Miltiades the Younger

Athenian general

• Born: c. 554 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Attica, Greece
• Died: 489 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Probably Athens, Greece

Through innovative tactics and inspired battlefield leadership, Miltiades led Athens to victory over the Persians at the Battle of Marathon. He thus helped to secure Greek civilization from engulfment by Near Eastern influences and greatly enhanced Athenian prestige in the Greek world.

Early Life

Very little is known about the first thirty years of Miltiades (mihl-TI-uh-deez) the Younger. His family and clan relationships, however, would prove to be highly influential in the shaping of his career, as was commonly the case in ancient Athens. He was born into the very old and wealthy Philaidae clan, whose members had long played an active part in Athenian politics. This family’s estates were located in rural Attica (the countryside that bordered Athens). As a member of a prominent, aristocratic family, Miltiades probably enjoyed the benefits of a fine education and certainly profited from extensive political connections.

Miltiades’ father, Cimon, however, was notorious for his failure to advance in the Athenian political arena, a source of considerable shame for aristocrats in Greek society. Cimon was also widely known for intellectual torpidity, a trait that earned for him the nickname koalemos, meaning “the nincompoop.” Nevertheless, his failure to earn a prominent place in public life was probably more a result of his opposition to the Pisistratidae clan, an aristocratic family and political faction that exercised an authoritarian rule over Athens from 560 to 510 b.c.e., with considerable popular support.

In order to secure his own place in politics, Miltiades was forced to disavow his father’s opinions and seek allies elsewhere. He did not have to search outside his own clan, because his uncle, Miltiades the Elder, and his older brother, Stesagoras, had acquiesced to Pisistratidaen rule and had been dispatched to the Chersonese (modern Gallipoli Peninsula) to conquer, colonize, and rule the region for Athens. In roughly 524 or 523, Miltiades served as archon, a judicial-administrative post that he secured through his acceptance of the Pisistratidaen tyranny.

Sometime before 514, Miltiades married an Athenian woman, about whom nothing definite is known. Some historians believe that she was a relative of the Pisistratidae. The couple had at least one child. Around 516, the Pisistratidae sent Miltiades to the Chersonese to assume the duties formerly performed by Miltiades the Elder and Stesagoras, both of whom had recently died childless. Miltiades would utilize this opportunity to achieve renown in the Aegean world.

Life’s Work

The Pisistratidae had entrusted Miltiades with an important assignment. By the latter half of the sixth century, Athens was importing unknown quantities of wheat from Black Sea regions through the Hellespontus strait to feed its burgeoning population. The Philaidae’s mission was to preserve free access to the waterway by protecting the coastal regions from the depredations of pirates, Thracian tribes, and those Greek cities on the Asian side of the Hellespontus. Ancient sources tell little about the quality of Miltiades’ service in the Chersonese, except that he continued the authoritarian rule over Athenian colonists and natives begun by his relations.

Miltiades’ fame had its origins in the events surrounding the Scythian expedition, undertaken by Darius the Great, king of Persia. The Persians had extended their rule over the Greek cities of eastern Asia Minor (known as Ionia) in 545 and governed this region through Greek tyrants supported by their armies. From Ionia, around 513, Darius launched the first Persian invasion of Europe, using the Greek fleets for logistical support. Initially, he was successful, subduing Thrace and reducing Miltiades to vassalage. Darius’s difficulties began when his army plunged into the lands of the Scythians, just north of the Danube River in modern Romania. The Persian army was doggedly harassed by the enemy and forced to retreat toward the Danubian boat-bridge maintained by the Ionians and their ships. At this crossing point, Miltiades urged the other Greeks to destroy the bridge and abandon Darius to his fate. Although his compatriots refused, Miltiades withdrew his forces to the Chersonese. His anti-Persian stand would serve him well politically in the future.

In the meantime, however, Darius’s escape across the Danube left Miltiades in a precarious position. As the Persians retreated through the Chersonese into Asia, they were pursued by the Scythians. Miltiades and his family were expelled from their small kingdom. His whereabouts during the next eighteen years are not made known by the ancient sources, but it is likely that he spent time at the court of Olorus, king of Thrace.

There, sometime between 513 and 510, he married Olorus’s daughter, Hegesipyle. The fate of his first wife is unknown. With his second wife he had four children: Cimon, destined to achieve greater fame than his father in the mid-fifth century as rival to Pericles and a founder of the Athenian Empire; Elpinice, a woman admired for her beauty and notorious for her free sexual behavior; and two other daughters whose names are unknown.

While Miltiades bided his time in exile, events in Ionia offered new political and military opportunities. In 499 the Ionian cities rose up in revolt against their Persian-imposed tyrants and thus began a six-year-long war in the eastern Aegean for Greek independence. Miltiades entered the fray in 495, when the inhabitants of the Chersonese invited him to return to rule over them. Installed once again in his kingdom, he used the Persians’ preoccupation with the Ionian Revolt to seize the islands of Lemnos and Imbros, turning them over to the Athenians.

The Persian riposte was not long in coming. After suppressing Ionian resistance, their attentions focused on the Chersonese. When a Phoenician fleet in the service of the Persians closed in on Miltiades, he fled for the island of Imbros. In 493 he arrived in Athens, armed with vast political, and especially military, experience and widely admired for his consistently anti-Persian stance.

Politics in the Athens to which Miltiades returned had changed significantly since the days of his youth. Hippias, the last of the Pisistratidaen tyrants, had been expelled in 510. Around 508, Cleisthenes had introduced democratic reforms to the Athenian constitution, a political maneuver that greatly increased the strength of his clan, the Alcmaeonidae. Aristocrats seeking political power were thus forced to court the favor of the populace more strongly than ever before. It was a political culture alien to Miltiades’ previous experience, but the looming Persian threat to Greek security—Athens had assisted the Ionian Revolt—made his military knowledge of the Persian Empire an important asset.

Traditionally, historians have viewed Athenian politics during the 490’s as a contest between political parties supporting well-defined ideologies. Some were appeasers of the Persians, while others were decidedly in favor of resistance to them. Some favored the new democratic constitution, and others longed for a return to an era of aristocratic predominance. Recently, most historians have rejected such theories, because they do not jibe with ancient sources, which describe political rivalries largely in personal and familial terms. Modern interpretations stress the general agreement of Athenian politicians on essential issues: strong opposition to the Persian threat and a generalized acceptance of—if not preference for—the democratic constitution. An exception to this rule was the Pisistratidae, still led by Hippias, who wanted to restore their tyranny with the backing of the Persians.

Miltiades’ arrival on the political scene threatened to upset a delicate power balance. His appeal as a “Persian-fighter” instantly secured for him a power base, which promised to be troublesome to those clan factions that had grown used to the absence of the Philaidae. Although nearly all aristocratic politicians agreed with Miltiades’ views, the essential issue in Athens in this era was not to what purposes power should be used but who should enjoy the benefits and prestige of power itself.

Shortly after Miltiades’ arrival in Athens, he was brought to trial for exercising a tyranny over the Chersonese, possibly at the instigation of the Alcmaeonidae. During these proceedings, Miltiades probably strained to disassociate himself from his former affiliations to the Pisistratidae, giving rise to later legends of his youthful hostility to that clan. In any case, he was acquitted, thus foiling clever attempts to depict him as a reactionary aristocrat and to boost his enemies’ popularity with the people.

In 490, with a Persian invasion imminent, Miltiades was elected to the ten-man board of generals from his tribe. Although this position was largely a command post—the Athenian army was organized tactically along tribal divisions—the board also functioned as an advisory council to the supreme commander, the polemarchos. Miltiades’ expert advice was to play a crucial role in the impending campaign.

In July of 490, a Persian fleet, commanded by Datis and Artaphernes, sailed west from Ionia. King Darius’s objectives were to punish Athens and another city-state, Eretria, for assisting the Ionian Revolt and to establish a base from which all mainland Greece could later be conquered. Ancient sources give grossly exaggerated numbers for this invasion force. Modern historians have variously estimated its military strength at fifteen thousand to thirty thousand infantry, including five hundred to one thousand cavalry. After subduing the Cyclades Islands and ravaging Eretria on Euboea Island, the Persians landed on the plain of Marathon, about twenty-file miles northeast of Athens. Most Athenian strategists favored a tough defense of the city’s walls as the key to victory. Miltiades, however, who had personally observed skilled Persian siegecraft during the Ionian Revolt, argued for a pitched battle in the open field. He sponsored a decree to this effect in the Assembly. On its authority, the commander Callimachus led the ten-thousand-man hoplite force out to Marathon to meet the enemy.

For several August days, the Persians and Athenians observed each other across the plain. Both sides had compelling reasons for delay. The Persians were waiting for Hippias, who had accompanied them, to rally the Pisistratidaen faction to the invasion. The Athenians were anticipating the arrival of troops from Sparta, the most militarily powerful of the city-states in Greece.

Miltiades had different ideas about how this campaign should be fought. He persuaded Callimachus at a divided meeting of the board of generals to attack the Persians in the plain immediately. Ancient sources do not give explicit reasons for this precipitate decision to engage in battle, although modern historians have generally agreed that the Athenian commanders feared the collusion of the Pisistratidae—and possibly the Alcmaeonidae—in the invasion. An immediate victory would save Athens from the treachery of these opponents.

In the ensuing battle on August 12, Miltiades’ innovative tactics capitalized on Persian weaknesses: a lack of heavy armor and reliable shock weapons and an overdependence on the missile power of their archers and cavalry. As the Greek hoplites advanced toward the Persian lines, their pace accelerated. Once within missile range, they rushed headlong into contact with the enemy. The vaunted Persian archery skills were thus rendered useless. The Persians were surprised by this tactic, as Greek armies normally walked into combat to preserve the solidity of their battle lines.

To avoid being outflanked, Miltiades had deliberately extended his weaker army to match the frontage of the Persians. This formation involved weakening the center of the phalanx. As the battle developed, this emaciated center gave way before the enemy onslaught. His stronger wings, however, were triumphant. Exercising firm control over his men, Miltiades diverted these flank hoplites from pursuit in order to turn them in against the Persian center. This section of the enemy army was almost annihilated. More than six thousand Persians fell in the battle. As the Persians sailed away in retreat, Miltiades and his men could congratulate themselves on a victory that had saved Greece from tyranny.

In the aftermath of this battle, known as the Battle of Marathon, Miltiades’ popularity soared. His career, nevertheless, was already very close to an ignominious end. From the Assembly, he secured funds for a secret military mission that, he promised, would enrich Athens. His subsequent assault on the island of Paros ended in failure, while Miltiades received a critical leg wound. Back in Athens, he was brought to trial for deceiving the people, an accusation brought forth by Xanthippus, who had married into the Alcmaeonidae clan. Miltiades was convicted and assessed an enormous fine. Jealous political rivals had triumphed. He died shortly thereafter from gangrene.

Significance

Miltiades’ career provides a fine case study in the extremely competitive nature of Greek politics, a competition wherein clan and family loyalties, while very important, played a secondary role to the overpowering imperative to succeed. Aristocrats who won the political game were regarded as virtuous, while those who failed—such as Miltiades’ father—were disgraced or shamed. Athenian political culture holds interesting clues to the reasons for the individual brilliance of the Greeks and their inability to achieve stable political organizations.

Bibliography

Burn, A. R. Persia and the Greeks: The Defence of the West, c. 546-478 B.C. Rev. ed. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1984. An excellent account of the titanic struggle between the Greeks and Persians. Interspersed with short sections on Miltiades’ activities in this era, with references to the ancient sources on him. Includes a precise chronology of the Battle of Marathon.

Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Robin Waterfield. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. By far the most important ancient source on Miltiades and the Battle of Marathon—the place to start for those doing research. Aspiring scholars should use this volume only in conjunction with modern accounts because historians have discounted some of what Herodotus wrote.

Hignett, Charles. Xerxes’ Invasion of Greece. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1963. Despite its title, this book contains an excellent scholarly account of the Battle of Marathon. Provides references to nearly all the ancient sources and criticism of many of the modern attempts at reconstruction of the great event. Explains the modern tendency to regard Herodotus’s writings as the most reliable of ancient sources on the Persian Wars.

Sealey, Raphael. A History of the Greek City-States, 700-338 B.C. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. Written by a prominent proponent of the prosopographical approach to Greek politics, that is, the concept that personal and familial relations overrode ideological issues in shaping events. Includes discussion of major aspects of Miltiades’ life, with ancient sources referenced.