d reserved
to be led away captives into Upper Asia, there to hear their doom from
the lips of King Darius himself. Moreover, the men of Athens knew that
in the camp before them was their own banished tyrant, who was seeking
to be reinstated by foreign cimeters in despotic sway over any remnant
of his countrymen that might survive the sack of their town, and might
be left behind as too worthless for leading away into Median bondage.

The numerical disparity between the force which the Athenian commanders
had under them, and that which they were called on to encounter, was
hopelessly apparent to some of the council. The historians who wrote
nearest to the time of the battle do not pretend to give any detailed
statements of the numbers engaged, but there are sufficient data for our
making a general estimate. Every free Greek was trained to military
duty; and, from the incessant border wars between the different states,
few Greeks reached the age of manhood without having seen some service.
But the muster-roll of free Athenian citizens of an age fit for military
duty never exceeded thirty thousand, and at this, epoch probably did not
amount to two-thirds of that number. Moreover, the poorer portion of
these were unprovided with the equipments, and untrained to the
operations of the regular infantry. Some detachments of the best-armed
troops would be required to garrison the city itself and man the various
fortified posts in the territory, so that it is impossible to reckon the
fully equipped force that marched from Athens to Marathon, when the news
of the Persian landing arrived, at higher than ten thousand men.[41]

[Footnote 41: The historians, who lived long after the time of the
battle, such as Justin, Plutarch, and others, give ten thousand as the
number of the Athenian army. Not much reliance could be placed on their
authority if unsupported by other evidence; but a calculation made for
the number of the Athenian free population remarkably confirms it.]

With one exception, the other Greeks held back from aiding them. Sparta
had promised assistance, but the Persians had landed on the sixth day of
the moon, and a religious scruple delayed the march of Spartan troops
till the moon should have reached its full. From one quarter only, and
that from a most unexpected one, did Athens receive aid at the moment of
her great peril.

Some years before this time the little state of Plataea in Boeotia, being
hard pressed by he