Marathon and The Battle of Marathon

[Epictetus]

The Wall Street Journal has reviewed two books: Marathon by Richard A Billows and The Battle of Marathon by Peter Krentz.

A couple interesting points:

For Richard Billows the battle's unlikely outcome "changed Western civilization." For Peter Krentz it was, more modestly, "the pivotal battle that changed Greek military history 2,500 years ago."...

Mr. Billows, acutely sensitive to the inescapable fact that the modern historian can't convey a fully realistic sense of what the battle was actually like, devotes to its description but 20 pages in a 300-page book. His predilections lie elsewhere—in scene-setting, in unraveling geopolitical and diplomatic maneuverings. Mr. Krentz, by contrast, is a premier military historian of the "revisionist" school. Three out of his nine chapters go to the action of the battle itself. His object is to reassess and deflate the ancient claim that the Athenian hoplites (that is, members of the heavy infantry) ran for about a mile before smashing into the far lighter-armed Persian infantry awaiting them in no good order. Mr. Krentz contends that the average Athenian hoplite was carrying—rather than the standard estimate of 70 pounds or so—as little as 30 pounds of battle gear and even so would have jog-trotted, not run, that miracle mile.

[Epictetus]

... and several months later Peter Thonemann of Oxford reviews the same two books in The Sunday Times.