The circumstances at Thermopylæ forced the Persians to adopt tactics involving close fighting. But it is noticeable that the Persian soldiers and the Persian commanders did not altogether take the same view on this question. The commanders evidently thought that they must win the pass by mere pressure of numbers, and be prepared to sustain losses, absolutely great, but, considering the immense disparity between the two armies, relatively small. Probably also circumstances rendered it all-important for them to force the pass as soon as possible; and this could, owing to the nature of the ground, only be accomplished by close fighting.
But the Persian soldier, soon after the attack began, discovered that he was no match for the better-armed Greek, and proceeded, on his own responsibility, to adopt tactics less dangerous to himself, an assault with missiles, to which the enemy could make no effective reply. This is clearly shown by the tactics which the Spartans were compelled to resort to, the charge forward, and then a pretended retreat, with a view to drawing the enemy on. But the circumstances were such that neither side could absolutely force the other to adopt disadvantageous tactics: nor even with whips and other severe methods of encouragement could the Persian commanders induce their men to a sustained assault at close quarters. In the last battle on the mound the Greeks were not cut down, but buried beneath a shower of missiles.
Platæa affords three very remarkable examples of the contrast of tactics. It was a battle of mistakes, in which each side conspicuously failed to play its own game. At the first position of the Greeks the Persian threw away his excellent cavalry in an attack on a necessarily limited portion of the front of the unshaken Greek heavy infantry, where outflanking was impossible, and only close fighting could be really effective. The result was inevitable.
In the second position, the Greeks made the mistake of seeking to maintain an advanced position in the plain, after the object with which they had in all probability attained it, a surprise flank attack on the Persians, had miscarried. TACTICAL MISTAKES. In view of the excessive immobility of their army as compared with that of the enemy, the danger that their line of communication with the passes, short though it was, might be cut, was evident; and their position permitted the cavalry to harass them on all sides by that form of attack to which it was best adapted. The mistake cost them dearly: it ought to have cost them the battle.
On the retirement of the Greeks from this position, Mardonius threw away the success he had gained by hurling his light-armed infantry against the large Spartan contingent. By doing so he threw away all the advantage which he possessed by reason of his mobile force of cavalry. The tactics of Pausanias were excellent, but could only have been possible with a highly trained force, such as that which he had under his command. He held his men back, despite a galling shower of missiles, until, as it would seem, the foremost ranks of the enemy behind their barrier of shields were deprived of all power of retreating by the pressure of the ranks in rear of them. Then he charged; and in the close fighting which ensued, the Persian had no chance, despite that quality of conspicuous bravery in which he appears never to have been lacking.
The same inevitable issue of battle resulted from the close fighting at the assault on the Persian stockade.
At Mykale the Persians again made the mistake of meeting the Greeks in that form of battle which was most eminently favourable to the more heavily armed man, though in that case the extreme embarrassment of the circumstances in which they found themselves may have necessitated the line of action which they adopted.
Such, then, are the conclusions which may be drawn from the history of the war as a whole. Perhaps the story has many morals; it certainly has one which in later days, under the sobering influence of personal experience, Thucydides expressed when he said that “he is the best general who makes the fewest mistakes.” He was doubtless right, owing to the multitude and variability of the factors in war. But in this, the first and greatest of the wars between Greek and Persian, the liability to error was increased by the incalculability of many factors whose exact value only the knowledge of experience could gauge, an experience lacking at the time, but from which both Greek and Macedonian profited in later years.
CHAPTER XIV.
HERODOTUS AS THE HISTORIAN OF THE GREAT WAR.
A history of the war would be incomplete unless the writer made an attempt to render an account of the evidence which the narrative affords of the methods employed by the great historian to whom the knowledge of almost all that is worth knowing concerning it is due. The story of the war is the climax of Herodotus’ work. All the manifold information which he gives of the times preceding it is merely an overture to the history of the struggle in which the fate of Greece, and it may be of Europe, was decided. But this preliminary portion of his work, though intensely interesting from a critical point of view, and though artistically one with the purely Hellenic part of his narrative, does not fall within the scope of a criticism which aims mainly at summing up the results of an inquiry as to the amount of light which the land of Greece at the present day casts upon the work of an author of more than 2000 years ago.