Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Ancient Warfare Answers with me, Murray.

This is a very special episode, which is, of course, you can see in the descriptor saying it's number 300, which is crazy.

Now, interestingly, number 300, I'm not going to be talking about

the Battle of Thermopylai. This, of course, is your weekly 10-minute fix of ancient military

affairs to take you away from whatever's happening in your actual life, to think about,

not necessarily the Roman Empire, but ancient warfare. And so you can of course ask us a question.

That's what I do. I answer or I attempt to answer questions sent in by listeners, viewers,

people on the street. You can send us an email. You can comment on one of the previous

podcasts or videos on YouTube. You can send us a postcard. And you can ask us a question that's on your mind

about ancient warfare, and I will do my best. Now, today's 300th is tricky because it's

about a bigan. It's what really happened at the Battle of Marathon. Wow. Okay, so any of those

what really happens are tricky,, of course, as historians,

we're plagued by trying to decipher what happened 2,000 plus years ago using ancient sources,

mostly in translation, but often, you know, we can use the Greek and the Latin of their originals.

But they also are often writing much, much later.

And the Battle of Marathon is no exception.

Obviously, our best source for the Battle of Marathon is Herodotus, who's writing about 40, maybe 50 years later.

The battle fought on the 10th of September 490 BC.

And we have got various sources which give us that date to be able to specify it.

Now, as for what really happened, one of the issues, of course, with several other sources,

Pausanias, for instance, in Plutarch, they're writing in the second century AD, so five, six hundred years after the events they're describing.

But in oftentimes they're the ones that survive and who they used as sources do not.

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