![]() If caught on a broad plain and surrounded or outflanked by a much larger army organised on Persian lines, such a force was liable to be massacred.īut if it was positioned on uneven ground, where the Great King’s cavalry could not easily manoeuvre, it could withstand an artillery barrage and fend off his spearmen. ![]() They relied, instead, on a phalanx of hoplites – well-armoured spearmen deployed in serried ranks eight-men deep, bearing capacious, interlocking shields. The Greeks, by way of contrast, rarely employed cavalry and did not deploy bowmen in any number. Ordinarily, the Persians employed archers on foot and on horseback as a species of primitive artillery to break up enemy formations then these same horsemen were used as shock cavalry to rout and massacre the scattered footsoldiers who remained and, finally, spearmen (most of whom doubled as archers) cleaned up. The infantry was not the strongest branch within the Great King’s army. The Lacedaemonians knew that, if Athens’ infantry really had bested an Achaemenid army of considerable size, they could do so in similar circumstances themselves. The Persians were land-lubbers, renowned for their pre-eminence in battle on land. It is telling that the soldiers dispatched from Lacedaemon to Athens at this time insisted on visiting the battlefield at Marathon to survey the carnage. It was not until 490 BC, when Darius chose to attack Athens in mainland Greece, just a few miles from the gates of the Peloponnese, that the Lacedaemonians bestirred themselves – and even then they were slow, for they reached Attica a day too late. And when his Ionian subjects launched a great rebellion and sought their help, the Spartans once again refused to come to the aid of their fellow Hellenes. When Darius, son of Hystaspes, extended his dominion on the European mainland westward into Thrace and Macedonia, the Lacedaemonians still did nothing. When the former took to the sea and roped in the islands along that coast, Sparta remained quiet. When the Persians subdued the Greek cities on the Anatolian coast, the Spartans considered their plea for help and baulked at the prospect. ![]() But the Greek military system, based on the hoplite phalanx, proved superior to the Persian army. The Persian Empire was the largest yet known, with vast resources of manpower and treasure. Persian warriors of the Great King, as depicted on a frieze formed of glazed brick in the Pergamon Museum.
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