THE PREPARATIONS OF THE GREEKS FOR DEFENSE.
B.C. 480
The Greeks.--The two prominent states of Greece.--Greek kings.--The two
kings of Sparta.--Origin of the custom of two kings.--The twins.--The
Delphic oracle consulted.--Plan for ascertaining the eldest.--Civil
dissensions.--Two lines established.--Character of the Spartans.--Their
lofty spirit.--The Athenians.--The city of Athens.--Sparta and Athens
defy the Persians.--Earth and water.--Spirit of the Spartans.--The blank
tablets.--Leonidas.--His wife discovers the writing on the tablets.--The
three spies.--Alarm at Athens.--The Greeks consult the Delphic
oracle.--The responses.--Various interpretations of the oracle.--The
Athenian fleet.--Themistocles.--Proposed confederation.--Council of
Spartans and Athenians.--The Argives reject the propositions of the
Spartans.--Embassy to Sicily.--Demands of Gelon.--The embassadors go to
Corcyra.--The River Peneus.--The Vale of Tempe.--Straits of
Thermopylae.--Question to be decided.--Messengers from
Thessaly.--Negotiations.--Decision to defend the Olympic
Straits.--Sailing of the fleet.--Advice of the King of Macedon.--The
Greeks fall back to Thermopylae.--Xerxes visits Thessaly.--Beautiful
rural scene.--Conversation of Xerxes at the Olympic Pass.
We must now leave, for a time, the operations of Xerxes and his army,
and turn our attention to the Greeks, and to the preparations which they
were making to meet the emergency.
The two states of Greece which were most prominent in the transactions
connected with the invasion of Xerxes were Athens and Sparta. By
referring to the map, Athens will be found to have been situated upon a
promontory just without the Peloponnesus, while Sparta, on the other
hand, was in the center of a valley which lay in the southern part of
the peninsula. Each of these cities was the center and strong-hold of a
small but very energetic and powerful commonwealth. The two states were
entirely independent of each other, and each had its own peculiar system
of government, of usages, and of laws. These systems, and, in fact, the
characters of the two communities, in all respects, were extremely
dissimilar.
Both these states, though in name republics, had certain magistrates,
called commonly, in history, kings. These kings were, however, in fact,
only military chieftains, commanders of the armies rather than sovereign
rulers of the state. The name by which such a chieftain was actually
called by the people themselves, in those days, was _tyrannus_, the name
from which our word _tyrant_ is derived. As, however, the word
_tyrannus_ had none of that opprobrious import which is associated with
its English derivative, the latter is not now a suitable substitute for
the former. Historians, therefore, commonly use the word king instead,
though that word does not properly express the idea. They were
commanders, chieftains, hereditary generals, but not strictly kings. We
shall, however, often call them kings, in these narratives, in
conformity with the general usage. Demaratus, who had fled from Sparta
to seek refuge with Darius, and who was now accompanying Xerxes on his
march to Greece, was one of these kings.
It was a peculiarity in the constitution of Sparta that, from a very
early period of its history, there had been always two kings, who had
held the supreme command in conjunction with each other, like the Roman
consuls in later times. This custom was sustained partly by the idea
that by this division of the executive power of the state, the exercise
of the power was less likely to become despotic or tyrannical. It had
its origin, however, according to the ancient legends, in the following
singular occurrences:
At a very early period in the history of Sparta, when the people had
always been accustomed, like other states, to have one prince or
chieftain, a certain prince died, leaving his wife, whose name was
Argia, and two infant children, as his survivors. The children were
twins, and the father had died almost immediately after they were born.
Now the office of king was in a certain sense hereditary, and yet not
absolutely so; for the people were accustomed to assemble on the death
of the king, and determine who should be his successor, choosing always,
however, the oldest son of the former monarch, unless there was some
very extraordinary and imperious reason for not doing so. In this case
they decided, as usual, that the oldest son should be king.
But here a very serious difficulty arose, which was, to determine which
of the twins was the oldest son. They resembled each other so closely
that no stranger could distinguish one from the other at all. The mother
said that she could not distinguish them, and that she did not know
which was the first-born. This was not strictly true; for she did, in
fact, know, and only denied her power to decide the question because she
wished to have both of her children kings.
In this perplexity the Spartans sent to the oracle at Delphi to know
what they were to do. The oracle gave, as usual, an ambiguous and
unsatisfactory response. It directed the people to make both the
children kings, but to render the highest honors to the first-born. When
this answer was reported at Sparta, it only increased the difficulty;
for how were they to render peculiar honors to the first-born unless
they could ascertain which the first-born was?
In this dilemma, some person suggested to the magistrates that perhaps
Argia really knew which was the eldest child, and that if so, by
watching her, to see whether she washed and fed one, uniformly, before
the other, or gave it precedence in any other way, by which her latent
maternal instinct or partiality might appear, the question might
possibly be determined. This plan was accordingly adopted. The
magistrates contrived means to place a servant maid in the house to
watch the mother in the way proposed, and the result was that the true
order of birth was revealed. From that time forward, while they were
both considered as princes, the one now supposed to be the first-born
took precedence of the other.
When, however, the children arrived at an age to assume the exercise of
the governmental power, as there was no perceptible difference between
them in age, or strength, or accomplishments, the one who had been
decided to be the younger was little disposed to submit to the other.
Each had his friends and adherents, parties were formed, and a long and
angry civil dissension ensued. In the end the question was compromised,
the command was divided, and the system of having two chief magistrates
became gradually established, the power descending in two lines, from
father to son, through many generations. Of course there was perpetual
jealousy and dissension, and often open and terrible conflicts, between
these two rival lines.
The Spartans were an agricultural people, cultivating the valley in the
southeastern part of the Peloponnesus, the waters of which were
collected and conveyed to the sea by the River Eurotas and its branches.
They lived in the plainest possible manner, and prided themselves on the
stern and stoical resolution with which they rejected all the
refinements and luxuries of society. Courage, hardihood, indifference to
life, and the power to endure without a murmur the most severe and
protracted sufferings, were the qualities which they valued. They
despised wealth just as other nations despise effeminacy and foppery.
Their laws discouraged commerce, lest it should make some of the people
rich. Their clothes were scanty and plain, their houses were
comfortless, their food was a coarse bread, hard and brown, and their
money was of iron. With all this, however, they were the most ferocious
and terrible soldiers in the world.
They were, moreover, with all their plainness of manners and of life, of
a very proud and lofty spirit. All agricultural toil, and every other
species of manual labor in their state, were performed by a servile
peasantry, while the free citizens, whose profession was exclusively
that of arms, were as aristocratic and exalted in soul as any nobles on
earth. People are sometimes, in our day, when money is so much valued,
proud, notwithstanding their poverty. The Spartans were proud of their
poverty itself. They could be rich if they chose, but they despised
riches. They looked down on all the refinements and delicacies of dress
and of living from an elevation far above them. They looked down on
labor, too, with the same contempt. They were yet very nice and
particular about their dress and military appearance, though every thing
pertaining to both was coarse and simple, and they had slaves to wait
upon them even in their campaigns.
The Athenians were a totally different people. The leading classes in
their commonwealth were cultivated, intellectual, and refined. The city
of Athens was renowned for the splendor of its architecture, its
temples, its citadels, its statues, and its various public institutions,
which in subsequent times made it the great intellectual center of
Europe. It was populous and wealthy. It had a great commerce and a
powerful fleet. The Spartan character, in a word, was stern, gloomy,
indomitable, and wholly unadorned. The Athenians were rich,
intellectual, and refined. The two nations were nearly equal in power,
and were engaged in a perpetual and incessant rivalry.
[Illustration: FATE OF THE PERSIAN EMBASSADORS AT SPARTA.]
There were various other states and cities in Greece, but Athens and
Sparta were at this time the most considerable, and they were altogether
the most resolute and determined in their refusal to submit to the
Persian sway. In fact, so well known and understood was the spirit of
defiance with which these two powers were disposed to regard the Persian
invasion, that when Xerxes sent his summons demanding submission, to the
other states of Greece, he did not send any to these. When Darius
invaded Greece some years before, he had summoned Athens and Sparta as
well as the others, but his demands were indignantly rejected. It seems
that the custom was for a government or a prince, when acknowledging the
dominion of a superior power, to send, as a token of territorial
submission, a little earth and water, which was a sort of legal form of
giving up possession of their country to the sovereign who claimed it.
Accordingly, when Darius sent his embassadors into Greece to summon the
country to surrender, the embassadors, according to the usual form,
called upon the governments of the several states to send earth and
water to the king. The Athenians, as has been already said, indignantly
refused to comply with this demand. The Spartans, not content with a
simple refusal, seized the embassadors and threw them into a well,
telling them, as they went down, that if they wanted earth and water for
the King of Persia, they might get it there.
The Greeks had obtained some information of Xerxes's designs against
them before they received his summons. The first intelligence was
communicated to the Spartans by Demaratus himself, while he was at Susa,
in the following singular manner. It was the custom, in those days, to
write with a steel point on a smooth surface of wax. The wax was spread
for this purpose on a board or tablet of metal, in a very thin stratum,
forming a ground upon which the letters traced with the point were
easily legible. Demaratus took two writing-tablets such as these, and
removing the wax from them, he wrote a brief account of the proposed
Persian invasion, by tracing the characters upon the surface of the wood
or metal itself, beneath; then, restoring the wax so as to conceal the
letters, he sent the two tablets, seemingly blank, to Leonidas, king of
Sparta. The messengers who bore them had other pretexts for their
journey, and they had various other articles to carry. The Persian
guards who stopped and examined the messengers from time to time along
the route, thought nothing of the blank tablets, and so they reached
Leonidas in safety.
Leonidas being a blunt, rough soldier, and not much accustomed to
cunning contrivances himself, was not usually much upon the watch for
them from others, and when he saw no obvious communication upon the
tablets, he threw them aside, not knowing what the sending of them could
mean, and not feeling any strong interest in ascertaining. His wife,
however--her name was Gorgo--had more curiosity. There was something
mysterious about the affair, and she wished to solve it. She examined
the tablets attentively in every part, and at length removed cautiously
a little of the wax. The letters began to appear. Full of excitement and
pleasure, she proceeded with the work until the whole cereous coating
was removed. The result was, that the communication was revealed, and
Greece received the warning.
When the Greeks heard that Xerxes was at Sardis, they sent three
messengers in disguise, to ascertain the facts in respect to the Persian
army assembled there, and, so far as possible, to learn the plans and
designs of the king. Notwithstanding all the efforts of these men to
preserve their concealment and disguise, they were discovered, seized,
and tortured by the Persian officer who took them, until they confessed
that they were spies. The officer was about to put them to death, when
Xerxes himself received information of the circumstances. He forbade the
execution, and directed, on the other hand, that the men should be
conducted through all his encampments, and be allowed to view and
examine every thing. He then dismissed them, with orders to return to
Greece and report what they had seen. He thought, he said, that the
Greeks would be more likely to surrender if they knew how immense his
preparations were for effectually vanquishing them if they attempted
resistance.
The city of Athens, being farther north than Sparta, would be the one
first exposed to danger from the invasion, and when the people heard of
Xerxes's approach, the whole city was filled with anxiety and alarm.
Some of the inhabitants were panic-stricken, and wished to submit;
others were enraged, and uttered nothing but threats and defiance. A
thousand different plans of defense were proposed and eagerly
discussed. At length the government sent messengers to the oracle at
Delphi, to learn what their destiny was to be, and to obtain, if
possible, divine direction in respect to the best mode of averting the
danger. The messengers received an awful response, portending, in wild
and solemn, though dark and mysterious language, the most dreadful
calamities to the ill-fated city. The messengers were filled with alarm
at hearing this reply. One of the inhabitants of Delphi, the city in
which the oracle was situated, proposed to them to make a second
application, in the character of the most humble supplicants, and to
implore that the oracle would give them some directions in respect to
the best course for them to pursue in order to avoid, or, at least, to
mitigate the impending danger. They did so, and after a time they
received an answer, vague, mysterious, and almost unintelligible, but
which seemed to denote that the safety of the city was connected in some
manner with Salamis, and with certain "wooden walls," to which the
inspired distich of the response obscurely alluded.
The messengers returned to Athens and reported the answer which they had
received. The people were puzzled and perplexed in their attempts to
understand it. It seems that the citadel of Athens had been formerly
surrounded by a wooden palisade. Some thought that this was what was
referred to by the "wooden walls," and that the meaning of the oracle
was that they must rebuild the palisade, and then retreat to the citadel
when the Persians should approach, and defend themselves there.
Others conceived that the phrase referred to ships, and that the oracle
meant to direct them to meet their enemies with a fleet upon the sea.
Salamis, which was also mentioned by the oracle, was an island not far
from Athens, being west of the city, between it and the Isthmus of
Corinth. Those who supposed that by the "wooden walls" was denoted the
fleet, thought that Salamis might have been alluded to as the place near
which the great naval battle was to be fought. This was the
interpretation which seemed finally to prevail.
The Athenians had a fleet of about two hundred galleys. These vessels
had been purchased and built, some time before this, for the Athenian
government, through the influence of a certain public officer of high
rank and influence, named Themistocles. It seems that a large sum had
accumulated in the public treasury, the produce of certain mines
belonging to the city, and a proposal was made to divide it among the
citizens, which would have given a small sum to each man. Themistocles
opposed this proposition, and urged instead that the government should
build and equip a fleet with the money. This plan was finally adopted.
The fleet was built, and it was now determined to call it into active
service to meet and repel the Persians, though the naval armament of
Xerxes was six times as large.
The next measure was to establish a confederation, if possible, of the
Grecian states, or at least of all those who were willing to combine,
and thus to form an allied army to resist the invader. The smaller
states were very generally panic-stricken, and had either already
signified their submission to the Persian rule, or were timidly
hesitating, in doubt whether it would be safer for them to submit to the
overwhelming force which was advancing against them, or to join the
Athenians and the Spartans in their almost desperate attempts to resist
it. The Athenians and Spartans settled, for the time, their own
quarrels, and held a council to take the necessary measures for forming
a more extended confederation.
All this took place while Xerxes was slowly advancing from Sardis to the
Hellespont, and from the Hellespont to Doriscus, as described in the
preceding chapter.
The council resolved on dispatching an embassy at once to all the states
of Greece, as well as to some of the remoter neighboring powers, asking
them to join the alliance.
The first Greek city to which these embassadors came was Argos, which
was the capital of a kingdom or state lying between Athens and Sparta,
though within the Peloponnesus. The states of Argos and of Sparta, being
neighbors, had been constantly at war. Argos had recently lost six
thousand men in a battle with the Spartans, and were, consequently, not
likely to be in a very favorable mood for a treaty of friendship and
alliance.
When the embassadors had delivered their message, the Argolians replied
that they had anticipated such a proposal from the time that they had
heard that Xerxes had commenced his march toward Greece, and that they
had applied, accordingly, to the oracle at Delphi, to know what it would
be best for them to do in case the proposal were made. The answer of the
oracle had been, they said, unfavorable to their entering into an
alliance with the Greeks. They were willing, however, they added,
notwithstanding this, to enter into an alliance, offensive and
defensive, with the Spartans, for thirty years, on condition that they
should themselves have the command of half the Peloponnesian troops.
They were entitled to the command of the whole, being, as they
contended, the superior nation in rank, but they would waive their just
claim, and be satisfied with half, if the Spartans would agree to that
arrangement.
The Spartans replied that they could not agree to those conditions. They
were themselves, they said, the superior nation in rank, and entitled to
the whole command; and as they had two kings, and Argos but one, there
was a double difficulty in complying with the Argive demand. They could
not surrender one half of the command without depriving one of their
kings of his rightful power.
Thus the proposed alliance failed entirely, the people of Argos saying
that they would as willingly submit to the dominion of Xerxes as to the
insolent demands and assumptions of superiority made by the government
of Sparta.
The embassadors among other countries which they visited in their
attempts to obtain alliance and aid, went to Sicily. Gelon was the King
of Sicily, and Syracuse was his capital. Here the same difficulty
occurred which had broken up the negotiations at Argos. The embassadors,
when they arrived at Syracuse, represented to Gelon that, if the
Persians subdued Greece, they would come to Sicily next, and that it was
better for him and for his countrymen that they should meet the enemy
while he was still at a distance, rather than to wait until he came
near. Gelon admitted the justice of this reasoning, and said that he
would furnish a large force, both of ships and men, for carrying on the
war, provided that he might have the command of the combined army. To
this, of course, the Spartans would not agree. He then asked that he
might command the fleet, on condition of giving up his claim to the land
forces. This proposition the Athenian embassadors rejected, saying to
Gelon that what they were in need of, and came to him to obtain, was a
supply of troops, not of leaders. The Athenians, they said, were to
command the fleet, being not only the most ancient nation of Greece, but
also the most immediately exposed to the invasion, so that they were
doubly entitled to be considered as the principals and leaders in the
war.
Gelon then told the embassadors that, since they wished to obtain every
thing and to concede nothing, they had better leave his dominions
without delay, and report to their countrymen that they had nothing to
expect from Sicily.
The embassadors went then to Corcyra, a large island on the western
coast of Greece, in the Adriatic Sea. It is now called Corfu. Here they
seemed to meet with their first success. The people of Corcyra acceded
to the proposals made to them, and promised at once to equip and man
their fleet, and send it round into the AEgean Sea. They immediately
engaged in the work, and seemed to be honestly intent on fulfilling
their promises. They were, however, in fact, only pretending. They were
really undecided which cause to espouse, the Greek or the Persian, and
kept their promised squadron back by means of various delays, until its
aid was no longer needed.
But the most important of all these negotiations of the Athenians and
Spartans with the neighboring states were those opened with Thessaly.
Thessaly was a kingdom in the northern part of Greece. It was,
therefore, the territory which the Persian armies would first enter, on
turning the northwestern corner of the AEgean Sea. There were, moreover,
certain points in its geographical position, and in the physical
conformation of the country, that gave it a peculiar importance in
respect to the approaching conflict.
By referring to the map placed at the commencement of the fifth chapter,
it will be seen that Thessaly was a vast valley, surrounded on all sides
by mountainous land, and drained by the River Peneus and its branches.
The Peneus flows eastwardly to the AEgean Sea, and escapes from the great
valley through a narrow and romantic pass lying between the Mountains
Olympus and Ossa. This pass was called in ancient times the Olympic
Straits, and a part of it formed a romantic and beautiful glen called
the Vale of Tempe. There was a road through this pass, which was the
only access by which Thessaly could be entered from the eastward.
To the south of the Vale of Tempe, the mountains, as will appear from
the map, crowded so hard upon the sea as not to allow any passage to the
eastward of them. The natural route of Xerxes, therefore, in descending
into Greece, would be to come down along the coast until he reached the
mouth of the Peneus, and then, following the river up through the Vale
of Tempe into Thessaly, to pass down toward the Peloponnesus on the
western side of Ossa and Pelion, and of the other mountains near the
sea. If he could get through the Olympic Straits and the Vale of Tempe,
the way would be open and unobstructed until he should reach the
southern frontier of Thessaly, where there was another narrow pass
leading from Thessaly into Greece. This last defile was close to the
sea, and was called the Straits of Thermopylae.
Thus Xerxes and his hosts, in continuing their march to the southward,
must necessarily traverse Thessaly, and in doing so they would have two
narrow and dangerous defiles to pass--one at Mount Olympus, to get into
the country, and the other at Thermopylae, to get out of it. It
consequently became a point of great importance to the Greeks to
determine at which of these two passes they should make their stand
against the torrent which was coming down upon them.
This question would, of course, depend very much upon the disposition of
Thessaly herself. The government of that country, understanding the
critical situation in which they were placed, had not waited for the
Athenians and Spartans to send embassadors to them, but, at a very early
period of the war--before, in fact, Xerxes had yet crossed the
Hellespont, had sent messengers to Athens to concert some plan of
action. These messengers were to say to the Athenians that the
government of Thessaly were expecting every day to receive a summons
from Xerxes, and that they must speedily decide what they were to do;
that they themselves were very unwilling to submit to him, but they
could not undertake to make a stand against his immense host alone; that
the southern Greeks might include Thessaly in their plan of defense, or
exclude it, just as they thought best. If they decided to include it,
then they must make a stand at the Olympic Straits, that is, at the pass
between Olympus and Ossa; and to do that, it would be necessary to send
a strong force immediately to take possession of the pass. If, on the
contrary, they decided _not_ to defend Thessaly, then the pass of
Thermopylae would be the point at which they must make their stand, and
in that case Thessaly must be at liberty to submit on the first Persian
summons.
The Greeks, after consultation on the subject, decided that it would be
best for them to defend Thessaly, and to take their stand, accordingly,
at the Straits of Olympus. They immediately put a large force on board
their fleet, armed and equipped for the expedition. This was at the time
when Xerxes was just about crossing the Hellespont. The fleet sailed
from the port of Athens, passed up through the narrow strait called
Euripus, lying between the island of Euboea and the main land, and
finally landed at a favorable point of disembarkation, south of
Thessaly. From this point the forces marched to the northward until they
reached the Peneus, and then established themselves at the narrowest
part of the passage between the mountains, strengthened their position
there as much as possible, and awaited the coming of the enemy. The
amount of the force was ten thousand men.
They had not been here many days before a messenger came to them from
the King of Macedon, which country, it will be seen, lies immediately
north of Thessaly, earnestly dissuading them from attempting to make a
stand at the Vale of Tempe. Xerxes was coming on, he said, with an
immense and overwhelming force, one against which it would be utterly
impossible for them to make good their defense at such a point as that.
It would be far better for them to fall back to Thermopylae, which, being
a narrower and more rugged pass, could be more easily defended.
Besides this, the messenger said that it was possible for Xerxes to
enter Thessaly without going through the Vale of Tempe at all. The
country between Thessaly and Macedon was mountainous, but it was not
impassable, and Xerxes would very probably come by that way. The only
security, therefore, for the Greeks, would be to fall back and intrench
themselves at Thermopylae. Nor was there any time to be lost. Xerxes was
crossing the Hellespont, and the whole country was full of excitement
and terror.
The Greeks determined to act on this advice. They broke up their
encampment at the Olympic Straits, and, retreating to the southward,
established themselves at Thermopylae, to await there the coming of the
conqueror. The people of Thessaly then surrendered to Xerxes as soon as
they received his summons.
Xerxes, from his encampment at Therma, where we left him at the close of
the last chapter, saw the peaks of Olympus and Ossa in the southern
horizon. They were distant perhaps fifty miles from where he stood. He
inquired about them, and was told that the River Peneus flowed between
them to the sea, and that through the same defile there lay the main
entrance to Thessaly. He had previously determined to march his army
round the other way, as the King of Macedon had suggested, but he said
that he should like to see this defile. So he ordered a swift Sidonian
galley to be prepared, and, taking with him suitable guides, and a fleet
of other vessels in attendance on his galley, he sailed to the mouth of
the Peneus, and, entering that river, he ascended it until he came to
the defile.
Seen from any of the lower elevations which projected from the bases of
the mountains at the head of this defile, Thessaly lay spread out before
the eye as one vast valley--level, verdant, fertile, and bounded by
distant groups and ranges of mountains, which formed a blue and
beautiful horizon on every side. Through the midst of this scene of
rural loveliness the Peneus, with its countless branches, gracefully
meandered, gathering the water from every part of the valley, and then
pouring it forth in a deep and calm current through the gap in the
mountains at the observer's feet. Xerxes asked his guides if it would be
possible to find any other place where the waters of the Peneus could be
conducted to the sea. They replied that it would not be, for the valley
was bounded on every side by ranges of mountainous land.
"Then," said Xerxes, "the Thessalians were wise in submitting at once to
my summons; for, if they had not done so, I would have raised a vast
embankment across the valley here, and thus stopped the river, turned
their country into a lake, and drowned them all."