The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

PELOPONNESIAN STRATEGY IN 479.

There can be no question as to what was at the beginning of this year the Spartan view as to the plan on which the campaign was to be conducted. It comprised nothing beyond a defence of the Isthmus. The method adopted to carry out the plan was characteristic. It was known, of course, that Athens would be absolutely opposed to it, as she had been in the previous year, so not a word was said to her on the subject; nay, she was even led to believe that her own design would be supported by Sparta. Then was adopted a policy of passive resistance,—a resistance so obstinate and so prolonged that the tension upon the bonds which held the patriot states together was all but brought to the breaking point. Whether the astuteness of the Spartan government was sufficiently great to gauge with the utmost accuracy the amount of tension possible without bringing about actual fracture, or whether warning from outside opened its eyes to the fact that it had carried its policy to the extremest edge of danger, must be a matter of opinion. At the very last moment Sparta gave way. Athenian determination had won a victory over Spartan obstinacy. Sparta’s calculation had evidently been all through that if she sat still and allowed circumstances in Attica to develop under the agency of Mardonius, Athens would be forced to surrender her plan of campaign, and to adopt at last, though late, the war policy which the Peloponnesians had consistently advocated from the beginning.

The Athenian plan is definitely stated in Herodotus. It consisted in the first instance in meeting the enemy in Bœotia before he could invade Attica a second time. Its object seems clear,—the salvation of Attica; but if that was the only object, how is it that the plan remained unaltered after Attica had been overrun, and its salvation was no longer in question?

The troops despatched suddenly from Sparta while the Athenian embassy was present there were despatched to the Isthmus. What lever so great did Athens use to induce Pausanias to meet her troops at Eleusis, and take the offensive against Mardonius in Bœotia? Herodotus makes no statement on the subject. It is quite evident, however, from the incompleteness of this part of the history, that he experienced great difficulty in collecting reliable materials for the story of the events between Salamis and Platæa. But if the main circumstances of the time—the facts, that is to say, that Herodotus does mention—be taken into consideration, it is evident that the state of affairs in Northern Greece was such as must have caused the most serious alarm to the patriots. Thessaly had medized long ago of its own free will. Phocis and Opuntian Locris had done so partially and under compulsion; and, worst of all, Bœotia had thrown in her lot with the Persian in the most unequivocal manner. Must it not inevitably have been suggested to the Greeks of the South that there was every fear that the Persian, though his attempt to subjugate all Hellas had failed, was only too likely, if let alone, to be able to push forward his frontier from Macedonia to Bœotia, from Olympus to Kithæron? It was an eventuality that not even the Peloponnesian could regard with equanimity; and if any valid cause can be suggested for the sudden and complete change in the plan of the Lacedæmonian commander-in-chief after his arrival at the Isthmus, it is that his attention was called, probably by the Athenians, to the very serious danger of allowing events in the North an unchecked development. The very fact that Mardonius had deliberately stayed his movement of retreat at Thebes renders it highly probable that the extraordinary offensive movement of the Greeks was called for by a danger that did not exist merely in their own Imagination: in other words, that Mardonius’ alternative design was to keep what he could, since he could not get what he would.

This offensive movement of the Greeks has always been accounted extraordinary by those who have paid special attention to the military history of the time. That it was probably due to Athenian persuasion is generally agreed, but no adequate reason for the exercise of such persuasion on the part of Athens at this particular moment has been put forward, still less has any reason been adduced for the yielding of Sparta to it. The mischief for that year had been done in Attica, and movement into Bœotia could not remedy it. GREEK FLEET IN 479. The winter was drawing nigh, in which Mardonius would—if Attica was all that he aimed at—withdraw northward, as in the previous year. It can only have been the fear that Mardonius had gone to Thebes with intent to stay there, that moved the Greeks to an unprecedented course of action. They knew perfectly well that, from a purely tactical point of view, they had everything to lose and nothing to gain by transferring the war into a country where that much-feared but untried factor, the Persian cavalry, could come into play; and it is inconceivable that they can have moved north except under the stress of what they regarded as a grave necessity. It is quite a different question whether they took what were, under the circumstances, the best strategical measures. Had, for instance, a force been sent with the fleet under Leutychides to the Malian gulf, Mardonius’ position in Bœotia would have become so perilous that it is hardly possible that he would have ventured to retain it; and it may even be doubted whether he could ever have won his way back past Mount Œta.

The best strategy on the Greek side in this year’s campaigning was carried out by the commanders of the fleet; especially by Xanthippos, the admiral of the Athenian contingent. The caution displayed in waiting in the Western Ægean until the Ionians gave some signal was probably wise. A move eastward before receipt of information as to the real state of affairs on the Asian coast, as to the numbers and position of the Persian fleet, and especially as to the whereabouts of the Phœnician section of it, might have unduly hazarded the results of the success already obtained on the western coast of the Ægean. On arrival at Samos, a bold and successful attack was made on the Persian force at Mykale. It was necessary to crush the main resistance before further operations were attempted. After this the Spartans went home, while the Athenians continued the campaign by a strategic move of the highest importance. In attacking Sestos and the Thracian Chersonese, they assailed the all-important tête-du-pont in Europe, and by their success rendered Persian operations from the Asiatic side to the north of the Propontis difficult, if not impossible, as the Chersonese lay on the flank of any advance from the direction of the Bosphorus towards Macedonia and Greece. The command of the Hellespont was also the first step towards the freeing of the great trade route to the corn regions on the north coast of the Euxine.

The strategy of the two contending sides in the war of 480–479 must have been deliberate. It cannot have been unconscious. The agreement with the strategic conditions of the regions wherein fighting took place is too close to render any such view tenable. Nor is it strange that such should have been the case. On the one side was a race with a war experience greater beyond comparison than that of any other contemporary nation; on the other, a people whose quickness of intellect rendered it peculiarly capable of supplying the defects of experience by appreciation of the exigencies of the situation. The Greek was among the nations what Themistocles was among the Greeks.

Though the tactics employed by either side were, as events befell, more decisive of the issue of the war than their strategy, the question relating to them is more simple, and may be discussed more briefly. Of the naval tactics but little is told. From the account of Salamis it would appear as if the aim of the Greek in an engagement was so to steer his ship as to break as much as possible of the enemy’s oarage on one side, and, having thus rendered his opponent’s vessel more or less unmanageable, to ram the weakest part of its structure, the flank, with the beak and stem of his own. It may be safely assumed that it is an anachronism on the part of Herodotus to assign the manœuvre of cutting the line (διέκπλους) to this period.

The fact that the vessels carried each a certain number of heavy-armed infantry, as well as marines, and were fitted with boarding bridges (ἀπόβαθρα), shows clearly that boarding held a prominent place in Greek naval tactics. LAND TACTICS. To Kimon in later years is no doubt due the elaboration of what may be called the “ship tactics” at the expense of the boarding tactics, an innovation most effective in wars between Greek and Greek, but an improvement of doubtful value in wars with other races, where the panoply of the Greek heavy-armed infantryman could hardly fail to be effective in close fighting. It was left for the Roman to prove conclusively the mistake of this policy. Perhaps it was forced on Kimon by the growing unpopularity among the richer classes of hoplite service aboard the fleet in the long years of warfare after 479, and not brought about by purely tactical considerations.

The land tactics were naturally dictated by the armament of the two opponents, the nature of the forces at their disposal, and the ground on which at different times they came into conflict. The composition of the Persian army placed it at a considerable disadvantage in such a country as Greece. This disadvantage was much emphasized by the fact that, during the campaign of 480, and, in a sense, during that of 479 also, it was the attacking force in a country which greatly favoured the defence. Not until Mardonius took up the defensive in Bœotia was it possible for the Persians to chose ground favourable to the nature of their force. Against a foe of greatly superior mobility, the policy of the defensive was the only one which the Greek army could adopt with any hope of success, supposing that the enemy adopted tactics suitable to his force. The difference between the two armies was, that the Greek had everything to hope from close fighting, the Persian from the opposite; and in every case throughout the war in which reverse or disaster fell on either party, it was due to its having been forced, either by the nature of the position or by some tactical error of its own, into adopting that method of combat for which it was least adapted. If it were not a misnomer to speak of that which is manifest as a secret, it might be said that this is the whole secret of tactical success and failure in the war. It was illustrated in the most marked manner in all the three great land battles, at Thermopylæ, at Platæa, at Mykale.