The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

But when the news arrived that the expedition was on its way, and reports, doubtless exaggerated, as to its magnitude poured into Greece, there came a revulsion of feeling, and the former sense of security gave place to hurried alarm.

H. vii. 32.

Before the expedition had actually started from Sardes, heralds had been sent by Xerxes to all the Greek States, with the exception of Athens and Sparta, to demand the earth and water of submission. The treatment which those two States had on a previous occasion meted out to certain Persian heralds who had been sent on a like errand, was not such as to encourage a repetition of the experiment in their case, H. vii. 134. although the Spartans had themselves repented of this breach of international law. Herodotus is probably only expressing the feeling and expectation of the Greece of forty or fifty years before he wrote, when he says that he does not know exactly what calamity befel the Athenians in consequence of their having treated the heralds in the fashion in which they did, except that their territory and city were ravaged. He is, however, inclined to think that this did not happen in consequence of the crime committed. Despite the somewhat grim humour of the Athenian and Spartan action, it is evident that it shocked that Greek reverence for international usage which is one of the most striking developments of the civilisation of that extraordinary people.

It was while Xerxes was in Lower Macedonia that the heralds returned from their mission.

The list of those who submitted is a noticeable one.

H. vii. 132.

The races of the region of Thessaly—of Greece, that is, north of Mount Œta—submitted without exception (so Herodotus says); Thessalians, Dolopians, Ænianians, Perrhæbi, Magnetes, Achæans of Pthiotis, and Malians. There is nothing very extraordinary nor even blameworthy in their action. The Peloponnesian policy or strategy, the fundamental idea of which was to confine the main defence to the Isthmus of Corinth, was already acquiring the upper hand in the Greek councils; and the circumstances of the time were well calculated to give the population of the north the impression that they were to be deserted,—a true impression, as the sequel showed.

In Thessaly itself the political circumstances were unfavourable to a display of patriotic feeling. That land of great plains, so contrasted in its physical characteristics to the rest of Greece, had bred a political system which was also in violent contrast to the forms of government existing at the time in the other regions of the country. There prevailed a quasi-feudalism such as might perhaps have found some counterpart in the Argolic plain, when the lords of Mycenæ and of Tiryns held sway, but the like of which had, by the beginning of the fifth century, long vanished from the Hellenic lands. It was the physical which produced the political contrast. THESSALY. The fertile, unimpeded plains of Thessaly permitted the growth of rich landed proprietors on a large scale, families of whom, like the Aleuadæ in Larisa, or their relatives the Skopadæ in Krannon, or like Jason of Pheræ in later days, were enabled to establish their supremacy over a large area.

The great ambition of the Thessalian baron was to make himself Tagos, or Captain of all Thessaly; which end he seems to have pursued without scruple as to the means. When it was merely a question of maintaining his power against reluctant forces at home, he had a powerful weapon at his back in the feudal cavalry whose effectiveness was due to the unimpeded nature of the field of operations. He could play a part, and he did play a part, so long as Greece had a history of her own, which would have been impossible in the intricate mountain regions of the rest of the land. But nature had bestowed one more favour upon his system, by raising the formidable barrier of Mount Œta between him and the rest of Greece. That it was which prevented the Hellenic spirit of independence from penetrating to the name-place, if not the birth-place, of the Hellene; and the Thessalian, though one in body, was never during the historic period one in spirit with the men of his own race.

Thermopylæ was in no mere strategic sense the gate of Greece.