An examination of the map will show how well the position was chosen. It lay high up the rocky valley of Avlona, so near the point where the two forks of the upper road to Athens from the Marathonian plain join one another, that it commanded them both. Moreover, the army in this position would threaten the flank of any body of troops who tried to march on Athens by the lower road, which left the plain between the foot of Mount Agrieliki, (to use its modern name), and the little marsh. Herodotus’ account of the system of command existent at this time in the Athenian army service is confused, and contains at least one serious anachronism. It leaves the reader in a state of uncertainty as to whether the polemarch Kallimachos or the “general” Miltiades was the actual commander-in-chief.* * * * * * _On the Command at Marathon._ *He says (ch. 103): “They were led by ten generals, of whom Miltiades was the tenth.” The last phrase closely resembles the quasi-official phraseology of Thucydides, where he is mentioning the generals in command of an expedition, and wishes to indicate the one who had been appointed first in command. Though the phraseology of Herodotus does not exactly correspond with that of the later author, yet the resemblance is so close that it seems probable that he was under the impression that the “strategi” of 490 held a position more closely analogous to that of the strategi of his own day than was actually the case. #THE COMMAND AT MARATHON.# It seems to imply that the command of the army lay with them, and that in 490, as in later times, one of them was appointed to be first in command for a particular expedition. This last was certainly not the case. The ten strategi or “generals” in 490 seem to have been the commanders of the contingents of the ten tribes which Kleisthenes had instituted less than twenty years before; and, in so far as the control of the army as a whole was concerned, to have formed, under the presidency of the polemarch, a council of war. In a later chapter (110), Herodotus says that each held a πρυτανηίη τῆς ἡμέρης. In whatever sense the term πρυτανηίη may have been used, it is plain from the context that Herodotus intends to imply that each of the strategi in rotation commanded the army for one day.