The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

The expedition to North Thessaly was made under a gross misapprehension as to the geography of the region. The Greeks who despatched it were evidently under the impression that the Tempe pass was the only practicable entrance into that country. It will be best to speak in detail of the passes of this region when the march of Xerxes is described; for the present suffice it to say that in Tempe itself there is on the hills north of the Peneius River a path by which the defence of the main road, which keeps on the south bank of the stream, may be turned; and, furthermore, there are two other passes through the Olympo-Cambunian chain, by which entrance may be obtained into the Thessalian plain. The army, of which the Lacedæmonian contingent was commanded by Evænetos,[103] and the Athenian by Themistocles, found itself in a false position. It says something for Herodotus’ military insight that, although he gives what was, so he says, the generally received story, that the retreat was decided upon in consequence of a message from Alexander, a Macedonian, describing the enormous numbers of the Persian army, he believes the real reason to have been the discovery that the Tempe defile could be turned by other passes.

The growth of sea communication, and the consequent disuse of some of the old land routes, probably accounts for the ignorance which the Greeks displayed of a region through which the old trade route to the north must have passed.

The army returned to its ships at Halos, and so home. Then, says Herodotus, the Thessalians, abandoned by their allies, readily took part with the king.

That the Locrians of the East were among those who gave earth and water is not surprising. Though within the gates of Thermopylæ, their country was north of the Œta range. It was imperatively necessary that, in case they were deserted, they should be in a position to make terms with the invader; for the flood of invasion, unless stemmed, must pass in full stream their way. The length of their narrow territory was traversed by the great military highway from the North.

The fiasco of the expedition to Tempe had no doubt discouraged the northern Greeks, and among the powers represented at the Isthmus it must have told greatly in favour of the Peloponnesian strategy. Be that as it may, the design of the Council at the Isthmus was to make the defence a Panhellenic effort, and to persuade the whole Greek world to lend a helping hand towards the preservation of the mother country. It may be suspected that Athens roused and sustained the energy which such an effort implied; but the official invitations sent out appealing for assistance were evidently issued in the name of the Congress as a body.[104]

The situation which the Congress had to face was not a little complicated by the attitude of the oracle at Delphi. It prophesied not good but evil of the prospects of the Hellenic cause. It seems quite clear that the versions of the responses which Herodotus gives are editions of the originals revised in certain particulars in accordance with the event. He probably obtained them from records at Delphi itself; and it may be supposed that the authorities of that sanctuary would not allow a manifestly mistaken prophecy to remain upon their books, when a slight alteration would place it in accord with what actually happened. Even had the divine Delphi been much more free from human frailty than it was, such emendations would have proved a sore temptation to the priests.

ATTITUDE OF DELPHI.

The general aspect and tone of the oracles when they are freed from what is manifestly suspicious, gives the impression that the original responses predicted the fortunes of the Greeks in the coming war in the most pessimistic language. There is no appeal or encouragement to the self-sacrifice of great patriotism. Resistance appears to be discouraged; and whether this was the intent or not,—though the matter admits of little doubt—the effect of these answers was to afford some of the powers concerned what they, at any rate, considered a justifiable excuse for neutrality in the coming struggle. The attitude of Delphi at this time is one of the most interesting problems in the history of the period. When questions of a purely Hellenic nature were concerned, its policy was calculated on a basis of information such as its wide-spread and intimate relations with the Greek states as a whole enabled it to acquire. In the present instance, however, the great factor in the calculation, the real intention of Persia, was an uncertain one. Yet it would seem as if Delphi had made up its mind as to its nature.

The student of Greek History, insensibly imbued with knowledge after the event, has a natural tendency to regard what is now known to have been the object of the great expedition, the subjugation of all Greece, as having been from the very first the declared and conspicuous design of the Persian king. Yet, as a fact, Herodotus makes it perfectly clear that this was not the case at the time,—at any rate, not wholly the case. H. vii. 138. He tells us that the expedition was nominally directed against Athens, H. vii. 157. but was really sent against all Greece; and then, curiously enough, H. vii. 139. he goes on to show in the very next chapter how disastrous for Greece it would have been had Athens followed the policy which Delphi advocated. H. vii. 139. He expressly says that the oracles which came thence and filled the Athenians with terror, did not induce them to abandon Greece. Despite his general respect for such divine utterances, he is in this case hardly at pains to conceal the fact that he believes that obedience to the oracle would have brought with it a political disaster of appalling magnitude to the whole of Hellas.

The two responses given to the Athenians on the two occasions on which they consulted Delphi at some date immediately before the war are of a very remarkable nature if taken apart from one another, and still more remarkable if taken in contrast. The second indicates a complete change of policy from that advocated in the first. The priests of Delphi were no mere fortune-tellers. It may be taken for certain that they did not speak at haphazard on an occasion so momentous. There was something,—call it motive, or call it policy,—behind what they said. In the present instance the remarkable feature in the case is that the second response given is in so decided a contrast with the first that the motives or policies which lie behind the two must be essentially different. Were the policy advocated by Delphi a negligible quantity on Greek History, the matter, though interesting, could form little more than a subject for academic discussion. But in some way or other which cannot now be fully realized, the method being secret, the oracle was the voice of an inner ring, a secret society of Hellenic statesmen, whose authority was due to the average excellence of the information on which the policy they advocated was founded. Taking all the oracular responses which were uttered at this time, they seem to fall under two periods, during the earlier of which Delphic policy was distinctly opposed to a Pan-hellenic effort against the invader.