READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

THE PERSIAN EMPIRE AND THE WEST

CHAPTER IX

XERXES’ INVASION OF GREECE

I.

 XERXES’ MARCH AND FORCES

KING Darius was bound to avenge the rebuff at Marathon, which impaired the prestige of Persia in the Aegean. Moreover, the scope of the war had now been enlarged, for behind Athens stood the paramount power, Sparta. The annexation of Greece could no longer be shirked or postponed. The preparations, put in hand at once, were on a scale which showed that Darius was determined to settle the business, and the organization of the expedition was worthy of his reputation. But a providential respite was granted to the Hellenes first by the revolt of Egypt, and then the king’s death in the autumn of 486 b.c. His son Xerxes, who inherited his throne and project, was for a while fully occupied with the Egyptian, and perhaps also Babylonian, rebels. His apparent slowness to resume the enterprise may have been mistaken in Greece for vacillation in his purpose. It was not until the year 481 bc that Xerxes put his forces in move­ment towards the west and himself set out, presumably from Susa.

Of the king’s route as far as Celaenae in Phrygia, at the source of the Maeander, Herodotus has nothing to tell but that he picked up his army, or the portion of it which was to journey with him, at Critalla in Cappadocia, and crossed the Halys. The site of Critalla is not fixed; and the passage of the Halys is probably no more than an inference by Herodotus from his misconception of the course of that river. His knowledge of the march extends in fact no farther eastwards than the point where Greek information may be supposed to have begun. We may assume that the king traversed Mount Taurus by the Cilician Gates, and that Critalla lay not far from the exit from the pass, perhaps near Tyana or Cybistra. A probable route onwards to Celaenae, passing between the great lakes and the Sultan Dagh range, has been recently- suggested. Thenceforward, although questions may arise in detail, the line of march is on the whole clearly marked by Herodotus and by nature.

Elaborate preparations had been made along the road. Two bridges of ships were built across the Hellespont from Abydos to a point near Sestos. When the first pair was destroyed by a storm, they were rebuilt under the direction of a Greek engineer, Harpalus. The bridges of Darius over the Bosphorus and the Danube were of course useful precedents. Another bridge was thrown across the Strymon, no doubt another across the Hebrus, and possibly others over big rivers. A canal was cut through the low isthmus which joins the promontory of Mount Athos to the mainland. Its use is problematic; and its existence has been questioned in ancient as well as modern times, but is guaranteed by Thucydides and by vestiges still visible. The road was doubtless put in order. The ‘king’s way’ in Thrace remained an object of veneration to the natives for generations to come. When the army reached the frontier of the empire in Macedonia, one-third was sent forward to clear a route through the forests of the Pierian highlands. Great stores of corn were accumulated at suitable intervals—Herodotus notes five such magazines on the road through Thrace and Macedonia; and the cities on the king’s itinerary had notice to provide for his entertainment. The bridges over the straits and the canal through the isthmus most impressed the imagination of the Greeks. Xerxes with Titanic might ignored the divinely ordered constitution of the world; his army marched across the sea, and his navy sailed through the dry land. But the organization of the supplies for the expedition, although we hear less of it, was probably a greater feat.

The king spent the winter 481—480 bc at Sardes. Thence he dispatched heralds to invite the Greek states, except Sparta and Athens and possibly their allies with whom he deemed himself to be already at war, to recognize his sovereignty and furnish food for him on his coming. With the advent of spring he set out for the Hellespont. Herodotus in his description of Xerxes’ route not infrequently gives only one, and not always the most obvious, of several roads probably used. It may be doubted whether he is right in sending the whole army from the plain of Thebe to Ilium by the toilsome and unnecessary route round the eastern flank of Mount Ida. Surely the mass of the forces took the easier road along the coast; but here as elsewhere Herodotus’ information follows only one division. Another statement in this context is indisputably false. No eclipse of the sun marked the departure of Xerxes from Sardes. The real foundation of the story may be found in the annular eclipse of the 17th of February 478 bc. The conjunction of the phenomenon with the king’s march is commonly ascribed to popular superstition, but the same difference of two years occurs so often in dates of this period that one may suspect that the myth originated in chronology.

The passage of the Hellespont is variously stated by Hero­dotus to have occupied two days, a week, a month. Perhaps the combatant forces crossed in two days, the baggage train in a week, and the total pause from beginning to end from the arrival of the first vanguard to the departure of the last rearguard lasted a month. The fleet first appears at Abydos. It seems unlikely that the whole of it was brought so far up the straits. But the two bridges demanded respectively 360 and 314 vessels, and most or all of these may have been drawn from the expeditionary fleet of transports or ships of burden, and have been released to resume their voyage when the army had passed over. The Greeks were surprised to find after the battle of Mycale that the bridges were gone. The explanation, that a storm had wrecked them, may be mere inference. It is hardly probable that they were intended to be kept up continuously after the crossing, although the cables were ready at Sestos for their reconstruction on the return of the troops.

From Sestos the army marched round the head of the Black Gulf to Doriscus, near the mouth of the Hebrus, whither the fleet had directed its course. Here the vast motley host was finally organized for the campaign. It is implied that Doriscus was the point at which the last Asiatic contingents joined and the concentration was completed. The force which journeyed from Critalla with the king was not the whole. No doubt it was furnished only by the central and eastern provinces of the empire. Divisions from the western provinces may have joined at Sardes or Abydos, or even come by sea to Doriscus. If Tyrodiza, one of the depots, was really in the territory of Perinthus, it may indicate that some of them crossed the Bosphorus. Herodotus pictures the multitude assembled at Doriscus as a mere confused mob, a mixed inarticulate crowd. That conception is absurd, and incompatible with his own description of the king’s march from Sardes. We have rather to imagine the local or provincial levies coming in day by day at haphazard perhaps, but already regimented and probably brigaded in myriads. All that was now needed was to distribute them to the higher units or army corps.

Herodotus gives a ludicrous account of the numbering of the infantry. Ten thousand men were packed tightly together; a line was drawn round them, and a wall built on the line; the troops were then herded in batches into this pen, which measured their number. Possibly there may have been a standing camp, designed to accommodate 10,000 men, which successive myriads occupied for a night on their arrival until they could pitch their own, and Greek wit may have amused itself with the idea of Xerxes counting his millions like corn by the bushel. The important points are that the unit is the myriad and the total 170 myriads, to which Herodotus adds ten more myriads for the mounted troops (80,000 cavalry, and 20,000 chariot and camel corps), making a grand total of 1,800,000 men for the entire army. By computing in addition to these the crews of the fleet and the reinforcements gathered in Europe on the march, and by doubling the figures to include the non-combatant attendants, Herodotus (still omitting the camp-followers, male and female) succeeds in reaching 5,283,220, a truly prodigious number. It is easy to discount his conjectural estimates of the attendants and the European recruits, and his figures for the service ships and light vessels and their crews. But his total of 180 myriads for the army requires explanation and invites criticism.

Let us start from his ‘Homeric catalogue’ of the 46 nations marshalled under 29 archontes or brigadier-generals. Stripped of its descriptive embroidery, its details of armature and dress, for which Herodotus may be partly indebted to Mandrocles’ picture in the Heraeumat Samos, and marginal notes of history or biography, this list is clearly an official docu­ment. Without the personal names of the commanders it might almost be called an abstract of a Notitia Dignitatum militarium in partibus Orientis. But, like the Notitiae, it gives no numbers. We must look to the organization of the army for light on Herodotus’ figures. The system is decimal up to the myriad, which is evidently the divisional unit. There are decarchs, hecatontarchs, chiliarchs, and myriarchs. Above the myriarchs Herodotus puts his ar­chontes or brigadiers, and above these six generals-in-chief. But the number of the archontes, 29, is quite incongruous with all the other numbers, which obviously demand 30. The name of Hydarnes, the commander of the king’s guard, the ‘Immortals’, almost obtrudes itself as the thirtieth. Hydarnes commands only 10,000 men, and we should certainly expect the archontes to be the divisional commanders or myriarchs. But Herodotus’ total 1,800,000 divided by 30 gives 60,000 to each archon. The solution of the problem seems to be that by some confusion he has promoted the myriarchs (archontes) a step too high, and assigned to them the command of army corps of 60,000 which really belongs to the six generals-in-chief. If so, the total number of the army is at once reduced to 360,000. But 30 myriarchs give only 300,000. We must assume six more myriarchs; and the obvious suggestion is that they are hipparchs. Herodotus appears to have merely estimated the mounted contingents on an average rate of 10,000 for each of the eight nations which furnished the cavalry, and to have made up the round 100,000 with the chariot, and camel corps. Six hipparchs, each in command of 10,000 horse, would supply the required 60,000, one myriad to each army corps.

Herodotus sends only three hipparchs on the campaign, but implies that there were others, or at all events other cavalry, not present. This fact suggests that perhaps only three of the six army corps actually took part in the expedition. It is significant that the army leaves Doriscus in three separate columns. Certainly only three distinct commands (those of Mardonius, Artabazus, and Tigranes) can be detected in the subsequent operations. It is obvious that Herodotus, but for his reservation or revoke on the cavalry, included in his catalogue of Xerxes’ host the whole military forces of the Persian empire, probably as organized by Darius. Any complete list of the Persian army of the period would pass as an accurate enumeration of Xerxes’ army on this campaign, for Herodotus, and the Greeks at large, believed that Xerxes led against Hellas the entire forces of his empire. But it is incredible that Xerxes can have denuded that empire, hardly yet pacified, of practically all its garrison, in order to settle accounts with a few troublesome but petty tribes beyond its western frontier; and our suspicion that Herodotus’ catalogue is no true record of the muster at Doriscus, but a general ‘Army list,’ and not even an up-to-date list, is confirmed when we find that several Persian officers hold quite different rank or posts in the catalogue and in the narrative of the war. In particular Artabazus and Tigranes are mere archontes or myriarchs at Doriscus, but re­appear in command of army corps. These two instances may preserve a clue to the origin of the confusion between myriarchs and generals-in-chief. However that may be, the above considerations justify us in concluding that Xerxes took with him only three of the six corps, and his expeditionary army numbered 180,000 combatants.

One might expect Herodotus to have had better information about Xerxes’ navy than about his army. He does indeed give numbers for the several contingents of ships. But this precision proves fallacious. His total at Doriscus is 1207 triremes. To them he adds afterwards 120 from the Greeks of Thrace and the Thracian islands; but he admits that this is a conjectural estimate, and it is certainly too large for the year 480 bc. He pays no further heed to it, and we may here ignore it. The 1207 agrees with the figures ascribed to Xerxes’ fleet by Aeschylus in the Persae—a thousand ships, with 207 preeminent for speed. Aeschylus, to be sure, writes of the battle of Salamis, not of the review at Doriscus, but the distinction is negligible. Hero­dotus knew the Persae, and could half quote a line from it on occasion. He appears to have taken his total, 1207 triremes, from Aeschylus, and to have estimated the contingents to fit that sum. Many of his estimates, particularly those of con­tingents from regions south of the Aegean, are improbably high, the 17 from the Islands are too obviously a residue to balance the account, and the total itself is monstrous and fantastic, challenging and outdoing the legendary armada of Agamemnon. Never before or after is there any authentic Mediterranean fleet which remotely approximates to these 1207 triremes.

Whether Aeschylus meant the total sum to be 1207, and not rather 1000, may be disputed; his words are ambiguous, and do not make it clear whether the 207 are to be added to the 1000 or included in it. But whatever he may have intended, there can be little doubt that the latter alternative must be the better interpretation of his figures; for without the inclusion of the 207 the 1000 can hardly be explained. The thousand is of course a round number. That fact does not discredit it, for Xerxes’ fleet, like his army, was organized on decimal numbers; but it does not carry much conviction. We can, however, make out how the thousand was reached. Herodotus describes the navy on a geo­graphical scheme from south to north, save that the Phoenician contingent is put first on the list. This precedence is one mark of its primacy and superiority, which is recognized throughout his history. Clearly the admiral of the Phoenician fleet held the highest rank in the Persian navy. Now Herodotus names four admirals; and two of them are sons of Darius. Achaemenes, full brother of Xerxes, is in command of the Egyptian fleet; Ariabignes, Xerxes’ half-brother, commands the Ionian and Carian fleet (to which must be reckoned also the Dorian contingent); Prexaspes and Megabazus are of inferior rank and less account. From these and other indications it has been acutely inferred that the King himself must have been the admiral of the Phoenician fleet. The remaining two territorial divisions, southern Asia Minor (including Cyprus) and the Hellespontine region (with Aeolis), separated by Ariabignes’ command, may be assigned to Prexaspes and Megabazus. Thus we have five distinct commands—(1) the Phoenician, (2) the Egyptian, (3) the Cilician or Cypriote, (4) the Ionian, (5) the Hellespontine or Pontic— which we may surely assume to have been a permanent system in the Persian organization. Now further, Herodotus reckons the Egyptian fleet at 200 sail; and the Ionian fleet, if the Dorians be included, at 2 00; and again, in spite of his own assessment of its contingents, the Cilician at 200, if (aswill be argued below) thatwasthe fleet sent round Euboea before the battles at Artemisium. Bringing the other two fleets into line with these three, we get five fleets of 200 ships apiece, or the same total as the thousand in the Persae.

But 1000 and 200 cannot be regarded as the normal numbers of ships in the Persian navy and in a division of it respectively. Herodotus has an almost stereotyped number for a Persian fleet, 600. He applies it to the fleets on the Scythian expedition, at Lade, and on the Marathon campaign. He ‘writes down’ Xerxes’ fleet itself towards this normal number before it reaches Attica. A total of 600 would give 120 ships to each of the five fleets. Sure enough, Herodotus, left to his own devices to raise a Thracian fleet, puts it at 120 triremes. Ephorus, if Diodorus reproduces his figures, reckoned the Hellespontine fleet at 120. Possibly he corrected Herodotus’ 160 by some local record at Cyme. Further, reasons have been shown for believing that the Persian navy was organized on the model of the Phoenician and the Phoenician was organized in units of 60 ships. Carthaginian fleets normally consist of 60 ships of the line, or multiples of 60, with 10 additional cruisers or scouts. Even the cruisers recur in the Phoenician fleet of Xerxes, in the 10 Sidonian ships which reconnoitre the Greek position at Artemisium. On the whole evidence there is at least a very strong presumption that 600 ships were the official and generally recognized total Persian navy, and 120 the number in each of its component fleets.

But 1000 and 200 might be not normal but exceptional numbers, including a special increase of the navy for the purpose of this war. Each fleet of 120 ships postulates two squadrons of 60. Supported by the Phoenician and Carthaginian parallels we may conjecture that each squadron had its 10 cruisers (which may or may not have been triremes). A third squadron of 60 ships of the line would raise each fleet to 200, or, if we credit the third squadron with 10 cruisers, to 210, which might in round numbers be counted as 200. (The Carthaginian examples show that our authorities sometimes reckon, sometimes omit, the cruisers, and usually calculate a three squadron fleet at 200 ships.) Five fleets of 200 ships give the Aeschylean thousand; and we may suppose that the Greeks arrived at that figure by imputing to each fleet a third squadron.

But is the 1000 much more credible than the 1207? Darius and Xerxes had no doubt made great preparations for the invasion of Greece; there had been much shipbuilding for several years. But most of it must have been, not ‘fresh construction,’ additions to the navy, but replacement of old vessels, especially obsolete penteconters by new triremes, the latest type of warships just then being introduced. (Hence, of course, the abundance of vessels available for bridges, transport and supply services.) It is most improbable that even the Persian king not only rebuilt his fleet, but also increased it by half as much again, to a figure far beyond all other record, in order to defeat an enemy who could not muster a third of as many ships to meet him. He must have fancied that he had before him a task easy in comparison with his recent victory over the Ionians, when half his navy had been on the wrong side. The hypothesis that there had been a general increase is therefore inacceptable. But we have positive evidence to prove that one fleet, the Phoenician, the King’s own command, had been reinforced by a third squadron, cruisers and all. Herodotus repeatedly notes that the Phoenician ships were the best and fastest of the Persian navy. Aeschylus’ 207 ships pre-eminent for speed can be none other than the Phoenician fleet. The exact figure is reached by deducting from the original 210 the three Sidonian cruisers lost on the rock Myrmex. Herodotus often implies that the Sidonian contingent was a distinct squadron. He may indicate the three squadrons in his mention of the three most notable Phoenician leaders, one from Sidon, one from Tyre, and one from Aradus. It is also significant that he puts the Phoenician contingent at 300 ships, just 50 per cent, above the conventional 200 ascribed to other fleets. The Phoenician fleet, their hereditary foe and rival on the sea, so completely occupied the attention and dominated the imagination of the Greeks, that we may readily believe that they took it for the type and measure of the rest, and computed them all on that standard. But that computation does not bind us, and our estimate of Xerxes’ entire fleet will be 660 ships of the line with not more than 116 nor less than 30 cruisers. Perhaps a total of 730 ships, allowing 30 cruisers to the Phoenician fleet and 10 to each of the other four, would be a reasonable calculation. A few more may have come in after Doriscus (e.g. the Island contingents at Phalerum), but, on the other hand, the Abydene contingent, Herodotus tells us, was left in the Hellespont to guard the bridges (or cables?), and it is at least extremely probable that the whole Hellespontine fleet, of which there is no clear trace in the operations, remained there until the king was in Attica.

The concentration and final organization of the forces at Doriscus must have taken some time, hardly less than three weeks, but no doubt at least half of the time overlaps the month at Abydos. The army, when it set out for Therma, moved in three columns, each, as Herodotus would have us to believe, under its own Zwo generals. Herodotus conceives the three columns marching on a single front by three parallel roads, one along the coast, one inland, and the third between these two. The configuration of the country from Doriscus to Therma offers in parts two alter­native routes, but nowhere three, except perhaps for a short distance east and west of the Strymon; and only occasionally does any road touch the sea. If we are to insist upon three parallel routes, we must either push the right-hand column far into the interior on an immense detour, up the Hebrus and across the upper Strymon and down the Axius, or thrust the left-hand column out to sea on the ships. It is more probable that the parallel advance is a figment of Herodotus’ fancy, and that the three Persian army corps marched much of their way by a single road, but where there are two (notably from the Symbolum Pass onwards) used both roads. Herodotus notes the tripartite division of the army only on the section between Doriscus and Acanthus, but he drops a hint of it on the approach to Thessaly, and it may be assumed throughout the campaign. He can, however, hardly be right in bringing any large force to Acanthus, south of the hog’s back ridge of Chalcidice. On the contrary, the bulk of the army must certainly have taken the shortest and easiest road to Therma along the shores of Lake Bolbe, although Herodotus does not clearly recognize that route. But no doubt Xerxes himself came to Acanthus to inspect the new canal. There he celebrated the obsequies of Artachaees, the commandant in charge of the work, and seems to have spent some time. Meanwhile his army was presumably marching to Therma, whence one-third of it was sent forward into Pieria to prepare the road through the passes into Thessaly. Herodotus obviously confuses the king’s movements with his army’s, and more than once Therma with Pieria. It would ease his narrative if we might suppose that Xerxes parted not from his fleet, but from his army, sailed in fact from Eion first to Acanthus, then to Tempe and Pieria, and finally to Therma.

The fleet at all events, which since leaving Doriscus had been in frequent touch with the army, turned away southwards from about the mouth of the Strymon to Acanthus, and passed through the canal, perhaps under the eyes of the king. Thereafter Herodotus ascribes to it an absurd itinerary. He takes occasion to present a detailed periplus of the coasts of Chalcidice, exploring every inlet and omitting scarcely a seaside village. Having sent the whole royal navy on a cruise round the Toronaic gulf, although it had just cut across its entrance from point to point, he finally dispatches it on a futile voyage up to Therma, where it cannot have been wanted. Perhaps ever since the expedition of Mardonius in 492, certainly since the inception of the canal, Acanthus had been the naval arsenal of the Thracian station. It probably remained so; and the advanced base of the fleet and starting-point of its subsequent operations may be placed on the southern coast of Pallene, in line with the Pass of Tempe. But no doubt the Phoenician fleet, Xerxes’ own guard of honour, conveyed him to Therma. In Pieria Xerxes received the heralds sent forth from Sardes, who brought the tokens of submission from most of the peoples north of Mount Oeta and even (could we trust Herodotus) others farther south. There he ‘tarried many days’; but probably the days are reckoned from the arrival of the Persian vanguard and include some of the king’s stay at Acanthus.

II

THE GREEK DEFENCE

The Persian forces had now reached the Thessalian frontier without hindrance. What measures had the Greeks taken to meet the invasion? They had long warning of the king’s preparations and ample notice of his approach. The attack was aimed primarily at Athens and Sparta, and they doubtless took the initiative in organizing the defence. A league was formed, and a Congress representative of its members met at the Isthmus of Corinth in the autumn of 481, of course under the presidency of Sparta. Efforts were made to compose quarrels and feuds among the allies or other Greek states. In particular Athens and Aegina were reconciled. An oath of vengeance, vowing to confiscate the property of any Greek people which voluntarily joined the Persian, and dedicate a tenth of it to the Delphic god, is best put here, and may be interpreted mainly as a threat against states which might refuse to enter the alliance. Nevertheless there remained lamentable gaps in the confederacy. North-western Greece was scantily represented, the Achaean cities of the Peloponnese not at all, and Argos stood aloof, sullen and sinister. The adhesion of the Boeotians and the Thessalians was a relief almost too good to be true, and few of them could be implicitly trusted. It was indeed too much to expect of them that they should be enthusiastic for a policy which might lead to a Spartan domination over the whole of Greece. The Congress however, conscious of the magnitude of its task, attempted to enroll even Argos in the league, and endeavoured to get help from the still independent Greek states of the east and the west.

The results were small. The Cretans, who took little interest in the affairs of Greece and were exposed to Persian attack, sheltered themselves under pretext of an oracle from Delphi; but possibly the Greek envoys did some fruitful propaganda on their way through the Cyclades. In the west the main object was to secure the support of Gelon Tyrant of Syracuse, the strongest Hellenic power at that time in the world. But Gelon, whether by an unlucky coincidence or by Persian diplomacy, had his hands full with a no less formidable struggle against the Carthaginians. The embassy perhaps enlisted one volunteer in Magna Graecia, for Phayllus of Croton brought his own ship to fight at Salamis. At all events the Corcyraeans promised assistance, and in due course sent 60 ships as far as Cape Malea. The plea that they could get no farther owing to contrary winds is refuted by the presence at Salamis of small contingents from Leucas and Ambracia. But the charge that they waited in order to claim favour from Xerxes, if he had won, may be suspected of afterthought; at least they may have hesitated between, not Greek and Barbarian, but the allies and Gelon. The Argives could never forget their ancient supremacy in the Peloponnese nor forgive the Spartans for having usurped it. They were still sore from their defeat by Cleomenes. They were not without reason accused afterwards of intriguing with the national enemy, and their guilt is no less credible because Herodotus will not assert it outright. They produced a rather obsolete oracle from Delphi to justify them in remaining neutral, but professed themselves willing to join the league, if the Spartans would concede to them a peace for 30 years and the command, or at least an equal share in the command, of the allied forces. This impudent attempt to extort a recognition of their old pretensions can only have been intended to throw the odium of their refusal on their successful rivals.

Besides these diplomatic missions the Congress had to deal with military and strategical matters. Xerxes was now at Sardes. Three spies were dispatched thither to report on his forces. The story runs that they were arrested, but that the king, with superb confidence and politic calculation, let them inspect his troops and go home to warn the Greeks of the futility of resistance. The command of the allied army was of course committed to Sparta. The Athenians put forward a claim to the command of the navy, but did not press it against the wishes of the majority. Thus on both land and sea the conduct of the war was formally assigned to the Spartans. But Themistocles, who at this critical juncture directed the policy and led the forces of Athens, knew that he would carry weight second to none in the counsels of the allies. In the strategical plans, presumably then discussed at the Congress and afterwards carried out, we may clearly recognize his influence.

The scheme of defence was dictated by the method of the attack, the relative forces on either side, and the configuration of the Greek peninsula. The Persian army was too large to be shipped across the Aegean. It was bound to follow the land route through Thrace and enter Greece from the north. The allies could furnish a considerable army, but when every contingent was mobilized, they could not muster more than half the troops brought against them by Xerxes. Outnumbered by two to one they could not face the enemy in the open field but must look for strong narrow positions. The Greek mainland presented several such positions on the road southwards. Not to mention Thaumaci and Dryoscephalae, which are too easily evaded, there are the defile of Tempe, the pass of Thermopylae, and the Isthmus of Corinth. But, of course, all of them could be turned by sea, and the allies had to reckon with the Persian fleet, which was not tied to the army and might land troops in their rear. Apart from any distrust of the Thessalians and Boeotians, this importunate danger was aggravated by the attitude of Argos, which offered to the enemy a foothold and a valuable ally in the Peloponnese. Through half a generation’s rest Argos had recruited her forces, not only by natural increase of population, but probably also by admission of fresh citizens. She was perhaps stronger than before Cleomenes’ massacre, more democratic, and more hostile to Sparta. And if the Argives with Persian aid made a flank attack on Laconia and raised the Helots in revolt, could the Mantineans and Eleans be trusted to remain loyal? Hints in Herodotus suggest that they were not whole-hearted for the league. In short nothing but a fleet strong enough to dispute the command of the sea with the Persian, or a garrison large enough to crush any invasion or rising south of the Isthmus, could safeguard the Peloponnese, the very citadel of Greek independence. Themistocles, to be sure, had already provided Athens with a fleet evidently designed to be equal in number and quality to the Phoenician. But the total allied navy was as heavily outnumbered by the Persian as the army on land, and could not confront it on the open sea. At all costs, therefore, the bulk of the allied army must be retained in the Peloponnese; and consequently the Isthmus must be the main line of defence by land. This fundamental necessity was obviously the first axiom in all the discussions.

But a defence confined only to the Peloponnese was open to grave objections. It would abandon to the enemy the whole of northern and central Greece, and sacrifice all hope of support from states north of Cithaeron. It would put severe strain upon the loyalty of the Athenians. Above all it would imperil the safety of the Peloponnese itself. The Peloponnesians might confidently meet Xerxes at the Isthmus, or suppress any hostile landing or movement in their rear; but if he reached the Saronic gulf with his army and his navy intact and together, they had to reckon with both attacks simultaneously, and that would be an almost desperate emergency. Even had they the forces, could they retain their troops at the Isthmus when the Barbarian was threatening their homes? It was impossible to advance the main line of defence on land farther northwards; but if the Greek fleet, taking ad­vantage of narrow waters, could inflict on the enemy, before he approached the Isthmus, such losses as to impair his command of the sea or render him incapable of detaching a squadron against the Peloponnese, the situation was at once relieved. A naval victory as far north as possible was clearly the best solution; and a com­plete naval victory would probably be decisive of the war, for it would free the allies to threaten the Persian communications and excite a rebellion in Ionia, which would compel Xerxes to send back a large part of his army. The channel inside Euboea or the sound of Salamis offered admirable positions, where the enemy could not use his superior number for a frontal attack, but might be tempted to divide his fleet in order to take the defenders in the rear, and so give a chance of defeating his main force before the other division came into action. The problem was to get the Persians to attack in the narrows. Here the immense advantage of the Euboean position appears. The sound of Salamis was a forlorn hope; it was too far south—actually in the Saronic Gulf— and presented little inducement to the enemy. But the strait between the north end of Euboea and the south cape of Magnesia covers the only practicable landing-places on the east coast of Greece from Tempe to Marathon; for the seaboard of Thessaly is fenced by the range of Ossa and Pelion, and the long island of Euboea protects the shores of central Greece. (Marathon was of course too far distant for a turning movement, and a force landed there would be intercepted by the Greeks from the Isthmus.) If, therefore, Xerxes (who must arrive at the Isthmus and occupy the allied army there before he could invade the Peloponnese by sea) were blocked at Tempe or Thermopylae, he would be compelled to use his fleet to turn the obstruction to his progress on land, or, in other words, his fleet must attack the Greek naval position. Now the pass of Tempe or the pass of Thermopylae could be defended, for the short time needed to give the Greek fleet its opportunity of fighting, by a small detachment, which would not seriously weaken the garrison of the Peloponnese. Should the fleet succeed in crippling the enemy’s, the Peloponnesian army would be set free to advance and confirm the defence, and Greece from that point southwards might be saved from invasion. The farther north the stand were made, the more allies would be gained or retained.

Accordingly, and in response to a call from the Thessalians, when Xerxes was at Abydos a Greek fleet conveying 10,000 hoplites was dispatched through the Euripus to Halus on the gulf of Pagasae under Evaenetus (a Spartan polemarch) and Themistocles. The fleet may have been entirely Athenian and Themistocles, who was no doubt the sponsor of the scheme, in command of it, while Evaenetus was leader on land. If so, the other contingents were to follow; for the main object must have been the naval battle at the entry to the straits. The army included, if we may trust Aristophanes of Boeotia, 500 Thebans, who would naturally be picked up at Aulis. It marched from Halus to Tempe, but did not stay there many days. Tempe is not the only gate into Thessaly from the north. Apart from the mountain path by Gonnus, which is not of much account, there are in chief the passes of Petra and Volustana. They were too distant to be comprehended in the defence of Tempe, and required to hold them a much larger force than could be spared from the Peloponnese. The Thessalians had promised to co-operate in the defence. Presumably they had undertaken to guard the other passes, if the allies would hold Tempe. But only the cavalry, the Thessalian aristocracy, presented itself, and it was of little use for the purpose. The mass of the Thessalians, perhaps intimidated by Macedonian reports of Xerxes’ irresistible strength, perhaps seduced by his envoys, more probably suspicious of Sparta and inclined to the party of the Aleuadae, who were said to have invited the Persian invasion, stood aloof. The appeal of the Thessalians to the allies proved to have been a far from unanimous summons. Evaenetus marched back to the ships and withdrew the whole forces to the Isthmus.

This ominous opening to the campaign evidently discredited Themistocles’ strategy. He had to overcome opposition both among his colleagues at the Isthmus and among bis own fellow-countrymen. The linked positions of Thermopylae and Artemisium provided a line of defence stronger, more compact, than Tempe and Artemisium, but not altogether free from the same defects—the pass could be turned by another, and the peoples behind it could not be entirely trusted. Some of the Peloponnesians, shortsighted in their caution and their confidence, were reluctant to try again at Thermopylae the plan which had failed at Tempe. They relied upon the Isthmus alone and would occupy no outpost beyond it. On the other hand, a party at Athens, especially the Agrarians, very naturally but unreasonably insisted that the whole allied army should march out and give battle in defence of Attica, if not at Thermopylae, at all events in Boeotia.

It was probably at this crisis, when the defence seemed for the moment to have fallen back to the Isthmus and Salamis, that the oracles were delivered to the Athenians at Delphi which Herodotus records rather than places at an earlier date, at the inauguration of the league. The character of the responses is incompatible with that date, and they have commonly been put after the disaster at Thermopylae. But there is no room for the mission to Delphi in the four or five days between the fall of Thermopylae and the Persian occupation of Phocis; and by that time there was no doubt to be solved or question to be asked. The interval between the retreat from Thessaly and the decision to hold Thermopylae presents the most suitable occasion. In the two envoys deputed to consult the god we may perhaps see representatives of the Themistoclean and the Agrarian parties respectively. Neither got any encouragement for their immediate purpose, although Themis- tocles could extract some for future use. The Pythia Aristonice bade them ‘begone to the ends of the earth’ and ‘school their hearts in woe.’ Even when at the suggestion of Timon, a man of influence in Delphi, they returned in guise of suppliants and begged for a kinder answer, the god was obdurate against any resistance on land, conceded salvation only in ‘a wooden wall,’ and pointed to Salamis as the site for a battle. The Delphians in fact pretty accurately gauged the probabilities. The Pelopon­nesians -would not, could not, come out in full force to fight north of the Isthmus; to hold Thermopylae and Artemisium was to incur a double hazard; the issue would ultimately be decided on the last line of defence. The Delphians, anxious for the interests of the great institution under their charge, the ‘Bank of Hellas,’ would not invite the risk of being involved in an unsuccessful or merely temporary stand against the invader, and had a more secure protection in reserve. At least six, possibly nine, of the twelve ‘nations’ represented on the Amphictyonic Board, which nominally directed the affairs of the sanctuary, were already hastening, probably on instructions from Delphi, to give their submission to Xerxes. The policy of la haute finance is seldom heroic.

Nevertheless the Athenians decreed to meet the invader in full force in their ships with the assistance of what other Greeks would join them, and the allies decided by a majority of votes to occupy Thermopylae. Leonidas, the Agid king of Sparta, led forth 4000 Peloponnesian hoplites including his royal guard of 300 Spartiates. He picked up 700 Thespians and 400 Thebans in Boeotia, and found 1000 Phocians and the whole levy of the Opuntian Locrians mustered in response to a message in advance at Trachis. We may reasonably add the Trachinians, who appear in Diodorus as 1000 Malians. With Helots and light-armed troops, who are not reckoned, the total force may have amounted to 10,000 men. The fleet took up its station at Artemisium on the north coast of Euboea flanking the entrance to the straits. It consisted (if we may here add the 53 ships which Herodotus brings up later) of 324 triremes and nine penteconters. The Athenians contributed their entire navy, 180 triremes manned by themselves and 20 by their Chalcidian cleruchs. They were led by Themistocles; but the supreme command was vested in the Spartan admiral Eurybiades, whose contingent numbered only ten ships. The disproportion between the land and the sea forces plainly indicates that a naval battle was the primary object and the defence of Thermopylae was in the first instance only subordinate to that end. But naturally the chiefs emphasized their intention of bringing up the main army in support after the Olympian and Carnean festivals, without dwelling upon the proviso that the fleet should first have won its victory.

The Greeks were only just in time. The vanguard of the leading Persian column had already entered Pieria and Xerxes had doubtless reached Acanthus. The failure in Thessaly and the opposition which delayed the occupation of Artemisium and Thermopylae may have had this fortunate result, that the Persian generals believed that the enemy had definitely abandoned all hope of resistance north of the Isthmus. Otherwise one cannot see why they omitted to seize in advance those cardinal positions.

III

ARTEMISIUM

The account given by Herodotus of the naval operations which followed is a tangled tale, and the fumbling expedients of Ephorus or Diodorus only involve it in worse confusion. The solution here offered may appear drastic, but endeavours, while unravelling the threads, to retain whatever can be reasonably accepted and can be fitted into a coherent whole. The clue is to be found in a recog­nition of the several separate narratives combined in the story of Herodotus. His ultimate sources may be reduced to three—(1) Pytheas (supplemented by Phormus), (2) Scyllias, who sailed with Sandoces, (3) an Athenian on board of one of the 53 ships. Each of the three narratives naturally covered only particular portions of the whole series of events; but they have been im­perfectly adjusted and their information has been misapplied outside their proper limits in the attempt to extract from them a complete account of what happened.

The Persian navy having traversed the canal proceeded to establish an advanced base on or near the southern coast of the peninsula of Pallene, probably at Scione. Leaving the rest there, the Phoenician fleet set out to reconnoitre the passages through the.islands which extend eastwards from the extremity of Magnesia. Led by the Sidonian squadron with its ten cruisers in front, it struck straight across the open sea to Sciathus. There three Greek scoutships were stationed, a Troezenian, an Aeginetan, and an Athenian. It is not clear why they did not escape to Artemisium; probably the enemy approached under cover of night, entered the channel between Sciathus and Peparethus at daybreak, and surprised them in the harbour of Sciathus. They fled from the harbour, which opens southwards, but the swift Sidonian cruisers must have headed them off from the Euboean channel and driven them northwards through the strait between Sciathus and the point of Magnesia. Here three of the pursuers ran upon ‘the Ant’, a reef off the Magnesian side of the entrance, and were lost. But the Troezenian and Aeginetan ships were soon overtaken and captured, the latter after a stout resistance of which a valiant Pytheas was the hero. He lived to be released at Salamis from his Sidonian captors; and that is doubtless how we know the tale. The delay rescued the Athenians, but not their ship. After a long chase their captain Phormus ran his vessel ashore at the mouth of the Peneus and brought his crew safely home through Thessaly —evidently the Persians had not yet occupied Tempe.

The seven Sidonian cruisers with their prizes would rejoin at the naval base. Before returning thither the Phoenician fleet, having presumably suppressed the Greek signal station on Sciathus, appears to have proceeded to Scyrus. At all events it was a Scyrian, Pammon, who explained the mystery of the sunken reef. So before the advance of the whole armada a monolith was provided to mark the dangerous spot and, no doubt for the purpose of its erection, the professional services of the diver Scyllias of Scione were commandeered. This duty however devolved upon another division; the Phoenician fleet had to convey the king to Tempe and to Therma.

The advent of the 200 Phoenician ships had been signalled by beacons from Sciathus to the Greek admirals at Artemisium, who must have foreseen the probability of a turning movement round Euboea to circumvent their position. They dispatched 53 Attic ships (a squadron of 50 with three scouts) to defend the Euripus at Chalcis, where it narrows to little over 200 feet. In order to observe and report to the squadron at Chalcis the progress of the enemy southwards, coastguards were posted along the hills which overlook the east shore of Euboea. The Athenians had to wait at Chalcis for some time, and it was not the Phoenician fleet that eventually came.

Xerxes at length resumed his advance. On the 12th day after he had marched from Therma the armada began to move southwards. Although Herodotus lets him first hear of the defence of Thermopylae on his way through Thessaly, the king must have known the distribution of the Greek forces from the naval captives and his allies on land. The Persian plan of operations was that the army and the main part of the fleet should arrive simultaneously before Thermopylae and the entrance to the channel north of Euboea and engage the Greeks there, while a squadron sent round the island should attack or threaten both positions from the rear. The bare threat might make the enemy retire; and if he evacuated either position, the other became useless and the road to the south would be cleared. Obviously the turning squadron, which had a long way to go, would move first; and to it would be assigned the incidental task of marking the reef between Sciathus and Magnesia. We argue from indications which will appear that it was the ‘Cilician’ fleet. Let us suppose that it sailed at daybreak from Scione, whence it took the diver Scyllias, and that it had twelve hours’ start of the main fleet (except the Phoenicians, who had an extra day’s voyage and would sail at the same time from Therma). In the afternoon it will have approached Sciathus and, passing perhaps out of sight from it, shed a detachment of Cypriote ships to set the mark upon ‘the Ant’. This detachment, having planted the obelisk on the reef about sunset, would prudently retire round the heel of Magnesia (Cape Sepias) towards its supports and after nightfall put in at one of the little anchorages along the coast, there to await the passing of the main Persian fleet. With the dawn came the fleet, but with it came a north-easterly gale, the dreaded ‘Hellespontias’ which afflicts those inhospitable shores. The great bulk of the fleet no doubt slipped safely round the corner into shelter at Aphetae, which is best placed at Platania between the cape and Olizon, but the rear-guard may have been caught too far north and have sustained some losses; certainly the ships of burden strung out far behind must have fallen under the full blast of the storm. Many were dashed to pieces on the precipitous Magnesian coast; others escaped only by running ashore on the rare beaches. The Cypriote squadron, anchored in a ‘quincunx’ formation eight deep projecting like an equilateral triangle from the strand, suffered heavily; 11 of the 12 Paphian vessels perished; and out of the 36 ships, which the formation would suggest, only 15 reappear. Isolated and distrustful of the native tribes, the survivors of the crews fortified their camp with a fence of wreckage.

The storm raged for 24 hours. Herodotus makes it last for three days and three nights, but he has preserved evidence for his own refutation: (1) in the parallel narrative derived from the 53 ships there is no hint of more than a one day’s storm; (2) Xerxes enters Malis on his twelfth day out from Therma and that day is two days before ‘the fleet’ reached Aphetae after the storm—by ‘the fleet’ we must here understand the hindmost part of it (mostly supply ships) which was caught and driven ashore by the storm and was all that Scyllias could observe. The storm therefore lasted only from dawn of the 13th to dawn of the 14th days of the diary. Why did Herodotus prolong it? Because the Cypriote squadron in which Scyllias was sailing, ‘having put to sea long after the rest’ (from its Magnesian anchorage) arrived two days later, on the 16th. No doubt the salvage operations of Scyllias, which were extensive and profitable, needed time and calm water, and there were repairs to be done. But Herodotus has assumed that the delay was due to the storm, that it involved the whole fleet, and that the whole fleet reached the Euboean channel on the same day. By reducing the storm to one day we both relieve the congestion of events on the 16th, the day of the first battle, and get rid of the discrepancy of two days between the diaries of the army and the fleet, which has vexed every student of Herodotus.

On the morrow, then, the barbarians who had weathered the storm launched their ships and followed the coast round to Aphetae, where the admirals held a review to take stock of the damage. The Cypriote squadron however, now reduced to 15 vessels, under Sandoces the governor of Cyme (who may or may not have been its original commander) came up two days later. Never expecting to find the Greeks still maintaining their position, and sighting them before he saw the Persians in the bay of Aphetae, Sandoces steered straight for them and delivered his squadron an easy prey into their hands. Herodotus surmises that Scyllias came across the strait in a boat. We go further and suppose that he was on board one of the 15 ships. The prisoners, doubtless including Scyllias, who now makes his exit from the narrative, were closely questioned and forwarded under guard to the head­quarters of the allies at the Isthmus. The Greek admirals learnt from them, or by his own story from Scyllias himself, of the Persian losses in the storm and of the dispatch of the ships to sail round Euboea, which appears to have been news to them. They held a council of war, which must have decided to attack the enemy at once in the absence of the ‘Cilician’ fleet.

The Greeks accordingly made a brusque attack late in the afternoon, trusting to the darkness to cover their retreat should they come off badly. The description given by Herodotus of this action reads suspiciously like a varnished replica of the final battle two days later, and suggests that he had little or no information on what happened between the arrival of Scyllias and that of the 53 ships, but, bewildered by his interpolated two days, has inadvertently used the same material twice. Even the postscripts are questionable. Plutarch, who supplements Herodotus from some monumental source, places the exploit of the Athenian Lycomedes in taking the first ship from the enemy not at Artemisium but at Salamis. The capture of 30 prizes ‘would be more intelligible,’ a critic observes, ‘if these 30 ships were cut off in some way from the main fleet’; and we venture to conjecture that, as the prisoners included Philaon, brother of the king of the Cypriote Salamis, the 30 ships were really part of the Cilician division destroyed, according to Herodotus, on the next day.

Thus, if Herodotus’ account of this first engagement be discredited, there seems to be a clear field for the alternative version drawn from the recently discovered fragment of Sosylus, which cannot otherwise be fitted into the story of the battles at Arte­misium. Sosylus tells that the Massaliotes fighting against the Carthaginians in the second Punic War bethought themselves of the scheme of a second line of ships in reserve behind the front, whereby Heraclides of Mylasa had long before at Artemisium countered the Phoenician diecplus (breaking the line) and had won the victory. A Heraclides of Mylasa figures in Herodotus’ narrative of the Ionian revolt, in which he destroyed a Persian army in Caria by an ambush. No naval battle in the Ionian revolt nor any in the Persian wars other than these battles in 480 bc is recorded to have been fought at an Artemisium. Herodotus himself ascribes to the Greeks in this first attack the wish to test the enemy’s method of fighting and in particular his diecplus. Nevertheless Heraclides certainly cannot have been in command here, the result of the action was, if by courtesy a victory, hardly a conspicuous advertisement to his stratagem, and it is extremely improbable that the Massaliotes (or Sosylus either) knew more than Herodotus about the operations. It is easier to suppose that Heraclides emigrated, like Dionysius of Phocaea, to the west in order to escape Darius, and assisted the Massaliotes in a battle against the Carthaginians off the Iberian Artemisium (Dianium), which seems to become the boundary between their respective spheres of influence in Spain. Sosylus therefore cannot be used with any confidence to fill the gap in Herodotus.

Night ended the brief engagement. The Greeks were not encouraged to renew it and the Persian admirals still hoped that the ships sent round Euboea would draw them off. What had become of those ships? Herodotus here derives his information from the 53 Attic ships on guard at Chalcis, but misapplies much of it to the combatants at Artemisium. The scouts posted on the hills ran down to Chalcis on the day after the storm and announced that a large squadron of the enemy had been caught by the tempest out on the open sea east of Euboea and been wrecked or driven ashore. The Athenians praised Poseidon; but had more to do before they rejoined their comrades than Herodotus apprehended. Not all the enemy’s ships had perished on the east coast. The recorded scene of their destruction is the Hollows of Euboea, the south-western coast of the island, where the north-easterly gale could not have hurt them, in fact the best refuge whither they could have run. The key to the puzzle is to be found in Herodotus’ notice (of the coming, or rather return, of the 53 ships to Artemisium. In his story they came (out of the void) to help the Greeks; with them came the news of the wreck of the enemy’s division sent round Euboea; so having waited for the same hour they (the Greeks?) on their voyage fell upon a force of Cilician ships; having destroyed the Cilicians they set off when night was coming on to sail back to Artemisium. It is fairly obvious that the news of the wreck was brought by the 53 ships. Is it not obviously probable, and suggested by the curious expressions of Herodotus, that the rest of the statement was also news brought by them and gives an account of their doings, which Herodotus has inadvertently transferred from oratio obliqua into oratio recta, from the place (the Hollows) and time (the previous day) of their enactment to the place and time of their announcement at Artemisium, from the 53 ships to the main Greek fleet? This solution explains why the 53 ships did not return to Artemisium immediately after the news of the wreck reached them; why the Hollows are brought into the story of the destruction of the ships sent round Euboea— the survivors rallied there under the lee of the island and fell a prey to the 53 ships, which swooped down upon them from Chaicis; why the Cilician division was caught far apart from the main Persian fleet; and (may we not add?) how the capture of the 30 ships, including Cypriote, although rightly dated is misplaced to Artemisium. The news of the wreck reached Chaicis on the day after the storm; the 53 ships would sail southwards on the next day; and the action at the Hollows would be fought on the following day, the day of the first battle at Artemisium, a coincidence which would be remarked; the 30 ships may have been all of the Cilician fleet that had survived the storm.

The 53 ships arrived at Artemisium, probably in the evening, on the day after the first battle. Their crews may have been disappointed at the formidable array of the enemy in spite of the storm, but their succour and their news cheered the Greeks there, who, if ever they had meditated a retreat during the night, were now encouraged to hold on and fight again. This time it was the Barbarians who attacked; they had doubtless heard of the failure of the turning movement or inferred it from the arrival of the 53 ships. Having awaited through the forenoon in the vain hope, we may suppose, of news of the fall of Thermopylae, which would have absolved them from another action, they advanced about midday, and pushing forward their wings in a crescent enveloped the Greek flanks. The Greeks, ranged in a semicircle with their backs to the land, presented their prows to the enemy, and at a signal charged stem to stem. There was no room for manoeuvres. The battle became an obstinate struggle at close quarters. The Greeks, striking out from the centre, maintained better order than their assailants, who pressed inwards and fell foul of one another; but neither gave way and neither gained a decisive advantage. Of the Barbarians the Egyptians with their heavy armour most distinguished themselves, of the Hellenes the Athenians, and of these Cleinias, son of Alcibiades (presumably a great-uncle of the famous Alcibiades), who commanded a ship built and manned at his own cost. The Greeks were left in possession of their station and of the wreckage, but had suffered severe losses. Themistocles had had his day, but had not won his victory. If Herodotus may be trusted, the council of admirals had already determined to withdraw when a boat detailed for the purpose brought news from Thermopylae and announced the disaster there, which left them no choice. Having lighted fires to deceive the enemy, and roasted the cattle of the Euboeans driven down for removal, they retired under cover of the darkness, making for the Euripus and the Saronic gulf.

IV

THERMOPYLAE

In contrast with the composite patchwork of the naval narrative Herodotus’ account of the operations on land is simple and suggests a single source or the smooth ground of an orthodox tradition. Criticism by cross-examination and impertinent questions may reveal omissions, inadvertent or deliberate, and smouldering controversies beneath the surface, but Herodotus ignores them as far as he can, and declines to spoil his story.

The Persian army still moving in three columns, as is indicated by the pioneer work of one-third of it, may have entered Thessaly by the three main passes, Tempe, Petra, and Volustana. Knowing of the path by Gonnus, a mere by-pass to Tempe, Herodotus insists on sending the whole army over it; but that is doubtless no more than misapplied geography. The three main passes converge upon Larissa. Thence Xerxes followed the route by the gulf of Pagasae to Halus and round the east end of Othrys. But it is probable, and supported by the mention of the river Apidanus, that the bulk of his army used the direct road through Thaumaci. On the 12th day after quitting Therma he entered Malis and camped ‘in the Trachinian territory,’ presumably between the rivers Melas and Asopus, in the plain below Trachis.

The descriptions given by Herodotus of the defile of Thermo­pylae and the approach to it fit the topography on the whole very well, if allowance be made for the retirement of the sea due to the silting up of the gulf, and for the erroneous orientation which represents the pass lying north and south instead of west and east. But it is obvious that, although he appears to have made some enquiry about the path Anopaea, he has only a vague idea of the mountainous country above and behind the heights which overhang the plain and pass, ‘the Anopaea’ in the broad sense of the name. And there is one astonishing omission. The pass of Thermopylae is not the only practicable route from the Malian plain to the south. A not really difficult hill road runs up the ravine of the Asopus and over the comparatively low ridge between Oeta and Callidromus into the valley of the Cephisus. Herodotus almost calls attention to this road later, for he sends the whole Persian army by it into Doris after the fall of Thermopylae and perhaps brings Artabazus and his corps back by it after the battle of Plataea. Thus he himself proves the strategic importance and military use of this road; but in his account of the defence of Thermopylae he barely hints at its existence. Yet it is not too much to say that, had this road been open, there would have been no defence of Thermopylae at all, no attack, no turning movement. Xerxes would simply have dispatched a column up the Asopus into Phocis and unlocked the gates without a blow. The fact must be, in spite of the silence of Herodotus, that this road was held. The obvious and regularly adopted method of barring it was to put a garrison into the citadel of Trachis, which stood near the angle between the Trachinian cliffs and the canon of the Asopus and commanded the gorge. Trachis, according to Herodotus, marks the Greek front line against the Persian on the eve of the fighting, and it was there that the Locrians and the Phocians had assembled. Assuredly they did not entirely evacuate it. A parallel omission in Herodotus’ distribution of the defenders confirms the inference. The Peloponnesians and Boeotians are with Leonidas at Thermopylae, the Phocians are guarding the Anopaea, but the Locrians are missing. The Locrians must have been the garrison of Trachis. To them may be added the Trachinians themselves, who figure in Diodorus as 1000 Malians.

Xerxes therefore found both the coast road and the hill road blocked. He waited three days after the day of his arrival expecting, Herodotus says, that the Greeks would run away, but more probably in hope that the fleet sent round Euboea would compel them to abandon Thermopylae. The Persian generals evidently appreciated the strength of the Greek positions and wished to avoid frontal assaults on them. It is not surprising that they appear to have made no attempt on Trachis, a very formidable task. But even their first attack at Thermopylae on the fourth day, when it had become clear that the naval stratagem had some­how miscarried, may have been no more than a reconnaissance in force to test the Greek defence, or possibly to divert attention from the turning movement, which may have been originally planned for the night of that day. Leonidas had no difficulty in repelling the attack, but probably did not seriously defend the west gate of the defile. This gate is not protected by inaccessible heights on the landward side; and presumably it remained in the enemy’s hands. Herodotus’ description of the combat reads like a fancy picture and can hardly be trusted in detail; in particular the employment of the Immortals is questionable, at least they ought to have learnt to distinguish Lacedaemonian ‘red coats’ from Phocians two days later. The Persians, however, no doubt ascertained how costly an undertaking it would be to force their way through the pass.

Several Greeks were afterwards charged with the betrayal of the path Anopaea to the enemy. Herodotus fixes the guilt upon Ephialtes, a Malian of Trachis, for the sufficient reason that the Amphictyones set a price upon his head. The path starts from the Asopus above Trachis, runs over rough partially wooded country, crosses near its upper end the great ravine which issues inside the west gate of Thermopylae, climbs to a high saddle between Callidromus and the mountain which dominates the middle gate, descends an upland valley clothed with dense pine forest, and finally drops down over clearer slopes to Alpeni beyond the east gate. For the most part the course of the path is certainly determined by natural features, but its exact starting point in the valley of the Asopus may be disputed. A recent explorer scrambled up a very steep and rugged track through a gully which enters the deep gorge a couple of miles above Trachis. But an easier, more practicable route, preferable also for its more serviceable communications southwards, may be found near the modern hamlet of Eleutherochori a mile or two higher up the valley, here fairly broad and open. The total distance from the Asopus to Alpeni, which, measured on the map, is not less than ten miles, may well be half as much again on foot. Throughout its length the path is difficult, and it attains a height of 3000 feet. Herodotus reveals a false idea of it when he says that it ‘stretches along the spine of the range,-’ but his precision in placing the two extremities and his mention of ‘the culminating ridge’ below ‘the apex of the mountain’ may indicate local information. Arduous as the Anopaea is, it has time after time been traversed by large forces of armed men, and the king’s Immortals, who were now detailed for the enterprise, were not the first.

The night following the preliminary fight at Thermopylae, if one may judge by the weather at Aphetae, was sombre with thunderclouds and heavy showers. If the march, which needed all the light of the full moon, had been designed , for that night, it must have been postponed till the next. At all events the second day’s fighting in the pass was probably as perfunctory as the record of it and had no other purpose than to distract attention from the movement. It was ‘about the hour of lighting lamps’ that Hydarnes set out from the Persian camp under the guidance of Ephialtes. The way up the gorge of the Asopus was closed to him by the fortress of Trachis and its garrison. He must have struck the Anopaea path by some other route which circumvented the obstacle. Herodotus tells how the Persians, taking the Anopaea path after crossing the Asopus, marched all night, having on their right the mountains of the Oetaeans and on their left those of the Trachinians. Did they pass to the east or west of Trachis? did they cross the Asopus in the plain or above the gorge? were the mountains on their right the long comb of Callidromus or the main mass of Oeta? It is a nice question. Two fairly easy paths (and only fairly easy paths could be attempted at night) lead up from the plain to join the Asopus road, the one from the eastern, the other from the western, end of the Trachinian cliffs. The eastern is the old mule-track now engineered into the carriage road from Lamia. The western begins by ascending the Melas and works round behind Trachis to the wide valley of the Asopus above the gorge. Both routes would strike the Anopaea path near its western extremity in the neighbourhood of Eleutherochori. The balance of evidence inclines to the western route. If the eastern is the shorter, it is also steeper; if the eastern is today more frequented, twenty-four centuries ago, when the centre of the Malian plain was sea and marsh, the western was no doubt in more general use; the Oetaean mountains can hardly mean any other than the massif of Oeta; Herodotus appears to have jumped to his conclusion and inverted the order of his description—he starts the Persians on the Anopaea path, then explains how they got there, by crossing the Asopus, and finally harks back to their nightlong march which brought them to the river; Pausanias, who had been at Thermopylae and was interested in its history, recognizes both routes and expressly sends Hydarnes by the western, extending, to be sure, its circuit too widely by carrying it through Aenianian territory; the western path lying beyond the Greek left flank might be expected to be unguarded, whereas the eastern would presumably be occupied or at least patrolled by light troops; other considerations to be noted below tend in the same direction.

The Phocians, 1000 strong, had volunteered to defend the Anopaea. Most historians have placed them at the summit of the path on the saddle above the site of Old Dracospilia. There is much to be said for this station. It is strategically correct, for, wherever the invaders might ascend, they must inevitably pass that point on their way towards Alpeni. It is an excellent position, near the eastern edge of the great ravine which cuts into the mountains above Thermopylae. It fits the descriptive notes of Herodotus, who puts the Phocians ‘on the gable of the mountain’ below a yet higher peak or crest off the path, and states that the descent from the mountain is much shorter and more direct than the circuitous ascent. Nevertheless there are objections to this argument, and there are other indications which lead us to put the Phocians farther to the west. In the first place Hydarnes started at dusk, encountered the Phocians at daybreak, and arrived at the east gate of Thermopylae about noon; that is to say, he took about nine hours of darkness to reach the Phocian station and about seven hours of daylight to complete his march. Is it credible that he took seven hours to descend from the summit above Old Dracospilia to Alpeni? If that was his rate of progress by day and downhill, what becomes of the much longer ascent in the dark? Next, the Phocians learn the approach of the Persians by the rustle of their feet in the fallen oak-leaves of the forest in the stillness of the dawn. Can we doubt that this touch goes back ultimately to an ear-witness? But whereas there are deciduous oaks enough in the Asopus valley and as far east as the prominent crags known as Lithitza or ‘the Great Gable,’ there are none beyond that point, two good miles (as the crow flies) from the summit of the path. Further, a hint dropped by Herodotus throws a flood of light on the instructions, or rather undertaking, of the Phocians. They were not only guarding the Anopaea path, but also defending their own country. This ex­pression must mean that they were covering a way into Phocis; and that way can be no other than the hill road over the ridge into Doris. Herodotus, looking back on the tragedy of Thermopylae after the event, has been too exclusively preoccupied with the Anopaea path. To Leonidas the road into Doris was hardly less important than that path; to the Phocians it was more important. Strategically regarded, the defence was dual; Leonidas held ‘the pass’ with a base at Alpeni and communications through Elatea; ‘the mountain’ was committed to the Phocians, with their own country as base and communications through Doris. We may be sure that what the Phocians volunteered to defend was ‘the Anopaea’ in the broader sense of the name, and that they never understood their pledge to mean solely, or even primarily, the path. Herodotus’ descriptive phrases which seem to place them above Old Dracospilia we may surmise to be derived from a topo­graphical rather than a historical source.

We put the Phocians therefore near Eleutherochori, let us suppose about a mile to the east of it, in the dip between the steep hill which stands north-east of the hamlet and the westernmost outlying height of the Lithitza range. There they would command the junctions of the main routes, the Asopus road (which had already absorbed the path from the west of Trachis), the path from the eastern end of the Trachinian cliffs, and the Anopaea path. The unexpected approach of the Immortals from the west confronted the Phocian general with a strategical problem; was he to defend the road to the south or the path to the east? He might argue from the advance of the Persians up the Asopus that they were making for the Cephisus valley; perhaps they knew nothing of the Anopaea path; a defence of it, if successful, would turn them upon Phocis; if unsuccessful, would draw them down upon the rear of Thermopylae. Care for his communications, for his line of retreat homewards, for the sentiments of his men, the appeal of city and country in jeopardy, the narrow patriotic instinct of the Greek, called him southwards; it was almost a foregone conclusion that he took the road for ‘the summit of the ridge’ towards Phocis. We may however credit him with ordinary observance of military usage and his duty to his allies, and assume that before relinquishing the eastward path he dispatched runners to tell Leonidas that he was retiring on Phocis followed by the enemy, whom he would hold in check to the best of his power. But Hydarnes, well pleased to be rid of what might have been a serious obstruction, did not pause to pursue. If we have rightly determined the spot, he had marched all night at the rate of about one mile to the hour, but he had still some 14 miles to cover. Having dismissed the Phocians with a few volleys of arrows and presumably detached a force to protect his rear, he turned along the Anopaea path.

Apart from the prognostications of his seer Megistias, the first warning of Hydarnes’ march was brought to Leonidas during the night by deserters from the enemy’s camp. They could announce no more than an expected movement against which provision had already been made. The next news came from scouts who ran down from the hills. Herodotus says that they arrived ‘at dawn’; but that is the precise time at which Hydarnes came upon the Phocians by surprise. Either they could tell no more than that the Immortals had gone up by the path west of Trachis, or Herodotus has put their arrival too early. We assume that these ‘scouts’ were in fact sent by the Phocian general and reported his first impression, that the Persians were bound for the valley of the Cephisus. Here was official intelligence of a fresh development in the situation; and a council of war met to consider it. Opinions differed whether to hold the pass or to evacuate it. No decision is recorded; but after the meeting most of the allied forces marched away and eventually went home, while Leonidas with his Spartiates and (probably) his other Lacedaemonian troops and the Boeotians remained at Thermopylae. It was afterwards contended that out of regard for their lives he had dismissed those who went, but that it was unseemly for him and the Spartiates to desert the post which they had been sent to hold. It was also said that an oracle from Delphi had declared when the war was about to begin that either Sparta or a Spartan king must perish, and that Leonidas therefore devoted himself in order to save his country. Further it was asserted that whereas the Thespians, 700 in number at the opening of the campaign, volunteered to stay with Leonidas, the Thebans, 400 hoplites, were retained by him under compulsion as hostages.

These several allegations will not bear scrutiny, and betray their origin out of later controversies. It cannot be maintained that the military code of honour of his country forbade a Spartan general to retire in face of the enemy, if he deemed it expedient; in this very war Eurybiades retreats from Artemisium, and Pausanias from his advanced position at Plataea. It is generally recognized that the oracle was invented, or at least resuscitated, in order to counteract the dismay caused in Greece by the news that the Spartan king had been defeated and slain. It is a crude example of the familiar bulletin issued after a disaster—‘Our strategical scheme is working out according to plan’; it is not a factor in the events, but a product of them. Why the self-sacrifice of Leonidas must have involved his comrades was not explained; but the more was his heroic death glorified, the more invidious became by contrast the withdrawal of his allies, which saved their lives but exposed them, like Aristodemus, the sole survivor of the 300, to ignominy. The story of their deliberate dismissal to their homes is no doubt their answer to criticism. The reproaches against the Thebans, that they stayed under compulsion, embraced the opportunity of the catastrophe to surrender, and after all suffered the infamy of branding by Xerxes like slaves, are obviously spiteful slanders and have been sufficiently refuted by Plutarch in the De malignitate Herodoti (31—3). Thebes had not yet declared for the invader, and however disloyal may have been the intentions of her politicians, there is no reason to implicate her soldiers in their guilt. The mention of Leontiades, father of the Eurymachus who organized the attack on Plataea in 431 bc, suggests that Herodotus has too easily accepted a story distorted by later prejudices. Moreover, he makes Leontiades the commander of the Thebans at Thermopylae and Eurymachus their commander in the attack on Plataea; but Thucydides implies that Eurymachus was not in command on that occasion, and Plutarch quotes Aristophanes of Boeotia, who seems to have had documentary evidence, to prove that the Theban general at Thermopylae was not Leontiades but Anaxander.

Putting aside the retrospective interpretations imported by subsequent controversies, and endeavouring to envisage the situation as it may have presented itself to Leonidas at his last council of war, we find a fairly simple explanation of the facts. Leonidas never expected the Immortals by the Anopaea, but did expect them by the much longer route round the southern side of Mount Callidromus, which would have taken them at least another day’s march. Accordingly he dispatched most of his forces, not up the Anopaea, where they would have met and probably stopped the Persians, and so (especially in view of the recriminations afterwards) we should have heard of the fighting, but towards Tithronium and Elatea in order to keep Hydarnes in check and his own line of retreat open. He retained his best troops, the Lacedaemonians and Boeotians, for the defence of Thermopylae. But why, instead of withdrawing his whole army at once into safety, did he incur so great a risk for the sake of delaying Xerxes’ march by one day or at best two days? Leonidas, we have argued, had come to Thermopylae with the instruction, or undertaking, to hold the pass in order that the Greek fleet might compel the Persians to a naval engagement which they would of course decline if the land road were clear. It was his duty to defend his post so long as he could hold it, or so long as the fleet could still challenge the enemy’s to battle at Artemisium. He had seen the 53 Attic ships pass up the channel on the day before, and had doubtless heard their good news and their too sanguine hopes. Could he but keep the pass for one day more, the decisive naval battle might be fought and won. From his last two days’ experience he believed that with 2000 men he could do it, and to his eternal honour he made the gallant attempt. But at the moment it was no forlorn hope, no desperate sacrifice, but a well-calculated scheme which offered fair promise of success. The descent of Hydarnes by the Anopaea was a complete surprise.

Xerxes, by arrangement with Ephialtes, attacked at ‘the hour when the market is fullest,’ that is to say, about the middle of the forenoon, soon after which it was expected that the Immortals would appear upon the scene. But Ephialtes had not reckoned the delays introduced by the Phocians and by the number of the troops employed. He came evidently several hours too late, and the heaviest fighting was over before the attack from the rear developed. Leonidas had already fallen, and on the Persian side two sons of Darius. Thereupon, except the Thebans, the survivors of the Greeks, or at any rate of the Lacedaemonians, retired to a hillock afterwards crowned with the sculptured Lion of Leonidas, probably the knoll about the centre of the pass, near the upper mill, midway between the baths and the salt-spring. There they made their last stand and sank, overwhelmed with missiles, fighting to the bitter end.

The part of the Boeotians in the final struggle is not very clear. The Spartan tradition took little heed of them. Herodotus parenthetically lets the Thespians die to a man with the Spartans on the hillock, and he recounts at full length the discreditable story of the Thebans’ surrender. If the hillock is rightly identified, it is tempting to suppose that, when the approach of the Immortals was announced, the Boeotians were told off to defend the rear, the Thespians at the east gate, the Thebans on the steep track which descends to a point a little west of that gate; Hydarnes then, having detached a force to contain the Thebans, came down to Alpeni and drove the Thespians in upon the Spartans; thus the Thebans were left isolated and surrendered at discretion.

The fighting at Thermopylae and Artemisium coincided, ac­cording to Herodotus, with the Olympian festival (480 bc)—that same meeting which witnessed the epic contest between Theogenes and Euthymus, the greatest of Greek boxers. With the Olympian Herodotus couples the Carneian celebration; and as the two festivals ended at the full moon, both must have finished on either the 21 st July or the 19th August, for no other full moons of this year are possible. Although the seasonal notes in Herodotus favour the former, other considerations lead us to prefer the latter date.

V

THE WOODEN WALLS OF ATHENS

The retreat of the Greek fleet was announced to the Persians at Aphetae during the night. At sunrise they crossed over to Artemisium, and proceeded after noon to occupy Histiaea. On Xerxes’ invitation all who could procure a boat spent the next day in a visit to Thermopylae to view the Greek dead. They returned on the following day to Histiaea. On this same day the army began its march from Trachinia; but the fleet stayed three more days before starting down the channel and through the Euripus for Phalerum, where it arrived on the third day from Histiaea or ninth after the last battles on sea and land. No doubt the army or its vanguard was timed to reach Athens by that day. The distance from Trachis could quite well be covered in a week, and the operations on the way need not have detained the leading column.

Trachis must have surrendered on the fall of Thermopylae. Herodotus accordingly adds the Malians and Locrians to Xerxes’ forces. He sends the whole Persian army by the hill road into Doris, but probably the bulk of it with the king himself marched by the coast road. The Dorians saved themselves by ‘medism,’ the Phocians by flight to Parnassus. The invaders, we are told, instigated by the Thessalians, laid waste the Phocian towns with fire and sword. But it is likely that the Phocians, 1000 of whom figure subsequently in the enemy’s ranks, have made the most of the devastation. The king appears to have disapproved of the pillage, for it ceases when the routes unite at Panopeus, and Mace­donian officers are sent forward to protect the cities of Boeotia. The expedition dispatched from Panopeus to Delphi may be interpreted as a similar protective measure, although it was afterwards represented as hostile. Delphi must have owed its immunity to an arrangement with the Persians. The fantastic story of its salvation is clearly an apologetic figment; words dropped by Herodotus admit the suggestion that an inventory was made for the king of the treasures of the temple, which were presumably guaranteed by his seal. Except the Plataeans and Thespians, whose cities he burnt, the Boeotians declared for the invader, and proved staunch auxiliaries. Xerxes entered Attica within three months of his departure from the Hellespont.

Meanwhile the Greek fleet had taken up its station in the sound of Salamis, and the main strength of the Peloponnesian army under Cleombrotus, brother of Leonidas and regent for his son Pleistarchus, had rushed on the news of the fall of Thermopylae to occupy the Isthmus, where probably everything had been prepared beforehand whether for an advance or for defence. Now in all haste the road from Megara was broken up and blocked at the Scironian cliffs, and the Isthmus was fortified with a wall. The fleet had presumably pressed its pace and may well have reached Salamis on the third morning of its voyage. Reinforced by ships collected at Pogon it numbered, according to Aeschylus, 310 triremes, to which we may add from Herodotus seven penteconters. The detailed figures given by Herodotus, amounting in all to 380 triremes, are best explained as ‘campaign totals’ repre­senting the whole number of ships contributed by each state during the entire year.

The positions at the Isthmus and Salamis had without doubt been determined from the first discussions of the plans of campaign. Herodotus’ account would suggest that the fleet was bound for the Isthmus and put into Salamis merely to enable the Athenians to transport their families across the water, and that the army was pledged to march out and give battle in Boeotia in defence of Attica. These crude and incompatible schemes are not likely to have been proposed by responsible commanders in the navy or the camp, least of all after the lessons of Thermopylae and Artemisium. They emanate from the strategists of the lower deck, and are perhaps not uncoloured by subsequent events, Themistocles’ message to Xerxes, the Athenian misinterpretation of the westward movement of the Corinthians before the battle, the army’s advance north of Cithaeron under the very different conditions of the next year. Herodotus here and in his stories of the councils of war, drawing possibly on literary sources, reproduces the surmises and recriminations of the rank and file, the rumours and feelings which agitated the outside public, the murmurs of the opposition, the criticism and prejudices of a later day, rather than the authentic debates and decisions of the generals. He reflects the current impressions of the situation and uses the councils as a dramatic vehicle to convey them. We cannot believe that Herodotus reveals to us the secrets of the leaders, but need not doubt that he preserves a picture on the whole truthful, in spite of all contaminations, of the environment in which their de­liberations were conducted, and enables us to estimate their difficulties at this crisis.

Probably at least as stubborn as any from his colleagues on the council was the opposition which Themistocles had to overcome in persuading the Athenians to abandon their country and city to the enemy. He worked upon their superstition by announcing that Athena’s serpent had left his cake uneaten, and exploited for his purpose what dubious encouragement could be extracted from the Delphic response of a few months before. Cimon loyally seconded his efforts, ostentatiously hung up his bridle on the Acropolis, and embarked to fight afloat. The Court of Areopagus smoothed obstacles by a grant of 8 drachmae a head to the crews. A decree committed the city to the care of her goddess and ordered the evacuation of Attica. The ten generals proclaimed that the citizens should save their families as best they could. The mass of the population was accordingly transported to Troezen or Aegina or Salamis. But the evacuation was not complete; 500 prisoners (afterwards released by the Samians) were captured in Attica by the Persians, and, probably a concession to the die-hards of the opposition, possibly a scheme to prolong the campaign into the season of storms, a garrison was left in the Acropolis. The defence was subsequently represented as the attempt of a few paupers and fanatics who were too poor to migrate or too obstinate to give up their own opinion that the ‘wooden wall’ of the oracle meant the stockade or barri­cades behind which they took refuge.

Xerxes naturally made for Athens rather than the Isthmus. The punishment of Athens was the prime object of his expedition; he could not prudently leave Attica on his flank in the enemy’s hands; he could not freely use his navy against the Peloponnese until it had disposed of the Greek fleet; he was anxious to concert his next operations with his admirals. He occupied Athens about the beginning of September and besieged the Acropolis. The Persians established themselves on the Areopagus and attacked the gates and fortifications on the ascent to the citadel from the west, shooting arrows bound with burning tow into the wooden palisade. The defenders rolled blocks of stone upon them and for a long time repulsed all their assaults. Although hard pressed they rejected the terms of surrender offered to them through the Peisistratidae, and the king was at his wits’ end to overcome their resistance. At last some of the enemy succeeded in climbing up by the chapel of Aglaurus behind the defence and opened the gates from within. The garrison was put to the sword and the temple of Athena to the flames. Xerxes had attained his first objective and dispatched a courier to announce his achievement to Artabanus at Susa. Herodotus implies that the Acropolis was taken two days before the battle of Salamis, that is to say, on the 21st of September. The siege therefore had lasted about three weeks. On the next day Xerxes invited the Athenian exiles to ascend to the Acropolis and do sacrifice according to their own ritual. They are said to have reported that the burnt stump of Athena’s olive had already put forth a shoot a cubit long. No doubt they returned with Mardonius next year and their report has been antedated. It was probably on this same day (22nd September), although the day cannot be precisely determined from Herodotus, that Dicaeus, one of the exiles, with Demaratus, the former king of Sparta, witnessed in the Thriasian plain a phenomenon which he interpreted to be a portent of disaster to the Persian fleet. He saw a cloud of dust, as from the passage of 30,000 men, sweep across from Eleusis to the Greek station at Salamis, and heard the mystic invocation with which the Athenians were wont to conduct Iacchus in procession to Eleusis on the eve of the great day of the Mysteries. It was the season of the Mysteries, and (at all events in the later Attic calendar) the day of the procession was also the eve of the date of the battle of Salamis. Herodotus tells that on that same evening Xerxes’ army began to move towards the Peloponnese. Was it his vanguard that raised the dust and the chant?

VI

SALAMIS

The Persian fleet since its arrival from Histiaea had lain at Phalerum. If we may assume that the Hellespontine or Pontic division had been left at Abydos, and that some 250 ships had been lost by storm and battle, it numbered about 350 triremes. With so narrow a majority the admirals did not attempt to force an entry into the sound of Salamis. The enemy’s strategic position there was extremely strong, but sooner or later starvation would drive him out to fight at a disadvantage in the open. Nevertheless, if the Greek provision of bread was running low, so also was the Persian. Day by day the summer waned, but the Greeks did not move. Even could Xerxes have maintained his huge forces in Greece over the winter, a second campaign was an unwelcome prospect. Under these circumstances the Persian commanders appear to have decided to blockade the Greeks at Salamis and proceed against the Peloponnese. They prepared to close one, no doubt the easternmost, of the exits from the straits by a mole and barricades of vessels lashed together, preparations afterwards mistaken by the Greeks for an attempt to construct a bridge from Attica to Salamis. But recognizing that they had not ships enough to contain the enemy’s and at the same time to detach a division for operations elsewhere, they beat up contingents from the Islands, and above all, summoned the Pontic fleet from the Hellespont The reinforcements from the Islands (17 ships, if we could trust the catalogue at Doriscus) arrived at Phalerum, one gathers from Herodotus, on the day of the capture of the Acropolis. The Pontic fleet was not far behind, for we find it on the evening of the next day on the east side of Attica, its first squadron at Ceos, its second at Cynosura near Marathon. That next day Xerxes, advised, of course, of its coming and now free for an advance on land, held a council of war at Phalerum. It was presumably to that meeting that a man from the Greek head­quarters at Salamis was introduced who had a momentous message to deliver. Perhaps his advent was the reason for the meeting.

The fall of the Acropolis deeply stirred the Greeks at Salamis, whether Athenians or not. It portended that the attack on the Isthmus was imminent. But still graver must have been the news, known of course to the higher officers, that the Persian naval reserves had been called up and were now near at hand, indeed beginning to arrive. The risk of being shut up in the sound of Salamis and slowly reduced by hunger, while the enemy launched an expedition against the Peloponnese, became an urgent danger. Was it not better to escape while escape was still possible, sacrifice the advantage of the position, and, as the Corinthians clamoured, fight a desperate battle at the Isthmus, covered in rear by the allied army? The answer from the other side was simple and conclusive. No Mnesiphilus was needed to demonstrate that, if it quitted Salamis, the fleet would break up. Eurybiades might order it to the Isthmus, but not a third of it would obey. Neither he nor Themistocles could compel the Athenians, the Aeginetans, the allies from the Argolic peninsula, to abandon their families to the enemy. If, as Herodotus represents, Themistocles threatened that the Athenians would embark their wives and children and sail off to Italy, he spoke the brutal truth. But he had his better alternative solution ready. The enemy, instead of concentrating his forces, might be encouraged to disperse them still further, and then be drawn into a battle before his reserves could come up and give him a decisive superiority at the critical point. Xerxes was flushed with success and the now assured hope of capturing the entire Greek fleet. Let him be told that it was about to run away, and he would try to prevent its escape, divide his forces in order to block both ends of the channel, and give a chance of defeating them in detail. This bold scheme was accepted by Eurybiades and the council. The version of Herodotus, that it was a ruse practised by Themistocles not only on the enemy but also on his own colleagues, receives no countenance from Aeschylus and may be relegated to the cycle of legends which clustered about Themistocles.

So Sicinnus, ‘pedagogue’ to Themistocles’ boys, was sent on the 22nd September, the day after the fall of the Acropolis, to the Persian headquarters at Phalerum to tell the king (or his admirals) that the Greeks meant to slip away out of the straits under cover of the coming night. Their destination, to judge from the silence of our best authorities, was left vague; Pogon might seem to the enemy as plausible a guess as the Isthmus. Herodotus professes to add a second clause to the message, that the Greeks were quarrelling among themselves and some of them (the Athenians, it is implied) were prepared to join the Persians and turn their arms against their allies. Is this another accretion on the story? Herodotus is the sole authority for it. It is barely con­sistent with the main purport of the message. It matches the tissue of legends which were spun about Themistocles; and if it also harmonizes with the context of the particular situation, that very fact may betray the motive for its insertion. It may be defended, hardly as an authentic part of the official message, but possibly as a private instruction to Sicinnus from Themistocles, who may well have been intent upon the strategic problem of the future battle and anxious to coax the enemy into relieving the Greeks of the formidable task of forcing the gates of the sound, or even to reserve to the Athenians a last expedient at the expense of their allies, if the worst came to the worst. This explanation, however, is a little too subtle to be altogether convincing, and provokes the questions how Herodotus got the information, and why he alone? At all events it is unsafe to build anything on so dubious a foundation.

Herodotus differs again from Aeschylus on the time and circum­stances of the mission of Sicinnus. He fetches the Persian fleet from Phalerum into the sound (not a mile broad) and arrays it for combat parallel to the Greek line on the afternoon before the battle, which is postponed only by the dark; after nightfall Themistocles dispatches Sicinnus with his message, whereupon the Persians occupy the island of Psyttaleia, and after midnight close the straits on both wings. The absurdities of this account need no demonstration. It is refuted by its own incongruities, by Aeschylus, by the topography, and by common sense. Herodotus has started with an entirely wrong preconception of the battle and has tried in vain to adjust or force his information into conformity with it. We may dismiss it and base our interpretation of the story on Aeschylus, whose Persae, written by a combatant for the ears of his comrades within eight years of the event, imposes a limit to every controversy.

It is clear from Aeschylus that Sicinnus arrived at Phalerum by daylight on the day before the battle. He arrived probably early in the day, for time must be allowed for the Persian delibera­tions and preparations, and he would start presumably not later than the ship which the Greeks now dispatched to Aegina to fetch the Aeacidae—indeed it is a plausible conjecture that both he and that ship were sent out under cover of the previous night in accordance with a decision taken on the day before, and that he arrived therefore soon after sunrise. Perhaps it was on the news of his arrival that Xerxes, leaving the Athenian exiles to perform their sacrifice, came down to Phalerum to preside at a council of war, at which we may assume that the message of Sicinnus was the main business for discussion. The result was the king’s order to his admirals of which Aeschylus gives the substance. As soon as the sun had set and darkness overspread the sky, the bulk of the fleet was to be posted in three lines to guard the channels of exit from the sound, and other ships were to be stationed round about the isle of Salamis; should the Greeks steal out and escape, the king’s captains would forfeit their heads. The intention of this order is plain enough. The Greeks were to be enclosed in the straits, not a man of them was to be let slip through the blockade. The three lines of ships obviously correspond to the three channels—(1) between the Attic coast (north of the mouth of the Piraeus) and the island of Psyttaleia (Lipsokutali), (2) between Psyttaleia and the long eastern promontory of the island of Salamis, (3) between the western extremity of Salamis and the Megarian headland which stretches out towards it. What else, in the names of all the Muses, could have been in this context the sense and point of Aeschylus’ insistence on the three lines? The ‘other ships’ were no doubt placed to catch any boats which might be launched from the outer shores of the island of Salamis. To these dispositions we may add, what Aeschylus reserves for a pendant to his naval picture but Herodotus puts in its right order at the beginning of the operations, the occupation of the island of Psyttaleia. Its purpose was afterwards inferred from its part in the subsequent battle, to help friends and slay foes who might be driven to land there, but was originally (we may rather suppose) to facilitate the blockade of the eastern channels. We assume that Psyttaleia is to be identified with the modern Lipso­kutali or Lipsokutala. A recent attempt to transfer the name to the island of St George rests on insufficient evidence and inadmissible premises.

The king’s armada lying in the bay of Phalerum had its front to the south and west. Of its three component fleets the Phoenician of course held the centre, the royal post of honour in every Persian array, the Egyptian no doubt formed the right or western wing, and the Ionian the left. After supper the crews embarked, and at nightfall the fleets moved out in succession, by the right, to take up their several stations to guard the three channels. Naturally the stations were assigned to the three fleets in the order of their sailing, the farthest westernmost channel to the leading (right) wing, the middle channel to the centre, and the nearest (easternmost) channel to the rear (left) wing. If we may trust Herodotus and our interpretation of him, the king’s order was also communicated to the Pontic fleet at Ceos and Cynosura, which weighed anchor, but does not appear to have arrived in time to take part in the battle. Its failure is not surprising. The order would be sent overland to Marathon; the squadron at Cynosura would have to embark its crews and clear; the squadron at Ceos had to be picked up, involving more delay; and it may well have been after sunrise when the fleet left Ceos on its 50 miles’ voyage to the scene of action.

The closure of the channels was announced to the Greek com­manders by Aristides, who narrowly escaped capture on his way in from Aegina. Herodotus (or his authority) has not missed the opportunity for a dramatic episode between him and his rival Themistocles, and conveys the impression that Aristides was only now arriving from his banishment. But this story cannot impugn the statement of the Constitution of Athens that all the exiles were recalled in the previous archontic year; and, on Herodotus’ own showing, Aristides appears next day in command of Athenian hoplites, presumably as one of the ten generals in office. He must have gone to Aegina on some mission, perhaps to concert for the co-operation of the Aeginetan squadron there in the coming engagement. It is a probable conjecture that he went and returned on the (Aeginetan) ship sent to fetch the Aeacidae. His report of the enemy’s movement was soon confirmed by a Tenian vessel which came over from the king’s fleet. The Greek admirals accordingly made their final preparations for action. These included, we may assume, the dispatch of the Corinthian squadron (with possibly the Ambraciote and Leucadian contingents) to hold the Megarian channel against the Egyptians. Its mission figures in Herodotus only as an Athenian allegation against the Corinthian Adeimantus and his crews, that, when the fleets were about to engage, they fled away and were turned back by a mysterious barque, which met them off the temple of Athena Sciras with the news of the Greek victory. This scandal, which did not impose upon Herodotus and hardly needed Plutarch’s elaborate refutation, originated no doubt from an ignorant misinterpretation of the movement at the time, and has been afterwards sharpened by Athenian malice. One point that has been whetted is the hour of the Corinthians’ departure, which is held back until it appears to be a flight in the very face of the enemy. They acted, we may be sure, upon orders and started long before the engagement. The duty assigned to them, as to the 53 ships sent back from Artemisium to Chaicis, was to protect the rear of the Allies. Plutarch’s evidence proves that they took part in the fighting, although not in the main battle.

At daybreak, after the customary exhortations, the other combatants embarked. The fleet lay fringing the Salaminian shore, facing north. The commander-in-chief, Eurybiades, with his 16 Lacedaemonian triremes, of course held the post of honour on the extreme right; the Athenians, more than half the force present, occupied the left. As they pushed out the crews raised the measured chant of the paean; a trumpet called; with a quick turn to starboard the long line of ships moved off in column due eastward down the coast, the right wing leading in orderly array. The men were in good heart and full of resolute courage, but Eurybiades and his colleagues may well have felt qualms of anxiety. A short mile or half mile of water to traverse, a few minutes’ row, and the head of the column would shoot out beyond Cape Barbara into full view of the enemy. That was the critical moment. Themistocles had doubtless provided a plan for every contingency. Were the Greeks prepared to rush the channels and attack the blockaders outside? Probably, but only in the last resort. It would have been a hazardous enterprise, although we cannot bind the genius of Themistocles, who may have had his stratagem ready. That contingency never arose. Themistocles staked first upon the chance that the enemy could be drawn into the straits, and used every artifice to invite them in. The Greek fleet had noisily advertised its start from its anchorage behind the screen of the long eastern promontory of Salamis. It emerged past Cape Barbara and trailed its train across the Phoenicians’ bows within a bare mile of their beaks. It hesitated as though caught unawares and faltering at sight of its foe. It edged off, formed front, to be sure, towards the enemy, but only to back water away from him towards the Attic shore in its rear. The Persian admirals were in a reckless mood, stimulated by Sicinnus’ message, the nearness of their reserves, the presence of the King, who was arriving by land, presumably to receive the expected surrender of the Hellenic navy. They could not resist the tempting opportunity of cutting through the Greek column as it filed out from behind the cape. With a cheer the Barbarians dashed forward, pressed through the channels, and flung themselves in a tumultuous torrent at the centre of the Allies’ line, which steadily sagged away from them. This manoeuvre of the Greeks drew the enemy farther into the net and enabled the Athenian rear to deploy into very effective action against the Phoenician left flank. It will be noted that both fleets had changed front since quitting their respective anchorages; in the battle the Phoenicians fight on the Persian left, the Ionians on the right, the Athenians on the Greek right, the Lacedaemonians and other Allies on the left. Themistocles doubtless saw to it that the formidable Phoenicians should be opposed by his own new navy.

There was of course a limit to the sagging of the Greek line. Themistocles could not allow a gap, through which the enemy might pour, between his extreme right and Cape Barbara. It was when that limit was reached, we may suppose, that the very natural cry of protest arose, which was afterwards deemed supernatural, ‘Madmen, how much farther are you going to back?’ The point was no doubt crowded with Athenian spectators, not to mention Aristides’ hoplites, who were horrified at being cut off from their protectors. At all events the retrograde movement was arrested and the Greeks took the offensive, probably on both wings at once, for it was disputed whether an Athenian trierarch, Ameinias (brother of Aeschylus?), or the Aeginetan vessel which had brought the Aeacidae struck the first blow. The Barbarians, already disordered from the crush through the channels and assailed on both flanks, soon fell foul of one another and lapsed into worse and worse confusion as more ships pressed in from behind. The Greek captains thrust at them in well-timed charges and herded them together, like dogs about a troop of oxen. The welter was complete when the foremost ships turned back to escape and collided with those which were still pushing on. It may be conjectured that the Athenians, who may have had a certain surplus of ships on their right wing, and more of them as the ambit of the line contracted, succeeded as the day wore on in shutting the channel between Salamis and Psyttaleia. At the opposite extremity of the arc the Greek left wing, where the Aeginetans appear to have been posted and to have eclipsed all rivals, was working down to seize the eastern channel.

As the claws of the pincers closed the combatants encountered unexpected adversaries or allies. Thus a Samothracian trireme, attached no doubt to the Ionian division, sank an Athenian, and was then rammed by an Aeginetan; Polycritus, son of Crius, in command of an Aeginetan ship, captured the Sidonian cruiser on which his compatriot Pytheas (taken off Magnesia) was a prisoner, and then fell foul ofThemistocles; Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus, chased by the Athenian Ameinias, deluded both her pursuer and her sovereign by sinking Damasithymus, dynast of Calydna, her own vassal, who stood in her way (perhaps politically as well as physically), and secured at one blow her escape and great praise from Xerxes. The king watched the battle from a neighbouring hill, and his secretaries noted the exploits of his captains. Most of them, even the Ionians, fought stoutly. The Samothracians, for example, not only sank an Attic ship but also boarded and took the Aeginetan which rammed their own; Herodotus knew the names of many trierarchs who captured Greek ships, although he gives only two, Theomestor and Phylacus, both Samian. The Greeks could not achieve the closure of the eastern channel. Whether the Aeginetans, who according to Herodotus’ information waylaid the fugitives sailing out to Phalerum, were inside, in, or outside the channel, and whether they were the 30 ships contributed to the allied fleet or the squadron on guard at Aegina, are open questions; but if they were the squadron from Aegina, it must surely have numbered more than 12. On the other hand, the Athenians by their advance eastwards gained possession of the more westerly of the two channels and enabled Aristides to get his troops transported across it to Psyttaleia, where he shot down or hacked to pieces the entire Persian garrison.

Perhaps the approach of the Pontic fleet balked the Greeks of the full exploitation of their victory. At all events the Persians managed to extricate a large proportion, at least a half, of their ships from Themistocles’ trap. They abandoned the scene of battle strewn with wrecks and floating men, whom the victors clubbed with oars or spitted like tunny. The slaughter, but probably not the fighting, went on till nightfall. Among the dead was Ariabignes, Xerxes’ brother, the admiral of the Ionian fleet. The fugitives fled to Phalerum to the protection of the troops there, and were doubtless joined by the Egyptian and Pontic divisions. The Greeks, who must have suffered considerably, made no attack on their still superior enemy, but returned to Salamis and prepared for another conflict. The king however had lost confidence in his navy now defeated, demoralized, disor­ganized, and dangerously Hellenic in composition. The winter was at hand; his supplies were running low; there was no longer any hope of a speedy solution to the strategical problem; perhaps news of trouble in Babylon disquieted him; he had accomplished enough to make a good show, and Mardonius could complete the conquest in a second campaign. So the order went forth that the fleet should return to the Hellespont to guard that vital spot in the line of communications, and the army should evacuate Attica and seek winter quarters farther north.

The battle of Salamis was fought on the 23rd of September 480 b.c. Plutarch in one passage gives the date the 20th Boedromion, in two others the 16th Munychion. If we may assume that down to the publication of Meton’s cycle the Attic calendar was of the primitive type indicated by Herodotus; that Meton determined the solstice on the 13th Scirophorion 432 bc; that before that date an extraordinary Hecatombaeon had been intercalated, as provided in a well-known inscription; that in 480 bc the Eleusinian Mysteries had no constant relation to the civil calendar; then Plutarch’s two dates are reconciled, for they coincide on the 22nd/23rd of September 480 bc, the 16th Munychion being the ‘Old Style’ date and the 20th Boedromion being a reduction of it to the ‘Metonic’ or ‘Metonicized’ calendar.

The forces actually engaged in the main battle on the two sides may have been about equal in number; or if the Persians had a surplus, it was quite small. Diodorus (Ephorus) gives the losses as 40 Greek ships and over 200 Persian. These figures are not likely to be better than estimates or calculations, but they agree fairly well with Herodotus’ statement that the Persians had. 300 ships at Samos in the next summer, and would be plausible enough, had not Diodorus reckoned the ships at Samos at over 400 without the Phoenician. What put the king’s navy out of action for the rest of the war was not so much the numerical loss as its incidence. The Phoenician fleet had shrunk almost to a squadron, the Egyptian had probably suffered heavily, and the Hellenic divisions could no longer be trusted. Thus, Xerxes, although he still had the larger number of ships, lost the command of the sea, and with it eventually the war. In the first place, one of the three army corps had to be sent back to hold Ionia and another to guard the communications in Thrace; in the second place, this reduction of the land forces became in any case in­evitable when supplies could no longer be sent by sea. The good fight put up by Mardonius and his corps, the best troops of the empire, may obscure but cannot invalidate the truth of Aeschylus’ verdict, that the defeat of the fleet involved the destruction of the army.

VII

XERXES’WITHDRAWAL

Herodotus, if we strictly demand of him an account of every day that passed, is committed to the statements that the Persian fleet fled from Phalerum in the night after the battle, and that the Greeks, apprised at last of its departure, started next day in pursuit, and followed it as far as Andros. His narrative does not convey the impression of such haste, and whether intended or not, this rapid development of the situation can hardly be accepted. The Persian fleet was surely in no condition to sail a few hours after the battle; time must be allowed for the king’s deliberations with his counsellors; the Greeks would not quit Salamis before they were certain that the enemy either had evacuated Attica or had at his disposal no vessels in which he might cross the straits. Neither the Persian flight nor the Greek pursuit was so precipitate. It was at Andros, according to Herodotus, that a council was held at which the admirals debated whether to push on to the Hellespont and cut the invader’s communications by destroying the bridges, or to leave him every facility for retirement. We may well believe that Themistocles urged the advance and that the Peloponnesians, ever anxious to restrict their liabilities abroad, outvoted him. But the story that, with an eye to future needs, he made capital out of his discomfiture by sending Sicinnus back to Attica to tell Xerxes that he had frustrated the project, is obviously a figment evolved out of his own pretence to Artaxerxes’ gratitude. Attacks next made on Andros and Carystus are a logical sequel to the council’s decision. These two strong­holds kept the straits between them open for the enemy, should he return. The Allies seem to have aimed at securing the Cyclades and pushing forward their naval front to their eastern margin, where Leotychidas next spring takes up his station at Delos. They appear to have imposed a fine or levy upon the Islanders who had furnished ships to Xerxes. The charge that Themistocles exacted these monies for his own pocket (while the Allies enforced his, demands) is plainly a malicious scandal. The Parians, whose attitude had been ambiguous, were perhaps let off, and Themistocles may have been suspected of appropriating their payment. The Andrians and Carystians resisted, successfully for the nonce. The Allies were unwilling to spend time in reducing them and returned to Salamis, where they vowed thank-offerings to the gods and awarded the prizes of valour to the victors. The award of the first prize to the Aeginetans suggests that our tradition does scant justice to their part in the battle.

It was some days after the battle that Xerxes began to withdraw his army by the same route whereby he had come, through Boeotia. On the 2nd October Cleombrotus was deterred by the solar eclipse of that day from taking the offensive from the Isthmus against presumably his rearguard still south of Cithaeron. Mardonius and his corps were left in winter quarters in Thessaly, where most food and fodder were to be found. There he held a safe strategical position, secure from naval raids, and neither too far forward to risk his communications nor too far back to support his Boeotian allies. The king pushed on through Siris (Seres) and Abdera to the Hellespont. (Herodotus refutes a story that he took ship from Eion to Asia.) The bridges, pace Aeschyli, no longer stretched across the straits, but his fleet put him and his army over to Abydos, whence he regained Sardes. The fleet then went part to Cyme and part to Samos for the winter.

The homeward journey of the haughty invader offered a fine theme for Greek rhetoric, which has embroidered it with every circumstance of horror and ignominy. Possibly some details (e.g. the collapse of the ice on the Strymon) may be referred to the retreat of the remnant of the Persian army in the next winter, but even so the exaggeration is patent. The superfluous numbers attributed to Xerxes’ host had to be disposed of somehow. Three facts in particular discount the accounts of panic and starvation. First, Xerxes, if we may believe Herodotus, spent 45 days on the march to the Hellespont, no record speed, even if reckoned from Attica. Second, Artabazus accompanied him, we are told, to the Hellespont, at all events to Thrace, with 60,000 men, and then returned to Chalcidice. He seems to have had no difficulty in maintaining his troops during the winter; probably a supply service had been organized by land or sea. Third, the force in Ionia next year is still computed at six myriads. It appears clear that of the three army corps one was left with Mardonius in Thessaly, a second was retained under Artabazus in Thrace and Macedonia, and the third crossed with Xerxes into Asia.

There was work for Artabazus and his command. The Potidaeates and the inhabitants of Pallene rose in rebellion in the king’s rear, and the Bottiaeans of Olynthus were implicated in the revolt. Artabazus besieged and took Olynthus, put the Bottiaeans to death, and handed over their city to their neighbours, the Chalcidians. He laid siege to Potidaea for three months, but failed to capture it in spite of treachery within the city. His final attempt to circumvent the (north?) wall through the sea on occasion of a very low ebb tide proved disastrous, for the attacking column was caught by the returning flood and perished. The revolt was near enough to the line of the Persian communications to be dangerous, but it was still more serious as a token of what the Greek victory at Salamis might elsewhere provoke.

CHAPTER X

THE DELIVERANCE OF GREECE