Xerxes

One crew escape.

The alarm spread.

The third of the Greek guard-ships contrived to escape, or, rather, the crew escaped, while the vessel itself was taken. This ship, in its flight, had gone toward the north, and the crew at last succeeded in running it on shore on the coast of Thessaly, so as to escape, themselves, by abandoning the vessel to the enemy. The officers and crew, thus escaping to the shore, went through Thessaly into Greece, spreading the tidings every where that the Persians were at hand. This intelligence was communicated, also, along the coast, by beacon fires which the people of Sciathus built upon the heights of the island as a signal, to give the alarm to the country southward of them, according to the preconcerted plan. The alarm was communicated by other fires built on other heights, and sentinels were stationed on every commanding eminence on the highlands of Eubœa toward the south, to watch for the first appearance of the enemy.

Return of the Persian galleys.

The monument of stones.

The Persian galleys that had been sent forward having taken the three Greek guard-ships, and finding the sea before them now clear of all appearances of an enemy, concluded to return to the fleet with their prizes and their report. They had been directed, when they were dispatched from the fleet, to lay up a monument of stones at the furthest point which they should reach in their cruise: a measure often resorted to in similar cases, by way of furnishing proof that a party thus sent forward have really advanced as far as they pretend on their return. The Persian detachment had actually brought the stones for the erection of their landmark with them in one of their galleys. The galley containing the stones, and two others to aid it, pushed on beyond Sciathus to a small rocky islet standing in a conspicuous position in the sea, and there they built their monument or cairn. The detachment then returned to meet the fleet. The time occupied by this whole expedition was eleven days.

Progress of the fleet.

The fleet was, in the mean time, coming down along the coast of Magnesia. The whole company of ships had advanced safely and prosperously thus far, but now a great calamity was about to befall them—the first of the series of disasters by which the expedition was ultimately ruined. It was a storm at sea.

The fleet anchors in a bay.

The fleet had drawn up for the night in a long and shallow bay on the coast. There was a rocky promontory at one end of this bay and a cape on the other, with a long beach between them. It was a very good place of refuge and rest for the night in calm weather, but such a bay afforded very little shelter against a tempestuous wind, or even against the surf and swell of the sea, which were sometimes produced by a distant storm. When the fleet entered this bay in the evening, the sea was calm and the sky serene. The commanders expected to remain there for the night, and to proceed on the voyage on the following day.

A coming storm.

The bay was not sufficiently extensive to allow of the drawing up of so large a fleet in a single line along the shore. The ships were accordingly arranged in several lines, eight in all. The innermost of these lines was close to the shore; the others were at different distances from it, and every separate ship was held to the place assigned it by its anchors. In this position the fleet passed the night in safety, but before morning there were indications of a storm. The sky looked wild and lurid. A heavy swell came rolling in from the offing. The wind began to rise, and to blow in fitful gusts. Its direction was from the eastward, so that its tendency was to drive the fleet upon the shore. The seamen were anxious and afraid, and the commanders of the several ships began to devise, each for his own vessel, the best means of safety. Some, whose vessels were small, drew them up upon the sand, above the reach of the swell. Others strengthened the anchoring tackle, or added new anchors to those already down. Others raised their anchors altogether, and attempted to row their galleys away, up or down the coast, in hope of finding some better place of shelter. Thus all was excitement and confusion in the fleet, through the eager efforts made by every separate crew to escape the impending danger.

The storm rages.

In the mean time, the storm came on apace. The rising and roughening sea made the oars useless, and the wind howled frightfully through the cordage and the rigging. The galleys soon began to be forced away from their moorings. Some were driven upon the beach and dashed to pieces by the waves. Some were wrecked on the rocks at one or the other of the projecting points which bounded the bay on either hand. Some foundered at their place of anchorage. Vast numbers of men were drowned. Those who escaped to the shore were in hourly dread of an attack from the inhabitants of the country. To save themselves, if possible, from this danger, they dragged up the fragments of the wrecked vessels upon the beach, and built a fort with them on the shore. Here they intrenched themselves, and then prepared to defend their lives, armed with the weapons which, like the materials for their fort, were washed up, from time to time, by the sea.

Destruction of many vessels.

Plunder of the wrecks.

Scyllias, the famous diver.

The storm continued for three days. It destroyed about three hundred galleys, besides an immense number of provision transports and other smaller vessels. Great numbers of seamen, also, were drowned. The inhabitants of the country along the coast enriched themselves with the plunder which they obtained from the wrecks, and from the treasures, and the gold and silver vessels, which continued for some time to be driven up upon the beach by the waves. The Persians themselves recovered, it was said, a great deal of valuable treasure, by employing a certain Greek diver, whom they had in their fleet, to dive for it after the storm was over. This diver, whose name was Scyllias, was famed far and wide for his power of remaining under water. As an instance of what they believed him capable of performing, they said that when, at a certain period subsequent to these transactions, he determined to desert to the Greeks, he accomplished his design by diving into the sea from the deck of a Persian galley, and coming up again in the midst of the Greek fleet, ten miles distant!

After three days the storm subsided. The Persians then repaired the damages which had been sustained, so far as it was now possible to repair them, collected what remained of the fleet, took the shipwrecked mariners from their rude fortification on the beach, and set sail again on their voyage to the southward.

Dissensions in the Greek fleet.

Jealousy of the Athenians.

In the mean time, the Greek fleet had assembled in the arm of the sea lying north of Eubœa, and between Eubœa and the main land. It was an allied fleet, made up of contributions from various states that had finally agreed to come into the confederacy. As is usually the case, however, with allied or confederate forces, they were not well agreed among themselves. The Athenians had furnished far the greater number of ships, and they considered themselves, therefore, entitled to the command; but the other allies were envious and jealous of them on account of that very superiority of wealth and power which enabled them to supply a greater portion of the naval force than the rest. They were willing that one of the Spartans should command, but they would not consent to put themselves under an Athenian. If an Athenian leader were chosen, they would disperse, they said, and the various portions of the fleet return to their respective homes.

Situation of the Athenians.

The Athenians, though burning with resentment at this unjust declaration, were compelled to submit to the necessity of the case. They could not take the confederates at their word, and allow the fleet to be broken up, for the defense of Athens was the great object for which it was assembled. The other states might make their peace with the conqueror by submission, but the Athenians could not do so. In respect to the rest of Greece, Xerxes wished only for dominion. In respect to Athens, he wished for vengeance. The Athenians had burned the Persian city of Sardis, and he had determined to give himself no rest until he had burned Athens in return.

It was well understood, therefore, that the assembling of the fleet, and giving battle to the Persians where they now were, was a plan adopted mainly for the defense and benefit of the Athenians. The Athenians, accordingly, waived their claim to command, secretly resolving that, when the war was over, they would have their revenge for the insult and injury.

Eurybiades appointed commander.

A Spartan was accordingly appointed commander of the fleet. His name was Eurybiades.

Things were in this state when the two fleets came in sight of each other in the strait between the northern end of Eubœa and the main land. Fifteen of the Persian galleys, advancing incautiously some miles in front of the rest, came suddenly upon the Greek fleet, and were all captured. The crews were made prisoners and sent into Greece. The remainder of the fleet entered the strait, and anchored at the eastern extremity of it, sheltered by the promontory of Magnesia, which now lay to the north of them.

Debates in the Greek council.

Dismay of the Eubœans.

The Greeks were amazed at the immense magnitude of the Persian fleet, and the first opinion of the commanders was, that it was wholly useless for them to attempt to engage them. A council was convened, and, after a long and anxious debate, they decided that it was best to retire to the southward. The inhabitants of Eubœa, who had been already in a state of great excitement and terror at the near approach of so formidable an enemy, were thrown, by this decision of the allies, into a state of absolute dismay. It was abandoning them to irremediable and hopeless destruction.

The Greek leaders bribed.

The government of the island immediately raised a very large sum of money, and went with it to Themistocles, one of the most influential of the Athenian leaders, and offered it to him if he would contrive any way to persuade the commanders of the fleet to remain and give the Persians battle where they were. Themistocles took the money, and agreed to the condition. He went with a small part of it—though this part was a very considerable sum—to Eurybiades, the commander-in-chief, and offered it to him if he would retain the fleet in its present position. There were some other similar offerings made to other influential men, judiciously selected. All this was done in a very private manner, and, of course, Themistocles took care to reserve to himself the lion's share of the Eubœan contribution. The effect of this money in altering the opinions of the naval officers was marvelous. A new council was called, the former decision was annulled, and the Greeks determined to give their enemies battle where they were.

Precautions of the Persians.

The Persians had not been unmindful of the danger that the Greeks might retreat by retiring through the Euripus, and so escape them. In order to prevent this, they secretly sent off a fleet of two hundred of their strongest and fleetest galleys, with orders to sail round Eubœa and enter the Euripus from the south, so as to cut off the retreat of the Greeks in that quarter. They thought that by this plan the Greek fleet would be surrounded, and could have no possible mode of escape. They remained, therefore, with the principal fleet, at the outer entrance of the northern strait for some days, before attacking the Greeks, in order to give time for the detachment to pass round the island.

Designs of the Persians discovered.

The Persians sent off the two hundred galleys with great secrecy, not desiring that the Greeks should discover their design of thus intercepting their retreat. They did discover it, however, for this was the occasion on which the great diver, Scyllias, made his escape from one fleet to the other by swimming under water ten miles, and he brought the Greeks the tidings.4

The Greeks decide to give battle.

Euripus and Artemisium.

The Greeks dispatched a small squadron of ships with orders to proceed southward into the Euripus, to meet this detachment which the Persians sent round; and, in the mean time, they determined themselves to attack the main Persian fleet without any delay. Notwithstanding their absurd dissensions and jealousies, and the extent to which the leaders were influenced by intrigues and bribes, the Greeks always evinced an undaunted and indomitable spirit when the day of battle came. It was, moreover, in this case, exceedingly important to defend the position which they had taken. By referring to the map once more, it will be seen that the Euripus was the great highway to Athens by sea, as the pass of Thermopylæ was by land. Thermopylæ was west of Artemisium, where the fleet was now stationed, and not many miles from it. The Greek army had made its great stand at Thermopylæ, and Xerxes was fast coming down the country with all his forces to endeavor to force a passage there. The Persian fleet, in entering Artemisium, was making the same attempt by sea in respect to the narrow passage of Euripus; and for either of the two forces, the fleet or the army, to fail of making good the defense of its position, without a desperate effort to do so, would justly be considered a base betrayal and abandonment of the other.

Advance of the Greeks.

The battle.

A stormy night.

Scene of terror.

The Greeks therefore advanced, one morning, to the attack of the Persians, to the utter astonishment of the latter, who believed that their enemies were insane when they thus saw them coming into the jaws, as they thought, of certain destruction. Before night, however, they were to change their opinions in respect to the insanity of their foes. The Greeks pushed boldly on into the midst of the Persian fleet, where they were soon surrounded. They then formed themselves into a circle, with the prows of the vessels outward, and the sterns toward the center within, and fought in this manner with the utmost desperation all the day. With the night a storm came on, or, rather, a series of thunder-showers and gusts of wind, so severe that both fleets were glad to retire from the scene of contest. The Persians went back toward the east, the Greeks to the westward, toward Thermopylæ—each party busy in repairing their wrecks, taking care of their wounded, and saving their vessels from the tempest. It was a dreadful night. The Persians, particularly, spent it in the midst of scenes of horror. The wind and the current, it seems, set outward, toward the sea, and carried the masses and fragments of the wrecked vessels, and the swollen and ghastly bodies of the dead, in among the Persian fleet, and so choked up the surface of the water that the oars became entangled and useless. The whole mass of seamen in the Persian fleet, during this terrible night, were panic-stricken and filled with horror. The wind, the perpetual thunder, the concussions of the vessels with the wrecks and with one another, and the heavy shocks of the seas, kept them in continual alarm; and the black and inscrutable darkness was rendered the more dreadful, while it prevailed, by the hideous spectacle which, at every flash of lightning, glared brilliantly upon every eye from the wide surface of the sea. The shouts and cries of officers vociferating orders, of wounded men writhing in agony, of watchmen and sentinels in fear of collisions, mingled with the howling wind and roaring seas, created a scene of indescribable terror and confusion.

The violence of the sudden gale was still greater further out at sea, and the detachment of ships which had been sent around Eubœa was wholly dispersed and destroyed by it.

A calm after the storm.

The storm was, however, after all, only a series of summer evening showers, such as to the inhabitants of peaceful dwellings on the land have no terror, but only come to clear the sultry atmosphere in the night, and in the morning are gone. When the sun rose, accordingly, upon the Greeks and Persians on the morning after their conflict, the air was calm, the sky serene, and the sea as blue and pure as ever. The bodies and the wrecks had been floated away into the offing. The courage or the ferocity, whichever we choose to call it, of the combatants, returned, and they renewed the conflict. It continued, with varying success, for two more days.

Terror of the Eubœans.

Their plans.

During all this time the inhabitants of the island of Eubœa were in the greatest distress and terror. They watched these dreadful conflicts from the heights, uncertain how the struggle would end, but fearing lest their defenders should be beaten, in which case the whole force of the Persian fleet would be landed on their island, to sweep it with pillage and destruction. They soon began to anticipate the worst, and, in preparation for it, they removed their goods—all that could be removed—and drove their cattle down to the southern part of the island, so as to be ready to escape to the main land. The Greek commanders, finding that the fleet would probably be compelled to retreat in the end, sent to them here, recommending that they should kill their cattle and eat them, roasting the flesh at fires which they should kindle on the plain. The cattle could not be transported, they said, across the channel, and it was better that the flying population should be fed, than that the food should fall into Persian hands. If they would dispose of their cattle in this manner, Eurybiades would endeavor, he said, to transport the people themselves and their valuable goods across into Attica.

How many thousand peaceful and happy homes were broken up and destroyed forever by this ruthless invasion!

The Greeks retire.

Inscription on the rocks.

In the mean time, the Persians, irritated by the obstinate resistance of the Greeks, were, on the fourth day, preparing for some more vigorous measures, when they saw a small boat coming toward the fleet from down the channel. It proved to contain a countryman, who came to tell them that the Greeks had gone away. The whole fleet, he said, had sailed off to the southward, and abandoned those seas altogether. The Persians did not, at first, believe this intelligence. They suspected some ambuscade or stratagem. They advanced slowly and cautiously down the channel. When they had gone half down to Thermopylæ, they stopped at a place called Histiæa, where, upon the rocks on the shore, they found an inscription addressed to the Ionians—who, it will be recollected, had been brought by Xerxes as auxiliaries, contrary to the advice of Artabanus—entreating them not to fight against their countrymen. This inscription was written in large and conspicuous characters on the face of the cliff, so that it could be read by the Ionian seamen as they passed in their galleys.

The commanders of the Persian fleet summoned to Thermopylæ.

The fleet anchored at Histiæa, the commanders being somewhat uncertain in respect to what it was best to do. Their suspense was very soon relieved by a messenger from Xerxes, who came in a galley up the channel from Thermopylæ, with the news that Xerxes had arrived at Thermopylæ, had fought a great battle there, defeated the Greeks, and obtained possession of the pass, and that any of the officers of the fleet who chose to do so might come and view the battle ground. This intelligence and invitation produced, throughout the fleet, a scene of the wildest excitement, enthusiasm, and joy. All the boats and smaller vessels of the fleet were put into requisition to carry the officers down. When they arrived at Thermopylæ the tidings all proved true. Xerxes was in possession of the pass, and the Greek fleet was gone.

Chapter IX.

The Battle of Thermopylæ

B.C. 480

The pass of Thermopylæ.

The pass of Thermopylæ was not a ravine among mountains, but a narrow space between mountains and the sea. The mountains landward were steep and inaccessible; the sea was shoal. The passage between them was narrow for many miles along the shore, being narrowest at the ingress and egress. In the middle the space was broader. The place was celebrated for certain warm springs which here issued from the rocks, and which had been used in former times for baths.

Its situation.

The position had been considered, long before Xerxes's day, a very important one in a military point of view, as it was upon the frontier between two Greek states that were frequently at war. One of these states, of course, was Thessaly. The other was Phocis, which lay south of Thessaly. The general boundary between these two states was mountainous, and impassable for troops, so that each could invade the territories of the other only by passing round between the mountains and the shore at Thermopylæ.

Ancient intrenchments.

View at Thermopylæ.

The Phocæans, in order to keep the Thessalians out, had, in former times, built a wall across the way, and put up gates there, which they strongly fortified. In order still further to increase the difficulty of forcing a passage, they conducted the water of the warm springs over the ground without the wall, in such a way as to make the surface continually wet and miry. The old wall had now fallen to ruins, but the miry ground remained. The place was solitary and desolate, and overgrown with a confused and wild vegetation. On one side the view extended far and wide over the sea, with the highlands of Eubœa in the distance, and on the other dark and inaccessible mountains rose, covered with forests, indented with mysterious and unexplored ravines, and frowning in a wild and gloomy majesty over the narrow passway which crept along the shore below.

The allied forces.

Leonidas the Spartan.

The Greeks, when they retired from Thessaly, fell back upon Thermopylæ, and established themselves there. They had a force variously estimated, from three to four thousand men. These were from the different states of Greece, some within and some without the Peloponnesus—a few hundred men only being furnished, in general, from each state or kingdom. Each of these bodies of troops had its own officers, though there was one general-in-chief, who commanded the whole. This was Leonidas the Spartan. He had brought with him three hundred Spartans, as the quota furnished by that city. These men he had specially selected himself, one by one, from among the troops of the city, as men on whom he could rely.

It will be seen from the map that Thermopylæ is at some distance from the Isthmus of Corinth, and that of the states which would be protected by making a stand at the pass, some were without the isthmus and some within. These states, in sending each a few hundred men only to Thermopylæ, did not consider that they were making their full contribution to the army, but only sending forward for the emergency those that could be dispatched at once; and they were all making arrangements to supply more troops as soon as they could be raised and equipped for the service. In the mean time, however, Xerxes and his immense hordes came on faster than they had expected, and the news at length came to Leonidas, in the pass, that the Persians, with one or two millions of men, were at hand, while he had only three or four thousand at Thermopylæ to oppose them. The question arose, What was to be done?

Debate in regard to defending Thermopylæ.

The decision.

Those of the Greeks who came from the Peloponnesus were in favor of abandoning Thermopylæ, and falling back to the isthmus. The isthmus, they maintained, was as strong and as favorable a position as the place where they were; and, by the time they had reached it, they would have received great re-enforcements; whereas, with so small a force as they had then at command, it was madness to attempt to resist the Persian millions. This plan, however, was strongly opposed by all those Greeks who represented countries without the Peloponnesus; for, by abandoning Thermopylæ, and falling back to the isthmus, their states would be left wholly at the mercy of the enemy. After some consultation and debate, it was decided to remain at Thermopylæ. The troops accordingly took up their positions in a deliberate and formal manner, and, intrenching themselves as strongly as possible, began to await the onset of the enemy. Leonidas and his three hundred were foremost in the defile, so as to be the first exposed to the attack. The rest occupied various positions along the passage, except one corps, which was stationed on the mountains above, to guard the pass in that direction. This corps was from Phocis, which, being the state nearest to the scene of conflict, had furnished a larger number of soldiers than any other. Their division numbered a thousand men. These being stationed on the declivity of the mountain, left only two or three thousand in the defile below.