---
node: battle_of_marathon
type: event
slug: battle_of_marathon
title: "Battle of Marathon"
lead: "At Marathon in 490 BC, the Athenians defeated the punitive expedition sent by Darius I of Persia on a plain about 40 km from Athens — generally regarded as the first major Greek victory over the Persian empire on land."
published: 2026-07-10
updated: 2026-07-10
image_file: battle_of_marathon.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tumulus_(tomb)_in_Marathon.jpg"
image_author: "amanderson2"
image_license: "CC BY 2.0"
---

## What happened

In September 490 BC the Athenians — joined only by little Plataea, since Sparta arrived late, delayed by a festival — met Darius I's punitive expedition on the plain of Marathon. Under Miltiades the outnumbered Athenians attacked at a run, with strengthened wings and a deliberately thin center; the wings crushed their opposites and turned inward in a double envelopment, and the Persians fled to their ships. Perhaps 10,000 Greeks faced some 25,000 Persians, though ancient figures are unreliable. Herodotus reports 192 Athenian dead against 6,400 Persian — his figures, and nearly all narrative sources for this war are Greek.

## Background

The expedition came to punish Athens and Eretria for aiding the Ionian Revolt against Persia. Eretria had been sacked only days before the battle.

## Consequences

The victory gave enormous confidence to Athens and its young democracy. Darius planned revenge, which Xerxes delivered ten years later. The Athenian dead were buried in a mound, the soros, still visible at Marathon. The tale of the messenger who ran to Athens with news of the victory and died on arrival belongs to later tradition — in Herodotus, Pheidippides runs to Sparta before the battle. That conflation inspired the modern marathon race.