Such an eventuality must have been foreseen by the Greek generals; it seems, indeed, almost certain, from the subsequent development of the fight, that the falling back of the centre was a pre-arranged feature in the tactics of the battle. Herodotus, drawing his account largely from popular tradition, and not finding any reference to such a design in the sources of his information, represents the retreat of the centre as a reverse, whereas it was the essential preliminary to that movement which decided the battle. The strong Athenian wings defeated, not without a severe struggle, the troops opposed to them; but, being kept well in hand, refrained from pursuing them. They wheeled round and assailed the victorious (_sic_) Persian centre on either flank. The deliberate checking of the pursuit of the wings points clearly to the fact that the falling back of the Greek centre was an essential feature of the plan of battle. As has been already said, that retreat was almost certainly a deliberate act, which had been provided for in the orders given to the officers of the wings before the battle began. It would have been difficult to check the pursuit of a victorious citizen force, had not its officers been aware beforehand that this formed an essential part of the whole design of the battle. It was in this fight that the Persians must have sustained their severest losses, if the term fight can be applied to what, if the numbers of the slain given by Herodotus be near the truth, must have soon degenerated into a massacre. Such of the Persian centre as escaped,—they cannot have been many in number,—fled to the ships. On reaching the shore, the Greeks called for means of setting fire to the vessels. As the fugitives from the Persian wings must have already reached the shore, and had, no doubt, hauled a large number of the ships into deep water, the success here attained by the Greeks was not great. The enemy seem to have fought with the courage of desperation to save their sole means of escape, and the Athenian losses at this stage of the fight, if not large numerically, included the polemarch Kallimachos and Stesilaos, one of the generals. Other prominent citizens fell in the same combat. ◆Paus. i. 32. 7.◆ Pausanias mentions that part of the Persian army got involved in one of the marshes, and was there slaughtered. This detail is derived from the picture preserved in the Poikilé Stoa at Athens.[84] The marsh referred to is evidently the great marsh at the north-east end of the plain; for the cave of Pan is mentioned as lying somewhat farther from the plain than the marsh itself. The unfortunates who perished there seem to have been attempting to reach the shore of the bay by making a large circuit. ◆H. vi. 115.◆