Tom Holland

I think everyone on that morning must have felt terror.

But I think that people in that advance are kind of born on the intoxication as well as the dread of the moment.

And, you know, we know that when Greeks advance into battle, there are those who wet themselves.

There are those who void their bowels and streak their cloaks.

But you advance because you feel yourself to be part of a collective.

You are kind of one with your fellow citizens.

And I think that Herodotus, we read it in the previous episode, that sense that being part of a democracy probably...

does give a sense of fellowship to an Athenian phalanx that perhaps hadn't previously existed.

So as you descend down that slope onto the plane of Marathon, I think you probably do feel that you are part of a body of freeborn men.

I think that it would not be wrong to say that that is part of what steals the Athenians to take this incredible risk of marching down to meet an enemy who has never been defeated by a Greek army before.

And they have a mile to cover.

And incredible stories in due course come to be told of this advance.

It's said that the Athenians ran the whole way down towards the Persian lines.

I mean, this is impossible.

The weight of their kit is so heavy that they couldn't possibly have managed that and then fought a battle.

But I think it's clear that as they near the enemy, they do start to run.

And Herodotus is very, very precise about this.

They were, he writes, so far as we can tell,

the very first Greeks anywhere to make use of running towards an enemy as a tactic, and the first not to cringe before the sight of Median dress, so Persian dress, and the men who wear it, hitherto Greeks had only had to hear the name of the Medes to be reduced to a state of terror.

And they reach the Persian lines and they crash into the Persian lines and the impact is absolutely devastating.