THE PERSIAN EMPIRE AND THE WEST

CHAPTER X

THE DELIVERANCE OF GREECE

MARDONIUS AND THE ALLIES

MARDONIUS had undertaken a difficult task. It is true that he retained the best of Xerxes’ troops, and by calling up Artabazus’ corps and the king’s Greek allies could muster a force larger than the enemy’s. We have argued that his own command was one army corps, 60,000 men. Herodotus gives him 300,000 (one-sixth of the total ascribed to Xerxes), or in detail five national divisions and cavalry. It may be doubted whether two divisions were Persian, for the Immortals would surely have escorted the king with their commander Hydarnes, but, on the other hand, the Bactrians and Sacae may have formed one, as at Doriscus. We may suppose that each division was a myriad and the whole cavalry a myriad. The small drafts incorporated from other nations may have replaced losses in the ranks. Artabazus can bring from Potidaea 40,000 out of his original 60,000 men (whom Herodotus reckons in Mardonius’ 300,000). The medizing Greeks are estimated by Herodotus at 50,000, but cannot reasonably be put at more than 20,000. Thus Mardonius might concentrate a total force of 120,000 men to complete the conquest of Greece. But the wall at the Isthmus defended by a Peloponnesian army had in the former campaign deterred Xerxes himself with his 200,000, and Herodotus insists that it was still being strengthened. This impregnable position could not be turned by land, and the Persians no longer commanded the sea.

The Thebans therefore and subsequently Artabazus, unless the advice attributed to him on the Asopus be not indeed his criticism post eventum, recommended patience and bribery to make a breach in the Greek defence. But Mardonius had other ideas. If he could induce the Athenians to come over with their navy to his side, no wall could keep him out of the Peloponnese. The political situation at Athens seemed favourable to the attempt. Themistocles had, presumably at the beginning of the new year (on the old Attic calendar 5th December 480 bc), handed over the direction of military affairs to his former opponents, Aristides and Xanthippus. Their action in the past, their political traditions and connections, might suggest that they would prefer a reconciliation with Persia to the alliance with Sparta. How else could Athens in her present plight reassert her independence and preserve her democratic constitution? At all events the Agrarians, Aristides’ own party, had a growing grievance against their Peloponnesian allies, and it is clear from Herodotus and Plutarch that a section of the Athenians was ready to entertain proposals for a change of policy. It was not without good hope of success that Mardonius in the spring or early summer of 479 bc dispatched Alexander of Macedon, a persona grata to the Athenians, to negotiate. Alexander on behalf of Mardonius and in the name of Xerxes offered to them remission of all penalties for their offences against the king, restitution of their territory, as much more land as they might ask, autonomy, restoration of their burnt temples, and alliance with Persia on free and equal terms. The story of the Spartan counter-embassy and the replies of the Athenians, rejecting with a beau geste the Persian proposal and the Peloponnesian charity, may be suspected of dramatic and rhetorical embellishment. But the Spartans may well have been alarmed and have sought to allay Athenian impatience by assurances that they and their allies would provide (or continue to provide) for the refugees from Attica during the war. One point may be noted which here emerges. Herodotus conceives that the Athenians returned to Attica after the battle of Salamis and on the advice of Themistocles set to work at tilling their farms and rebuilding their city. That notion is incredible. So long as Mardonius commanded the mainland down to the Isthmus, no sane Athenian would have sown a crop or repaired his house. The Persian offer, to give back their land to the Athenians, proves that they had not reoccupied it. The Spartans condole with them on the loss of two harvests. Herodotus does, to be sure, bring Alexander to Athens, but he afterwards implies that he had to cross the straits to Salamis.

The Athenians then in spite of all temptations rejected the handsome terms conveyed by Alexander; but at the same time they claimed of their allies a prompt advance to deliver their country which lay defenceless at the mercy of the invaders. Their refusal of the Persian offer must be pronounced to have been not only patriotic but also prudent. Whatever immediate advantages they might have gained by accepting it, their independence under the protection of Persia would have been hollow and short-lived. The final argument of the Spartans may have been more convincingly developed than appears from the bald aphorism to which Herodotus has reduced it. Long views however were not likely to appeal to distressed refugees impatient to get home. The promise of maintenance for their families was more pertinent to the occasion, but did not go far enough. The Athenian demand for an immediate offensive was natural and urgent. It could not without peril be long ignored.

Mardonius, disappointed in his first plan, seems to have tried a second of which there are fragmentary and dislocated indications in Herodotus. Persia had friends, or at least Sparta had enemies, within the Peloponnese. Mardonius could reckon on the Argives; and to judge from their subsequent behaviour the Mantineans and the Eleans might have joined him on a favourable opportunity. He concerted a scheme whereby he should suddenly appear at the Isthmus and carry its wall by a coup de main, while the Argives detained the Spartans at home or interrupted them on their way to defend it. So he abruptly broke up his camp in Thessaly and pressed southwards in hot haste, picking up his Greek auxiliaries as he went. It was surely before he crossed Cithaeron, and not at Athens as Herodotus says, that a courier from Argos met him with the message that ‘the youth has marched out from Lacedaemon and the Argives cannot stop it; take your measures accordingly.’ We may understand by ‘the youth ’ the first five years of the Spartan levy and identify it with the vanguard of 1000 Lacedaemonians who (afterwards, according to Herodotus) pushed forward to Megara in advance of the main army. They must have reached the Isthmus in time to be ready to repel, with the allied troops there stationed and busy on the wall or within call, any possible attack by Mardonius. Similarly one may suspect that the signal sent by Mardonius to Xerxes by beacons through the (north) Aegean islands is to be put earlier in the story and means that he was calling for the Persian fleet from Samos. The Argives could hardly have been expected to act alone, and Mardonius, calculating that his approach would keep the Athenian fleet at Salamis and unaware of the demoralization of the Persian navy, may reasonably have reckoned that the 300 ships at Samos could get across to Argolis in spite of Leotychidas and his attenuated squadron. The Argives however were not supported and made no attempt to arrest the Spartan march. Mardonius had to devise a fresh plan of operations.

His third idea was to use the Athenians as a lever to prise the Peloponnesians out from their stronghold. Alexander’s report must have told him of the rising indignation of the Athenians at the delay in rescuing their land, and of the apprehensions of the Spartans lest they should medize. By fomenting these feelings he might bring the Peloponnesian army out into the open. So far there had been no hint of its taking the offensive, and the main Spartan force had not stirred from Laconia. Accordingly on receipt of the Argive message Mardonius changed his course and marched into Attica. Probably he left the bulk of his army behind to prepare his fortified camp on the Asopus, but he took with him his cavalry, which was perhaps all he had yet in Boeotia. He reoccupied Athens, Herodotus notes, in the tenth month after Xerxes, that is to say, in June 479. Thence he sent a Hellespontine Greek, Morychides, to Salamis to repeat his former offer to the Athenians, not so much, we may surmise, in the hope of converting them as of alarming the Spartans. The Council of the Five Hundred refused to entertain the offer, and with the bystanders promptly lynched one of its members, Cyrsilus (or Lycides, as Herodotus names him), who proposed to submit it to the Assembly of the citizens. The women went beyond official instigation by stoning to death the wife and children of the offender. From a reference by the orator Lycurgus it appears that the executions were retrospectively legalized by a decree, perhaps the same whereby Aristides, according to Plutarch, put a curse upon anyone who opened negotiations with the enemy or renounced the alliance of the Greek states.

Evidently the government had a firm hand on the situation and was resolute to crush any attempt to treat with Persia, but the incident was ominous. Mardonius by reoccupying Attica had raised a dangerous ferment among the Athenians. Something must be done at once to vindicate the government’s policy and above all to expedite the long-expected offensive campaign. By the same or another decree proposed by Aristides, either now or while Mardonius was still in Boeotia (Herodotus has inextricably confounded the alternative occasions), Cimon, Xanthippus, and Myronides, men of weight and probably representative of the three parties, were sent to Sparta to urge the necessity of immediate action if the loyalty of the Athenians was to be guaranteed. With them went envoys from the Megarians and the Plataeans. The Spartans were busy celebrating (or preparing for) the Hyacinthia, a festival to which they attached great importance. Its date cannot be precisely determined, but may be inferred from the latest evidence to have been about midsummer. The Ephors put off their answer to the embassy from day to day for ten days. Meanwhile the wall at the Isthmus was completed with battlements. At last, warned by a trusted Tegeate, Chileus, that the defection of the Athenians would open wide doors into the Peloponnese, in the night before the day appointed for the final interview with the envoys they dispatched 5000 Spartiates with 35,000 Helots for the Isthmus. The envoys were prepared to set off homewards next day. They reproached the Ephors with the Spartans’ betrayal of their allies and announced that the Athenians would now make terms with the Persian king and join his forces. They were now told that the Lacedaemonian troops were already at Orestheum on their march to the front.

Clearly the story of the embassy has been cooked and served up with Attic salt. Neither the Isthmian wall, defensible ten months before, nor the neat but very obvious criticism of Chileus, nor the parody of Spartan methods, now rudely swift now obstinately slow, are much to the point. Probably the envoys conceded a postponement until after the Hyacinthia and the Ephors promised the mobilization within ten days after the festival and kept their word. We have no sufficient reason to suppose that there was serious antagonism between the Spartan and Athenian governments. They understood one another’s difficulties and maintained a fundamental accord. The impatience of the Athenian populace was directed against both. The Athenian government had to bear the brunt of it and humour it; but its diplomatic representations at Sparta were probably less truculent than its attitude at Salamis. The Spartans, however anxious to expel the Persians from Greece and gratify their ally by an immediate offensive, could not ignore the need of gathering the year’s harvest, if supplies were to be provided for a big army or the Peloponnesians induced to take the field; the military advantage of letting Mardonius come as far south as he would, and perhaps break his head against the Isthmian wall, instead of seeking him in the north; the risk of denuding the Peloponnese of its garrison while there was a Persian fleet in being and the Argives lay in wait to deliver a stab in the back. This cool strategic argument may have irritated the indigent and irresponsible refugees at Salamis, but have been better appreciated by the Athenian generals.

The forbearance, however, was not all on the one side. The Spartan government had a legitimate grievance against Athens, although it scarcely appears in the mainly Attic tradition. King Leotychidas had assembled the allied fleet at Aegina at the beginning of the spring, 110 ships. The number, 200 less than at Salamis, plainly indicates that the Athenian navy was absent. Leotychidas, therefore, could not venture across the Aegean in response to a pressing invitation from certain Chians, but was restricted to a defensive station at Delos. The Spartans would have felt more secure if the Athenian contingent had been there, and the situation in Greece would have been greatly relieved by a Mycale four months before it was actually achieved. The Athenians, at all events if protected by 20 triremes and 2000 hoplites, would really have been as safe at Salamis as behind the Isthmus, and can hardly have needed their whole fleet to ferry their army across the straits. But they appear to have kept their ships on guard until Mardonius had withdrawn beyond Cithaeron; and the Spartans respected their fears. Some friction there probably was between the two allies; the Spartans would not stake too much on the fleet’s defence of the flank of Greece, nor the Athenians on a Spartan victory over Mardonius. But their differences were not beyond compromise, and we may see in the simultaneous offensive by land and sea after midsummer a plan of campaign agreed upon in advance.

PAUSANIAS’ ADVANCE BEYOND CITHAERON

Cleombrotus was now dead. His son Pausanias, who had succeeded him as regent for the young king Pleistarchus, was appointed to the command of the Spartan and allied army. Why Euryanax, son of Dorieus, was passed over, is not clear; but Pausanias, for reasons which may be variously conjectured, associated him with himself in the command. The Spartiates and Helots, followed next day by 5000 picked Perioecic hoplites, marched, as Herodotus implies, by way of Orestheum. It is not easy to see why they took this roundabout route to the Isthmus unless to avoid skirting the Argive frontier and passing by Mantinea. But that explanation would be far more appropriately applied to the 1000 ‘forerunners,’ whom we have supposed to have preceded Pausanias two or three weeks before, than to the imposing force which he brought with him. Herodotus has failed to distinguish that advance-guard from the main body and still reckons the Spartiates with Pausanias at 5000. The route by Orestheum may have been the former’s, not the latter’s.

Pausanias and his Lacedaemonians may have arrived at the Isthmus in the first half of July, but several weeks may have elapsed before the allied army was assembled—indeed, if Herodotus be trusted, some contingents joined only on the Aesopus. It is there in the Plataean land, when all were gathered, that Herodotus first gives a catalogue and enumeration of the army, in battle order. His list of the states represented closely agrees with the names on the ‘serpent column’ from Delphi, although naturally he arranges them in a different order and omits solely maritime states. Did he derive the names (directly or indirectly) from the Delphian list (or some similar record, such as the inscription on the parallel monument at Olympia of which Pausanias the Periegetes has preserved an imperfect copy), or had he any independent information? The very test which might seem to vindicate his independence has become the strongest evidence against it. He alone includes the Paleans, and he omits the Eleans, who appear in the Delphian and Olympian lists. But the suggestion that both these discrepancies are due to a misreading of the name Eleans is almost irresistible. More important is the question of the numbers. The inscriptions give none. Had Herodotus any authentic record of them, or are they mere estimates? He puts the ‘Paleans’ at 200, which might be a plausible figure for the little Cephallenian town, but not for Elis, if we are to substitute Eleans for Paleans. Has he invented a contingent to suit the mistaken name? But this argument is not conclusive. He states in another passage, and there is no reason to doubt it, that the Eleans and the Mantineans came too late for the battle at Plataea. Yet the Eleans, but not the Mantineans, are inscribed at Delphi and Olympia among the states which fought and won the war. The presence of 200 Elean hoplites at the battle of Plataea would best account for the entries on the trophies without invalidating the general statement that the Eleans as a whole were absent. The 400 Thebans at Thermopylae did not exculpate their city at large from the charge of medism, but if Xerxes had been repulsed there, they would have sufficed to enrol her name among the saviours of Hellas. But, again, it may be questioned whether any Potidaeates fought at Plataea, and whether the numbers assigned to several of the contingents are credible in the light of later history. Did Sparta really send 10,000 hoplites, Corinth 3000, Sicyon and Megara 3000 each?—although, to be sure, the future historian may find it hard to accept the figures for the British army in 1916 to 1919.

The 35,000 Helots ‘trained for war,’ seven to each Spartiate, are beyond all parallels; but Herodotus repeats the number several times, and his insistence may indicate that they were a novel and peculiar feature in the campaign. There is no trace of them in the fighting, but possibly the Spartans had organized them as a special Service Corps for the supplies and commissariat of the whole army. If so, it was a remarkable achievement, which no other state could have done, and deserves more explicit recognition; but all the less acceptable is the (confessed) estimate of a light armed man for every hoplite beyond the 5000 Spartiates, a reckoning which holds good in Lacedaemonian and Boeotian armies but certainly not in the Athenian, nor probably in those of other naval and democratic states. Athens had however (at all events in the Peloponnesian war) 1600 archers, and Athenian archers are prominent in the campaign; 800 of them may be implied by the surplus of 800 in Herodotus’ calculation of the light troops, and the other 800 be assigned to the fleet in accordance with Plutarch’s quota of four to each trireme. To sum up, the numbers given by Herodotus in each category are 38,700 hoplites, 35,000 Helots, 34,500 other light armed men, making a total of 108,200 troops, to whom he adds 1800 Thespians (without heavy armour) to complete the round 11 myriads. None of these figures are above suspicion, and it would be rash to accept them as authentic records; but none are wildly impossible, and even as conjectured estimates, superficial may be and uncritical, they are still Greek and almost contemporary estimates of a Greek force. After all allowances for error and exaggeration we may put the total at about 80,000 men, of whom about two- fifths were hoplites.

The strategic movements which led to the battle of Plataea are a lost chapter of history. Herodotus has little to tell of them and imperfectly understands what he tells. We are left to reconstruct an intelligible account out of very inadequate materials. It may have been early in August when Pausanias marched out from the Isthmus to Eleusis, where Aristides joined him with 8000 Athenian hoplites. Mardonius, according to Herodotus, had burnt Athens and begun to evacuate Attica on receipt of the Argive message before Pausanias had reached the Isthmus, but, hearing that 1000 Lacedaemonians had pushed on to Megara in advance of the rest, he turned back in order to catch them and overran the Megarid with his cavalry. He seems, however, to have returned to the plain of Athens, whence on arrival of a third message, that the Greeks were assembled at the Isthmus, he retired to Theban territory by way of Decelea, Sphendale, and Tanagra. It is unlikely that he withdrew from Athens twice, and we have already connected the Argive message with the march of the 1000 Lacedaemonians from Sparta before midsummer. The raid into the Megarid is best explained if referred back to that date, when Mardonius was not quitting but entering Attica. Presumably the 1000 Lacedaemonians pressed forward to save Megara and succeeded. The Persian horsemen were useless against a walled city and could only ravage the country. Mardonius did not burn and evacuate Athens before the Greek army was in Attica. His route to Boeotia round the eastern end of Parnes indicates that the roads to Cithaeron were already in the enemy’s hands and even the road to Thebes by Phyle was cut or threatened, no doubt in the neighbourhood of Panactum. With his nimble cavalry he could afford to take risks in face of an adversary on foot, and probably he wished to draw the Greeks away from the Isthmus by offering a chance of intercepting him from his main force and base. Herodotus, believing that he had his whole army with him, ascribes to him some superfluous reasons for quitting Attica, which may reproduce Greek reflections on the campaign.

From Tanagra Mardonius turned to Scolus, where he was in Theban territory. Although now on friendly soil, he set about felling the trees of his allies in order to build a ‘wooden wall’ which should serve as a protection to his camp beside the Asopus and, in case of defeat, a refuge for his army. The one clear fact about this fortification is that Herodotus has no clear ideas about it. He does not expressly say where it was, but we might naturally infer that it was at or near Scolus, and the inference is supported by Xenophon’s mention of a stockade just there, one of the palisades erected by the Thebans more than a century later to keep Agesilaus out of their country. Scolus lay at the foot of Cithaeron near the point where the road from Phyle issues from the hills and crosses the Asopus. The work might be on either or both of the banks of the river and still be near Scolus, but (1) it is afterwards said to have been constructed ‘in the portion of Thebes,’ which favours the left (north) bank, and (2) the whole narrative of the campaign conveys the impression that at all events the camp was on that bank. When, therefore, Herodotus here hastens to explain that the camp stretched from Erythrae past Hysiae into the territory of Plataea, all towns on the right of the river, we must suppose that he has not clearly distinguished between the army and its camp—the army was posted on the south side of the river, in front of the camp, the camp lay behind on the north side. But the camp must have been at least coextensive with the position across the river. The ‘wooden wall’ on the contrary had, according to Herodotus, a frontage of only 10 stades, and seems to have stood near Scolus, where it could cover nothing but one flank of the long lines, which began at Erythrae. How could it (put it where you please) be a ‘bulwark’ or ‘fence’ to the camp and render it too a refuge? Has Herodotus misconceived its character? He imagines it to have been an elaborate square fortress provided with towers. Has he perhaps confused it, as a comparison of his descriptions of the two works suggests, with the Persian stronghold at Mycale. Was the wooden wall of Mardonius after all a stockade, or rather a series of four stockades, like the Theban palisades against Agesilaus, guarding the four roads to Thebes from the south, and has Herodotus pictured to himself the four frontages on the river bank as a single quadrilateral fort? This answer to the puzzle appears to be the most satisfactory, and is not without precedent, for Plutarch having at first accepted from Herodotus the square single fort is constrained at last to resolve it into a number of distinct fortifications.

Hardly less difficult, owing to its brevity, is Herodotus’ account of the advance of the Greeks into Boeotia. He notes only that they moved forward from Eleusis and, when they arrived at Erythrae and observed the enemy encamped on the Asopus, took up a position facing him on the base of Cithaeron. It appears further, that this position was unassailable by cavalry except in one limited part, where the Megarians were stationed. Two main roads crossed Cithaeron—(1) the Great North road from the Isthmus and Megara by the Vilia pass; it threw off two branches to Plataea, the one a rough track starting from a point south of the crest and passing through another pass about a mile west of the Vilia pass, the other diverging from the road near the northern end of the Vilia pass; but neither of these branches is of much account in the operations; (2) the road from Eleusis by Eleutherae and the pass commonly but erroneously called the ‘Dryoscephalae’ pass. On or hard by this latter road stood Hysiae, at or near the modern Kriekuki, perhaps three-quarters of a mile to the east of that village, but certainly not to the west of it, for the upper waters of the Oeroe must be assigned to Plataea. Erythrae was east of Hysiae on the road from Thespiae and Plataea to Scolus. Pausanias (the Periegetes) mentions it with Hysiae as lying ‘a little’ off his direct route from Eleutherae to Plataea, which no doubt branched from the Eleusis-Thebes road at a point above Hysiae. Could Erythrae be placed between Hysiae and the high shoulder of Cithaeron which rises a mile and a half east of Kriekuki, we might assume that the Greeks crossed the ridge by their most obvious road, through the Eleutherae pass. But that site for Erythrae is impossible for two reasons: because water, which is abundant there, was, according to Herodotus, scanty at Erythrae; and because Hysiae, which furnished a Boeotarch (implying 1000 hoplites and 100 horse), demands a big territory. We are driven therefore to put Erythrae farther east, probably at Katzula about midway between Hysiae and Scolus, and to suppose that Pausanias, who seems not to have visited it, accommodated his ‘little’ distance to the propinquity of Hysiae.

Neither, then, the Eleusis-Thebes road nor still less the Megara-Thebes road (which passed to the west of Hysiae) led to Erythrae, and it is inconceivable that the regent Pausanias, having once reached Hysiae, abandoned it for a position where water was scarce and supplies precarious. But a glance at the strategic situation suggests another route to Erythrae. Mardonius was in Attica tempting the Greeks eastwards. It is fairly obvious that in order to safeguard his camp during his absence, and to enable him to fall upon their western wing and cut them off from the Isthmus should they be drawn so far to their right as to endanger their left, he must have thrown forward his own right wing over the Asopus and occupied the Vilia and Eleutherae passes. Pausanias, we may suppose, had no mind to force those passes by a frontal attack, but having now extended his right to the gap between Cithaeron and Parnes, where Mardonius might have escaped into Boeotia by the Phyle road, he may naturally have conceived the idea of advancing through the gap and intercepting him between Tanagra and Scolus, and at the same time turning the Persian left, perhaps weakened by reinforcement of the right. He would, of course, leave his left wing and centre to hold the southern exits of the western passes, and to advance through them if, as might be expected, the enemy fell back in consequence of the threat to his left flank. Some such hypothesis would explain the strategy. The arrival of Mardonius, and the stockade at Scolus, frustrated the full success of the movement. Pausanias, not venturing on to the plain in face of the cavalry, turned westward along the skirts of the mountain to Erythrae, where he formed his troops (the Lacedaemonians and Tegeates) fronting the enemy. He thus did at least compel Mardonius to withdraw his forces from the passes to the north bank of the Asopus. It was a result achieved by manoeuvre without fighting, and so left no clear trace in the tradition. The theory that Mardonius invited the Greeks across Cithaeron to a battle on ground of his own choice is inconsistent with his stand on the Asopus. His proper ground would have been nearer Thebes with the open plain in front of him. He is on the defensive, probably awaiting his supports from Thrace, and although he will strike if he finds an opportunity, he contests each successive position, the line of Cithaeron as well as of the river. Pausanias, on the other hand, presses forward for a decisive battle before Artabazus should arrive.

It was probably in order to cover the withdrawal of his right wing by the Megara-Thebes road that Mardonius launched his cavalry led by Masistius against the Greeks who were following his retreating troops from the passes. Masistius arrested them on .the edge of the rocky slope of the mountain, where they no doubt deployed to the right so as to get into touch and line with Pausanias and his division. We may assume that the Athenians and Plataeans were the centre and advanced by the Eleutherae road, while the Megarians headed the left column debouching from the Vilia pass down the Megara road. The rocky mantle of the mountain swings sharply southwards along the western border of the village of Kriekuki admitting a wide bay of cultivated land over which the Megara-Thebes road runs. The Megarians may have pushed on down the road into this re-entrant angle in order to keep their alignment with their comrades on the right. Accordingly, they found themselves in the one weak spot in the Greek line and had to bear the full brunt of the cavalry’s attack. Hard pressed, they dispatched an urgent message to Pausanias begging to be relieved. The Athenians alone, in the Attic story retailed by Herodotus, volunteered for the duty. As they alone had a regular corps of archers, they would in any case have been the first to be deputed. Aristides at once sent forward a company of 300 select hoplites under Olympiodorus, son of Lampon, along with the bowmen, and followed with his entire division. The Athenians were to occupy the left flank of the army; the left wing, including the Megarians, were to close to the right and become the centre. The Persian cavalry continuing its attacks charged by squadrons (thousands?), until Masistius, thrown by his horse which was wounded by an arrow, was overwhelmed, and was killed by a stab in the eye. His men by a combined assault essayed to recover his corpse, but were repulsed by the main body of the Athenians arriving at the critical moment. The Persians then abandoned the attempt, and the dead Masistius was placed on a cart and paraded along the Greek line, on the Erythrae road, no doubt, which ran just in front of the position. His corselet of gilt scale armour afterwards hung in the temple of Athena Polias on the Athenian Acropolis.

III

THE GREEK REBUFF AT THE ASOPUS

The repulse of the dreaded cavalry encouraged Pausanias to advance beyond the rocky base of Cithaeron into the Plataean land. Herodotus says that the reason was to get a more convenient site for the camp and in particular a better supply of water than at Erythrae. He describes the new position as beyond Hysiae, and near the spring Gargaphia and the precinct of the hero Androcrates, and extending over hills of no great height and flat ground. The hills can be no other than the ridges which rise between the foot of Cithaeron and the Asopus. Separated from the mountain by a trough of lower ground they stretch north-westwards from the rivulet which may with some confidence be named the Moloeis to within a short distance of the Asopus, and culminate near their south-western verge in three summits, on two of which, just one mile apart, stand churches, on the north-western the church of St John, on the south-eastern the church of St Demetrius. The direct road from Plataea to Thebes runs half a mile west of the hills over the level Plataean plain to the Asopus. This plain must be the flat ground on to which the Greek lines extended. The spring Gargaphia is best identified with the fount half a mile west of the church of St Demetrius, near the probable intersection of the Megara-Thebes and Thespiae-Erythrae roads. Of the Androcrateum nothing certain can be said except that it was a well-known landmark on the right of the direct road from Plataea to Thebes. It may have stood at the church of St John or near the Apotripi spring below that church.

Details may be obscure, but the general lie of the Greek position is clear. If all the hoplites were deployed eight deep, their front must have been at least three miles long. If its right flank be placed at the church of St Demetrius, its left falls west of the direct Plataea-Thebes road and quite near to the Asopus. Herodotus is primarily concerned with the movement of the right wing. It is Pausanias and his division who were stationed at Erythrae and felt the lack of water there; it is they in particular who descended from the higher slopes of the mountain and marched past Hysiae; it is they, as afterwards appears, who are posted at the spring Gargaphia. The prominence of Gargaphia in the story and its use as a fixed point whence measurements are reckoned show that Herodotus derives information from the right wing. Probably ‘the reinforcements arriving’ are no other than the centre and left wing coming on to the scene through the passes. But in later references, derived no doubt from Attic sources, Herodotus does recognize, although confusedly, the wide extent of the position. The Greeks encamped ‘on the Asopus’; they drew water from it; the nearer to the river were their respective stations, the farther were they from Gargaphia. When he states that ‘the island’ was ten stadesfrom the Asopus and from Gargaphia, the bewildered historian attempts to apply a single measurement to the standpoints of two informants at different distances, one in each wing.

This broader view of the position shows that the aim of the movement was not merely to secure the supply of water and food but also to execute on the enemy’s right flank the offensive which had been foiled on his left. It was no well-considered station to be occupied for an indefinite period, but a temporary foothold whence to launch an attack. The left wing in particular must have been intended to take instant action. The general idea appears to have been that, while the right wing and centre occupied the enemy opposite, the left wing should force the passage of the Asopus (in August probably almost dry) and turning sharply to the east should sweep down the left bank crumpling up the hostile line already engaged in front. Perhaps it was hoped that the Greek allies of Mardonius on his right would offer only half-hearted resistance—the story of a nocturnal visit from Alexander of Macedon to the Athenian camp suggests collusion, and in the subsequent battle only the Boeotians put up a fight. There was, however, the cavalry to be reckoned with; and the success of the Athenians against Masistius marked them out for the post of honour and danger on the left wing rather than the Tegeates, who are said to have claimed it. If, as surmised above, a stockade on the river bank barred the direct road from Plataea to Thebes, the Athenians’ reputation in siege-warfare may also have recommended them. How the Greek army moved to its new position is not recorded; but we may conjecture that the Athenians stood fast at the Megara-Thebes road while first the right wing and then the centre marched behind them along the base of Cithaeron to the left flank, the Athenians next passing behind them resumed their place on the left, and finally all advanced together in line. This hypothesis would suit the catalogue of the army in battle array here inserted by Herodotus and account for the strange story, which he gives a little later, of the double exchange of wings between the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians.

Mardonius on the opposite bank conformed his movements to those of the Greeks and followed them up the river. Yet for eight days, as Herodotus appears to mean, the two armies confronted one another without an engagement or any action whatsoever. No reason is assigned for their inaction except that the omens on both sides forbade them to cross the Asopus. Why should Pausanias, if he intended no more, have abandoned a strong for an untenable position ? Why should Mardonius, who is represented as eager for the fray in spite of all omens, have refused battle? If, as is more likely, he had no wish to move out from his fortifications for a general attack, why did he not use his cavalry at once, instead of a week later, to cut the enemy’s communications? Did he really need to be prompted by a Theban, Timagenidas? The delay is so improbable that it is better to suppose that the eight days ought to be counted from the arrival of Pausanias north of Cithaeron. We may even go further and conjecture that the next two days (the 9th and 10th of Herodotus’ diary) are to be identified with the following two (the 11th and 12th) which immediately preceded the battle. Herodotus, who has already invoked the soothsayers with their past careers to provide an interlude between the scenes of his drama, here seems to call up the whole chorus of his supernumerary reserves to beguile an interval in the action. In Plutarch’s manner he throws into a void in his story a miscellaneous stock of unemployed anecdotes. We are treated to (1) a conference on the plan of operations between the headstrong Mardonius and the prudent Artabazus, (2) an argument, incongruous with Herodotus’ account of the Persian attempt on Delphi, drawn by Mardonius from an oracle in order to silence the misgivings of his subordinates, (3) Alexander’s nocturnal visit to the Athenian generals, warning them of an impending attack, (4) the exchange of the Greek wings, already anticipated above, (5) a challenge from Mardonius to the Spartans inviting them to a duel with the Persians.

These stories serve a double purpose; they fill a gap not only in time but also in the record of the Greek operations. Something has dropped out, or his informants have kept it from Herodotus. The allied forces, when they emerge again into view, are no longer in the same position as that to which they had advanced from the base of Cithaeron. The Athenians are no longer in the plain, but on a hill whence they have to descend into the plain on their way to their next intended station at ‘the island’; the contingents of the centre on the contrary are presumably on the flat ground, for they have borne the brunt of the attacks of the enemy’s cavalry and been harassed to the verge of demoralization; the Lacedaemonians on the right wing are so far west that they have relaxed their hold not only on the Eleutherae road, but also on the much more vitally important Megara road and Gargaphia. The simplest explanation of this situation is that the Greek offensive had failed; the Athenians, who led it, either did not press their attack with resolution or were repulsed, and were driven off the Plataean plain; they took refuge from the enemy’s cavalry on higher ground, evidently at the western edge of the plain; Pausanias, in order to fill the gap caused in his line, shifted his centre down into the plain and his right wing westwards into the place of the centre. We may suppose that the Greeks had moved forward from the foot of Cithaeron on the evening of the seventh day, that the Athenian failure was on the eighth, and that the Theban Timagenidas at once reported the breach in the Greek line to Mardonius, who on the night of the eighth day, as Herodotus records, sent his cavalry to the passes which issue from Cithaeron towards Plataea. The cavalry, advancing no doubt through the gap, captured a train of 500 pack animals bringing provisions from the Peloponnese, as it was emerging on to the plain. Pausanias of course hastened to close the breach next morning, but he thereby lost his hold on the Megara-Thebes road and his main source of water, the spring Gargaphia, which the Persian horsemen choked on the following, if not the same, day. They now raided freely round his right flank and cut off all supplies through the passes.

On the 10th (Herodotus’ 12th) day the situation of the Greek army had become critical. It was short of water and food, it was harassed by constant attacks from an enemy who could not be brought to close quarters, the centre in particular was tried beyond endurance. The advanced station was clearly no longer tenable, and a council of war decided to retreat during the night to a position at the base of Cithaeron better protected against cavalry, well provided with water, and covering the passes. This position is described as ‘the island,’ a strip of land between two of the head streams of the river Oeroe. The exact spot is no doubt rightly recognized in a prominent knoll about a mile east of the citadel (or north-west corner) of Plataea. But evidently the island, which Herodotus himself puts at only three stades broad, could not be more than a small fraction of the new line. The full extent of the position must be gathered from the movements of the army. In the second watch of the night the centre began to retire, and halted in front of the Heraeum, which stood in front of the city (acropolis) of Plataea. The front of the temple is, of course, the east, and the front of the city is naturally also the east, the direction from which most travellers, especially Athenians, would approach Plataea. The site of the large building probably to be identified with the Heraeum supports this interpretation, and agrees approximately with Herodotus’ estimate of 20 stades from Gargaphia. The centre therefore appears to have taken up its post between the island and the no doubt ruined but still defensible citadel of Plataea, which covered its left flank. The right wing, the Lacedaemonians and Tegeates, waited until the peep of dawn and then marched 10 stades, reckoned evidently from Gargaphia, to a station near the river Moloeis and a place named Argiopius, where was a temple of Demeter Eleusinia. Argiopius gives us no clue, but the Kriekuki brook, much the largest and most copious hereabouts of the affluents of the Asopus, may plausibly claim to have been the Moloeis. Plutarch, a good witness, gives some further evidence on the site of the temple. He describes it as near Hysiae, under Cithaeron, at the fringe of the rocky base of the mountain, which rendered the ground impracticable for cavalry. Two inscriptions assigned to the early part of the fifth century b.c. and referring to the worship of Demeter have been discovered close under the rocky slope a few yards west of the Eleutherae road. They may have been carried, but prove the neighbourhood of a temple of the goddess. If the temple be put at the north end of the village of Kriekuki, it would be a little over io stades from Gargaphia, a couple of hundred yards from the conjectured Moloeis, and just where Plutarch indicates. The right wing accordingly appears to have been drawn up along the edge of the base of the mountain, between the Megara-Thebes road and the Eleutherae road, and no doubt commanding both.

The account given by Herodotus of these movements is obviously influenced by Attic sources and reflects Athenian recriminations against the Allies. The Athenians presumably were blamed for the failure of the advance to the Asopus and its disastrous consequences, which made the retreat necessary, and for the miscarriage of the plan of withdrawal, which nearly involved the whole army in an overwhelming catastrophe. They retort by obscuring their own share in the operations and throwing the blame back upon their confederates. They represent the centre as having fled in panic to a point twice as far from Gargaphia as the island, and the Lacedaemonians as having been delayed by the contumacious obstinacy of a subordinate officer and surprised by the enemy on their march. Both, we are given to understand, were making for the island, but neither got there. Inconsistently enough, the divergent course taken by the right wing is explained by anxiety to avoid the plain, where the cavalry could attack it, or by a project to rescue the convoys blocked up in the passes—no doubt a main motive for the retirement, but easily attainable without dividing the army.

These Athenian misrepresentations cannot be allowed. It is pretty clear that the centre arrived in good order at its proper destination, and that the right wing occupied its intended station before the enemy attacked it. Both positions were well selected and formed parts of a single strategic design. Only the Athenians (with the Plataeans) failed to reach their appointed place. It was they alone who were directed to the island, and their absence there left a yawning gap in the Greek line. By their own account they waited ‘at the post assigned to them’ for the Lacedaemonians to move, ‘knowing that their words could not be trusted to reveal their intentions’. This bold diversion merely seeks to distract attention from their own default. Were they unwilling to relinquish the coveted left wing to the centre? or to exchange the comparative security of a station opposed to the compliant Greek troops of the enemy for the risks of another less remote from the redoubtable Persian cavalry? or have they in their anxiety to incriminate their allies overreached themselves, and by imputing to the centre a precipitate flight spoilt their own best plea, that the slow procession of the centre across their path prevented their reaching the island? They pretend to have waited for the Lacedaemonians to move, but it may be surmised that really the Lacedaemonians waited for them.

The Athenian story of the obstinacy of Amompharetus is suspicious, and the facts suggest a different and simpler explanation. Amompharetus, the story says, the commander of the Pitanate battalion, which according to Thucydides never existed, had not been present at the council when the retreat was settled, and now refused to disgrace Sparta by ‘running away from the foreigners’. In vain Pausanias and Euryanax argued with him all night. A nameless Athenian horseman, sent to headquarters for news and instructions, arrived to witness (in the dark three days after the new moon) Amompharetus plant a boulder at his general’s feet and tell him that this was his vote for staying. Pausanias then turning to the messenger besought the Athenians to close up to the right wing and conform to its movements. At dawn of day he left Amompharetus and his Pitanates behind; but, hoping that they would follow and unwilling to abandon them beyond all rescue, he halted his troops near the Moloeis and the temple of Demeter. The Pitanates presently rejoined, retiring slowly with the Persian cavalry on their heels. Cleared of Athenian misconstruction and jugglery, the narrative indicates that Pausanias deferred his start in order to cover the flank of the Athenian march to the island, and that Amompharetus was detailed to hold the Megara road to the last moment at the valley between Gargaphia and the church of St. Demetrius—a duty which he admirably performed.

It has become clear that the general position designed for the Greek army extended from the walls of Plataea, which covered the west flank, to the high bastions of Cithaeron, which covered the east flank. This position was practically the same as that which the army had occupied on the eve of its advance towards the Asopus. It is further evident that the former centre, which was now to be the left wing, and the Lacedaemonians and Tegeates, who were still to be the right wing, duly took up their appointed stations, but the Athenians, who ought to have formed the new centre, never reached their post at the island. Sunrise found the Athenians still trailing across the Plataean plain and the army split up into three widely separate divisions. Mardonius naturally seized so obvious an opportunity. He crossed the Asopus and attacked.

PLATAEA

The first impact came from the Persian cavalry, who had resumed at daybreak their incursions on the Greek lines. Finding the forward position void they pushed on, drove in Amompharetus, and set to harassing the Lacedaemonians and Tegeates at the foot of Cithaeron. The rocky ground, except perhaps at the extremities of the front, precluded cavalry charges, but the troopers were also archers and javelin-men, and always relied more on their ‘artillery’ than on shock tactics. Pausanias, we are told, dispatched a mounted man to beg the Athenians to come to his aid or at least to send their bowmen. They were, of course, the acknowledged masters in this warfare and had saved the Megarians a few days before on almost the same spot, but this flattering appeal may be received with a grain of scepticism. The Athenians at all events, although they responded with alacrity, never arrived, for they were engaged on their way across the plain by the medizing Greeks, and Pausanias managed to do without them. Mardonius was presumably from the first informed of the situation by the cavalry. He pressed forward with the Persian infantry at the double and was followed by the other Asiatic troops in haste and disorder. He led his whole Barbarian forces against the Greek right wing, leaving his auxiliaries to deal with the Athenians. Herodotus states that he crossed the Asopus in pursuit of the Greeks believing them to be in full flight, but directed his attack upon the Lacedaemonians and Tegeates alone, because he could not see the Athenians in the plain owing to the intervening hills. The point of the remark seems to be that, had he seen the Athenians, he either would have realized that they at all events were not running away or would have deemed them a foe more worthy of single combat. No great stress can in such a context be laid on the mention of the hills, but it confirms the general implication that Mardonius’ attack was developed through, and round the eastern end of, the ridges between Cithaeron and the Asopus, that is to say, along the Megara and the Eleutherae roads. The attack on the Athenians naturally followed the direct Thebes-Plataea road over the plain.

The Persian infantry took over from the cavalry the attack on the Lacedaemonians and Tegeates. Planting their wicker shields upright in front of them, they poured arrows on the Greeks. The line of shields presented the aspect of a fence, but afforded no protection against a charge of hoplites and probably had no practical purpose beyond freeing the hands of the archers. The Greek men-at-arms on their side, each crouching behind his shield, opposed to the wicker a hedge of steel, and endured the hail of shafts without movement. Some were shot dead and many wounded, but the omens from the sacrifices remained adverse. Probably the soothsayers kept one eye on Pausanias, and he on the massing enemy. The other Asiatic troops now arriving behind the Persians would block their rear, leaving them no room for their tactics of touch and go, the elastic front which yields and returns, and so would compel them to a combat at close quarters. At last, looking away to Hera’s temple, the white facade of which full in the morning sunlight must have shown up sharply against the mud buildings of Plataea, Pausanias lifted his voice and prayed to the goddess ‘that we be not disappointed of our hope.’ Instantly, as he spoke, the Tegeates sprang up and rushed upon the enemy. The'Lacedaemonians, better disciplined, waited for the sanction of the sacrifices, which immediately followed. The Persians dropped their bows and met them with their dirks and javelins at the fence of shields. This frail shelter soon collapsed, but they maintained a stubborn fight by the Demetrium, gripping and trying to snap the hoplites’ spears, dashing forward against the Spartans singly or by tens or in little groups to their own destruction. Mardonius, mounted on a white charger and accompanied by his special corps, 1000 strong, rallied his troops now here now there and pressed the foemen hard. But when he fell by the hands of Aeimnestus, and with him the best of his followers, the rest gave in and took to flight, carrying with them their Asiatic auxiliaries. Pausanias had won ‘the finest victory ever recorded in Greek history’.

Meanwhile the Athenians were engaged on the plain with the Boeotians, who alone of Mardonius’ Hellenic allies showed any appetite for battle. The Greek centre now posted near the Heraeum appears to have been unmolested. The elevated ‘Asopus ridge’ in front of it diverted the enemy’s attacks along the roads on the east and west and protected its position. That it bestirred itself only on news of Pausanias’ victory may be rejected as a malicious slander. Probably Pausanias sent an order that it should hasten to the aid of the two wings. Accordingly the larger right brigade turned eastwards by the upper road, over the spurs of Cithaeron, towards the temple of Demeter. Whether it arrived in time to take part in the fighting there, or ever got there at all, is left uncertain in the perfunctory mention of it by Herodotus. The left brigade moved in loose order down on to the plain. There the Theban cavalry under Asopodorus caught and routed it and drove it on to the slope of Cithaeron, leaving 600 men dead on the field. This diversion and the flight of the Asiatics on the other wing may have relieved the pressure on the Athenians and enabled them to beat off the Boeotians, who retired straight for Thebes, having lost 300 of the foremost and noblest of the Thebans. The destination of the other medizing Greeks is not recorded. The Barbarians fled to their ‘wooden wall.’ The cavalry intervened on both wings to protect the fugitives. Artabazus, Herodotus tells, was marching forward with 40,000 men as though to battle, but filled with misgivings and disapproval of Mardonius’ conduct of the campaign and determined to act independently on his own judgment. He had already advanced far on his way when he saw the Persians in full retreat. Immediately he wheeled about and made off with all speed by the quickest route neither for the wooden wall nor for the fortress of Thebes, but for Phocis and the Hellespont.

Where was he when he met the routed Persians? He has figured in Herodotus’ story of the Plataean campaign never as an actor but only as the critic and monitor of Mardonius. Has Herodotus perhaps reproduced in dramatic form the subsequent animadversions of Artabazus on the strategy of Mardonius, and his vindication of his own? Did Artabazus ever arrive on the field of Plataea? The very words used, or preserved, by Herodotus suggest that he did not, but was still far in the rear of the fighting line. If so, one might conjecture that he was summoned from Macedonia only when the Peloponnesians were already mustering at the Isthmus.

The Asiatic troops of Mardonius rallied behind their ‘wooden wall’ and defended it obstinately. The Athenians, who prided themselves on their skill in siege warfare, claimed to have effected the breach, but it was the Tegeates who entered first and plundered the tent of Mardonius. The brazen manger of his horses afterwards adorned the temple of Athena Aiea at Tegea. The victorious Greeks fell upon the huddling barbarians and slaughtered them like sheep. Only 3000, it is said, escaped. According to Herodotus, 91 Spartiates, 16 Tegeates, and 52 Athenians fell in the battle. Plutarch, who repeats these figures, states on the authority of Cleidemus that the 52 Athenians were all of the tribe Aeantis, and gives the total Greek losses at 1360. It is probable that the numbers are authentic but refer to particular ‘units’ in the several forces, and that the total is incomplete. Herodotus is hard to reconcile with Pausanias on the subject of the graves of the dead, and some of the cenotaphs which he mentions may not have been so fraudulent as he was told. If Plutarch may be trusted, the award of the prize of valour was a compromise. The Athenians disputed the claim of the Spartans, but both agreed to the Corinthian suggestion that the Plataeans should have the prize. Herodotus gives his personal verdict for the Lacedaemonians and among them for Aristodemus, the survivor of Leonidas’ 300, whom his fellow-Spartiates rejected because he had sought death to end his shame. They did however honour (among others) Amompharetus, an argument against the story of his insubordination. Of the Athenians Sophanes of Decelea most distinguished himself. The famous anchor with which, it was said, he held his ground may have been an offensive grapnel. Among the offerings made out of the spoils in commemoration of the victory was a gold tripod dedicated to the Delphian god. It rested on a brazen column formed of three entwined serpents (not, as Herodotus says, a single serpent with three heads) which now stands in the Hippodrome at Constantinople engraved with the names of the states which took part in the war. The allies guaranteed by oath to the Plataeans, who on their part undertook the tending of the dead, their independence and the security of their land. An altar was erected to Zeus the Liberator, and a festival, the Eleutheria, ascribed to the initiative of Aristides, was instituted, which was still celebrated in the time of Plutarch, although its continuous observance can hardly be credited.

In his Life of Aristides Plutarch puts the battle on the day on which it was commemorated in his own time, the 4th of the Attic month Boedromion, which he equates with the 27th of the Boeotian month Panemus. It is not clear how the dates are to be reconciled, nor whether he means that they coincided in 479 bc or in the year when he was writing, or in both, or, if they sometimes differed, whether the Attic or the Boeotian date was the day of the commemoration. But in two other passages in his works Plutarch gives the 3rd of Boedromion as the day of the battle, and this may be regarded as the accepted date. It may be assumed to be a ‘Metonic’ reduction of the original date in the old Attic calendar and may be identified with the 27th of August 479 BC.

Plataea, like Marathon, was a tactical victory wrung from a strategic failure. Mardonius had frustrated the advance of the Greeks, and rightly used his opportunity of attacking them when they had fallen apart into three isolated divisions. Theoretically he ought to have driven them back over Cithaeron in headlong rout. What saved the day were the steady discipline of the Lacedaemonians and the cool judgment of Pausanias in launching his charge at the precise moment when the Persian infantry could no longer evade it. At close quarters the hoplites’ armour and ‘the Dorian spear’ soon decided the issue.

The Mantineans and at any rate the main force of the Eleans arrived too late for the battle. They professed their regret and offered (or afterwards pretended to have offered) to pursue Artabazus and his corps, a ludicrous proposal which Pausanias of course vetoed. When they got home, they banished their generals. Probably the delay was not involuntary but political and indicates that the party in power was not wholehearted for the cause of Hellas.

The Allies had still to reckon with Thebes, the chief stronghold of medism in Greece. Ten days after the battle they invested the city and demanded the surrender of the partisans of Persia and in particular their leaders, Timagenidas and Attaginus. On the refusal of the demand they began to lay waste the territory of the Thebans and to assault the walls. On the 20th day Timagenidas and his friends offered to give themselves up and stand their trial. The Thebans negotiated a surrender on that condition and handed the medizers over to Pausanias, all except Attaginus, who made his escape. The prisoners expected, and seem to have had a right to claim, a trial, and relied upon bribery to pull them through. But Pausanias, having dismissed the allied army, took them to Corinth, and there, anticipating their design, put them to death. It is possible however that his action was less arbitrary than appears in the brief narrative of Herodotus. How summary and incomplete that narrative is, may be judged from a consideration of the terms imposed on the Thebans, which must have included far more than the extradition of the medizers, and altered the whole status of Thebes in Boeotia. But we can only infer this change from incidental notices in later writers and from the subsequent history.

MYCALE

On the same day, it is told, as the battle of Plataea the Greeks won another victory on the Ionian coast at Mycale, the promontory east of Samos. Leotychidas and his fleet had lain at Delos on guard throughout the summer. Xanthippus and the Athenians, who joined him probably when Mardonius evacuated Attica and Pausanias crossed Cithaeron, may have raised the total of ships to about 250. The time had come for offensive action on sea as well as on land. Accordingly, when three envoys arrived from the Samians inviting the fleet to Samos, promising an immediate revolt in Ionia, and assuring the admirals of the unseaworthy and helpless plight of the enemy’s navy, Leotychidas took an omen from the name of their spokesman, Hegesistratus, accepted their proposal, and concluded a treaty of alliance with them. On the morrow the sacrifices proved favourable and the fleet sailed for Samos, where they anchored off the Heraeum and prepared for battle.

For Xerxes’ admirals had on the advent of spring concentrated the remnants of his armada at Samos, where they kept ward over the Ionians. According to Herodotus, they had still 300 ships, but deemed them unequal to coping with the Greek force, and therefore on news of its advance sent the Phoenicians away and withdrew the rest to the mainland to be under the protection of the army. There are three new admirals in command, Mardontes, Artayntes and Ithamitres, and the number might suggest that the Phoenicians went earlier in the winter or even, as Diodorus says, straight from Salamis. But the Phoenicians hitherto had no admiral other than the King; they are to be reckoned in the 300 ships at Samos. Whither they were sent we are not told. It has been conjectured that they were dispatched to the Hellespont or north Aegean, but at all events there is no trace of them there, and Artabazus crosses the Bosphorus in ‘boats’ not ‘ships.’ Herodotus presumably means that they went home. The problem involves more than the Phoenician division, for Mardontes is an admiral, but has no fleet. Probably he commanded the Egyptian contingent and sent away his ships with the Phoenician, but retained the marines, apparently Egyptians, of whom Mardonius had already picked out the best individual fighters. What remained then at Mycale of the navy was only the intact Pontic fleet and the residue of the Ionian, both almost wholly Hellenic and probably less than 200 ships in all.

There could be no question of a naval battle. In order to save the ships they were beached at a place named (perhaps afterwards) Scolopoeis, by a river Gaeson (to be identified with the Eski Menderes, ‘old Maeander’), under the south slopes of Mount Mycale a few miles south-west of Priene. The Maeander has long since silted up the Latmian gulf and pushed its plain far westwards past the probable site, nearly due north of the island of Lade. There, within view of the scene of the last struggle of the Ionian revolt 15 years before, the Persians built a fort of stones and stakes to protect their stranded fleet. The general Tigranes was present with no doubt a considerable force, but surely not, as Herodotus believed, his entire army of 60,000 men, the bulk of which would be at Sardes with the King. The naval commanders might muster about 5000 marines, but the Ionian and Aeolian crews were a positive danger. The Samians, whose city was already suspected owing to the release of the prisoners taken in Attica and was now in open-rebellion, were disarmed. The Milesians were sent away to the rear on the pretence of securing the passes over the mountain.

Herodotus places the Persian decision and preparations after the Greeks had departed from Delos, puts the precautions against the disaffected lonians after an appeal addressed to them by Leotychidas through a herald from his ship, and represents the Allies as disappointed of a battle at Samos and in doubt whether to go back or to sail to the Hellespont. It is more likely that the Persian admirals formed their plan as soon as they heard that the Athenians had joined Leotychidas, and withdrew from Samos before Hegesistratus and his colleagues started for Delos. This hypothesis would give them time to secure the co-operation of Tigranes and to build their elaborate fort, and would explain the Samian mission, Leotychidas’ prompt response to it, and the release of the Athenian prisoners. The debate of the Greek commanders at the Heraeum would be more intelligible at their council on their return to Samos from Mycale, and their preparations for battle before and after that debate might well coalesce. Among other things they provided landing bridges, which imply that they were aware that the enemy was no longer afloat.

Having accomplished the voyage of about 20 miles in the morning, the Greeks rowed past the enemy’s position and disembarked, probably at a long distance from it, for they were not opposed, and to the east or south-east of it, for the Lacedaemonians, who presumably held the right wing, approached it over a gully and hills, while the Athenians marched on level ground and along the shore. Their number is as vague as their enemy’s. Leotychidas could easily have landed 25 or ’30 thousand men, but only the marines, at most 5000, would be regular troops. As they moved forward a rumour spread through the ranks, that their brethren were victorious over Mardonius in Boeotia, and heightened their courage. The left wing or Athenians, Corinthians, Sicyonians, and Troezenians, who had the easier and perhaps shorter route, came into action first. The Persians awaited the attack in front of their fortification behind their wicker shields and for a time held their ground. The approach of the Lacedaemonians spurred the Athenians and their consorts by a spirit of rivalry to fresh efforts, and perhaps enfeebled or distracted the defence. They pushed through the hedge of shields, fell upon the Persians, drove them after a stubborn fight into their stockade, and pressed in with them. Thereupon the other Barbarians fled, but the Persians grouped in small bands kept up their obstinate resistance until the Lacedaemonians with the rest of the right wing arrived and took a hand in disposing of them. In this combat Mardontes and Tigranes fell and not a few of the Greeks. The Sicyonians in particular lost many lives including their general, Perilaus. Of the Hellenes in Xerxes’ service the Samians claimed to have been the first to turn against the Barbarians. Their example was followed by the other Ionians and doubtless the more numerous Aeolians and others, whom Ephorus did not forget, although Herodotus omits them. As the Samians had been disarmed and Herodotus can say no more of their achievements than that they did what they could to aid the Greeks, one may surmise that their claim was rather political than military and referred to the mission of Hegesistratus rather than daring deeds at Mycale. The Milesians, whose turn came last, have a better title to a share in the honours of the day. They so shepherded the fugitives escaping up the mountain that they delivered them over to their pursuers, or finally slaughtered them outright. When the Greeks had made an end of killing they set fire to the Persian fort and fleet (or did not the enemy rather burn them on abandoning them?) and sailed back to Samos. The prize of valour went to the Athenians and individually to Hermolycus, son of Euthoenus.

The description given by Herodotus of the battle of Mycale so closely reproduces some of the incidents and language of his narrative of the operations at Plataea that it raises the suspicion that the two have somehow been contaminated. Had the synchronism of the battles, the emulation of the services naval and military, and the rivalry of the protagonists Athenian and Lacedaemonian provoked a forced assimilation of the stories, which was further developed by the Greek love of parallels and coincidences? Was the preliminary fight at Mycale approximated to the Spartan victory on the Moloeis? was there ever a temple of Demeter Eleusinia at Scolopoeis? was the wooden wall by the Asopus modelled on the fort by the Gaeson? and was the tale of its capture adapted from the Athenian drama enacted in the other theatre of war ? Diodorus drew from Ephorus a different version of the battle of Mycale, which ascribes a more prominent part to the Asiatic Greeks, but it is hardly consistent with Herodotus and is of dubious authority. Both accounts leave uncomfortable doubts. How and where between sea and river did the Greeks land unopposed? What was the number engaged on either side, 5000 or 25,000? Was Mycale a big battle or a hasty raid? designed to liberate the Hellenes of the eastern continent at large or merely to destroy the enemy’s last fleet in the Aegean before his army could come down from Sardes ? The Islands and the Hellespont were the prizes at stake, says Herodotus, but the result, he notes, is a second Ionian revolt.

THE CAPTURE OF SESTOS

On their return to Samos the Greeks (no doubt the council of admirals) debated the transplantation of the Ionians from their country. But that was not the primary question discussed. It appears that the real business of the meeting was to determine whether the fleet should now go home or to the Hellespont, the question in fact which, according to Herodotus, had been considered on their first arrival at Samos. The Peloponnesians were anxious to go home and to limit their liabilities overseas by leaving Asia to the Persians. The Athenians would not abandon to the enemy their Ionian kinsfolk and other Greeks who were now committed to their cause. The proposal to transfer the Ionians to Greece and settle them on the territories of the medizers, who would be exported to Ionia, was the Peloponnesian answer to the Athenian objection. This drastic solution has its humorous side, but, however crude, it had a show of rough justice and expediency and may have been put forward as an argument or debating point in the controversy. A national migration was an idea familiar to the Greeks and had been suggested to the Ionians long ago by Bias and to the Athenians only the year before by Themistocles. In a.d. 1923 it has become an accepted method of solving the Eastern question. But obviously under the circumstances the point could not be pressed against the will of the Ionians and of the Athenians, who disputed the right of the Peloponnesians to dispose of their ‘colonies.’ If Herodotus may be trusted, the Samians, Chians, Lesbians, and other Islanders were now formally admitted to the alliance. The fleet, in which Thucydides subsequently includes Ionians and Hellespontines, then sailed for Abydos.

Herodotus believed that the object of the move to the Hellespont was to destroy the bridges, but on his own showing they were already gone at the time of Xerxes’ return. Whatever the rank and file might expect, the Greek generals must have known that fact. It was, however, important to secure the Hellespont and to impound the cables, and the Athenians, who constituted the larger part of the expedition and more and more plainly asserted themselves in its direction, had interests of their own to promote in that region. The fleet, which was delayed at Cape Lectum by contrary winds, can hardly have reached Abydos before the middle of September. The Persians in the neighbourhood had time to concentrate their forces at Sestos under Artayctes, the governor of the district. Sestos was strongly fortified and was the key of the Straits. Thither Oeobazus, commandant of Cardia, had conveyed the cables for safety. The autumn was beginning. The Spartans disliked sieges. Neither they nor the other Peloponnesians had any enthusiasm for a transmarine war mainly for the benefit of Athens. They had no mind to sit down to a prolonged blockade. Leotychidas was not sorry to leave the task to the Athenians and the new confederates. He took the Peloponnesian contingents back to Greece, and thereby manifested that rift between the allies which soon grew into an open breach.

The Athenians with their associates invested Sestos, but met with a resolute resistance. As the autumn waned the crews began to murmur and demanded to be led home; but Xanthippus and his colleagues refused to retire before the fortress was taken, unless on express orders from the Athenian people—which they had doubtless made sure would be withheld. At length one night, when the garrison had been reduced to eating their bed-straps, the Persians climbed down the wall on the landward side and abandoned the town. At daybreak the citizens opened the gates to the besiegers. Artayctes was overtaken at Aegospotami; and at the instance of the Elaeusians, who accused him of offences against the hero Protesilaus, was crucified by the Athenians. Oeobazus fell into the hands of the Apsinthians, who sacrificed him to their god Pleistorus. This indication of his course suggests that Artabazus on his way from Greece with his army corps was perhaps expected when the Persians broke out and they hoped to meet him. The siege had trenched upon the winter—Thucydides’ word need not mean that it lasted all through the winter, but would imply that it continued at least into the second half of November. Artabazus travelled within three days’ march of Sestos, and proceeded to Byzantium. He made no attempt to save Sestos, nor did the Athenians molest his passage of the Bosphorus. Sestos must have already fallen and the fleet been dispersed. But if Artabazus reached Byzantium only about the end of November, three months after the battle of Plataea, his ‘flight’ cannot have been so precipitate as Herodotus represents.

The Greeks, when they crossed Cithaeron and the Aegean, had already passed beyond a strictly defensive attitude to an offensive defence. The capture of Sestos concludes at once the campaign and Herodotus’ history and this phase of the war. Xanthippus, when he took the Athenian fleet home, brought with him the cables of the invader’s bridges to be dedicated in the temples of the gods.

CHAPTER XI