Comparison of the Two Adversaries.—The contrast between the two worlds which now entered into conflict is well marked by Herodotus[73] in the form of a conversation of King Xerxes with Demaratus, a Spartan exile: "'I venture to assure you,' said Demaratus, 'that the Spartans will offer you battle even if all the rest of the Greeks fight on your side, and if their army should not amount to more than one thousand men.' 'What!' said Xerxes, 'one thousand men attack so immense an army as mine! I fear your words are only boasting; for although they be five thousand, we are more than one thousand to one. If they had a master like us, fear would inspire them with courage; they would march under the lash against a larger army; but being free and independent, they will have no more courage than that with which nature has endowed them.' 'The Spartans,' replied Demaratus, 'are not inferior to anybody in a hand-to-hand contest, and united in a phalanx they are the bravest of all men. Yet, though free, they have an absolute master, the Law, which they dread more than all your subjects do you; they obey it, and this law requires them to stand fast to their post and conquer or die.'" This is the difference between the two parties to the conflict: on the one side, a multitude of subjects united by force under a capricious master; on the other, little martial republics whose citizens govern themselves according to laws which they respect.
First Persian War.—There were two Persian wars. The first was simply an expedition against Athens; six hundred galleys sent by Darius disembarked a Persian army on the little plain of Marathon, seven hours distant from Athens.
Religious sentiment prevented the Spartans from taking the field before the full moon, and it was still only the first quarter; the Athenians had to fight alone.[74] Ten thousand citizens armed as hoplites camped before the Persians. The Athenians had ten generals, having the command on successive days; of these Miltiades, when his turn came, drew up the army for battle. The Athenians charged the enemy in serried ranks, but the Persians seeing them advancing without cavalry and without archers, thought them fools. It was the first time that the Greeks had dared to face the Persians in battle array. The Athenians began by turning both flanks, and then engaged the centre, driving the Persians in disorder to the sea and forcing them to reëmbark on their ships.
The victory of Marathon delivered the Athenians and made them famous in all Greece (490).
Second Persian War.—The second war began ten years later with an invasion. Xerxes united all the peoples of the empire, so that the land force amounted, as some say, to 1,700,000 men.[75] There were Medes and Persians clad in sleeved tunics, armed with cuirasses of iron, bucklers, bows and arrows; Assyrians with cuirass of linen, armed with clubs pointed with iron; Indians clad in cotton with bows and arrows of bamboo; savages of Ethiopia with leopard skins for clothing; nomads armed only with lassos; Phrygians armed with short pikes; Lydians equipped like Greeks; Thracians carrying javelins and daggers. The enumeration of these fills twenty chapters in Herodotus.[76] These warriors brought with them a crowd equally numerous of non-combatants, of servants, slaves, women, together with a mass of mules, horses, camels, and baggage wagons.
This horde crossed the Hellespont by a bridge of boats in the spring of 480. For seven days and nights it defiled under the lash. Then traversing Thrace, it marched on Greece, conquering the peoples whom it met.
The Persian fleet, 1,200 galleys strong, coasted the shores of Thrace, passing through the canal at Mount Athos which Xerxes had had built for this very purpose.
The Greeks, terrified, submitted for the most part to the Great King and joined their armies to the Persian force. The Athenians sent to consult the oracle of Delphi, but received only the reply; "Athens will be destroyed from base to summit." The god being asked to give a more favorable response, replied, "Zeus accords to Pallas [protectress of Athens] a wall of wood which alone shall not be taken; in that shall you and your children find safety." The priests of whom they asked the interpretation of this oracle bade the Athenians quit Attica and go to establish themselves elsewhere. But Themistocles explained the "wall of wood" as meaning the ships; they should retire to the fleet and fight the Persians on sea.
Athens and Sparta, having decided on resistance, endeavored to form a league of the Greeks against the Persians. Few cities had the courage to enter it, and these placed themselves under the command of the Spartans. Four battles in one year settled the war. At Thermopylæ, Leonidas, king of Sparta, who tried to bar the entrance to a defile was outflanked and overwhelmed. At Salamis, the Persian fleet, crowded into a narrow space where the ships embarrassed one another, was defeated by the Greek navy (480). At Platæa the rest of the Persian army left in Greece was annihilated by the Greek hoplites; of 300,000 men but 40,000 escaped. The same day at Mycale, on the coast of Asia, an army of the Greeks landed and routed the Persians (479). The Greeks had conquered the Great King.
Reasons for the Greek Victory.—The Median war was not a national war between Greeks and barbarians. All the Greeks of Asia and half the Greeks of Europe fought on the Persian side. Many of the other Greeks gave no assistance. In reality it was a fight of the Great King and his subjects against Sparta, Athens, and their allies.