The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

Another important question which suggests itself is whether this demand on Andros and these exactions from Karystos and Paros were made at this time, within a few days of Salamis. It is extremely unlikely that the Greek fleet, with only half of the danger at home averted, should have ventured at this moment to spend time over the siege of one of the island towns. The whole incident of the exactions looks as if it ought to be attributed to a somewhat later date.

H. viii. 113.

The retreat of the Persian army began a few days after the naval battle. Mardonius accompanied it because, so Herodotus says, he wished to escort the king. The campaigning season also was far advanced, and he thought it would be better to winter in Thessaly. His real motive in retiring so far north,—a motive Herodotus could hardly appreciate, even if he ever heard it mentioned,—would be to shorten the line of communications, especially for commissariat purposes. He had now no fleet upon which to depend. Moreover, Thessaly was a rich country, whose local supplies would go far towards satisfying the temporary wants of his army. There he selected the men who were to remain with him for the next year’s campaign. He seems to have chosen the best troops in the huge and motley host, Persians, Medes, Sakæ, Bactrians and Indians; and Xerxes made no objection. And then the rest of the helpless throng departed on its long march round the North Ægean, to carry to Asia a terrible tale of suffering of which but few details have survived in the Greek historians. According to Herodotus, three hundred thousand men remained with Mardonius. It is commonly supposed that this number is largely exaggerated; but unless there is a proportionate exaggeration in the numbers of the Greek army present at Platæa, the force which the Persians opposed to them there can hardly have been less than two hundred and fifty thousand in number. Mardonius probably retained with him nearly the whole of the really effective land-force of the original expedition.

H. viii. 115.

That part of the army which continued its retreat from Thessaly took forty-five days to reach the Hellespont. The misery of that time must have been unspeakable, and but few out of the many ever set foot again on Asian soil. The realities of a six weeks’ march of four hundred miles, in the case of a large force wholly unprovided with commissariat, must have been horrible beyond description. Starving themselves, they spread famine by their ravages wherever they went. In many places no food was obtainable, and then they ate the very grass by the way and the leaves of the trees. Dysentery was the inevitable result. The sick who fell by the road were left to the care of the natives; and, knowing the nature of those wild Thracian tribes of the North Ægean, it is not difficult to imagine that their fate must have been pitiable in the extreme. At last the survivors reached the Hellespont, to find that the bridge had been carried away in a storm; but they were transported to Abydos in boats. Not even then were their misfortunes over. Many of the starving multitude perished from giving undue satisfaction to their ravenous hunger.

H. viii. 119.

Herodotus, though he mentions two accounts of the matter, is of opinion that Xerxes accompanied the army all through its retreat. AN INTERVAL IN THE WAR. He rejects a tale to the effect that on arriving at Eion, at the mouth of the Strymon, the king went the rest of the way by sea on a Phœnician ship, and was only saved from perishing in a northern gale by the devotion of certain Persians who accompanied him, and who sacrificed themselves in order to lighten the ship. Apart from the tale of devotion, the rejected version is manifestly the more probable. Not to speak of the horrors of the land-march, the king’s personal safety may well have been imperilled in the midst of an army which had undergone and was undergoing the sufferings of his. To Hydarnes was committed the conduct of the remainder of the retreat.

H. viii. 121.

The siege of Andros turned out a failure. Karystos was attacked and its territory ravaged; and then a return was made to Salamis. It is evident that the Greeks themselves were at this time under the impression that the war in Europe was over, in so far as they were concerned; and eagerness of the Athenian section to carry the war into Asia, which Herodotus has antedated, may be ascribed to this time. The news that Mardonius had remained in Thessaly, with evident intent to renew the war next year, can hardly have reached Athens until several weeks at earliest from the time at which the retreat began.

Under this mistaken impression they began to wind up the skein of past events, and after their patriotic victory to discuss who had deserved best of their common fatherland. The gods had been very good to them, much better, perhaps, than they themselves realized; and it was to them that their remembrance first turned. To Delphi was dedicated a tenth of the spoils. H. viii. 123. After dividing the rest of the plunder, the Greeks sailed to the Isthmus to decide by vote who of all of them had rendered the greatest services to his country in the recent war. The result was unfortunate. Each general having two votes gave the first to himself, and the majority gave the second to Themistocles. Under the circumstances they thought it best to forego the decision; and the various contingents departed home to their cities.