READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

GEORGE GROTE'S HISTORY OF GREECE

CHAPTER XXXIX.

PROCEEDINGS IN GREECE FROM THE BATTLE OF MARATHON TO THE TIME OF THE BATTLE OF THERMOPYLAE.

Our information respecting the affairs of Greece immediately after the repulse of the Persians from Marathon, is very scanty.

Kleomenes and Leotychides, the two kings of Sparta (the former belonging to the elder, or Eurystheneid, the latter to the younger, or the Prokleid, race), had conspired for the purpose of dethroning the former Prokleid king Demaratus: and Kleom­enes had even gone so far as to tamper with the Delphian priestess for this purpose. Has manoeuvre being betrayed shortly afterwards, he was so alarmed at the displeasure of the Spartans, that he retired into Thessaly, and from thence into Arcadia, where he employed the powerful influence of his regal character and heroic lineage to arm the Arcadian people against his country. The Spartans, alarmed in their turn, voluntarily invited him back with a promise of amnesty. But his renewed lease did not last long: his habitual violence of character became ag­gravated into decided insanity, insomuch that he struck with his stick whomsoever he met; and his relatives were forced to confine him in chains under a Helot sentinel. By severe menaces, he one day constrained this man to give him his sword, with which he mangled himself dreadfully and perished. So shocking a death was certain to receive a religious interpretation, but which among the misdeeds of his life had drawn down upon him the divine wrath, was a point difficult to determine. Most of the Greeks imputed it to the sin of his having corrupted the Pythian priestess : but the Athenians and Argeians were each disposed to an hypothesis of their own,—the former believed that the gods had thus punished the Spartan king for having cut timber in the sacred grove of Eleusis,—the latter recognized the avenging hand of the hero Argus, whose grove Kleomenes had burnt, along with, so many suppliant warriors who had taken sanctuary in it. Without pronouncing between these different suppositions, Herodotus contents himself with expressing his opinion that the miserable death of Kleomenes was an atonement for his conduct to Demaratus. But what surprises us most is, to hear that the Spartans, usually more disposed than other Greeks to refer every striking phenomenon to divine agency, recognized on this occasion nothing but a vulgar physical cause: Kleomenes had gone mad, they affirmed, through habits of intoxication, learned from some Scythian envoys who had come to Sparta.

The death of Kleomenes, and the discredit thrown on his char­acter, emboldened the Aeginetans to prefer a complaint at Sparta respecting their ten hostages whom Kleomenes and Leotychides had taken away from the island, a little before the invasion of Attica by the Persians under Datis, and deposited at Athens as guarantee to the Athenians against aggression from Egina at that critical moment. Leotychides was the surviving auxiliary of Kleomenes in the requisition of these hostages, and against him the Aeginetans complained. Though the proceeding was one unquestionably beneficial to the general cause of Greece, yet such was the actual displeasure of the Lacedaemonians against the deceased king and his acts, that the survivor Leotychides was brought to a public trial, and condemned to be delivered up as prisoner in atonement to the Aeginetans. The latter were about to carry away their prisoner, when a dignified Spartan named Theasides, pointed out to them the danger which they were incurring by such an indignity against the regal person,—the Spartans, he observed, had passed sentence under feelings of temporary wrath, which would probably be exchanged for sympathy if they saw the sentence realized.

Accordingly the Aeginetans, instead of executing the sentence, contented themselves with stipulating that Leotychides should accompany them to Athens and redemand their hostages detained there. The Athenians refused to give up the hostages, in spite of the emphatic terms in which the Spartan king set forth the sacred obligation of restoring a deposit: they justified the refusal in part by saying that the deposit had been lodged by the two kings jointly, and could not be surrendered to one of them alone: but they probably recollected that the hostages were placed less as a deposit than as a security against Aeginetans hostility,—which security they were not disposed to forego.

Leotychides having been obliged to retire without success, the Aeginetans resolved to adopt measures of retaliation for themselves : they waited for the period of a solemn festival celebrated every fifth year at Sunium, on which occasion a ship pecu­liarly equipped and carrying some of the leading Athenians as Theors, or sacred envoys, sailed thither from Athens. This ship they found means to capture, and carried all on board prisoners to Egina. Whether an exchange took place, or whether the prisoners and hostages on both sides were put to death, we do not know; but the consequence of their proceeding was an active and decided war between Athens and Egina, beginning seemingly about 488 or 487 bc, and lasting until 481 bc, the year preceding the invasion of Xerxes.

An Aeginetan citizen named Nikodromus took advantage of this war to further a plot against the government of the island: having been before, as he thought, unjustly banished, he now organized a revolt of the people against the ruling oligarchy, concerting with the Athenians a simultaneous invasion in support of his plan. Accordingly, on the appointed day he rose with his partisans in arms and took possession of the Old Town,—a strong post which had been superseded in course of time by the more modern city on the sea-shore, less protected though more convenient. But no Athenians appeared, and without them he was unable to maintain his footing: he was obliged to make his escape from the island after witnessing the complete defeat of his partisans,—a large body of whom, seven hundred in number, fell into the hands of the government, and were led out for execution. One man alone among these prisoners burst his chains, fled to the sanctuary of Demeter Thesmophorus, and was fortunate enough to seize the handle of the door before he was overtaken. In spite of every effort to drag him away by force, he clung to it with convulsive grasp: his pursuers did not venture to put him to death in such a position, but they severed the hands from the body and then executed him, leaving the hands still hanging to and grasping the door-handle, where they seem to have long remained without being taken off. Destruction of the seven hundred prisoners does not seem to have drawn down upon the Aeginetan oligarchy either vengeance from the gods or censure from their contemporaries; but the violation of sanctuary, in the case of that one unfortunate man whose hands were cut off, was a crime which the goddess Demeter never forgave. More than fifty years afterwards, in the first year of the Peloponnesian war, the Aeginetans, having been previously conquered by Athens, were finally expelled from their island: such expulsion was the divine judgment upon them for this ancient impiety, which half a century of continued expiatory sacrifice had not been sufficient to wipe out.

The Athenians who were to have assisted Nikodromus arrived at Egina one day too late. Their proceedings had been delayed by the necessity of borrowing twenty triremes from the Corinthians, in addition to fifty of their own: with these seventy sail they defeated the Aeginetans, who met them with a fleet of equal number, and then landed on the island. The Aeginetans solicited aid from Argos, but that city was either too much displeased with them, or too much exhausted by the defeat sustained from the Spartan Kleomenes, to grant it. Nevertheless, one thousand Argeian volunteers, under a distinguished champion of the pentathlon named Eurybates, came to their assistance, and a vigorous war was carried on, with varying success, against the Athenian armament.

At sea, the Athenians sustained a defeat, being attacked at a moment when their fleet was in disorder, so that they lost four ships with their crews: on land they were more successful, and few of the Argeian volunteers survived to return home. The general of the latter, Eurybates, confiding in his great personal strength and skill, challenged the best of the Athenian warriors to single combat: he slew three of them in succession, but the arm of the fourth, Sophanes of Dekeleia, was victorious, and proved fatal to him. At length the invaders were obliged to leave the island without any decisive result, and the war seems to have been prosecuted by frequent descents and privateering on both sides,—in which Nikodromus and the Aeginetans exiles, planted by Athens on the coast of Attica near Sunium, took an active part; the advantage on the whole being on the side of Athens.

The general course of this war, and especially the failure of the enterprise concerned with Nikodromus in consequence of delay in borrowing ships from Corinth, were well calculated to impress upon the Athenians the necessity of enlarging their naval force. And it is from the present time that we trace among them the first growth of that decided tendency towards maritime activity, which coincided so happily with the expansion of their democracy, and opened a new phase in Grecian history, as well as a new career for themselves.

The exciting effect produced upon them by the repulse of the Persians at Marathon has been dwelt upon in my preceding volume. Miltiades, the victor in that field, having been removed from the scene under circumstances already described, Aristeides and Themistokles became the chief men at Athens: and the former was chosen archon during the succeeding year. His exemplary uprightness in magisterial functions insured to him lofty esteem from the general public, not without a certain proportion of active enemies, some of them sufferers by his justice. These enemies naturally became partisans of his rival, Themistocles, who had all the talents necessary for bringing them into cooperation: and the rivalry between the two chiefs became so bitter and menacing, that even Aristeides himself is reported to have said, If the Athenians were wise, they would cast both of us into the barathrum. Under such circumstances, it is not too much to say that the peace of the country was preserved mainly by the institution called Ostracism, of which so much has been said in the preceding volume. After three or four years of con­tinued political rivalry, the two chiefs appealed to a vote of ostra­cism, and Aristeides was banished.

Of the particular points on which their rivalry turned, we arc unfortunately little informed. But it is highly probable that one of them was, the important change of policy above alluded to,—the conversion of Athens from a land-power into a sea-power,—the development of this new and stirring element in the minds of the people. By all authorities, this change of policy is ascribed principally and specially to Themistokles d on that account, if for no other reason, Aristeides would probably be found, opposed to it,—but it was, moreover, a change not in harmony with that old-fashioned Hellenism, undisturbed uniformity of life and narrow range of active duty and experience, which Aristeides seems to have approved in common with the subsequent philosophers. The seaman was naturally more of a wanderer and cosmopolite than the heavy-armed soldier: the modern Greek seaman even at this moment is so to a remarkable degree, distinguished for the variety of his ideas and the quickness of his intelligence : the land-service was a type of steadiness and inflexible ranks, the sea-service that of mutability and adventure. Such was the idea strongly entertained by Plato and other philosophers: though we may remark that they do not render justice to the Athenian seaman, whose training was far more perfect and laborious, and his habits of obedience far more complete, than that of the Athenian hoplite, or horseman: a training beginning with Themistocles, and reaching its full perfection about the commencement of the Peloponnesian war.

In recommending extraordinary efforts to create a navy as well as to acquire nautical practice, Themistokles displayed all that sagacious appreciation of the circumstances and dangers of the time for which Thucydides gives him credit: and there can be no doubt that Aristeides, though the honester politician of the two, was at this particular crisis the less essential to his country. Not only was there the struggle with Egina, a maritime power equal or more than equal, and within sight of the Athenian harbor,—but there was also in the distance a still more formidable contingency to guard against. The Persian armament had been driven with disgrace from Attica back to Asia; but the Persian monarch still remained with undiminished means of aggression and increased thirst for revenge; and Themistocles knew well that the danger from that quarter would recur greater than ever. He believed that it would recur again in the same way, by an expedition across the Aegean like that of Datis to Marathon; against which the best defence would be found in a numerous and well-trained fleet. Nor could the large preparations of Darius for renewing the attack remain unknown to a vigilant observer, extending as they did over so many Greeks subject to the Persian empire. Such positive warning was more than enough to stimulate the active genius of Themistocles, who now prevailed upon his countrymen to begin with energy the work of maritime preparation, as well against Egina as against Persia. Not only were two hundred new ships built, and citizens trained as sea­men,—but the important work was commenced, during the year when Themistokles was either archon or general, of forming and fortifying a new harbor for Athens at Peiraeus, instead of the ancient open bay of Phalerum. The latter was indeed somewhat nearer to the city, but Peiraeus, with its three separate natural ports, admitting of being closed and fortified, was incomparably superior in safety as well as in convenience. It is not too much to say, with Herodotus,—that the Aeginetan “war was the salvation of Greece, by constraining the Athenians to make themselves a maritime power.” The whole efficiency of the resistance subsequently made to Xerxes turned upon this new movement in the organization of Athens, allowed as it was to attain tolerable completeness through a fortunate concurrence of accidents; for the important delay of ten years, between the defeat of Marathon and the fresh invasion by which it was to be avenged, was in truth the result of accident. First, the revolt of Egypt; next, the death of Darius; thirdly, the indifference of Xerxes, at his first accession, towards Hellenic matters,—postponed until 480 bc, an invasion which would naturally have been undertaken in 487 or 486 bc., and which would have found Athens at that time without her wooden walls,—the great engine of her subsequent salvation.

Another accidental help, without which the new fleet could not have been built,—a considerable amount of public money,—was also by good fortune now available to the Athenians. It is first in an emphatic passage of the poet Aeschylus, and next from Herodotus on the present occasion, that we hear of the silver mines of Laurium in Attica, and the valuable produce which they rendered to the state. They were situated in the southern portion of the territory, not very far from the promontory of Sunium, amidst a district of low hills which extended across much of the space between the eastern sea at Thorikus, and the western at Anaphlystus. At what time they first began to be worked, we have no information; but it seems hardly possible that they could have been worked with any spirit or profitable result until after the expulsion of Hippias and the establishment of the democratical constitution of Kleisthenes. Neither the strong local factions, by which different portions of Attica were set against each other before the time of Peisistratus, nor the rule of that despot succeeded by his two sons, were likely to afford confidence and encouragement. But when the democracy of Kleisthenes first brought Attica into one systematic and comprehensive whole, with equal rights to all the parts, and a common centre at Athens,—the power of that central government over the mineral wealth of the country, and its means of binding the whole people to respect agreements concluded with individual undertakers, would give a new stimulus to private speculation in the district of Laurium. It was the practice of the Athenian government either to sell, or to let for a long term of years, particular districts of this productive region to individuals or companies,—on consideration partly of a sum or fine paid down, partly of a reserved rent equal to one-twenty-fourth part of the gross produce.

We are told by Herodotus that there was in the Athenian treasury, at the time when Themistokles made his proposition to enlarge the naval force, a great sum¹ arising from the Laurian mines, out of which a distribution was on the point of being made among the citizens,—ten drachms to each man. This great amount in hand must probably have been the produce of the purchase-money or fines received from recent sales, since the small annual reserved rent can hardly have been accumulated during many successive years : new and enlarged enterprises in mines must be supposed to have been recently begun by individuals under contract with the government, in order to produce at the moment so overflowing an exchequer and to furnish means for the special distribution contemplated. Themistokles availed himself of this precious opportunity,—set forth the necessities of the war with Egina and the still more formidable menace from the great enemy in Asia,—and prevailed upon the people to forego the promised distribution for the purpose of obtaining an efficient navy. One cannot doubt that there must have been many speakers who would try to make themselves popular by opposing this proposition and supporting the distribution, insomuch that the power of the people generally to feel the force of a distant motive as predominant over a present gain deserves notice as an earnest of their approaching greatness.

Immense, indeed, was the recompense reaped for this self-denial, not merely by Athens but by Greece generally, when the preparations of Xerxes came to be matured, and his armament was understood to be approaching. The orders for equipment of ships and laying in of provisions, issued by the Great King to his subject Greeks in Asia, the Aegean, and Thrace, would of course become known throughout Greece Proper,—especially the vast labor bestowed on the canal of Mount Athos, which would be the theme of wondering talk with every Thasian or Akanthian citizen who visited the festival games in Peloponnesus. All these premonitory evidences were public enough, without any need of that elaborate stratagem whereby the exiled Demaratus as alleged to have secretly transmitted, from Susa to Sparta, in­telligence of the approaching expedition. The formal announcements of Xerxes all designated Athens as the special object of his wrath and vengeance, and other Grecian cities might thus hope to escape without mischief: so that the prospect of the great invasion did not at first provoke among them any unanimous dispositions to resist. Accordingly, when the first heralds despatched by Xerxes from Sardis in the autumn of 481 BC, a little before his march to the Hellespont, addressed themselves to the different cities with demand of earth and water, many were disposed to comply. Neither to Athens, nor to Sparta, were any heralds sent; and these two cities were thus from the beginning identified in interest and in the necessity of defence. Both of them sent, in this trying moment, to consult the Delphian oracle: while both at the same time joined to convene a Pan­Hellenic congress at the Isthmus of Corinth, for the purpose of organizing resistance against the expected invader.

I have in the preceding volume pointed out the various steps whereby the separate states of Greece were gradually brought, even against their own natural instincts, into something approaching more nearly to political union. The present congress, assembled under the influence of common fear from Persia, has more of a Pan-Hellenic character than any political event which has yet occurred in Grecian history. It extends far beyond the range of those Peloponnesian states who constitute the immediate allies of Sparta: it comprehends Athens, and is even sum­moned in part by her strenuous instigation: it seeks to combine, moreover, every city of Hellenic race and language, however distant, which can be induced to take part in it,—even the Cretans, Corcyraeans, and Sicilians. It is true that all these states do not actually come, but earnest efforts are made to induce them to come: the dispersed brethren of the Hellenic family are intreated to marshal themselves in the same ranks for a joint political purpose,—the defence of the common hearth and metropolis of the race. This is a new fact in Grecian history, opening scenes and ideas unlike to anything which has gone before,—enlarging, prodigiously, the functions and duties connected with that headship of Greece which had hitherto been in the hands of Sparta, but which is about to become too comprehensive for her to manage,—and thus introducing increased habits of cooperation among the subordinate states, as well as rival hopes of aggrandizement among the leaders. The congress at the isthmus of Corinth marks such further advance in the centralizing tendencies of Greece, and seems at first to promise an onward march in the same direction: but the prom­ise will not be found realized.

Its first step was, indeed, one of inestimable value. While most of the deputies present came prepared, in the name of their respective cities, to swear reciprocal fidelity and brotherhood, they also addressed all their efforts to appease the feuds and dis­sensions which reigned among the particular members of their own meeting. Of these the most prominent, as well as the most dangerous, was the war still subsisting between Athens and Aegina. The latter was not exempt, even now, from suspicions of medizing, i. e., embracing the cause of the Persians, which had been raised by her giving earth and water ten years before to Darius: but her present conduct gave no countenance to such suspicions: she took earnest part in the congress as well as in the joint measures of defence, and willingly consented to accommodate her difference with Athens. In this work of reconciling feuds, so essential to the safety of Greece, the Athenian Themistocles took a prominent part, as well as Cheileos of Tegea in Arcadia. The congress proceeded to send envoys and solicit cooperation from such cities as were yet either equivocal or indifferent, especially Argos, Corcyra, and the Cretan and Sicilian Greeks,—and at the same time to despatch spies across to Sardis, for the purpose of learning the state and prospects of the assembled army.

These spies presently returned, having been detected and condemned to death by the Persian generals, but released by express order of Xerxes, who directed that the full strength of his assembled armament should be shown to them, in order that the terror of the Greeks might be thus magnified. The step was well calculated for such a purpose: but the discouragement throughout Greece was already extreme, at this critical period when the storm was about to burst upon them. Even to intelligent and well-meaning Greeks, much more to the careless, the timid, or the treacherous,—Xerxes with his countless host ap­peared irresistible, and indeed something more than human : of course, such an impression would be encouraged by the large number of Greeks already his tributaries: and we may even trace a manifestation of a wish to get rid of the Athenians altogether, as the chief objects of Persian vengeance and chief hindrance to tranquil submission. This despair of the very contin­uance of Hellenic life and autonomy breaks forth even from the sanctuary of Hellenic religion, the Delphian temple; when the Athenians, in their distress and uncertainty, sent to consult the oracle. Hardly had their two envoys performed the customary sacrifices, and sat down in the inner chamber near the priestess Aristonice, when she at once exclaimed: “Wretched men, why sit ye there? Quit your land and city, and flee afar! Head body, feet, and hands are alike rotten: fire and sword, in the train of the Syrian chariot, shall overwhelm you: nor only your city, but other cities also, as well as many even of the temples of the gods,—which are now sweating and trembling with fear, and foreshadow, by drops of blood, on their roofs, the hard calamities impending. Get ye away from the sanctuary, with your souls steeped in sorrow.”

So terrific a reply had rarely escaped from the lips of the priestess. The envoys were struck to the earth by it, and durst not carry it back to Athens. In their sorrow they were encouraged yet to hope by an influential Delphian citizen named Timon (we trace here, as elsewhere, the underhand working of these leading Delphians on the priestess), who advised them to provide themselves with the characteristic marks of supplication, and to approach the oracle a second time in that imploring guise: “O lord, we pray thee (they said), have compassion on these boughs of supplication, and deliver to us something more comfortable concerning our country; else we quit not thy sanctuary, but remain here until death.” Upon which the priestess replied: “Athene with all her prayers and all her sagacity cannot propitiate Olympian Zeus. But this assurance I will give you, firm as adamant: when everything else in the land of Kekrops shall be taken, Zeus grants to Athene that the wooden wall alone shall remain unconquered, to defend you and your children. Stand not to await the assailing horse and foot from the continent, but turn your backs and retire: you shall yet live to fight another day. O divine Salamis, thou too shalt destroy the children of women, either at the seed-time or at the harvest.”

This second answer was a sensible mitigation of the first: it left open some hone of escape, though faint, dark, and unintelligible,—and the envoys wrote it down to carry back to Athens, not concealing, probably, the terrific sentence which had preceded it. When read to the people, the obscurity of the meaning provoked many different interpretations. What was meant by “the wooden wall? ” Some supposed that the acropolis itself, which had originally been surrounded with a wooden palisade, was the refuge pointed out: but the greater number, and among them most of those who were by profession expositors of prophecy, maintained that the wooden wall indicated the fleet. But these professional expositors, while declaring that the god bade them go on shipboard, deprecated all idea of a naval battle, and insisted on the necessity of abandoning Attica forever: the last lines of the oracle, wherein it was said that Salamis would destroy the children of women, appeared to them to portend nothing but disaster in the event of a naval combat. Such was the opinion of those who passed for the best expositors of the divine will: it harmonized completely with the despairing temper then prevalent, heightened by the terrible sentence pronounced in the first oracle; and emigration to some, foreign land presented itself as the only hope of safety even for their persons. The fate of Athens,—and of Greece generally, which would have been helpless without Athens,—now hung upon a thread, when Themistokles, the great originator of the fleet, interposed with equal steadfastness of heart and ingenuity, to insure the proper use of it. He contended that if the god had intended to desig­nate Salamis as the scene of a naval disaster to the Greeks, that island would have been called in the oracle by some such epithet as “wretched Salamis”: but the fact that it was termed “divine Salamis,” indicated that the parties, destined to perish there, were the enemies of Greece, not the Greeks themselves. He encouraged his countrymen, therefore, to abandon their city and country, and to trust themselves to the fleet as the wooden wall recommended by the god, but with full determination to fight and conquer on board. Great, indeed, were the consequences which turned upon this bold stretch of exegetical conjecture. Unless the Athenians had been persuaded, by some plausible show of interpretation, that the sense of the oracle encouraged instead of forbidding a naval combat, they would in their exist­ing depression have abandoned all thought of resistance.

Even with the help of an encouraging interpretation, however, nothing less than the most unconquerable resolution and patriotism could have enabled the Athenians to bear up against such terrific denunciations from the Delphian god, and persist in resistance in place of seeking safety by emigration. Herodotus emphatically impresses this truth upon his readers : nay, he even steps out of his way to do so, proclaiming Athens as the real saviour of Greece. Writing as he did about the beginning of the Peloponnesian war,—at a time when Athens, having attained the maximum of her empire, was alike feared, hated, and admired, by most of the Grecian states,—he knows that the opinion which he is giving will be unpopular with his hearers generally, and he apologizes for it as something wrung from him against his will by the force of the evidence. Nor was it only that the Athenians dared to stay and fight against immense odds: they, and they alone, threw into the cause that energy and for­wardness whereby it was enabled to succeed, as will appear farther in the sequel. But there was also a third way, not less deserving of notice, in which they contributed to the result. As soon as the congress of deputies met at the isthmus of Corinth, it became essential to recognize some one commanding state, and with regard to the land-force no one dreamed of contesting the preeminence of Sparta. But in respect to the fleet, her pretensions were more disputable, since she furnished at most only six­teen ships, and little or no nautical skill; while Athens brought two-thirds of the entire naval force, with the best ships and sea­men. Upon these grounds the idea was at first started, that Athens should command at sea and Sparta on land: but the majority of the allies manifested a decided repugnance, announcing that they would follow no one but a Spartan. To the honor of the Athenians, they at once waived their pretensions, as soon as they saw that the unity of the confederate force, at this moment of peril, would be compromised. To appreciate this generous abnegation of a claim in itself so reasonable, we must recollect that the love of preeminence was among the most prominent attributes of the Hellenic character: a prolific source of their greatness and excellence, but producing also no small amount Loth of their follies and their crimes. To renounce at the call of public obligation a claim to personal honor and glory, is perhaps the rarest of all virtues in a son of Hellen.

We find thus the Athenians nerved up to the pitch of resistance,—prepared to see their country wasted, and to live as well as to fight on shipboard, when the necessity should arrive,—furnishing two thirds of the whole fleet, and yet prosecuting the building of fresh ships until the last moment,—sending forth the ablest and most forward leader in the common cause, while content themselves to serve like other states under the leadership of Sparta. During the winter preceding the march of Xerxes from Sardis, the congress at the Isthmus was trying, with little success, to bring the Grecian cities into united action. Among the cities north of Attica and Peloponnesus, the greater number were either inclined to submit, like Thebes and the greater part of Boeotia, or at least lukewarm in the cause of independence,—so rare at this trying moment (to use the language of the unfor­tunate Plataeans fifty-three years afterwards), was the exertion of resolute Hellenic patriotism against the invader. Even in the interior of Peloponnesus, the powerful Argos maintained an ambiguous neutrality. It was one of the first steps of the con­gress to send special envoys to Argos, to set forth the common danger and solicit cooperation; the result is certain, that no cooperation was obtained,—the Argeians did nothing throughout the struggle; but as to their real position, or the grounds of their refusal, contradictory statements had reached the ears of Herodotus. They themselves affirmed that they were ready to have joined the Hellenic cause, in spite of dissuasion from the Delphian oracle,—exacting only as conditions, that the Spartans should conclude a truce with them for thirty years, and should equally divide the honors of headship with Argos. To the pro­posed truce there would probably have been no objection, nor was there any as to the principle of dividing the headship: but the Spartans added, that they had two kings, while the Argeians had only one; and inasmuch as neither of the two Spartan kings could be deprived of his vote, the Argeian king could only be admitted to a third vote conjointly with them. This proposition appeared to the Argeians, who considered that even the undivided headship was no more than their ancient right, as nothing better than insolent encroachment, and incensed them so much that they desired the envoys to quit their territory before sunset,—preferring even a tributary existence under Persia to a formal degradation as compared with Sparta.

Such was the story told by the Argeians themselves, but seem­ingly not credited either by any other Greeks or by Herodotus himself. The prevalent opinion was, that the Argeians had a secret understanding with Xerxes, and some even affirmed that they had been the parties who invited him into Greece, as a means both of protection and of vengeance to themselves against Sparta after their defeat by Kleomenes. And Herodotus himself evidently believed that they medized, though he is half afraid to say so, and disguises his opinion in a cloud of words which be­tray the angry polemics going on about the matter, even fifty years afterwards. It is certain that in act the Argeians were neutral, and one of their reasons for neutrality was, that they did not choose to join any Pan-Hellenic levy except in the capacity of chiefs; but probably the more powerful reason was, that they shared the impression then so widely diffused throughout Greece as to the irresistible force of the approaching host, and chose to hold themselves prepared for the event. They kept up secret negotiations even with Persian agents, yet not compromising themselves while matters were still pending; nor is it improbable, in their vexation against Sparta, that they would have been better pleased if the Persians had succeeded,—all which may reasonably be termed, medizing.

The absence of Hellenic fidelity in Argos was borne out by the parallel examples of Crete and Corcyra, to which places envoys from the Isthmus proceeded at the same time. The Cretans declined to take any part, on the ground of prohibitory injunctions from the oracle of the Corcyraeans promised without performing, and even without any intention to perform. Their neutrality was a serious loss to the Greeks, since they could fit out a naval force of sixty triremes, second only to that of Athens. With this important contingent they engaged to join the Grecian fleet, and actually set sail from Corcyra; but they took care not to sail round cape Malea, or to reach the scene of action. Their fleet remained on the southern or western coast of Peloponnesus, under pretence of being weatherbound, until the decisive result of the battle of Salamis was known. Their impression was that the Persian monarch would be victorious, in which case they would have made a merit of not having arrived in time ; but they were also prepared with the plausible excuse of detention from foul winds, when the result turned out otherwise, and when they were reproached by the Greeks for their absence. Such duplicity is not very astonishing, when we recollect that it was the habitual policy of Korkyra to isolate herself from Hellenic con­federacies.

The envoys who visited Korkyra proceeded onward on their mission to Gelon, the despot of Syracuse. Of that potentate, regarded by Herodotus as more powerful than any state in Greece, I shall speak more fully in a subsequent chapter: it is sufficient to mention now, that he rendered no aid against Xerxes. Nor was it in his power to do so, whatever might have been his inclinations ; for the same year which brought the Persian monarch against Greece, was also selected by the Carthaginians for a formidable invasion of Sicily, which kept the Sicilian Greeks to the defence of their own island. It seems even probable that this simultaneous invasion had been concerted between the Per­sians and Carthaginians.

The endeavors of the deputies of Greeks at the Isthmus had thus produced no other reinforcement to their cause except some fair words from the Corcyraeans. It was near the time when Xerxes was about to pass the Hellespont, in the begin­ning of 480 bc, that the first actual step for resistance was taken, at the instigation of the Thessalians. Though the great Thessalian family of the Aleuadae were among the companions of Xerxes, and the most forward in inviting him into Greece, with every promise of ready submission from their countrymen, it seems that these promises were in reality unwarranted: the Aleuadae were at the head only of a minority, and perhaps were even in exile, like the Peisistratidae : while most of the Thessalians were disposed to resist Xerxes, for which purpose they now sent envoys to the Isthmus, intimating the necessity of guarding the passes of Olympus, the northernmost entrance of Greece. They offered their own cordial aid in this defence, adding that they should be under the necessity of making their own separate submission, if this demand were not complied with. Accordingly, a body of ten thousand Grecian heavy-armed infantry, under the command of the Spartan Euaenetus and the Athenian Themistocles, were despatched by sea to Halus in Achaea Phthiotis, where they disembarked and marched by land across Achaea and Thessaly. Being joined by the Thessalian horse, they occupied the defile of Tempe, through which the river Peneius makes its way to the sea, by a cleft between the mountains Olympus and Ossa.

The long, narrow, and winding defile of Tempe, formed then, and forms still, the single entrance, open throughout winter as well as summer, from lower or maritime Macedonia into Thessaly : the lofty mountain precipices approach so closely as to leave hardly room enough m some places for a road : it is thus eminently defensible, and a few resolute men would be sufficient to arrest in it the progress of the most numerous host. But the Greeks soon discovered that the position was such as they could not hold,—first, because the powerful fleet of Xerxes would be able to land troops in their real; secondly, because there was also a second entrance passable in summer, from upper Macedonia into Thessaly, by the mountain-passes over the range of Olympus; an entrance which traversed the country of the Perrhaebians and came into Thessaly near Gonnus, about the spot where the defile of Tempe begins to narrow. It was in fact by this second pass, evading the insurmountable difficulties of Tempe, that the advancing march of the Persians was destined to be made, under the auspices of Alexander, king of Macedon, tributary to them, and active in their service; who sent a communication of this fact to the Greeks at Tempe, admonishing them that they would be trodden under foot by the countless host approach­ing, and urging them to renounce their hopeless position. This Macedonian prince passed for a friend, and probably believed himself to be acting as such in dissuading the Greeks from unavail­ing resistance to Persia: but he was in reality a very dangerous mediator ; and as such the Spartans had good reason to dread him, in a second intervention of which we shall hear more hereafter. On the present occasion, the Grecian commanders were quite ignorant of the existence of any other entrance into Thessaly, besides Tempe, until their arrival in that region. Perhaps it might have been possible to defend both entrances at once, and considering the immense importance of arresting the march of the Persians at the frontiers of Hellas, the attempt would have been worth some risk So great was the alarm, however, produced by the unexpected discovery, justifying, or seeming to justify, the friendly advice of Alexander, that they remained only a few days at Tempe, then at once retired back to their ships, and returned by sea to the isthmus of Corinth,—about the time when Xerxes was crossing the Hellespont.

This precipitate retreat produced consequences highly disastrous and discouraging. It appeared to leave all Hellas north of mount Cithaeron and of the Megarid territory without defence, and it served either as reason or pretext for the majority of the Grecian states north of that boundary to make their submission to Xerxes, which some of them had already begun to do before. When Xerxes in the course of his march reached the Thermaic gulf, within sight of Olympus and Ossa, the heralds whom lie had sent from Sardis brought him tokens of submission from a third portion of the Hellenic name,—the Thessalians, Dolopes, Aenianes, Perrhaebians, Magnetes, Locrians, Dorians, Melians, Phthiotid Achaeans, and Boeotians,—among the latter is included Thebes, but not Thespiae or Plataea. The Thessalians, especially, not only submitted, but manifested active zeal and rendered much service in the cause of Xerxes, under the stimulus of the Aleuadae, whose party now became predominant: they were probably indignant at the hasty retreat of those who had come to defend them.

Had the Greeks been able to maintain the passes of Olympus and Ossa, all this northern fraction might probably have been induced to partake in the resistance instead of becoming auxiliaries to the invader. During the six weeks or two months which elapsed between the retreat of the Greeks from Tempe and the arrival of Xerxes at Therma, no new plan of defence appears to have been formed; for it was not until that arrival became known at the Isthmus that the Greek army and fleet made its forward movement to occupy Thermopylae and Artemisium.