Asia we cannot be sure. Xerxes, after reaching Europe, took an odd way
of counting his army. Ten thousand men were counted and packed close
together. Then a line was drawn around them, and a wall built about the
space. The whole army was then marched in successive detachments into
this walled enclosure. Herodotus tells us that there were one hundred
and seventy of these divisions, which would make the whole army one
million seven hundred thousand foot. In addition there were eighty
thousand horse, many war-chariots, and a fleet of twelve hundred and
seven triremes and three thousand smaller vessels. According to
Herodotus, the whole host, soldiers and sailors, numbered two million
six hundred and forty thousand men, and there were as many or more
camp-followers, so that the whole number present, according to this
estimate, was over five million men. It is not easy to believe that such
a marching host as this could be fed, and it has probably been much
exaggerated; yet there is no doubt that the host was vast enough almost
to blow away all the armies of Greece with the wind of its coming.
On leaving Sardis a frightful spectacle was provided by Xerxes: the army
found itself marching between two halves of a slaughtered man. Pythius,
an old Phrygian of great riches, had entertained Xerxes with much
hospitality, and offered him all his wealth, amounting to two thousand
talents of silver and nearly four million darics of gold. This generous
offer Xerxes declined, and gave Pythius enough gold to make up his
darics to an even four millions. Then, when the army was about to march,
the old man told Xerxes that he had five sons in the army, and begged
that one of them, the eldest, might be left with him as a stay to his
declining years. Instantly the despot burst into a rage. The request of
exemption from military service was in Persia an unpardonable offence.
The hospitality of Pythius was forgotten, and Xerxes ordered that his
son should be slain, and half the body hung on each side of the army,
probably as a salutary warning to all who should have the temerity to
question the despot's arbitrary will.
On marched the great army. It crossed the plain of Troy, and here
Xerxes offered libations in honor of the heroes of the Trojan war, the
story of which was told him. Reaching the Hellespont, he had a marble
throne erected, from which to view the passage of his troops. The
bridges--which the scourged and branded waters had now spared--were
perfumed with frankincense and strewed with myrtle boughs, and, as the
march began, Xerxes offered prayers to the sun, and made libations to
the sea with a golden censer, which he then flung into the water,
together with a golden bowl and a Persian scimitar, perhaps to repay the
Hellespont for the stripes he had inflicted upon it.
At the first moment of sunrise the passage began, the troops marching
across one bridge, the baggage and attendants crossing the other. All
day the march continued, and all night long, the whip being used to
accelerate the troops; yet so vast was the host that for seven days and
nights, without cessation, the army moved on, and a week was at its end
before the last man of the great Persian host set foot on European soil.
Then down through the Grecian peninsula Xerxes marched, doubtless
inflated with pride at the greatness of his host and the might of the
fleet which sailed down the neighboring seas and through the canal which
he had cut to baffle stormy Athos. One regret alone seemed to come into
his mind, and that was that in a hundred years not one man of that vast
army would be alive. It did not occur to him that in less than one year
few of them might be alive, for all thought of any peril to his army
and fleet from the insignificant numbers of the Greeks must have been
dismissed with scorn from his mind.
Like locusts the army marched southward through Thrace, eating up the
cities as it advanced, for each was required to provide a day's meals
for the mighty host. For months those cities had been engaged in
providing the food which this army consumed in a day. Many of the cities
were brought to the verge of ruin, and all of them were glad to see the
army march on. At length Xerxes saw before him Mount Olympus, on the
northern boundary of the land of Hellas or Greece. This was the end of
his own dominions. He was now about to enter the territory of his foes.
With what fortune he did so must be left for later tales.
_HOW THE SPARTANS DIED AT THERMOPYLAE._
When Xerxes, as his father had done before him, sent to the Grecian
cities to demand earth and water in token of submission, no heralds were
sent to Athens or Sparta. These truculent cities had flung the heralds
of Darius into deep pits, bidding them to take earth and water from
there and carry it to the great king. This act called for revenge, and
whatever mercy he might show to the rest of Greece, Athens and Sparta
were doomed in his mind to be swept from the face of the earth. How they
escaped this dismal fate is what we have next to tell.
As one of the great men of Athens, Miltiades, had saved his native land
in the former Persian invasion, so a second patriotic citizen,
Themistocles, proved her savior in the dread peril which now threatened
her. But the work of Themistocles was not done in a single great battle,
as at Marathon, but in years of preparation. And a war between Athens
and the neighboring island of AEgina had much to do with this escape from
ruin.
To make war upon an island a land army was of no avail. A fleet was
necessary. The Athenians were accustomed to a commercial, though not to
a warlike, life upon the sea. Many of them were active, daring, and
skilful sailors, and when Themistocles urged that they should build a
powerful fleet he found approving listeners. Longer of sight than his
fellow-citizens, he warned them of the coming peril from Persia. The
conflict with the small island of AEgina was a small matter compared with
that threatened by the great kingdom of Persia. But to prepare against
one was to prepare against both. And Athens was just then rich. It
possessed valuable silver-mines at Laurium, in Attica, from which much
wealth came to the state. This money Themistocles urged the citizens to
use in building ships, and they were wise enough to take his advice, two
hundred ships of war being built. These ships, as it happened, were not
used for the purpose originally intended, that of the war with AEgina.
But they proved of inestimable service to Athens in the Persian war.
[Illustration: THE PLACE OF ASSEMBLY OF THE ATHENIANS.]
The vast preparations of Xerxes were not beheld without deep terror in
Greece. Spies were sent into Persia to discover what was being done.
They were captured and condemned to death, but Xerxes ordered that they
should be shown his total army and fleet, and then sent home to report
what they had seen. He hoped thus to double the terror of the Grecian
states.
At home two things were done. Athens and Sparta called a congress of all
the states of Greece on the Isthmus of Corinth, and urged them to lay
aside all petty feuds and combine for defence against the common foe. It
was the greatest and most successful congress that Greece had ever yet
held. All wars came to an end. That between Athens and AEgina ceased,
and the fleet which Athens had built was laid aside for a greater need.
The other thing was that step always taken in Greece in times of peril,
to send to the temple at Delphi and obtain from the oracle the sacred
advice which was deemed so indispensable.
The reply received by Athens was terrifying. "Quit your land and city
and flee afar!" cried the prophetess. "Fire and sword, in the train of
the Syrian chariot, shall overwhelm you. Get ye away from the sanctuary,
with your souls steeped in sorrow."
The envoys feared to carry back such a sentence to Athens. They implored
the priestess for a more comforting reply, and were given the following
enigma to solve: "This assurance I will give you, firm as adamant. When
everything else in the land of Cecrops 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."
Here was some hope, though small. "The wooden wall"? What could it be
but the fleet? This was the general opinion of the Athenians. But should
they fight? Should they not rather abandon Attica forever, take to their
wooden walls, and seek a new home afar? Salamis was to destroy the
children of women! Did not this portend disaster in case of a naval
battle?
The fate of Athens now hung upon a thread. Had its people fled to a
distant land, one of the greatest chapters in the history of the world
would never have been written. But now Themistocles, to whom Athens owed
its fleet, came forward as its savior. If the oracle, he declared, had
meant that the Greeks should be destroyed, it would have called Salamis,
where the battle was to be fought, "wretched Salamis." But it had said
"divine Salamis." What did this mean but that it was not the Greeks, but
the enemies of Greece, who were to be destroyed? He begged his
countrymen not to desert their country, but to fight boldly for its
safety. Fortunately for Athens, his solution of the riddle was accepted,
and the city set itself diligently to building more ships, that they
might have as powerful a fleet as possible when the Persians came.
But not only Athens was to be defended; all Greece was in peril; the
invaders must be met by land as well as by sea. Greece is traversed by
mountain ranges, which cross from sea to sea, leaving only difficult
mountain paths and narrow seaside passes. One of these was the long and
winding defile to Tempe, between Mounts Olympus and Ossa, on the
northern boundary of Greece. There a few men could keep back a numerous
host, and thither at first marched the small army which dared to oppose
the Persian millions, a little band of ten thousand men, under the
command of a Spartan general.
But they did not remain there. The Persians were still distant, and
while the Greeks awaited their approach new counsels prevailed. There
was another pass by which the mountains might be crossed,--which pass,
in fact, the Persians took. Also the fleet might land thousands of men
in their rear. On the whole it was deemed best to retreat to another
pass, much farther south, the famous pass of Thermopylae. Here was a road
a mile in width, where were warm springs; and at each end were narrow
passes, called gates,--the name Thermopylae meaning "hot gates."
Adjoining was a narrow strait, between the mainland and the island of
Euboea, where the Greek fleet might keep back the Persian host of
ships. There was an old wall across the pass, now in ruins. This the
Greeks rebuilt, and there the devoted band, now not more than seven
thousand in all, waited the coming of the mighty Persian host.
It was in late June, of the year 480 B.C., that the Grecian army, led by
Leonidas, king of Sparta, marched to this defile. There were but three
hundred Spartans[3] in his force, with small bodies of men from the
other states of Greece. The fleet, less than three hundred ships in all,
took post beside them in the strait. And here they waited while day by
day the Persian hordes marched southward over the land.
The first conflict took place between some vessels of the fleets,
whereupon the Grecian admirals, filled with sudden fright, sailed
southward and left the army to the mercy of the Persian ships.
Fortunately for Greece, thus deserted in her need, a strong ally now
came to the rescue. The gods of the winds had been implored with prayer.
The answer came in the form of a frightful hurricane, which struck the
great fleet while it lay at anchor, and hurled hundreds of ships on the
rocky shore. For three days the storm continued, and when it ended more
than four hundred ships of war, with a multitude of transports and
provision craft, were wrecked, while the loss of life had been immense.
The Greek fleet had escaped this disaster, and now, with renewed
courage, came sailing back to the post it had abandoned, and so quickly
as to capture fifteen vessels of the Persian fleet.
While this gale prevailed Xerxes and his army lay encamped before
Thermopylae, the king in terror for his fleet, which he was told had been
all destroyed. As for the Greeks, he laughed them to scorn. He was told
that a handful of Spartans and other Greeks were posted in the pass, and
sent a horseman to tell him what was to be seen. The horseman rode near
the pass, and saw there the wall and outside it the small Spartan force,
some of whom were engaged in gymnastic exercises, while others were
combing their long hair.
The great king was astonished and puzzled at this news. He waited
expecting the few Greeks to disperse and leave the pass open to his
army. The fourth day came and went, and they were still there. Then
Xerxes bade the Median and Kissian divisions of his army to advance,
seize these insolent fellows, and bring them to him as prisoners of war.
Forward went his troops, and entered the throat of the narrow pass,
where their bows and arrows were of little use, and they must fight the
Greeks hand to hand. And now the Spartan arms and discipline told. With
their long spears, spreading shields, steady ranks, and rigid
discipline, the Greeks were far more than a match for the light weapons,
slight shields, and open ranks of their foes. The latter had only their
numbers, and numbers there were of little avail. They fell by hundreds,
while the Greeks met with little loss. For two days the combat
continued, fresh defenders constantly replacing the weary ones, and a
wall of Persian dead being heaped up outside the wall of stone.
Then, as a last resort, the Immortals,--the Persian guard of ten
thousand,--with other choice troops, were sent; and these were driven
back with the same slaughter as the rest. The fleet in the strait
doubtless warmly cheered on the brave hoplites in the pass; but as for
Xerxes, "Thrice," says Herodotus, "did he spring from his throne, in
agony for his army."
The deed of a traitor rendered useless this noble defence. A recreant
Greek, Ephialtes by name, sought Xerxes and told him of a mountain pass
over which he could guide a band to attack the defenders of Thermopylae
in the rear. A strong Persian detachment was ordered to cross the pass,
and did so under shelter of the night. At daybreak they reached the
summit, where a thousand Greeks from Phocis had been stationed as a
guard. These men, surprised, and overwhelmed with a shower of arrows,
fled up the mountain-side, and left the way open to the Persians, who
pursued their course down the mountain, and at mid-day reached the rear
of the pass of Thermopylae.
Leonidas had heard of their coming. Scouts had brought him word. The
defence of the pass was at an end. They must fly or be crushed. A
council was hastily called, and it was decided to retreat. But this
decision was not joined in by Leonidas and his gallant three hundred.
The honor of Sparta would not permit her king to yield a pass which he
had been sent to defend. The laws of his country required that he should
conquer or die at his post. It was too late to conquer; but he could
still die. With him and his three hundred remained the Thespians and
Thebans, seven hundred of the former and about four hundred of the
latter. The remainder of the army withdrew.
Xerxes had arranged to wait till noon, at which hour the defenders of
the pass were to be attacked in front and rear. But Leonidas did not
wait. All he and his men had now to do was to sell their lives as dearly
as possible, so they marched outside the pass, attacked the front of the
Persian host, drove them back, and killed them in multitudes, many of
them being driven to perish in the sea and the morass. The Persian
officers kept their men to the deadly work by threats and the liberal
use of the whip.
But one by one the Spartans fell. Their spears were broken, and they
fought with their swords. Leonidas sank in death, but his men fought on
more fiercely still, to keep the foe back from his body. Here many of
the Persian chiefs perished, among them two brothers of Xerxes. It was
like a combat of the Iliad rather than a contest in actual war. Finally
the Greeks, worn out, reduced in numbers, their best weapons gone, fell
back behind the wall, bearing the body of their chief. Here they still
fought, with daggers, with their unarmed hands, even with their mouths,
until the last man fell dead.
The Thebans alone yielded themselves as prisoners, saying that they had
been kept in the pass against their will. Of the thousand Spartans and
Thespians, not a man remained alive.
Meanwhile the fleets had been engaged, to the advantage of the Greeks,
while another storm that suddenly rose wrecked two hundred more of the
Persian ships on Euboea's rocky coast. When word came that Thermopylae
had fallen the Grecian fleet withdrew, sailed round the Attic coast, and
stopped not again until the island of Salamis was reached.
As for Leonidas and his Spartans, they had died, but had won
imperishable fame. The same should be said for the Thespians as well,
but history has largely ignored their share in the glorious deed. In
after-days an inscription was set up which gave all glory to the
Peloponnesian heroes without a word for the noble Thespian band. Another
celebrated inscription honored the Spartans alone:
"Go, stranger, and to Lacedaemon tell
That here, obeying her behests, we fell,"
or, in plain prose, "Stranger, tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here,
in obedience to their orders."
On the hillock where the last of the faithful band died was erected a
monument with a marble lion in honor of Leonidas, while on it was carved
the following epitaph, written by the poet Simonides:
"In dark Thermopylae they lie.
Oh, death of glory, thus to die!
Their tomb an altar is, their name
A mighty heritage of fame.
Their dirge is triumph; cankering rust,
And time, that turneth all to dust,
That tomb shall never waste nor hide,--
The tomb of warriors true and tried.
The full-voiced praise of Greece around
Lies buried in this sacred mound;
Where Sparta's king, Leonidas,
In death eternal glory has!"
_THE WOODEN WALLS OF ATHENS._
The slaughter of the defenders of Thermopylae exposed Athens to the
onslaught of the vast Persian army, which would soon be on the soil of
Attica. A few days' march would bring the invaders to its capital city,
which they would overwhelm as a flight of locusts destroys a cultivated
field. The states of the Peloponnesus, with a selfish regard for their
own safety, had withdrawn all their soldiers within the peninsula, and
began hastily to build a wall across the isthmus of Corinth with the
hope of keeping back the invading army. Athens was left to care for
itself. It was thus that Greece usually let itself be devoured
piecemeal.
There was but one thing for the Athenians to do, to obey the oracle and
fly from their native soil. In a few days the Persians would be in
Athens, and there was not an hour to lose. The old men, the women and
children, with such property as could be moved, were hastily taken on
shipboard and carried to Salamis, AEgina, Troezen, and other
neighboring islands. The men of fighting age took to their ships of war,
to fight on the sea for what they had lost on land. A few of the old and
the poverty-stricken remained, and took possession of the hill of the
Acropolis, whose wooden fence they fondly fancied might be the wooden
wall which the oracle had meant. Apart from these few the city was
deserted, and Athens had embarked upon the seas. Not only Athens, but
all Attica, was left desolate, and in the whole state Xerxes made only
five hundred prisoners of war.
Onward came the great Persian host, destroying all that could be
destroyed on Attic soil, and sending out detachments to ravage other
parts of Greece. The towns that submitted were spared. Those that
resisted, or whose inhabitants fled, were pillaged and burnt. A body of
troops was sent to plunder Delphi, the reputed great wealth of whose
temple promised a rich reward. The story of what happened there is a
curious one, and well worth relating.
The frightened Delphians prepared to fly, but first asked the oracle of
Apollo whether they should take with them the sacred treasures or bury
them in secret places. The oracle bade them not to touch these
treasures, saying that the god would protect his own. With this
admonition the people of Delphi fled, sixty only of their number
remaining to guard the holy shrine.
These faithful few were soon encouraged by a prodigy. The sacred arms,
kept in the temple's inmost cell, and which no mortal hand dared touch,
were seen lying before the temple door, as if Apollo was prepared
himself to use them. As the Persians advanced by a rugged path under the
steep cliffs of Mount Parnassus, and reached the temple of Athene
Pronaea, a dreadful peal of thunder rolled above their affrighted heads,
and two great crags, torn from the mountain's flank, came rushing down
with deafening sound, and buried many of them beneath their weight. At
the same time, from the temple of Athene, came the Greek shout of war.
In a panic the invaders turned and fled, hotly pursued by the few
Delphians, and, so the story goes, by two armed men of superhuman size,
whose destructive arms wrought dire havoc in the fleeing host. And thus,
as we are told, did the god preserve his temple and his wealth.
But no god guarded the road to Athens, and at length Xerxes and his army
reached that city,--four months after they had crossed the Hellespont.
It was an empty city they found. The few defenders of the Acropolis--a
craggy hill about one hundred and fifty feet high--made a vigorous
defence, for a time keeping the whole Persian army at bay. But some
Persians crept up a steep and unguarded part of the wall, entered the
citadel, and soon all its defenders were dead, and its temples and
buildings in flames.
While all this was going on, the Grecian fleet lay but a few miles away,
in the narrow strait between the isle of Salamis and the Attic coast,
occupying the little bay before the town of Salamis, from which narrow
channels at each end led into the Bay of Eleusis to the north and the
open sea to the south. In front rose the craggy heights of Mount
AEgaleos, over which, only five miles away, could be seen ascending the
lurid smoke of blazing Athens. It was a spectacle calculated to
infuriate the Athenians, though not one to inspire them with courage
and hope.
The fleet of Greece consisted of three hundred and sixty-six ships in
all, of which Athens supplied two hundred, while the remainder came in
small numbers from the various Grecian states. The Persian fleet,
despite its losses by storm, far outnumbered that of Greece, and came
sweeping down the Attic coast, confident of victory, while the great
army marched southward over Attic land.
And now two councils of war were held,--one by the Persian leaders, one
by the Greeks. The fleet of Xerxes, probably still a thousand ships
strong, lay in the Bay of Phalerum, a few miles from Athens; and hither
the king, having wrought his will on that proud and insolent city, came
to the coast to inspect his ships of war and take counsel as to what
should next be done.
Here, before his royal throne, were seated the kings of Tyre and Sidon,
and the rulers of the many other nations represented in his army. One by
one they were asked what should be done. "Fight," was the general reply;
"fight without delay." Only one voice gave different advice, that of
Queen Artemisia of Halicarnassus. She advised Xerxes to march to the
isthmus of Corinth, saying that then all the ships of the Peloponnesus
would fly to defend their own homes, and the fleet of Greece would thus
be dispersed. Xerxes heard her with calmness, but declined to take her
prudent advice. The voice of the others and his own confidence
prevailed, and orders were given for the fleet to make its attack the
next day.