Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/371

 KLMAKKS ON THE BATTLE. 333 rest for combat with the enemy before him. If it had once become known to the Marathonian army that a Persian detach- ment had landed at Phalerum, 1 where there was a good plain for cavalry to act in, prior to the building of the Phaleric wall, as had been seen in the defeat of the Spartan Anchimolius by the Thessalian cavalry, in 510 B.C., that it had been joined by timid or treacherous Athenians, and had perhaps even got pos- session of the city, their minds would have been so distracted by the double danger, and by fears for their absent wives and children, that they would have been disqualified for any unani- mous execution of military orders, and generals as well as soldiers would have become incurably divided in opinion, perhaps even mistrustful of each other. The citizen-soldier of Greece generally, and especially of Athens, possessed in a high degree both personal bravery and attachment to order and disci- pline ; but his bravery was not of that equal, imperturbable, uninquiring character, which belonged to the battalions of Wel- lington or Napoleon, it was fitful, exalted or depressed by casual occurrences, and often more sensitive to dangers absent and unseen, than to enemies immediately in his front. Hence the advantage, so unspeakable in the case before us, and so well appreciated by Miltiades, of having one undivided Athenian army, with one hostile army, and only one, to meet in the field. "When we come to the battle of Salamis, ten years later, it will be seen that the Greeks of that day enjoyed the same Advantage: though the wisest advisers of Xerxes impressed upon him the prudence of dividing his large force, and of send- ing detachments to assail separate Greek states which would infallibly produce the effect of breaking up the combined Gre- cian host, and leaving no central or cooperating force for the defence of Greece generally. Fortunately for the Greeks, the childish insolence of Xerxes led him to despise all such advice, as implying conscious weakness. Not so Datis and Hippias. Sensible of the prudence of distracting the attention of the Athenians by a double attack, they laid a scheme, while tb'3 main army was at Marathon, for rallying the partisans of Hip- pi*?, with a force to assist them, in the neighborhood of AthenSi 1 Herodot. v, 62, 63. VOL. TV. 23oc.