts of Asia Minor, and through them much of the civilisation and something of the literature of Persia had drifted into the young confederacy. Presently Persia began to demand tribute of these colonies. The colonies resisted, and called for aid from the mother country, and a desultory warfare sprang up along the shores of Asia Minor. As a rule the Greeks were defeated. Persia’s people were numerous, the colonists few, and their troops untrained irregulars, but the ill-feeling between Greece and Persia was rapidly becoming intensified.

And now King Darius rallied all his energies for a final effort. For this purpose the force which was assembled on the great plain of Cilicia and in the adjacent waters was simply overpowering. Six hundred armed triremes or ships of war with three banks of oars, and full as many transports for horse and foot, were moored along the shores, and in the spring of 490 BCE, the greatest flotilla and the most numerous army ever yet massed, even by mighty Persia, set sail for Greece.

Late in August, unopposed, Median Datis disembarked his immense army upon the plain of Marathon, with the capital, Athens, only one day’s march away. Then it was that the great men of Athens sprang to the fore, and foremost among them was Miltiades, the same who had won the enmity of Darius years before. The ordinary formation of the Athenian phalanx of that day was in eight ranks, but in order to cover the Persian front Miltiades was compelled to reduce the depth to four ranks. His plan was daring. Placing Callimachus in command of the right wing with massed phalanxes in heavy charging columns, the Plataeans and two Athenian tribes being similarly disposed on the left, he deployed his remaining troops between them in long, slender line of battle.

It must have been about three o’clock on the afternoon of the 10th (probably) of August. Thousands of the Persian soldiery were dozing. Suddenly there comes a chorus of warning yells from the open plain, suddenly the camp rings from right to left with the wild blare of horns and trumpets sounding the alarm. There, midway to Pentelicus, with burnished helmet, shield, and spear, with ringing war-cry and serried ranks that sweep the full length of those of Asia, with perfect alignment and terrific impetus, for the first time in her history Greece comes, charging at a run. Leaving camp, leaving all behind them, bent only on the annihilation of that daring foe, the Persian army of the centre is artfully enticed out upon the open plain. All too late Datis sees the fatal blunder. North and south the spearmen of Plataea and Athens have closed upon the surging mass of his best and bravest. On three sides the resistless infantry of Greece hems in the hapless Persians, and now the carnage begins.

Marathon checked the hopes and schemes of Darius at once, sent the discomfited fleet and army back to the shores of Asia, and roused the valour and enthusiasm of Greece to the highest pitch. For ten valuable and much-improved years the shores of Greece saw no more of the Persian invaders.

(adapted from: Famous and decisive battles of the world by C. King)

Persian Warriors, from the Archer’s Frieze in Darius’ palace in Susa, c. 510 BCE.

Glazed bricks.

Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Jacques Louis David, Leonidas at Thermopylae, 1814.

Oil on canvas, 395 × 531 cm.

Musée du Louvre, Paris.