The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

The junction of the Asopos with the Spercheios is at the present day, as has been said, a few hundred yards east of the bridge of Alamana, off the west end of the west gate. In Herodotus’ time it entered the sea independently, and it seems from his description as if its mouth must have been near the point where it now joins the main river. In the first place he expressly tells us that the Phœnix river joins it. That river, so called, is to be identified with a little stream which issues from the rocks of the west gate, whose bed is of a ruddy brown colour, owing, no doubt, to its being impregnate with oxide of iron. This fact alone shows that the Asopos mouth must have been at some point off, that is, north of the west gate.

The site of Anthele.

The historian also tells us that it entered the sea near village of Anthele, which he describes as having been between the Phœnix and Thermopylæ proper. Leake in his sketch map places Anthele on the great accumulation of débris which is brought down by the stream which issues from the great ravine just about half a mile west of the hot springs. The site is impossible. This heap is traversed in every direction by ever-shifting branches of the torrent, and anything built upon it would be soon carried away. Such a site, on what is practically a huge stream-bed, would also be excessively malarious. Herodotus describes the situation almost unmistakably when he says (vii 200), “There is a broad piece of land about it in which are the temple of Amphictyonid Demeter, and the seats of the Amphictyons, and a temple of Amphictyon himself.” This must be the fairly level piece of land just inside the west gate, under the old Turkish cavalry barracks. The latter stand at the extremity of a steep-sided shelf which projects from the hill which forms the west gate; and I am strongly inclined to think that one or both of the temples, and the seats of the Amphiktyons, were on this somewhat commanding site, looking down upon Anthele.

The West Gate.

Coming to the actual pass itself, along the line which Herodotus followed, we enter it by the west gate. Herodotus says (vii. 176) that the pass is not narrowest at Thermopylæ itself, i.e. at the middle gate, but before Thermopylæ and behind it, meaning by the latter, as his next words show, the east gate. It will be seen that by using the words “before Thermopylæ,” of the west gate, he again indicates the route by which he visited the pass. THE WEST GATE. “In front,” he says, “by the Phœnix river, near the city of Anthele, is another place where only one waggon at a time can pass.” The road at the present day does not traverse the whole of the west gate. Crossing the bridge of Alamana, it arrives at the actual foot of the cliff at a point somewhat east of the stream which is identified with the Phœnix. In former days, coming from the west it would pass along the whole of the foot of the steep slope or cliff in which this low promontory of Œta ends towards the plain.

The total length of the passage, from the west end to the site of the Turkish barracks, which I am inclined to identify with that of the Amphiktyonid temples, is just under one mile,—about 1670 yards. To the right, or south of the line of road, the hill rises either very steeply, or in the form of a cliff, to a height of between two and three hundred feet; above which the slope is gentle. The total height attained by the promontory is not great, only varying between three and four hundred feet above the level of the plain. The road was in 480 artificially constructed at this point, as is indicated by Herodotus’ use of the word δέδμηται (H. vii. 200). It can only have been a few feet wide. At the present time, the ground between the left or north side of the road and the Spercheios is in winter time marshy throughout; and even in the month of August, 1899, the eastern portion of it, extending from the road to the river, was impassable, though there had been a long drought. In Herodotus’ time it would seem to have been for the most part a marsh between the cliffs and the Asopos river, though it may well be that the sea actually came up to the road towards the east end of the gate. No passage is possible between the road and the modern river; much less can it have been so in B.C. 480.

Leake speaks of the pass as “the false Thermopylæ,” and seems never to have dreamt of its being a possible site of the battle of 480. It would be quite indefensible to any force which was not large enough to occupy and defend the wide, and, to a light-armed man, easy passage of the hills above it. In some of the best known guide books the battle is described as having taken place in this gate. I do not know the authority for this statement. Apart from its indefensibility against superior numbers, Herodotus makes it quite clear that the battle took place near the hot springs in the middle gate.

On issuing from the west gate underneath the old barracks, the land on the right is fairly level, the hill-side retiring somewhat. This is, as I have already said, almost certainly the site of Anthele. On the left of the road the marshy land still continues for a space. But within a few hundred yards the road ascends in the form of a long gradual hill, to descend further in like manner to the great lime and sulphur deposits of the hot springs. This rise in the road is caused by the intervention of a mass of stream débris, which has poured out of a great chasm to the west of the hot springs and has extended far out into the plain. Its magnitude is enormous absolutely, and, relative to the mean magnitude of that torrent which has produced it, astounding. On issuing from the ravine it forms a fan-shaped mass, one mile in length from the chasm to the plain, with an extreme breadth of three quarters of a mile. Its apex is over three hundred feet in perpendicular height above its base. It is formed for the most part of large material, the finer stuff having gone down to form the new land of the plain. This is what Leake calls the plain of Anthele. East of this great chasm this mass of débris is edged by the great face of Kallidromos, which rises almost sheer to a height of three thousand feet above it. The hot springs. The eastern part of this great cliff overhangs the deposit at the hot springs, a white, glistening mass of lime impregnated with sulphur, which covers an area of ground five and a half furlongs in length from east to west, with an average breadth of one furlong; that is to say, about fifty-five acres of land. The hot springs rise in the side of Kallidromos on the edge of the great mass of débris which has been described; and the water from them is carried along an artificial channel, immediately at the foot of the steep side of the mountain, for more than half a mile. The stream first enters the baths, and then turns a mill, which may be called the upper mill; after this it crosses the road and is carried by a solid stone aqueduct to turn a second mill in the plain. The springs are very copious. In the artificial channel the water rushes along rapidly in a stream three feet broad by about eighteen inches deep, and is of that bright clear green which Pausanias describes. The Middle Gate. The original middle gate of the pass was undoubtedly under the steep hill-side between the baths and the upper mill. Herodotus makes that quite clear. Of the mountain overhanging it, he says that it is “untraversable and precipitous, lofty, extending to Œta” (vii. 176). Of the middle gate he says, “Again the entrance to Greece, through Trachis, is at its narrowest point half a plethron in width” (vii. 176). THE MIDDLE GATE. “To the east (really the north) of the road the sea and the marshes begin.” “There are also in this entrance warm baths, which the natives call the caldrons, and an altar of Herakles is built above them. A wall had been built at this passage, and in old days there were gates in it. The Phocians built the wall for fear of the Thessalians when these came from Thesprotis to settle in the Æolid territory which they now possess. In case of the Thessalians attempting to subjugate them the Phocians took this precaution, and at that time they turned the hot water on to the passage, so that deep channels might be formed in the ground, using every device to prevent the Thessalians invading the country. This old wall had been built a long time before, and the greater part of it had fallen down with age” (vii. 176). “This place is called by most of the Greeks Thermopylæ, but by the natives, and by those who dwell in the neighbourhood, Pylæ” (vii. 201). “The Greeks with Leonidas, as though going to meet their fate, now advanced into the broader parts of the neck much more than before. Hitherto they had held their station within the wall, and from this had gone forth to fight where the path was narrowest” (vii. 223). Herodotus says that the Spartans “retreated to the narrow part of the way, and, crossing the wall, came and took up their positions on the mound, all of them in a compact body, except the Thebans. The mound is in the pass where stands the stone lion in honour of Leonidas.” The Three Gates. The fact that this was regarded as “the gates” par excellence is shown by the passage in vii 201. The contour lines of the map of the pass as it is at the present day illustrate in a very remarkable way the description of it given by the ancient historian. The curves of the five-yard contour line are most noticeable. It is at the three gates of the pass as described by Herodotus that it approaches most closely to the hill slope. At the west and east gates it reaches the actual base of the mountain. At the middle gate it all but does so; but the accumulation of matter from the hot springs has somewhat pushed it back.

The old coast-line.

It cannot amount, of course, to more than a rough calculation, but I am disposed to believe that in the cases where stream débris has been pushed forward into the plain, the ten-yard contour, and elsewhere the five-yard contour, represent pretty closely the coast line as it was in the last few centuries before Christ.