The Life of Greece

by Will Durant

  In the year 491 a Persian fleet of six hundred ships under Datis struck across the Aegean from Samos, stopped on the way to subdue the Cyclades, and reached the coast of Euboea with 200,000 men. Euboea submitted after a brief struggle, and the Persians crossed the bay to Attica. They pitched their camp near Marathon, because Hippias had advised them that in that plain they could use their cavalry, in which they were overwhelmingly superior to the Greeks.4

  All Greece was in turmoil at the news. The Persian arms had never yet been defeated, the advance of the Empire had never yet been stopped; how could a nation so weak, so scattered, so unused to unity, hold back this wave of Oriental conquest? The northern Greek states were loath to resist so monstrous a power; Sparta hesitatingly prepared, but allowed superstition to delay its mobilization; little Plataea acted quickly, and sent a large proportion of its citizens by forced marches to Marathon. At Athens Miltiades freed and enlisted slaves as well as freemen, and led them over the mountains to the battlefield. When the rival armies met, the Greeks had some twenty thousand men, the Persians probably one hundred thousand.5 The Persians were brave, but they were accustomed to individual fighting, and were not trained for the mass defense and attack of the Greeks. The Greeks united discipline with courage, and though they committed the folly of dividing the command among ten generals, each supreme for a day, they were saved by the example of Aristides, who yielded his leadership to Miltiades.6 Under this blunt soldier’s vigorous strategy the small Greek force routed the Persian horde in what was not only one of the decisive battles, but also one of the most incredible victories, of history. If we may accept Greek testimony on such a matter, 6,400 Persians, but only 192 Greeks, fell at Marathon. After the battle was over the Spartans arrived, mourned their tardiness, and praised the victors.

  II. ARISTIDES AND THEMISTOCLES

  The strange mixture of nobility and cruelty, idealism and cynicism, in Greek character and history was illustrated by the subsequent careers of Miltiades and Aristides. Inflated by the praise of all Greece, Miltiades asked the Athenians to equip a fleet of seventy ships, to be under his unchecked command. When the ships were ready Miltiades led them to Paros, and demanded of its citizens one hundred talents ($600,000) on pain of wholesale death. The Athenians recalled him and fined him fifty talents; but Miltiades died soon after, and the fine was paid by his son Cimon, the future rival of Pericles.8

  The man who had yielded place to him at Marathon survived the pitfalls of success. Aristides was in life and manners a Spartan at Athens. His quiet, staid character, his modest simplicity and undiscourageable honesty won him the title of the Just; and when, in a drama of Aeschylus’, the passage occurred—

  For not at seeming just, but being so,

  He aims; and from his depth of soil below

  Harvests of wise and prudent counsels grow—

  all the audience turned to look at Aristides, as the living embodiment of the poet’s lines.9 When the Greeks captured the camp of the Persians at Marathon, and found great wealth in their tents, Aristides was left in charge of it, and “neither took anything for himself, nor suffered others to do it”;10 and when, after the war, the allies of Athens were induced to contribute annually to the treasury of Delos as a fund for common defense, Aristides was chosen by them to fix their payments, and none protested his decisions. Nevertheless, he was more admired than popular. Though a close friend of Cleisthenes, who had so extended democracy, he was of the opinion that democracy had gone far enough, and that any further empowerment of the Assembly would lead to administrative corruption and public disorder. He exposed malfeasance wherever he found it, and made many enemies. The democratic party, led by Themistocles, used Cleisthenes’ recently established device of ostracism to get rid of him, and in 482 the only man in Athenian history that was at once famous and honest was exiled at the height of his career. All the world knows—though again it may be only a fable—how Aristides inscribed his own name on the ostracon for a letterless citizen who did not know him, but who, with the resentment of mediocrity for excellence, was tired of hearing him called the Just. When Aristides learned of the decision he expressed the hope that Athens would never have occasion to remember him.11

  The historian is constrained to admit that the public men of Athens were properly equipped with the unscrupulousness that sometimes enters into statesmanship. As much as Alcibiades at a later age, Themistocles was a very flame of ability; “he has a claim on our admiration quite extraordinary and unparalleled,” says the always moderate Thucydides.12 Like Miltiades, he saved Athens, but could not save himself; he could defeat a great empire, but not his own lust for power. “He received reluctantly and carelessly,” says Plutarch, “instructions given him to improve his manners and behavior, or to teach him any pleasing or graceful accomplishment; but whatever was said to improve him in sagacity, or in the management of affairs, he would give attention to beyond his years, confident in his natural capacity for such things.”13 It was Athens’ misfortune that both Themistocles and Aristides fell in love with the same girl, Stesilaus of Ceos, and that their animosity outlived the beauty that had aroused it.14 Nevertheless it was Themistocles whose foresight and energy prepared for, and carried through, the victory of Salamis—the most crucial battle in Greek history. As far back as 493 he had planned and begun: a new harbor for Athens at the Piraeus; now, in 482, he persuaded the Athenians to forego a distribution of money due them from the proceeds of the silver mines at Laurium, and to devote the sum to the building of a hundred triremes. Without this fleet there could have been no resistance to Xerxes.

  III. XERXES

  Darius I died in 485, and was succeeded by Xerxes I. Both father and son were men of ability and culture, and it would be an error to think of the Greco-Persian War as a contest between civilization and barbarism. When Darius, before invading Greece, sent heralds to Athens and Sparta to demand earth and water as symbols of submission, both cities had put the heralds to death. Troubled by portents, Sparta now repented of this violation of international custom, and asked for two citizens to go to Persia and surrender themselves to any punishment that the Great King might exact in retribution. Sperthias and Bulis, both of old and wealthy families, volunteered, made their way to Xerxes, and offered to die in atonement for the killing of Darius’ messengers. Xerxes, says Herodotus,15 “answered with true greatness of soul that he would not act like the Lacedaemonians, who, by killing the heralds, had broken the laws which all men held in common. As he had blamed such conduct in them, he would never be guilty of it himself.”

  Xerxes prepared leisurely but thoroughly for the second Persian attack upon Greece. For four years he collected troops and materials from all the provinces of his realm; and when, in 481, he at last set forth, his army was probably the largest ever assembled in history before our own century. Herodotus reckoned it, without moderation, at 2,641,000 fighting men, and an equal number of engineers, slaves, merchants, provisioners, and prostitutes; he tells us, with perhaps a twinkle in his eye, that when Xerxes’ army drank water whole rivers ran dry.16 It was, naturally and fatally, a highly heterogeneous force. There were Persians, Medes, Babylonians, Afghans, Indians, Bactrians, Sogdians, Sacae, Assyrians, Armenians, Colchians, Scyths, Paeonians, Mysians, Paphlagonians, Phrygians, Thracians, Thessalians, Locrians, Boeotians, Aeolians, Ionians, Lydians, Carians, Cilicians, Cypriotes, Phoenicians, Syrians, Arabians, Egyptians, Ethiopians, Libyans, and many more. There were footmen, cavalrymen, chariots, elephants, and a fleet of transports and fighting triremes numbering, according to Herodotus, 1207 ships in all. When Greek spies were caught in the camp, and a general ordered their execution, Xerxes countermanded the order, spared the men, had them conducted through his forces, and then set them free, trusting that when they had reported to Athens and Sparta the extent of his preparations, the remainder of Greece would hasten to surrender.17

  In the spring of 480 the great host reached the Hellespont, where Egyptian and Phoenician engineers had built a bridge that
was among the most admired mechanical achievements of antiquity. If again we may follow Herodotus, 674 ships of trireme or penteconter size were distributed in two rows athwart the strait, each vessel facing the current, and moored with a heavy anchor. Then the builders stretched cables of flax or papyrus over each row of ships from bank to bank, bound the cables to every ship, and made them taut with capstans on the shore. Trees were cut and sawn into planks, and these, laid across the cables, were fastened to them and to one another. The planks were covered with brushwood, and this with earth, and the whole was trodden down to resemble a road. A bulwark was erected on each side of the causeway high enough to keep animals from taking fright at sight of the sea.18 Nevertheless many of the beasts, and some of the soldiers, had to be driven by the lash to trust themselves to the bridge. It stood the burden well, and in seven days and nights the entire host had passed over it successfully. A native of the region, seeing the spectacle, concluded that Xerxes was Zeus, and asked why the master of gods and men had taken so much trouble to conquer little Greece when he might have destroyed the presumptuous nation with one thunderbolt.19

  The army marched overland through Thrace and down into Macedonia and Thessaly, while the Persian fleet, hugging the coasts, avoided the storms of the Aegean by passing southward through a canal dug by forced labor across the isthmus at Mt. Athos to the length of a mile and a quarter. Wherever the army ate two meals, we are told, the city that fed it was utterly ruined; Thasos spent four hundred silver talents—approximately a million dollars—in playing host to Xerxes for a day.20 The northern Greeks. even to the Attic frontier, surrendered to fear or bribery, and allowed their troops to be added to Xerxes’ millions. Only Plataea and Thespiae, in the north, prepared to fight.

  IV. SALAMIS

  How can we imagine, today, the terror and desperation of the southern Greeks at the approach of this polyglot avalanche? Resistance seemed insane; the loyal states could not muster one tenth of Xerxes’ force. For once Athens and Sparta worked together with single mind and heart. Delegates were sped to every city in the Peloponnesus to beg for troops or supplies; most of the states co-operated; Argos refused, and never lived down her disgrace. Athens fitted out a fleet that sailed north to meet the Persian armada, and Sparta dispatched a small force under King Leonidas to halt Xerxes for a while at Thermopylae. The two navies met at Artemisium, off the northern coast of Euboea. When the Greek admirals saw the overwhelming number of the enemy’s vessels they were of a mind to withdraw. The Euboeans, fearing a descent of the Persians upon their shores, sent to Themistocles, commander of the Athenian contingent, a bribe of thirty talents ($180,000) on condition that he persuade the Greek leaders to fight; he succeeded by sharing the bribe.21 With characteristic subtlety Themistocles had sailors inscribe upon the rocks messages to the Greeks in the Persian fleet begging them to desert, or in any case not to fight against their motherland; he hoped that if the Ionians saw these words they would be moved by them, and that if Xerxes saw and understood them, the King would not dare to use Hellenes in the battle. All day the rival fleets fought, until night put an end to the engagement before either side could win; the Greeks then retired to Artemisium, the Persians to Aphetae. Considering the inequality of numbers, the Greeks justifiably looked upon the battle as a victory. When news came of the disaster at Thermopylae the surviving Greek fleet sailed south to Salamis, to provide a refuge for Athens.

  Meanwhile Leonidas, despite the most heroic resistance in history, had been overwhelmed at the “Hot Gates,” not so much by the bravery of the Persians as by the treachery of Hellenes. Certain Greeks from Trachis not only betrayed to Xerxes the secret of the indirect route over the mountains, but led the Persian force by that approach to attack the Spartans in the rear. Leonidas and his three hundred elders (for he had chosen only fathers of sons to go with him, lest any Spartan family should be extinguished) died almost to the last man. Of the two Spartan survivors one fell at Plataea, the other hanged himself for shame.22 The Greek historians assure us that the Persians lost 20,000, the Greeks 300.23 Over the tomb of the latter heroes was placed the most famous of Greek epitaphs: “Go, stranger, and tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here in obedience to their laws.”24

  When the Athenians learned that no barrier now remained between Athens and the Persians, proclamation was made that every Athenian should save his family as best he could. Some fled to Aegina, some to Salamis, some to Troezen; some of the men were enlisted to fill up the crews of the fleet that was returning from Artemisium. Plutarch paints25 a touching picture of how the tame animals of the city followed their masters to the shore, and howled when the overladen vessels drew off without them; one dog, belonging to Pericles’ father, Xanthippus, leaped into the sea and swam alongside his ship to Salamis, where it died of exhaustion.26 We may judge of the excitement and passion of those days when we learn that an Athenian who, in the Assembly, advised surrender, was killed there and then, and that a crowd of women went to his house and stoned his wife and children to death.27 When Xerxes arrived he found the city almost deserted, and gave it over to pillage and fire.

  Soon afterward the Persian fleet, twelve hundred strong, entered the Bay of Salamis. Against it were ranged three hundred Greek triremes, still under divided command. The majority of the admirals were opposed to risking an engagement. Resolved to force action upon the Greeks, Themistocles resorted to a stratagem that would have cost him his life had the Persians won. He sent a trusted slave to Xerxes to tell him that the Greeks were intending to sail away during the night, and that the Persians could prevent this only by surrounding the Greek fleet. Xerxes accepted the advice, and on the next morning, with every escape blocked, the Greeks were compelled to give fight. Xerxes, seated in state at the foot of Mt. Aegaleus, on the Attic shore across from Salamis, watched the action, and noted the names of those of his men who fought with especial bravery. The superior tactics and seamanship of the Hellenes, and the confusion of tongues, minds, and superfluous ships among the Orientals, finally decided the issue in favor of Greece. According to Diodorus the invaders lost two hundred vessels, the defenders forty; but we do not have the Persian side of the story. Few of the Greeks, even from the lost ships, died; for being all excellent swimmers, they swam to land when their boats foundered.28 The remnant of the Persian fleet fled to the Hellespont, and the subtle Themistocles sent his slave again to Xerxes to say that he had dissuaded the Greeks from pursuit. Xerxes left 300,000 men under command of Mardonius, and with the rest of his troops marched back in humiliation to Sardis, a large part of his force dying of pestilence and dysentery on the way.

  In the same year as Salamis—possibly, as the Greeks would have it, on the same day (September 23, 480 B.C.)—the Greeks of Sicily fought the Carthaginians at Himera. We do not know that the Phoenicians of Africa were acting in concert with those who supported Xerxes and so largely manned his fleet; perhaps it was only a coincidence that Greece found itself assaulted in east and west at once.29 In the traditional account Hamilcar, the Carthaginian admiral, arrived at Panormus with 3000 ships and 300,000 troops; he proceeded thence to lay siege to Himera, where he was met by Gelon of Syracuse with 55,000 men. After the fashion of Punic generals, Hamilcar stood aside from the battle, and burned sacrificial victims to his gods as the contest raged; when his defeat became evident he threw himself into the fire. A tomb was erected to him on the site; and there his grandson Himilcon, seventy years afterwards, slaughtered 3000 Greek captives in revenge.30

  A year later (August, 479) the liberation of Greece was completed by almost simultaneous engagements on land and sea. Mardonius’ army, living leisurely on the country, had pitched its camp near Plataea on the Boeotian plain. There, after two weeks of waiting for propitious omens, a Greek force of 110,000 men, led by the Spartan king Pausanias, joined issue with them in the greatest land battle of the war. The non-Persians in the invading force had no heart for the conflict, and took to flight as soon as the Persian contingent, which bore the point of the
attack, began to waver. The Greeks won so overwhelming a victory that (according to their historians) they lost but 159 men, while of the Persian force 260,000 were slain.* On the same day, the Greeks aver, a Greek squadron met a Persian flotilla off the coast of Mycale, the central meeting place of all Ionia. The Persian fleet was destroyed, the Ionian cities were freed from Persian rule, and control of the Hellespont and the Bosporus was won by the Greeks as they had won it from Troy seven hundred years before.

  The Greco-Persian War was the most momentous conflict in European history, for it made Europe possible. It won for Western civilization the opportunity to develop its own economic life—unburdened with alien tribute or taxation—and its own political institutions, free from the dictation of Oriental kings. It won for Greece a clear road for the first great experiment in liberty; it preserved the Greek mind for three centuries from the enervating mysticism of the East, and secured for Greek enterprise full freedom of the sea. The Athenian fleet that remained after Salamis now opened every port in the Mediterranean to Greek trade, and the commercial expansion that ensued provided the wealth that financed the leisure and culture of Periclean Athens. The victory of little Hellas against such odds stimulated the pride and lifted up the spirit of its people; out of very gratitude they felt called upon to do unprecedented things. After centuries of preparation and sacrifice Greece entered upon its Golden Age.