The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

H. v. 117.

Herodotus represents Daurises as having been called away to Caria before his work in the Hellespontine region was done. It may be that he was called away from the north; but, even on Herodotus’ own evidence, he had done his work thoroughly on the Asiatic side of the Propontis.

The reconquest of Caria was a much more difficult matter. The Carians were not mere amateurs in the art of war, but numbered among them men who had seen fighting in many lands, the soldiers of fortune of their time. The race was infected with that strange fever which has at different periods driven members of some of the world’s most virile peoples to seek a livelihood in quarrels not their own.

Herodotus makes no attempt to place the striking events of this war in Caria in a chronological setting. Three great battles take place, of which the first two are great Persian victories, while the last is a tremendous disaster to their arms. There is no means of judging of the interval between the victories and the disaster; though, from the way in which the narrative is told, it might be supposed that the Carians recovered almost instantaneously from two serious and successive defeats.

On the general question of the campaign it may be said that it seems to have been part of a great design planned at Sardes in the winter of 497–96, to be carried out so soon as reinforcements came up from the east.

The Carians were not caught unprepared. The insurgents of the Ægean coast must have spent a winter of anxious expectation as to what would happen when the Persian reinforcements arrived. The Ionian fleet had in the autumn brought back news of the disastrous failure of the revolt in Cyprus; and from that time it was a question where the next blow would fall, and how it could best be parried. The danger of the situation arose from the fact that by the end of the year 497 the opportunity for a vigorous offensive on land in the west had, for the time being, vanished. The absence of the Ionian fleet in Cyprus in the late summer of that year would prevent any combined movement of the insurgents at a time when the available fighting strength of Persia in the satrapy of Sardes can hardly have been sufficient to cope with the force which might have been collected had the fleet been there. The Ionian towns, the moral and geographical centre of the revolt, had for the moment staked their all on success in Cyprus, and had despatched thither their fleet, the sole means by which the concentration necessary for a formidable combined movement could be brought about. So the revolted were reduced to a passive state of expectancy, confined to a defensive, which, inasmuch as Persia held the inner line in Western Asia Minor, was most disadvantageous to them from a strategical point of view. The Persian council of war saw this weakness. The revolted regions could be taken in detail.

The plan adopted seems to have been to deal with the Hellespont, the Ionian towns, and Caria, as three areas of operations, and to take a vigorous offensive in one region at a time, while threatening the other two with a number of troops sufficient to prevent their sending any substantial help to the region attacked. With the reduction of one region, the troops which had been employed in it would be largely available for the second attack.

The Hellespont, certainly the weakest of the three, was first invaded and reduced, while Ionia and Caria were merely threatened. This accomplished, a twofold force was directed against Caria, while Ionia was watched; and, finally, the combined armies fell upon the land which formed the heart, the life-centre of the revolt.

The first step in this design seems to have succeeded. The second proved a harder task.

H. v. 118.