bravely, an old rule forbade them to march during the week before
the full moon, and in this week Athens might be utterly ruined. Nobody
did come to their help but 600 men from the very small state of Plataea,
and this little army, not numbering 10,000, were encamped around the
temple of Hercules, looking down upon the bay of Marathon, where lay the
ships which had just landed at least 200,000 men of all the Eastern
nations, and among them many of the Greeks of Asia Minor. The hills
slant back so as to make a sort of horse-shoe round the bay, with about
five miles of clear flat ground between them and the sea, and on this
open space lay the Persians.

It was the rule among the Athenians that the heads of their ten tribes
should command by turns each for a day, but Aristides, the best and most
high-minded of all of them, persuaded the rest to give up their turns to
Miltiades, who was known to be the most skilful captain. He drew up his
men in a line as broad as the whole front of the Persian army, though far
less deep, and made them all come rushing down at them with even step,
but at a run, shouting the war-cry, "Io paean! Io paean!" In the
middle, where the best men of the Persians were, they stood too firm to
be thus broken, but at the sides they gave way, and ran back towards the
sea, or over the hills, and then Miltiades gave a signal to the two side
divisions--wings, as they were called--to close up together, and crush
the Persian centre. The enemy now thought of nothing but reaching their
ships and putting out to sea, while the Athenians tried to seize their
ships; Cynegyrus, one brave Greek, caught hold of the prow of one ship,
and when the crew cut off his hand with an axe, he still clung with the
other, till that too was cut off, and he sank and was drowned. The fleet
still held many men, and the Athenians saw that, instead of crossing back
to Asia Minor, it was sailing round the promontory of Sunium, as if to
attack Athens. It was even said that a friend of Hippias had raised a
shield, glittering in the sun, as a signal that all the men were away.
However, Miltiades left Aristides, with his tribe of 1000 men, to guard
the plain and bury the dead, and marched back over the hills with the
rest to guard their homes, that same night; but the Persians must have
been warned, or have changed their mind, for they sailed away for Asia;
and Hippias, who seems to have been wounded in the battle, died at
Lemnos. T