How long Datis and Artaphernes remained at Phaleron, history does not say; but the Athenian army from Marathon cannot have been long at Athens before the Spartan contingent arrived there. It had, presumably, left Laconia on the 15th of the month, the day of full moon; and, making an extraordinarily rapid march, it reached Athens in less than three days. Its numbers are curiously small, only 2000 men; yet the speed with which it travelled shows that the Spartans were in earnest. They must have arrived very shortly after the battle, for they visited the field to view the dead; and it is not conceivable that 6400 corpses would be allowed to rot under a Greek sun, unburied for many days. Despite its brevity, Herodotus’ account of Marathon contrasts favourably in certain respects with his narratives of the battles of ten years later. Fewer details are given; but the main tactics employed are far more clearly noted. The Greek generalship during the brief campaign was, in respect to both strategy and tactics, the best of the century. The difficulties which Kallimachos and his colleagues had to face were great. The danger was extreme. They might have been excused had they erred on the side of caution. The boldest course, taken in the move to Marathon, proved the most effective. It struck at the one weak point in the otherwise admirable Persian design. It placed the Persians in the manifest difficulty of a choice between two strategic evils. They would either have to assail the Greeks at a great disadvantage, or would, in the process of embarkation, have to face attack themselves with only a part of their force. Marathon has, and must always have, a great place in history. It made a great and immediate impression on those who were its contemporaries. Its story would certainly, in any age of the world, have gained by exaggeration. It is only possible at the present day to surmise the lengths to which that exaggeration went; but chance references in later authors show that it went very far. Little of the exaggeration is found in Herodotus. That honest old historian has winnowed out nearly all the chaff from the crop of legends; though it cannot be doubted that in the process he has cast away some of the good grain also. The loss may have been unavoidable. The machinery for historical criticism was in his day in its most primitive stage; and the good grain in the material to be dealt with was smothered in valueless dust. One, and, historically speaking, the most important side of the exaggeration of after-time, must be mentioned. The Greek world, thanks no doubt to the Athenian presentment of the tale, regarded Marathon as a defeat inflicted on the full strength of Persia. It has been shown that such cannot have been the case.