Hello, χαίρετε, and welcome to Epic Greek History Episode 36, War Is Hades: Five Battles that Kept Greece Greek. I’m Scott Emmons

 Well, this is it. We’ve finally reached the milestone event that I’ve been foreshadowing for months. The successful defense against the Persian invasion of 480 BCE is commonly thought of as the turning point from the archaic to the classical period. That dividing line is artificial, of course, but it’s not completely arbitrary. Because their victory gave the Greeks an enormous sense of pride, confidence, and a perception of their own identity that fueled their subsequent achievements in art, literature, architecture, philosophy, all the things we typically associate with classical Greece. 

 Naturally, an event of this magnitude caught the attention of historians — both ancient and modern — so the literature on the topic is endless. I could easily devote an episode or even more to each of the major battles in this war. But as I said in my opening episode, I’m not a professional historian. Even more to the point, I’m especially not a military historian. Tons of scholarly ink have been spilled on attempts to reconstruct the details of these engagements. That kind of analysis is just not in my wheelhouse. So what I’m going to do is try to present a clear, basic outline of each battle, the circumstances that led up to it, and its outcome. And I’ll include some of the famous anecdotes that the ancient sources report. Many of those probably never really happened, but they became part of the Greek historical consciousness, so in that sense they’re a part of the cultural history. 

 As the episode title suggests, I’ll focus on five major battles that made up the second Persian War. Each one had its own peculiarities, of course, but we can see an overarching strategy on each side. The Persian game plan was to go in with overwhelming force. To use the vast size of the invading army to cow the Greek communities into submission, or failing that, to steamroll over any force that tried to resist it. The Greek strategy — on both land and sea — was to force the Persians to fight in narrow spaces where their superior numbers wouldn’t be such a great advantage. All well and good… but that meant different things to different Greeks. A crucial part of the allied Greek army, including the Spartans, came from the Peloponnese, which was essentially a big island connected to the mainland by the narrow Isthmus of Corinth. The very name “Peloponnese” means “Island of Pelops.” So their first impulse was always to fortify the Isthmus and defend their territory there. Athens and other important cities outside the Peloponnese had to do a lot of cajoling to get the Spartans and their allies to fight farther north, outside their comfort zone.

With that background, we now come to battle number one, Thermopylae, and battle number two, Artemisium. These two have to be considered together, because they were coordinated operations on land and at sea. The Persian army was marching from the north down into Greece, and it needed the fleet following along on the coast to support it and keep it supplied. Likewise, the Greeks had to coordinate their land operations with the fleet to try to stop the Persian advance. 

Well, when we last looked at the Greek preparations, we saw that the allied states had assembled at the Isthmus and determined that the best place to mount a defense was the pass of Thermopylae up in central Greece. This was a very narrow pass with steep mountains on one side and the sea on the other. If you go there today, it’s hard to get a good sense of its ancient topography, because the coastline has accumulated 2500 years of silt, so the plain has been greatly extended. But in ancient times it lived up to its name, Thermopylae, which literally meant the “hot gates.” Hot because there were hot springs in the area, and the “gates” were a series of three points where the pass became extremely narrow.  

The general direction of the Persian advance was north to south, but at this point the route bends around and runs west to east. So there was a western gate, then a middle and an eastern gate of Thermopylae. At the middle gate there was an old fortification that the Phocian Greeks had built some time before to defend against incursions from Thessaly. The defending Greeks did some quick repairs on that so-called Phocian wall and established the middle gate as their main defensive position.

So, who were these Greeks who were going to hold this pass? The Spartan king Leonidas famously brought his force of 300 hoplites. They’re the ones who’ve gotten most of the press over the centuries. But as the commander-in-chief of the Greek land army, he led a much bigger force of between six and seven thousand, mostly from the Peloponnesian states but also Phocians and Boeotians, including 400 Thebans. Which is interesting because Herodotus portrays the Thebans as enthusiastic collaborators with the Persians. It’s true that after Thermopylae, Thebes had little choice but to go all in with Persia, but at this point, I don’t see a reason not to believe that at least those particular Thebans were there voluntarily.  

 So Leonidas had a few thousand hoplites, but the force he led far from the full strength of the allied states. And only 300 Spartan hoplites? Why so few? The Spartan explanation was that this was only an advance guard. While these preparations were going on, the Spartans were celebrating the Carneia, an important festival of Apollo, and as soon as that was over, they’d turn out in force. Similarly, the other Peloponnesian contingents weren’t at full strength because they were busy with another religious festival — the Olympic Games. It sounds a lot like making excuses. But we shouldn’t underestimate how seriously the Greeks took their religious obligations. Then again, the Spartans were always reluctant to fight far from home, and the Peloponnesians on the whole thought of the Isthmus as their real line of defense. They may also have just miscalculated how quickly the situation at Thermopylae would become serious. In any case, Leonidas and his small force of six to seven thousand, plus undoubtedly some light-armed troops that we don’t hear much about, dug in at Thermopylae to confront the Persian army. 

Late in the summer, probably in what we would call late August, Xerxes’ army arrived and camped in the Malian plain outside the western gate. And the king’s initial plan seems to have been to take Thermopylae without even having to fight. He was hoping that once the Greeks saw the enormous force they were up against, they’d abandon their position and retreat. So, for the next four days, Xerxes just sat and waited. This is the setting for one of the classic legends about Thermopylae. A Persian scout had been sent to spy on the Greek army, and he saw a group of Spartans doing exercises and grooming their hair. Xerxes couldn’t make any sense of it when he heard the scout’s report, so he called Demaratus, the exiled Spartan king, to explain it to him. Demaratus told him that the Spartan custom was to fix their hair just right when they were preparing to risk their lives in battle. If he saw Spartan hoplites doing their hair, that meant it was on!

Well, while Xerxes is waiting for the Greek army to run away, we can turn our attention about 40 miles, or 65 kilometers if you prefer, to the east and check in with the Greek fleet at Artemisium. Where’s Artemisium? In past episodes I’ve referred several times to Euboea, which is the long, narrow island that runs parallel to the east coast of central Greece. A narrow channel called the Euripus runs between Euboea and the mainland. At the north end of the island is the town of Artemisium, where the Greek fleet was stationed. From there, a sailor serving in the fleet would look north across a gap to see a peninsula called Magnesia, which juts south, and then the tip of it turns westward toward the mainland. The Persian objective was to sail down around Magnesia, through that gap, and into the Malian Gulf, near where the army was stationed. From there they could follow along down through that strait as the army moved south. The Greek fleet’s job was to prevent that movement. 

If you noticed that I didn’t mention Athenians when I talked about the Greek army at Thermopylae, that’s because all of their combatants were serving in the navy. A lot of those would be manning the oars, but their best fighters would serve as marines who would fight on the decks of the ships in a sea battle. The Athenians made up by far the largest contingent, but it was an allied fleet, with Corinth, Megara, and other cities contributing ships or crews. And even though Sparta was not really a sea power and only contributed ten ships, the commander was the Spartan Eurybiades. He was the top admiral for the whole allied fleet, but our old friend Themistocles commanded the Athenian contingent. And the way the sources tell it, he seems to have called a lot of the shots. 

The first engagement we hear about at Artemisium comes before the arrival of the main Persian fleet. Three Greek ships were out doing reconnaissance when they were attacked by an advance force of Persian vessels. One of them got away, but the Persians captured two of them. And according to Herodotus, that spooked the Greek commanders to the point where they withdrew into the Euripus, that strait between Euboea and the mainland. Some modern historians think that’s unlikely, because Eurybiades would have been under orders to stay at his post as long as Leonidas held Thermopylae. In any case, it wasn’t a promising start for the Greek fleet. 

So it must have been especially alarming when the full Persian fleet arrived off the coast of Magnesia. But those huge numbers could present problems for the Persians as well as the Greeks. There weren’t nearly enough places along the coastline to moor all those ships safely. So they had to anchor off the coast, in eight rows extending out toward the open sea. That was a very vulnerable position. And as luck would have it, a violent storm came on that night and wrecked a considerable portion of the fleet. We even hear that before that incident, the Delphians had received an oracle that they passed on to the other Greeks, saying they should pray to the winds. Which was sensible advice, because bad weather was the one thing that could help most in reducing the size of the Persian navy. According to Herodotus, that weakening of the Persian force emboldened the Greeks to return to their post at Artemisium.

But even with a lot of their ships out of commission, the Persians still greatly outnumbered the Greeks at sea. And when they brought their fleet around that bend in the peninsula and stationed it on the opposite coast from Artemisium, the Greek commanders started debating whether they should retreat and fall back toward Attica. Reports of those discussions soon leaked out, and the inhabitants of Euboea were alarmed at the possibility of being left to their fate. The story is that some of the leading men approached Themistocles with a bribe of thirty talents to keep the fleet there. Themistocles took the money without telling the other commanders, then went to Eurybiades and said, “There’s five talents in it for you if you stand with me and keep the fleet here.” He made an offer of three talents to the Corinthian commander and pocketed the rest for himself. That’s the kind of story that was passed around about Themistocles, and it may be true. However it played out, the fleet stayed. 

About this time, the Persians decided to send a secret detachment of 200 ships under cover of night to sail to the south end of Euboea and block the southern end of the channel so that the Greeks would have no escape route. But their secret was blown because a champion Greek diver by the name of Skyllias got a message through to the Greeks. Supposedly he dived in at Aphetae, where the Persian fleet was stationed, and swam ten miles underwater to Artemisium. Even Herodotus doesn’t believe that one. He says Skyllias must have gotten there in a boat. But once they were tipped off, the Greek commanders made a plan to wait until midnight and send their own secret detachment to engage with those Persian ships.  

In the meantime, that afternoon, Themistocles convinced the other leaders that while the Persians were still recovering from the storm, this was the perfect time to try an attack and see how they fought at sea. The Greeks had the initial advantage that they advanced in a solid formation, while the Persian ships were strung out along a long coastline and needed time to form into a cohesive unit. So for a while, the Greeks were getting the upper hand, but things got more and more difficult as more Persian ships arrived. There was heavy fighting on both sides, and by the end of the day when the battle broke off, there was no clear winner. 

The Greeks got another stroke of luck, though, when that Persian detachment sailing around Euboea got hit by another storm. Greek prayers to the winds seemed to be working. A lot of the Persian ships were wrecked in treacherous waters at a place called the Hollows. And at that point a reserve force of Athenian ships that had been left behind to guard Attica came sailing up, and that put an end to any Persian plans to block the strait. The upshot was that after both sides had fought hard and suffered losses, the Greeks held their position at Artemisium. For now.

Back at Thermopylae, Xerxes waited four days, hoping to scare the defending Greeks away. But he couldn’t play that game forever. For one thing, there was the problem of keeping that massive army supplied. Which must have been especially hard when the fleet was busy fighting the Greek navy. So on the morning of the fifth day, he sent his Median troops to assault the Greek position. These were good, well-trained troops and they fought well, but the long thrusting spears that the Greeks used gave them an advantage. They held the gate as more and more of the enemy rushed forward only to be cut down. Ultimately Xerxes ordered the Medes to retreat, and he sent in his elite Persian troops, the Immortals, under their commander Hydarnes. But even they failed to break the Greek defenses. Herodotus reports that during that day’s fighting, Xerxes leapt up from his throne three times out of anxiety for his troops. 

The next day, Xerxes renewed the assault with the same results as before. But at last, he got a break that turned the tide. In ancient warfare, when any force went into unfamiliar territory, they had to depend to a great extent on local guides for information. And any native of this region would know that there was an alternate route, a steep mountain path that could take a force around the gates to the rear of the Greek position. The defenders knew about it, and a group of a thousand Phocians, men who knew the area, were posted at the highest point to guard it in case the Persians found out about it. Well, a Malian Greek named Epialtes has gone down in history as the turncoat who came to Xerxes with the offer that, for a reasonable fee, he would be glad to guide a Persian force on that mountain path. Xerxes wasn’t going to mess around. He sent Hydarnes with his Immortals to take that path and attack the Greeks in the rear. When the Phocians guarding the path saw the Persians approaching, they retreated to the highest ground to meet the attack. But the Immortals just passed them by, hardly giving them a second look. 

But Leonidas wasn’t taken by surprise. A deserter from the Persian camp had gotten through to the Greeks with the message that the Immortals were on their way. Leonidas called an emergency council of war to decide on a course of action. And the upshot was that most of the allied troops would retreat. Herodotus’ version is what’s come to be known as the Thermopylae legend, which says Leonidas sent all those other contingents home, because it would be a waste for so many good men to die on a suicide mission. In reality, he probably had no choice but to let them go, since they would have saved themselves anyway.  But somebody had to hold the pass for as long as possible to cover their retreat, and that job fell to Leonidas and his 300 Spartans. Not them alone. 700 Boeotians from Thespiae stayed with him, as did those 400 Thebans I mentioned earlier. And although they get next to no mention in Herodotus, each Spartan hoplite would have had at least one helot with him.  

So this skeleton crew would make the Greeks’ last stand at Thermopylae. This was the occasion of the most famous bit of banter to come out of this battle, when a local came to the Greek camp with the warning that the Persians’ arrows would fly so thickly, they’d blot out the sun. And one of the Spartans answered, “Good! Then we’ll fight in the shade.”

 When the final confrontation came, instead of staying within the middle gate, the Greeks rushed out to attack in a broader area. They had some success at first, but Leonidas was killed. An intense battle erupted around him as both sides tried to get his body and his armor. But at this point it was hopeless for the Greeks. They were driven back behind the Phocian wall, that defense that they’d rebuilt before the battle. Herodotus tells us they withdrew to a nearby hill where they fought to the last man. When the battle was finally over, Xerxes vented his frustration by having Leonidas’ head cut off and mounted on a pole.

From a strictly military standpoint, Thermopylae was a huge setback for the Greeks. The Persian army would march on, conquering as it went. But the heroism of those who stayed to hold the pass was an inspiration to those who still believed in the cause. That spirit was immortalized in the epitaph for the Spartans who were buried where they fell. As translated from Herodotus by Andrea Purvis, quote: “Tell this, passerby, to the Lacedaemonians: It is here that we lie. Their commands we obey.” Unquote. 

And that will bring us to a well-deserved break. As you know if you’re a regular listener, I produce this podcast as a free resource for anyone who wants to learn the basics of ancient Greek history. I don’t put anything behind paywalls, and I’ll never sign up with one of those distribution services that interrupt the program with annoying ads. I am, of course, grateful to those few who pitch in a little to help with production costs. If you’d like to become one of those, the one way to do it is by going to the website at www.epicgreekhistory.com, clicking the “Support” button, and selecting a contribution rate starting at just three dollars a month. With that, it’s time to move on to…

[SFX] A Moment of Greek! 

The Persians have just won a major victory, but I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that the Greeks will have their own at the end. The Greek word for victory is one that just about everybody knowns — νίκη, or in its Anglicized form, “Nike.” It’s the perfect name for a brand of athletic gear because νίκη is not just an abstract concept. She’s the goddess of victory. The Winged Victory of Samothrace is one of the best-known sculptures of the Hellenistic period. And the tiny Ionic temple on the Athenian Acropolis is dedicated to Athena Nike. But don’t go looking for an inscription that says, “Just do it.” I’ve checked. And that’s today’s moment of Greek! 

[SFX] 

We’re on to battle number three, the Battle of Salamis… which is a good-sized island just off the coast of Attica and very close to Athens itself. Today it’s about a ten-minute ferry ride from the port. This was a major naval battle — and a turning point in the war. 

So what led up to this turning point? After news of the defeat at Thermopylae reached Artemisium, the Greek fleet had to make a fast retreat down through the strait of the Euripus, toward Attica. They knew the Persian fleet would be close behind them. I’ve been calling it the Persian fleet, but of course it was made up of divisions from different parts of the empire. The Phoenicians were the backbone of the navy, but an important part was played by Ionian Greeks who were subjects of the king. So during this retreat down the Euripus, Themistocles ordered that at all the natural harbors where the pursuing fleet was likely to stop for fresh water, a message would be scratched on rocks urging the Ionians to desert and come over to the Greek side. The way Herodotus presents it is kind of comical, because he quotes a long, eloquent paragraph that sounds more like an orator delivering a well-crafted speech. In reality, these must have amounted to graffiti with short messages like “Free yourselves!” “Ditch the Persians” or whatever. Themistocles may have hoped he could really convince some Ionians to defect, but failing that, he might be able to sow some doubt among the Persians as to whether their Greek subjects could be trusted.

Now, the Athenians hoped that after Thermopylae, the retreating land army would regroup and make a stand in Boeotia, up north of Attica. But when they arrived at the island of Salamis, they got word that the army, now under the command of Leonidas’ brother Cleombrotus, had gathered at the Isthmus and was busy building a defensive wall across it. That left Athens defenseless against the invaders. Their only option at this point was to evacuate. And here we run into a notorious historical problem. Because there’s a lot of conflicting evidence about when that decision to evacuate was made. Herodotus makes it sound like the Athenians got to Salamis, discovered that the army had abandoned them, and then decided to evacuate the population to nearby Troezen, Aegina, and Salamis. It seems much more likely that some kind of evacuation plan was made before Thermopylae, when Themistocles persuaded the Assembly that his interpretation of the “wooden wall” oracle was correct —that the navy was the city’s best hope for survival. That view of an earlier decision gained some support in 1959, when an inscription was discovered called the Troezen Decree, which purported to be the text of the evacuation order. But the inscription itself is from the third century BCE, and there’s a lot of scholarly debate over how much of it, if any, is genuine.  

So the timeline is uncertain, but the main point is that there was a large-scale evacuation from Athens. It was a huge undertaking to get the women and children to safety and to get every available fighting man aboard a ship. Public funds were just about exhausted, but we hear from Aristotle that the ancient council of the Areopagus stepped in to help finance the evacuation. Plutarch, in his Life of Themistocles, gives a dramatic description of the scene, which I think is worth quoting. As translated by Ian Scott Kilvert, quote:

In this way the whole city of Athens put out to sea. It was a sight which filled some with pity and others with amazement at the hardihood of what they were doing, as they sent off their families in one direction and themselves crossed over to Salamis, unmoved by the cries and tears and embraces of their own kin. Most pathetic of all were the old men, who were left behind because of their years, and the domestic animals too, who chose this moment to show a heart-rending affection and ran along howling piteously by the side of their masters as they went on board. The story has come down to us of the dog which belonged to Xanthippus, Pericles’ father, and which could not bear to be separated from him, and so leaped into the sea, swam across the straits alongside his master’s trireme, and was washed ashore at Salamis, where it fainted and died on the spot. Unquote 

When it came to their pets, the ancient Greeks could be as sentimental as anyone. It was undoubtedly an emotionally charged scene. But not everyone who could evacuate did so. There were still some who disagreed with Themistocles’ interpretation of the wooden wall oracle and thought their best bet was to build a wooden barricade on the Acropolis. Some of those were probably those old men left behind, that Plutarch mentioned. Some would have been men of the hoplite class who preferred to stand and fight rather than flee and watch the invaders take over. 

Well, the invaders did march in, ransacked the city, and laid siege to the Acropolis. The defenders held out for some time, rolling boulders down the slopes the cause trouble for the enemy. Meanwhile, the Persians used flaming arrows to set fire to the wooden barricade. Eventually they managed to scale a cliff to get up on top of the Acropolis and stormed the Greek position. They killed all the defenders and then went on to destroy the temples. All those great buildings you see in photos of the Athenian Acropolis are from the period after the invasion. The Persians justified the destruction as an act of revenge, because when the Athenians had sent forces to aid in the Ionian revolt of 499 BCE, the temple of Cybele was destroyed by the fire that broke out in Sardis. 

While this was going on, the allied fleet was amassed at Salamis with the Spartan Eurybiades still in command. The Greek leaders held a council, and the consensus was that the fleet should retreat to the Isthmus and support the land army there. That would of course be disastrous for Athens. So Themistocles met privately with Eurybiades and pointed out all the advantages to opposing the Persians in the narrow straits around Salamis rather than the more open waters at the Isthmus. He argued that if they could beat the Persians at Salamis, that would give just as much protection to the army as a sea battle at the Isthmus. Eurybiades was persuaded that he should at least call another council. 

The debate at that council got seriously heated, with Themistocles making his case for staying at Salamis and the Peloponnesians arguing for the Isthmus. In a particularly rough exchange, Themistocles locked horns with the Corinthian commander Adeimantus, who said, “You don’t have the privilege of speaking in this council, because you don’t have a city anymore!” Themistocles answered with an argument we’ve seen before in the early lyric poets. A city, a polis, isn’t the houses and temples, it’s the people. A lofty sentiment, maybe, but in this case it had teeth, because Themistocles said, “If you won’t stay and fight alongside us, we can take our navy and go off to found a new city at Siris over in Italy.” The threat of losing Athenian naval support was enough to convince the commanders — at least for the time being — to stay at Salamis. 

Well, after the Persian fleet arrived at the Athenian port of Phaleron, Xerxes also held a council to discuss a naval offensive. A striking thing about this council, as Herodotus reports it, is that a woman played a prominent part in the debate. Artemisia was the queen of Caria, one of the provinces of the Persian empire, and also the location of Halicarnassus, which was Herodotus’ home city. So Herodotus may have had some inside information about her. He tell us that Artemisia gave Xerxes good advice not to attack but to wait and give time for disagreements among the Greeks to split them apart. Xerxes treated her with respect, but said essentially, “This won’t be like Artemisium, because I’ll be watching this battle myself. Their fear of me will give my sailors the push they need to do their best fighting.” 

So the Persian fleet moved in on Salamis. The situation here is a little like what we saw with Euboea, in that the island is close to the mainland, so there’s a strait running between them. And there’s a narrow opening leading into that strait at each end of the island. The Persians moved in with ships arranged in three ranks facing the eastern opening, and they also landed troops on the tiny island of Psyttalea, which sits right in the middle of that entryway.  

When the Peloponnesian contingents saw those movements, they started clamoring again for a retreat to the Isthmus. Eurybiades called yet another council of war. And Themistocles could see that all his plans were about to fall apart. What he did next sounds outlandish, but it’s what all the sources report. He sent a trusted slave named Sicinnus, who according to Plutarch was a Persian, with a message for Xerxes. He was to tell the king that Themistocles and the Athenians were ready to defect to the Persian side. And he wanted to let Xerxes know that the Greeks were planning to slip away by night, but if the Persians could prevent their escape, they’d have an easy victory. The Greeks would be trapped, and the Athenians would throw the fight.  

Somehow, Xerxes bought that story. Or maybe he didn’t believe all of it, but trapping the Greeks in the straits seemed like a good idea, so he sent 200 Egyptian ships to block the western entrance. So Themistocles got what he wanted. The allies couldn’t retreat to the Isthmus. But they didn’t know it yet, so the council continued. At one point, Themistocles was called out to meet with a man who’d just arrived with important news. This was none other than Aristides, Themistocles’ old political rival, who’d recently been recalled from his ostracism. He came to deliver the news that the Persians now had the Greeks trapped. Themistocles said, “Yeah, I know. I arranged it all.” Aristides said, “Hmm, good plan.” For now, they would put aside their political differences and work together. The news was delivered to the allied commanders, and now it was a done deal. They’d have to fight at Salamis.  

On the morning of the battle, Xerxes had a throne set up on a high lookout point on the mainland where he could view all the action. What he saw unfolding is very difficult to reconstruct. I won’t even try to present a blow-by-blow account. The most important point is the overall strategy I mentioned at the beginning. Xerxes was lured into sending his fleet to fight in narrow waters where the Persian numerical advantage didn’t matter as much. As far as details go, Herodotus gives us essentially a series of episodes stitched together to form a narrative. One of those shines a spotlight on that Carian queen Artemisia, whose acts of bravery made Xerxes cry out, “My men have become women, and my women have become men!” 

As always, Herodotus presents a vivid narrative. But the Battle of Salamis is unique in that we actually have an eyewitness account. Not from a historian, but from a playwright. Only a few years after the war, the tragedian Aeschylus produced his play Persians, which depicted the supposed anguish at the Persian court after the Greek victory. Aeschylus himself had fought in the battle, and some of the speeches in the play contain descriptions of the fighting. Even though it’s a dramatic treatment, modern scholars take the play seriously as a source and draw on Aeschylus’ account as well as those of Herodotus and other historians. So here is Aeschylus’ description of the battle. The speaker is a messenger delivering news of the Persian defeat to the royal court. As translated by Edith Hall, quote: 

Straightaway a ship struck its bronze beak against a ship. A Greek vessel began the ramming, and smashed off the entire stern of a Phoenician ship; each captain steered his ship against another. At first the flood of the Persian force put up a resistance; but when the mass of the ships was crowded together in a narrow strait, and they could not bring any assistance to one another, they struck each other with their bronze-mouthed beaks, and shattered all the rowing equipment; the Greek ships judiciously encircled them and made their strikes, and ships’ hulls were turned upside down, and it was no longer possible to glimpse the sea, which was brimming with wrecked ships and dead men. The shores and reefs were brimming with corpses. Every ship was being rowed in disorderly flight — every ship, that is, in the barbarian fleet.  

But they kept on striking and splicing us with broken oars and fragments of the wreckage as if we were tunny or a catch of fish. At the same time groaning and shrieking filled the sea, until black-eyed night brought it to an end. Unquote

When I read that account, the most impactful thing to me is that many of the audience members sitting in the theater of Dionysus had fought in that battle and seen everything that Aeschylus described. I can only imagine how stirring that must have been. 

Especially stirring because Salamis was a decisive win for the Greeks. It wasn’t the end of the war, but it was a turning point. We’ll look at the aftermath right after a break for…

 [SFX: Random Facts!]

 If you go to Athens today and you visit the touristy neighborhood known as the Plaka, you can look up at the north wall of the Acropolis, and there you’ll see a collection of big column drums — that is, segments of Greek columns — built right into the masonry. Those came from the early temple of Athena, which the Persians destroyed when they stormed the Acropolis. It was common to recycle old building material, but these column drums are very prominently placed to be visible from below. The traditional explanation was that when the Athenians rebuilt, they put those relics of the old temple on display as a permanent reminder of what the city had been through. In a place like Athens, history is everywhere you look. And that’s today’s random fact. 

[SFX]

 After the Persian defeat at Salamis, Xerxes decided it was time to head back to Asia. Greek authors, of course, make it sound like he ran off in a panic. And that must have been what it looked like to them. But Xerxes wasn’t in any immediate danger. His navy had taken a beating, but his army was still intact. I’m sure he must have been frustrated that he couldn’t see the mission through to a complete victory. But it was late in the campaigning season, and keeping that enormous army in the field over the winter would create major logistical problems. And he couldn’t stay in Greece indefinitely, because after all, he did have an empire to run. One concern was that when news of Salamis reached the Ionian Greeks, he might have another rebellion on his hands. So Xerxes returned over the land route, while the fleet hurried to the Hellespont to make sure no rebels would break down the bridges. It turned out that they’d already been destroyed, probably by storms. But the fleet had no trouble ferrying the king and much of the land army to safety over on the Asiatic side. Once he was there, Xerxes set up his headquarters at Sardis. 

 So the king was gone, but the war was far from over. Xerxes left a formidable land army in Greece, under the command of his trusted general Mardonius, to continue operations. It was already what in our calendar would be early October, too late in the year to start any major new operations, so Mardonius withdrew to northern Greece for the winter. The following spring, in 479 BCE, he was joined by another prominent Persian officer, Artabanus, with the army division that had escorted Xerxes back to the Hellespont. So, even though it wasn’t the gigantic force that Xerxes had first brought, the Greeks still had a major army to contend with. 

To add to their troubles, tensions between the allied Greek powers were running high. The Athenians were naturally disgusted with the Spartans and the other Peloponnesians for retreating to the Isthmus and hanging them out to dry. None of that was lost on Mardonius. Before the new campaigning season got under way, he undertook a “charm offensive” to try to bring the Athenians over to his side. He sent the usual go-between, King Alexander of Macedon, with an offer to rebuild and even acquire new territory for Athens if they would ally with Persia. The Athenians reportedly told Alexander that as long as the sun kept its present course, they would never come to terms with Xerxes.

 But Mardonius’ overtures to Athens did get the attention of the Peloponnesians. So negotiations brought at least a promise that Sparta would send troops north to Boeotia. Well, promising is one thing; acting is something else again. With their fortification of the Isthmus complete, the Peloponnesians thought, “We feel safer here.” Besides, the Spartans had another religious festival, the Hyacinthia, that needed their pious attention. So that spring, Mardonius marched his army back to Athens, which meant another evacuation. At this point, Athens and the few states outside the Peloponnese that were still resisting the Persian advance gave the Spartans an ultimatum. If they couldn’t get serious support, they’d have no choice but to join with the Persians. Supposedly it was a man from Tegea by the name of Chileos who convinced the Spartan ephors that an alliance between the Persian army and the Athenian navy would be disastrous.

 So the Spartans finally came around, and very dramatically. They decided to send a force of 5000 Spartan hoplites commanded by a general named Pausanias, who was a nephew of the recently deceased king Leonidas. Each of those hoplites would be accompanied by seven helots. So the total is now up to 40,000. And another 5000 perioikoi would join them, also bringing helots along. Sparta had never before sent such a large force outside the Peloponnese. When Mardonius got word that they were on the march, he retreated to Boeotia with his army. The Spartans and Peloponnesian allies were joined by a force of 8000 Athenian hoplites led by Aristides. And this all culminated in battle number four, the Battle of Plataea.

 When I read accounts of this battle, the impression I get is one of a hopelessly tangled mess of troop movements, communication breakdowns, and disputes between individuals and units from different cities. Again, I won’t attempt a blow-by-blow account. For that, you can consult Herodotus and his modern commentators. All I can do is try to convey a general sense of the strategy on each side and a few key events.

 To set the scene… North of Attica is the region of Boeotia, and the conventional dividing line between them is the Cithaeron mountain range, running east and west. In the plain north of that range is the river Asopus, also running west to east, so they’re roughly parallel. The battle gets its name from the city of Plataea, which was in the western part of the area I’ve been describing, in the foothills overlooking the plain. Mardonius had his main army camp north of the Asopus river. The greatest advantage he had over the Greek troops was his cavalry, which included highly skilled archers who could shoot on horseback. So Mardonius’ objective was to try to lure the Greeks to fight in the plain where his cavalry would be most effective. The Greek troops under Pausanias had just the opposite goal. They wanted to get the Persians to fight in the hills, where the Greeks held the higher ground and the Persian cavalry couldn’t operate as well.

For that reason, a lot of this confrontation came down to each side waiting and trying to wear down the patience of the other. We hear a lot in this battle about sacrifices and reading omens, waiting until the signs were favorable for an engagement. It’s hard to tell, but I have to think there was considerable overlap between a competent commander’s judgment and the interpretation of the omens. Pausanias’ great strength as a commander seems to have been his discipline. He wasn’t going to be tempted into fighting a battle in unfavorable conditions. A useful tool in that situation, especially if his troops were getting impatient, would be to say, no, the gods are telling us it’s not time to engage yet.

 There was some early action, though, on the left wing of the army, where the Athenians and Megarians were stationed. Their lines stretched down to flatter land where they were more vulnerable to Persian cavalry attacks. The cavalry unit they faced was commanded by a Persian nobleman by the name of Masistius, who was one of those impressive, majestic military leaders who look good on a horse and inspire devotion in the troops. At one point, the Megarians were hard pressed under a cavalry attack and 300 Athenians rushed to assist them. In the fighting that ensued, Masistius’ horse was wounded and threw him to the ground. His armor made it impossible for him to get up, but it also made it hard for the Greeks who crowded around him to get a spear into him. Finally, one hoplite managed to get a spearhead through the eyehole of his helmet, and that finished him. Herodotus tells us that the sounds of lamentation in the Persian camp that night echoed all over Boeotia.

 But the death of Masistius didn’t result in any great advantages for the Greeks. In fact, the Persians soon made a couple of important gains. One crucial consideration for the Greeks was the need for a good water supply, which they had early on in a spring called Gargaphia, until the Persians managed to get in and block it up. They also cut the supply lines from Attica, which put the Greek army in a very difficult position. Pausanias held a council and planned secret maneuvers by night to establish a stronger position and hopefully reopen the supply lines. Everything seems to have gone wrong at this point. For some reason, the Athenians didn’t arrive in the center where they were supposed to be stationed. They may have just gotten lost in the night march. Meanwhile, the Spartan movements were delayed. The story is that a Spartan commander named Amompharetus refused to budge because he saw the night move as running from the enemy, and Pausanias had to waste time trying to talk sense into him. 

 Well, however it happened, Mardonius saw that the Greek army was divided, and he took the opportunity to attack. His cavalry harassed the Spartans while the infantry led by Mardonius himself advanced. The Persians set up a wall of their wicker shields and sent volley after volley of arrows. Pausanias kept his cool and didn’t rush into the fight. This was one of those instances where he kept sacrificing and waiting for good omens. At last he called out a great prayer to Hera, who had a temple in the area, and the omens turned favorable. The Spartan army at last attacked the Persian front lines.

 Pausanias sent a fast messenger to Aristides for help, but the Athenians were cut off by a force of medizing Greek troops and couldn’t get through. Nevertheless, Pausanias’ troops gradually drove the Persians back and overran their wall of shields. During the intense fighting that followed, Mardonius was killed. That was a huge blow to Persian morale. And by this time, reinforcements were arriving on the Greek side. The Persian lines broke, and the Greeks pursued them, eventually overrunning their fortified camp and slaughtering the defenders. Plataea was another decisive victory. 

 Four down, one to go! Battle number five is the Battle of Mycale, which — along with the Battle of Plataea — is considered the final conflict in this war. After the fact, the legend arose that they were fought on exactly the same day. That’s how Herodotus presents it. More probably, Mycale came a few days later. In any case, the Greeks now took the fight across the Aegean and into Persian-held territory.

 To backtrack a little… After the victory at Salamis, the Greek fleet was considerably pared down. In the preparations for Plataea, Aristides took 8000 Athenian hoplites with him, so those obviously wouldn’t be serving on the ships. The Greeks still needed to maintain a naval presence, though, because they really didn’t know how much damage had been done to the Persian fleet, and they had to be prepared in case it came back. So the Greek fleet was stationed at the island of Aegina, close to Athens, and it was now under the command of the Spartan king Leotychidas. 

 We hear from Herodotus that Themistocles lobbied for the fleet to sail up to the Hellespont and break down the Persian bridges, but Leotychidas rejected that idea because naval support would be needed if the Persians attached at the Isthmus. But… with that characteristic ancient Greek vindictiveness, the Athenian fleet under Themistocles went out to punish and extort money from island states that had given any support to the Persians.

 I mentioned earlier that one of Xerxes’ concerns after Salamis was that the Greeks of Ionia might be inspired to rebel against him. And those worries were not unfounded. The Ionians seem to have been getting restless, and at one point a delegation from the island of Chios approached the Spartans with a request for the navy to be sent to aid the Ionians in an uprising. Leotychidas refused to go on the offensive, but he did take the navy as far as Delos, about halfway across the Aegean, where he could keep an eye out in both directions. Well, that summer, the situation had developed to the point where envoys from Samos, just off the coast of Ionia, convinced Leotychidas that the Ionians were ready to revolt and that the Persians were in a weakened position. 

 At this time, the Persian fleet was stationed at Samos. A land army was camped just across the strait at Cape Mycale. When the Greek fleet approached Samos, the Persians decided they weren’t in any condition to fight a sea battle, so they sent their Phoenician ships home, beached their ships at Mycale, built a barricade around them for protection, and joined the land army. But a good part of that army was made up of Ionian Greeks, whose loyalty to the Persians was suspect. And Leotychidas exploited that situation by sailing along the coast with a herald on the deck of his ship who shouted out to the Ionians, encouraging them to turn against their Persian masters. It was the same tactic Themistocles had used with his messages on the rocks. But this time it may have had a greater impact. 

 The Greek leaders in the fleet now met and decided their best move was to venture an attack by land. They were in for some stiff resistance, because a Persian general named Tigranes had been posted with troops in that area to keep an eye on the Ionians. That force faced off with the Greek troops and used the same “wall of shields” technique that we saw at Plataea. The fighting was heavy, but as the Greeks started getting the upper hand, more and more Ionians deserted the Persian cause. Ultimately the Persian line broke. The Greeks stormed the barricade and burned it. Their victory was complete.

 There’s a story that as the fighting was going on, rumors of the victory at Plataea spread through the Greek troops and inspired them to fight with greater spirit. That doesn’t square very well with the tradition that both battles happened on the same day. But it is possible that news of Plataea could have arrived very quickly, because the Greeks used a system of fire signals that could transmit simple messages by relay from island to island across the Aegean. 

 Anecdotes aside, the battle of Mycale is traditionally considered the end of the Persian Wars. It really wasn’t quite as cut and dried as that, because Greek operations in Asia continued for some time. But Mycale is a convenient point to say that’s a wrap for the war against Xerxes. The effect of the victory on the Greeks’ morale and self-image can hardly be overstated. For centuries afterward, they looked back on it as emblematic of Greek virtues like courage, perseverance, and the love of freedom. One monument commemorating the event stands out. At Delphi, the allied states dedicated a gold tripod supported by a bronze column made up of three intertwined serpents. The coils of those serpents were inscribed with the names of all the cities that took part in the defense of Greece. The gold tripod is long since lost, but amazingly, the serpent column still survives. It’s not at Delphi, though. The Roman emperor Constantine had it moved from there to decorate his hippodrome at Constantinople. As you may have heard, Istanbul was Constantinople, so if you want to see the serpent column today, you’ll need to go to Sultanahmet Square in Istanbul. And if you have sharp eyes or a decent pair of binoculars, you can still see the names of the Greek states inscribed on the coils. 

 And that concludes Episode 36. If you’re still listening, congratulations on making it all the way through the Persian Wars. If you have comments, questions, corrections, anything at all to add, I’ll be very happy to hear from you at scott@epicgreekhistory.com or on 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 are by Chris Harding. Until next time, εὐτυχεĩτε. Be well!