The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

The stockade constructed was apparently of a formidable character, made of wood and stone. H. ix. 97. Herodotus says of it that it was prepared alike in view of a siege and of a victory, referring doubtless to some feature in its design which cannot now be conjectured.

The retirement of the Persian fleet to this strong position, and its practical conversion into a land force, placed the Greeks at Samos in a situation of considerable difficulty. They were, as might be expected, prepared to contest the supremacy of the enemy by sea rather than by land; and Leutychides may well have hesitated to employ the force he had with him for an attack in which the fleet, as fleet, could play little if any part. It was debated whether, under the circumstances, they should sail to the Hellespont or return to Greece. It was finally decided to take the bold course and to assail the enemy at Mykale, though everything about the fleet was made ready in case, after all, the Persians should risk a sea-fight.

On their reaching Mykale the enemy showed no sign whatever of a disposition to put out and meet them. Seeing this, Leutychides in his own ship sailed close in shore, and sought by means of a herald to enter into communication with the Ionians in the enemy’s army, and to persuade them to desert the Persians during the coming engagement, a policy in which, as Herodotus remarks, he imitated that of Themistocles at Artemisium. No immediate effect resulting from this appeal, H. ix. 99. Leutychides disembarked his troops without any opposition on the part of the enemy, presumably, therefore, at some distance from their camp. But whether owing to Leutychides’ action, or to the distrust of the Ionians which the circumstances of the time must inevitably have aroused among the Persians, measures were taken to render them as innocuous as the situation permitted. The Samian contingent was forthwith disarmed. The people of that island had rendered themselves peculiarly open to suspicion by ransoming and forwarding home five hundred Athenian prisoners which the Persians had picked up in Attica at the time of Xerxes’ invasion. The Milesians also were despatched from the camp on the pretext of acting as guards of the passes over the peaks of Mykale, but really, so Herodotus says, in order to obviate the danger of keeping them within the actual fortifications.

The Greeks now advanced to the attack. In reference to this advance Herodotus mentions a curious tale. He says that a report ran through the army at this moment to the effect that the Greeks were victorious over Mardonius in Bœotia. Naturally enough, he ascribes this strange rumour to supernatural influence, since, according to his narrative, the two battles occurred on the same day. A STRANGE REPORT. It is not perhaps impious to suggest that if, as he positively asserts, the battle at Mykale was fought on the same day as the final engagement at Platæa, the report which reached the Greek army in Asia related to the success attained in the first position at Platæa some weeks before this time, but was referred by later tradition to the final defeat of Mardonius’ army. However the report arose, it greatly cheered the Greeks. Herodotus, in speaking of their exultation, mentions incidentally two noticeable facts with regard to their feelings at this time. He says that their fear had been not for themselves, but for the success of the Greeks against Mardonius. If it be remembered that the fleet when at Delos must have heard of Mardonius’ retirement from Attica, and had also, it would seem, heard of the march of the home army into Bœotia, their fear strongly supports the conjecture that they knew that the object of that army was not to merely guard the passes of Kithæron, but to take the offensive against the Persian. It is hardly conceivable that, after Mardonius’ retirement, they should have felt apprehensions of this nature about the army, had its object been merely the defence of the Kithæron range, since the enemy had plainly shown by his retreat from Athens that his main desire was to be north of that range, and that he would have but little motive for throwing his men against mere defenders of passes which he had shown that he did not want to use. Furthermore, the possible intentions of Mardonius in making Thebes his headquarters may have alarmed the Greeks by indicating the nature of a policy, not indeed so terrible as that wherewith the expedition was originally undertaken, but constituting, all the same, a most serious danger to all the states of Southern Greece.

Relieved of this fear, they went into battle with a good heart, feeling, says Herodotus, “that the Hellespont and the Islands would be the prize of victory.” Not a word of the Ionian towns on the mainland. The Persian position was indeed too strong in respect to these.

H. ix. 102.

The march was evidently parallel with the shore, along it and the level ground in its neighbourhood, and also along the hillside, cut up, as the hillsides of that land always are, by numerous water-courses. The result was that the Athenians and those with them, advancing along the unimpeded level, came into contact with the enemy before the Lacedæmonians, who were advancing along the slope of the mountain. If Herodotus’ description is strictly worded, H. ix. 102. the Lacedæmonians were engaged in some kind of a turning movement.

The Athenians were therefore probably guilty of a tactical error in beginning the attack before the movement was complete.

The Persians adopted the same form of defence as in the last fight at Platæa, using their shields as a breastwork; and for some time the battle was fought without advantage to either side, until the Athenians and those with them, eager to win the victory before the Lacedæmonians came up, broke through this barrier and fell in a mass upon the Persians, who, after an obstinate resistance, retreated within their fortifications. The Athenians, Corinthians, Sikyonians, and Trœzenians, however, followed close on their heels, and seem to have reached the breastwork with the fugitives, so that it was captured without difficulty. Except the native Persian contingent, the enemy now took to flight the former, however, resisted in scattered groups with all the bravery of a great reputation,—the Old Guard of this Asiatic Waterloo. In this combat two out of the four Persian generals fell. The Lacedæmonians came up while it was in progress, and their arrival put the coping stone on the enemy’s discomfiture. But the assailants, and especially the Sikyonians, paid dearly for their victory, so Herodotus says; and Greek historians are not in the habit of exaggerating Greek losses in battles with barbarians. Meanwhile the disarmed Samians did what they could to help the Greeks, and, following their lead, the other Ionians attacked the Persians in the camp. The Milesians, who had been sent to the peaks of Mykale, now played the part which, under the circumstances, they might be expected to play. So far from acting as guides to safety, they led the routed fugitives into the very hands of the Greeks, and themselves took part with zeal in the slaughter which ensued. At last Miletus had the opportunity of avenging its destruction at the end of the Ionian revolt, and it is certain that the bitterness of the last fourteen years found ample expression and ample satisfaction on this day of revenge.

H. ix. 104, ad fin.