pe. CONGRESS AT THE ISTHMUS.-PROGRESS OF THE PERSIANS. 257 being compelled by necessity, had surrendered mus, knowledge an Ionian leader without a considerthough not hostile to Athens, could not acWhile the Persian army was waiting at PieThe next care of the congress at the Isth- able sacrifice of national prejudices. after their endeavours to unite the nation in the common cause, was to decide on their ria till a road had been opened for it through the place of defence. Their first step was deter- thick forest that clothed the sides of the Cammined by the call of the Thessalians, who, as bunian Hills, or soon after it had crossed over we have seen, notwithstanding the treachery into Thessaly, a squadron of ten fast-sailing Off the island of Sciathus they of the Aleuads, were willing, if supported by ships was detached from the fleet of Therme the allied forces, to resist the invader on their to obtain intelligence about the movements of border. They invited the deputies to send a the Greeks. strong body of troops to guard the pass of Tem- fell in with three Greek ships, which were It seems not to have occurred to any one there stationed on the look-out, one an Athethat this position would be useless, and that an nian, the others of Trozen and Ægina. They expedition to Thessaly would answer no pur- took to flight at the sight of the Persians, who pose, unless it was made with the intention of pursued and captured the Trozenian, and, after giving the enemy battle in the Thessalian plain, a brave struggle, the Æginetan. The victors a field much more favourable to the invading selected the comeliest man they found among army than to the weaker force. A body of their Træzenian prisoners, and sacrificed him 10,000 men was sent, while Xerxes was pre- at the prow of his ship for an omen of victory : paring for his passage at Abydos, under the this fearful superstition, however, did not precommand of Euænetus, a Spartan, and of The- vent them from paying a generous respect to mistocles, to take possession of Tempe. While the valour of Pytheas the Eginetan, who, after they were encamped there, they received a his ship was taken, fought till he was almost message from Alexander, now king of Mace-cut to pieces. The Athenians ran their vessel don, exhorting them to withdraw, and not to aground in the mouth of the Peneus, and made wait till they were trampled under foot by the their way home through Thessaly. This first At the same time they discov-appearance of the enemy was speedily announinvading host. ered that Thessaly lay open to the passes over ced by fire-signals from Sciathus to the Greeks the Cambunian range, and that the enemy at Artemisium. The alarm it excited was so would be able to hem them in on every side. great, that the admiral resolved on quitting few ships might defend the Euripus: before he They therefore took the advice of the Macedo- this station, and retiring to Chalcis, where a nian, and marched back to the Isthmus. The Persian squadron, sailed away, he set watches on the heights of Euboea, to secure the earliest intelligence of the hostile armament. ous rock in the channel between Sciathus and after setting up a stone pillar to mark a dangerMagnesia, returned to Therme with the report that the coast was clear. On this information, the whole fleet got under way eleven days afthe same evening came to anchor on the southter Xerxes began his march from Therme, and ern coast of Magnesia. From the mouth of the Peneus to the Gulf of Pagasa the whole coast is rugged, and destitute of harbours, and even of good roadsteads, but more especially at the foot of Ossa and of Pelion. Night overtook the Persians before they could reach the Pegasæan Gulf; but under the brow of Pelion they found a beach, stretching from the town of Canastaa to the Cape of Sepias, and here they resolved to wait for the morning. As the low shore was of small extent in proportion to their numbers, only a small part of the ships could be drawn up on the beach; the rest rode at an The next defensible position appeared to be the Pass of Thermopyle, and here it was resolved to make a stand, and, at the same time, to guard the northern entrance of the Euboean channel. Accordingly, when the news came that the Persians were in Pieria, on the borders of Thessaly, more than two thirds of the whole naval force set sail for the north coast of Euboea, and a small body of Peloponnesians began its march for Thermopylæ. The northern side of Euboea afforded a commodious and advantageous station: it was a long beach, called, from a temple at its eastern extremity, Artemisium, capable of receiving the galleys if it should be necessary to draw them upon the shore, and commanding a view of the open sea and the coast of Magnesia, and consequently an opportunity of watching the enemy's movements as he advanced towards the south; while, on the other hand, its short distance from Thermopylæ enabled the fleet to keep up a quick and easy communication with the land force. Here, therefore, 271 triremes were stationed under the Spartan admiral Eu-chor, their sterns turned towards the sea, line rybiades. A Spartan had been appointed to the command, though the Lacedæmonians sent only ten ships, by the desire of the allies, who refused to obey an Athenian. Yet Athens manned 127 ships, and also supplied the Chalcidians with twenty others. It may have been principally the jealousy of Ægina that led to the determination not to submit to Athenian command. The force she sent on this occasion, eighteen triremes, bore no proportion to her power, and to the end of the war she husbanded her navy under the plea of protecting her own shores. Corinth contributed forty sail, Megara twenty, and the rest were chiefly drawn from the Dorian cities of Peloponnesus, which, VOL. I.-Kx within line. The night (it was the middle of complete their ruin; and they hastily formed a ed) as the price of his endeavours to detain the high fence out of the wrecks round the fleet fleet at Artemisium, he employed a part of the that was drawn up on the beach. In the mean sum in bribing the admiral Eurybiades and the while the Magians were not idle: they kept re- Corinthian commander Adeimantus, and thus peating their incantations, and offering sacri-induced them to change their resolution. We fices to the wind, and to Thetis and the Nere-would willingly agree with Plutarch in rejecting ids, when they heard from the Ionians that the this story as one of the numberless, scandalous, fatal coast was sacred to these powers. At and groundless anecdotes which Herodotus length the storm subsided; but for many miles must have found in circulation, such as commonthe shores were strewed with wrecks and with ly spring up in abundance, after a period big corpses. The ships of war destroyed were with great events, in minds that love to trace reckoned, on the lowest calculation, at 400: them to secret and little causes. But, whatevthe lives, the transports, the stores, the treas-er foundation it may have had, the Greeks not ure lost, were past counting. When the sea grew calm, the remains of the fleet doubled the Southern headland of Magnesia, and put into the Gulf of Pagasa, where they moored in the harbour of Aphetæ close at its mouth. only stayed, but soon recovered from their first astonishment, and did not shrink from looking the enemy in the face. They had received early information of his plans from a man named Scyllias, who deserted to them from Aphetæ, and was so famous as a diver that he was commonly believed to have traversed the whole intervening space, about ten miles, under water. The news reached them in the morning, and it was determined to wait till midnight, and then sail to meet the squadron which had been sent round Euboea. In the mean while the Persians did not move from their station at Aphetæ, for they feared lest they should scare their puny The joy with which the Greeks observed the rising and the continued raging of the tempest, was proportioned to the fears which the first approach of the barbarian armament had excited in them. It was afterward believed that the event had been signified by oracles, which bade the Delphians sacrifice to the wind, and the Athenians to Boreas, their kindred god, who had carried off Orithyia, the daughter of Erechtheus, from the banks of the Ilissus. They now grate-enemy to flight they deemed their own ships fully acknowledged his friendly succour, and not only sacrificed with earnest invocations to him and to their native heroine, while the storm lasted, but afterward raised a temple to him on the Ilissus. The day after the gale got up, while it was at its height, the scouts, who had been left to look out for the enemy, came to Chalcis with such a description of its effects, that every one believed the whole armada to be almost utterly ruined, and after a thanksgiving and a libation to Poseidon, the fleet returned to its former station at Artemisium, to complete the victory which the gods had begun. It arrived in time to capture fifteen Persian ships, which had been detained at Sepias after the departure of the main body, and as they followed in search of it, seeing the Greeks off Artemisium, took them for friends, and only discovered their ror when they had gone too far to retreat. superior, not only in numbers, but as sailers. The Greeks were surprised at their inaction, and having waited till noon expecting an attack, they then resolved to venture out and try their strength. The Persians were astonished at their foolhardiness, and hastened to meet and enclose them. They formed a circle round them; the Greeks first drew their line into a smaller circle, with their prows facing the surrounding enemy, and then, at the signal, darted forward, like rays, to pierce and break the wall of ships that encompassed them. The Persians were thrown into disorder by the attack, and lost thirty ships, but the combat was still undecided, when the approach of night put an end to it. Each party returned to his station with altered feelings, the Persians perplexed and diser-heartened, the Greeks with new hopes. They had gained, not, indeed, a clear victory, but a pledge of one; confidence in their own strength, and insight into the enemy's weakness. It was with good reason Pindar afterward celebrated Artemisium as the place "where the sons of Athens laid the shining groundwork of freedom." The loss the Persians had suffered, though it amounted to a number exceeding that of the whole Grecian fleet, was scarcely felt in their huge armament. When, from their station at Aphetæ, they perceived the slender force of their adversary, their only concern was to prevent him from escaping: they could not ima- In the following night another violent sumgine that he would venture on a contest. They mer storm, accompanied with torrents of rain, therefore, without delay, detached a squadron thunder, and lightning, terrified more than it of 200 sail, with orders to make for the north, hurt the Persians at Aphetæ, where the road that their object might not be suspected, but was choked with the wrecks and the bodies that when they had got out to sea beyond Sciathus, were driven in from the scene of the action. to bear away to the south, round the southern But the same storm overtook the squadron that extremity of Euboea, and then sail up the chan- was sailing round Euboea with perhaps greater nel, and cut off the retreat of the Greeks. The fury, and off a part of the coast infamous in anGreeks, on their part, who had persuaded them-cient times under the name of Cola (the Holselves that they should scarcely find an enemy lows). This terrible place probably lay on the to combat, were at first thrown into consternation by the sight of the power opposed to them, and it is said that Themistocles had great difficulty in restraining them from again turning their backs, and seeking shelter in the Euripus. Herodotus even relates that, having received the enormous sum of thirty talents from the Eubeans (the particular cities are not mention eastern side of the island, which, throughout the whole line of its iron-bound coast, contains only one inlet where a ship can find shelter in distress. On these rocks the Persian squadron perished. The joyful tidings reached the Greeks at Artemisium at the same time that they received a re-enforcement from Athens of fifty. three ships, which, if Cela lay as has been THERMOPYLE. commonly supposed, passed by the scene of the wreck, and must have brought the news. Thus strengthened and cheered, they again sailed out, ready for another trial. The Persians, yet trembling under the terrors of the past night, kept still; but a squadron of Cilicians, either freshly arrived, or detached, for some unknown purpose, from the main body, fell in with them and was destroyed. On "They were reminded that the invader was not At the time when the congress at the Isth- It was a prevailing belief in later ages, one, perhaps, that became current immediately after his death, that when he set out on his expedition he distinctly foresaw its fatal issue. And Herodotus gives some colour to the opinion by recording that he selected his Spartan followers among those who had sons to leave behind them. But Plutarch imagined that before his departure from Sparta he and his little band games in the presence of their parents, and solemnized their own obsequies by funeral that it was on this occasion he spoke of them as a small number to fight, but enough to die. One fact destroys this fiction. Before his arrival at Thermopylæ, he did not know of the path over the mountain by which he might be attacked in the rear; the only danger he had before the courage of any brave warrior, that of mahis eyes was one which could not have shaken king a stand for a few days against incessant attacks, but from small bodies, in a narrow space, where he would be favoured by the ground. The whole pass shut in between the eastern promontory of Eta, called Callidromus, which towers above it in rugged precipices, and the shore of the Malian Gulf, is four or five miles in length; it is narrowest at either end, where the mountain is said once to have left room At the foot only for a single carriage; but between these points the pass first widens, and then is again contracted, though not into quite so narrow a space, by the cliffs of Callidromus. of these rocks a hot sulphureous spring gushes up in a copious stream, and other slenderer veins trickle across the road. This is the pass properly called Thermopyla. On the side of the sea it was once guarded no less securely than by the cliffs; for it runs along the edge of a deep morass, which the mud, brought down by the rivers from the vale of the Spercheius, is now continually carrying forward into the gulf, while the part next the road gradually hardens into firm ground, and widens the pass. In very early times the Phocians were in possession of Thermopyla, and, to protect themselves from the inroads of the Thessalians, had built a wall across the northern entrance, and greatly thinned in their ranks, were recalled from the contest, which the king now thought worthy of the superior prowess of his own guards, the ten thousand Immortals. They were led up as to a certain victory; the Greeks stood their ground as before; or, if ever they gave way and turned their backs, it was only to face suddenly about, and deal tenfold destruction on their pursuers. Thrice during these fruitless assaults the king was seen to start up from his throne in a transport of fear or rage. The combat lasted the whole day: the slaugh had discharged the water of the springs to hollow out a natural trench in the road. They were in safety behind this bulwark till the Thessalians discovered a path which, beginning in a chasm through which a torrent called the Asopus descends on the north side of the mountain, winds up, by a laborious ascent, to the summit of Callidromus, and then, by a shorter and steeper track, comes down near the southern end of the pass, where the village of Alpeni once stood. After this discovery, the fortification became comparatively useless, and was suffered to go to ruin. It seems wonder-ter of the barbarians was great; on the side of ful, and would be scarcely credible if it was not positively asserted by Herodotus, that when the congress at the Isthmus determined to defend Thermopylæ, there was not a man among them who knew of the existence of this circuitous track. They ordered the old wall to be repaired; but when Leonidas arrived, he was informed of the danger that threatened him from the Anopea, so the mountain path was named, if it should come to the knowledge of the barbarians; and on the arrival of the enemy, he posted the Phocians, by their own desire, on the summit of the ridge, to guard against a surprise. the Greeks a few Spartan lives were lost: as to the rest nothing is said. The next day the attack was renewed with no better success; the bands of the several cities that made up the Grecian army, except the Phocians, who were employed as we have seen, relieved each other at the post of honour; all stood equally firm, and repelled the charge not less vigorously than before. The confidence of Xerxes was changed into despondence and perplexity. The secret of the Anopea could not long remain concealed after it had become valuable. Many tongues, perhaps, would have revealed it: two Greeks, a Carystian, and Corydallus, of Anticyra, shared the reproach of this foul treach the solemn sentence of the Amphictyonic council, which set a price upon his head, Ephialtes, a Malian, was branded with the infamy of having guided the barbarians round the fatal path. Xerxes, overjoyed at the discovery, ordered Hydarnes, the commander of the Ten Thousand, with his troops, to follow the traitor. They set out at nightfall: as day was beginning to break they gained the brow of Callidromus, where the Phocians were posted; the night was still, and the universal silence was first broken by the trampling of the invaders on the leaves with thickly strewed.* The Phocians started from their couches and ran to their arms. The Persians, who had not expected to find an enemy on their way, were equally surprised at the sight of an armed band, and feared lest they might be Spartans; but when Ephialtes had informed them of the truth, they prepared to force a passage. Their arrows showered upon the Phocians, who, believing themselves the sole object of attack, retreated to the highest peak of the ridge, to sell their lives as dearly as they could. The Persians, without turning aside to pursue them, kept on their way, and descended towards Alpenus. The first sight of the Persian host covering the Trachinian plains is said to have struckery; but by the general opinion, confirmed by some of the followers of Leonidas with no less terror than their brethren at Artemisium felt at the first approach of the hostile armada: the Peloponnesians would have retreated, and have reserved their strength for the defence of their own Isthmus. But the Phocians and Locrians, who were most interested in checking the progress of the invader, were indignant at this proposal, and Leonidas prevailed on the other allies to stay, and soothed them by despatching messengers to the confederate cities to call for speedy re-enforcement. Xerxes had heard that a handful of men, under the command of a Spar-which the face of the woody mountain was tan king, were stationed at this part of his road; but he imagined, it is said, that his presence would have scared them away. He was surprised by the report of a horseman whom he had sent forward to observe their motions, and who, on riding up, perceived the Spartans before the wall, some quietly seated, combing their flowing hair, others at exercise. He could not believe Demaratus, who assured him that the Spartans at least were come to dispute the pass with him, and that it was their custom to trim their hair on the eve of a combat. Four days passed before he could be convinced that his army must do more than show itself to clear a way for him. On the fifth day he ordered a body of Median and Cissian troops to fall upon the rash and insolent enemy, and to lead them captive into his presence. He was seated on a lofty throne, from which he could survey the narrow entrance of the pass which, in obedience to his commands, his warriors endeavoured to force. But they fought on ground where their numbers were of no avail but to increase their confusion when their attack was repulsed their short spears could not reach their foe; the foremost fell, the hinder advanced over their bodies to the charge; their repeated onsets broke upon the Greeks idly, as waves upon a rock. At length, as the day wore on, the Medians and Cissians, spent with their efforts, and Meanwhile deserters had brought intelligence of the enemy's motions to the Grecian camp during the night, and their report was confirmed at daybreak by the sentinels who had been stationed on the heights, and now came down with the news that the barbarians were crossing the ridge. Little time was left for deliberation: opinions were divided as to the course that prudence prescribed or honour permitted. Leonidas did not restrain, perhaps encouraged, those of his allies who wished to save themselves from the impending fate; but for himself and his Spartans, he declared his resolution of maintaining the post which Sparta had assign* See Herodotus, vii., 218. Yet the time was the middle of summer. terward buried: their tomb, as Simonides sang, was an altar-a sanctuary in which Greece revered the memory of her second founders.* ed to them to the last. All withdrew except | retreated to the wall, and passed on to a knoll the Thespians and the Thebans. The Thes- on the other side, where they took up their pians remained from choice, bent on sharing his last stand. The Thebans, however, did not glory and his death. We should willingly be- return with them, but threw down their arms lieve the same of the Thebans, if the event did and begged for quarter. This, it is said, the not seem to prove that their stay was the effect greater part obtained. Herodotus heard a story, of compulsion. Herodotus says that Leonidas, about which Plutarch is, with good reason, inthough he dismissed the rest because their spirit credulous, that they were afterward all brandshrank from the danger, detained the Thebans ed like runaway slaves; but it is not denied as hostages, because he knew them to be disaf- that they placed themselves at the mercy of fected to the cause of liberty; yet, as he was the barbarians. The Persians rushed forward himself certain of perishing, it is equally diffi- unresisted, broke down the wall, and surroundcult to understand why and how he put this ed the hillock where the little remnant of the violence on them; and Plutarch, who observes Greeks, armed only with a few swords, stood the inconsistency of the reason assigned by a butt for the arrows, the javelins, and the Herodotus, would have triumphantly vindicated stones of the enemy, which at length overthe credit of the Thebans, if he could have de-whelmed them. Where they fell they were afnied that they alone survived the day. Unless we suppose that their first choice was on the side of honour, their last, when death stared them in the face, on the side of prudence, we must give up their conduct and that of Leonidas as an inscrutable mystery. Megistias, an Acarnanian soothsayer, who traced his descent to the ancient seer Melampus, is said to have read the approaching fate of his companions in the entrails of the victims, before any tidings had arrived of the danger. When the presage was confirmed, Leonidas pressed him to retire; a proof, Herodotus thinks, that the Spartan king did not wish to keep any who desired to go. Megistias, imitating the example of the heroic prophet Theoclus, who, after predicting the fall of Eira to Aristomenes, refused to survive the ruin of his country, would not quit the side of Leonidas; but he sent away his son, an only one, who had accompanied him, that the line of Melampus might not end with him. Leonidas would also, it is said, have saved two of his kinsmen, by sending them with letters and messages to Sparta; but the one said he had come to bear arms, not to carry letters, and the other, that his deeds would tell all that Sparta wished to know. Before Hydarnes began his march, Ephialtes had reckoned the time he would take to reach the southern foot of the mountain, and Xerxes had accordingly fixed the hour when he would attack the Greeks in front. It was early in the forenoon when the Ten Thousand had nearly finished their round, and the preconcerted onset began. Leonidas, now less careful to husband the lives of his men than to make havoc among the barbarians, no longer confined himself, as before, within the pass, but, leaving a guard at the wall, sallied forth and charged the advancing enemy. His little band, reckless of everything but honour and vengeance, made deep and bloody breaches in the ranks of the Persians, who, according to an Oriental custom, were driven on to the conflict by the lash of their commanders. Many perished in the sea, many were trampled under foot by the throng that pressed on them from behind; yet the Spartans too were thinned, and Leonidas himself died early. The fight was hottest over his body, which was rescued after a hard struggle, and the Greeks four times turned the enemy. At length, when most of their spears were broken and their swords blunted with slaughter, word came that the band of Hydarnes was about to enter the pass. Then they The inscription of the monument raised over the slain, who died from first to last in defence of the pass, recorded that 4000 men from Peloponnesus had fought at Thermopyla with 300 myriads. We ought not to expect accuracy in these numbers: the list in Herodotus, if the Locrian force is only supposed equal to the Phocian, exceeds 6000 men; the Phocians, it must be remembered, were not engaged. But it is not easy to reconcile either account with the historian's statement that the Grecian dead amounted to 4000, unless we suppose that the Helots, though not numbered, formed a large part of the army of Leonidas. The lustre of his achievement is not diminished by their presence. He himself, and his Spartans, no doubt considered their persevering stand in the post intrusted to them, not as an act of high and heroic devotion, but of simple and indispensable duty. Their spirit spoke in the lines inscribed upon their monument, which bade the passenger tell their countrymen that they had fallen in obedience to their laws. How their action was viewed at Sparta may be collected from a story which cannot be separated from the recollection of this memorable day. When the band of Leonidas was nearly enclosed, two Spartans, Eurytus and Aristodemus, were staying at Alpeni, who had been forced to quit their post by a disorder which nearly deprived them of sight. When they heard the tidings, the one called for his arms, and made his Helot guide him to the place of combat, where he was left, and fell; but the other's heart failed him, and he saved his life. When he returned to Sparta he was shunned like a pestilence : no man would share the fire of his hearth with him, or speak to him; he was branded with the name of the recreant Aristodemus. A separate inscription recorded the generous loyalty of Megistias. The Persians are said to have lost 20,000 men; among them were several of royal blood. To console himself for this loss, and to reap the utmost advantage from his victory, Xerxes sent over to the fleet, which, having heard of the departure of the Greeks, was now stationed on the north coast of Eubœa, and by public notice invited all who were curious to see the chastisement he had inflicted on the men who had dared to defy his power. *Ο δὲ σηκὸς οἰκετῶν οἰκιστάν !) ευδοξίαν "Ελλάδος cero. Diodor., xi., 11. |