Hello, Χαίρετε, and welcome to Epic Greek History Episode 34, Waiting for Goliath: The Years After Marathon. I’m Scott Emmons.

 Let’s pick up right where we left off last month, in the aftermath of the battle of Marathon. The Athenians, along with a few auxiliaries from Platea, had won a decisive victory over a much larger invading force from Persia. The mood in Athens must have been one of extreme elation mixed with a great deal of relief. In all the excitement, I imagine it would have been hard to look at the situation coolly and rationally. The more astute Athenians probably knew deep down that Marathon had really only bought them some time. But now wasn’t the time to dwell on that. Understandably, they were going to take a while to bask in their glory. 

A good share of that glory went to Miltiades, the general who was hailed as the hero of Marathon. But it didn’t last long. You may remember the story from Plutarch about the young Themistocles, whose father pointed out some old ships rotting on the beach and said, “That’s how the Athenians treat their leaders when they have no more use for them.” The story of Miltiades is Exhibit A. 

After the Athenian victory, Miltiades had enormous political capital. And he spent that capital on an ambitious new adventure. He persuaded the Assembly to give him a fleet for an expedition against the island of Paros. The pretext was that the Parians had provided one trireme for the Persian attack on Attica. As if they’d had much of a choice. It’s a little puzzling why Paros was the target, since it wasn’t one of the very wealthiest islands, although it did have quarries with some of the best marble in Greece. But it’s clear that Miltiades promoted this expedition as one that would bring in a lot of money. So he got his ships, soldiers, and the financing he needed, and he was off to Paros. 

The expedition turned out to be a disaster. Miltiades spent three weeks besieging the city, but the Parians reinforced their defenses and he got nowhere. At some point during the operation, he suffered a serious leg injury. Herodotus tells a story that he ascribes to the Parians, and it’s clearly meant to show Miltiades in a bad light. They said he’d been sneaking around in a sanctuary of Demeter while colluding with a traitorous temple attendant, but he got scared and hurt his leg jumping the fence when he tried to run away. Well, however he got his wound, it soon became infected. So, when he returned to Athens, having nothing to show for his Parian adventure, he was in bad shape. 

For Miltiades’ political enemies, this was the time to strike. A young nobleman by the name of Xanthippus, who was connected by marriage to the powerful Alcmaeonid family, filed a charge against him for deceiving the Athenian people. By the day of his trial, his wound was gangrenous and he had to be carried in on a stretcher. It was standard procedure for defendants to speak in their own defense, but he was too weak even to do that. So his friends and relatives spoke on his behalf, reminding the jurors of his service to Athens at Marathon and before. The Athenians found him guilty. But instead of the death penalty, which is what Xanthippus had asked for, they imposed a fine of fifty talents. That was an enormous sum for an individual. There’s no really good way to compare ancient and modern currencies, but one way to look at it is that a talent was equivalent to 6000 drachmas, and one drachma per day was a common wage for a skilled worker in the late 5th century. In Miltiades’ time, the daily wage was probably less than a drachma. So a 50-talent fine was astronomical. Miltiades was off the hook because in no time, he was dead from that gangrenous wound. That left his son Kimon to pay off the fine. 

But Xanthippus was not the only political enemy of Miltiades. Themistocles’ star was rising fast. As I mentioned in last month’s episode, he came from the lesser nobility, without a very distinguished family pedigree. But he was exceptionally talented and insanely ambitious, which I guess you had to be to break into the Athenian power structure the way he did. To draw another anecdote from Plutarch, Themistocles became sullen and withdrawn after Marathon. He stopped going to parties and socializing with friends. And when someone asked him what was wrong, he said, “I can’t sleep at night, thinking about all the glory that’s going to Miltiades!” 

That drive to be in the spotlight, combined with his keen intellect, made him a force in Athenian politics. But even with Miltiades out of the way, Themistocles had a formidable rival in Aristides, who had a reputation as that rarest of creatures, an honest politician. Herodotus called him “the best and most honorable man in Athens.” His conscientiousness had earned him the nickname “Aristides the Just.” Now, there’s a tendency to portray Themistocles as a quote-unquote “democrat” and Aristides as an oligarch. That’s an oversimplification. Aristotle tells us that the two of them were the “leaders of the people.” Anyone who wanted to make it in Athenian politics had to be persuasive in the popular Assembly. But with that caveat, Aristides was a more conservative leader, where Themistocles was usually bolder, more innovative, and more of a risk taker. We’ll see how that led them to lock horns later in the decade.

In the meantime, an important constitutional change was under way, quite possibly masterminded by Themistocles. In 487/6 BCE, a measure passed that from then on, the archonship would be decided not by election, but by lot. A pool of eligible candidates would be chosen by election, but then the official would be chosen at random. The practical effect of that was that offices like the eponymous archon and the polemarch were no longer the powerful and prestigious positions that they had been. Selection by lot is essentially an admission that we don’t need someone highly competent in this position. We just need someone to perform the ceremonial functions and take care of some routine administrative work. After that change, no ambitious politician was going to aim for the archonship. The most influential office would now be the generalship. Each of the ten tribes would select its candidates, but then the whole assembly would vote for each general. And unlike the archonship, which could only be held once in a lifetime, a general could be elected year after year. So if you were aiming for an influential office after 487 BCE, the board of generals was where you wanted to be. 

The political situation at this time continued to be volatile. For proof of that, you don’t need to look any farther than the sudden upsurge in the use of ostracism. As you may remember from an earlier episode, ostracism was a form of temporary exile. The Assembly would vote each year on whether there was going to be an ostracism, and if the vote was yes, the citizens would then gather on an appointed day in the agora to vote. They’d scratch the name of the person they wanted to get rid of on an ostracon — a potsherd — and put it into an urn to be counted. If a minimum number of 6000 votes were cast, the person with the most votes had to stay away from Athens for ten years, although they still kept their citizenship and their property.  

One of many strange things about ostracism is how long it took before it was actually used. All our ancient sources say it was instituted as part of Cleisthenes’ democratic reforms, but the first ostracism wasn’t held until about fifteen years later. Historians have different ways of explaining that. Some say the sources are wrong, that it must have been a later addition to the constitution. I lean more toward the explanation that the Assembly just didn’t vote to hold ostracisms in that first decade and a half. And the fact that they suddenly started up now suggests that Themistocles may have started using that previously dormant political instrument for his own ends. 

Whatever the case, the first man known to have been ostracized was Hipparchus in 488/7 BCE. Which makes sense because he was a leading figure of the Pisistratids, the family of the tyrants. Aristotle even tells us that when Cleisthenes introduced ostracism, he had Hipparchus in his crosshairs. The next year, Megacles got the boot. Which also makes sense, because he was a prominent member of the Alcmaeonid family, which in this period was widely suspected of collusion with the tyrants and their pals, the Persians. A lot of Athenians blamed the Alcmaeonids for sending that shield signal to the Persians after the battle of Marathon. So Megacles was ousted, and the next year the vote went against Xanthippus, the man who had brought Miltiades to trial. As we’ve seen, he was closely connected to the Alcmaeonids through his wife Agariste.

For this sudden string of ostracisms, we have very little information other than the fact that they happened. Historians have connected the dots in all different ways to explain why they took place and who was behind them. One thing the ostracisms tell us very clearly, though, is how important and how divisive Themistocles was. Because even though he was never ostracized in this decade, more of those ostraca have been found with his name on them than any other. So even though no single ostracism went against him — not yet, anyway — a sizable portion of the citizenry was out to get him. 

Those Athenians who didn’t like Themistocles evidently included some who talked to Herodotus when he was writing his history. In Herodotus, even though Themistocles is the architect of the Athenian victory, he comes across as underhanded and corruptible, always looking out for his own gain. And by all accounts, he could be duplicitous in pursuing his political agenda, both in and outside Athens. But the next major Greek historian, Thucydides, who was much more cerebral and analytical, recognized that Themistocles had a rare talent for thinking several moves ahead. In Thucydides’ words, as translated by Richard Crawley, quote: 

For Themistocles was a man who exhibited the most indubitable signs of genius; indeed, in this particular he has a claim on our admiration quite extraordinary and unparalleled. By his own native capacity, which was neither shaped by education nor developed by later training, he was at once the best judge in those sudden crises which admit of little or of no deliberation, and the best prophet of the future, even to its most distant possibilities. An able theoretical expositor of all that came within the sphere of his practice, he was not without the power of passing an adequate judgment in matters in which he had no experience. He could also excellently divine the good and evil which lay hidden in the unseen future. To sum up, whether we consider the extent of his natural powers, or the slightness of his application, this extraordinary man must be allowed to have surpassed all others in the faculty of intuitively meeting an emergency. Unquote 

That unusual prescience led Themistocles to his most important insight — that the future of Athens as a military and economic force lay in sea power. Athenian culture was never going to produce a hoplite army to rival Sparta’s. But its potential at sea was enormous. Themistocles probably started pushing Athens in that direction as early as his archonship back in 493, when the port of Piraeus started to be fortified. Up to this time, the main naval and commercial port for Athens was the bay of Phaleron, which had the advantage of being closer to the city, although it wasn’t especially well protected. A little farther away was the much larger Piraeus, which had three good natural harbors and a better defensive position. So development had begun at that time, and Piraeus eventually became the main port of Athens. Even today, it’s the central port in Greece. 

So Themistocles was looking ahead to a much bigger, more powerful navy as the basis of Athenian strength. Of course, a big naval expansion would be very expensive and hard to get through the Assembly, even for Themistocles. But, as luck would have it, in 483 BCE Athens got a huge windfall. An unusually rich new vein of silver ore was discovered in Laureion, an important mining district in Attica. I mentioned these mines back in the episode on slavery, and it’s disturbing to think how horrible conditions were for the slaves who had to work them. But for the citizens who didn’t concern themselves with such things, it was a great new revenue stream. So now the Assembly had to decide how to use it. The expectation seems to have been that it would be treated essentially like a stock dividend and would be distributed to all the citizens at about ten drachmas a head. That was the policy that Aristides supported. But Themistocles argued that this new wealth should be used to pay for 200 new ships that would transform Athens into a major sea power.

Now, by this point, there were already clear signs that Persia was soon going to be on the move. We’ll see what was going on there in the next section. But many Athenians may have still been in denial, or they may have thought, “We whipped them at Marathon, and by the gods, we’ll whip them again!” So, in arguing for his naval policy, Themistocles didn’t sell it as a defense against Persia but as a weapon against Athens’ longtime enemy, the island of Aegina. The on-again-off-again hostilities with Aegina were known as an “unheralded war,” in other words a war that had never officially been declared but was for all practical purposes ongoing. Using that as his main selling point, Themistocles persuaded the Assembly to use the funds from Laureion for his greatly expanded navy. It was a dramatic shift in Athenian policy. And in a development that had to be connected, Aristides, who had opposed the naval expansion, was ostracized. With Aristides out of the way, Themistocles was essentially unrivaled as the top dog in Athenian politics.

Over the next two to three years, the shipyards of Attica worked at full capacity, cranking out as many as two ships a week at the height of production. Most of those were triremes, the state-of-the-art warships that were built for speed, maneuverability, and the ability to ram other ships in sea battles. A trireme had three banks of oars and needed 170 men to row it. So this initiative meant that Athens not only had to procure the wood and other materials and the labor to produce the ships, but it had to recruit thousands of rowers and train them to operate the triremes effectively. Themistocles had sold it as a weapon against Aegina, but this was the force that would ultimately face the Persian invasion. 

That seems like a great place for our first break. As you know if you’re a regular listener, I’m committed to keeping Epic Greek History free and ad-free. But I’m always grateful when a listener helps with the cost of production. On that note, I’d like to thank my latest contributing subscriber, Greg McKee, an ancient Greece enthusiast and owner of the Bike Doctor shop in Saskatoon, Canada. If you’d like to follow Greg’s lead and help support the podcast, the one way to do that is by going to the website at www.epicgreekhistory.com, clicking on the “Support” button, and selecting a contribution rate starting at just three dollars a month. That said, let’s move on to…

[SFX: A Moment of Greek!] 

English has borrowed a lot of words from Greek, but not all those words were native Greek. A prime example is our word “paradise,” which comes from the Greek “paradeisos.” But the Greeks themselves took it from the Old Persian word “paradaida,” which meant a large, enclosed park or garden. Persian kings and nobles had an intense interest in horticulture, and it was a matter of pride to have expansive gardens filled with exotic trees and plants from different parts of the world. The Greeks of course, had a great appreciation for beauty, and it’s clearly evident in their art and architecture, but they had nothing like the exquisite gardens of the Persians. So how did the word “paradise” take on the spiritual sense that it has for us? Well, when translators were rendering the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, paradeisos was the word they used for the Garden of Eden. Early Christian writers picked it up to use in the sense of “heaven,” and it’s had that connotation ever since. And that’s today’s moment of Greek! 

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We’ve looked at events in Athens in the decade after Marathon. Now let’s shift our focus over to the Persian Empire. Once again, I’m going to have to start with a reminder that virtually all our information about the Persian Wars comes from Greek sources. No known Persian documents refer directly to the campaign that led up to Marathon or to the second invasion ten years later. That’s not entirely surprising, since Persian kings weren’t in the habit of advertising their defeats. But it’s always good to remember that the Greek and Persian perspectives on these wars were very different. For the Athenians, the Spartans, and their allies, the Persian invasion was an existential threat. To the Persians, these were border wars that ended in setbacks. It must have been frustrating, but their defeats in Greece didn’t weaken their hold on their vast empire. 

Keeping that in mind… Herodotus tells us that after Marathon, the Persian king Darius was more determined than ever and immediately started making plans for a new invasion. And this was clearly going to be a much bigger invasion, because he dramatically increased the levies on the provinces for horses, warships, transport vessels, grain, and other military equipment. But while he was making those preparations, a couple of things happened that put the whole operation on hold. For one thing, a revolt broke out in Egypt — maybe in response to those increased demands from Darius. Pacifying Egypt was a much higher priority, because it provided a lot more grain and a lot more gold than Greece ever could. The other problem was that in the middle of all this, Darius died. So now there was the issue of transferring power to a successor. 

Darius had many sons by several wives, but the one he’d chosen to succeed him as king was Xerxes. The Persian kings didn’t practice a strict primogeniture when it came to succession, and Xerxes was not Darius’ oldest son. According to Herodotus, his oldest son Artobazanes did try to claim the throne. But Xerxes’ mother was Atossa, who was a daughter of Cyrus the Great, so his bloodline provided a direct link to the founder of the empire. And Atossa herself seems to have been a force to be reckoned with. Aside from all that, Xerxes was highly accomplished in all the warlike arts that Persian princes were expected to be trained in. And he looked the part. Like the Greeks, the Persians associated a tall stature and good looks with nobility. 

Despite Artobarzanes’ objections, the succession seems to have gone off smoothly. I would imagine that had something to do with all the careful work Darius had done to bring efficiency and stability to the empire. So, after going through all the necessary ceremonies, Xerxes was firmly established as the Great King. And his first order of business was to lead an army to Egypt, where he very quickly put down the revolt. According to Herodotus, he subjected it to a much harsher rule than before. That’s been questioned, because there evidently isn’t much Egyptian documentation to back it up. But we know that he put his brother Achaemenes in charge as satrap. And although Xerxes was now officially the pharaoh of Egypt, he doesn’t seem to have played that up as part of his public persona the way Darius had. Xerxes was going to be a more distant figure and wouldn’t worry so much about playing to Egyptian sensibilities. 

On top of the Egyptian issue, he had to put down a revolt in Babylonia as well. But once things were under control, influential people in the Persian court were lobbying for Xerxes to carry through with Darius’ plan for a massive operation against Greece. The foremost of those was Mardonius, who played a major role in the last episode as the general in charge of westward expansion until he lost his fleet in the storm off Mount Athos and then nearly got killed fighting a Thracian tribe in Macedonia. He was eager to take up a command again, and with his background campaigning in those areas, he could make a good case that he was the best man to lead the expedition. He probably saw himself as the future satrap of Greece. There were also members of the Pisistratid family at the Persian court, always hoping to get Persian backing for a return to power in Athens.  

Herodotus portrays Xerxes as waffling about the Greek campaign, changing his mind depending on which adviser he was talking to. I suspect he always intended to honor his father and fulfill the expectations of a Persian king to expand the empire. The story in Herodotus is probably a literary device that gives him a dramatic way to present the pros and cons of the expedition by putting them into the mouths of two advisers. On the pro-invasion side, Mardonius argues that the Greeks are weak, the Persians vastly outnumber them, and Xerxes has a responsibility to punish Athens and make a show of Persian strength. The down sides of the invasion are put into the mouth of Artabanus, an uncle of Xerxes. He points out that the Greeks aren’t pushovers, as they proved at Marathon. Furthermore, Darius had a narrow escape when he invaded Scythia, and this new invasion will run the same kinds of risks. He ends with a typically Herodotean warning about overreach, pointing out that the gods are jealous and don’t like it when humans get too much power. Just notice how lightning always brings down the tallest trees and buildings. 

As Herodotus tells it, both Xerxes and Artabanus were finally convinced by a series of prophetic dreams that they had to go to war. However it happened, the King made his decision, and the years 483 to 480 were spent preparing for the invasion. It would be a huge force, including army units from all parts of the empire, plus a tremendous navy that would move along with it. With such a colossal mobilization, there was no question of island hopping, as in the earlier expedition by Datis and Artaphernes. The army would have to march all the way around the Aegean with the fleet moving along the coast. That presented considerable logistical challenges just to keep the army fed. Stores of grain were left at certain points along the route, and pack animals would carry food, but of course the animals would need food too. It was assumed that the army would meet some of its needs by living off the land — which in practical terms meant raiding farms along the way and taking whatever food they could get. 

And what about Mount Athos? The Persians had already lost one fleet in those treacherous waters. To prevent another disaster like that, Xerxes had a canal dug through the Athos peninsula, wide enough for two warships to pass through side by side. In that way, the fleet would be protected from the weather. The canal wasn’t maintained after the invasion, and it was gradually filled in, but traces of it are still visible today.

In 481 BCE, Xerxes left Susa to make the long journey to Sardis, the Lydian capital near the Aegean coast. Along the way, at a place called Critalla in Cappadocia, he met up with the eastern contingents of his army. Herodotus includes an anecdote that illustrates that Persian obsession with horticulture and botany. On his march through Lydia, Xerxes discovered a plane tree that struck him as exceptionally beautiful, so he had it decorated with gold ornaments and left one of the elite soldiers from the unit known as the Immortals to guard it.   

As Xerxes reached Sardis, other troops were gathering in the area and preparing for the march. But how was the army going to cross over? When Darius led his invasion of Scythia, he’d had a bridge of boats built at the Thracian Bosphorus, the narrow strait just off Byzantium. Xerxes’ plan was even more ambitious. He ordered Phoenician and Egyptian engineers to build a pair of bridges across the much wider Hellespont, from Abydos on the Asian side to Sestos on the European side. It was an impressive accomplishment, but before the bridges could be put to use, a violent storm came along and completely wiped them out. 

Herodotus’ account of Xerxes response is a classic portrayal of hybris. As he tells it, Xerxes flew into a rage and had the engineers who’d been in charge of the project beheaded. And not content with punishing the people, he had to punish the Hellespont itself. He ordered men to scourge the strait with 300 lashes and drop a pair of shackles into it. And while they were whipping the Hellespont, they were to say the following, as translated by Andrea Purvis. Quote: 

Bitter water, your master is imposing this penalty upon you for wronging him even though you had suffered no injustice from him. And King Xerxes will cross whether you like it or not. It is for just cause, after all, that no human offers you sacrifice, you are a turbid and briny river! Unquote 

To both Greeks and Persians, natural forces like waterways were divine. Treating the Hellespont like a disobedient slave was the height of hybris. 

Well, Xerxes eventually calmed down, and he decided the only thing to do was bring in more engineers and build even bigger, better bridges. Herodotus gives us an elaborate description of the new construction. The two bridges were made up of 674 ships in total, all lashed together side by side, with anchors to keep them in place. Planks were tied down to the decks to make flat surfaces, and then brush and packed earth were added on top. Tall fences were added on the sides to keep the horses and pack animals from looking over the side and panicking.  

Now, after that story about Xerxes having the Hellespont flogged, I think it’s clear that Herodotus is now in full-on epic mode. So we’re in for some exaggeration. He tells us that when the king gave the order to march, it took the army seven days and seven nights to cross the bridges. Once he had his army in Thrace, he stopped at the broad plain of Doriscus to count his troops. And here we come to a problem that’s vexed scholars for centuries. Herodotus comes up with a total of 1,700,000 ground troops. And when he includes all the cavalry, the rowers on the ships, and all the noncombatants, the final sum is over five million. Everyone agrees that those numbers are way too high. But no one can agree on what the real number was. I’m not going to get into the weeds with how historians have tried to calculate the count. Estimates range from under 100,000 to around 300,000. As one of my professors put it when I first read Herodotus, “Whatever the number, it was a damn big army.” And of course, there was a damn big navy following its progress along the coast. 

Continuing in the Homeric vein, Herodotus lists all the army units from every part of the empire. From a literary perspective, it’s an obvious nod to the Catalogue of Ships and other lists in the Iliad. He highlights the king’s elite troops, the Immortals, so called because their force was always kept at a full complement of 10,000 men. In addition to those and the regular Persian troops, there are Medes, Assyrians, Bactrians, Scythians, Indians, Parthians, and on and on — each group dressed in its distinctive clothing, with its own type of armor and weaponry.  

At the end of this long catalogue of troops, Herodotus tells an anecdote to illustrate the Greek love of freedom as well as the do-or-die mentality of the Spartans. Xerxes has with him the exiled Spartan king Demaratus. We’ve seen how Cleomenes had pulled strings to have him deposed, and he then found a home at the Persian court. So in Herodotus’ story, Xerxes now has Demaratus brought before him and asks, “Do you really think the Greeks will stand up against such a gigantic force as this?” Demaratus answers, “I can’t speak for all the Greeks, but I know that the Spartans will never accept you as their master. They’ll always fight for their freedom.” Xerxes presses him, saying Sparta is just one little city-state. How could it possibly stand up to the vast Persian army? Demaratus tells him, “The Spartans are free, but not absolutely free. The master they answer to is called law, which forbids them from fleeing in battle. And they fear their master more than your soldiers fear you.” Xerxes just laughs it off as an absurd notion. 

 Of course, every Greek hearing Herodotus give a public reading would know that Xerxes had a surprise in store.

 That’ll take us to our second break. And before today’s random fact, I have something to promote. If you enjoy Epic Greek History and like having history to fall asleep to, you might also enjoy Arthur’s Sleepy History. It’s a long-form podcast exploring the wider ancient world - Ancient Egypt, Göbekli Tepe, lost civilizations, archaeology and some of history’s biggest mysteries - all told in a calm, relaxing style designed for bedtime. When I say long-form, I’m not kidding. Episodes range from an hour and a half to over three hours. So if you’re into history and sleep-learning, just search Arthur’s Sleepy History wherever you listen to podcasts. Or follow the link in the show notes to this episode. With that, let’s move on to…

 [SFX: Random Facts!]

 In the first section, I talked about the growing influence of Themistocles. And unlike any other individual from his time, we may have a representation of what he actually looked like. The conventional view for a long time has been that true portrait sculpture didn’t exist at this time in Greece. Representations of individuals were highly idealized. But there is a Roman-era bust of Themistocles, most likely based on a Greek original, that looks more like a real representation of a real person. His appearance is a good fit with what we know of his character. He looks like a no-nonsense, down-to-earth guy who knows how to get things done and isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. It’s definitely worth a look, so I’ve added a link to a photo of it in the show notes and posted it on Substack. To be honest, I’m skeptical that it really is copied from a realistic portrait from Themistocles’ own time. But it’s a possibility, and reputable scholars who are more optimistic than I am have described it as the first true portrait of an individual European. And that’s today’s random fact.

 [SFX]

 The Greeks may have kept their heads in the sand for a while after Marathon, but by the late 480s BCE, there was no denying that Xerxes was coming for them. The digging of the Athos canal in 483 was a dead giveaway. It’s interesting that at about the same time, Themistocles still had to sell his naval program as a counter to Aegina. I’m sure some who voted for it must have been looking ahead to defense against Persia.

 The warning lights started flashing even brighter when the Great King came down from Susa to Sardis in 481. Around that time, Xerxes did what his father Darius had done a decade earlier. He sent heralds around to the Greek states demanding the standard earth and water as tokens of submission. But this time, he pointedly left out Athens and Sparta. Those two had had their chance and had responded with the sacrilege of executing Darius’ heralds. As for other Greek states, especially in the north, the Persians could expect a lot of cooperation. In the northern region of Thessaly, the ruling family of the Aleuadae had reportedly sent messages inviting the king to invade Greece, expecting nice rewards for themselves. 

 Those states that were committed to mounting a defense would have to band together and coordinate with one another. But first things first… Before taking any action, they had to consult the Delphic oracle. And the answers they got were, on the whole, very pessimistic. There’s been a lot of speculation about why that would be. Did the Persians bribe the oracle? Were the Delphians hoping to get more lenient treatment if they predicted Persian success? Or was the oracle just being realistic about the Greeks’ chances against such an enormous offensive? It could very well have been a mix of all three.

 But even if the responses were mostly negative, they weren’t identical. Each city-state got a different answer. Argos at this time was still in a weakened state after the Spartan king Cleomenes’ murderous campaign over a decade earlier. Naturally, the Argives were still bitter about it. They probably hated the Spartans more than they feared the Persians. Their story, as Herodotus tells it, was that the oracle told them, “Just sit it out. Remain neutral, and you’ll be okay.” Herodotus also includes a story that’s much less flattering to the Argives, that Persian envoys had approached them for an alliance, claiming that they were related because they had a common ancestor in the hero Perseus. “Persian-Perseus.” Get it? Herodotus declines to weigh in on which story is true, but the upshot is that Argos wasn’t going to be front and center in the defense of Greece.

Delphi gave the Spartans a depressing response, that in order for their city to escape destruction, one of its kings would have to die. But the harshest of all the answers was reserved for Athens. The Pythia told the Athenian delegation, “Fly to the ends of the earth. Leave your homes. Your city is doomed to destruction.” Naturally, the Athenian representatives were dismayed, so they arranged to get a second hearing. They went back carrying olive branches to signal that they were coming as suppliants. And they asked if they could get an answer with some ray of hope. The Pythia’s answer was still pretty harsh. She told them that Athena couldn’t change the will of Zeus, that their city would still be destroyed. But the one thing that could give them some protection was the “wooden wall.”

 When the delegates brought that answer back to Athens, there was intense debate in the Assembly over what it could mean. One side argued that it referred to the Acropolis, which at some time in the distant past was supposed to have had a thick hedge enclosing it. Maybe a bit of a stretch, but in oracle-speak, that hedge could be called a wall of wood. And of course, the Acropolis was always the last bastion for defenders against an invading force. But Themistocles argued that the “wooden wall” meant a wall of ships, that new navy that the Athenians had been feverishly building for the last couple of years. That interpretation carried in the Assembly, and it had huge implications for Athenian strategy. When it came to defending Athens, they were going to go all in on a naval defense, even if that meant letting the Persians overrun the city.

 Well, after everyone had gotten Delphi’s advice, Sparta and Athens, as the leading powers, held a conference of Greek city-states that were willing to fight back. The meeting was probably held at the Isthmus of Corinth, that narrow strip of land that connects the Peloponnese to the rest of Greece, although some sources say it was at a meeting place called the Hellenion in Sparta. These states formed a defensive pact that has been called the first truly panhellenic alliance. Which is true to a certain extent, but it wasn’t literally “panhellenic” in the sense of “all of Greece.” Thessaly, Thebes, and many northern states didn’t participate. To keep this in perspective, out of hundreds of Greek city-states, only 31 are recorded as taking an active role in the defense of Greece.

The representatives at this conference passed several resolutions. First, all current hostilities between allied states had to end. Crucially, that meant that for the time being, at least, Athens and Aegina would have to get along. They also resolved to send spies to Asia to gather as much information as they could. And they’d send envoys to other important Greek states and try to recruit them for the alliance. Either at this conference or at a later one, they resolved that after the war, any states that had allied with the Persians would be punished by having to pay a tithe to Delphi. 

 At some point, the alliance also determined that Sparta would be in command of all forces. There was some talk of putting the Athenians in charge at sea, especially because Sparta was not a naval power. But much of the alliance was made up of Peloponnesian League members, and Sparta no doubt exerted its influence over them to oppose Athenian naval leadership. Under the circumstances, the Athenians understood that they’d have to pick their battles, so they acquiesced. The Spartan king Leonidas would command the land troops. The allied fleet would be under a Spartan by the name of Eurybiades. Another wise decision the Athenians made was to recall Aristides and Xanthippus from ostracism. They were going to need all the competent leaders they could get.

 The spies that went over to Asia were soon caught and brought before the king. Their captors expected him to put them to death, but Xerxes said, “No, just the opposite. Show them around. Give them a good look at our massive army and our vast resources. Let them see everything, and then let them go, so they can report back to their home cities. It can only scare them and make them think twice about trying to stand up against us.”

 The embassies to the other Greek states didn’t drum up a lot of support. Argos, as we’ve seen, had pretty well determined already that it was going to stay out of the fight. Its representatives made a show of offering to join the alliance, but only on the condition that they’d get a 30-year truce with Sparta and a share in the command. They knew that Sparta would never agree to that. The allies may have had higher hopes when they approached the tyrant Gelon in the powerful Greek city of Syracuse over in Sicily. But Gelon played it much the way Argos did. He said he could send 200 triremes, 20,000 hoplites, cavalry, and other troops, but only if he would get command of all the Greek forces. Again, neither Sparta nor Athens could accept that. In reality, Gelon could probably never have spared all those troops, because there was a conflict brewing with Carthage closer to home.

 In the spring of 480 BCE, about the time Xerxes was marching his army across the Hellespont, the alliance met again at the Isthmus. Some envoys had come from Thessaly, that big region up north. They represented factions that weren’t happy with the ruling family’s cozy relations with Persia. They urged the allies to send a force to hold the pass of Tempe, up in northern Greece between the mountains of Ossa and Olympus. And they made it clear that if the rest of the Greeks wouldn’t make a stand there, the Thessalians would have no choice but to join with the Persians.

 So the alliance sent a force of 10,000 hoplites to Tempe. But once they got there and did some scouting, they discovered that there were other passes where the Persians could come in and overwhelm them. So they had to give up on holding Tempe, which meant that Thessaly would have to “medize,” to go over to the Persians, and that in turn meant that important states like Thebes would have to submit too. 

Those were the cards the Greek alliance had to play. They reconvened at the Isthmus and, after some debate, they decided their best option was to make a stand somewhat south of Tempe, in a narrower, much more defensible mountain pass called Thermopylae. 

 And that’s where we’ll meet up with them this time next month, when the battle begins. If you’ve enjoyed this episode and would like to send a comment, a question, a correction, or anything else, as always, I’d love to hear from you. I’m at scott@epicgreekhistory.com, and if you don’t like email, you can always leave a comment on my Facebook or Instagram. I’m Scott Emmons. The music for my theme song was composed and produced by Parry Gripp. My logo and other artwork were created by Chris Harding. Until next time, ευτυχεĩτε! Be well.