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You fought it out for the territory. Battling against the Medes at Marathon, you used swords against them. Marathon [is] a place of Attica, at which Datis and Artabazos the Median satraps landed, having been sent by King Darius to enslave Greece. There, with Miltiades as general, the Athenians attacked them -- only the Plataeans, with a thousand men, had come to be his allies, meaning that the number of the Greek forces of the Persian had been increased;[1] and they were responsible for the freedom of the Greeks -- they alone from all of the Greeks destroying the first of the Persians.

Διεξιφίσω: διεμαχέσω περὶ τῆς χώρας. ἐν Μαραθῶνι πολεμήσας πρὸς τοὺς Μήδους τοῖς ξίφεσι κατ' αὐτῶν ἐχρήσω. Μαραθὼν δὲ τόπος τῆς Ἀττικῆς, εἰς ὃν ἐνωρμίσατο Δᾶτις καὶ Ἀρτάβαζος Μηδικοὶ σατράπαι πεμφθέντες ὑπὸ Δαρείου βασιλέως καταδουλώσασθαι τὴν Ἑλλάδα. ἔνθα συμβαλόντες αὐτοῖς οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι Μιλτιάδου στρατηγοῦντος, μόνων Πλαταιέων συμμαχησάντων αὐτῷ χιλίοις ἀνδράσι καὶ οὕτω πληρωθέντος τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς δυνάμεως τῆς Περσικῆς καὶ τοῖς Ἕλλησι τῆς ἐλευθερίας αἴτιοι κατέστησαν, μόνοι ἐξ ἁπάντων τῶν Ἑλλήνων τὸν πρῶτον τῶν Περσῶν διαφθείραντες.

From the scholia to Aristophanes, Knights 781, where the headword (which literally means 'you fought it through with swords') occurs. As often in Aristophanic comedy, the history of the early fifth century (two generations earlier) is recalled; in this instance the famous Athenian (and Plataean) defeat of the invading Persian army at the Battle of Marathon, 490 BCE, immortalised in book 6 of Herodotus. For Marathon cf. mu 177; for Miltiades, mu 1067, mu 1068.
[1] Something is textually amiss here. One manuscript (and the scholia) omits 'of the Persian'; the Suda ed. pr. adopted a more elaborate solution (omitting 'of the Greek' and proposing τῆς τε Περσικῆς δυνάμεως περιεγένοντο , i.e. 'and with their number increased they survived [sc. their encounter with] the Persian forces').

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