HISTORY 36B Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Strategos, Ostracism, Hellenic Army
Document Summary
The athenian board of 10 strategoi (generals from each tribe) made command decisions/consensus difficult. Delay and wait for the spartans or attack the persian contingent that had landed at the bay. Miltiades convinced the board to let him direct strategy. Final decision is to attack, gambling on the intel that not all the persian forces had landed. Greeks were outnumbered and the victory was more likely due to the element of surprise: the much stronger persian forces likely assumed the greeks wouldn"t attack. Any greek who fought at marathon was revered. Themistocles (most likely) engineered a change in the election process. Since the board of strategoi become more popular and even more powerful than the archons. Archons would now be selected by lot, from a large pool of men from the demes (citizens basically had to self-select themselves into the available pool) Ambitious men more interested in the board of strategoi than archonship, could serve multiple terms as strategos.
