The greatest story in the world, period 1 (of 3)

by Horace G. Hutchinson

It was fought on a small plain, only some three miles wide, on the seashore, where the Persians had disembarked their forces. And here I would give you a word of warning which must apply to all this story of the glorious days of Greece. The battles—Marathon, Thermopylæ, and Salamis—have become very famous, and rightly famous. They were of importance in the story because they—Marathon and Salamis, at all events, which were Grecian victories—put a stop to that westward advance of the Persians which might have extended we cannot say how far but for those victories. But they were battles in which the forces engaged on the one side or the other were almost ridiculously small in comparison with the armies which we have seen put into the field. They were fought over very small spaces of land or sea, and they were very quickly over.

But though they are rightly famous, for the reason which I have spoken of, a good deal of their fame is due to the splendid way in which their story has been told to us by the great historian Herodotus, and, as you know, the best story in the world can be made to seem very poor if it is badly told; and a poor story can be made interesting by good telling. These people, these Greeks, with their extraordinary accomplishments, had the power of telling stories very well, and the stories really were good in themselves. They were good stories, and stories of important events, but the events are rather apt to appear even more important than they really were, just because their story is told so very well.

That is the word of warning which I want to give you about all these stories of the glorious days of Greece.

In giving you the outlines of the great story of the world, as I am trying to do in this book, there is no space for an account of these battles. You must read about them elsewhere, and all I can do is to tell you how they fit into the big story, where they come, and how it was that they happened. The Greeks, at this battle of Marathon, defeated the Persians and utterly demolished any chance of the success which this first invasion of Greece by the Persians could have had. The Persians returned again to the attack, but it was not until ten years later; and then it was attempted in a different manner.

There had been an effort at the invasion of Greece even before that which was defeated at Marathon. Those Ionian cities along the coast of Asia Minor had revolted against the Persian rule, and had been aided by the Athenians, who were closely related to them. A Persian expedition had set out four years before the Marathon enterprise to punish the Athenians for helping the Ionians in that revolt which the Persians had easily repressed. It set out both by land and sea, with the intention that the fleet should support the land army, but the fleet was caught and shattered in a storm, and although the Persian power was supposed to be established over Thrace and even as far west as Macedonia, their land army was fallen upon and broken up by attacks of the wild tribes on the borders of Thrace without ever reaching Greek territory at all.

But though this expedition, thus planned to act together by land and sea, had been a failure, it was just the same kind of enterprise, only on a far larger scale, that was attempted by Xerxes, then King of Kings, ten years after the Persian overthrow at Marathon. King Xerxes himself was the leader.

Xerxes

I think we may be safe in saying that no forces as large as these, in the number of men enrolled in them, had ever before been collected for a military purpose, and also that no former expedition had ever been planned with so much care and forethought. Xerxes made two bridges for the passing of his army across the Hellespont; he cut a canal through the Isthmus at Mount Athos for the passage of his fleet. The fleet, you see, if you will look at the map, would coast round along the south of Thrace, accompanying the army, till it came to the Peninsula at the end of which is Mount Athos. Xerxes had established stations in Thrace for the supply of his army with food and all needful things as it went along. It was just off Mount Athos that the storm had scattered the fleet of the former expedition that he had sent against Greece. By making this canal, and so letting the ships go through the Isthmus, he avoided the danger of another storm off the end of the Peninsula.

But there were other dangers besides those from the wind and waves, for a fleet in any part of the Mediterranean. Although the Persian monarch might style himself King of Kings, there was another power that ruled the sea at this time, the power of Carthage, that colony of the Phœnicians of which I asked you to take note the first time that it found a place in this story. The Phœnicians, as we have seen, had planted colonies of their own at all convenient places along the Mediterranean shore, and of all these Carthage had grown to be by far the strongest in its numbers. It was regarded as the capital city, the headquarters, of all that half-merchant and half-pirate host which we have seen always going to and fro on the waters of the great inland sea. For fifty years and more before the battle of Marathon was fought it had become a great power, the chief naval power of the world, and it had already come into collision with the Greeks.

For the Greeks, too, as we know, sent out their colonies. They sent them to Ionia, eastward along the coast of Asia Minor, and they also sent them westward, round the heel and toe of Italy, as far as that great island of Sicily lying nearly opposite to where you see Carthage on the African shore. Sicily and the African continent lie at no great distance from each other at the nearest points. And the Carthaginians and other Phœnicians had come into conflict with the Greek colonists in Sicily long before Greece was threatened by the Persians. Xerxes, before making his attempt on Greece, assured himself that his fleet would not be attacked by the great naval power, by making an alliance with Carthage. Phœnician ships were among the best that fought for him. His plans seem to have been laid with every possible care and completeness. The overthrow of Greece, and of that liberty which all Grecian states, in spite of their jealousy of each other and of their incessant quarrels, prized so very highly, seemed certain. It looked as if the King of Kings, who would rule absolutely, according to the Eastern idea, was sure to bring them under his subjection. The danger was so great that for the moment the states of Greece were able to put their jealousies on one side. Athens and Sparta, and the less powerful states with which one or other was in alliance at the time, drew together. It was a terrible moment for them.