In this battle the Athenians most distinguished themselves, and next to the Athenians, they who obtained the greatest reputation were the Corinthians, Trœzenians, and Sicyonians. The greater number of the barbarians being slain, either in the battle or in the pursuit, the Greeks burned their ships, and totally destroyed their wall: the plunder they collected upon the shore, among which was a considerable quantity of money. Having done this, they sailed from the coast. When they came to Samos, they deliberated on the propriety of removing the Ionians to some other place, wishing to place them in some part of Greece where their authority was secure; but they determined to abandon Ionia to the barbarians. They were well aware both of the impossibility of defending the Ionians on every emergency, and of the danger which these would incur from the Persians, if they did not. The Peloponnesian magistrates were of opinion, that those nations who had embraced the cause of the Medes should be expelled, and their lands given to the Ionians. The Athenians would not consent that the Ionians should be transported from their country, nor would they allow the Peloponnesians to decide on the destruction of Athenian colonies. Seeing them tenacious of this opinion, the Peloponnesians no longer opposed them. Afterwards the people of Samos, Chios, Lesbos, and the other islands who had assisted with their arms in the present exigence, were received into the general confederacy, having by an oath, promised constant and inviolable fidelity. This ceremony performed, they sailed towards the Hellespont, meaning to destroy the bridge, which they expected to find in its original state.
The barbarians who saved themselves by flight, came to the heights of Mycale, and thence escaped in no great numbers to Sardis. During the retreat, Masistes, son of Darius, who had been present at the late unfortunate engagement, severely reproached Artayntes the commander-in-chief: among other things, he said, that in the execution of his duty he had behaved more like a woman than a man, and had materially injured the interests of his master. To say that a man is more dastardly than a woman is with the Persians the most infamous of all reproaches. Artayntes, after bearing the insult for some time, became at length so exasperated, that he drew his scimitar, intending to kill Masistes. He was prevented by Xenagoras, son of Praxilaus, a native of Halicarnassus, who happening to be behind Artayntes, seized him by the middle, and threw him to the ground: at the same time the guards of Masistes came up. Xenagoras by this action not only obtained the favour of Masistes, but so much obliged Xerxes, by thus preserving his brother, that he was honoured with the government of all Cilicia. Nothing further of consequence occurred on their way to Sardis, where they found the king, who after his retreat from Athens, and his ill success at sea, had there resided.
The Greeks, sailing from Mycale towards the Hellespont, were obliged by contrary winds to put in at Lectum: thence they proceeded to Abydos. Here they found the bridge, which they imagined was entire, and which was the principal object of their voyage, effectually broken down. They on this held a consultation; Leotychides, and the Lacedæmonians with him, were for returning to Greece; the Athenians, with their leader Xanthippus, advised them to continue where they were, and make an attempt on the Chersonesus. The Peloponnesians returned; but the Athenians, passing from Abydos to the Chersonesus, laid siege to Sestus. To this place, as by far the strongest in all that district, great numbers had retired from the neighbouring towns, as soon as it was known that the Greeks were in the Hellespont: among others was Œobazus of Cardia, a Persian who had previously collected here all that remained of the bridge. The town itself was possessed by the native Æolians, but they had with them a great number of Persians and other allies. The governor of this place, under Xerxes, was Artayctes, a Persian, of a cruel and profligate character.
Whilst they were prosecuting the siege, the autumn arrived. The Athenians, unable to make themselves masters of the place, and uneasy at being engaged in an expedition so far from their country, entreated their leaders to conduct them home. They refused to do this, till they should either succeed in their enterprise, or be recalled by the people of Athens, so intent were they on the business before them.
The besieged, under Artayctes, were reduced to such extremity of wretchedness, that they were obliged to boil for food the cords of which their beds were composed. When these also were consumed, Artayctes, Œobazus, and some other Persians, fled, under cover of the night, escaping by an avenue behind the town, which happened not to be blockaded by the enemy.
When the morning came, the people of the Chersonesus made signals to the Athenians from the turrets, and opened to them the gates. The greater part commenced a pursuit of the Persians, the remainder took possession of the town. Œobazus fled into Thrace; but he was here seized by the Absinthians, and sacrificed, according to their rites, to their god Plistorus: his followers were put to death in some other manner. Artayctes and his adherents, who fled the last, were overtaken near the waters of Ægos, where, after a vigorous defence, part were slain, and part taken prisoners. The Greeks put them all in chains, Artayctes and his son with the rest, and carried them to Sestus. Conducting him therefore to the shore where the bridge of Xerxes had been constructed, they there crucified him; though some say this was done upon an eminence near the city of Madytus. The son was stoned in his father’s presence.
The Athenians, after the above transactions, returned to Greece, carrying with them, besides vast quantities of money, the fragments of the bridge, to be suspended in their temples.[b]
A REVIEW OF RESULTS
The disproportion between the immense host assembled by Xerxes, and the little which he accomplished, naturally provokes both contempt for Persian force and an admiration for the comparative handful of men by whom they were so ignominiously beaten. Both these sentiments are just, but both are often exaggerated beyond the point which attentive contemplation of the facts will justify. The Persian mode of making war (which we may liken to that of the modern Turks, now that the period of their energetic fanaticism has passed away) was in a high degree disorderly and inefficient: the men indeed, individually taken, especially the native Persians, were not deficient in the qualities of soldiers, but their arms and their organisation were wretched—and their leaders yet worse. On the other hand, the Greeks, equal, if not superior, in individual bravery, were incomparably superior in soldier-like order as well as in arms: but here too the leadership was defective, and the disunion a constant source of peril. Those who, like Plutarch (or rather the Pseudo-Plutarch) in his treatise on the malignity of Herodotus, insist on acknowledging nothing but magnanimity and heroism in the proceedings of the Greeks throughout these critical years, are forced to deal very harshly with the inestimable witness on whom our knowledge of the facts depends, and who intimates plainly that, in spite of the devoted courage displayed, not less by the vanquished at Thermopylæ than by the victors at Salamis, Greece owed her salvation chiefly to the imbecility, cowardice, and credulous rashness of Xerxes. Had he indeed possessed either the personal energy of Cyrus or the judgment of Artemisia, it may be doubted whether any excellence of management, or any intimacy of union, could have preserved the Greeks against so great a superiority of force; but it is certain that all their courage as soldiers in line would have been unavailing for that purpose, without a higher degree of generalship, and a more hearty spirit of co-operation, than that which they actually manifested.