Tom Holland

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.

And the Persians have the advantage, of course, that on their wings, the men who have broken there have a head start.

And so they are able to start piling into the ships before the Athenians arrive.

But once the Athenians get to the beach where all the Persian ships are drawn up, there is very, very desperate fighting.

dies.

So Callimachus.

Yeah, so it's on the beaches that the Athenian casualties are heaviest.

So we say Callimachus dies there, the war archon, another of the ten generals, he dies there.

And there's a very famous story, the one Athenian reaches up to the prow of a ship that is pulling away to try and stop it.

And there's a person with an axe who swings it down, chops off the Athenian's hand who collapses into the sea, blood spraying everywhere.

And this Athenian is the brother of Aeschylus, who is the first of the three great Athenian tragedians of the 5th century BC.

And Aeschylus himself is also fighting at Marathon.

And he has this famous epitaph.