KING XERXES CRUSHES SPARTANS AT THERMOPYLAE

300 NOT NEARLY ENOUGH

August 17, 480 B.C.

Thermopylae, Greece

 

Xerxes, the great and mighty King of Persia, has defeated the Greeks, as we all knew he would.

The Spartans, in their arrogance, underestimated our indomitable king. The only sent 300 warriors to hold a small pass at a place called Thermopylae. The Great King has never heard of this little place, but he will add it to all the other places he rules over, from India to Egypt to all of Asia.

The mighty Xerxes oversaw the conquest personally. After watching his men rout the vaunted Spartans, he went home, confident that his army would completely subject the rest of Greece.

It appears the Spartans were overrated. Like the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, and every other people under the sun, they were no match for the King of All Lands.

There is no question that future generations will all remember the Persian army as the greatest fighting force on earth, and will praise noble Xerxes as the greatest conqueror in history.

 

But seriously…

 

April 5^th, 2022

 

Who won at Thermopylae?

In 480 B.C., Xerxes, King of Persia, invaded Greece, in a war of vengeance and conquest. Vengeance for the sacking of his capital, Sardis, by the Athenians fourteen years earlier; and conquest, because he ruled most the rest of the world, and he wanted to live up to his title, “King of all lands.”

The Spartans, as leaders of the Greek coalition, sent 300 men to a pinch-point called Thermopylae; their job was to slow the advance of the massive Persian army, giving their comrades time to assemble an adequate fighting force. It was a suicide mission; only men who had living sons were chosen, so their family lines would continue after their certain death.

The king they fought against, Xerxes, is known to history as overconfident and weak, but he achieved his goal of vengeance, sacking Athens twice, and lived on in splendor and power. The fact that he failed to conquer Greece almost didn’t matter; he remained the absolute ruler of most of the known world.

 

The Spartans

The Spartans, led by general Leonidas, had a lot of help. They traveled with their slaves, known as Helots. (The heroic stand of the 300, celebrated as one of the great moments in history of an army fighting for freedom, was made by a group of slave-owners.)

The Spartans lived in constant vigilant fear of a slave uprising. At the beginning of each new civil year Sparta’s board of five ephors (elected overseers or supervisors) formally declared war on the Helots, so that if they rebelled, they could be killed without the killer’s incurring the taint of religious pollution associated with the shedding of blood.

Also accompanying them were the Perioeci, “dwellers around’, who were free but politically unenfranchised sub-Spartans. These were the people who, along with the Helots, kept the economy going by doing the jobs the Spartans couldn’t do. (Spartan men were not allowed to perform any work except fighting.) The Perioeci made the armor the Spartans wore into battle.

Other Greek cities were represented. The total number of Greek warriors and their retainers may have been as high as 7,000.

 

The Thebans

This included about 400 Thebans, who may have been there against their will, their city being held hostage by the Spartans. The conduct of the Thebans has been debated by historians. They either fought bravely to the last man, stayed only by coercion, or ran away like abject cowards.

Each city in Greece has its own story in the war against Persia. More Greeks actually lived under Persian rule than in Greece, on islands outlying the Greek mainland and in Western Asia. Before he invaded, Xerxes conducted a charm campaign, trying to persuade the Greeks, city by city, to support him, and he succeeded in getting most of them on his side. He did this by threat of destruction, by promise of riches, and by stressing the inevitability of his victory. He also played on the web of existing inter-city rivalries, claiming other cities were going to betray the Greeks, and the smart move was to join them.

Knowing the great king’s power, hearing news of a neighboring city Medizing, and witnessing the onslaught of the overwhelmingly large Persian army, it would have been very difficult for a polis to stay loyal to Greece.

Thebes was one city caught in the web of rivalry. It chose Persia over Athens in this war, and paid the price in reputation and retribution; but on this day the Thebans fought with their fellow Greeks.

 

The Thespians

Sparta only fielded 4% of its fighting force. The rest were attending the Karneia, a nine-day religious festival.

The city of Thespiae sent 100 % of its hoplites (infantrymen), about 700 of them. At the height of the battle, Leonidas sent away most of the Greek contingent. The Thespians remained, and died with the Spartans.

The Thespians’ 700 deserve to be honored with the Spartans’ 300.

 

The Phocians

Phocia, a local polis, fielded 1,000 hoplites.

Thermopylae was a narrow spot between a range of mountains and the sea. At one point in the battle a local Greek traitor told the Persians about a pass in the mountains that would allow them to circle behind the Greek line and attack from the rear. This is how the Persians eventually broke the Greek line.

Leonidas knew about this weak point, and sent his 1,000 Phocians to guard the pass. Normally he would have assigned a Spartan commander to lead them, but he didn’t have the manpower.

The Persians overran the Phocians, the Greeks’ last hope in the battle.

 

The Athenians

The Athenians, meanwhile, were busy at sea. Their navy, positioned not far from Thermopylae, won the battle of Artemisium.

An Athenian speechwriter named Lysias couldn’t help exercising his bragging rights:

“The battles [Thermopylae and Artemisium] occurred simultaneously. But whereas the Athenians were victorious as sea, the Spartans were destroyed.”

 

Leonidas

His name is forever linked to glory. In his own day there was an allegation that he had murdered his brother, his father-in-law, and the King of Sparta (all three were the same person, Cleomenes).

It’s probably a false rumor; cutting heroes down to size is not a new phenomenon. Leonidas was in fact a gallant soldier who gave his life for his people.

Part of the lore of this battle were the cheeky replies to Persians attempts at intimidation. One was from Leonidas.

When the Persians, about to attack, ordered the Spartans to lay down their weapons, Leonidas shouted,

“Come and get them.”

Dieneces

According to Herodotus, the Spartan Dieneces was the bravest fighter at Themopylae. He also gave us bon mot to remember.

When it was suggested that the Persian arrows were so plentiful they would darken the sky, Dieneces said,

“Good, we’ll fight in the shade.”

 

Simonides

Who won at Thermolpylae?

In one sense, it was Greece.

In another sense, it was freedom.

It could also be said that storytelling was the real winner, because the legend of that small battle has come down through the centuries, told over and over as a reminder of courage and martial duty.

That telling began with the Spartan poet Simonides, with this simple couplet, imagining the 300 dead heroes speaking for themselves:

Go tell the Spartans, passerby

That here in obedience to her laws we lie.

 

Xerxes

Xerxes has gotten a lot of bad publicity, because our view of him comes mainly from the Greeks. Yes, he was arrogant, overconfident, short-sighted, and cruel. But he was an absolute ruler, and all that goes with the territory. And yes, he waged a campaign that inspired death and destruction. But he was only doing what was expected of a king. He was engaging in payback for the Athenian attack on his capital, Sardis. This retribution would lead to further retribution from another Greek, Alexander.

And Alexander engaged in his own propaganda effort against Xerxes, painting him as a weak Oriental despot who engaged in very un-Greek customs, such as Proskunesis, in which subjects- and ambassadors- were expected to prostrate themselves before the king.

The irony is that Alexander, after conquering Persia, himself adopted some of those Eastern manners, including the way he dressed. And Proskunesis.

 

Sources

The Histories, Herodotus

Thermopylae The Battle That Changed the World, Paul Cartledge

Xerxes A Persian Life, Richard Stoneman