How is it known for sure that the Athenians won the battle of Marathon?

What evidence is there? I keep reading information about the battle of marathon but can't find sources that explain how people got that information.|||You can't know for sure that anything happened unless you witnessed it; and even then your eyes might have deceived you. Don't ask for absolute certainty - it's like perfect love. You never get it.



On the other hand there is enough indirect evidence to make the happenings at Marathon a fair bet to be accurately reported. The grave of the Athenian dead on the battlefield still exists and is marked by a modern memorial. Contemporary accounts, some full, some mere mentions, agree on almost every detail of what happened. The Persians never claimed either that the battle did not happen or that they won.



Unless there was a massive conspiracy involving thousands of people and two hostile ethnic groups to mislead future historians, the simplest and best explanation is that the battle happened as reported. The alternative involves a startlingly high level of improbability, whereas that a battle actually happened and that the winners won is reasonably probable.



As so often, Occam's razor applies.|||How do you mean what evidence, if you mean was there a war correspondent. No but we do have the Historian Herodotus, and he spoke to people involved in the battle and wrote the History down. Also the very fact that Athens survived and then won the Battle of Salamis, which ensured the defeat of the Persians, is fairly substantial evidence in its own right. That the Persians didn't succeed in conquering Athens is there recorded by others as well as Herodotus.





So if you are wanting to read the original source document get hold of a copy of Herodotus.





http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/histor鈥?/a>|||It's kind of a general truism that the victors are the ones who write the history. The losers are too busy licking their wounds or being dead. I realize this sounds kind of flippant, but there it is.





I imagine, though, that there may be a Persian version. Try the 'net...|||Didn't one of the survivors run back to a village and break the news to the people, dying shortly after of exhaustion? That's how the marathon was born.|||Because Greek primary sources say so,and as the Persians didn't conquer Greece (no need to invade again 10 years later if they had),it seems reasonable to accept their word for it.|||People run the marathon and have been doing so for a century or so. No point celebrating sth that didn't happen don't you think?|||Because Athens continued to exist and the Persians didn't subjugate Greece.