Tom Holland

I think it's even better than that, because don't forget, they have actually captured Naxos, they have captured Eretria, and they do lead their armada safely back to the Asian mainland.

Most of the ships have survived the Athenian attempt to destroy them.

And when they land back on Asian soil, they then lead the Eretrian captives to the great king in Persia, as they'd been ordered to do.

And to quote Herodotus on how Darius responds to the sight of these Eretrian prisoners, before they became the king's prisoners of war, the fury felt by Darius towards the Eretrians had been terrible, wronged as he had originally been by their unprovoked aggression.

So you see, Herodotus agrees with the Persian perception that

that basically the Eretrians had been terrorists.

But when Darius saw them led into his presence and utterly at his mercy, he inflicted no further miseries on them, but instead settled them in the land of Kisia.

So this is a display of mercy, but it's not a pardon because Kisia is a region of Iran that it's not the most attractive reason because it's full of oil wells.

And Herodotus describes the oil as black and giving off a revolting stench.

So it's one of the earliest descriptions in history of petroleum.

And the Eretrians are settled there and there is no return home for them.

And even centuries later, tourists would go and visit their descendants and some of them would still be speaking Greek.

So, you know, for a Greek to be parted from his homeland is a terrible thing.

And that might, of course, have the Athenians lost the Battle of Marathon.

That might have been the fate of the Athenians.

Their city burned, their sons castrated, the survivors exiled.

And the fact that Athens had been spared that fate, it was a cause of enormous relief to them, obviously, but it is a cause of the most immense pride as well.

Only 192 died at Marathon, most of them on the beaches.

And the Athenians...

saw them as heroes of the city, men who had died for freedom.