The Greeks, lying encamped on the mountains, could watch every
movement of the Persians on the plain below, while they were
enabled completely to mask their own. Miltiades also had, from
his position, the power of giving battle whenever he pleased, or
of delaying it at his discretion, unless Datis were to attempt
the perilous operation of storming the heights.

If we turn to the map of the old world, to test the comparative
territorial resources of the two states whose armies were now
about to come into conflict, the immense preponderance of the
material power of the Persian king over that of the Athenian
republic is more striking than any similar contrast which history
can supply. It has been truly remarked, that, in estimating mere
areas, Attica, containing on its whole surface only seven hundred
square miles, shrinks into insignificance if compared with many a
baronial fief of the Middle Ages, or many a colonial allotment of
modern times. Its antagonist, the Persian empire, comprised the
whole of modern Asiatic and much of modern European Turkey, the
modern kingdom of Persia, and the countries of modern Georgia,
Armenia, Balkh, the Punjaub, Affghanistan, Beloochistan, Egypt,
and Tripoli.

Nor could a European, in the beginning of the fifth century
before our era, look upon this huge accumulation of power beneath
the sceptre of a single Asiatic ruler, with the indifference with
which we now observe on the map the extensive dominions of modern
Oriental sovereigns. For, as has been already remarked, before
Marathon was fought, the prestige of success and of supposed
superiority of race was on the side of the Asiatic against the
European. Asia was the original seat of human societies and long