There were eleven members of that council of war.  Ten were the generals who were then annually elected at Athens, one for each of the local tribes into which the Athenians were divided.  Each general led the men of his own tribe, and each was invested with equal military authority.  But one of the archons was also associated with them in the general command of the army.  This magistrate was termed the “Polemarch” or War-ruler, He had the privilege of leading the right wing of the army in battle, and his vote in a council of war was equal to that of any of the generals.  A noble Athenian named Callimachus was the war-ruler of this year, and, as such, stood listening to the earnest discussion of the ten generals.  They had, indeed, deep matter for anxiety, though little aware how momentous to mankind were the votes they were about to give, or how the generations to come would read with interest the record of their discussions.  They saw before them the invading forces of a mighty empire, which had in the last fifty years shattered and enslaved nearly all the kingdoms and principal cities of the then known world.  They knew that all the resources of their own country were comprised in the little army intrusted to their guidance.  They saw before them a chosen host of the great king, sent to wreak his special wrath on that country and on the other insolent little Greek community which had dared to aid his rebels and burn the capital of one of his provinces.  That victorious host had already fulfilled half its mission of vengeance.

Eretria, the confederate of Athens in the bold march against Sardis nine years before, had fallen in the last few days; and the Athenian generals could discern from the heights the island of AEgilia, in which the Persians had deposited their Eretrian prisoners, whom they had reserved to be led away captives into Upper Asia, there to hear their doom from the lips of King Darius himself.  Moreover, the men of Athens knew that in the camp before them was their own banished tyrant, who was seeking to be reinstated by foreign cimeters in despotic sway over any remnant of his countrymen that might survive the sack of their town, and might be left behind as too worthless for leading away into Median bondage.

The numerical disparity between the force which the Athenian commanders had under them, and that which they were called on to encounter, was hopelessly apparent to some of the council.  The historians who wrote nearest to the time of the battle do not pretend to give any detailed statements of the numbers engaged, but there are sufficient data for our making a general estimate.  Every free Greek was trained to military duty; and, from the incessant border wars between the different states, few Greeks reached the age of manhood without having seen some service.  But the muster-roll of free Athenian citizens of an age fit for military duty never exceeded thirty thousand, and at this, epoch probably did not amount to two-thirds of that number.