Design and Strategy
1998
1. Introduction
European culture – and by extension, Western civilisation – has its initial foundation in Greece, specifically in the Athens of the 5th century B.C. Today, twenty-five centuries later, at the beginning of the third millennium, the influence of this foundation continues to permeate innumerable aspects of our daily life. Architecture, thought, religion and our conception of the world in general all owe a debt to Greek culture, whose heritage emerges even in everyday speech. Many words in European languages come from the Greek, including, for example, the word “strategy”, which forms a part of the title of this essay. It comes from “strátegos”, which means general, army leader.
Highlighting here the pre-eminence of Athens as the birthplace of European culture does not mean ignoring or underestimating the heritage of the poets, thinkers and physicists of the Greek colonies on the Ionian cost or in southern Italy (the Magna Grecia), nor the contribution to our civilisation made by other peoples of Antiquity. What distinguishes Athens from the other city-states is that it was there that for the first time in history the “kratos” of the “demos”, democracy, the exercise of power by the people, was tried out and came to flourish. And this first attempt at a “government of the many” was made during a period in which the norm was the exercise of power by one single man, king or tyrant, or by the few, oligarchs or aristocrats. In Athens, the access of new social classes to power and their participation in the shaping of the character and destiny of the city, unleashed, in the course of relatively few years, an extraordinary collective creativity. All that led to the amazing display of the Attic-Athenian spirit, immortalised by men like Solon, Pericles, Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Phidias and many others, who confronted the fundamental questions that are still present in contemporary thought and intellectual speculation. The flowering of this spirit made Athens a city open to the world and to ideas, a melting pot where native and foreign converged, the centre of the great synthesis of East and West.
The flourishing of this spirit, and what it meant for the subsequent development of what is today Europe, was possible because the Greeks succeeded, at the beginning of the 5th century, in conquering the mortal danger that threatened them. Between 490 and 479 B.C. the Persian Wars took place, during which the Eastern invader repeatedly attempted to subjugate the Greeks and make them part of their vast empire. Herodotus recounts the details of these events in his Histories.
In this great war between Persians and Hellenes, which was the first great struggle between East and West on European soil, many battles were fought, some of them major – such as Salamis, Platea, Marathon and others – such as Thermopylae, where Leonidas, king of Sparta, with a handful of men held in check a contingent of tens of thousands of Persians – all of them decisive not just for the destiny of Athens and Hellas, but also for the evolution of what was later to become Europe.
When the person who takes an interest in these battles is a designer, whose intellect has been shaped by the practice of his profession, the battle of Marathon attracts him in a unique way, since the planning of the battle reveals the workings of a kind of thinking analogous to the one which can be applied to problems of design. In no other battle of that period can we observe so clearly how this form of strategic thought worked. The analogy between Design and Strategy that appears here poses questions such as: Does a strategist design? Or, inversely, can a designer be considered a strategist? If this is so, what does it mean for design as such?
In order to clarify this question, the battle of Marathon will serve as an example.
To understand how it was planned, in other words, how the strategic thinking that designed it worked, it will be necessary to recall how and under what circumstances the battle took place.
The plain of Marathon
2. Description of the Battle of Marathon (12 September, 490 B.C.)
Marathon is a plain located 42 km. from Athens, on the northeast coast of Attica. It extends like a half-moon 9 km. long on a northeast-southwest axis and is between 2.5 and 4 km. wide. In the east it is bounded by the sea; on the west, by hills about 300 m. high. The plain ends at Mount Agrikili, in the southeast, and at Drakonera, a low hill in the northeast. From this hill a stretch of land, the peninsula of Cynosura, extends out into the sea. Just in front of it, at the foot of Drakonera hill, there was, at the time the battle took place, a great marsh. Another, smaller marsh was situated by the sea, near Agriliki. The River Charadros, which flows through one of the valleys of the western hills, crosses the plain to the sea, dividing it into two approximately equal parts.
In early September 490 B.C., the Persians arrived at Marathon. They had sailed down the Ionian coast and, when crossing the Aegean Sea, had demanded water and earth from various island cities, this being a symbol of submission to their power. The ultimate purpose of this expedition was to punish and subjugate Athens for the aid the Athenians had given, ten years before, to the Ionian cities that had rebelled against the Persian yoke. Due to their common ancestral origin, the Athenians responded to the Ionians’ call for help, which was taken as an insult by the king of the Persians, who found it intolerable for a small city like Athens to have the audacity to interfere in the internal affairs of his empire. Since up to then no one had dared to confront his immense power, he sent a punitive expedition, convinced that beating the Athenians would be an easy matter.
Marathon was the ideal place for the fleet to drop anchor near Athens and for the army to disembark. The ships anchored in the northeast part of the bay, off the Cynosura peninsula on the south side and in front of the large marsh. The position protected the fleet from possible inclement weather. Between the marsh and the shore, where the ships were moored, there was a stretch of land that permitted the landing of a Persian army consisting, depending on the sources, of from 20,000 to 30,000 men, some venture even 48,000. Once they had disembarked, the Persians forded the marsh and camped, further south, on the plain. From there, looking southward, the Persians could see Mount Agriliki where the Athenians were to camp and thus had the ships and the great marsh behind them.
The Persian army consisted chiefly of archers and had a cavalry of about 5,000 men. Though the infantry, apart from their bows and arrows, were armed with short swords, they were not accustomed to hand-to-hand combat but to fighting at the range of the bowshot. They were skilful with the bow and could hit their target at 500 metres, though they were most accurate at 200 metres. In a very short time they could shoot thousands of arrows at the enemy which, once part of it had been decimated by the archers, the rest would have to face the cavalry who had the task of finishing it off. The Persians did not know any other way of waging war and it was by fighting in this way that they had won their empire.
However, in spite of having brought with them a reputation of being invincible, they did not have the same motivation for the battle as the Athenians. Democracy in Athens had emerged 20 years before and the decision to confront the invasion of the “barbarians” had been taken by the citizens in assembly so that those who went to Marathon knew that the survival of Athens was at stake and were prepared to give their lives for its freedom. The invading army, on the other hand, was made up of men from diverse points of the vast Persian Empire, many of which had been forced to take up arms. It is significant that its military leaders took up their positions, whip in hand, in the rearguard, to urge on the soldiers to advance against the enemy and ensure that they did not yield to the temptation to abandon the fight. Thus the two armies confronted each other with totally different attitudes, fears and hopes.
When news reached the Athenians that the Persians had landed at Marathon, they decided to meet them there rather than wait until they arrived at the gates of their city. At the same time they agreed to send a long distance runner to Sparta to ask for help in this fateful hour but the Spartans took several days to leave their city since they were in the midst of celebrating one of their religious festivals. The Athenians therefore had to meet the enemy alone.
Athens sent an army of about 10,000 men to the battlefield, led by 10 “stratigoi”, or generals. Among them was Themistocles – who ten years later would be the hero of the battle of Salamina – and the military genius Miltiades with Callimachus as commander in chief. They had no cavalry. Later they were joined by a contingent of about 1000 men from the allied city of Platea. The Greek warrior of the time, the hoplite, was armed with a long spear and a sword. He wore a helmet, shield and pieces of bronze armour to protect chest and legs. In contrast with the Persian soldier, he had been trained for hand to hand fighting.
On arriving at Marathon, the Athenian army camped on the slopes of Mount Agriliki which afforded them safety from the Persian cavalry, the main reason for which the Athenians did not go into battle for several days, since, without cavalry and outnumbered, they could not risk a confrontation as the situation was unfavourable and the Greek generals decided to wait.
They had reached Marathon at the beginning of September but several days passed before they met the Persians in battle. The generals could not reach an agreement. Half of them were of the opinion that they should wait for the Spartans to get there, while the other half, led by Miltiades, thought the opposite, in other words, that they should attack when the opportunity presented itself without waiting for reinforcements. Of all the generals, Miltiades seemed to have had the clearest idea as to the strategy to be followed. He convinced Callimachus – whose vote and influence were decisive – of the advantages of confronting the enemy as soon as possible and was for that reason elected commander in chief. When he defended the idea of not putting off the battle, there were undoubtedly other factors that weighed on Miltiades’ mind: the morale of his men, camping on the hill with nothing to do, the problem of supplies for the army and the risk of possible betrayal by the pro-Persian faction in Athens.
The occasion Miltiades was waiting for presented itself on the 12th of September (this date is disputed, some historians indicate an earlier, some a later date.) According to some authors the Persians, apparently fed up with the Athenians’ unwillingness to go into battle, seem to have sent most of their cavalry to Athens, thinking that they could take the city since it had been left without a defensive force. Whatever the reasons for the apparent absence of the cavalry, according to several authors, it did not participate in the battle.
Miltiades then prepared his men to go into combat. He deployed them so that the front line of his army was as broad as that of the opposing army and with the flanks reinforced so that they would not be able to surround them. As a consequence, the centre was weakened, with less ranks of warriors.
Herodotus recounts that when the Persians saw the Athenian army charging upon them, they thought they had gone mad since, without archers or horsemen and outnumbered, they seemed to be racing toward death. They were soon to change their minds. The two armies fought “for a long time” according to Herodotus, until the weak Athenian centre was forced to retreat before the powerful advance of the enemy. On the other hand, the Greek flanks not only held fast but even forced back the Persian flanks that finally fled in confusion, running in terror for the safety of their ships.
Instead of giving pursuit in order to destroy them, the two Athenian flanks fell back, reordered and fell from behind upon the centre of the Persian army that had forced the Athenian centre to retreat. This centre then halted their withdrawal and stood firm against the thrust of the enemy forces. The Persians, seeing the pincer movement closing in upon them, retreated toward the ships – and the great marsh that barred their way. It seems that many of them drowned there, unable to reach their ships since the Athenians had cut them off, leaving the Persians at the mercy of their enemies and of the swamp.
There was fierce fighting near the ships, seven of which were captured by the Athenians. The poet Aeschylus fought at Marathon, and his brother died in this last stage of the battle. In any case, what was left of the Persian army was able to set course toward Cape Sunion and from there on to Athens. Miltiades, fearing this possibility, ordered his men to head for the city “as fast as their legs could carry them” to defend it. When the Persians finally reached Phaleron, Athens’s port, they saw the Athenian army before the gates of the city, ready to give them yet another beating. They considered it wiser to give up and retreat.
6,400 Persians and 192 Athenians died at Marathon. The tiny Athenian army’s victory over the invincible Persians was considered such a prodigious feat that the fallen Athenians were buried on the battlefield as the ultimate homage to their courage and sacrifice. The burial mound that covers their remains still exists today.
3. Analysis of the battle
Various authors who have made an extensive study of the battle of Marathon coincide in attributing an extraordinary importance to it. This seems to reside in both its military characteristics and in the historic consequences. It is a classic example of military strategy in the history of war, and, furthermore, it is believed that if the Athenians had not succeeded in gaining a victory over the Persians, the history of Europe would have followed very different paths.
Some historians insist that the fate of the Western world was sealed on that fateful September day in 490 B.C. on the plains of Marathon, a hypothesis that is not at all implausible when one considers what would have happened had the Persians won the battle. No military power capable of opposing them would have remained. There was Sparta, but it would certainly have been beaten on land and on sea. And since the ambitions of the Persian kings were limitless, on emerging victorious at Marathon they would have subjugated the whole of Greece, then Italy and, possibly, the rest of Europe. Given the importance of this battle and what it meant to posterity, the study and analysis of it, even outside of the military context, is of great interest to us.
The different versions and interpretations of the battle give the distinct impression that the Athenians had working for their side an intelligence, a way of thinking that was quick and effective in planning the battle and fighting it in the most favourable conditions. The actions of the Athenians in the different phases of the battle suggest that they were guided by a plan, by a project.
What was at stake on that September day in 490 was the very survival of Athens and Hellas. Their existence and freedom or destruction and the yoke of slavery were to be decided at Marathon. Their life thus depended on the excellence of the strategic conception that was to guide the battle and this conception, this project, in order to be effective, had to be thought out, designed, in other words, in order to bring about the defeat of the invader.
As in all design projects, Miltiades had to incorporate into his project the circumstances that would condition its realisation. There were basically two: the geographical characteristics of the place and the character and numerical superiority of the enemy. With regard to geographic aspects, the first thing that Miltiades had to consider was whether or not the plain would be an ideal area for the deployment of the Persian cavalry. Since it was a geographical situation favourable to the enemy, he decided not to go into battle and to wait.
The significance and strategic importance of the second geographical situation must have been immediately evident to the mind of Miltiades: this was the presence of the large marsh in the north-eastern part of the plain. The fact that the enemy fleet was anchored at the same level and to the right must at once have suggested to the Athenian general the basic idea of his ultimate purpose: if he could manage to drive the Persians from the plain, their safety would apparently be at the ships, but there too would lie their potential downfall in the marsh, given the proximity of the two.
However, in order for the marsh to become a factor favourable to the Athenian strategy, it was first necessary to defeat the Persian army in order to be able to drive them precisely in that direction. This question concerns Miltiades’s second conditioning point of his strategic project: the character and numerical superiority of the Persian army.
In any case, before clarifying this aspect of his strategy, it is advisable to consider another question that can help us to understand the thought of the Athenian general: the deployment of the armies on the day of the battle. There are two theories in this respect, but no certainty. To establish a hypothesis as to what Miltiades’ choice could have been between the two possibilities, it is necessary to ask the following: Supposing that he could choose between the two positions, which one, from the strategic point of view, was the most suitable for his men to enable them to execute his plan?
The two theories relative to this hypothetical deployment differ in that they maintain that the battle was fought on different directional axes.
Positioning of the two armies according to the first theory
The first theory maintains that the Persians positioned themselves with their backs to the sea, more or less parallel to the coastline, while the Athenians faced them with the mountains behind them, on the west side of the plain, so that the battle would have taken place on a west-east axis. But if this theory were true, it would not provide as satisfactory a reason as the second theory for the large number of Persians who drowned in the marsh at the northwest point of the plain. Why, with their camp on the River Charadros, would the Persians have crossed in a southeastern direction to place themselves with their backs to the sea? Such a strange manoeuvre could only be explained if the Athenian army had forced it, which is highly improbable. Those who defend this hypothesis claim that a part of the Persian fleet was not anchored by the peninsula of Cynosura, but more to the south, where the burial mound of the dead Athenians is now to be found. The location of the burial mound, according to them, is due to the fact that the Persian fleet was anchored close to this place and that it was precisely there that many of the 192 Athenian fell, victims of the Persians’ fierce defence. But the funerary mound is far from the marsh, so that this explanation does not clarify why so many Persian warriors died in it. This theory would only stand if there had been two battlefronts, one where the mound is and the other in the area of the marsh, but neither Herodotus nor Pausanias make any mention of this. Thus the hypothesis of a confrontation on an east-west axis does not really provide a satisfactory explanation of Miltiades’ strategic thought.
Positioning of the two armies according to the second theory
The second theory, endorsed by the majority of scholars, seems more plausible: the battle took place with the two armies positioned at right angles to the coast, in other words, on a northeast-southwest axis, the Persians having the great marsh and the fleet at their backs and the Athenians with the slope of Mount Agriliki at theirs.
Miltiades had powerful strategic motives for camping on the wooded hillside. From that height he could observe the movements of the Persian forces with ease. The woods protected his men from the onslaught of the enemy cavalry and there was a river nearby to supply them with water. In addition, positioned there, the route that led to Athens was barred to the Persians. It is thus most likely that they camped on this spot, a position that supports the second theory, since in a certain way it forced the battle to be fought to Miltiades advantage, on a southwest-northeast axis. Only in this way could the marsh be kept at the Persians’ backs, thus becoming a natural ally of the Athenians, as long as Miltiades could manage to drive them toward it.
Since the battle took place in the morning, there is another factor that, from a strategic point of view, argues against a hypothetical alignment of the two armies on an east-west axis: the Athenians, with the westerly hills behind them, would have had to fight facing the east, with the sun in their eyes, something that was not at all favourable.
Herodotus does not say precisely at what time of day the battle took place; he only says that “it went on a long time.” However, there are clear indications that it took place in the morning. It seems that at the end of the battle bright signals were observed high on one of the hills, 300 metres above sea level on the west side of the plain. The Athenians supposed that this was a message being sent to the enemy fleet by someone from the pro-Persian party in Athens with a burnished bronze shield that reflected the sunlight. In order to make such signals toward the east, where the fleet was, the sun must not have been very high, because if it was its rays could not have been reflected in the bronze “mirror”.
Herodotus recounts that after the defeat what was left of the Persian army sailed for Athens, rounding Cape Sunion, with the intention of taking the undefended city. Miltiades however, anticipating this move, ordered his men to return as rapidly as possible to Athens to defend it. Taking into account that in an Olympic competition today a Marathon runner takes more than two hours to run 42 km, that army of 10,000 heavily armed men walking fast must have taken about eight hours to cover the distance. If, as Herodotus says, the army reached Athens before the Persian fleet and that once anchored it was there for a while without doing anything “before departing for Asia”, one must assume that all this took place in daylight, that is, roughly in mid-or late afternoon.
If we assume as a hypothesis that the battle took place on September 12, then, according to The Sky Map 6, by Chris Marriots, the sun came up that day in Greece in 490 B.C., at 05:57h in the morning and went down at 18:48h that evening. If we further accept Hammond’s claim that the battle was initiated by the Athenians at daybreak in order to surprise the Persians, then we can assume the following: if the Athenian army was in front of the city to defend it, say at 18:00h, this would mean that it must have left the plain of Marathon at around 10:00h in the morning, this based on the assumption of an eight hour march. This again means that the battle was finished somewhat before the Athenian army left, say 09:00h and therefore must have lasted three hours. This maybe is what Herodotus means when he says that the two armies “fought for a long time.”
With this point clarified, we must now recall the question of the numerical superiority of the Persian army and consider the decisions that Miltiades took with regard to it.
There can be no doubt that the valiant, heroic spirit of the Athenians, their love for their city and their freedom, their willingness to die rather than surrender, were decisive factors in swinging the battle in their favour. However, this did not depend solely on the excellent morale of the army but, above all, on good strategy and planning, on a design that would make victory possible.
Given the numerical superiority of the enemy, Miltiades could not think of wiping them out but rather of designing a strategy to drive them from the plain of Marathon in the same direction from which they had come, toward the sea. Accomplishing that alone was in itself a major victory.
Faced with the powerful machine of destruction that was the Persian army, Miltiades had to find the solution to the two major problems the Athenians were going to meet: the enemy’s numerical superiority and the range of their arrows. In order to minimise the murderous efficiency of the enemy’s archery, the strategy had to ensure that his army was exposed to it for as short a time as possible. To accomplish that, he ordered his men, when they were within bowshot range, to rush at the enemy and attack. There may have been a secondary motive for this order. It seems that at that time just the mention of the name of the invader – they called them Medes or Persians – or the sight of their costumes, filled the Hellenes with terror. Thus by making his men run against the enemy he attempted at the same time to avoid allowing time enough for panic to take hold and cool their warlike enthusiasm.
To solve the problem of the enemy’s numerical superiority, Miltiades redesigned the usual combat deployment of his army, an element of extraordinary importance if we take into account that battles were then fought between armies made up of ranks of warriors lined up one behind the other.
Usual formation of two armies facing one another on the battlefield
The length of the ranks was the same in the entire formation, so that the army formed a compact, solid rectangle. At Marathon, the Persian army was made up of more or less 20 ranks of men presenting a front about 1,600 m. long. Miltiades, with an army two or three times smaller, had to distribute his men along a front of the same length to prevent the enemy outflanking him. On this point Herodotus says that the Athenian battle line was as long as that of the Medes, and therefore (emphasis added) the centre consisted of very few ranks of warriors, due to which it was extremely vulnerable while, on the other hand, the two flanks were
The new combat deployment of the Athenian army and the conventional formation of the Persians reinforced by numerous ranks of warriors. From Herodotus’ account it appears that the weakness of the Athenian centre was the consequence of having to create a front line of the same length as that of the Persian army and reinforcing his flanks. This may have been one, but certainly not the only reason. The reorganisation of the usual combat deployment of the Athenian army undoubtedly corresponded to another carefully thought out plan as the subsequent course of the battle demonstrates. This reorganisation of deployment for combat in the way described here was a carefully thought out plan, a design, guided by an intention, the form of which was adapted to the specific situation on the battlefield.
In fact Miltiades distributed his men so as to form two strong flanks of about 8 ranks and a weak centre of possibly 4. On each flank there thus must have been about 4,000 men, with about 2,000 in the centre. The fear of being surrounded by the enemy was surely one of the reasons for reinforcing his flanks, but the idea of a weak centre must have corresponded to a definite intention. Miltiades must have assumed that this centre would not hold against the onslaught of the Persians and would be obliged to fall back in retreat. He therefore put his faith completely in his flanks. They had not only to stand firm but to throw back the enemy at any price, forcing them into a retreat. What could the Athenian general have been the thinking when he introduced this weakness in his army? Given the numerical superiority of the Persians, it was clear that the Athenian army could not fight them on equal terms. The redesign of deployment for combat could mean only one thing. The enemy centre was “invited”, so to speak, to strike the Athenian army at its weakest point, succeeding in this way in dividing the monolithic enemy army in three parts, disrupting its internal unity. Athenian weakness was thus transformed into a deadly trap for the force of the Persian army. This would seem to be the central idea of the project.
Break-up of the Persian army and the rout of its flanks
The idea of introducing a weakness in one’s own army is of an incredible audacity, since it means the inversion of fundamental assumptions: it comes to suggest that Miltiades proposed to beat strength with weakness. In other words, the vulnerability intentionally introduced in his army was transformed into a strength that undermined the power of the enemy, which was revealed in this case, precisely to be their weakness.
The audacity of such an approach is the fruit of a thinking radically different from that of the oriental adversary. An historian has written that “…the Greeks did not follow well-travelled paths or recognise limitations. They thought vigorously and boldly on the subjects that concerned them, and the novelty of a speculation constituted a particular source of intellectual interest for their minds.” This is indicative of the creativity, openness of spirit and the new “world view” with which they approached their concerns, whatever the field might be.
In this case the problem was of a military nature. The new design of the deployment for combat of the Athenian army, its specific form, shows what its purpose and intention were: to allow itself to be penetrated in order to thus dismantle the strong and compact with the weak. The most significant aspect of Miltiades thinking is that he saw the army in a way that was different from his adversaries, not as a monolithic steamroller but as a weapon of a variable structure that can be adapted to the conditions of a specific situation. He thought creatively.
Of all that has been recounted up to now, if we were to emphasize what tipped the scales in favour of the Athenians, we would have to point precisely to the redesigning of the combat deployment of the army. It was thanks to this central idea, to its design, that the enemy army was divided into three parts, which undoubtedly had a devastating effect on the Persian warriors already fighting without much motivation.
During the second phase of the battle, the Athenian army also fought split up in order to cover three different parts of the plain of Marathon, but this division had been designed as a weapon, with the parts of the army united by a common intention, an overall conception that linked and coordinated the entirety of these actions toward one and the same goal, which was to drive out the invader.
Miltiades, like Themistocles ten years later at Salamína, was the man of the hour, the great strategist-designer in a moment of supreme danger. He represented, in its highest form, the Attic-Athenian spirit: a man that was strong, bold, wise and gifted with great discernment. He questioned and rethought everything that had been, up to then, the norm.
4. Intention-Design-Strategy
The data provided up to this point on the different aspects of the battle present a picture that reveals, essentially, what Miltiades’ considerations were before the situation he was faced with at Marathon, considerations that make it possible to understand the intrinsic nature of strategic thought, in other words, the process that goes from the formulation of a problem to the conception of its solution. What has been presented up to now suggests that the Athenian general had to take into account the following basic questions in order to design his military project:
1. General knowledge of the situation
A. Knowledge of the enemy
Herodotus and Pausanias provide abundant biographical information on Miltiades. They tell how, years before the battle of Marathon, he had fought as a mercenary in one of the campaigns of the Persian King Darius against the Scythians. He was thus familiar with the adversary; he knew its army, its arms, its combat strategy, composition and degree of efficiency. And he also knew their way of thinking.
Thus on arriving at Marathon, Miltiades was able to gauge, on the basis of his experience, the relation of power between his army and the Persians, their position, that of the fleet and the presence of the cavalry.
Thus he had a complete knowledge of his adversary.
B. Knowledge of the geographic layout
The plain could only be reached by sea or by the road from Athens – situated between the sea and Mount Agriliki – which was under the control of the Athenians. The Persian objective, to take the city of Athens, could only be achieved by going down that road. On the opposite side, at the foot of Mount Drakonera, was the great marsh. The hills and the sea bounded the plain on the west and east. It thus formed a closed area with only two entrances/exits, the sea and the road. In such a geographical context, the specific location of the Persian fleet and army constituted, in a certain way, another “geographic circumstance” which was to determine how the battle was to be fought. In fact the confrontation would have been quite different if it had taken place on a west-east axis or if the fleet had been anchored in a place different from the one indicated by Pausanias. The position of the Persian army and that of its fleet established relationships of proximity-distance with the geographical surroundings that were clearly of vital significance with regards to the decisions taken by Miltiades when he prepared his military project and determined his choice of the most favourable spot on which to locate the Athenian camp.
C. The weather
The bad/good weather must have been a conditioning factor. In September temperatures are still relatively high in those latitudes, so it could be considered that the relative coolness of the morning might favour the endurance of the warriors.
D. Morale of the two armies
The invading army had made a long voyage, were weary and found themselves in a land they did not know. However, although many Persian warriors were forced to fight, they must have taken their victory for granted because until then they had won every battle. The Athenians, who came to the struggle with powerful motivations – the defence of their homeland, their city and their lives – were in terms of morale without doubt in better shape for the fight than their adversaries. These considerations, added to those concerning the different forms of combat – the Persians at a distance with their archery, the Athenians trained in hand to hand fighting – should also be taken as decisive aspects for the design of the military project.
2. Evaluation of the knowledge
In the evaluation of all the factors that one side or the other had for and against them, those that were prejudicial to the invading adversary were worth special attention. Analysis and evaluation of the data led necessarily to the formulation of the primary and fundamental objective of the military project, in other words, the formulation of the end to be achieved, of its intention: the expulsion of the enemy by the same way he had come. This had to be the guiding idea around which the project was conceived.
The intention is “a look that aims at something,” it is a will that contemplates the attainment of the end proposed. In the case we are concerned with, Miltiades weighed up the specific circumstances that came together at Marathon in order to accomplish his intention.
3. The project
The project consists in designing a means which will make possible the attainment the intention aims at. A project – its form or nature – is determined by the characteristics of the problem it must resolve and the means that support it. Through the design project, the intention appears as a figure, as a sign, and this signifies to the spectator the end it is aiming at. At Marathon, the means to accomplish the expulsion of the enemy was the redesigning of the combat deployment of the Athenian army. One of the authors consulted indicates that another of the reasons that Miltiades urged his men to rush upon the adversary was that, in the event that the enemy saw and understood the purpose of the new Athenian deployment for combat, they would not have had time to adapt their strategy to this unusual situation. This new combat deployment, considered visually, as a sign, made it possible to see Miltiades intentions. If this design worked so well it was because it was perfectly adapted to the use that was to be made of it and the goal that it was meant to achieve.
4. Strategic thought
Strategy is a concept that pertains, initially, to the military world. It means the systematic planning and carrying out of an action of war with the intention of defeating the adversary, by making use of the means available. It is the formulation of a theory having to do with waging war, which will be put into practice.
But of course strategy is applied to and used in other fields as well, perhaps because any conduct that aims at a specific end must design/develop strategies to accomplish that end. Chess is a kind of “war game” in which the two adversaries each develop strategies to checkmate the other.
Advertising, an example of “peaceful war”, even makes use of military terms (briefing, campaign, target). The signs, messages and slogans that it produces are but the “ammunition” it fights with.
From what has been recounted up to this point, it is possible to perceive the basic and essential structure of what strategy is and to formulate it in a more universal sense. Leaving aside the warlike origin of the concept, the combination of actions that define strategy can be stated based on four guiding concepts:
• The end/intention
• The project/design
• The means
• The action to achieve the end
This means that the process of thought used by both the strategist and the designer are based on these four mainstays: the overall knowledge of a given problem-situation in which one or the other is called upon to act leads to the formulation of the end/intention, or solution, that is to be achieved. In order for its attainment to be feasible, a project/design is prepared, based on the means available. The characteristics of these means and the use that is made of them are essentially determined by the end that is being sought, by the overall concept that guides and moves (action) the project towards its completion.
Having formulated the four aspects on which strategic action is based, we can see that the analogy between strategy and design, glimpsed at the beginning of this investigation, is real. The two operate in an analogous fashion. In both cases, when they act to solve a problem, they find themselves faced with a given situation of greater or lesser complexity or danger: in the case of the strategist, a geographical situation, one’s own army and that of the adversary, arms and methods of fighting; in the case of the designer, a market, a customer/company, a public, the competition (the “adversary”), and a repertoire of means. Both are concerned with the need to obtain all the information possible about the nature of the problem to be solved that might help them to formulate the intention to be carried out and to devise a project. It is characteristic of the ways of thinking of both that they strategically interrelate the four steps in order to successfully attain their intention with the minimum possible effort.
This perspective on the design-strategy relationship makes it possible to formulate that the designer-strategist is anyone who, regardless of the kind of intention he or she wishes to carry out, follows a thinking process directed at shaping a project that, making use of available, suitable means, makes that intention feasible.
To conclude it is still worth considering the specific significance of this design-strategy relationship for design, taken in the sense of an activity that devises and forms objects for daily use.
It corresponds to this creative activity to, as Heidegger put it, “make a thing come into presence from no-presence”. In the act of designing the object is becoming concrete, “made present”, through representation. In representation it takes on form, becomes visible and is defined as a figure, its identity being shaped in this way.
In the process of projecting, the object – its figure – tends to be perceived most of all in terms of “aesthesis”. This word, Greek in origin, is usually translated as aesthetics, which the dictionary defines as: “The science that deals with beauty and the theory of art.” Aesthetics, thus understood, as beauty, tends to be the predominant criterion in all decisions taken while a project is being taken to its conclusion.
However, etymologically speaking, the word “aesthesis” means “capable of being perceived by the senses. Perception, knowledge.” This definition says nothing about beauty. In Greek the concept of beauty is expressed by “oraios, ómorfos”. On the other hand, in German, a language that is closer to Greek than Latin languages, “aesthesis” is translated as “Wahrnehmung”. This word means “to see”, but is composed of “wahr” – true – and “nehmen” – take – so that it could be said that “aesthesis” is knowledge obtained by “taking-truth-in-seeing”. Thus, when an object appears to us in its “aesthesis”, it does not reveal to us so much its beauty but its “truth” through its figure, through its specific being as it is.
The usefulness of strategic thinking resides in the fact that it is not based on beauty but on effectiveness. This means that the choice or design of the parts that make up the whole of a project should be considered according to this parameter. In other words, the designer-strategist should not wonder if what he is doing is aesthetic but rather, if the design of this form, of this sign, the choice of this material or this colour is effective for the end that he is attempting to achieve. And this objective cannot be other than to shape objects as “beings-for…” ideally adapted in all aspects to fulfil the purpose they have been assigned, which is their “usefulness-for…” When an object has been designed according to the parameter of effectiveness and, in the process of its projecting, the different parts that make it up have been integrated in a harmonic fashion, then it will be a beautiful object. As Plato said, “… the beautiful will be for us that which is useful…”
(Greater Hippias, 19.2)
Sources:
Herodotus: Histories, Book VI, 105-117
Pausanias: Descripción de Grecia, Vol 1., books I y II. Biblioteca Clásica, Gredos
Konstantinos P. Kontorlis: The Battle of Marathon, Athens 1973
Victor Ehrenberg: From Solon to Socrates, Methuen & Co. Ltd. London 1967
M. Rostovzeff: Greece. University Press. New York 1963.
Edward Sheperd Creasy: Fifteen decisive battles of the world. From Marathon to Waterloo.
Barnes & Noble, New York 1995.
Basil Petrakos: Marathon, The Archaeological Society at Athens, 1996.
Istoría tou Ellynikou Ethnous, Ekdotiki Athenon (16 vols.)
H. G. L. Hammond, The campaign and the battle of Marathon, Studies in Greek History
Oxford 1973
The Persian Wars, Prof. Livio Stecchini,
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/persian_wars4.php
Chris Marriots, Sky Map 6