Editing Battle of Marathon (section)

=== Second phase: the Greeks attack and the lines make contact ===
[[File:Les Héros de Marathon Georges Rochegrosse 1859.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|Greek troops rushing forward at the Battle of Marathon, [[Georges Rochegrosse]], 1859.|left]]
[[File:Second phase of the Battle of Marathon-the Greeks attack and the lines make contact.svg|thumb|Second phase]]
When the Athenian line was ready, according to one source, the simple signal to advance was given by Miltiades: "At them".<ref name="h191" /> Herodotus implies the Athenians ran the whole distance to the Persian lines, a feat under the weight of hoplite armory generally thought to be physically impossible.<ref>Dennis L. Fink, [https://books.google.com/books?id=wOPDAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA155 ''The Battle of Marathon in Scholarship: Research, Theories and Controversies Since 1850,''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221230163031/https://books.google.it/books?id=wOPDAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA155 |date=2022-12-30 }} McFarland, 2014 pp. 154–60.</ref><ref name="L66">Lazenby, pp. 66–69</ref> More likely, they marched until they reached the limit of the archers' effectiveness, the "beaten zone" (roughly 200 meters), and then broke into a run towards their enemy.<ref name="L66" /> Another possibility is that they ran ''up to'' the 200 meter-mark in broken ranks, and then reformed for the march into battle from there.  Herodotus suggests that this was the first time a Greek army ran into battle in this way; this was probably because it was the first time that a Greek army had faced an enemy composed primarily of missile troops.<ref name="L66" /> All this was evidently much to the surprise of the Persians; "... in their minds they charged the Athenians with madness which must be fatal, seeing that they were few and yet were pressing forwards at a run, having neither cavalry nor archers".<ref>Herodotus [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0126&layout=&loc=6.110 VI, 110] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221230163033/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0126&redirect=true |date=2022-12-30 }}</ref> Indeed, based on their previous experience of the Greeks, the Persians might be excused for this; Herodotus tells us that the Athenians at Marathon were "first to endure looking at Median dress and men wearing it, for up until then just hearing the name of the Medes caused the Hellenes to panic".<ref name="VI112" /> Passing through the hail of arrows launched by the Persian army, protected for the most part by their armour, the Greek line finally made contact with the enemy army.