Callimachus

Callimachus was the Athenian polemarch at the Battle of Marathon, which took place during 490 BC. According to Herodotus, he was from the Attica deme of Aphidna.

The Battle of Marathon

As polemarch, Callimachus had a vote in military affairs along with the 10 strategoi, including Miltiades.

Herodotus recounted the speech given by Miltiades to Callimachus to convince him to vote in favour of the battle.

During the battle, as polemarch, Callimachus commanded the right wing of the Athenian army as was the Athenian custom at that time. The right and left wings (the left wing commanded by the Plataeans) surrounded the Persians after a seemingly suicidal charge by the centre line.

Although the Greeks were victorious, Callimachus was killed during the retreat of the Persians while he was chasing them to their ships.

Plutarch, in his work: Moralia. Greek and Roman Parallel Stories mentions that Callimachus was pierced with so many spears that, even when he was dead, he continued to be in an upright posture.

Contemporary Athenian custom dictated that the city choose a man held in high regard to deliver an oration over the war dead at the end of public funeral rites. Polemon of Laodicea, a sophist flourishing six centuries after the event, imagined the aftermath of the battle to have occasioned a public dispute between the fathers of Cynaegirus and Callimachus before an Athenian assembly to decide which should give such an oration over the Marathon dead; using this fictional situation to exercise his rhetorical skill, Polemon made declamations for each litigant.

Callimachus was portrayed among the Athenian gods and heroes on the wall-paintings of the Stoa Poikile. The Athenians erected a statue in honour of Callimachus, the "Nike of Callimachus".

According to some sources, before the battle, Callimachus promised that if the Greeks won, he would sacrifice to Artemis Agrotera as many goats as the number of Persians killed at the battlefield. Athenians kept his promise, in spirit, and every year sacrificed 500 goats, because they didn't have enough goats for every single Persian who was killed at the battle (6,400).

The statue of the "Nike of Callimachus"

After the battle of Marathon, Athenians created a statue in honour of Callimachus. The statue was the "Nike of Callimachus" and it was erected next to the Parthenon (not the Parthenon that we can see today, but the previous temple which was destroyed by the Persians) on the Acropolis of Athens.

The surviving fragments of the statue, depicting the goddess Nike atop a large column and made of Pentelic and Parian marble, are now housed in the Acropolis Museum in Athens.