As in the order of time, so likewise in the order of importance, Marathon stands first among the Battles of Destiny. Without Marathon there would have been no Thermopylæ, Salamis, Platæa, Mycale; no Attic supremacy; no Age of Pericles: and would the world be just what it is today if these things had not been? Would Attica as a Persian satrapy ever have become Athens of the Acropolis crowned with the Propylaea-Erectheum-Parthenon: Athens bright star-night of the past glittering with deathless names? Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia had risen and set; Rome subsequently rose and fell; France, Italy, Spain, England, Germany, and our own infantine experimental Republic of the West are advancing fatefully in the old circle: yet not one of these may boast as many eminent men, stars of first magnitude, glorious constellations--as little Greece might boast, that brief bright star-night of the past thick-studded with immortal names. CALLIMACHUS, WAR RULER. Of the ten commanders of the ten Athenian tribes who assembled on the heights overlooking the plain of Marathon, five voted against battle with the invading Persians, five in favor of battle. Callimachus the War Ruler, influenced by the enthusiastic eloquence of Miltiades, gave the casting vote in favor of battle. On this so seeming slight chance hung Marathon. Humanly speaking, it was madness for that little handful of Greeks to rush down upon the countless Persian hosts. The Persians themselves could not believe their own eyes when they saw the Greeks running to battle; and half-heartedly, perhaps even jestingly, they prepared for a brief skirmish with madmen. The Medes and Persians were at that time deemed invincible. Babylonia, Assyria, Asia Minor, the isles of the Ægean, the African Coast, the Euxine, Thrace, Macedonia had successively fallen before the soldiers of the Great King. The Ægean was a Persian Lake; from east, from south, from north approached the awful power of imperial Persia, ready irresistibly to absorb little Greece, to punish and obliterate Athens. Already the Eretrians, who together with the Athenians had aided in the Ionian revolt, were overtaken by the dread vengeance of Darius: their city had fallen and more than a thousand Eretrians were left bound on the island Egilia awaiting the return of the victorious Persian fleet from Marathon. Then together with the captive Athenians, the Eretrians were to be taken to Susa there to await the pleasure of the Great King, whose wrath had been new-kindled day by day with memories of burning Sardis by a court attendant whose sole duty was to repeat to Darius at each meal, “Sire, remember the Athenians.” Sardis would then be fearfully avenged.