The two armies were at this time encamped in sight of each other on the plain of Marathon, between the mountain and the sea. They were nearly a mile apart. The countless multitude of the Persians extended as far as the eye could reach, with long lines of tents in the distance, and thousands of horsemen on the plain, all ready for the charge. The Greeks, on the other hand, occupied a small and isolated spot, in a compact form, without cavalry, without archers, without, in fact, any weapons suitable either for attack or defense, except in a close encounter hand to hand. Their only hope of success depended on the desperate violence of the onset they were to make upon the vast masses of men spread out before them. On the one side were immense numbers, whose force, vast as it was, must necessarily be more or less impeded in its operations, and slow. It was to be overpowered, therefore, if overpowered at all, by the utmost fierceness and rapidity of action--by sudden onsets, unexpected and furious assaults, and heavy, vigorous, and rapid blows. Miltiades, therefore, made all his arrangements with reference to that mode of warfare. Such soldiers as the Greeks, too, were admirably adapted to execute such designs, and the immense and heterogeneous mass of Asiatic nations which covered the plain before them was exactly the body for such an experiment to be made upon. Glorying in their numbers and confident of victory, they were slowly advancing, without the least idea that the little band before them could possibly do them any serious harm. They had actually brought with them, in the train of the army, some blocks of marble, with which they were going to erect a monument of their victory, on the field of battle, as soon as the conflict was over! At length the Greeks began to put themselves in motion. As they advanced, they accelerated their march more and more, until just before reaching the Persian lines, when they began to run. The astonishment of the Persians at this unexpected and daring onset soon gave place, first to the excitement of personal conflict, and then to universal terror and dismay; for the headlong impetuosity of the Greeks bore down all opposition, and the desperate swordsmen cut their way through the vast masses of the enemy with a fierce and desperate fury that nothing could withstand. Something like a contest continued for some hours; but, at the end of that time, the Persians were flying in all directions, every one endeavoring, by the track which he found most practicable for himself, to make his way to the ships on the shore. Vast multitudes were killed in this headlong flight; others became entangled in the morasses and fens, and others still strayed away, and sought, in their terror, a hopeless refuge in the defiles of the mountains. Those who escaped crowded in confusion on board their ships, and pushed off from the shore, leaving the whole plain covered with their dead and dying companions.