Histories of Herodotus, The Greeks Defeat the Mighty Persians in the Greco-Persian Wars

Today we will learn and reflect on the Histories of Herodotus, covering
the Greco-Persian Wars under King Darius, then his son King Xerxes,
where the greatly outnumbered Greek city-states successfully defeated
the might Persian Army and Navy, to keep the Greek city-states free.
Just as in the Iliad, the Greek soldiers and sailors in the Histories of
Herodotus fight for cleos, or glory, and warriors in these warrior
societies are immortalized by their great and marvelous deeds on the
battlefield. Herodotus is interested in recording any mighty deeds of
both the Greeks and the Persians, although the glory was earned
mostly by the Greeks.
Why did Herodotus write his Histories?

Herodotus tells us why he wrote
his Histories in his first
paragraph, “so that human
achievements may not be
forgotten in time, and great and
marvelous deeds, some
displayed by Greeks, some by
barbarians, may not be without
their glory; and especially to
show why the two peoples
fought with each other.”

At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources used for this video,
and the additional lessons we learn from these sources, and my blogs
that also cover this topic. Please, we welcome interesting questions in
the comments. Let us learn and reflect together!

Herodotus Histories: The Greco-Persian Wars
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Herodotus Histories: The Greco-Persian Wars
https://youtu.be/JjNcyLo54ko

In the first four book of his Histories, Herodotus treats us to a
tour and snippets of the histories of Persia and its conflicts with
Scythia and Egypt, but the last five books are more familiar
history of the Greco-Persian Wars.

When we compare the dates of the two main war of the Greek world,
we realize that the Greco-Persian Wars ends only a few decades
before the start of the larger Peloponnesian Wars between Athens
and Greece, with Persian wealth assisting in the eventual Spartan
victory.

Likewise, Herodotus was only a few decades younger than
Thucydides, who with Xenophon recorded the history of the
Peloponnesian Wars. They could have been acquaintances, though
history does not recount any meetings between them.

WHY THE GREEKS OVERWHELMED THE PERSIANS ON LAND AND AT SEA
We need to understand how the Greeks and Persian fought on land and at sea to understand the
battles in the Greco-Persian Wars. The biggest difference was in training, the Greeks had, by far,
the best trained hoplite infantry and trireme naval forces in the ancient world.
Hoplites fought in tight formation, interlocking shields in the left hand, long spears and swords
yielded in the right hand, poking through the lines at the enemy. Hoplite soldiers were drawn from
the middle and upper classes, they had to purchase the hoplite armor, the helmet, shield,
breastplate, and greaves for the legs. Hoplite soldiers needed constant drilling and conditioning,
the Spartan hoplite infantry soldiers were full-time soldiers, but many other Greek city-states, in
particular Athens, Platea, Corinth, and Thebes, had equally skilled hoplite soldiers, likely training
monthly, much like our army reserve units. If two Greek city-states fought and both their hoplite
forces kept in formation, often the contest was a draw, but if one side broke rank and fled, the
fleeing troops were often massacred, leading to very lopsided casualty counts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoplite

In contrast, the Persian infantry were not as well trained, they had but a wicker
shield, short spear, sword, and a bow and arrow. They were no match for the
Athenian hoplites. But the Persian forces included calvary forces and archers, but
these were most effective when fighting on flat plains, whereas much of Greece is
hills and mountains. Herodotus does not mention any Greek Ionian hoplites fighting
for the Persians, he hints that the Greek Ionians had lost their fighting spirit under
Persian subjugation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparabara
The Persian variant of sparabara: nine rows of archers protected
by one row of shield-bearers equipped with spear.

The mostly mercenary infantry forces of the Persians were
no match for the highly disciplined and motivated Greek
hoplite troops, as this picture depicts:

Greeks battling
Persians,
illustration for the
Story of the
Greatest Nations,
published 1900,
Edward Sylvester
Ellis and Charles
Francis

Discussing the naval forces, the triremes had three long stacked rows of rowers who had to row in
unison, with a heavy ram below the waterline at the front of the ship. A typical trireme had about
170 rowers, plus a handful of hoplite infantry ready on deck. The favored strategy was to ram the
middle of the opposing ship, sinking it, or quickly try to pass closely to the opposing ship,
withdraw your oars in unison, and shear off the oars of the opposing rowers. Once ships were
entangled, then the hoplites could board them and engage in hand-to-hand combat. Greek navies
fighting on both sides rowed triremes, several references in Herodotus state that it was difficult to
tell them apart in the thick of battle.
These naval fighting strategies required even more drill and conditioning; the Athenian navy were
likely serving full-time so they could maintain the conditioning required to row in unison during a
day-long battle. Slaves were never employed as rowers in the ancient world. Since rowers did not
need to purchase any equipment, many were from the lower classes, the existence of this large
lower to middle class navy favored the development of democracy in Athens.
We have a photograph of a modern recreation of a trireme, when Greek college students trained
as rowers, this trireme was quite agile with impressive acceleration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trireme
The Olympias,
a modern-day
reconstruction
of a trireme.

And we also show here the reigns of the kings of Persia. We see that both
Kings Darius and his son King Xerxes each reigned for about three
decades, which was a long reign in the ancient world. We can also see
that King Xerxes reigned for over a decade after the end of the Greco-
Persian Wars in 449 BC.

Smerdis, not
Bardiya,
Per Herodotus

The Histories of Herodotus were meant to be read aloud, ancient books
never contained battle maps and graphics. Historical reconstructions are
based on clues from the ancient written sources of the battle, plus a
knowledge of the geography and archaeology of the battlefield. Plus,
ancient audiences already had a general understanding of how the major
battles progressed. But Dr Wikipedia can help modern readers on how
exactly we think the battles progressed, complete with guessed positions
of battle lines in the different phases of the battles.

The Greco-Persian Wars
begin with conflicts in
Ionia, the Greek-
speaking West
Mediterranean coast of
the Persian Empire in
what is today Turkey. It
is in Ionia that Athens
first antagonizes the
Persian King Darius,
giving him an excuse to
mount a quick raid on
Greece, hoping to add it
to his Empire.
Ionia

Early in the fifth
book, the
Persian general
Megabazus “sent
to Kling Amyntas
of Macedonia a
demand for
earth and water,
as a sign of his
submission to
Darius.”
Macedonia was
in Northern
Greece and close
to Turkey, its
closeness to
Persia meant
this was a wise
concession.

This demand was not refused,
and Amyntas invited the seven
Persian envoys “to a
magnificent dinner,
entertaining them most
hospitably. After dinner, while
the wine was still going around,
one of the Persians said, ‘At
important dinners like this, my
Macedonian friend, it is our
custom in Persia to get our
wives and mistresses to come
and sit with us in the dining-
room.’”

The footnotes confirm that this was not a Persian
custom. Amyntas was concerned but cautious, but
not his headstrong son, Alexander, who suggested his
father allow him to entertain these Persians. Amyntas
warned him, “I beg you not to do these men any
mischief; for if you do, you will ruin us all. Have the
courage to endure the sight of their behavior. As for
myself, I will leave the room as you suggest.”
Prince Alexander turned to the Persian envoys, “My
friends, these women are entirely at your service;
you may take to bed any of them who you choose,
indeed, you can bed all of them. You have but to say
the word. Now, however, as it is nearly bedtime and
you are, as I observe, agreeably primed with drink,
perhaps you will allow me to send them away to take
a bath, after which you may have them again.”

We see the themes Herodotus and indeed, Homer in the Iliad, comes back to,
how hubris can make the gods angry, withdrawing their support of the
endeavors of men, how the arrogance of hubris can humble even the bravest of
warriors. We also see how the Persians are no longer the warrior race they once
were under King Cyrus, how they have grown soft, how they have lost the
warrior spirit, how they disregard the fighting spirit of the Greeks at their own
peril. We see how the Persians do not keep up their guard in meetings when
they must dine with the enemy in hostile enemy camps, a danger we explored in
our video and blog on the Iliad. We also see echoes of the story of Jacob and
Laban, how Laban got Jacob so drunk at his wedding dinner that he swapped his
older daughter Leah for his younger daughter Rachel, with whom Jacob was
madly in love, and Jacob did not even notice until morning, so drunk was he.

When Prince Alexander brought out the
freshened ladies to his Persian envoy
guests, they did not notice that under the
flowing robes were not pretty young ladies,
but rather young warriors armed with
sharpened knives. Herodotus tells us, “That
was the end of the Persian envoys to
Macedon, and of their servants too, and
carriages, and a great deal of baggage of
every kind, all disappeared together.”
Evidently the Persian commander, Bubares,
was impressed by this brave show of
defiance, because Amyntas “kept the affair
dark by giving Bubares a large sum of
money and his own sister Gygaea. In this
way the murder was hushed up and never
discovered.”

This most impetuous Prince Alexander of Macedon was a distant
ancestor of another impetuous monarch, Alexander the Great,
who conquered Persia and part of India a century and a half later.
BEGINNING OF EVILS FOR THE GREEKS AND BARBARIANS
Now we will discuss “the ships that were the beginning of evils
for Greeks and barbarians,” as Herodotus says.

The Persians had already conquered the many Greek
colonies on the Western Mediterranean shores of Asia
Minor. Many of these Greeks wanted to be free of Persian
domination, Aristagoras of Miletus traveled to Sparta,
speaking to their assembly, “We beg you, in the names of
the gods of Greece, to save from slavery your Ionian
kinsmen. It will be an easy task, for these foreigners have
little taste for war, and you are the finest soldiers in the
world. The Persian weapons are bows and short spears;
they fight in trousers and turbans, that shows how easy
they will be to beat!” He must not have realized that the
Spartans are, well, spartan, little influenced by promises of
wealth, for he continues, “The Persians have everything,
gold, silver, bronze, elaborately embroidered clothes and
beasts of burdens and slaves.”
Color reconstruction of Achaemenid infantry on the Alexander Sarcophagus (end of 4th century BC).

“King Cleomenes stopped
Aristagoras from saying any more
of the road to the Persian regional
capital city of Susa. ‘Milesian
stranger, you must leave Sparta
before sunset. Your proposal to
take Lacedaemonians a three
month’s journey from the sea is a
highly improper one.’” Spartans
did not possess the hubris
generated by greed.

At the public assembly at Athens Aristagoras had more luck, reminding them that his Miletians were descended from
Athenian colonists, they sent “twenty ships to Ionia, under the command of Melanthius, a distinguished Athenians.”
In their brief adventure, the Athenians landed in Miletus, then attacked Sardis, burning it to the ground. “In the
conflagration of Sardis a temple of Cybebe, a goddess worshipped by the natives, was destroyed, and the Persians
later made this a pretext for their burning of Greek temples” when they invaded Greece. In the ensuing battle with
the enraged Persians the Greeks were badly beaten, “after this battle the Athenians would have nothing to do with
the Ionian rebellion.”
Ruins of a
temple in
Sardis, Turkey

After the death of Aristagoras the Ionian rebellion continued, the
Persians gathered a fleet to defeat the Ionian rebels. But to
defeat the Persians, the Ionian fleet, assembled from all the
unruly city-states of Ionia, had to fight as a disciplined unit, the
Phocaen commander Dionysus was chosen to whip them into
fighting shape.

Herodotus tells us, “Every day he had ships and crews out
for training, making the fleet sail in line ahead, keeping
the troops on board under arms practicing the oarsmen
on the maneuver of ‘breaking the line’” to shear off the
oars of their opponents, or ramming and sinking them.
“Thus, the men got no rest from morning to night.”
After many days the men started to grumble, “What god
have we offended to be punished like this?” “Anything
would be preferable to the misery we now endure, if it is
a choice between two sorts of slavery, then the one we
are threatened with, however bad it turns out to be,
could hardly be worse than what we are putting up with
now. Now then, let us refuse to obey his orders.”
“It was no sooner said than done. Every seaman in the
fleet refused duty.” “They lounged about in the shade and
refused to go aboard their vessels or continue their
training in any way whatever.”
The reconstructed ancient Athenian trireme
Olympias. Flisvos Marina, Attica, Greece.

This is the equivalent of the foolish teenagers who ask
themselves, Why study? Why go to college? Why not party? The
Persians did come, but to win in naval battles in the ancient
world requires drilled and disciplined rowers, the Ionians refused
to do the work that Athenian crews accepted as their lot, and
they were roundly defeated by the Persians and enslaved. So
ended the Ionian revolt.

KING DARIUS INVADES
GREECE
In his first attempt to
invade Greece, King
Darius sailed his fleet
close to shore following
his marching army.
When they reached
Mount Athos they
encountered
treacherous winds, the
winds blowing off the
high mountain down to
the sea can be fierce.
Mount Athos

Herodotus tells us, when the ships
“rounded the promontory, they were
caught by a violent northerly gale,
which proved too much for the ships.
Many were driven ashore and wrecked
on Athos, reports say three hundred
ships were lost with over twenty
thousand men. The sea in by Athos is
full of monsters, and the ships that
were not dashed upon the rocks were
seized and devoured. Many men,
unable to swim, were drowned; others
died of cold.”

Perhaps these monsters were sharks.
The army also faced heavy casualties when the
Brygi, a Thracian tribe, attacked their camp at
night. Herodotus tells us, “the whole force
returned to Asia in disgrace.”

The Gulf Stream, by Winslow Homer, painted 1899

King Darius instructed his servant to whisper in his ear each time he sat
down for dinner, “Remember Athens.” When King Darius invaded Greece
again in another campaigning season the navy cut across the seas to
avoid the treacherous winds blowing off Mount Athos. As he marched
down the Greek coast, many cities showed submission by giving earth
and water, others were put under siege and subdued. The Persians
decided to disembark at Marathon, and the Athenian hoplites hurried to
meet them.

Pheidippides giving word of victory after the Battle of Marathon, by Luc-Olivier Merson, painted 1869
The Athenians sent their
runner Pheidippides to
Sparta, his message was,
“Men of Sparta, the Athenians
ask you to help them, and not
to stand by while the most
ancient city of Greece is
crushed and enslaved by a
foreign invader.” But the
Spartans were in the middle
of a religious festival, they
said they “could not take the
field until the moon was full,
they did not wish to break
their law.”

The Athenians would have to face the Persians alone, assisted only by a
contingent from Platea, a small city-state northwest of Athens.
The Athenians were outnumbered, their center was weak since they had
to extend their infantry hoplite line to match the Persian line. The
Persians did not deploy their calvary, maybe they were still on the ships,
maybe the marshes on both sides of the battlefield made calvary useless.

Battle of Marathon, Georges Rochegrosse 1859

Herodotus tells us, “The Persians, seeing the attack developing at the double, prepared to meet
it, thinking it suicidal madness for the Athenians to risk an assault with so small a force, rushing
in with no support from either cavalry or archers. Well, that was what they imagined;
nevertheless, the Athenians came on, closed with the enemy all along the line, and fought in a
way not to be forgotten; they were the first Greeks, so far as we know, to charge the enemy at a
run, and the first who dared to look without flinching at Persian dress and the men who wore
it; for until that day came, no Greek could hear even the word Persian without terror.”
The Athenian center was pushed back, but then
the Athenian wings advanced, trapping the
Persian enemies, “triumphant, they chased the
routed enemy, and cutting them down until they
came to the sea, and men were calling for fire
and taking hold of the ships.”
Marshes
Marshes

Battle of Marathon, Georges Rochegrosse 1859
Over six thousand Persians
were slaughtered, the
Athenians only lost several
hundred men. Even though
these casualties may have
been exaggerated, the losses
were lopsided when an
opposing army broke
formation and fled. The
Athenians captured seven
ships; the rest sailed off to
attack the undefended city of
Athens. After fighting all day,
the “Athenians hurried back
with all possible speed to save
their city and succeeded in
reaching it before the arrival
of the Persians.” “When the
Persian fleet appeared, it lay
at anchor for a while, then
sailed back to Asia.”

ARMY AND NAVY OF KING XERXES MARCHES AND SAILS TO GREECE
Since he led the forces to overthrow his hapless predecessor, King Darius was a warrior king like
King Cyrus only a few generations before, though he became soft as he enjoyed the wealth and
luxury of the Persian court. His son, King Xerxes, was the first Persian king whose entire life was
spent at court surrounded by luxury and sycophants, it was unthinkable for him to lead the
Persian troops in battle. Rather, he would sit on throne-like dais built for him to observe the tides
of battle much like he was a spectator at the Olympic games, which meant that is army and navy
were more concerned about impressing the great king with their bravery rather than executing
sound tactical maneuvers that win battles.
King Darius spent three years preparing for another invasion of Greece when a revolt broke out in
Egypt, and he died during the campaign. His son Xerxes turned his attention back to Greece after
putting down the Egyptian rebellion. This invasion was launched seven years after Marathon and
Salamis.
The characters of Herodotus remind their Persian kings over and over again that they
underestimate the Greeks at their peril.

King Darius
Meeting
Scythian
emissaries,
Franciszek
Smuglewicz,
after 1785

Sphinx &
Pyramid
of Giza,
postcard
1905

King Xerxes called a meeting to debate whether to invade
Greece once again. Embedded in his long speech egging
on King Xerxes, his general Mardonius asks this, “Have we
anything to fear from the Greeks? The size of their army?
Their wealth? The question is absurd, we know how they
fight, we know how slender their resources are.”
There is an interesting moral lesson when Artabanus
argues against invading Greece, Herodotus believes that it
is an act of hubris to underestimate and slander your
opponent. He addresses Mardonius, “By slandering the
Greeks you increase the king’s eagerness to make war on
them, as this is the very thing you most passionately
desire. Heaven forbid it happen! Slander is a wicked
thing.” “The slanderer is guilty of speaking ill of a man
behind his back; and the man who listens to him is guilty
in that he takes his word without bothering to find out
the truth.”

Artabanus warns Xerxes that the size of his forces and the great
distance to Greece may work against him. “Let me tell you, my
king, of your other great enemy, the land. If you meet with no
opposition, the land itself will become more and more hostile
to you the further you advance, drawn on and on. The mere
distance will ultimately starve you.” Although his army was not
two and a half million as Herodotus states, it surely numbered
close to a hundred thousand, feeding that large a host was a
challenge in the ancient world, Herodotus tells us of his army
drinking dry the streams in their path.
Xerxes counters with some Dale Carnegie responses: “I would
much rather take a risk and run into trouble half the time than
keep out of trouble by being afraid of everything.” “It was by
taking risks that my ancestors brought us to where we stand
today. Only by great risks can great results be achieved.”
Herodotus

The army and navy who would march
and sail to Greece would be many times
larger than the army of Darius the Greeks
defeated, and the preparations for the
war would be more thorough.

Xerxes decided to cut a
canal across the isthmus
at Mount Athos so his
ships could avoid the
treacherous seas at the
tip of the peninsula.
Mount Athos

Many historians viewed this as another
lie told by Herodotus until archeologists
found the buried remains of this ancient
canal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerxes_Canal

Herodotus thinks this is
hubris, “It was mere
ostentation that made
Xerxes have the canal
dug, he wanted to show
his power and to leave
something to be
remembered by.” The
canal was wide enough
for two triremes to pass
side by side.
Mount Athos

Herodotus accuses Xerxes of other acts
of hubris against nature when he lashed
boats together at the Dardanelles, tying
planks on the decks to form a bridge
from Asia to Europe.

Xerses at the Hellespont, by Adrien Guignet, 1800's
Herodotus tells us, “the
work was successfully
completed, but a storm
of great violence
smashed it up and
carried everything away.
Xerxes was very angry
when he learned of the
disaster and gave orders
that the Hellespont
should receive three
hundred lashes and have
a pair of fetters thrown
into it.” As we learned in
the Iliad, the Greeks
believed that every lake
and waterway was
inhabited by a god.

King Xerxes sent envoys to
the Greek cities demanding
earth and water to show
their submission, but “Xerxes
sent no demand for
submission to Athens or
Sparta because of what
happened to messengers
sent by Darius previously: at
Athens they were thrown
into the pit like criminals, at
Sparta they were thrown
into a well, and told that if
they wanted earth and water
for the king, to get them
from the well.”

PERSIAN ARMY APPROACHES THE NEARLY EMPTY CITY OF ATHENS
The Athenians were worried, they saw no way to block the Persian
army from putting Athens under siege and breaching the walls of
Athens.

Priestess of Delphi (1891) by John Collier,
showing the Pythia sitting on a tripod with vapor
rising from a crack in the earth beneath her.
The Athenians sent envoys to consult the oracle at
Delphi, the Priestess of Apollo uttered this
prophecy:
“Why sit you, doomed ones? Fly to the world’s end,
Leaving home and the heights your city circles like a
wheel.”
“All is ruined, for fire and the headlong god of war
Speeding in a Syrian chariot shall bring you low.”

The complete response is even more depressing, but they
did not wish to surrender to Persian might, that was not the
message they wanted to bring to their fellow citizens in
Athens, so they approached the oracle a second time, olive
branch in hand, and the Priestess uttered a second
prophecy:
“Zeus the all-seeing grants to Athene’s prayer
That the wooden wall shall not fall, but help you and your
children.
But await not the host of horse and foot coming from Asia,
Nor be still, but turn your back and withdraw from the foe.
Truly a day will come when you will meet him face to face.
Divine Salamis, you will bring death to women’s sons
When the corn is scattered, or the harvest gathered in.”

This less threatening second prophecy would be
read to the Athenian Assembly. Some older men
thought this meant they could build a palisade on
the Acropolis, a temple complex on the rocky hills in
the middle of Athens. We will consult Plutarch on
the response of the leading Athenian citizen,
Themistocles, forcibly argued that the “wooden wall
could only refer to their fleet of triremes, and that
the reason why the god had called Salamis divine,
rather than dreadful or cruel, was because it was
destined to become synonymous with a piece of
great good fortune for Greece.”

The decision was made to abandon Athens, as the Athenians could not
withstand a Persian siege. The Athenian men would board their triremes
while the women, children, and slaves would be sent as temporary
refugees to the nearby Peloponnese city-state of Troezen, taking
whatever property with them that they could, leaving Athens nearly
deserted. One detail told by Plutarch that Herodotus did not mention was
that helpless older citizens and domestic animals had to be left behind.
Herodotus says the Athenians sent their women, children, and slaves to
the island of Salamis. Quite likely the Athenians evacuated their families
to both Troezen and Salamis, and whatever Greek city-state was putting
up unfortunate refugees from the war, as the Persians had torched many
other Greek city-states.

Athens was able to challenge the Persian fleet
because several years before, when the Athenian
miners at Laurium struck a rich vein of silver,
Themistocles persuaded the Athenian Assembly not
to distribute this windfall to the citizenry, but to “use
the money to build a fleet” of two hundred triremes
“for the war they were waging against the
Aeginetans, who controlled the sea because of their
fleet. Themistocles did not have to wave Darius or
the Persians at them: their distance made their
coming seem a remote prospect.”
Plutarch notes that Themistocles’ “greatest
achievement was to end all the inter-Greek fighting
and get the various states to come to terms with one
another, by persuading them that their hostilities
should take second placed to the war with Persia.”

THE SPARTAN FEW BLOCK THE PERSIAN ARMY AT THERMOPALYE
The Greek forces discussed where to best check the advance of
the Persian multitudes through Greece, the decision was to take
a stand at the narrow coastal pass at Thermopylae, northeast of
Athens. Today Thermopylae stands on a coastal plain, but in
ancient times the water level was higher so the pass was
narrower, fifty feet wide in some places, narrow enough to only
let a single wagon through in other places.

Monument for Battle of Thermopylae

Priestess of Delphi (1891) by John Collier,
showing the Pythia sitting on a tripod with vapor
rising from a crack in the earth beneath her.
Herodotus tells us that here “the Persians would here be unable to
use their calvary or take advantage of their numbers, so here the
Greeks determined to make their stand.”
The plan was the Spartans and allied forces would face the Persians
on land at Thermopylae, and the Athenian triremes would face the
Persian fleet near the island of Salamis. What did the Oracle advise
the Greeks? “Pray to the winds, for they will be good allies to
Greece.” The winds were good allies, the Persian “fleet was caught in
a heavy blowing wind from the east called a Hellespontian, which
raised a confused sea like a pot on the boil.” “The storm was very
violent and there was no chance of riding it out.” The Persians lost
about four hundred ships, about a third of their fleet, in this storm,
improving the odds for the Athenian fleet.

Xerxes sent a man on horseback
to report back on the strength
and activities of the Spartan
force at Thermopylae. He was
astonished to see some Spartans
“stripped for exercise, while
others were combing their hair.”
Xerxes asked Demartus, a Greek
in his service, what this meant,
he answered, “It is the custom of
the Spartans to pay careful
attention to their hair when they
are about to risk their lives.”
A spartan woman giving a shield to her son, by Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier, painted 1826

Xerxes could not understand why such a small number of
warriors would dare to stand up to his mighty army, he
waited four days for the Greeks to flee. The troops he sent
against the Spartans were defeated with heavy casualties, so
he then sent in his picked troops, the King’s Immortals, who
fought the Greeks to a standstill on the fifth day.

Leonidas at Thermopylae, by Jacques-Louis David, painted 1814 Herodotus tells us that for the
“Spartans it was a memorable fight;
they were men who understood war
pitted against an inexperienced
enemy. Among the feints the
employed was to turn their backs in
a body and pretend to be retreating
in confusion, goading the enemy to
pursue with a great clatter and roar;
but then the Spartans, just as the
Persians were on them, would
wheel and face them and inflict in
the new struggle innumerable
casualties. The Spartans had their
losses too, but not many. At last, the
Persians, finding that their assaults
on the pass were useless, broke off
the engagement and withdrew.
Xerxes was watching the battle from
where he sat; and it is said that
during the attacks, in terror for his
army, three times he leapt to his
feet.” The next day’s battle went the
same way.

Then a traitor revealed for gold a mountain trail
that bypassed the pass so nobly defended. When
the Spartans realized they would be fighting
Persians on both sides, the Spartan King Leonidas
ordered the confederate troops to flee to fight
another day, and the small contingent of Spartans,
Thebans, and Thespians resolved to face the
Persian Army to their deaths.

Leonidas at Thermopylae, by Jacques-Louis David, painted 1814 The next morning, when
the Persians attacked,
“many of the barbarians
fell; behind them the
Persian commanders plied
their whips
indiscriminately, driving
the men on. Many fell into
the sea and drowned, still
more were trampled to
death, no one could count
the number of the dead.
The Greeks, knowing that
death was inevitable,
fought with strength and
fury and desperation. By
this time most of their
spears were broken, and
they were killing Persians
with their swords.”

Leonidas at Thermopylae, by Jacques-Louis David, painted 1814 “In the course of that fight
Leonidas fell, having fought most
gallantly, and many
distinguished Spartans with
him.” Like in often sung songs of
the battles in the Iliad, in this
battle Herodotus tells us that
“there was a bitter struggle over
the body of Leonidas; four times
the Greeks drove the enemy off,
and at last by their valor rescued
it.” As their numbers grew
smaller, the Greek perimeter
shrunk, but the Greeks “resisted
to the last, with their swords, if
they had them, and if not, with
their hands and teeth, until the
Persians, coming on from the
front over the ruins of the wall
and closing in from behind,
finally overwhelmed them with
missile weapons.”

Leonidas at Thermopylae, by
Jacques-Louis David, painted 1814
Xerxes then
commits an outrage
of hubris not
pleasing to the
gods, “Xerxes went
to the battlefield to
see the bodies,”
“and ordered the
head of King
Leonidas to be cut
off and fixed on a
stake.”
“The dead were buried where they fell,”
“over them is this inscription:”
“Four thousand here from Pelop’s land
Against three million did stand.”
“The Spartans have a special epitaph, it runs:”
“Go tell the Spartans, you who read:
We took their orders, and here lie dead.”

The Persians lost no time in invading Attica and the nearly
empty city of Athens, laying a siege on the wooden walls built
on the Acropolis, quickly overwhelming those Athenians
trusting in these walls, looting and burning Athens and all her
temples. But booty of another kind was not to be found, no
concubines could be seized.

Acropolis, by Leo von Klenze, painted 1846

THE GREEK TRIREMES RAM AND SINK THE PERSIAN FLEET AT SALAMIS
Once the tides of war shifted to the Greeks the Spartan’s noble stand at
Thermopylae, like the Alamo, would inspire them in their battles with
the Persians, and would inspire historians over the centuries and the
millennia, but the effect on the Greeks the day after the battle was
despairing. Some were wanting to sail their triremes to the Isthmus to
defend the Spartan lands of the Peloponnese.
The Athenian playwright Aeschylus fought at Marathon and may have
also fought at Salamis. We render his emotional eyewitness account of
this fierce naval battle in our blog and video:

Themistocles grasped that the best chance for the
Greeks to prevail would be to fight in the cramped
straits of Salamis. He made a speech to the troops
and likewise tried to convince the other
commanders that sticking together and fighting at
Salamis was the best strategy, but he had doubts
that everyone would agree. So he sent a message
to the Persian commander telling him that he was
on his side, that the Persians that night needed to
bottle up the Greek fleet in the straits of Salamis,
we quote Herodotus in our video on the Battle of
Salamis.

This was also brilliant tactically, for the Greek naval forces had the benefit of a
sound night’s sleep, while the Persians spent their night before the big battle
bobbing on the waves bottling up the Greeks, and not getting a wink of sleep. Can
you imagine pulling an all-nighter, then having to row and fight all day long with
little to eat and drink under the bright hot sun? This is what happens when a
hubristic potentate decides how battles will be fought.

The Battle of Salamis, by Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1868)
Herodotus brings us to the morning of the battle: “At dawn the fighting men were
assembled, and Themistocles gave his finest speech. He compared all that was
best and worst in human nature and fortune, and an exhortation to choose the
better. Finishing, he ordered the men to embark onto their ships.”

The Battle of Salamis, by
Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1868)
“The whole fleet got under way, and in a moment the Persians were on
them. The Greeks checked their way and began to back astern; and they
were on the point of running aground, when an Athenian ship drove
ahead and rammed an enemy vessel. Seeing the ships locked together,
the rest of the ships hurried to assist, and the general action began.”.

This painting gives you an idea of the confusion in the narrow
straits, the better disciplined Athenian crews made short work of
the Persians who panicked, the Persians who fought foolishly
rather than tactically, seeking either to flee or to please the great
King Xerxes who was watching the battle. For the Persians it was
every man to himself, there was no coordinated actions, a large
portion of their fleet were sunk, a large portion of the Persian
sailors and soldiers drowned. The Persians had landed troops on
the Island of Salamis to slaughter any Greeks who swam to shore,
these troops were also massacred.

The Battle of Salamis, by Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1868)

After the battle, one advisor told Xerxes that he had
achieved his main objective, he had invaded and
burned the empty city of Athens.

Mardonius tells Xerxes, “If
you have made up your
mind not to stay here,
then go home together
with the greater part of
the army and I will make it
my duty, with 300,000
picked troops, to deliver
Greece to you in chains.”
This gave a way for Xerxes
to return home without
losing too much face.
Battle of Salamis by Wilhelm von Kaulbach , painted 1800’s

The march back to Persia
was difficult. Herodotus
relates, “During the march
the troops lived off the
country as best they could,
eating grass where they
found no grain, and stripping
the bark and leaves off trees
of all sorts, cultivated or
wild, to stay their hunger.”
“Plague and dysentery
attacked them, many died,
and others who fell sick
were left in the various
towns along the route.”

We know Herodotus exaggerates, but we also know that city-states on
the way home were less likely to assist soldiers of a defeated army, as
the Persians may not have seemed as threatening.
Herodotus also describes how much of the remaining Persian fleet was
destroyed in an odd land battle on an Ionian island. The Persians had
no stomach for battling the Athenians at sea, so they pulled their
triremes on land and threw up a palisade around their ships. The
Athenians breached this palisade and massacred most of the Persians.

BATTLE OF PLATEA, PERSIAN ARMY IS DEFEATED
General Mardonius was now stuck in Greece with no clear objective and no clear
timetable, although his hand-picked 300,000 troops were a clear threat, they
heavily outnumbered the Greek armies. The Persian army wintered with their
ally Thessaly in Northern Greece.

Amazingly, he sent an ambassador to address the
Athenians. He told them that he had a message from King
Xerxes: “I am willing to forget all the injuries which Athens
has done me. So, Mardonius, first give the Athenians back
their land; and let them take whatever other territory
they wish and be self-governing. If they are willing to
come to terms with me, you are also to rebuild the
temples which I burnt.” Then the ambassador added,
“Xerxes’ power is superhuman, and his arm is long.”
How did the Athenians respond to the superhuman
Xerxes who so recently fled Greece after many of his ships
were sunk at Salamis? “Now tell Mardonius, that so long
as the sun keeps his present course in the sky, we
Athenians will never make peace with Xerxes. On the
contrary, we will oppose him unremittingly, putting our
trust in our gods and heroes he despised, whose temples
and statutes he destroyed with fire.”

When spring came the Persians invaded Athens again, torching what had not yet
been torched, and again the Athenians took to their ships, and again their
women and children and valuables were evacuated to neighboring communities
and islands. It must have been disheartening for these invading Persians to
invade Athens with no booty, no gold, no silver, no concubines, no nothing.

The Persians could not
force the Athenian
hoplites to face them in
battle, and they could
not invade the
Peloponnese to fight the
Spartans, because they
would first need to cross
the narrow isthmus at
Corinth, and the
Persians did not have
the stomach to attempt
another Thermopylae.
Peloponnese
Isthmus of Corinth

The Persians built an
army camp on the plains
of Boeotia in central
Greece, where they
could deploy their
calvary. The Greeks were
not going to engage the
Persians on the plains,
they held the high
ground, where the
Persians refused to
engage them.
Beotia

Persian raiding parties had succeeded in fouling a spring the Greek forces used for
water, and had captured a baggage train carrying food, so the Greeks tactically
withdrew to the more hospitable neighboring province of Platea. The Persians
thought they were giving up, so they pursued them, but the Greeks turned around
and bettered the Persians, who retreated behind the palisades of their army camp.
General Mardonius died, and the Greeks breached the palisades and massacred
much of the remaining Persian army.
So ended the Greco-Persian Wars.

Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of
his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed, William Etty, painted 1830
In his conclusion, Herodotus
includes a complicated ugly
story, the footnote says that
this “tale of Xerxes’ passion for
Masistes’ wife gives us our last
view of the hubristic king and
in it he appears partly as the
tyrant ruled by lust and partly
as the hapless victim of his
own passion, who is unable to
control his desires or the
machinations of the one who
uses him,” in part a repetition
of the Gyges story.

Our friendly historian JB Bury
states that “the catastrophe
which befalls the Persian
expedition is not conceived as
the work of jealous gods
annoyed by the conspicuous
wealth or success of mere
mortals,” as in the Iliad. “It is
rather a divine punishment of
the insolence and rashness that
are often born of prosperity.
This is the Aeschylean doctrine:
‘Zeus is a judge who visits heavily
All whose self-glorious spirit
vaults too high.’”

The Hall of Hundred Columns, Throne Hall, in Persepolis, Persia, Cyrus’ Ceremonial Capitol, SW Iran.
Herodotus concludes with a flashback to the Greeks’ favorite Persian,
Cyrus the Great. One of his officials proposed to him, “Since Zeus has
given empire to the Persians,” “let us leave this small and barren
country,” the Persian homeland, “and take possession of a richer
country.” “Aren’t we masters of many nations and all Asia?”

The Hall of Hundred Columns, Throne Hall, in Persepolis, Persia, Cyrus’ Ceremonial Capitol, SW Iran.
Cyrus the Great replied as great men reply, “Soft countries
breed soft men.” Cyrus and his generation chose to rule from
Persepolis, choosing “to live in a rugged land and rule rather
than cultivating rich plains so they could be slaves to others.”

SOURCES: The Histories of Herodotus is a joy to read, and the books that cover the
Greco-Persian War reads more like a history, and has many entertaining stories, we
left some for you to discover.
Plutarch used Herodotus for his main source in writing the Life of Themistocles, he
also discussed his childhood and his career after the war and how he had to flee to
Persia and became a ruler of a satrapy in Asia Minor at the end of his life.
We enjoyed reading the play by Aeschylus, but we preferred the online translation
we found with the link in the Wikipedia article.
We discussed the Great Courses on Herodotus in our first video on Herodotus.

To find the source of any direct
quotes in this blog, please type in
the phrase to the search box in
my blog to see the referenced
footnote.
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Histories of Herodotus, The Greeks Defeat the Mighty Persians in the Greco-Persian Wars

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Histories of Herodotus, The Greeks Defeat the Mighty Persians in the Greco-Persian Wars