THERMOPYLÆ
“Dic, hospes, Spartæ nos te hic vidisse iacentes
Dum sanctis patriæ legibus obsequimur.”
CICERO, _translation of a Greek Epitaph_.[33]
Thermopylæ lies due north from Delphi, less than twenty-five miles
distant in an air line, but between them lie “many o’ershadowing
mountains,” as Achilles might say, or, to be more exact, the great
Parnassus cluster and the continuation of the Œta range, the watershed
between the Bœotian Cephisus and the Malian Spercheius. Just where Doris
and Phocis on the south meet Trachian Malis and Epicnemidian Locris on
the north Mount Kallidromos is set like a boundary stone. The ridge that
unites it with Mount Œta proper is now pierced by the Larissa
railway-tunnel, opened in the summer of 1908, through which the northern
express carries the traveller into the gorge and along the steep cliffs
of the Asopus, the river that flowed down between Xerxes and Leonidas.
To the east of the river’s outlet into the Malian gulf was the narrow
gangway between cliffs and water, called “Hot-Gates” from the local
“Thermal,” or hot springs, and the “Pylai,” or fortified gateways.
Footnote 33:
Cicero, in this translation of the famous epigram (see below)
attributed to Simonides, apparently follows a version slightly
different from that transmitted by Herodotus. A charming old German
translation is preserved in a Heidelberg manuscript:—
“Sag, frembder gast, dem Spartenn land,
Wir liegen fast hie inn dem sannd,
Dass wir so schon inn dem gefecht
Gehalten hon satzung unnd recht.”
It is not unnatural that the story of Thermopylæ should have found in
the imagination of men a place more secure than have even the victories
at Marathon, Salamis, and Platæa. The very tragedy of defeat stands out
more conspicuously against the background of the moral victory. The
physical surroundings, too, are more picturesque. At the narrow entrance
between cliffs and sea individual daring emerges, as in the defence of a
mediæval portcullis, and in the memory remain the details of the by-path
over Mount Kallidromos; the leaves under foot rustling in the darkness
and betraying the ascent of the Persians to the Phocian rear-guard; the
dawn breaking over the blue sea at the foot of the cliffs; and the
Persian Immortals descending swiftly upon the rear of the few resolute
men below. Then the long struggle in the narrow pass comes to an end and
Leonidas and his men move out into the wider part before the pass. The
“strength of the hills” was rendered futile by the traitor guide; the
water, faithful ally during the preceding days, would now vainly strive
to engulf the invaders. The Sun, god of both armies, beat down
indiscriminately upon the Oriental worshippers of his heavenly fire and
on the heaps of dead Greeks. Somewhere amongst them lay the unaffrighted
soldier Dieneces, who had welcomed with Laconic humour the sun-obscuring
Persian arrows as a grateful shade in the heat of battle.
It is disappointing, indeed, that now on the spot the actual scene
requires certain stage directions. The modern coast line has been pushed
far out into the bay by earthquakes and the detritus of the streams. The
Spercheius now flows through a plain some two miles wide between the
precipices and the sea. But the configuration of the land was still
essentially unchanged when, under Brennus and his Gauls, in the third
century B. C., there was another invasion hardly less formidable than
that of the Persians. Before the Gauls reached Delphi there was here at
Thermopylæ a repetition of the more famous struggle. The coast line
still lay close to the cliffs. The Athenian fleet stood in near enough,
despite the rapidly shoaling water, to harass the flank of the enemy,
while the other Greeks in the narrow pass repeated the stubborn
resistance of the Spartans and their allies just two hundred years
before. Other details, too, were duplicated. The Gauls, unable to force
the pass, resorted, as had the Persians, to the mountain path. Again it
was the Phocians who strove to stop them, but the invaders, pushing by,
descended on the rear of the Greeks, who were saved from the fate of
Leonidas only by the presence of the Athenian fleet.
The exact topography of Thermopylæ is still a matter of controversy, and
a liberal discount has long since been made from the fabulous total,
given by Herodotus, of Xerxes’s host. Just who and how many of the
allies remained and died after Leonidas sent the others away is also
uncertain. Among those remaining with the Spartans of their own free
will Pausanias mentions only the seven hundred Thespians and the eighty
men from Mycenæ. The inscription written avowedly for all the
Peloponnesian soldiers exaggerates the number of the Persians and fails
to state definitely that all of the four thousand fought to the finish:—
“Here on a time four thousand of men from the Peloponnesus,
Meeting three millions of men, struggled in battle and fought.”
But all restrictions, made in the interest of historic truth, only serve
to eliminate the miraculous element. They leave undisturbed the picture
of a heroism combined with military skill which, if properly
supplemented, might well have kept Xerxes shut out from lower Greece
indefinitely, or as long as the Greek fleet, aided by the elements,
could have restrained him from moving south by the sea.
The allies of Sparta, both those who fell in the four days before the
betrayal of the pathway and those who fell at the end, were duly
praised, but Leonidas and his three hundred have always received, and
justly, the lion’s share of honour. They represented the Lacedæmonians
at their best. The moral prestige that the Spartans had temporarily
forfeited by their absence from Marathon was now regained, to be still
further emphasized at Platæa. Over the Spartans buried at Thermopylæ was
inscribed:—
“Stranger, go unto Sparta, aye go and announce to our people
Here we their orders obeyed, here we are lying in death.”
In Lacedæmon also the names of the three hundred were inscribed upon a
pillar, still existing in the time of Pausanias. On the hill at
Thermopylæ, where the Spartans made their last stand, was set up a
marble lion to honour the name of Leonidas. In an epigram, said to have
been written for the monument by Simonides, the lion is represented as
saying to the passers-by:—
“I am the strongest of beasts of the wild, but the strongest of mortals
He it is over whose tomb I as a sentinel stand.
Were he not Leo in courage, as even my name he possesses,
Never had I set foot here on the marble above.”
From the longer “encomium” by Simonides on the dead at Thermopylæ is
handed down a fragment worthily translated by Sterling:—
“Of those who at Thermopylæ were slain,
Glorious the doom and beautiful the lot;
Their tomb an altar; men from tears refrain
To honour them and praise but mourn them not.
Such sepulchre nor drear decay
Nor all-destroying time shall waste; this right have they.
Within their graves the home-bred glory
Of Greece was laid: this witness gives
Leonidas the Spartan in whose story
A wreath of famous virtue ever lives.”
In addition to Leonidas there was also singled out for individual honour
and remembrance the seer Megistias of Acarnania, who claimed descent,
proud as that of the Levitical priesthood, from the Homeric seer
Melampus. From sacrifices made before sunrise on that last day, the
priest gave out in advance the certainty of their impending doom.
Presently deserters and scouts came in saying that the Persians had
forced the heights. Leonidas, recognizing that when they were attacked
in the rear also death was a foregone conclusion, commanded Megistias
and the greater part of the allies to withdraw while there was still
time. But the priest, refusing to depart, remained to die with Leonidas
and set the seal of religious sanction on the struggle for liberty, as
the modern priesthood of Greece, in the war with the Turks, by their
words and blood inspired and sanctioned the patriotism of the people.
The epitaph for the priest was written by Simonides, not by public
commission as poet laureate, but, as Herodotus states, by reason of
guest-friendship. Even this special inscription, however, on the tomb of
the Acarnanian seer, closes with a complimentary reference to Sparta. It
was Sparta’s day.
“Famous Megistias here is recorded as one whom the Persians,
Crossing Spercheius’s stream, slew on a day that is gone.
He was the seer, who, though knowing as certain the Fates that were on
them,
Could not endure to desert leaders of Sparta in war.”
A dramatic story is selected by Herodotus to embellish his account of
the battle. Two Spartan soldiers, Eurytus and Aristodemus, lay at the
headquarters at Alpeni, suffering with severe ophthalmia. When the news
came in of the final crisis, Eurytus, putting on his armour with the
help of his helot squire, was led on his blind way into the thick of the
battle and fell fighting with the rest, while the helot made good his
escape. Aristodemus, as might indeed seem natural in the case of a man
thus incapacitated for service, remained behind and returned home. But
his fellow citizens at Sparta, incensed at the contrast between the two,
refused him light to kindle fire and nicknamed him the “Trembler.” Nor
did any subsequent bravery wipe out his disgrace. Even when, in the
closing scene of the great drama at Platæa, he surpassed all others in
the reckless daring with which he fought and died, he was still excluded
from his country’s roll of honour. Thus imperative did it seem that
Spartan courage and love of liberty should be proclaimed to all as the
rule that knew no exception.