GRAECO-PERSIAN WARS, 546-466 B.C. The great Assyrian kingdom which had ruled and terrorized Asia for cen turies came to an end with the fall of Nineveh in 612 B.C. Of it the Greeks knew little or nothing. Only the Greeks of Cyprus had come into contact with it, and that only on one brief occasion. It had never ruled within the peninsula of Asia Minor.
For half a century after the fall of Nineveh the old dominions of Assyria were divided between two Powers, the Median and Babylonian kingdoms. The Median monarchy conceived ambi tions beyond the Taurus, so that a war arose between it and Lydia, which was brought to a practical, though not formal, conclusion by that strange incident on the Halys in 585, when the armies, pre pared for battle, withdrew from the unf ought fight in consequence of an eclipse of the sun. Freed from danger from the east, Lydia turned her attention westwards, and in the next 4o years brought into subjection those Greek cities of the Asiatic coast of the Aegean on whose liberties the Lydian kings had been making desultory attacks for more than a century past.
The fall of Lydia made a great impression on the Greek world, for it had loomed large as an oriental empire in contrast to the small and comparatively poor States of Greece.
Of the relations between the Persians and the Greeks during the later part of the reign of Cyrus and during the reign of his successor Cambyses but little is known. The islands of the eastern Aegean, with the exception of Samos, seem to have fallen early under Persian rule.
A certain Polycrates ruled at Samos as tyrant for some years, and used the wealth he acquired in trade in carrying out some great architectural and engineering works. But about 424 he fell into the hands of the Persians and was put to death. In 516 a Persian force captured the island. Thus Persian rule now extended to a line drawn north and south through the middle of the Aegean. Cambyses had died in 522, and had been succeeded by a pretender who was slain by certain Persian nobles, of whom the leader, Darius, succeeded to the throne.
Misled, it would seem, by exaggerated reports of some disaster having overtaken the Persians in Scythia, the Greek cities of the Propontis region, which had submitted to Darius on his march northwards, revolted ; so, when Darius himself returned to Asia, he left Megabazus in Europe to deal with those towns. Herodotus represents him as having subdued all Thrace, a statement incon sistent with the story of some years later; nor is the story of Macedonia having given the earth and water of submission at this time quite free from suspicion. The only element in the story of this aftermath of the Scythian expedition which lends colouring to the Greek conception of its having been preparatory to a future advance into Europe, that is to say, against Greece, is the tale of what happened at Myrcinus. That leads to the next act in the Perso-Greek tragedy—the Ionian revolt.
A certain Histiaeus, tyrant of Miletus, had been rewarded for his services in the Scythian expedition by the grant of Myrcinus, a town which commanded the narrow route along the north Aegean coast which was practically the only line of communica tion from the Hellespont region westwards. When he proceeded to fortify this place the suspicions of Megabazus were aroused. Representations made by him to Darius caused the latter to recall Histiaeus and to take him with him to Susa, where he would be out of mischief. Histiaeus did not like detention at Susa, and was anxious to get back to his own people. But, before he took any measures to bring about his return, certain other events of great significance in the relations between Persia and Greece took place.
which Sparta intervened in a half-hearted and ineffective way on behalf of the former, a half-heartedness due to the fact that a strong party at Sparta was opposed to incurring obligations abroad which might keep Spartan troops away from home; and events at Athens had shown that an oligarchy could only be maintained by something like permanent military support from Sparta. But to the democrats it seemed as if they had to face political foes who were backed by the strongest military power in Greece, against which no alliance with any other Greek State would be of effective value. Thus they turned to Persia for support, having no suspi cion that Persia had any designs on the Greeks in Europe. An embassy was sent to Artaphernes, the satrap of Sardis, asking for an alliance. He demanded earth and water from the envoys, which they gave, evidently under the impression that it was part of the contract of alliance. Artaphernes did not regard it in that light; but assumed that the Athenians had accepted subjection to the Great King. Not till the time of Marathon were the Athenians un deceived on this point. The date of this embassy is not known; but it must have been about 507. Matters became complicated a year or two later when Artaphernes took up the cause of the exiled Hippias, and demanded of the Athenians that they should receive him back as tyrant. The Athenian democrats who had expelled him had to swallow that bitter pill as the price of the continuance of the supposed alliance, for politics at Athens were finely balanced.
In the spring of 498 twenty ships from Athens and five from Eretria in Euboea arrived on the Asiatic coast. The hoplites which they brought over seem to have taken part in a march on Sardes, which was partly taken. The danger to Sardes, so Plutarch says, forced Artaphernes to raise the siege of Miletus and come to the rescue of his capital. The Greeks had to fall back to the sea, and were, according to Herodotus, badly defeated near Ephesus. Sub sequent events suggest that he exaggerated the disaster. Be that as it may, the Athenian fleet sailed home shortly afterwards, re called, it may be presumed, by the democrats who had once more got control of affairs. So the year closed for the rebels. They opened the next year 497 by sending their fleet to Byzantium and winning it and the cities of the Propontis over to their side. The absence of the Persian fleet from Herodotus' story of the revolt up to this time is perhaps to be explained by a story preserved by Plutarch to the effect that the Ionians had defeated that fleet in a battle off the Pamphylian coast. This had probably taken place in the summer or autumn of 498, and it would account for the un impeded action of the Ionian fleet in 497.
The news of the revolt of Ionia had stirred the Cypriote Greeks to action. The Greeks proceeded to attack Amathus, the stronghold of the Phoenician minority in the island. Onesilus, the leader of the revolt, sent urgent messages to the Ionians for help. Bef ore coming to the aid of the Cypriote Greeks the Ionian fleet brought about the revolt of Caria, a formidable addition to the resources of the rebels. The Hellespontine and Carian ventures must have taken some time, so that it is not possible to put the arrival of the Ionian fleet at Cyprus earlier than the late summer of 497 In a sense it arrived too late, for a Phoenician fleet had shipped a Persian force over to the island, and, though the fleet gained an other naval victory over the Phoenicians, treachery in the Greek land force led to disaster, and by the beginning of 496 the island was again in the hands of the Persians.
After the recapture of Cyprus by the Persians the chronology of the revolt, always shadowy, vanishes for some years into thin air. One thing seems certain—that the spread of the revolt in 497 must have called for great efforts on the part of Persia. It was not till 496 that Persia was ready. In the earlier half of that year Daurises seems to have subdued the Asiatic side of the Propontis. The Greeks on the European side and the Thracians behind them seem to have thrown off whatever allegiance they had had to Persia at the time when north-west Asia Minor revolted. Caria, with a population which had apparently for some centuries past made a living by fighting the battles of others, was a much more serious problem for Persia. Three great battles took place there, the first on the Marsyas river, in which the Carians were defeated ; the second shortly afterwards at Labraunda, in which they were again defeated, and a third near Pedasus, in which they inflicted a terrible defeat on the Persians. These three battles took place, it would seem, in the campaigning season of 496. It was probably after the two defeats in Caria that Aristagoras proposed and car ried out the plan of establishing, in case of the failure of the re volt, a refuge for the surviving rebels at that Myrcinus on the Strymon which had been granted to Histiaeus. But there he and all his company perished in battle with the Thracians.
Just about the time of • Aristagoras' death Histiaeus arrived at Sardes. His own plan had so far worked excellently, in that he had won his escape from Susa by persuading Darius to let him go down to the coast and settle the revolt; but on his arrival there he found that nobody trusted him. At last the Mytilenians gave him eight ships with which he set himself up as a pirate in the Propontis in the rebel interests, making things unpleasant for the merchant ships of any city which showed a tendency to weaken in its enthusiasm for the continuation of the revolt. These doings of Histiaeus form probably the sum of all that Herodotus has to tell of the events of the revolt in 495. In 494 the Persians began to besiege Miletus as being the true centre of the revolt. Nothing further is told of the fate of Caria, save that after the fall of Miletus some of its cities submitted, while some were subdued by the Persians. To aid in the attack on Miletus the Persians brought up a large fleet composed of Phoenician, Cilician, Cyp riote and Egyptian contingents, numbering in all boo vessels. Against this the rebels put to sea with 353 ships, Miletus, Chios, Lesbos and Samos furnishing the largest contingents. The fight took place at Lade off Miletus. The story of it as told by Hero dotus is much distorted by anti-Ionian bias; but the battle ended in a great defeat of the Greeks. This defeat was practically the end of the revolt. Miletus fell late in 494. Histiaeus was finally caught and executed by Artaphernes. After that the Persians spent part of 493 in extinguishing the dying embers of the rising.
Even from Herodotus' account it is clear that the revolt was one of the most glorious incidents in the story of the Greek race. It took the Persians six years to suppress it, and taxed severely the resources of the greatest empire of the time.
Very little is known of the history of Athens during these years; but what is known suggests that a lively and varying strug gle for supremacy was going on between the ultra-democrats and the conservatives. The end of the revolt in 493 brought it indi rectly to a climax. Phrynichus, in his play, The Capture of Miletus, attacked the democrats who five years before had with drawn Athenian aid from the rebels, and was prosecuted and fined for so doing. Also Miltiades returned a fugitive from his tyranny in the Thracian Chersonese and was prosecuted by the democrats for tyranny, but acquitted. This acquittal was a conservative vic tory of such a decisive character that that party seems under the leadership of Miltiades to have controlled Athenian affairs up to the time of Marathon three years later.
But Darius did not forget Athens and Eretria. They at least must be taught the lesson that it did not pay to interfere with Persian rule on the east side of the Aegean. The year 491 passed without movement on the part of Persia; but in 490 came the famous Marathonian expedition.
Since the return of Miltiades in 493 the Athenian ultra-demo crats had been viewing with apprehension the possibility of an oligarchical reaction. Now, if ever, was that alliance [sic] with Persia, which had been made with a view to provide against such a contingency, to bear fruit. Therefore they regarded the expedi tion as in their interest, and were quite ready to co-operate with it. Even Herodotus cannot disguise the fact, though he tries to tone it down in the interests of the democracy of 30 or 4o years later. Pindar and Aristophanes, however, backed by the evidence of the 20 years preceding Marathon, make the situation clear.
In the course of its passage across the Aegean the expedition attacked Naxos and did damage there ; but the inhabitants escaped to the hills. Delos was treated with respect, for the Persians did not wish to arouse the whole Greek world against them. Then, after visiting some other islands, they came to Eretria. In answer to an appeal for help the Athenians ordered the 4,00o Athenian KXr7pOVXoi (allotment holders) who had been settled in Chalcis after its capture in 5o6 to go to the assistance of Eretria. This they did not do, urging, so Herodotus relates, certain excuses which are not very credible. The siege of Eretria only lasted six days. The resistance was brave ; but then the Persians got into the town—through treachery, so Herodotus says. It was destroyed, and the inhabitants were carried away to be eventually settled at Ardericca near the mouth of the Euphrates. After capturing the place the Persians took ship across the Euripus and landed on the plain of Marathon 24m. north-east of Athens.
There can be little doubt that the strategy of the Persians in the brief campaign which ensued in Attica was dictated by the as sumption that they would receive considerable aid from their ul tra-democratic sympathizers. The country party, the moderate democrats, from which the hoplite force was mainly drawn, seem to have been aware that the ultra-democrats were prepared to sup port the invaders. The latter were probably hampered by the pres ence of the hoplite force in Athens, and the suggestion of the landing at Marathon, at the extreme end of Attica, may have come from them. When the news of the landing reached Athens a coun cil of war was held. A message had already been sent to Sparta for assistance, a natural measure on the part of those conservatives who had looked for, and to a certain extent obtained aid from Sparta in the internal political struggles of the last 20 years.
The council of war was composed of the polemarch and the ten generals, the commanders of the regiments of the ten tribes. Herodotus reads into the Athenian army organization of 490 that of the time at which he wrote, some 30 or 4o years later. The ap plication in 487 of the lot to the election of archons rendered it thenceforth impossible to entrust the supreme military command to the polemarch ; and thereafter the direction of military and naval affairs passed to the board of ten generals, and the command on active service to one or more appointed for the expedition or campaign. But at the time of Marathon the polemarch still had the supreme command in battle, though the strategy of a cam paign was decided by a council of war in which the generals had each an equal vote with the polemarch. It is evident from the story that the council was at first very nervous about leaving Ath ens for Marathon. But this nervousness seems to have vanished; and the army marched out. Moreover, no movement of the ultra democrats took place, though their leaders, the Alcmaeonid family, did not renounce their connection with Persia.
Battle of Marathon.—Miltiades was not commander-in-chief of the Athenian forces, though the council of war adopted his advice and design. He may have advised the march of the Athenians from Athens to Marathon. He was almost certainly the conceiver of the strategy they adopted when they got there. The council of war decided that it was safe for the hoplite force to leave Athens for Marathon, and thither it went. The Persians, who did not as yet know the change of feeling among their quondam friends at Athens, regarded the Athenians as having fallen into the trap set for them—as having left Athens exposed to a surprise at tack which would be supported by sympathizers within the city. It may be assumed that Miltiades' idea was that, as the Persian army had landed at Marathon, it could not, if the Athenians were there, either re-embark the army without exposing a covering force to attack and possible destruction, or advance on Athens without fighting its way through one or other of the narrow passages which led from the plain to Athens. That is why, in accordance with his advice, the Athenian army remained inactive at Marathon until the Persians developed one of these two designs. On arriving at Marathon the Athenians took up a position at the Heracleum, a sanctuary and precinct the remains of which have been discovered high up the valley now called the valley of Vrana, but called in old times the Aulon or Funnel. Here they were amid rugged hills on the actual upper road to Athens, and within striking distance— about two miles—of any force which either tried to cover an em barkment or attempted to use the lower road. Either here or at Athens i,000 Plataeans had joined them, assistance sent in grati tude for the protection which Athens had given to Plataea against Thebes for some 29 years past. Then ensued some days of inac tivity, the Athenians waiting for the Persians to move, and for the arrival of the promised Spartan assistance, the Persians for a sig nal that their partisans in Athens were ready. But the Persians moved before the signal came, anxious to decide the matter before the Spartans arrived. The Persian plan was to re-embark a part of their army under the protection of a covering force, and, while the latter held the Athenians at Marathon, to land at Phalerum and make a dash on Athens. So soon as the design developed its gen eral nature must have become clear to the Athenian command; also it was quite evident that the Athenian army must be back at Athens before the Persians landed at Phalerum.
That being so, the Athenians attacked the Persian covering force without delay. The remains of the mound which was raised over the Athenian dead after the battle show that the covering force was drawn up between the lower end of the Aulon and the sea with its back to the latter. Down the Aulon the Athenians advanced and took up battle formation at the mouth of the valley, probably about three quarters of a mile from the Persian front. For the actual tactics in the battle the polemarch Callimachus, who took the unusual step of strengthening both wings and weakening the centre, with the idea, actually realized in the course of the battle, that the enemy's centre would force back the Athenian centre, follow it up, and so expose both its flanks to attack by the troops massed on the Athenian wings.
As has been said, the battle developed as Callimachus had fore seen. The enemy drove in the Athenian centre with their own cen tre which, advancing in pursuit, was defeated and apparently wiped out by the Athenian wings. The rest of the army fled to the ships, on which, after a struggle, most of them managed to escape. That the battle was not by any means a walk-over for the Athenians is clear from their own account of it. Later tradition represented the numbers of the Athenians as r o,000, which was probably the truth. The number of the Persians was exaggerated at discretion. The Persian losses are said to have amounted to 6,400, a loss which must have fallen mainly on the centre, and perhaps included nearly the whole of it. If this number be accepted, and be taken as about one-third of the Persian troops in the battle, then their total num ber was about 20,00o.
From Marathon the Athenians marched with all speed to Athens in order to anticipate the arrival of the Persian fleet and the rest of the Persian army at Phalerum. The latter did not attempt a landing. The rapid movements of the Athenian army had rendered their plan hopeless, and so they sailed back to Asia. The ex pected signal came late—probably after the battle was already engaged. After the Athenian army arrived in Athens the promised force from Sparta, 2,000 strong, arrived at the city. The battle made an enormous, indeed an exaggerated, impression on the Greek mind. This great Persia, which to the Greek stood for all that was great in the contemporary world, had been defeated in battle by a Greek State which was at the time hardly a first-class Power in contemporary Greece. The Athenian State had suddenly emerged from a position of second-rate obscurity into a blaze of reputation. Exaggerated or not, Marathon was a great victory, and in one sense epoch-making in the history of warfare. It demon strated the superiority of the Greek hoplite over any form of sol diery that Persia could put into the field. Nevertheless, the glory of Marathon nearly proved the undoing of Greece, in that it made the Greek world incredulous as to the reality and the extent of the danger which threatened it from Persia ten years later, so that it was caught only half prepared to meet it.
The Ten Years After Marathon.—Of the history of Greece in the decade following Marathon very little is known, and of that little less still has a bearing on the relations between the Greek and the Persian. Aegina, jealous of the growth of Athenian rivalry in trade, renews a war with Athens which the events of 490 had inter rupted. Miltiades comes to political ruin the year after Marathon ; and a miscellaneous list of prominent Athenian politicians are os tracized in the years which follow. The legislation of 487, to which reference has been made already, brings about a change in the Athenian military and naval organization. Then comes the great increase of the Athenian fleet—of which more later. That Darius intended to take vengeance for Marathon is undoubtedly the case. He lost no time in beginning preparations with that end in view. Their magnitude prolonged them, and Greece was saved by a revolt in Egypt which broke out in 486. It was not suppressed till 484, and Darius had died the previous year.
During these years there had been coming to the front in the ultra-democratic party a new leader not of the Alcmaeonid family. Themistocles had been archon in 493 ; but his name does not come into prominence until the second half of this decade, when he comes to the front as the advocate of the increase of the Athenian fleet. The silver mines at Laurium were bringing in a much larger income than aforetime to the State, an income which Themistocles proposed to use in the building of a great fleet instead of distribut ing it in doles among the citizens.
There were political circumstances which were probably the real efficient cause of the support given by democracy to his naval policy. If the democratic position had been an anxious one before Marathon, it was certainly still more anxious afterwards, even al lowing for the fact that Miltiades had in 489 prejudiced conserva tive supremacy by his failure at Paros. Sparta was still to all ap pearance ready to support the conservatives, and the democrats had lost the support of Persia. There was nothing in Greece to substitute for it. A great fleet would give security for the vital import of foreign corn; but it could also be used to cut off the sup ply : in other words the crews of the fleet would have the last say on the fate of Attica, and any oligarchy which might be set up there could be starved to death. During those years, there came to Greece reports of great preparations being made in Asia for a repeated attack on the Greeks of Europe.
Preparations of Xerxes.—Xerxes had inherited the policy of Darius, and from the time when in 484 the revolt of Egypt was suppressed, he began preparations for a grand attack on the Greeks of Europe. By the autumn of 481 all was ready for an ad vance. Athens had no delusions on the object of the expedition. Corinth and Aegina with their trade connections with Asia would be in a position to ascertain the truth, and it was perhaps Corinth that convinced Sparta of it. The Peloponnese, with the excep tion of Argos, took the patriotic side. Boeotia, so Herodotus says, medized outright, a statement which Plutarch (De Herodoti Malignitate 3 2) indignantly denies. Phocis took the patriotic side because, so Herodotus says, the Thessalians took the other. In Thessaly the feudal barons, led by the Aleuadae of Larissa, medized ; but the mass of the population took the other side. Corcyra was inclined to be neutral. The Sicilian cities had their hands full with a Carthaginian attack arranged by Persia.
Meanwhile Xerxes had marched from Sardes to the Hellespont, where he had caused two bridges to be constructed, a consider able engineering feat across a wide strait with a strong current; also a canal had been cut across the peninsula of Mt. Athos to avoid the stormy and ill-omened passage round the cape. Its line is traceable at the present day.
Greek Plans of Defence.—The Greek council of war now knew that no help was to be expected from outside Greece ; so it planned the defence on that assumption. As in the expedition of 492 the Persian strategy centred on the co-operation between army and fleet. The plan's one drawback was that it limited the mobility of the fleet, since it had to keep in close touch with the army. That the Greeks recognized this is apparent from their designs, even if they were not unanimous as to how and where they should be carried out. That lack of unanimity came nigh to bringing the cause of the Greeks to ruin. There was only one State north of the isthmus, Athens, which really counted in the defence. The minor Peloponnesian States were therefore anx ious to concentrate the defence at the isthmus, and there can be little doubt that Sparta and Corinth were in sympathy with them. According to this design Athens was to sacrifice her terri tory for the time being, and her population was to take refuge in Peloponnese. With this intent the Peloponnesians set about forti fying in feverish haste the four and a half miles breadth of isthmus. It is plain that the Athenians refused to assent to a plan which involved at least the temporary sacrifice and devas tation of their territory. It is also plain that the Peloponnesians or, at any rate, the Spartans, knowing that the Athenian fleet was necessary even for a defence of the isthmus, made a show of falling in with the Athenian designs.
The co-operation of fleet and army in the Persian attack ren dered a similar co-operation necessary on the part of the defence. But it is possible that the question arose whether the main effort of the Greeks should be on land or on sea. Physiography decided the question. The passage from the north frontier of Thessaly to the isthmus is, owing to the difficult nature of the country, a well-defined line, which offers no alternatives save in Thessaly itself. There it is possible, in passing from Larissa to Thermopy lae to go either via Halos and Larissa Cremaste to Lamia, or to take a more inland route over the pass of Thaumacium. South of Thermopylae the line is single, through Thermopylae and a low passage through the Oeta range near Abae ; then by the narrow passage between the foot of Helicon and Lake Copais, and so by one of the passes of Mt. Cithaeron—preferably the Dryos cephalae—into the Megarid and Attica. There were various de fensible points on this route : at Tempe, where, however, the very narrow passage through that valley could be turned ; at Thermopylae, where a turning movement involved great diffi culty and danger; and at the narrow strip of traversable ground in Boeotia on the route between Coronea and Haliartus. By sea, on the other hand, there was no place where the passage of the Persians could be blocked. The Euripus could be turned by passing outside Euboea. The Athenian plan of campaign assumed rightly that, if either arm of the invaders' force could be brought to a stand, the other would be brought to a stand also. Physiog raphy determined that this could only be done in the case of the army. At the same time the Greek fleet would have to co operate with the Greek army to prevent the landing of troops in the rear of any position the latter might take up. Had this de sign been carried out it is probable that the invaders would never have got south of Thermopylae. That it was not carried out was due to the Peloponnesian dislike of any defence north of the isthmus, and to the further fact that, when forced into compli ance with the Athenian designs, their compliance was at best half-hearted.
The first attempt at land defence was made at Tempe, where the Peneius river breaks through the mountains between Ossa and Olympus. The available passage is very narrow indeed. To this place they despatched io,000 hoplites. This must have been in the spring of 480. The Thessalian commons had begged them to come thither. But, says Herodotus, the Greeks found that the pass could be turned by a route through Gonnos, and so gave up the idea of defending it, and so the Greek army and fleet went back to Attica and the isthmus.
Leonidas was, however, prepared to make a desperate defence of the pass; and it might have succeeded had not the Phocians who guarded the very narrow path of the Anopaea been taken unawares. The Middle Gate of Thermopylae was at that day of such a nature that the front of an attacking force could only be a few men wide. The light-armed Persian or the Persian bow men could not make any impression on a Greek hoplite force in such a strong position. The path of the Anopaea was a mere forest track on which a small force could have stopped an army. The defence of Thermopylae showed the grandeur of the Spartan nature at its best ; but for the Spartan Government it was fortu nate that the circumstances of the battle made it possible for it to give its own version of a very embarrassing story. The Greek world all but accepted in full a tale which redounded to the glory of the Greek race as a whole ; but there were those who, in moments of irritation and candour, were inclined to remind Sparta of the truth: "the Mede had time to come from the ends of the earth to Peloponnese ere any force of yours worthy of the name went out to meet him," said a speaker to the Spartan: some 5o years later (Thuc. i. 69).
While these things had been going on at Thermopylae the Greek fleet in the north Euripus had successfully prevented the Persian fleet from landing troops behind the pass, and had, gen erally speaking, tried conclusions with the enemy. The Persian fleet had suffered greatly in a storm near Cape Sepias off the mouth of the Euripus, and in a later storm a Persian detachment of 200 vessels had been wrecked in the Hollows of Euboea. After the disaster at Thermopylae the Greek fleet withdrew southwards to the strait of Salamis on the Attic coast.
In view of these considerations, Themistocles took what was the desperate measure of simulating treachery by sending a mes sage to Xerxes saying that the Greek fleet was ready to betray the Greek cause. This message reached Xerxes in the late afternoon of the day preceding the battle. Unfortunately for the Persian he had had too many experiences of treachery within the ranks of Greek opponents to suspect the genuineness of the message; and so, early in the night, Xerxes moved the main part of his fleet from Phalerum bay to the eastern entrance of Salamis strait, to a line of which the small island of Psyttaleia formed more or less the centre. To prevent any escape of the Greeks through the western strait of Salamis he sent the Egyptian squadron of 200 vessels to block its passage. What actually took place on the day of battle may be deduced from the Persae. The Persian fleet had to advance into the strait. Up to that time it had been hidden from the Greeks by the promontory of Cynosura ; but the latter were aware that they were shut in, since Aristides had arrived at Salamis from Aegina during the night, and had informed them of the Persian movement.
North of Psyttaleia the strait of Salamis turns at right angles from north to west, and thus the Persian fleet, advancing on both sides of Psyttaleia, had to execute a wheeling movement. The strait after turning becomes somewhat narrower, a fact for which the Persians do not seem to have allowed, so that when they tried to advance into the inner strait with as broad a front as they had had when south of Psyttaleia a certain amount of confusion arose. It was during this confusion that the Greeks, who had advanced eastwards down the inner strait, attacked. Everything must have been in favour of the Greeks. The two fleets must have become almost literally jammed in the strait to the north of Cynosura, and that would favour the boarding tactics of the Greeks who had on their vessels hoplites serving as marines. Of the details of the fight a few are related by Herod otus, but they are rather picturesque stories than real contribu tions to its history. Before the day was done the Persians had been either driven, or forced to retire, from the strait.
The Greeks themselves seem not to have realized the extent of their victory until, shortly afterwards, the Persian fleet retired altogether from European waters and their army fell back north - wards, part of it to winter in Thessaly with a view to further at tack next year, part of it to Asia. Though Salamis was not de cisive of the war, for the attack of Mardonius in 479 was very formidable, yet it is one of the decisive battles of the world in . that, had it turned out otherwise, Greece would have fallen under the dominion of Persia. When the Greeks discovered that the Persian fleet had retreated they sailed as far as Andros. Pro posals were made to break down the Hellespont bridges; but these were overruled.
In this same year Gelon of Syracuse inflicted on the Carthagin ian invaders of Sicily such a defeat that, had he followed it up on the African coast, the career of Carthage might have come to an end. Thus the great scheme of Persia had failed in both east and west. When the year 479 opened, the Persian fleet seems to have been on the Ionian coast with a view to preventing any movement of revolt in the Ionian cities. Mardonius was in Thessaly with an army which Greek authors reckoned at 400,000 men. Half that number would probably be nearer the truth. In the campaign of 48o Themistocles had held supreme command of the Athenian contingents, both naval and military; but in 479 he vanishes from the picture. No Greek author gives any explanation of his dis appearance.
A position of stalemate then supervened, neither side attempt ing anything for eight days. Then, as the Greeks were some two miles from the passes which debouch on to the field, the Persians began to send cavalry round their flanks, which attacked and inter fered with the Greek provision trains. Then came a grand attack by the Persian cavalry which harassed the Greeks with long-range missiles, and destroyed the spring of Gargaphia on which the Greeks were dependent for water. It lay in a hollow behind the Greek line. The Greek position on the Asopus ridge became unten able, and a retreat was necessary. The new position which was to be taken up was at the "island," which is a mound on a ridge at the foot of Cithaeron about a mile east of the town of Plataea, and almost surrounded by two branches of the Oeroe river. But, though the army generally was to make for this position, it is evident from what followed that the Spartans were to go in the first place to the relief of the Greek baggage trains in the passes. As the retreat was to be made at night there was every possibility of confusion. The Greek centre started first, but missed the "island" and arrived at the town of Plataea. The Spartans started later south-south-east towards the pass of Dryoscephalae. The Athenians, who had waited for the Spartans to move, then started for the "island." Neither the Spartans nor the Athenians reached their objectives, for the Spartans, after they had gone a little more than a mile from the summit of the Asopus ridge, were assailed by the Persian cavalry and brought to a standstill at a point near a temple of Eleusinian Demeter, which stood on the ridge next east of the Asopus ridge. Mardonius seems to have thought that the Greek retirement meant defeat, and to have determined to make the rout complete. So long as the Persian cavalry employed missiles the Spartans suffered considerable loss. Then the Persian infantry came up. The battle was an unequal one, for the light armed Persian had no chance against the hoplite. In the mêlée Mardonius himself perished, and eventually the Persians were driven back in rout and tried to take refuge in their camp. Mean while the Athenians on the Greek left had started for the "island." They had only reached the plain south-west of the Asopus ridge when they received a message from the Spartans asking for as sistance, and seem to have started off in their direction. But in the hollow south of the Asopus ridge they were assailed by the Greeks who were fighting on the Persian side. They defeated the Thebans after an obstinate fight. The Greek centre at Plataea had by this time received news of the two battles, and part of it seems to have hurried to aid the Spartans, while the other part went to help the Athenians. The latter were badly cut up by the Theban cavalry, and so never reached the Athenians, while the former may possibly have taken part in the last stages of the fight beneath the temple of Demeter. The last phase of the battle was a combined assault by the Greeks on the Persian camp and a general massacre of the enemy, 30,000 of whom are said to have perished. The Greeks celebrated their victory by dedicating to Delphi a tenth of the spoils and setting up the famous serpent column surmounted by a bowl, the remains of which still survive at Constantinople. The leaders of the medizing party at Thebes they captured and executed. Plataea set the seal on Salamis. The two battles saved Hellenism in Europe from becoming orientalized, and thus modified the history of the world.
Naval Operations in the Aegean: Mycale.—While these things were taking place in European Greece, a Greek fleet was operating on the Asiatic coast of the Aegean. The Ionians had appealed for help. The fleet was commanded by the Spartan Leutychides. For some unknown reason the Phoenician contingent of the Persian fleet had been sent home, and therefore the weak ened remnant dared not try conclusions with the Greeks on the open sea. They sought refuge at Mycale where was a strong land army which had been overawing the Greek cities. As the Persians declined a naval battle, Leutychides disembarked his troops and attacked them on land. The result was an obstinate battle but a great Greek victory to which the Ionian contingent on the Persian side contributed by turning against their masters. From that time forward the fate of the Greek cities of Asia became a factor in the relations between Persia and the European Greeks. The year 478 was spent partly in the reconstitution of Attica and in that rebuilding of the walls of Athens which the Spartans would have prevented had they not been tricked by Themistocles.
The Delian Confederacy.—As far as the patriotic Greeks were concerned the action of the Ionians at Mycale had practically committed them to the liberation of the Greek cities of Asia from Persian rule, and so the war had to be carried on in the form of an attack on the Persian hold on the Greek cities of the Aegean, the Propontis and Cyprus. Pausanias the Spartan who had com manded at Plataea led in 478 what was probably a very mis cellaneous fleet drawn from the Greek mainland and islands in an attack on the Persian possessions. Under his command Cyprus and Byzantium were taken, the former a base for Persian attack on the Aegean, the latter the key to the corn route from the Euxine. At Byzantium Pausanias developed certain strange habits which the Greek patriots interpreted as medism. Sparta recalled him, and sent out a successor whom the Greeks refused to accept as commander; and so the leadership passed to Athens. Sparta withdrew from the war, and it is probable that all the other States of the mainland save Athens withdrew at this time. With the new league came the tribute from those States which paid Athens to furnish ships and crews on their behalf, an ever-increasing number as time went on. How long it took to set free the Greek cities of the Asiatic coast is not known. It is probable that one of the main motives of the campaigning was the complete restoration of the passage through the Hellespont and Bosporus to the Euxine corn region. The restiveness of the allies culminating in the revolt of Naxos in 467, shows that there were many of them who thought that the danger from Persia was over by that time. Whatever may have been the case before 466 the battle of the Eurymedon in that year put Persia completely out of action as far as the Aegean was concerned. That great victory by land and sea was less dra matic and less decisive of the future than Salamis had been; but for so years after the battle Persia left Greece alone. Still the experience of so years later was to show that those members of the league who supposed that the danger from Persia was over for ever were mistaken. It was the continued existence of the great Athe nian fleet which kept the Persians from interfering in Greek affairs. Within a brief period after its destruction at Syracuse the inter ference began again, and within 3o years of that time Persia had become arbiter even in the internal politics of Greece.