Tom Holland

It's this great pulverizing smash up of metal into flesh and bone.

And the Persian forces are much more lightly armored than the Greeks.

You know, they have probably quilted jerkins at best.

And this means that when the Athenians smash into them and they're using their spears, the spears don't shiver as they would if they were crashing into another phalanx.

And that means that the Persians can be skewered and those who aren't skewered can be trampled underfoot by the sheer weight of all these bronze-clad men.

And then, of course, Dominic, I think with your expression, you conveyed a certain sense of scepticism as to whether Pan

with his curling goat horns and his enormous phallus was going to turn up.

I was a little skeptical.

Well, he does turn up because the Persians are afflicted with a terrible sense of panic.

Right.

And on the wings, they turn and they flee and they start scarpering for the boats, which are drawn up at the far end of the plane on the beach.

And only in the centre does the Persian force have the better of the fight, because that's where the Athenian line has been weakened.

And also, it's where the best Persian troops are.

So the Persians themselves, and also the Saka, the Scythians, who have these kind of enormous cleaving axes, like the housecarls at the Battle of Hastings.

And it looks briefly as though they might break through there.

But the Athenian wings who have sent the Persian wings fleeing, they are able to kind of curl around and to catch the Persians and the Saka on their flanks.

And the Persian centre then starts retreating and then panicking as well.

And they're all streaming across the plain, running for the ships to try and get away.

So by this point, the battle is won.

But it isn't yet over because, of course, the fighting now moves to the ships because the Athenians are as desperate to stop the Persians from getting away as the Persians are to make their escape.