It does not appear as if there were any formed intention of resuming the offensive in the Western Ægean in order to give support to Mardonius whenever he should re-open the campaign, though, if Herodotus is to be believed, H. viii. 130, ad fin. plans of attack of some kind were discussed. Whatever they may have been, they were not put into immediate operation; and the appearance of the Greek fleet on the Asian coast later in the year completely altered the situation.
The approach of spring warned the Greeks that they must make preparations to meet the impending attack of Mardonius. With incomprehensible but characteristic dilatoriness, no immediate effort was made to collect the army, though a fleet of a hundred and ten ships gathered at Ægina under a new commander, the Spartan Leutychides. Moreover, Themistocles no longer commanded the Athenian contingent, his place being taken by Xanthippos. Possible reasons for this remarkable and important change have been already suggested. Of the actual reasons nothing is known.
There was, moreover, in this year, a change not merely in the personnel, but also in the system of command which prevailed during the previous year in the Athenian contingent. The Athenian army had played no part at Thermopylæ, and at Salamis it had acted, in so far as it did act, in immediate conjunction with the fleet. It had been, therefore, possible to place both arms of the service under the control of one supreme commander,—Themistocles. In 479, however, it was evident that the altered circumstances of the war would necessitate the employment by Athens of a considerable force on land, acting quite independently of the fleet. It would be impossible, therefore, for one man to command both; and a separate command on land was given to Aristides, another member of the College of Ten Strategi. He may or may not have been placed under the general control of Xanthippos. As events turned out, he must have exercised a practically independent command. An arrangement of this kind would, had the circumstances arisen but a few years earlier, have raised considerable constitutional difficulty; but between 490 and 480 the whole system of military and naval control had been completely remodelled.
At the time of Marathon, the supreme command was in the hands of one of the archons, with the title of Polemarch, and the ten strategi were subordinate to him, being merely the commanders of the contingents furnished by the ten Kleisthenic tribes, and also forming a council of war. In the course of the official year 487–486, the method of lot was introduced into the election of the nine archons, of whom the polemarch was one. The most thoroughgoing democrat at Athens, being, as a citizen, liable to service in war, would hardly fail to see the undesirability of entrusting his life to a general chosen by this method. That special form of fatalism would have few attractions for him. Thus the constitutional change with regard to the archonship necessitated some change in the arrangements of the military and naval commands. The polemarch was no longer commander-in-chief. That office was vested in the members of the board of strategi, which henceforth had absolute control of military and naval affairs. As strategi, all of the ten were in a position of equality; and it is probable that each was allotted his own special department of administration, either on election, or by mutual arrangement between the members of the elected board. A board so constituted might work well in times of peace, but in time of war such a divided command could only lead to confusion and inefficiency. APPEAL FOR AND FROM IONIAN GREEKS. The people therefore reserved to itself the power of allotting special commands to strategi of its own choice, or even of appointing one member of the board a generalissimo (στρατηγός αὐτοκράτωρ).
It was under this constitutional arrangement that the mode of command adopted in 479 was possible.
It was while the fleet was at Ægina that the Greeks received the first direct appeal for aid from the Ionian Greeks. Doubtless the populations of the cities along the Asian coast were much stirred at this time by the disaster which had befallen the great expedition. That the Ionian contingent had shared in those disasters was a consideration which would affect but slightly the sentiments of the mass of the Ionian population; since, as has been already pointed out, that contingent represented merely the dominant philomedic minorities in the various Ionian towns. With the unbroken power of Persia to back them, those minorities could not be assailed with any hope of success; but now that that power was shaken, it might seem that the time had arrived for action. In Chios, at any rate, a plot was formed to murder the local tyrant Strattis. It miscarried, and six of the chief conspirators fled for their lives across the Ægean, where they made an appeal, first to Sparta, and then to the fleet at Ægina, to strike a blow for the liberty of their countrymen beyond the sea. Herodotus’ silence as to their reception at Sparta is eloquent; but his description of the effect of their appeal on the fleet is one of the most remarkable, and probably one of the most misinterpreted passages in his history, H. viii. 132. “The refugees, with difficulty, induced the fleet to go as far as Delos; all beyond was to the Greeks a land of danger, for they knew not even how it lay, and fancied it all to be full of the enemy’s troops. As for Samos, it seemed to them as far off as the Pillars of Hercules. So it befell that the Persians were afraid to sail westward of Samos, and the Greeks dare not go eastward of Delos, though the Chians entreated them so to do. So fear stood between them and protected them.”
This passage, even in its manifest rhetorical exaggeration, is interesting. The evident intention of the historian is to mark the fact that the mutual feelings of the two adversaries had entered upon a second stage.
He has spared no pains to draw a striking contrast between the exaggerated confidence prevailing on the Persian side up to the time of Salamis, and the corresponding lack of it among the Greeks. The balance of fear had been heavy against his countrymen. But now, at the opening of the campaign of 479, he is equally anxious to show that the scale had altered, and was now in equilibrium. With the dramatic instinct of the Greek, he wishes to indicate in one striking sentence that the turning-point in the tragedy has been reached. He was telling, as he well knew, the most exciting story in the history of the world up to his own time, and he may be pardoned, perhaps, if in his anxiety to emphasize its climax he has employed the language of exaggeration.
But when it becomes a question of determining the extent of the exaggeration, it may be suggested that there is perhaps less exaggeration in his statement than in the criticisms which have been passed upon it. May it not be that the eastern shore of the Ægean was to the European Greek of 480 a far less known region than might, without reflection, be assumed? Twenty years had passed since the outbreak of the Ionian revolt. Was not the attitude of Athens and Eretria in the first year of it peculiarly calculated to render communications between the two shores difficult and rare? The trade of the Ionian cities must have practically ceased during the seven years of the struggle; and, in any case, Persia, in her bitter resentment at the interference of the two states of European Greece, was not likely to encourage the visits of traders from the other side of the sea. Every avenue of trade in the Asian waters must have been unsafe to the Greek, not merely on account of the possible presence of the Persian fleet, but by reason of the swarm of privateers which the south coast of West Asia was ever ready to produce. THE SILENT ÆGEAN. And when the revolt was over, was it probable that the Persians would allow the Greek trader free access to information with regard to the plans of the expeditions of 492 and 490, or, amid the access of bitterness which arose from the failure of the latter year, with regard to the preparations made for a great revenge? If intercourse did continue, how does it arise that the Greeks were ignorant of the magnitude and real intent of the expedition of 480, up to within a few months of its arrival in Greece? The Ionian must have known long before. Why did he not tell the Greek trader, if that trader was a frequent visitor to his ports? After-ages do not realize the nature of the blow dealt to trade by a prolonged period of war, even if the active warlike operations be not continuous. To take examples from the history of England. Those who read the story of the Seven Years’ War mark with pride the absolute predominance which Great Britain had gained upon the seas by the year 1761. And yet, in that very year, eight hundred and twelve English trading ships were captured by the enemy,—no small fraction of the British trading fleet of those days. During the wars of the Napoleonic period when, after Trafalgar, Britain for many years commanded the sea, the English Channel, the greatest trade highway in the world, was almost as deserted as that Northern Ocean which Tacitus describes.
Is it not possible, at least, that Herodotus has in his mind a state of things lasting for many years in the Ægean similar to that which prevailed in the Channel in the first years of the nineteenth century? He may have exaggerated the feelings of the Greek sailors at this time; but who at the present day can say to what length of exaggeration he has gone?