ular
heavy-armed soldier was attended in the camp by one or more slaves, who
were armed like the inferior freemen. Cavalry or archers the Athenians
(on this occasion) had none, and the use in the field of military
engines was not at that period introduced into ancient warfare.

Contrasted with their own scanty forces, the Greek commanders saw
stretched before them, along the shores of the winding bay, the tents
and shipping of the varied nations who marched to do the bidding of the
king of the Eastern world. The difficulty of finding transports and of
securing provisions would form the only limit to the numbers of a
Persian army. Nor is there any reason to suppose the estimate of Justin
exaggerated, who rates at a hundred thousand the force which on this
occasion had sailed, under the satraps Datis and Artaphernes, from the
Cilician shores against the devoted coasts of Euboea and Attica. And
after largely deducting from this total, so as to allow for mere
mariners and camp followers, there must still have remained fearful odds
against the national levies of the Athenians.

Nor could Greek generals then feel that confidence in the superior
quality of their troops, which ever since the battle of Marathon has
animated Europeans in conflicts with Asiatics, as, for instance, in the
after struggles between Greece and Persia, or when the Roman legions
encountered the myriads of Mithradates and Tigranes, or as is the case
in the Indian campaigns of our own regiments. On the contrary, up to the
day of Marathon the Medes and Persians were reputed invincible. They had
more than once met Greek troops in Asia Minor, in Cyprus, in Egypt, and
had invariably beaten them.

Nothing can be stronger than the expressions used by the early Greek
writers respecting the terror which the name of the Medes inspired, and
the prostration of men's spirits before the apparently resistless career
of the Persian arms. It is, therefore, little to be wondered at that
five of the ten Athenian generals shrank from the prospect of fighting a
pitched battle against an enemy so superior in numbers and so formidable
in military renown. Their own position on the heights was strong and
offered great advantages to a small defending force against assailing
masses. They deemed it mere foolhardiness to descend into the plain to
be trampled down by the Asiatic horse, overwhelmed with the archery, or
cut to pieces by the invincible veterans of Cambyses and Cyrus.