II
KEEPING THE PASS
The innumerable East was pouring out of Thessaly into the Malian Plain, flooding in by two main channels, the hill-road through the pass of Thaumaki and the coast-road along the shore of the westward-bending Gulf of Malis. First came the pioneers, then the fighters, then the multitude of camp-followers and trains of supply which had fed all those numbers over so many leagues of hostile and unharvested regions. On attaining the brow of the steep climb to Thaumaki, had one looked back upon the view which gave this point its name of The Place of Wondering, he must have seen the wide Thessalian plain alive with an unwonted stir of men and baggage-wains and animals, and touched with shifting points of barbaric colour. As the continuous stream flowed past him he could note everything in greater detail—“Persians and Medes and Elamites,” the different contingents with their varying armature; footmen and horsemen; sumpter-mules and a number of high-necked, slow-striding camels, some of them showing on their flanks the proof that there were lions in Macedonia. Through the noise of the march would come the babel of strange oriental tongues. Enclosing all this, very far away could be descried a shadowy girdle of great mountains, from the highest and most distant of which the gods of Olympus looked down upon the invasion of Greece.
But Xerxes, driving along the coast-road to where it meets the Thaumaki route at Lamia, beheld a different sight. Mount Oeta stretched its wild massif there before him. At its western extremity (which he was approaching) the range piles itself into a shapeless bulk, crowding together its summits, which here in a surprising manner suddenly leap up some six or seven thousand feet from the plain. As the system trends eastward it sags down to a much lower level, but is there formidably guarded by the black precipices of the Trachinian Cliffs. Eastward yet it continues declining, until it is perhaps not three thousand feet high, then rises again another two thousand. This is the part that was called Kallidromos. Between the marshy shore of the Gulf and the broken cliff-wall of the mountain runs the Pass. Towering over all, at a vast distance rises the strange, enormous peak called Giona; while far to the south may be descried the most famous mountain in the world.
In the fierce sunlight of that sweltering day the King could not have failed to mark on his side of the Pass, under the very highest peaks of the range, a great black gash in the rocky barrier. As he approached it revealed itself to be the gorge through which the tormented Asôpos bores its narrow way between sheer walls of an altitude that disturbs the mind. A little space beyond the gorge, on the farther side of the Asôpos where it enters the Gulf, [(Note 34)]begins the Pass. The army was halted. Xerxes sent forward a scout.
The scout entered the Pass at a point where the sea barely left room for the road between it and the mountain, which here, gradually accentuating the gentle slope near the summit, comes down precipitously in the last few hundred feet. He rode a mile and met no one. Then the Pass, opening out a little towards the right, showed him the old temples where the Amphiktyones, the “Dwellers Round,” used to meet upon their sacred business. The road kept skirting the sea-marsh for a little, then rose in a long slope. He made his way cautiously to the summit. Arrived there, he all at once saw, thrust as it were into his face (so near they seem) the monstrous precipices of Kallidromos, three thousand feet high, all glistening at its eastern end with the whitish deposit of those clear bluish-green sulphur springs which gave its name to this famous place—the “Hot Gates,” Thermopylae. But the scout had no eyes for this great vision, for he saw, where the road again approaches the rocky wall, the red tunics of Spartan hoplites.
What were they doing? Some of them were practising the use of their weapons. Some were sitting on the ground and—yes—combing their long hair! One of them must have made a jest, for the others broke out laughing. The scout could not understand it at all. He counted them: a ridiculous handful. There were in fact rather more of them than he could see; an ancient wall across the Pass hid the rest. The scout rode quietly back with his information. Now one reason why the Spartans were combing their hair was this. It was customary among them to comb the hair of the dead.
They knew what was before them. Two of their spies had been captured by Xerxes, who let them go after fully showing them his whole array. The report of the spies was not likely to fall short of the facts as a result of this policy. All the East was on the march! Besides the Persians, Medes and Kissians, who formed the flower of the invading army, were coming the Assyrians, one of the great conquering races of history, distinguishable by their helmets of bronze and leathern straps curiously interwoven, by their clubs studded with iron nails, and by their linen breastplates. There were coming, the Bactrians with their bows of cane; the Sakai wearing their pointed sheepskin caps and armed with their native battleaxes; dark Indians in their cotton garments, carrying their bows of bamboo and iron-tipped arrows. There were hide-wrapped Caspians bearing sword and bow; Sarangians in dyed raiment and booted to the knee; Paktyes, Outioi, Mykoi, Parikanioi.... There were Arabians in flowing burnous who shot with the long bow; Ethiopians in the pelts of leopards and lions bearing spears of antelope’s horn and bossy maces and huge bows of split palm-wood with little arrows tipped with agate, who when they went to battle coloured half their black bodies with chalk and half with vermilion. (The “Eastern Ethiopians” wore on their heads the scalps of horses with the mane and ears attached; their shields were the backs of cranes.) There were Libyans from North Africa in goatskin garments; and buskined Paphlagonians in plaited headpieces. There were Phrygians, Armenians, Lydians, Mysians. There [(Note 36)]were Thracians with their foxskin caps, their deer-skin buskins, their long, many-coloured mantles. There were tribes armed with little shields of cow-hide and hunting-spears, two for each warrior; on their heads were bronze helmets and on the helmets the ears and horns of an ox in bronze, their legs were bound in crimson puttees. The Milyai were there, their cloaks fastened by brooches and with leathern skull-caps on their heads; the Moschoi, whose helmets were made of wood; the Tibarenes, the Makrônes, the Mossynoikoi; the Mares; the Colchians with wooden helms and raw-hide shields; the Alarodians and the Saspeires; the tribes from the islands of the Red Sea....
These (and more) were the infantry of the King. In addition there were the cavalry and the fleet.
There was the fine Persian cavalry. There were the Sagartians, who fought with the lasso; Medes and Kissians; Indians, some riding on steeds, some in chariots drawn by horses or by wild asses; Bactrians and Sakai; the Libyan charioteers; Perikanians; Arabians on camels.
To form the vast fleet came the famous mariners of Phoenicia and Syrians of Palestine—helmeted men with linen breastplates and rimless shields, throwers of the javelin. The Egyptians sent their navy, whose men had defences of plaited work on their heads, and carried hollow shields with enormous rims, and were armed with boarding-pikes and poleaxes and great triangular daggers. The Cyprian contingent could be recognized by the turbans of their “kings” and the felt hats of the common sort. The Cilician seamen were there in woollen jerseys. Pamphylians were there. The Lycian crews wore greaves and cuirasses, and were armed with bows of cornel wood and reed arrows without feathers, and with casting-spears; you knew them by the goatskins floating from their shoulders, their plumed hats, their daggers and crescent-shaped falchions. The Dorians of Asia were there, men of Greek race; the subject Ionians, alas; some from the Greek isles; the Aeolians; the “Hellespontians.” On board of every ship was a band of fighting men.