FACULTY OF HUMANITIES AND CULTURAL STUDIES

UNIVERSITY OF PELOPONNESE

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE MARATHON BATTLE TO CIVILIZATION:              

HISTORIC, ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND LITERARY EVIDENCE

7-10 OCTOBER 2010, KALAMATA, GREECE

ABSTRACTS

Karim W. Arafat, “Marathon in art”       

Artists, and those responsible for the imitation of artistic projects, were clearly aware of the potential of art as a vehicle for conveying messages related to contemporary politics, including messages of triumph over enemies in war. Hence, for example, the many buildings and monuments in Greece funded by the spoils of war. Here I consider such monuments and how their imagery was used to convey the message the ruling powers desired. I assess how far political references can be traced in different art-forms, and how far they can be associated with specific individuals and events, above all with the Persians Wars and their aftermath. What was the intended impact of such art on locals and on foreign visitors? Did it vary from one area of Greece to another? The battle of Marathon was often singled out in the fifth century in particular for commemoration, and here I consider why, and what direct use was made of Marathon in the art of the succeeding generations, as opposed to battles such as Plataea and Salamis. I also ask whether we should look for indirect references to the Persian wars, and to Marathon in particular, interpreting scenes such as the Amazonomachy as metaphors or allegories.

Ewen Bowie, “Marathon in the Greek culture of the 2^nd century AD: from cliché to cachet”

The battles of the Persian Wars were already an important part of Greek memory by the first century BC, and among them Marathon was not pre-eminent: Diodorus Siculus offers a relatively even treatment of all of them, Strabo says rather more about Thermopylae and Salamis. That is still the situation in the early second century AD, though a writer’s motives may in each case be as important as any supposed general perception of relative importance – Plutarch’s Lives include a Themistocles but not a Miltiades or Leonidas, Dio of Prusa has fun with an alternative Persian version of Datis’ and Xerxes’ campaigns, Favorinus has personal reasons for mentioning Salamis.

But by the later second century AD the two Athenian battles are getting more attention, as we find in Aelius Aristides, and, of the two, Marathon is much more mentioned by Hermogenes, Lucian, Pausanias and Philostratus. This may be partly due to the increasing importance of Athens in the Greek cultural world of the hic et nunc and in the Greek literary imaginaire. But Marathon’s lead may also be due to the cachet given by Herodes Atticus of Marathon: his attention to the location and the legend will be explored, with special attention to his seemingly having relocated inscribed stelai from the Marathon soros in his magnificent villa at Loukou in the northern Peloponnese.

Chris Carey, “Marathon and the construction of the comic past”

The Persian Wars play an important role in the construction of the past in comic myth. But as with everything else in comedy the conflict against the Persians is carefully filtered.  From the Panhellenic perspective, as seen by Pindar and Herodotos, Marathon was less significant than Salamis. Within Athens both battles figure in Athenian oratorical texts of all categories. Comedy however (not just Aristophanes but also his contemporaries and rivals, to judge from the extant fragments) takes a different view, largely ignoring Salamis but returning repeatedly to Marathon. This paper looks at the symbiosis between Marathon and fifth century Athenian comedy from two directions: firstly the factors in Marathon itself (both the actual battle and the Athenian reception/transmission) which linked it inseparably to Athenian democracy, power and identity, secondly the factors in the focus and self-definition of comedy which made Marathon the ideal model. Finally it looks at the different ways in which comedy deploys the idea of Marathon to construct and exploit a mythic past.

Athanasios Efstathiou, “The Marathon battle in 4^th c. BCE political oratory: the cases On the False Embassy (343) and On the Crown (330)”

The Marathon battle is suggested to be used as an example in oratory by Arist. Rhet. 1396a 6.  Isocrates (5.147) also regards these battles as compulsory topoi of the praise of Athens. Marathon symbolizes the virtue of the past and gives the opportunity to the orator to educate in virtue the young generation of his time. The glorification of Athens through the deeds in the Persian wars appears from Aischylos Persai (472 B.C.) onwards: Marathon echoes in Hdt. 9.27.26, in Ar. Clouds 986: ἐξ ὧν ἄνδρας Μαραθωνoμάχoυς ἡμὴ παίδευσις ἔθρεψεν and elsewhere in Aristophanes, e.g. Ach. 181). Since, the orators of fourth century BCE frequently appeal to the admirable moments of Marathon and Salamis (e.g. D.18.208, 22.13, 23.196, 198, 24.184; A.3.181), we can concentrate on two specific political battles: the case On the False Embasy (343) and the case On the Crown (330)in order to focus on the use of the Marathon battle in both orators’  as part of their argumentation and rhetorical means of persuasion. 

Peter Funke - Michael Jung, “Marathon and the construction of the Persian Wars in antiquity and modern times”

The various phases of the conflicts between the world of the Greek cities and the Persian Empire in the first third of the fifth century BC merged in the period that followed into a single complex of events that then entered the historical memory not only of antiquity as the “Persian Wars.” The first part of this paper (M. Jung) will trace the background and the course of these processes of construction in antiquity. The second part (P. Funke) will delve into the question of how and under what conditions this antique construction of the “Persian Wars” was received and politically instrumentalized subsequent to antiquity. In the latter, particular attention will be devoted to the Byzantine period and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Ariadne Gartziou-Tatti, “Gods, heroes and the Marathon battle”                    

My purpose is to investigate the role of the gods (Athena, Pan, Artemis, Nemesis etc) and heroes (Theseus, Heracles, Marathon, Echetlaeus etc) in the great vicrory of the Greeks at the battle of Marathon. In other words, I am interested in the religious and mythological images created at Athens after the victory against the barbarians .

Lorna Hardwick, “Moving targets, modern contests: Marathon and cultural memory”

This paper takes as its starting point the modes through which Marathon entered the Athenian cultural memory and the patterns that it inscribed into future perspectives in Greece and the wider world, especially concerning the ‘ownership’  and emblematic significance of past events. Agencies of transmission include historiography, drama, poetry and material and visual culture and each offers distinctive imprints in its combinations of formal elements, contexts of creation and dissemination and negotiation between values and power structures.

The associations between Marathon and victory against invaders have made it a seductive image for appropriation in other contexts, for example to promote and eulogise civic values, military solidarity and communal heroism, to say nothing of justifying cultural and political hegemonies or providing a basis for polarisation between different ethnic or national groups. However, the ancient sources also suggest that, within a few years of the battle, Marathon was recognised not only as a field constructed by political manipulation and exploited by subsequent leaders but also as a rich vein for community memory - pliable and liable to parody as well as to eulogy.

I shall discuss some twentieth-century examples from different media of the persistence and transferability of the image of Marathon. I shall argue that this contributes some particularly interesting elements to models of classical receptions that are based on ‘thickness’, that is on concepts of the braiding of accretions, repressions and transformations contributed by the different contexts and forms through which the ancient events have been mediated.

I also suggest (for further discussion) that the ‘critical distance’ offered by analysis of Marathon and of the lenses through which it is seen also provides insights into the processes through which events that take place in ‘history’ are assimilated, first to specific cultural memories and then to mythologies of the past. How is the ‘truth value’ to be negotiated and renegotiated in the face of the ‘symbolic’ value? What difference is made by this kind of shift?

Ioanna Karamanou, “As threatening as the Persians: Euripides in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae”

In the Thesmophoriazusae Euripides is paralleled to the Persians (336f.), with regard to the threat that they both represent to Athens; a potential Athenian alliance with Persia (cf. Th. 8. 53f.) would threaten the polis and its constitution, while Euripides is perceived by his female opponents as threatening the integrity of the oikos (384-428) and in turn, that of the polis, as the former is a constituent part of the latter. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to explore how this simile is treated throughout the play, not least because at its closure this idea is actually brought on stage by Euripides’ entry disguised as a woman named Artemisia (with the Persian connotations of this name) in the sound of a Persian tune (1160ff.). At this final stage, both threats are eliminated, as regularly in comedy; Euripides manages to turn this ‘Persian’ weapon against his Scythian opponent and reconciles with the women of the Thesmophoria for the common welfare against barbarian intruders.

Ioannis N. Kazazis, “Herodotean folk narratives and the idea of justice in his Histories”

The paper draws on the author’s Ph.D. dissertation (J. N. Kazazis, Herodotos’ Stories and History:  A Proppian Analysis of his Narrative Technique, PhD Thesis, U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1978). We shall not be concerned in this presentation with all the stories Herodotos narrates in his Histories, but rather only with those that belong to the category of magic folktale proper (Märchen), which may be distinguished technically in an absolute sense from all other oral narrative genres, such as myth, legend, saga, anecdote, etc.. This limitation is imposed because the magic folktale, apart from being a purely folk (oral) genre, contains extremely ancient material with formal characteristics that are very resistant to alteration over time (a folktale’s life may span several centuries), and encorporates an ideological logic that may be valuable for the narrative enframing it.

            The dissertation analyzes 16 such “tales”, half of which deal with ascension to power. The historian attributes them to leading actors in his Histories, Greeks or Barbarians. The main results are as follows:

These stories may be interpolated throughout the entire historical narrative and thus technically comprise “parenthēkes” (Exkurse), but it may be demonstrated that at a deeper ideological level, their function is not so much decorative or entertaining as “paradeigmatic” (in the epistemological sense of the term established by T. Kuhn).

That Herodotos’ audiences also understood these stories (which were publicly recited  and won prizes in antiquity) in this double fashion, i.e. as simultaneously both very ancient folktales and modern parables, is made clear through the structural analysis I carried out, according to which: 

1- in fact all appear to be structured as popular “folktales” (the detailed analysis to which I subjected them showed that they conform to the classic analysis of the magic folktale as an oral folk/popular genre, as introduced and practiced by Vladimir Propp);

2- despite their thematic variety, all appeared to contain a core involving a basic “act of justice”, just as normally occurs in this genre of folktale throughout the world; 

3- it thus appeared that all these stories functioned both at the “low” level of a folk narrative as well as at a “higher” level opperating for the enlightened Athenian society as “paradigms” of justice (a concept very intensely debated in the literature of the Archaic Age (Presocratics etc.).

Finally, I show that these stories (as ancient folktales and modern parables), incorporated into the historical conflict between Greeks and barbarians, offer ideological services to the extent that they promote and interpret divine justice, a critical concept for the interpretative historical schema of the ancient historian.

And a further consequence of the above: the structural and ideological analysis of these stories attempted to prove that history, histories, and ideological framework were bound together in a single unity, something which offers additional support to the much-discussed question of unity of Herodotos’ work. We hope that this highly complex conception of unity will be persuasive, within the framework of modern-day, sophisticated Herodotean research.

Vassileios Konstantinopoulos, “The Persian Wars and the political conflicts in Athens”

The victory of Greece against the Persians in Marathon and Salamis was assessed diversely by the political parties in Athens during the rivalry between Athens and Sparta for the supremacy over Greece.

            On the one hand, the democratic party under the influence of the Periclean
external policy believed that the salvation of Greece relied on the powerful and successful resistance of the Athenian army against the Persian army at Marathon and on the decisive contribution of Athens (strategic plan, the greater number of the ships) to the battle at Salamis. On the other hand the oligarchic party believed that both cities, Athens and Sparta, equally contributed to the victory.

            The effort of the Periclean policy to justify the Athenian supremacy both in the battles of Marathon and Salamis is reflected in the funeral orations (Lys.Epit. 21-26, cf. Herod. 6.139, Thuc. 1.73,2 ff.). On the contrary, Isocrates (Paneg. 85-86) and Plato (Menex. 240c-e, De Leg. 698e) present the contribution of Athens and Sparta to the victory of the Greeks against the Persians as equally important.

Christos Kremmydas, "Alexander the Great, Athens and the rhetoric of the Persian Wars"

Alexander the Great adopted the rhetoric of the “war of revenge” in his effort to unite the Greeks in a pan-hellenic expedition against the Persians. His propaganda tapped into mythical and historical material in order to appeal to different Greek audiences, Athens in particular. In this paper, I shall first survey the semiotics of his war propaganda aimed at Athens focussing especially on the absence of any references to the battle of Marathon. His rhetoric exploited the events of 480-479, while  Marathon remained off-limits as it was widely recognized as a quintessentially Athenian achievement. I shall explore the reasons for such a conspicuous absence by looking i.a. at the Athenian political landscape and ideology of the 340-330’s.

Peter Krentz, “Marathon and the development of the exclusive hoplite phalanx”

I will elaborate on a suggestion I made almost a decade ago, that the Athenians at Marathon created the exclusive hoplite phalanx. Until Marathon, Greeks fought in a mass of warriors equipped in various ways. At Marathon, the Athenians equipped as many hoplites as possible and charged to fight the Persians hand-to-hand. In making this suggestion I agree with Hans van Wees' view of Archaic warfare (2000, 2004), but I attach particular importance to Marathon. I will respond to Adam Schwartz's 2009 book Reinstating the Hoplite: Arms, Armour and Phalanx Fighting in Archaic and Classical Greece, in which Schwartz argues that the exclusive phalanx appeared before the end of the eighth century.

Andreas Markantonatos, “ The Silence of Thucydides: The Battle of Marathon and Athenian pride”

In this paper I suggest that, even if in Book 1 Thucydides appears to dismiss the Battle of Marathon as not being part of the Persian War proper, in his account of the far more important Peloponnesian War there are a few significant references to the strong connection between the defeat of the Persians at Marathon and the Athenians.  My basic conviction is that, although Thucydides downplays the importance of the Marathon campaign, as well as making light of other Greek victories against the barbarians, certain allusions to the land battle of Marathon suggest the special place that this remarkable episode of the Persian Wars will have in fourth-century oratory, especially in Athenian funeral speeches.  All in all, while Thucydides throws the Marathon battle into the shade, he cannot suppress its essential role in Athenian self-presentation.

Antonis Mastrapas, “The Marathon battle and the cult of Pan in Athens: The political dimension of a legend through the written reports and the archaeological material”

The Marathon battle was a significant fact for the political evolution especially in Athens, but also in other Greek cities. The Persian prospects set up, before and after the battle, directly and indirectly the internal arguments in Athens and in Sparta.

The Marathon battle had a great impact on the conscience of the Athenians and had to do with several legends which conceal the historical data of events. The legend of the introduction of the cult of Pan in Athens is part of this impact.

In this paper, we shall approach the historical sources and the archaeological evidence which relate with the legend and the acceptance of the cult by the Athenians. Our further task is to explore the political dimensions of this cult since its introduction was meant to be a political act. The acceptance of the Arcadian cult of Pan had a view to bring the Athenians closer to the Arcadians during the period some time before and until after the Marathon battle, when the role of Sparta was dominant in the political life of Greece by way of the Peloponnesian alliance. Moreover, as we shall demonstrate, the introduction of the cult of Pan played significant role to the conflicts and interrelations among the aristocratic families.

Efi Papadodima, “The battle of Marathon in fifth-century poetry and drama”

This study compiles and contextualizes the references and allusions to Marathon in fifth-century poetry and drama, which are rather few in number.

            There are several items of evidence (inscriptions etc.) which seem to connect the lyric poet Simonides of Ceos with Marathon; the poet had perhaps composed an elegy on Marathon, alongside other poems narrating the major Greek victories in the Persian Wars (including an elegiac and a lyric poem about Artemisium, a poem about Salamis, the Plataea elegy, as well as a lyric poem about Thermopylae). Simonides' war-poems are straightforwardly patriotic and encomiastic, permeated by (and probably idealizing) the idea of Panhellenic unity.

            In Attic drama, Marathon passingly becomes an object of recollection to various effects. Aeschylus alludes to the battle of Marathon in Persians, a play which dramatizes the naval battle at Salamis – and, according to some scholars, probably elevates the latter over the former – while at the same time exploring several points of opposition between the Greeks and the Persians. Speaking from the viewpoint of the defeated enemy, Atossa refers to the numerous dead barbarians of Marathon in conjunction with the present punishment of Xerxes by glorious Athens. The expeditions of both father and son have turned out to be disastrous, despite the fact that the former is largely presented as a wise adviser, whose war-exploits and prudence are stressed and praised. The Queen actually thinks that, in reference to Salamis, Xerxes has drawn upon himself such a multitude of woes in an effort to exact retribution for the dead of Marathon. Thus, the two confrontations are brought close together at this point both in terms of their outcome and in terms of Xerxes' motivation. The presence of Darius, in combination with his past defeat in Marathon and his revelations about the future, offer additional insights into the Greek-Persian polarity, the position of Athens, and the significance of Xerxes' ruin. In several Aristophanic comedies, on the other hand, the glorious Marathon-fighters and, more generally, the noble Greeks of the Persian Wars (as implicitly depicted in Persians) are nostalgically referred to and juxtaposed with contemporary Greeks/ Athenians, who are represented as falling short of their ancestors, to say the least. The Persian Wars thus function as a reference-point which most evidently illustrates the instability and degradation of the Greek world.

Whilst undoubtedly reflecting a strong sense of Greek (and, more particularly, Athenian) pride, the references and allusions to Marathon in classical poetry and drama usually lead to or become part of the exploration of broader issues, which are essentially tied to the factor of ethnic identity. Depending on the particular context, they can draw attention to interesting aspects of the Greek-barbarian antithesis, the idea of Hellenic unity, the special position of Athens, but also the idea of the Greeks' degradation.

Christopher Pelling, Herodotus' Marathon:  The birth of a legend “The battle of Marathon in fifth-century poetry and drama”

            The climax of the battle in Herodotus’ account is the fighting at the ships (6.113–4), with its Homeric echoes: this paper will discuss the point of such epic suggestions. The elevation of the battle to epic status did not begin with Herodotus, and we can see some of this both in our descriptions of the Stoa Poikile and in the Marathon epigrams. I shall argue that Herodotus’ Homeric suggestions are more than mere colourings or flourishes, and suggest ways in which the world has changed: heroism now needs to take different forms, acknowledging the inter-city and intra-city tensions and jealousies that mean that treachery and collapse are an ever-present danger; a new sort of leadership is required, and is provided here by Miltiades as later by Themistocles. Themes are developed from the earlier narrative of the Ionian Revolt, and look forward to further development in the accounts of, particularly, Thermopylae and Salamis. Some paradoxes of freedom are explored: the individualism of a free state, with everyone working for himself rather than for a tyrant (5.78), is inspiring, but also carries the dangers of factionalism and fragmentation. Both at Marathon and at Salamis, it is awareness of this danger that brings on the battle, and becomes central to the thinking and the rhetoric of Miltiades and Themistocles; in this way it is the worst aspects of freedom, not the best, that become critical at the most important moments, and paradoxically prove to be the salvation of Greece – even as there are also hints of how, in a post-479 world, those negative aspects will prove to be much more damaging.

Andrej Petrovic, “Marathon epigrams”

The earliest historiographical commemoration of the battle of Marathon is attested in the epigrams coming, for the most part, from the first half of the 5th c. BC. Some of these texts are known through the literary traditions; others survive on stone, and among these, the well-known IG I/3 503/504 is still subject of lively debates. However, one of the most spectacular recent finds is the verse inscription commemorating the battle of Marathon, coming from the villa of Herodes Atticus at Eva Kynourias (published by Spyropoulos in 2009). My talk will consist of a reassessment of the IG I/3 503/504 in the light of the Kynourias find, and will discuss the cultural and political setting of these texts.

Peter Rhodes, “The battle of Marathon and modern scholarship”

The battle of Marathon has not been limited in the interest which it has aroused among scholars to military historians. It has prompted questions about the written sources, both literary and epigraphic; about archaeology and topography; about practicalities; about Athenian politics; and recently about the reception of Marathon in modern times.

Rosalind Thomas, “Miltiades and Athenian expansionism in Herodotus and the later tradition”

This paper concentrates upon the hero of Marathon, Miltiades, his immediate family and ancestry, and how he is treated in the historical accounts of the fifth century.  It will examine the Philaids first as part of the international aristocracy, panhellenic victors, and potential tyrants, and Miltiades' activities in the Chersonnese and elsewhere in Herodotus' account.  Miltiades will serve as an important case study for the tensions between archaic megaloprepeia and the new expectations of a hero of the new democracy.  Herodotus, the early fifth century monuments and later fifth-century representations offer a rich and complex picture of how Miltiades developed into a patriotic hero and to what extent he remained an ambiguous figure.

Eleni Volonaki, “The battle of Marathon in oratorical funeral speeches”

The funeral speeches were formal orations which were delivered by well known political figures, chosen to pay tribute on behalf of the city to those who had fallen in the battle. According to the Athenian law, the burial of the dead from the war constituted a customary procedure which closed with the display of a funeral speech (Thuc. II.34). The particular tradition of public proclamation was most probably included in the ritual ceremony in the period of the Persian Wars.

            Six funeral speeches have survived from the classical times: those of Perikles (Thucydides 2.34-46), Lysias, Plato (Menexenus), Demosthenes, Hypereides (all almost complete) and Gorgias (fragmentary). These speeches are dated from 431 to 322 B.C.; not all of them were delivered and their authenticity has become a matter of dispute. Their structure follows a certain pattern: proem, praise (enkomion) of the ancestors, of the constitution, of the dead, advice and consolation, epilogue. The praise of the ancestors presents various topics, such as the birth of the Athenian race from the soil of Attica, the legendary and historical exploits of the ancestors, especially the victories of Marathon and Salamis and the superiority of the Athenian education and training.

As it appears, the references to the Persian Wars and to the superiority of the Greeks over the barbarians constitute a common place in the funeral epideictic oratory. The aim of the present paper is to focus on the rhetorical use of the topos concerning the Athenian victory in the Marathon battle in the preserved funeral speeches and to examine the variations and differences in the application of the particular rhetorical example as a symbol of virtue, bravery and right judgement. It is striking, for example, that the most extant reference to the Marathon battle is made in Lysias’ funeral speech (though the authenticity of the speech has been disputed by modern scholars) whereas the references to Marathon in the other funeral orations are brief, vague or even universal about the Persian Wars as a whole. It would also be interesting to explore whether changes in the praise of the achievements in the past had occurred throughout the fifth and fourth century B.C., based on the limited tradition of funeral orations available to us.

Georgia Xanthaki-Karamanou, “The Marathon battle as a topos of the Athenian political prestige in classical times”

An attempt is made to define globally the Marathon victory as a topos of Athenian political prestige on the basis of the evidence provided by fifth and fourth-century prose-writers, esp. Thucydides, orators and Plato. The Persian Wars provide the turning point for the increase of political power and the imperial development of both Athens and Sparta.

The main motifs constituting such a topos of Athenian political supremacy are: a) Athens alone, without allies, defended Hellas against the Persians (Thuc. 1.73.2, Dem. On the Crown 208, Isoc. Paneg. 86), secured its freedom and saved the country from the enemy (Pl. Menex. 240c-e, Laws 707c, Isoc. Paneg. 91, Philippus 147). b) The Athenians fought with remarkably fewer forces against the numerous Persian troops, chastised Asia’s insolent pride and set up a trophy of victory on behalf of Hellas (Lys. Epit. 21-26, Isoc. Paneg. 87,164, Pl. Menex. 240c-d, 241a-b). Such a disproportion of forces provides a main argument for the decisive contribution of Athens to civic freedom and its claim for the leadership of Hellas. c) Accordingly, the warriors’ postmortem distinction at Marathon (Thuc. 2.34.1) and the praise of their virtue is also a basic element of the topos. Thanks to the texts of the classical period Marathon became a very special symbol of courage and virtue (funeral orations in Thucydides and Lysias, Lyc. Leocrates, Pl. Menexenuse, Dem. On the Crown). The fighters of Persian Wars were all men of merit. d) The glory of the victory at Marathon and in Persian Wars in general, is attributed not merely to the leaders but to the city and the Athenians on the whole (Dem. Against Aristocrates 198, On Organization 21). e) The Athenians chose to lead them brave and noble personalities, men of sobriety and wisdom (Dem. Against Aristocrates 197, Aeschin. On the Embassy 75-76). f) In certain forensic speeches with political dimensions (Demosthenes, Aeschines, Lycurgus) the comparison with the Marathon glorious fighters is used to attack powerfully the opponent in court and shed light to his vicious intentions.