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Miltiades: the victor of Marathon

Ancient Greece · Athenian general · died 489 BC · ~9 min read · Updated October 2026

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Athenian hoplites charge the Persians at Marathon, part of Carl Robert's 1895 reconstruction of the lost Stoa Poikile painting, with Miltiades leading the Greek line

Reconstruction of Polygnotos' painting of Marathon, 19th century, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

At a glance

Also known as
Miltiades the Younger
Lived
died 489 BC
Role
Tyrant of the Thracian Chersonese, then Athenian general
Famous for
The victory at Marathon, 490 BC
Formation
A thin center and strong wings
Fall
Failed siege of Paros, fined 50 talents, 489 BC
Quick answer

Who was Miltiades?

Miltiades the Younger (died 489 BC) was an Athenian aristocrat who ruled the Thracian Chersonese on the Hellespont as a tyrant before fleeing to Athens in 493 BC. As one of the ten Athenian generals he pressed for battle at Marathon in 490 BC. A year later his siege of Paros failed, he was fined 50 talents and soon died.1

Miltiades fought one great field battle, the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, where Herodotus places him among the Athenian generals who voted to fight. His other recorded operations were a conquest and a siege rather than pitched battles: he took the island of Lemnos for Athens, and his 26-day siege of Paros in 489 BC ended his career.2

Early life and family

Miltiades belonged to the noble Philaid family of Athens. His father, Cimon son of Stesagoras, was driven into exile by the tyrant Peisistratus, won the Olympic four-horse chariot race three times with the same mares, and was later murdered at night by the sons of Peisistratus. Miltiades took his name from Miltiades the Elder, his father's half-brother, who had made himself ruler of the Thracian Chersonese.3

His relations with the ruling house were ambiguous. Herodotus says the sons of Peisistratus treated him well at Athens, pretending to have had no part in his father's death, and then sent him out in a trireme to take over the Chersonese after his elder brother Stesagoras was killed there. Bury nevertheless counts him, by 490 BC, as the bitterest enemy of the Peisistratid house.4

How did Miltiades become tyrant of the Chersonese?

He inherited the lordship from his family. When his brother Stesagoras died childless, the sons of Peisistratus sent Miltiades to the Chersonese. Herodotus says he shut himself in his house as if in mourning, arrested the local leaders who came to console him, and married Hegesipyle, daughter of the Thracian king Olorus, to secure his position.5

Herodotus calls him the tyrant of the Chersonese, and Nepos says he held a king's authority without the title and was called a tyrant, though a just one. How and Wells place his arrival before 510 BC, probably before 515. He held the peninsula until 493 BC, apart from a flight before a Scythian raid that How and Wells date to about 495 BC.6

As a vassal of Persia he served on the campaign of Darius I against the Scythians. Herodotus, Nepos and Bury tell how, when the Ionian tyrants guarded the king's bridge over the Danube, Miltiades urged them to break it and leave Darius to his fate, and how Histiaeus of Miletus talked them out of it. How and Wells think the story very doubtful, perhaps invented later to present him as a friend of Greek freedom.7

He also took Lemnos for Athens. Herodotus says he sailed from Elaeus on the Chersonese, ordered the Pelasgian inhabitants to leave and besieged the town of Myrina until it submitted; Nepos tells a different version of the same conquest. Bury and How and Wells place it after 500 BC, during the Ionian revolt against Persia.8

When the Phoenician fleet of the Persian king arrived in 493 BC, after the revolt was crushed, Miltiades fled to Athens. His eldest son Metiochus was captured at sea and brought to Darius, who, Herodotus says, gave him a house, property and a Persian wife. Bury takes this kind treatment as a sign that Miltiades had once been on good terms with Persia.9

In Athens his enemies prosecuted him for tyranny in the Chersonese. He was acquitted and elected one of the ten generals. Bury notes that he probably had more first-hand knowledge of the Persians than any other man in Athens.10

A 19th-century engraving of Themistocles, Miltiades, Aspasia and Pericles
A 19th-century engraving of leading Athenians, including Miltiades. No portrait of him from life survives. Public domain

What was Miltiades famous for?

Miltiades is famous for the Athenian victory over the Persians at Marathon in 490 BC. Herodotus says he persuaded the polemarch Callimachus to vote for battle when the ten generals were split, and that the Athenians and Plataeans, drawn up with a thin center and strong wings, routed the invaders, losing 192 men to some 6,400 Persians.11

In 490 BC a Persian expedition under Datis and Artaphernes crossed the Aegean; Herodotus gives it 600 triremes, Nepos 500 ships. It took Eretria on Euboea and landed at the bay of Marathon, guided there by the exiled Athenian tyrant Hippias. The Athenians marched out to meet it, and the Plataeans joined them in full force.12 › Darius the Great

Terrain map of Marathon: the open Plain of Marathon between Mount Agrieliki and Mount Kotroni, the Great Marsh to the north, the curving Bay of Marathon and the Soros burial mound near the shore
Our reconstruction of the ancient ground at Marathon: the open plain between Mount Agrieliki and Mount Kotroni, closed to the north by the Great Marsh and open to the bay where the Persian fleet lay, with the Soros, the mound of the Athenian dead, near the shore. Positions are approximate. Tap to enlarge. Map: Echoes of Battle. Relief: Copernicus DEM GLO-30 (ESA/Airbus). Base: Curtius & Kaupert, Karten von Attika

The generals were divided, some arguing that they were too few to fight. Herodotus gives Miltiades a speech to Callimachus, the polemarch, who held an eleventh vote: delay would breed discord and some Athenians would go over to the Persians, but an attack now could win. Callimachus voted for battle. Nepos and Bury stress instead Miltiades' part in persuading the Athenians to march out and meet the enemy in the field.13

Herodotus says the generals who favored battle handed their days of command to Miltiades, who still waited for his own day. The line was stretched to match the Persian front, its center only a few ranks deep and its wings strong, with Callimachus on the right and the Plataeans on the left. How and Wells think the thin center was deliberate, to avoid being outflanked; Bury credits the formation to Callimachus.14

Herodotus says the armies stood at least eight stades apart, roughly a mile, and that the Athenians crossed the gap at a run; How and Wells think only the last 200 yards or so could have been taken at full speed. The Persians and Sacae broke the Athenian center, but the wings won, closed together on the troops who had broken through and routed them. At the shore the Athenians took seven ships, and Callimachus was killed.15

Engraved map of the bay and plain of Marathon with the Greek and Persian lines of battle marked
The plain and bay of Marathon on a map from an 1897 edition of Herodotus, with the Greek camp in the Herakleion, the Persian position by the Great Marsh and the Persian fleet in the bay. Public domain. Herodotus, translated by George Rawlinson, 1897, British Library, via Wikimedia Commons.

No reliable count of the armies survives. Nepos gives 10,000 Athenians and Plataeans, 1,000 of them Plataeans, and Bury puts the Athenian army at about 9,000. For the Persians Nepos gives 200,000 infantry, of whom 100,000 fought, and 10,000 cavalry; How and Wells call this greatly exaggerated and suggest perhaps 40,000. Herodotus counts 6,400 Persian and 192 Athenian dead, figures that Bury and How and Wells accept as probably near the truth.16

Herodotus does not mention the Persian cavalry in the fighting, although the expedition had brought horse transports. Bury thought the cavalry had already been embarked for a move on Athens when the Athenians attacked, and How and Wells cite a late tradition, preserved in the Byzantine lexicon called the Suda, that Ionians signaled to the Athenians that the horsemen were away.17

The army then marched back to Athens and reached the city before the Persian fleet, which had sailed round Cape Sunium, anchored off Phalerum and then sailed for Asia. Two thousand Spartans arrived after the full moon, too late for the battle, went to see the Persian dead and left praising the Athenians.18

Did Miltiades command the Athenian army at Marathon?

Not formally. He was one of ten generals, each leading a tribal regiment, and the polemarch Callimachus held the deciding vote; Pausanias and Bury call Callimachus the commander-in-chief. Herodotus says the generals gave Miltiades their days of command, but Bury and How and Wells reject that daily rotation as a later tradition that magnified Miltiades.19

How and Wells argue that the Athenians later remembered Miltiades as commander-in-chief because he had carried the decision to fight and was seen as the author of the plan. Bury similarly calls him the heart and soul of the campaign, while giving the conduct of the battle itself to the polemarch.20

How did Miltiades die?

Miltiades died in 489 BC, soon after his trial. He came back from the failed siege of Paros with an injured thigh, was prosecuted by Xanthippus, who demanded death, and was fined 50 talents. Herodotus says the wound turned gangrenous and killed him; Nepos says he died in prison, unable to pay.21

After Marathon, Herodotus says, he asked the Athenians for 70 ships, men and money without naming his target, only promising to make them rich. He sailed against Paros on the pretext that the Parians had sent a trireme with the Persian fleet, and after besieging the town for 26 days he gave up. Bury and How and Wells date the expedition to 489 BC.22

Herodotus records the Parians' own story that a captive under-priestess named Timo led him to the sanctuary of Demeter outside the town, where he was seized with panic and hurt his thigh, or his knee, leaping down from the wall. Nepos, following another tradition, says he had been wounded in the siege and broke it off when a distant fire was taken for a signal from the Persian fleet; How and Wells consider that version untrustworthy.23

His prosecutor was Xanthippus son of Ariphron, the father of Pericles, who charged him with deceiving the Athenians. Miltiades lay on a couch in court while friends spoke of Marathon and the conquest of Lemnos. The people spared his life but fined him 50 talents, a sum Nepos equates with the cost of the fleet; How and Wells call that a guess. Herodotus says his son Cimon paid the fine, and How and Wells dismiss the prison story as a later fiction.24

How was Miltiades remembered?

Athens honored him modestly at first. Nepos says his only reward was to be painted first among the ten generals, urging on his men, in the picture of Marathon in the Painted Stoa of Athens. Pausanias, who saw it, names Miltiades and Callimachus as its most conspicuous fighters and also saw a monument to Miltiades at Marathon.25

Grass-covered burial mound on the plain of Marathon among olive trees
The Soros, the burial mound raised over the Athenians who fell at Marathon, on the plain where they fought in 490 BC. CC0 (public domain)

Bury argues that legend grew quickly around Marathon and that the wish of Miltiades' family to exalt his services helped turn him into the commander-in-chief of later tradition. His son Cimon later won victories over the Persians as an Athenian commander, and How and Wells note that the enmity between his family and the house of Xanthippus continued between Cimon and Pericles.26

A bronze Corinthian helmet found on the south slope of the stadium at Olympia, now in the Archaeological Museum of Olympia, carries an inscription saying that Miltiades dedicated it to Zeus. The Greek Ministry of Culture dates it to 490 BC and calls it his thanks for Marathon; the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens calls it very probably his offering after the battle.27

Marble statue of a dying young runner raising a palm branch
The Soldier of Marathon Announcing the Victory, a marble statue by Jean-Pierre Cortot completed in 1834 (Louvre, Paris), one of many 19th-century echoes of the battle. Public domain

See his great victory at Marathon, or meet the other great commanders of ancient Greece.

Notes

A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.

  1. Herodotus, The Histories; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great. ↩
  2. Herodotus, The Histories; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus. ↩
  3. Herodotus, The Histories; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus. ↩
  4. Herodotus, The Histories; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great. ↩
  5. Herodotus, The Histories; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus. ↩
  6. Herodotus, The Histories; Cornelius Nepos, Miltiades; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great. ↩
  7. Herodotus, The Histories; Cornelius Nepos, Miltiades; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus. ↩
  8. Herodotus, The Histories; Cornelius Nepos, Miltiades; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus. ↩
  9. Herodotus, The Histories; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great. ↩
  10. Herodotus, The Histories; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great. ↩
  11. Herodotus, The Histories; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great. ↩
  12. Herodotus, The Histories; Cornelius Nepos, Miltiades; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great. ↩
  13. Herodotus, The Histories; Cornelius Nepos, Miltiades; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great. ↩
  14. Herodotus, The Histories; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great. ↩
  15. Herodotus, The Histories; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great. ↩
  16. Cornelius Nepos, Miltiades; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus; Herodotus, The Histories. ↩
  17. Herodotus, The Histories; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus. ↩
  18. Herodotus, The Histories; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great. ↩
  19. Herodotus, The Histories; Pausanias, Description of Greece; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus. ↩
  20. W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great. ↩
  21. Herodotus, The Histories; Cornelius Nepos, Miltiades; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus. ↩
  22. Herodotus, The Histories; Cornelius Nepos, Miltiades; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus. ↩
  23. Herodotus, The Histories; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great; Cornelius Nepos, Miltiades; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus. ↩
  24. Herodotus, The Histories; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great; Cornelius Nepos, Miltiades; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus. ↩
  25. Cornelius Nepos, Miltiades; Pausanias, Description of Greece; J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus. ↩
  26. J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus. ↩
  27. Hellenic Ministry of Culture, “Κράνος Μιλτιάδη”; Museum of Cycladic Art, “Corinthian helmet”. ↩

Sources

  • Herodotus, The Histories, trans. A. D. Godley (Harvard University Press, 1920), via the Perseus Digital Library: Book 4, 137; Book 6, 34 to 41, 94 and 95, 102 to 117, 120 and 131 to 140.
  • W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus (Clarendon Press, 1912; revised 1928), notes on Book 4, 137 and Book 6, 34 to 140, and appendix 18, Internet Archive.
  • J. B. Bury, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great (Macmillan, 1900; reprint 1906), chapters 5 and 6, Internet Archive.
  • Cornelius Nepos, Miltiades, in Lives of Eminent Commanders, trans. J. S. Watson (George Bell and Sons, 1886), online text.
  • Pausanias, Description of Greece, trans. W. H. S. Jones (Harvard University Press, 1918), via the Perseus Digital Library: Book 1, 15.3 and 32.3 to 32.4.
  • Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Odysseus portal, “Κράνος Μιλτιάδη” (Miltiades helmet), Archaeological Museum of Olympia, inv. B 2600.
  • Museum of Cycladic Art, “Corinthian helmet”, Google Arts & Culture.

Frequently asked questions

What is Miltiades famous for?

Miltiades is famous for the Athenian victory at Marathon in 490 BC. Herodotus says he persuaded the polemarch Callimachus to vote for battle and that the Athenians and Plataeans, with a thin center and strong wings, routed the Persian army sent by Darius I, losing 192 men to about 6,400 Persians.

Was Miltiades the commander in chief at Marathon?

Not formally. He was one of ten Athenian generals, and the polemarch Callimachus held the deciding vote and, according to Pausanias and Bury, the chief command. Herodotus says the generals handed Miltiades their days of command, but Bury and How and Wells treat that rotation as a later tradition.

Was Miltiades a tyrant?

Yes, in the Thracian Chersonese on the Hellespont, where Herodotus calls him its tyrant and Nepos says he was called a tyrant, though a just one. He ruled there for well over a decade until 493 BC. Back in Athens he was prosecuted for that tyranny, acquitted and elected one of the ten generals.

How did the Athenians win at Marathon?

According to Herodotus, the Athenians stretched their line to match the Persian front, leaving the center thin and the wings strong, and charged at a run. The Persians broke the center, but the victorious Athenian and Plataean wings closed together on them, routed them and drove them to their ships.

What happened to Miltiades after Marathon?

In 489 BC he led 70 ships against Paros, besieged the town for 26 days and returned wounded without taking it. Xanthippus, the father of Pericles, prosecuted him and demanded death, but the people fined him 50 talents instead. He died soon afterward, of gangrene according to Herodotus.

Did Miltiades die in prison?

Cornelius Nepos says he did, unable to pay his fine of 50 talents. Herodotus, the earlier source, says only that he died of gangrene in his injured thigh and that his son Cimon paid the fine. How and Wells dismiss the prison story as a later fiction unknown to Herodotus.

Who was the son of Miltiades?

His best-known son was Cimon, who paid his father's fine of 50 talents and later won victories over the Persians as an Athenian commander. An elder son, Metiochus, was captured by the Phoenician fleet in 493 BC and taken to Darius I, who gave him a house, property and a Persian wife.

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