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The Persian army gathered in Asia Minor in the summer and autumn of 481 BC, ready for the greatest military campaign the world had ever seen, a feat of logistics and a display of power that went unmatched at least until the Napoleonic campaigns 2,300 years later.
Armies converged from the Eastern and Western satrapies, adding up to about 500,000 men including auxiliaries, from all corners of the empire including the Balkans, Arabia, Central Asia and Ionia. Fleets from coastal Anatolia, Cyprus, Phoenicia and Egypt numbered perhaps over 4,000 ships of all sizes, including at least five under the command of Artemisia of Caria, a rare case of Greek woman leader – since she was the Persian governor of Halicarnassus.
Early in the spring of 480 BC[1], the gigantic army – and a trail of followers including eunuchs, servants, concubines and the like – reached the ruins of Troy. There, Xerxes I took the highly symbolic step of ascending to the then-still visible acropolis and sacrifice to the protector goddess of that city that fought the Greeks so hard and so long, while his priests poured libations for the Asiatic heroes of Troy: Priam, Hector, Paris and the rest.
This done, he symbolically crossed the Hellespont over two pontoon bridges and set foot on Europe. The crossing wasn’t entirely pleasant due to the currents, and Xerxes I – anticipating Caligula by half a millennium – ordered that the sea was punished with 300 lashes and branded with red-hot irons. A few officers in charge of bridge-building also lost their heads[2].
Xerxes I inspected the army at Doriscus, a small city in Thrace founded by his father 30 years before, and the spectacle must have been impressive. Surrounded by the multinational soldiery, in the center was the chariot of Ahura Mazda, drawn by eight greys and driven by a walking charioteer. In front of the chariot went ten sacred horses of Nesaean stock, larger than European horses, and behind it Xerxes I rode seated in a chariot drawn by Nesaean horses and driven by a standing charioteer. Pack-camels added to the oriental exotism[3].
This was a unique sight that would never be repeated: logistical problems involving the provision of food and water for so many men and beasts, as well as sickness due to the lack of sanitary conditions, had probably started to take a toll already, and would only worsen over time.
This was despite the Persians’ best efforts, as the campaign had been prepared carefully. Advanced troops had already set five major food depots along the path, the third of which was in Doriscus, and the last two in Macedonia and northern Greece. By the spring, the last depot had been reached and the army was reorganized along tactical, rather than national, lines.
In Athens, Themistocles recalled ostracized enemies including Aristides and Xanthippus, Pericles’ father and a shameless populist married into the Alcmaeonid clan who prosecuted Miltiades after Marathon[4] and bore much responsibility for his early death. The Greek allies met and decided to set up a 10,000 strong blocking force – the size of the winning army at Marathon – on the main pass to Thessaly, but King Alexander I of Macedon, a Persian vassal anxious to play both sides, warned the Greeks that they could be bypassed, and the force was withdrawn.
Thessaly, with its important grain resources, fell easily under Xerxes I’s control, and Themistocles suggested that another choke point could be used: Thermopylae, a pass by the sea on the main route to Boeotia; at the same time, the allied fleet would block the Persian fleet on the nearby straits of Artemisium.
Nobody was certain that this would do any good. The Peloponnesian poleis prepared plans for a possible fall-back all the way to the Corinth Isthmus, while the women and children of Athens were evacuated en masse to Troezen in the Peloponnesus. Even though they were banned from military action under the Olympic truce at that time of that year, the Spartans dispatched their King Leonidas I with his personal guard of 300 veterans – all men who already had sons to follow the family line – as well as a few hundred others including trained helots, in what was clearly perceived as an almost-suicidal mission to Thermopylae.
Along the route, the Spartans picked up perhaps as many as 7,000 additional troops from various poleis, arriving in time to occupy the pass, rebuild the wall the Phocians had earlier built at the narrowest point of the pass and wait for Xerxes I's arrival.
The Greek plan wasn’t foolproof, but it was sound. A large Greek fleet, coordinated with Leonidas, had based itself at Artemisium, in northern Euboea, to stop the Persians from landing troops behind the Thermopylae. It wasn’t simply out of pure Spartan bravado that a Persian emissary, who urged the Spartans to drop their weapons, famously was told to “come and take them”[5] by Leonidas himself.
As the much larger Persian fleet was hindered by bad weather, as well as a failed attempt to push the Greeks out of Artemisium, Xerxes I ordered a frontal assault, exactly as Leonidas had anticipated. This led to massive casualties as the Persian infantry bled against the forest of Greek spears, and the Persian missile forces failed to make much impact on armored infantry trained to protect each other with their shields.
After two days, the Persians knew that they would have to find another way. Eventually, a local resident named Ephialtes was bribed to show the Persians a narrow mountain path that led behind the Greek lines. Leonidas anticipated the move, and dismissed the bulk of his army so it wouldn’t be lost. Bloodied after a second encounter with the Persian ships, the Greek fleet also withdrew south, looking to fight another day.
Leonidas, meanwhile, remained in the pass with all his Spartans plus just over 1,000 other Greeks, to slow the Persians’ advance and wash the stain of Sparta’s absence at Marathon. The stain was washed in blood. Leonidas and his men rushed the Persian main force just before the Immortals – Xerxes I’s elite Persian infantry – attacked the leftover blocking force from the back.
When their spears went down, the Spartans fought with their swords; when Leonidas fell, his men fought to protect his body. In the end, the Greeks were slaughtered to a man, except for a group of Thebans who surrendered[6], but not before they made a significant moral and actual dent on Xerxes I’s army.
In accordance with Persian practice of honoring brave men, the Greek dead were buried by the hillock of their last stand, although Xerxes I ordered that Leonidas’ body be treated like that of a criminal: his head was cut and impaled upon a pole. The Spartans wouldn’t forget the deed.
[1] The normally reliable Herodotus reported that Persian army set off in disorder because of the adverse omen of a solar eclipse; but he was misinformed, as the eclipse which was visible at Sardis occurred two years later, on 16 February 478 BC.
[2] Nine Thracian boys and nine Thracian girls were sacrificed by the Persian priests at the Strymon, now Struma, River marking the traditionally boundary between Greeks and Thracians, but this appears to have been unrelated to the difficult crossing.
[3] These were attacked at night by lions, Herodotus reports. Lions were still a common sight in parts of southern Europe by this time, but were unheard of by the Christian era. They were still spotted in Anatolia, Northern Africa and various parts of the Fertile Crescent until the 19th-20th centuries AD.
[4] This prosecution against the savior of Athens at Marathon again recalls Herodotus’ rumor about the Alcmaeonids having conspired with the Persians before the battle. One citizen voted for ostracism for Xanthippus, writing that he was “declared by this ostracon to be the out-and-out winner among accursed sinners.” In any case, other ostraca display the names of two other Alcmaeonids, Callixenus (“the traitor”) and Hippocrates, as candidates for ostracism during Themistocles’ heyday. And Aristotle cites the case of Aristides: once an illiterate Athenian asked the famed politician, whom he failed to recognize, to write the name 'Aristides' on his sherd. 'What injury has Aristides done you?' said Aristides. 'None at all', was the answer, 'but I am fed up with hearing him called "Aristides the Just" here, there and everywhere.' Aristides wrote the name on the sherd in silence. In truth, Athens’ politics were never gentlemanly; the name of Themistocles is also in many ostraca, a decade or more before he was actually ostracized.
[5] The phrase “Molon Labé” uttered in Thermopylae has a checkered history for later Greeks. For example, it has special meaning in Cyprus because they were the last words of Grigoris Afxentiou on March 3, 1957. Afxentiou, one of the leaders of the Cypriot war of independence against British occupation, had been betrayed by an informant and his cave hideout surrounded by British troops. Called on to surrender Afxentiou quoted Leonidas. The British then poured petrol into the cave and set it on fire, so Afxentiou was burned alive.
[6] They saved their lives, but were branded on the forehead with the royal mark as slaves, beginning with their commander, Leontiades.