Thermopylae (11 page)

The Greeks of the mainland had long been in consultation with their prosperous colonies, or former colonies, in rich Sicily and southern Italy, but little help was to be expected from these directions. Gelon, the tyrant of the great city-port of Syracuse, had, it is true, offered his services with that of his considerable fleet - but only if he had the high command. This had been turned down, because it was unthinkable that a
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mere colonial’ should hold such a position. In any case, by the time that the great invasion of Xerxes was on the point of being launched, Gelon, like the next most important ruler in Sicily, Theron of Acragas, realised that they too were under threat of attack. The Carthaginian colonies on the island, with the aid of their founders and in concert with Persia, were about to launch a major blow against the Greek settlements as soon as the invasion of Greece got under way. Xerxes and his staff had largely anticipated that additional help might arrive in Greece from the cities of Sicily, and had prepared to circumvent it by a flank attack on the island. (Gelon of Syracuse alone had promised 200 triremes and well over 20,000 men for the defence of the Greek homeland.)

Something that added to the disunity and dismay of the Greeks was the oracle at Delphi itself. In the years prior to the invasion the various inquiries sent by agitated cities had received little comfort in return. It was not only to Argos that Delphi gave the dismal news of a Persian victory and advised neutrality or friendship with the enemy. Gelon of Syracuse covered himself, after the attack had begun, by sending an emissary to Delphi to watch events and, if necessary, to offer submission. The Delphic oracle never at any time advised him to allow his rich city to become involved. Throughout this period it is possible that Delphi was either bribed by Persian gold or it was
Petainist
, in the sense of making as reasonable an accommodation as possible with the apparently inevitable victors. (It was, in any case, well enough known to the priests at Delphi that Xerxes would always spare their shrine, just as he had that of sacred Delos.) The Cretans, for instance, were not only following their natural inclinations, but were also advised to stay neutral. The Athenians, as might well be expected, received the grim warning that ‘they should fly to the ends of the earth’. The Oracle was explicit:

Do not stay here, you who are doomed… . Leave your homes and the heights of your wheel-shaped city… . All is ruined and the swift God of War, hurtling in a Syrian chariot, shall destroy it. He shall lay low many a tower - not yours alone - and burn to ashes many shrines of the gods. Even now they stand dripping with sweat and shake with terror. From the topmost roofs drips dark blood, which foretells your inevitable ruin. Arise and leave the sanctuary, and prepare your hearts to meet misfortune.

Delphi was not only ‘The Navel of the Earth’, but was also the centre best equipped to receive information from all over the Greek and Mediterranean world. Merchants, travellers, scholars, ambassadors, mystics and plain ‘spies’, all passed through the glowing illuminated home of the sun-god Apollo. (As has been seen at Delos, the fact that Apollo almost equated with Ahuramazda of the Persian religion gave his worship and his priests a foot, as it were, in both camps.) If Athens was doomed, it could hardly be expected that the arrogant Spartans (‘They dared to throw the Great King Darius’ ambassadors down a well!’) could expect any comfort. They were told that either their city ‘of the wide places’ would be sacked or ‘The whole of Lacedaemon shall mourn the death of a king of the house of Heracles [from whom the kings of Sparta claimed descent]’. This last of the many Delphic oracles certainly held a kernel of truth. A king of Sparta would indeed have to die in an effort to check the apparently invincible march of Persia.

The politics of both Athens and Sparta during the years immediately preceding the great invasion inevitably has considerable significance. In Athens, the political struggle which had ended with the triumph of Themistocles had been bitter in the extreme. His principal opponent in later years had been Aristeides, a dignified conservative who was known because of his incorruptibility (rare indeed in Greek politics) as ‘the Just’. Whereas Themistocles represented the ‘navy party’ which, as has been said, meant the poorer classes, Aristeides represented the ‘hoplite party’: men who could afford to provide their own armour, men of substance, and men furthermore who had already proved their worth at Marathon.

The curious Athenian process of ostracism, whereby voters annually wrote on a piece of potsherd the name of the man whom they felt the state could best do without, was the means whereby Aristeides was finally removed from the chessboard. (It is significant that the discovery of a pile of shards all bearing the name ‘Themistocles’ and dating from this period show how bitter was the struggle between the parties.) Ostracism meant banishment, and a sufficiently high count of votes meant exile for ten years. Political opponents of Themistocles who had been banished during this period included Hipparchus in 488-7, Megacles a year later, and Xanthippus two years after him. In 483-2 it was the turn of Aristeides, who was prominent among those who did not agree with the use of the Laurium silver to build the new triremes. A well-known anecdote records how, on being asked by an illiterate citizen to write his own name on a potsherd, he courteously inquired why the man wanted Aristeides banished. Back came the unexpected, but very human, reply: ‘Because I’m sick and tired of hearing him called “the Just”.’

If Athens had had its problems and close political in-fighting, so had Sparta. While the political scene in Athens seems not too unfamiliar to a modern, that of Sparta (like the state itself) is obscure and confusing. All this stems from that strangely muddled constitution which had grown up among the Lacedaemonian master-race. Grundy, like others, finds Sparta’s actions in international affairs difficult to interpret:

There is such an extraordinary consistency [my italics] in that “unambitious”, “vacillating”, “dilatory” policy, which even her friends and admirers condemned in the fifth century before Christ, and less passionate critics have condemned in the nineteenth century after Christ, that a thoughtful student of history may well feel some doubt as to whether that policy was dictated by an innate, unintelligent, selfish conservatism, or was due to motives of such a compelling character as to condition rigidly the relations of Sparta with the outside world.

The situation in Sparta was curious enough, to say the least. The dark struggle for power had taken place at a different level from that of Athens and had been considerably more primitive. Kleomenes, who had been one of the two kings of Sparta until his death in 489, had been responsible for the banishment of his fellow-king Demaratus, on the grounds that the latter was illegitimate. Herodotus has much to make of this story and tells it well; for the intrigue involved, and that which was to follow, was worthy of Shakespeare (with Macbeth in mind). Demaratus had gone across to the Persians and was now one of the advisers on the staff of Xerxes. It was Demaratus who cautioned Xerxes against underestimating the Spartans in warfare:

When the Spartans fight singly they are as brave as any man, but when they fight together they are supreme above all. For though they are free men, they are not free in all respects; law is the master whom they fear, a great deal more than your subjects fear you. They do what the law commands and its command is always the same, not to flee in battle whatever the number of the enemy, but to stand and win, or die.

It is clear that despite the embitterment which had driven him to the court of Xerxes the former king never forgot the Spartan virtues.

The death of Kleomenes has sinister undertones. After his twin-king Demaratus had been exiled, it is said the Spartans found out that lies had been told about the latter’s paternity, and that the whole thing was a put-up affair by Kleomenes. He fled from Sparta, visited Thessaly and Arcadia, and tried to get a league of chieftains to support him. It is possible that he had in mind a return to Sparta at their head and - with the aid of the Helots - the establishment of a completely new regime. The Spartiates were quick to see the danger to their own privileged position if Kleomenes succeeded in his aim, and invited him to return. ‘But when he did come back’, says Herodotus, ‘he immediately went mad; he had always been somewhat unstable… .’It appears that he was a heavy drinker, drinking his wine undiluted ‘in the Scythian fashion’, and he now became violent and uncontrollable. His half-brothers, the elder of whom was Leonidas, had him arrested and put in irons. Then one morning he was found in his cell with his body hideously cut up by a knife. The official story given out was that he had bribed his Helot jailer into giving him the knife so as to commit suicide - but it does not ring true. Some complicity between his half-brothers, even if not outright murder, seems more likely. It is possible that when Leonidas led out his small force to Thermopylae - to his eternally remembered death at the Hot Gates - he had something on his conscience to expiate.

Forty-six nations, under thirty Persian generals, were assembled for the invasion of Greece. Over and above them were six chief marshals, five of whom were sons of the royal house. Among the infantry generals were princes of the royal blood, while Otanes, father of Xerxes’ queen Amestris, commanded the crack Persian Guards. The latter was not responsible to any marshal but took his orders directly from the king himself. ‘Why, O God,’ a countryman is reputed to have asked Xerxes, ‘have you taken upon you the form of a Persian man, changing your name to Xerxes, in order to lead the whole world to conquer and devastate Greece? You could have destroyed Greece without all that trouble.’

The crossing of the whole army by the bridges took about a week and Xerxes, who passed over with his royal bodyguard behind the sacred horses and chariot of his god, was now able to see from the European side of the Bosporus the full magic of this display of imperial might. Herodotus says that the men ‘crossed under the lash’, but this seems improbable. It is merely another instance of his painting a portrait of an oriental tyrant whose reluctant soldiers - unlike the Greeks - had to be forced into action. That the lash was applied to the pack animals is more than likely, for otherwise, if we accept the figure of something like 75,000 beasts, ranging from horses and mules to camels, there would have been an inevitable congestion on the bridges.

There was in any case a very good reason for the army to press on into the alien territory of Europe as fast as possible - water. The Persians with their excellent organisation had set up food-dumps and supply organisations throughout Asia Minor and the northern part of Greece, which already came under their control, but they certainly could not organise the streams, rivers and other sources of water-supply. Herodotus asks the question: ‘What water did not fail them except for that of the great rivers?’ On the salient question of the water-supply of the invasion army no authorities can equal Maurice, with his practical military experience as well as his personal knowledge of all the terrain covered by it in the long march. To paraphrase his conclusions after the forces had left Asia Minor -limited quantities of water could have been obtained by boring ‘but this was beyond their resources’. At the point where the columns crossed, although there was water at Maidos near the bridges this was not on their route, so throughout this stage the army would have had to carry its own water with it. Except for occasional springs and wells, it seems that the troops would have had to
^{take four days’ supply with them in water-skins. It is possible that, along with the careful preparations of food depots, water-troughs had been erected for the animals in open ground around Gallipoli and at the northern end of the marsh midway between Melas and Aenos, which could have been kept filled by regular convoys from the Melas itself. The allowance for the troops would have worked out at about two quarts per day, ‘not an over-generous allowance for men marching in hot weather, whose food is dry grain’. Taking the estimate of the grand army’s numbers as 210,000 this would have amounted to 420,000 gallons of water. Presuming that much of this was carried by the camel corps, something like 15,000 camels would have been required (a good camel being capable of carrying 300 lb of water). It is the essential matter of water-supply which disproves the Greek tradition of the army being composed of three million men.}

It was not until the whole force assembled at Doriscus near the large River Hebrus that they could be ensured of a really adequate supply. It is very probable that, as Herodotus describes, the army was marshalled here to be regrouped in preparation for their further advance. There was also a food depot at this point, and the animals would have found ample grazing-land along the banks of the river. Doriscus was an ideal place for the pause before the advance. There was, furthermore, a convenient fort, which had been founded by Darius, to serve as a general headquarters.

While the Persians prepared themselves for their assault on northern Greece, the threatened Greeks, at this last stage before the invasion of their homeland, were still in disarray. Having failed to secure the naval assistance from Gelon of Syracuse, with the abstention of the Cretans from any involvement, and with doubts existing as to whether Corcyra would send a squadron to the defence of the Greek mainland, the navy party under Themistocles was at a considerable disadvantage. It seemed clear from reports on the strength of the Persian navy that, even after the new shipbuilding programme, the Athenians and their allies would still be heavily outnumbered. There was considerable difference of opinion among the high command at Corinth, the Peloponnesians arguing that the best solution was a land-defence line to be drawn across the Isthmus. This, of course, could hardly appeal to Themistocles, or indeed any Athenian, for the suggestion implied that, if the worst came to the worst, all of northern Greece including Athens itself would be abandoned. He took refuge in an additional answer that the Delphic oracle had given to the Athenian delegates, after they had returned with the first dark prophecy that Athens was doomed and that her citizens ‘should flee to the ends of the earth
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. (It is possible that he himself had some hand in ensuring the second more favourable, even if ambiguous, response.) This said that ‘all-seeing Zeus
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had listened to Athens
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prayer and that, despite a dire outlook, ‘the wooden wall alone shall not fall
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. It went on to say that ‘divine Salamis would bring death to the sons of women after the corn is scattered or the harvest gathered in
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.