Miltiades (550-489 BC) was a Greek Athenian statesman and general, the victor of the Battle of Marathon at the start of the Greco-Persian Wars, and the father of the noted statesman Cimon.
Biography[]
Miltiades was born in Athens, Greece in 550 BC, the son of a famed Olympic charioteer, and the nephew of Miltiades the Elder. His father was murdered by the sons of the tyrant Peisistratus out of jealousy, and his uncle established a tyrannical state on the Thracian Chersonese in 555 BC. Following Miltiades the Elder's death in 520 BC and the murder of his successor Stesagoras in 516 BC, Miltiades the Younger inherited the tyranny of the Chersonese, imprisoning the leading men of the city and allying with the Odrysian Kingdom of Thrace by marrying King Olorus' daughter. In 513 BC, Shahanshah Darius the Great of Achaemenid Persia invaded Thrace and made Miltiades a vassal of Persian rule, and Miltiades attempted to resist Persian rule by proposing that the other Greek officers in Darius' service join him in destroying a bridge across the Danube to strand Darius and his army in Scythia. However, Miltiades' fellow officers were afraid, and Miltiades was forced to flee in 510 BC. He joined the Ionian Revolt in 499 BC and returned to the Chersonese in 496 BC, capturing Lemnos and Imbros and ceding the islands to Athens. In 492 BC, Miltiades and his family sought refuge in Athens after the Ionian rebellion was crushed. While Miltiades, a supporter of the overthrown Athenian tyranny, was poorly received on his arrival, he persuaded the Athenians that he had defended Greek freedoms against Persian despotism, and that he knew of the battle strategies of the Persian armies. In 490 BC, he was elected one of Athens' ten strategoi, and Miltiades persuaded the polemarch Callimachus to give him command of the army sent to face the Persian invaders at the Battle of Marathon. Miltiades swiftly attacked and defeated the much larger Persian army on the beach, and, a year later, he led an expedition of 70 ships to punish the Aegean islands which had supported the Persians. Miltiades instead used the opportunity to seek petty revenge against the island of Paros for past slights, and he suffered a grievous leg wound and failed to capture the island. On his return to Athens, he was charged with treason and sentenced to death, but he died of gangrene from his leg wound.