9 - The expedition of Datis and Artaphernes

Summary

THE NATURE OF THE SOURCES

Herodotus' description of the Persian Wars was based on many accounts by eyewitnesses, mainly but not exclusively on the Greek side (sometimes he himself heard a participant, sometimes he obtained a report at second hand), and this description in turn was recited to audiences which contained veterans of those wars. Thus it was contemporary history in the fullest sense, deriving from contemporaries of the wars and checked by contemporaries at each audition. How good was the memory of those contemporaries about the Persian Wars? We should not be misled by comparisons with the monotonous trench warfare of 1914–18; for moments of action against Persia were brief in time and exciting in character, and they must have stayed vivid in men's minds. Thus the facts related by Herodotus are very likely to be correct; for instance, that the Athenians ‘went to the defence of Marathon’ (VI.103.1) and marched back ‘as fast as possible’ after the fighting (VI. 116), or that the Athenians faced the Phoenicians shortly after dawn and a westerly wind was blowing that evening in the Salamis Channel (VIII. 83, 85, 96). The sequence of events too is likely to be correct: for instance, Eretria falling a few days before the Persians landed at Marathon, or the shield signal being followed at once by the race for Athens, and the Phoenicians arriving by sea and the army overland that very evening.