The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

It was fortunate for the Greek cause that the council which met at the Isthmus after the withdrawal from Tempe had at its disposal the information necessary for forming a true estimate of the circumstances of the time. It knew that no help was to come from outside the mainland of Greece. It knew that Thessaly was lost, and that Bœotia, East Locris, Phocis, and Doris, and last, though not least, Eubœa, must be lost also, unless some prompt action were taken to save the situation in those parts. And so, says Herodotus, “the Greeks, on coming to the Isthmus, took counsel together, in view of what Alexander had told them, as to where and in what parts they should establish the defence.” The opinion which prevailed was, that they should guard the pass of Thermopylæ, which they thought was narrower than the pass in Thessaly, and nearer to their base. “They determined therefore to guard this pass, and so prevent the passage of the barbarian into Greece, and that the naval force should sail to Artemisium in the land of Histiæotis.”

There is no part of Greece where the strategical situation is so marked as in the line of defence which runs along Mount Œta. Malis is verily the entering in of the gate of Greece. The barrier of Mount Œta, the tremendous nature of which can only be appreciated by those who have seen it and traversed it, formed in a very real way the true boundary of the land, and was recognized as such by the Greek historians of this and after time. The Hellenism of the lands beyond it was a mere shadow of the reality. Thessaly, in that widest sense which included in the name all that lay between Œta, Pindus, and the Cambunian Mountains, was in respect to civilization a debateable land, in which the “barbarism” of the outer world to a great extent held sway. Nature had so ordained it by an immutable decree when she raised Œta to be alike a defence and a barrier to the Hellenism of the lands south of it.

Malis is separated from the plain of Thessaly by the range of Othrys. This line of mountains is not of a uniform character. It branches off from the backbone of Pindus in the West as a comparatively low range, through which numerous paths, practicable at any rate for an army without a large baggage train, lead into the upper valley of the Spercheios,—the upper plain of Malis. As a main line of communication, however, from the north, these paths are for two reasons comparatively unimportant. In the first place, the two great roads through Thessaly,—that from Larisa by way of Krannon to Thaumaki, and that from Larisa to Thebes in Phthiotis,—afford but an extremely circuitous route to their northern entrances; and, again, when these paths do reach the upper plain of Malis, they are not continued southwards by any direct routes across the chain of Œta; and it is necessary to traverse the whole length of the Malian plain to the neighbourhood of Thermopylæ before any practicable way leading south can be found. They could only have been of strategic importance in this campaign had the Greeks attempted to defend the eastern passes of Othrys, in which case the Persians, by using them, could without much difficulty have turned the defence.

From Sketch by E. Lear.]

MOUNT ŒTA AND PLAIN OF MALIS.

[To face page [259].

The part of Othrys east of the longitude of Lamia is of a loftier and much more difficult character. It is rather a mass of mountains than a single range. Viewed from Thermopylæ it presents the appearance of a series of cones and ridges rising towards a central point, where it attains a height of over six thousand feet. There are only two passes through it which are practicable for an army with baggage; these may be called respectively the pass of Thaumaki, and the pass of Thebes in Phthiotis. MARCH OF THE PERSIANS. The pass of Thaumaki is a direct continuation of the great route by way of Krannon. At Thaumaki itself it is eminently defensible, as the rise from the Thessalian plain is abrupt, and the road traverses a narrow ravine. From that point southward the pass is not a difficult one. It enters the Malian plain at Lamia.

The second of the two passages is more or less of a coast road, skirting first the shores of the Pagasætic Gulf, and later those of the Euripus and Malian Gulf. It debouched on the Malian plain at Phalara, a small town which stood within half a mile of the modern Stylida and about six miles from Lamia, by which latter town also the road must have passed. It is possible that Lamia was not effectively fortified in 480. Still, the occupation of it could only have harassed, not stopped, the invading army, since, owing to the presence of the fleet, the real line of communication was on the sea.

H. vii. 196.