The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

But Gelo had no idea of confining himself to a passive defence of the place, knowing, in all probability, that the enemy might expect reinforcements, whereas the Siciliot forces present at Himera represented the utmost effort of which Sicily was capable. The Himerans had walled up their city gates. He caused them to be opened once more, and infused a spirit of cheerful confidence into the whole Greek army. In all likelihood this change of feeling was largely due to the comparative inactivity to which Hamilcar was reduced in face of the large force of Syracusan cavalry against which, owing to his own loss, he had not any similar force to match. Something of the kind is indicated by the fact that he sent a message to Selinus, urgently demanding assistance in this arm. Unluckily for him, the return messenger announcing its despatch fell into the hands of Gelo’s men. That able commander had been for some time devising plans by which he might not merely defeat, but utterly destroy, the invading army. The intercepting of this message suggested to him a means of doing so. He had apparently already made up his mind that an attack on the naval camp, and the destruction of the ships within it, must be part of his programme. The disclosure made by the message that the Carthaginians were expecting cavalry reinforcements suggested to him the design of substituting cavalry of his own for the looked-for horsemen of Selinus, so as to obtain access to the naval stockade. It was a bold plan, but it was entirely successful. Not the least fortunate circumstance about the matter was that on the very day on which the cavalry were expected Hamilcar was going to offer a great sacrifice; and this was apparently known to Gelo. The Syracusan horsemen were sent under cover of night, and after making a circuit,—the Greek camp being probably east of the town,—arrived at the naval camp from the western side just about dawn, and were admitted by the guards under the impression that they were the Selinuntian horse. Once inside the stockade, they proceeded immediately to kill Hamilcar and to set fire to the ships.

But this was only part of the whole plan. Watchers had been placed upon the heights, with orders to announce by signal the arrival of the cavalry within the stockade. On receiving the signal, Gelo, with the whole of the rest of his army, began an assault on the other Carthaginian camp, which was, as has been seen, situated on the heights above the naval encampment. THE BATTLE OF HIMERA. The Carthaginian commanders, unaware at first of what had been going on below them, led out their men to meet this attack, and for some time the battle was stubborn and bloody, both sides fighting with great bravery. The increase of the conflagration in the camp below, however, at last attracted their notice, and the arrival of a message announcing the death of Hamilcar completed the dismay of the Carthaginians and fired the courage of the Greeks. The former gave way, pursued by the Greeks, to whom orders were given to take no prisoners. Though the slaughter was a terrible one, it is hardly possible to accept Diodorus’ statement that one hundred and fifty thousand perished. Some of the survivors fled to a bare height, where they defied all direct attack; but they were compelled in the end to capitulate, owing to there being no water obtainable on the position.

It was a brilliant and crushing victory for the Sicilian Greeks, so complete and so lasting in its results, that it marked the beginning of an era of peace and prosperity destined to last for many years.

Diodorus, with a pardonable pride in the exploits of his fellow-countrymen, draws a comparison between the victory at Himera and that which the Greeks won at Platæa in the following year. There is one important point of contrast which he does not mention, but which will be appreciated by those who are acquainted with the stories of those two great battles. The resistance which the Carthaginian troops offered to the Greek hoplite in close fighting was evidently much more stubborn than that offered by the Persian infantry. It was not a question of courage; it was not a question of physique. In these two respects the Persian was probably superior to the Greek, and not inferior to any contemporary race. The difference was in panoply. The African and Spaniard wore defensive armour, such as the Oriental never learnt to use because the climate of the lands wherein his campaigns were mostly fought rendered the burden of the weight of it too grievous to be borne. The resistance offered to the Eastern conqueror took the form of legions of cavalry and mobile bodies of light-armed infantry, and to meet them he had to employ forces of a similar kind. Against such, in a land of infinite distances like Western Asia, an army of hoplites might, if the enemy adopted tactics suitable to the nature of his force and to the nature of the country, be reduced to impotence, if not brought to destruction. The campaigns of Alexander are supposed to have proved the opposite to be the case. Those who take that view of them seem to forget that the enemy opposed to him adopted tactics wholly unsuited to the nature of their army, and fought the very pitched battles which they should have scrupulously avoided. Had the Persians in that war employed the tactics which three centuries later led to Carrhæ, the campaigns of Alexander might have ended in the neighbourhood of the Amanus. The military history of the East and West in the centuries preceding the Christian era is ruled by one great limitation. East could not gain any decisive advantage over West in the West, nor West over East in the East, unless the enemy made a fundamental error in tactics.

The resources of the East in light cavalry were out of all proportion to any number of this arm which the West could, even with the utmost effort, put into the field; and such a force, properly employed, must have always made the immense plains of the Euphrates or of Media untraversable to a Western army. In like manner, against the heavy infantry of the West, accompanied by a proper quota of light-armed troops, the light infantry of the East were helpless in regions where it could not be supported by its cavalry; and west of Taurus, such regions were the rule and not the exception. The eastern Taurus was, indeed, the military frontier between East and West.

This generalization may appear to be somewhat wide; but the results of every single battle in which East and West came into conflict support it. There are no exceptions. Such cases as appear to be so afford the strongest evidence of the truth of it: in every one of them the loser committed some glaring tactical error which robbed him of the essential advantages which the very nature of things afforded him.

GELO MAKES PEACE WITH CARTHAGE.

As a pure example of the military art, Himera did more credit to the victors than did Platæa. It was won by reason of a well-devised plan; Platæa, in spite of an ill-devised one. In its results it was hardly less decisive, though these results were not of a character to attract the attention of the modern world so forcibly as the after-effects of Platæa.

Its actual date in 480 is uncertain. Diodorus assigns it to the same day as Thermopylæ. Unfortunately, the historians of this period display so marked a tendency to discover such coincidences of date that any statement of this kind cannot be regarded as reliable.

Diod. xi. 24.