Authors: Jim Lacey
The First Clash
Also by Jim Lacey
Takedown: The 3rd Infantry Division’s
Twenty-one Day Assault on Baghdad
Pershing: A Biography
The Canons of Jihad: Terrorists’ Strategy for Defeating America
(editor)
The Making of Peace: Rulers, States, and the Aftermath of War
(co-editor, with Williamson Murray)
Copyright © 2011 by James Lacey
Maps copyright © 2011 by Jeffrey L. Ward
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
B
ANTAM
B
OOKS
and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., for permission to reprint excerpts from
The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories
by Robert B. Strassler, translated by Andrea L. Purvis, copyright © 2007 by Robert B. Strassler. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Lacey, Jim
The first clash: the miraculous Greek victory at Marathon and its impact on Western civilization / Jim Lacey.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-553-90812-1
1. Marathon, Battle of, Greece, 409
B.C.
—Influence. 2. Greece—Civilization—To 146
B.C.
3. Iran—History—To 640
A.D.
I. Title.
DF225.4.L33 2011 938′.03—dc22 2010046214
Jacket design: Christopher Sergio
Jacket photograph: © National Museum of Scotland / The Bridgeman Art Library
v3.1
Dedicated to
Ali and James
The mountains look on Marathon—
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone
,
I dream’d that Greece might yet be free
For, standing on the Persians’ grave
,
I could not deem myself a slave
.
—L
ORD
B
YRON
,
“
THE ISLES OF GREECE
”
