CHAPTER VI.

THE MARCH OF THE PERSIAN ARMY. PREPARATIONS IN GREECE.

It may be supposed that these preparations were more or less complete by the time that the winter of 481 set in.

It was in the summer or autumn of this year that part of the land army,[96] having assembled at Kritalla in Cappadocia, began its march to Sardes. Herodotus enumerates the various places it passed, with descriptions of interesting features at each, as in a guide-book. Whether he had actually visited them himself or not, may be a matter for discussion; he could, no doubt, get plenty of information with regard to them from Ionian and other Greek merchants who traversed the great trade routes, not to speak of what was contained in the works of Ionian geographers.

Crossing the Halys river, the army entered Phrygia, and arrived at the city of Kelænæ.

At that town it was entertained by a certain Pythios, son of Atys, a Lydian, whose enormous wealth, as reported in Herodotus, recalls the series of Greek legends in which this land plays the part of Manoa, the city of pure gold of the legends of Elizabethan days.

From Kelænæ, the army journeyed past Anaua, with its salt lake, to Kolossæ, a city of Phrygia, near which the Lykos, a tributary of the Maeander, had an underground course, ten stades long. Thence by Kydrara on the Lydian border, where was an inscribed boundary pillar erected by Crœsus; and so by Kallatebos to Sardes.

◆H. vii. 32.◆

Arrived at Sardes, the king sent heralds to demand earth and water from the States of Greece, with the exception of Athens and Lacedæmon. As in the case of the Marathonian expedition, the Persian wished to form an estimate of the amount of opposition which he might expect. ◆H. vii. 34.◆ Meanwhile the engineers at the Hellespont were constructing their bridges at Abydos, where the strait is narrowest. Those who have seen the strong current which flows through this channel will be best able to appreciate the engineering skill of those who were responsible for their construction.

One bridge was made by the Egyptians, the other by the Phœnicians. The bridges first made were broken in a storm, and Herodotus tells several tales of the childish expressions of vexation employed by Xerxes; how he had the waters scourged; how he let fetters down into them, and would have had them branded. The engineers were beheaded, _pour encourager les autres_, after the simple, effective method of those days. The new bridges were more permanent structures.

◆H. vii. 36.◆

Herodotus, doubtless, had plenty of opportunity in later time of getting information as to the structural peculiarities of the bridges from the Greeks of those parts; but his actual description is somewhat obscure in respect to one important detail. The two bridges seem to have left the Asiatic side at points quite close together. The western one, that towards the Ægean, appears to have crossed the strait direct, a distance which Herodotus gives as seven stades, or somewhat over three-quarters of a mile. The other diverged in an oblique direction up the strait towards the Propontis, and reached the European shore some distance from its fellow. They were formed of triremes and pentekonters, slung on long cables of flax or papyrus, there being 314 vessels in the western and 360 in the eastern bridge. #THE BRIDGE OVER THE HELLESPONT.# The current flows rapidly from the Propontis; and though Herodotus only mentions the eastern bridge as being anchored up stream, it must be presumed that both were secured in that way. In the same way both would have to be anchored down stream also, by reason, as Herodotus himself mentions, of the south and south-west winds.

In both bridges the prows of the supporting vessels were placed in such a way as to meet the current, which at this point in the Hellespont, owing to a bend in the course of the strait, runs, at one place just north of Abydos, across the channel, slanting from the European to the Asiatic shore.*

* * * * *

*_On the Passage describing the Details of the Structure of the Bridge._

The passage is as follows:—(vii. 36).

Ἐζεύγνυσαν δὲ ὧδε, Πεντηκοντέρους καὶ τριήρεας συνθέντες, ὑπὸ μὲν τὴν πρὸς τοῦ Εὐξείνου πόντου ἑξήκοντά τε καὶ τριηκοσίας, ὑπὸ δὲ τὴν ἑτέρην τεσσερεσκαίδεκα καὶ τριηκοσίας, τοῦ μὲν Πόντου ἐπικαρσίας |τοῦ δὲ Ἑλλησπόντου κατὰ ῥόον, ἵνα ἄνακωχεύῃ τὸν τόνον τῶν ὅπλων.|

The critical words are those underlined. Herodotus’ meaning is clear; but the application of it is obscure. He means that the vessels of the eastern bridge were “oblique in position,” whereas those of the western were “down stream.”

The current at this point in the Hellespont does not follow the middle line of the strait. There is a strong bend off Abydos, the channel, which up to this point comes from the Propontis in a south-west direction, turning due south. The current accordingly struck the European shore near Sestos, and then rebounded on to the Asian shore at Abydos (_cf_. Strabo, xiii. p. 591). The eastern bridge, therefore, which went from Abydos in a line not greatly divergent from the direct line from Abydos to Sestos, would have an axis inclined at an acute angle to the line of the current at this point; therefore, when Herodotus says its supporting vessels were oblique, does he mean oblique to this line of current, as they would be, if their axes were in their ordinary position at right angles to the axis of the bridge; or has he in his mind a different kind of obliquity, _i.e._ were they slewed round in such a way that their prows pointed up the stream, which was itself oblique at this point?

As a practical question of engineering, it is infinitely more probable that the latter was the case. The capable engineers who constructed the bridge were extremely unlikely, in view of the fate of their predecessors, to expose their work to the enormous strain which the position of its supporting boats all but broadside on to the line of current would have involved.

It cannot, however, be said that it is certain that Herodotus would have thus interpreted his own description. At the same time, descriptions by the ancients involving a reference to relative positions have to be treated with the greatest caution. It is often the case that the strictest meaning of their words is proved by the context not to be the sense they wish to convey. In these days of maps and instruments of precision, we are infinitely more strict, or, perhaps, less liable to error in orientation, than those who did not possess such things, save in the rudest possible form.

One of the commonest forms of mistake among ancient writers, in the course of a description, is to alter the point of view, or the object to whose position the positions of other objects are being referred. Polybius conspicuously does so in describing the valley running up from Lake Trasimene. A few chapters further on, Herodotus does the same thing (vii. 42), for he describes the Persians in their march as leaving Mount Ida on the _left_, whereas he should have said _right_, thus confusing his own point of view from the sea with theirs.

Furthermore, apart from inaccuracy of orientation, there was a lack of technical language, such as could be employed in such description. When Herodotus says the boats of the western bridge were κατὰ ῥόον, “down stream,” it is probable that he is merely employing a phrase which came handy to him, instead of the cumbrous paraphrase he would have had to employ to express the fact that their axes were at right angles to the axis of the bridge, though this was the fact really in his mind. This is the idea upmost in his mind when he speaks of those in the second bridge as being ἐπικάρσιαι, “oblique.” Their axes were not at right angles to the axis of the bridge.

#ROUTE FROM SARDES TO HELLESPONT.#

Six cables, two of white flax and four of papyrus, held each bridge in place, and on these trunks of trees were placed. A roadway was formed on this foundation, composed of brushwood with earth laid upon it, and each bridge was fenced in throughout its whole length.

◆H. vii. 37.◆

After spending the winter of 481–480 at Sardes, Xerxes started on his march at the beginning of spring. Herodotus asserts that his departure was signalized by an eclipse of the sun. He is certainly mistaken in attributing an eclipse to this date;[97] but popular tradition was but too apt to mis-date such phenomena in order to make them coincide with some momentous event in history.

◆H. vii. 40, 41.◆

The Persian household troops, gorgeously caparisoned, formed the body-guard of the king on his march. The total number of this _corps d’élite_ amounts to 24,000 in Herodotus’ enumeration.

Herodotus, writing for an audience that wished above all to be amused, tells many a tale of the incidents of the march. They are pleasant reading enough, but they are not history. They had, however, a serious as well as a lighter side. He wished to bring before his countrymen a picture of that life of the East which few of them, perhaps, could realize; of the illogical decrees of absolutism; of anything and everything which could display to them the contrast between a splendid liberty and a splendid servitude.

◆H. vii. 42.◆

The route followed by the army in its march from Sardes to the Hellespont led it over the river Kaïkos into Mysia. Then leaving Mount Kane on the left, it passed through Atarneus to Karine. Thence it marched through the plain of Thebe, and passing Adramyttion and Antandros, and, keeping Mount Ida on the _right_,[98] it entered the territory of Ilium. From there it passed near Rhoetion, Ophrynion and Dardanos to Abydos.

◆H. vii. 44.◆

At Abydos Xerxes reviewed his army. A philosophical dialogue with Artabanos on Herodotus’ pet philosophical theme is also attributed to him by the historian. Later in the conversation the political situation is discussed. There is one of those numerous and significant references to the fact that the Athenians alone of the Ionian Greeks had never been subdued by Persia, references which, if not always historical in their setting, suggest that Herodotus had in conversation with those acquainted with the workings of Persian policy, acquired the idea that it was largely influenced by this motive. The advisability of employing the Ionians of Asia in the impending expedition is also debated.

◆H. vii. 58.◆

The fleet also had evidently assembled at the Hellespont; for, after the army had crossed the bridge, it is reported to have sailed to Cape Sarpedon, and there to have waited. From its landing near Sêstos, the army marched up the Thracian Chersonese, leaving the city of Kardia on the left, and passing through a town called Agora. Thence it rounded the Bay of Melas, and crossed the river of that name. The waters of this stream, says Herodotus, did not suffice for the purposes of the army. He is anxious to emphasize in every way the magnitude of the expedition; and the inadequacy of the rivers to meet the needs of the great host is an ever recurrent theme in his history of it. In many instances the detail would be true. The eastern torrent is reduced to very small proportions in the summer months, and oft-times its bed is quite dry.

From the Melas they marched westward, passing by Ænos, an Æolian city, and the lake Stentoris, and so reached Doriskos. Thither also came the fleet. The town itself was in the plain of the Hebros river, but not on the actual coast. On the seashore near it stood Sale, a Samothracian city, and Zona. Here Xerxes numbered his army. The method of numeration reported may or may not have been actually employed. Ten thousand men were collected on a space of ground; this was then marked out, and the rest of the army was crowded on to this area in detachments. The sum total was, says Herodotus, 1,700,000. This statement of numbers has already been discussed. It is without doubt exaggerated at least two-fold, if not more.

#THE PERSIAN FLEET.#

◆H. vii. 61, _seq_.◆

A list, continued through many chapters, is given of the various contingents composing the host, together with their arms and other details. To take it in detail would be wearisome, and is unnecessary. It amounts to an enumeration of all the races in Asia known to the Greeks. That most of them were represented in the motley crowd, is doubtless the case; but it is probable that the list is founded on information culled from Ionian geographers. ◆♠H. vii. 82.◆ Of the generals commanding the army, Mardonius is the only one who has been in the highest command before. The others are unknown to previous history. One of them, Smerdomenes, is a son of the Otanes who had commanded in the Hellespont some twenty-seven years before.

♠ “H. viii. 82.” replaced with “H. vii. 82.”

The number of war-vessels amounted to 1207. If this number be correct (and there are no solid grounds for doubting it), the levy on this occasion had been just double the ordinary naval levy of 600 ships.

The numbers of the contingent as reported by Herodotus are:—

Phœnicians and Syrians 300 ships Egyptians 200 „ Cypriotes 150 „ Cilicians 100 „ Pamphylians 30 „ Lycians 50 „ Dorians of Asia 30 „ Carians 70 „ Ionians 100 „ Islanders 17 „ Æolians 60 „ Hellespontines 100 „ ---- 1207 ships.

Reckoning at least 100 of the ships from Cyprus as having been contributed by Greeks, it will be seen that of the total of 1207, the Greeks contributed 407 vessels.

Persians, Medes, and Sakæ served as marines on board the fleet. The Phœnician ships, especially those of the Sidonians, were the best sailers.

◆H. vii. 97.◆

Besides these first class vessels of the fleet, there were thirty- and fifty-oared ships and transports to the number of 3000.

Artemisia, queen of Herodotus’ own native place, Halikarnassos, a lady for whom he had a great admiration, seems to have commanded the whole contingent of the Dorians of Asia.

◆H. vii. 101.◆

After reviewing the fleet off the Doriskan shore, Xerxes is reported to have held a conversation with Demaratos, the exiled King of Sparta, and to have heard some plain and unpalatable truths from him with regard to the nature of the resistance he must expect to meet with from the Greeks, and especially from the Spartans. It has its place in the plot of the great drama. The king did not go to his fate unwarned.

Of the course of the army from Doriskos to Therma, but little need be said. ◆H. vii. 121.◆ The army marched in three divisions, one, with Xerxes, taking the well-known coast road, past various places named by Herodotus: the Samothracian fortresses, Mesembria, and Stryme, a city of the Thasians. Thence by the Greek cities of Maronea, Dikaea, and Abdera: past Pistyros and certain forts of the Pierians. Mount Pangaeus they left on their right, keeping, that is, on the coastward side of it. They then reached Eion on the Strymon river, and passing that stream by a bridge which had been constructed at Enneahodoi or Nine Ways, marched to Akanthos by way of Argilos and Stagiros.

During this passage, says Herodotus, the inhabitants of the districts through which the army passed were pressed into the service.

Herodotus thus describes the coast route with considerable detail, mentioning, moreover, various geographical features which are not given here. He has almost certainly traversed it, possibly in a journey through Macedonia to Northern Greece, of which there are such evident traces in his later books.

◆H. vii. 110, 111.◆

But, though he says that two of the Persian divisions took inland courses, he gives no real indication of what they were, though the mention of the Satræ and the description of their country suggests that one at least of these routes went near the higher peaks of Rhodope. #THE EXPEDITION AT THERMA.# It is, indeed, impossible on the practical question of physical and military possibilities, if Herodotus is right in his assertion with regard to this inland line of advance, to identify it with any other than a route leading to the sources of the Hebros, and then southward down the Axios or Strymon valleys into Macedonia.[99]

From Akanthos the fleet made its way by the canal through Athos to Therma, touching at various small Greek towns on the coast of the Chalkidike peninsula, and impressing ships and men from them.

The main army made its way direct across the base of the peninsula to Therma.

There the expedition rested.

From there the king went by ship to explore the great pass into Thessaly, where the river Peneius has cut the deep vale of Tempe between the heights of Olympus and Ossa. ◆H. vii. 130.◆ Herodotus takes the opportunity to put into his mouth some striking comments on the physical peculiarities of the region, which are, no doubt, the historian’s own, derived from the personal knowledge of the land.

From Tempe Xerxes returned to the army at Therma.

It was after Xerxes had reached Therma that the real difficulties of his land march began. Hitherto the route had traversed that north shore of the Ægean along which, between the mountains and the sea, nature has provided a strip of lowland which, though narrow, does not present great physical obstacles to the march of an army. But now all was different. It was as though, after traversing an unimpeded high road, he had to enter upon a region of enclosures, whose mountain walls, stupendous in difficulty, if not in height, forced him to take a winding pathway leading from one to the other of the narrow passages by which these walls were pierced. But this was not the only serious consideration which those in charge of the expedition had to face.

Hitherto the line of march, which had lain along the immediate sea coast, had been peculiarly favourable to the plan of advance adopted,—a plan founded essentially on the co-operation of the fleet with the land forces.

It may well be supposed that the dual nature of this advance was largely designed with intent to supply the commissariat of the army, as well as with the idea of military co-operation between it and the fleet.

The huge numbers which Herodotus gives of the Persian army are not merely open to doubt; they are practically impossible; but there exists no evidence whatever which would justify the assumption that the numbers were aught but very large indeed. They must have amounted at the lowest estimate to several hundred thousand men. The expedition was a great effort by a great empire, by far the greatest empire of its time, and, during the short period of its vigorous life, one of the greatest that the world has ever seen. The difficulty of transporting such a force round the long circuit of the Ægean must have been enormous; and the bare fact that it was transported successfully over such a distance bears eloquent testimony to the military organization of the empire which despatched it.

The tendency, which is sometimes displayed, to belittle the Persia of this time is in violent disagreement with such evidence as is extant, and is due to an attempt to read her history in the fourth century into her history of one century earlier. If human ability is to be judged by what human power can do, the mere fact that the organizers of this expedition were able to bring a force of this magnitude over hundreds of miles of difficult country, to keep it adequately supplied with provisions, and to place it upon the field of operations in an efficient state, must be taken as convincing proof of ability of no ordinary kind.

#HERODOTUS AS A TOPOGRAPHER.#

As far as the commissariat is concerned, it is known from Herodotus that it was, to a certain extent at any rate, requisitioned from various regions through which the army passed; but it is also quite certain that, except at a few points along the route, the land traversed was not of a description that would render it possible for the supplies of more than a fraction of the huge host to be drawn from local resources, and that the victualling must have been largely dependent on the fleet.

As far as Therma the association of the two branches of the expedition was of a comparatively easy and unimpeded character; but from this point onward the physical difficulties to be met and overcome were infinitely greater. The land to be traversed was, on the whole, poorer than that already passed, and the land route lay, in many places, at some distance from the sea, so that co-operation would be much less easy than it had been hitherto. And yet, despite these difficulties, the commissariat seems to have been still adequately maintained.

Herodotus does not describe with any detail the course which the army followed in its advance southward until, at any rate, Thermopylæ had been passed. It is hardly likely that he possessed much information of the incidents of the rapid march through Thessaly, though his remarks about the physical characteristics of that peculiar region seem to emanate from the recollection of one who has actually seen what he is describing. When and how he went there cannot now be said, but the evidence which he himself gives in many portions of his history that he is describing from personal autopsy the scenes of the great events which he narrates is overwhelming. Herodotus was not only the most conscientious, he was also the best topographer among ancient historians. The almost childlike simplicity of his narrative is calculated to create a presumption that the writer would not be likely to inquire into the question of truth or falsehood in the determined fashion which a minute examination of the theatre of events implies. The presumption would, in his case, be eminently erroneous. As a traveller, as heir to the historio-geographers of Ionia, he did not look upon history as having been formed, as it were, in a vacuum. He saw, as a man of his insight must inevitably see, that it is the land that creates the man, not the man the land,—a fact which the marked characteristics of the Ægean region would impress upon a consciousness far duller than was his.

Long before Xerxes had arrived at Therma the question of the defence of Hellas had been the subject of anxious consideration and of violent discussion among the Greek States. It is perhaps impossible to realize to its fulness the alarm which the reported advance of the great expedition created throughout the Hellenic world in Europe. The great monarchy which some sixty years before had reached the Ægean; the great power which for more than a generation past had filled the whole eastern horizon of the Greek; the power which had subdued Asia, even beyond the limits of the known world, and had conquered lands unknown, whose terrors would certainly not be diminished in the myth and fable of those who knew them not, was now advancing upon their own homeland. The lack of unity at home, too, must have served greatly to increase the anxiety of the situation. New combinations had to be formed, to be sought; old enmities to be laid aside, for a while, at any rate; old enemies to be reconciled, before anything resembling a united front could be shown to the great Eastern power which was now putting forth all its strength against them.

In most respects everything had to be done in a hurry.

It had not been possible for those who knew what had been going on for some years past beyond the Ægean to rouse into action the lethargy of the self-centred life of the barrier-bound states of Greece. One phase of the situation was of peculiar irony. Athens, the state which seems to have seen most clearly the coming storm, and to have rightly apprehended its tremendous nature, had herself, consciously or unconsciously, created a myth peculiarly calculated to lull the more ignorant population of the country into a false sense of security. The tale of Marathon was less than ten years old; but under the fostering care of its parent, it had grown immensely during that period, and done great credit throughout Greece to those who were responsible for its origin and nurture. #APATHY OF THE GREEKS.# Its growth had been unimpeded by the deadly enemy of young and promising myths, independent evidence; for, owing to the fact that the Athenians had been practically alone at Marathon, this can hardly be said to have existed; and the history of the fight was only limited by the powers of its creators. The myth had done its work: it had raised the reputation of Athens in Greece generally to a great height, in singular, and, to the Athenians, in pleasing contrast to the relative obscurity of the past. But it had done more than this. It had, no doubt, created an impression in the Greek mind generally that the great power of Persia was not so great as had been imagined, if an army not by any means accounted the best in Greece could inflict on it a blow supposed to be so crushing as Marathon. To Athens alone was the falsity of this impression known; and yet, even in the face of this great danger, whose greatness she also could alone adequately gauge, she could not afford to dispel it. She stood between the devil of a reputation and the deep sea of the truth.

Such was the situation in the years preceding 480. No joint preparation was made, because its necessity was not apprehended. Men either did not believe that the expedition would come to anything; or, if they did believe it, they imagined that a power which had been successfully met by one of the states of Greece, and that not the most powerful, could be dealt with effectively by a combined force, without unnecessarily prolonged preparation.

But when the news arrived that the expedition was on its way, and reports, doubtless exaggerated, as to its magnitude poured into Greece, there came a revulsion of feeling, and the former sense of security gave place to hurried alarm.

◆H. vii. 32.◆

Before the expedition had actually started from Sardes, heralds had been sent by Xerxes to all the Greek States, with the exception of Athens and Sparta, to demand the earth and water of submission. The treatment which those two States had on a previous occasion meted out to certain Persian heralds who had been sent on a like errand, was not such as to encourage a repetition of the experiment in their case, ◆H. vii. 134.◆ although the Spartans had themselves repented of this breach of international law. Herodotus is probably only expressing the feeling and expectation of the Greece of forty or fifty years before he wrote, when he says that he does not know exactly what calamity befel the Athenians in consequence of their having treated the heralds in the fashion in which they did, except that their territory and city were ravaged. He is, however, inclined to think that this did not happen in consequence of the crime committed. Despite the somewhat grim humour of the Athenian and Spartan action, it is evident that it shocked that Greek reverence for international usage which is one of the most striking developments of the civilisation of that extraordinary people.

It was while Xerxes was in Lower Macedonia that the heralds returned from their mission.

The list of those who submitted is a noticeable one.

◆H. vii. 132.◆

The races of the region of Thessaly—of Greece, that is, north of Mount Œta—submitted without exception (so Herodotus says); Thessalians, Dolopians, Ænianians, Perrhæbi, Magnetes, Achæans of Pthiotis, and Malians. There is nothing very extraordinary nor even blameworthy in their action. The Peloponnesian policy or strategy, the fundamental idea of which was to confine the main defence to the Isthmus of Corinth, was already acquiring the upper hand in the Greek councils; and the circumstances of the time were well calculated to give the population of the north the impression that they were to be deserted,—a true impression, as the sequel showed.

In Thessaly itself the political circumstances were unfavourable to a display of patriotic feeling. That land of great plains, so contrasted in its physical characteristics to the rest of Greece, had bred a political system which was also in violent contrast to the forms of government existing at the time in the other regions of the country. There prevailed a quasi-feudalism such as might perhaps have found some counterpart in the Argolic plain, when the lords of Mycenæ and of Tiryns held sway, but the like of which had, by the beginning of the fifth century, long vanished from the Hellenic lands. It was the physical which produced the political contrast. #THESSALY.# The fertile, unimpeded plains of Thessaly permitted the growth of rich landed proprietors on a large scale, families of whom, like the Aleuadæ in Larisa, or their relatives the Skopadæ in Krannon, or like Jason of Pheræ in later days, were enabled to establish their supremacy over a large area.

The great ambition of the Thessalian baron was to make himself Tagos, or Captain of all Thessaly; which end he seems to have pursued without scruple as to the means. When it was merely a question of maintaining his power against reluctant forces at home, he had a powerful weapon at his back in the feudal cavalry whose effectiveness was due to the unimpeded nature of the field of operations. He could play a part, and he did play a part, so long as Greece had a history of her own, which would have been impossible in the intricate mountain regions of the rest of the land. But nature had bestowed one more favour upon his system, by raising the formidable barrier of Mount Œta between him and the rest of Greece. That it was which prevented the Hellenic spirit of independence from penetrating to the name-place, if not the birth-place, of the Hellene; and the Thessalian, though one in body, was never during the historic period one in spirit with the men of his own race.

Thermopylæ was in no mere strategic sense the gate of Greece.

And yet in the spare glimpses of Thessalian history which are given in the contemporary historians, it is evident that the mass of the population did not at all times tamely acquiesce in this state of semi-feudal submission. The few occasions on which Greek States did interfere effectively in Thessalian affairs were provided by the discontent of the governed many against the governing few. It may well be supposed that some such state of things was in existence at this time, or had been existent within a very recent period. ◆H. vii. 6, 8, 130.◆ The Aleuadæ, whom Herodotus describes as Kings in Thessaly, had invited the Persian,—for motives of self-interest, it may be certain,—to interfere in the affairs of Greece; and this invitation, addressed to Xerxes some years before the actual march of invasion, while the whole question was still in the air, contributed not a little, so Herodotus says, to Xerxes’ final decision.[100]

◆H. vii. 172.◆

Despite this appeal on the part of the Aleuadæ, the Thessalians as a body had at first no intention to medize. They disapproved of the action of this family; and, before the Persians had crossed the Hellespont, they sent a strongly worded appeal to the council of the Greeks assembled at the Isthmus to help them with a large force to defend the passage of Olympus: otherwise, they said, they must of necessity yield to the barbarian.

The appeal did not remain without its effect. The Greeks determined to send an army to guard the Vale of Tempe. Ten thousand heavy-armed troops were despatched by sea up the Euripus, and, after landing at Halos on the west shore of the Pagasætic Gulf, marched to Tempe.[101] The despatching of these troops by sea has been taken to indicate that the Greeks mistrusted the attitude of the Bœotians. It is, perhaps, possible to attach too much importance to the symbolical submission of the Northern States of Greece. The general course of events would seem to indicate that one of two things was the case at this time. It may have been that the heralds had not yet visited these States to receive their submission when the expedition to Tempe took place—a quite possible contingency when it is borne in mind that these events are dated by Herodotus as occurring at a time when the Persian had not yet crossed into Europe, whereas the heralds did not meet Xerxes until he got to Therma. Or it may have been that, if such submission had been made, it had been made with the mental reservation of the intention to take part with the rest of Greece, provided the Southern States showed a disposition to strike a blow in defence of the North.[102]

#EXPEDITION TO THESSALY.#

The Bœotian attitude at the time of Thermopylæ, as related by Herodotus, is so extraordinary as to be incredible; and his account of the attitude of these Northern States at this time suggests the suspicion that the bitterness of feeling against them, which undoubtedly existed after Platæa, has been antedated by him, and has led to the growth of a story discreditable to them, relating to the time immediately previous to the actual invasion. It is not difficult to see that the Greek States of the South, by the selfishness of their policy, made it necessary for the States of the North to seek their own salvation by an attitude which, though on the face of it unpatriotic, was forced on them by the situation.

Such is the conclusion which may be drawn from Herodotus’ narrative of the events of this period. It is a tale undoubtedly coloured by the bitterness of the feeling subsequently displayed to those Greeks who were represented as having betrayed the Greek national cause. It may be, after all, that the account of the matter in Diodorus, which is more explicit, is also more true. If he is to be believed, neither Locris nor Bœotia nor the Thessalians proper medized until the retreat from Tempe left North Greece deserted for the time being.

[Illustration: THE VALE OF TEMPE.

[_To face page_ 231.

]

The expedition to North Thessaly was made under a gross misapprehension as to the geography of the region. The Greeks who despatched it were evidently under the impression that the Tempe pass was the only practicable entrance into that country. It will be best to speak in detail of the passes of this region when the march of Xerxes is described; for the present suffice it to say that in Tempe itself there is on the hills north of the Peneius River a path by which the defence of the main road, which keeps on the south bank of the stream, may be turned; and, furthermore, there are two other passes through the Olympo-Cambunian chain, by which entrance may be obtained into the Thessalian plain. The army, of which the Lacedæmonian contingent was commanded by Evænetos,[103] and the Athenian by Themistocles, found itself in a false position. It says something for Herodotus’ military insight that, although he gives what was, so he says, the generally received story, that the retreat was decided upon in consequence of a message from Alexander, a Macedonian, describing the enormous numbers of the Persian army, he believes the real reason to have been the discovery that the Tempe defile could be turned by other passes.

The growth of sea communication, and the consequent disuse of some of the old land routes, probably accounts for the ignorance which the Greeks displayed of a region through which the old trade route to the north must have passed.

The army returned to its ships at Halos, and so home. Then, says Herodotus, the Thessalians, abandoned by their allies, readily took part with the king.

That the Locrians of the East were among those who gave earth and water is not surprising. Though within the gates of Thermopylæ, their country was north of the Œta range. It was imperatively necessary that, in case they were deserted, they should be in a position to make terms with the invader; for the flood of invasion, unless stemmed, must pass in full stream their way. The length of their narrow territory was traversed by the great military highway from the North.

The fiasco of the expedition to Tempe had no doubt discouraged the northern Greeks, and among the powers represented at the Isthmus it must have told greatly in favour of the Peloponnesian strategy. Be that as it may, the design of the Council at the Isthmus was to make the defence a Panhellenic effort, and to persuade the whole Greek world to lend a helping hand towards the preservation of the mother country. It may be suspected that Athens roused and sustained the energy which such an effort implied; but the official invitations sent out appealing for assistance were evidently issued in the name of the Congress as a body.[104]

The situation which the Congress had to face was not a little complicated by the attitude of the oracle at Delphi. It prophesied not good but evil of the prospects of the Hellenic cause. It seems quite clear that the versions of the responses which Herodotus gives are editions of the originals revised in certain particulars in accordance with the event. He probably obtained them from records at Delphi itself; and it may be supposed that the authorities of that sanctuary would not allow a manifestly mistaken prophecy to remain upon their books, when a slight alteration would place it in accord with what actually happened. Even had the divine Delphi been much more free from human frailty than it was, such emendations would have proved a sore temptation to the priests.

#ATTITUDE OF DELPHI.#

The general aspect and tone of the oracles when they are freed from what is manifestly suspicious, gives the impression that the original responses predicted the fortunes of the Greeks in the coming war in the most pessimistic language. There is no appeal or encouragement to the self-sacrifice of great patriotism. Resistance appears to be discouraged; and whether this was the intent or not,—though the matter admits of little doubt—the effect of these answers was to afford some of the powers concerned what they, at any rate, considered a justifiable excuse for neutrality in the coming struggle. The attitude of Delphi at this time is one of the most interesting problems in the history of the period. When questions of a purely Hellenic nature were concerned, its policy was calculated on a basis of information such as its wide-spread and intimate relations with the Greek states as a whole enabled it to acquire. In the present instance, however, the great factor in the calculation, the real intention of Persia, was an uncertain one. Yet it would seem as if Delphi had made up its mind as to its nature.

The student of Greek History, insensibly imbued with knowledge after the event, has a natural tendency to regard what is now known to have been the object of the great expedition, the subjugation of all Greece, as having been from the very first the declared and conspicuous design of the Persian king. Yet, as a fact, Herodotus makes it perfectly clear that this was not the case at the time,—at any rate, not wholly the case. ◆H. vii. 138.◆ He tells us that the expedition was nominally directed against Athens, ◆H. vii. 157.◆ but was really sent against all Greece; and then, curiously enough, ◆H. vii. 139.◆ he goes on to show in the very next chapter how disastrous for Greece it would have been had Athens followed the policy which Delphi advocated. ◆H. vii. 139.◆ He expressly says that the oracles which came thence and filled the Athenians with terror, did not induce them to abandon Greece. Despite his general respect for such divine utterances, he is in this case hardly at pains to conceal the fact that he believes that obedience to the oracle would have brought with it a political disaster of appalling magnitude to the whole of Hellas.

The two responses given to the Athenians on the two occasions on which they consulted Delphi at some date immediately before the war are of a very remarkable nature if taken apart from one another, and still more remarkable if taken in contrast. The second indicates a complete change of policy from that advocated in the first. The priests of Delphi were no mere fortune-tellers. It may be taken for certain that they did not speak at haphazard on an occasion so momentous. There was something,—call it motive, or call it policy,—behind what they said. In the present instance the remarkable feature in the case is that the second response given is in so decided a contrast with the first that the motives or policies which lie behind the two must be essentially different. Were the policy advocated by Delphi a negligible quantity on Greek History, the matter, though interesting, could form little more than a subject for academic discussion. But in some way or other which cannot now be fully realized, the method being secret, the oracle was the voice of an inner ring, a secret society of Hellenic statesmen, whose authority was due to the average excellence of the information on which the policy they advocated was founded. Taking all the oracular responses which were uttered at this time, they seem to fall under two periods, during the earlier of which Delphic policy was distinctly opposed to a Pan-hellenic effort against the invader.

The authorities at Delphi seem to have read the coming invasion in the light of a tremendous punitive expedition against Athens, a revenge for Marathon and Sardes. ◆H. vii. 138.◆ It has already been shown on the evidence of Herodotus that these were the declared reasons of the expedition. Believing this to be the case, it required no great imaginative powers with respect to the future to foretell the destruction of Attica. Hence the first of the two celebrated oracles which caused the Athenian delegates such natural alarm. The Athenians are told to fly to the ends of the earth, and the utter destruction of their Greek home is foretold.

It was to Athens alone that such advice was given. Athens was the object of the expedition, so Delphi thought; and if the object were removed, the invasion might never take place. In any case, if it did take place, it was possible that its object might be regarded as attained if Attica and Athens were laid waste; and therefore it was necessary, in consistency with this view, to discourage the interference of the Greek States in the matter. ◆H. vii 148.◆ This is the reason for the advice given to Argos and to the Cretans. ◆H. vii. 169.◆ If other States interfered the devastation might spread to the whole of Greece.

It is quite conceivable that Delphi regarded this as being, under the circumstances, the most patriotic policy which could be advocated. The removal of the cause of offence would go far towards expiating the offence itself. Such a course of action was in a way parallel to that demanded by one Greek State from another in a case of sacrilegious pollution.

Two questions now arise. In the first place, at what period in the development of affairs prior to the invasion was this oracular response delivered to the Athenians? Secondly, what interval elapsed between it and the second? The first question hardly admits of an answer. The wording of the oracle affords but a slender and uncertain clue; and that, such as it is, is contained in the latter half of it. The answer, as given in Herodotus, is in twelve lines of verse. ◆H. vii. 140.◆ Of these the first six refer to Athens alone. The last six, however, extend the threat of destruction to other States of Greece. And yet the inhabitants of those States are not advised to fly their land; the exhortation to flight is addressed to Athens alone. If these words were dictated by circumstances existent at the time they were spoken, they can only be of the nature of a threat addressed to the other powers of Greece; and, if so, they were probably uttered either during the expedition to Tempe, or immediately after it, and were a warning of what would happen to those who tried to resist the invader.

A further possibility is that the last six lines appeared in a revised version of the original, made after the event.

Herodotus’ account of the delivery of the second oracle gives the impression that he supposed this to have been spoken immediately after the first. The tale is a curious one, and discloses an attitude of mind among the Greeks of that time to which no distinctly traceable counterpart could be found at the present day. The demand for the prophecy of smooth things, though sometimes raised even in our own times, does not, if fulfilled, convey much comfort to the modern mind; and such comfort as might be given could hardly be heightened by the fact that the prophecy had been previously arranged. That was palpably the case in this instance.

Herodotus tells the tale much as follows:—

The Athenian delegates, he says, were exceedingly depressed by the first answer they had received. While they were in this state, Timon the son of Androboulos, a man in the highest repute at Delphi, came to them and suggested they should go again and consult the oracle as suppliants. When people in Timon’s position make such suggestions, it may be presumed that they are acting upon knowledge. It may even be suspected that there was something in the previous answer which the authorities were anxious to amend.

There are two features in the second oracle which are of the nature of a forecast of events: the advice as to the reliance to be placed on the defence of the wooden walls, and the purely prophetic reference to Salamis. The first of these may be, probably is, a part of the original utterance; the second, contained in the last two lines, is probably an addition after the event, unless, which is improbable, Themistocles influenced the wording of the answer. The first may be possibly conceived as having brought about its own fulfilment; the second refers to a measure which is unanimously attributed to the genius of Themistocles.

But the most remarkable feature of the whole is the absence of any reference to a flight to the ends of the earth, the essential and most striking feature of the first response. The Athenians are indeed told that they must abandon their country; but all reference to an abandonment of Greece is conspicuously omitted.

It is superfluous to say that it is impossible at the present day to account with certainty for the manifest incongruity between the two utterances. #POLICY OF DELPHI.# At the same time, taking them as they stand, there is one hypothesis as to their origin which accords with the circumstances of the time. It is an hypothesis, moreover, which tends to explain the cause for that strong expression of personal opinion as to the part played by Athens in the salvation of Greece, which Herodotus puts forward in the chapter immediately preceding his record of their language, and in direct reference to them.

The first oracle seems to have been an expression of the policy which Delphi was disposed to advocate in view of the coming invasion. This policy can only have been founded on the genuine belief that Athens was the sole object aimed at by the Persians, and could remain so, if the rest of the Greek States would abstain from interference. The best solution of the situation seemed to be the voluntary removal of the Athenians to a land outside Hellas. If this was not the policy of Delphi, her advice to the Cretans, and, above all, to Argos, is quite inexplicable.

But whatever Delphi thought, there was a very general opinion throughout Greece, and especially in Peloponnesus, that the coming invasion did not aim merely at the punishment of Athens, but at the reduction of Greece to the position of a satrapy of the Persian Empire. It was known, too, at this time that the invading force was, perhaps, relatively stronger on sea than on land. It is not difficult, therefore, to imagine the blank dismay with which the Peloponnesian States must have heard of the wording of the first of the two oracles addressed to Athens, and no time can have been lost in setting their representatives at Delphi to undo the baneful effect which the pronouncement must have on the Athenian decision. Peloponnesus intended, no doubt, to defend itself at the Isthmus; but the Spartans had a perfectly clear comprehension of the necessary part which the Greek fleet, of which the Athenians must furnish the most important contingent, must play in the defence.

It is unnecessary to suppose that the pressure was exerted on the oracle at the immediate initiative of persons who were present on the spot when the Athenian delegates were given the first answer.

Herodotus is not strict on questions of chronology; possibly his sources of information did not allow him to be so; and the interval between the two oracles may have been quite considerable relative to the rapid march of events. Meanwhile pressure had been brought to bear on the authorities at Delphi from Peloponnesus, a part of the world whose representations they could not afford to neglect. So the tone of the first response was modified in the Peloponnesian interest. The Athenian was still counselled to desert Attica, but not to seek safety away from Greece; and the fleet is clearly pointed to as the means of salvation.

It was not Salamis which Delphi foresaw. It may be doubted even whether she had any belief in the policy advocated. The Isthmus and the Peloponnesians demanded the Athenian fleet; and Delphi could not afford to quarrel with her best friends.

The new oracle, whose meaning was obscured by the fact that the previous one had been uttered, came near to being misinterpreted by those to whom it was sent. They evidently saw from the first that it was, in a sense, a reversal of its predecessor; but as to its positive meaning they were in much doubt.

In the account of the debate upon it Herodotus introduces, practically for the first time, to the stage of history, with a suddenness and simplicity of expression which is almost dramatic, the name of Themistocles. ◆H. vii. 143.◆ “There was a certain man of the Athenians, who had recently come to the front (in the State), whose name was Themistocles;”—“And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab.” In both cases the dramatic effect of the story of the lives of the men whose biography is thus opened is heightened by the lack of anything resembling an introduction.

That a debate did take place on the meaning of the oracle is probably the case; and the tradition which Herodotus followed doubtless represents in the main the lines of argument adopted by either side. The reference to Salamis and to the lines thereon in the response of Delphi might seem to be evidence in favour of their genuineness; but it is quite manifest that, if the oracle was spoken at anything like the time at which Herodotus represents it to have been uttered, it is inconceivable that the idea of fighting at Salamis can at that time have entered into the head of Themistocles, much less into the minds of those who directed affairs at Delphi. Themistocles’ great reputation in the years which followed the war was very largely due to the part he played with respect to the strategy and tactics of Salamis; and there was every inducement for the oracle to put in after the event a claim to the first suggestion of the famous plan. But, if any judgment can be formed as to the approximate date at which this particular oracle was issued, it can only be said that Salamis lay at that time in a future impenetrable to human reckoning.

As the question of the exact bearing of these oracles has been discussed at some length, it may be convenient to sum up in a few sentences the hypotheses which have been suggested as to their origin and tendency.

There seems to have been a belief current in Greece when first the news of the coming expedition was noised abroad, that it was a punitive one aimed, like that of Datis and Artaphernes, against Athens.[105] The then recent events of 490 would lend colour to such a belief. When the magnitude of the coming expedition became known, and reports as to its real intent came across the Ægean, Greece as a whole began to think that the danger was more widely threatening than had been first supposed. Delphi did not share in this change of opinion, and continued to regard the expedition as aimed against Athens alone. Holding this view, she adopted the double course of trying to remove the cause of offence by getting the Athenians to leave Greece, and of doing all in her power to prevent Greece as a whole from being involved in the matter. She was successful in preventing Crete and Argos from joining in the Hellenic defence, and the second half of the first oracle delivered to Athens, if a part of the original version, is a threat, uttered possibly about the time of the expedition to Thessaly, to those powers other than Athens who seemed inclined to make the question a pan-Hellenic one. Whatever Delphi thought, Sparta had by that time fully made up her mind that the danger was one which threatened the whole of Greece, and was consequently exceedingly alarmed at the tenour of the advice given by Delphi to the Athenians, the only result of which would be to rob her of an adjunct to the defence whose value she fully appreciated,—the Athenian fleet No time was lost in bringing pressure to bear on Delphi. The result was the second oracle delivered to Athens, which, in spite of its ambiguous wording, clearly advocated a policy in strong contrast to that which the first response had laid down.

The account of these oracles, which is, evidently, from the chronological point of view, of the nature of a digression in Herodotus’ history, is succeeded by the description of certain events which must have taken place in the autumn and winter of 481.

Several measures are described which were adopted by the Council of the Greeks which had been formed to take the necessary steps to resist the coming invasion. A settlement was made of the outstanding disputes between the Greek States, and especially of the war between Athens and Ægina.

This settlement must, apparently, be attributed to the autumn of 481, for the measures which were next taken, ◆H. vii. 145.◆ which are expressly stated to have been subsequent to this reconciliation, were contemporaneous with the presence of the Persian Army at Sardes, ◆H. vii. 37.◆ and belong therefore to the winter of 481–480. The measures were: the seeding of spies into Asia; the despatching of ambassadors to solicit aid from Gelon of Syracuse, from Crete, from Corcyra, and from Argos.

[Illustration: THE HARBOUR OF CORCYRA.]

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#CORCYRA.#

◆H. vii. 146, 174.◆

The tale of the fate of the spies is one upon which tradition was likely to improve; but there is no reason to doubt the main incidents of it; how they went to Sardes and were apprehended; how they were only saved from execution by the interposition of Xerxes, who thought it would be instructive to them to see what they wanted to see, and that it might be very advantageous to him if they reported what they had seen to those who sent them. Xerxes’ policy in the matter was admittedly wise. Resistance is frequently due to misapprehension.

The States to whom appeals for aid were sent were all of them in peculiar positions with reference not merely to their home affairs, but also to their relations towards the mass of the Greek States.

The very nature of things as they existed in the fifth century before Christ made it improbable, almost impossible, that Corcyra should take a very active interest in the affairs of Greece generally. The Hellenism of her continental neighbours in North-west Greece, in Epirus, in Ætolia, in Acarnania, was as yet undeveloped. The range of Pindus, by its oblique course from the very shores of the Adriatic to those of the Corinthian Gulf, cut off that corner of the Greek world from those outside influences and that wide experience which contributed so largely towards making the Hellenism of the fifth century what it was. Corcyra had no immediate neighbours from whom she could catch the infection of the Hellenic spirit. It is hardly strange if she did not interpret the unwritten law of Greek patriotism in the sense in which it was interpreted by those who were much more interested in upholding it. Selfish she appeared to the Greeks of this time; and it can be seen by reading between the lines in Thucydides that this was the impression she gave to her contemporaries half a century later. She was severely—it may be, hardly judged. The circumstances were peculiarly unfavourable to the development within her of a pan-Hellenic spirit. Nature had placed her in an almost ideal position in relation to one of the greatest trade routes of the ancient world,—that from Greece to Italy and the West. Wealth came easily to her. Her position allowed her to regard with equanimity the competition of Corinth and the growing rivalry of Athenian trade. However much there might be for her competitors, the very nature of her position assured her of an ample sufficiency. So she lived on a policy of sufferance, neither interfering nor interfered with. If the Corcyrean was a spoilt child, he had been spoilt by mother nature. His circumstances were such as were peculiarly calculated to encourage a selfish patriotism. Had he voyaged the whole Mediterranean over, he could not have found a fairer picture than that presented by his own enchanted island. To himself, no doubt, he appeared the honest man; but to his contemporaries of larger view he seemed, as it were, the “man with the muck-rake” of Greek politics, over whose head the crown of patriotism was held in vain.

It is conceivable that in the present instance Corcyra did not understand to the full the nature of the danger which threatened Greece. It had taken long to convince the states who sent her the invitation that the attack was not directed against Athens alone. She promised assistance, but evidently with a mental reservation to hold back until the intention of the Persian was declared unmistakably.

Unfortunately for her reputation, she held back too long. When she ought to have joined in, she did not—possibly she was too late to do so; and it is not surprising if her contemporaries, who had borne the burden of the struggle unaided by her, judged her hardly.

Not so severe, perhaps, should be the judgment of those who are in a position to review the whole extent of the feeling which prevailed at this critical time. Patriotism, when aroused, does not argue according to the rules of logic; and so, remembering this, the severity of the judgment passed by the Greek patriot on the Greek neutral may be excused, or even in a sense justified. But it must also be borne in mind that those who, with Delphi, regarded any joint action of the Greek States in a quarrel which might be looked upon as concerning Athens alone, to be calculated to bring suffering upon the whole of Greece, or at any rate on those who took part in it, and therefore impolitic, were also justified from their point of view. To them it might seem as if Athens should lie on the bed she herself had made, when she had alone among the great powers of Greece interfered in the Ionian revolt.

#ATTITUDE OF ARGOS.#

Of the Crete of the earlier part of the fifth century but little is known from the historians; and the modern exploration of the historic remains on the island has, so far, thrown but little light on its political relations at this time, whether internal or external. It seems to have been divided up between a number of comparatively small city States, which it would have been difficult to rouse to joint action on any question which did not concern their special interests. Herodotus does not pass any judgment on the conduct of the Cretans in refusing aid, possibly because the refusal was in accordance with the answer given by the Delphic oracle when consulted on the subject.

The attitude of Argos is not so easy to account for. She had, indeed, suffered terribly by the loss of six thousand of her citizens in the battle with the Lacedæmonians under Kleomenes. Delphi, in consistency with its policy at the time, counselled against interference; but the Argive tale was that, even so, they were ready to take part in the defence, provided Sparta granted them a thirty years’ truce, and provided she shared the supreme command of the allied forces with them. ◆H. vii. 149.◆ The proposal of a truce was entertained, if not actually accepted; but Sparta refused to let Argos have more than one-third of the command. The old question of the hegemony of Sparta and Argos in the Peloponnese lay at the bottom of the refusal; but there is manifestly a certain amount of improbability in the Argive account of the affair as given by Herodotus. ◆H. vii. 151, _ad init._◆ He tells another tale, which seems to have been of Athenian origin. It is to the effect that Xerxes had been in direct communication with Argos, and had practically ensured its neutrality, and that the terms demanded by Argos from the other Greeks were proposed with a full knowledge that they would be refused.

This tale was supported, so the historian says, by information obtained at Susa by that mysterious embassy of Kallias; nevertheless, Herodotus believes the Argive account, and rejects the tale current in the rest of Greece.

If an author in the fifth century B.C. could not satisfactorily discover the truth with regard to the matter, it is not likely that it should be possible to do so at the present day. It may be that Argos, from genuine conviction, followed the lead of Delphi, but provided for a possible error in that policy by entering into some kind of arrangement with the Persian.

The answer which the Greek Council sent to the Argives, as reported by Diodorus, may be an invention of later times, but is so peculiarly apt as to be worthy of quotation:—

“If,” it ran, “you think it a more dreadful thing to have a Greek commander than a barbarian master, you are right in biding quiet; but if you are ambitious to get the hegemony of Greece, you must earn a position so splendid by doing something worthy of it.”

But the greatest military power in the Greek world at this time was not situated in the mother country. Gelo, the tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily, had at his command an armed force superior to that of any other Greek State. His land army may not, indeed, have been greater than the force which Sparta could put in the field; but he possessed, besides, a navy as powerful as that of Athens. He seems to have been a man of unusual capacity who, had death spared him for a while, might have made Syracuse the centre of a considerable dominion in the West. He was manifestly a desirable acquisition for the league of defence; and it was very natural that a joint embassy should be sent to him to ask his help in the coming peril. Herodotus describes the embassy with considerable detail, but his account raises some difficulties which cast a doubt, not perhaps on his truthfulness, but on the correctness of his version of what took place.

It may be assumed that the speeches made by Gelo and the Greek ambassadors are in their form the creation of the historian. The real historical question is not as to the form, but as to the matter. ◆H. vii. 157.◆ In the speech of the Greeks two points are peculiarly prominent; it shows that there was an idea in certain quarters in Greece that the expedition was directed against Athens alone; it is further asserted that if Greece is subdued, Sicily’s turn for attack will not fail to come quickly. The first of these is important as throwing further light on the attitude of the Delphic oracle; the second is an argument in accord with Herodotus’ own impression of the situation at the time.

#GELO OF SYRACUSE.#

It is quite easy to see that there prevailed in antiquity two views as to the exact significance of the coincidence of the Carthaginian attack on Sicily with the invasion of Greece by Xerxes. Herodotus never saw any connection between them. It is possible that no hint of such a connection was apparent in the sources from which he drew his story of the relations between Gelo and the embassy. ◆H. vii 158.◆ He represents the former as being willing to send a very considerable contingent to aid the Greeks at home, provided that the latter will give him the command of the united force. The condition, if the offer was ever made, was in no wise a surprising one. Considering the magnitude of the help which Gelo is reported to have offered, it was reasonable. ◆H. vii 159.◆ And yet it was refused, and that, too, in language which cannot be regarded as otherwise than insulting. So Gelo reduced his terms to the command of either the sea or land force. And now the Athenian section of the embassy had a word to say. Their refusal of the command by sea was, perhaps, somewhat more polite, but hardly less explicit than had been that of the Spartans to the original condition. Gelo’s answer, as reported, is brief, but marked by a wit not unworthy of the distinguished literary society of his court: “My Athenian friend, you seem to have commanders, without the likelihood of any troops to command.”

After this, it may well be imagined, there was nothing more to be said or done, and the embassy went home.

Gelo, however, is reported to have sent a treasure-ship to Delphi, to watch the course of the war, with orders, in case the Persian won the day, to surrender the treasure to him and offer the earth and water of submission. The general origin of the tale so far is plainly indicated by Herodotus. It is a story which existed—perhaps indeed was current—in European Greece, for the historian, before proceeding to add further details, expressly mentions that they were derived from Sicily.

◆H. vii. 165.◆

The Sicilians say, so he relates, that in spite of what had occurred, Gelo would have aided the Greeks and submitted to the Lacedæmonian command, had not circumstances arisen at home, in the shape of a Carthaginian invasion, which prevented him from so doing. Herodotus ascribes the invasion to the intervention of the Carthaginians in favour of Terillos, tyrant of Himera, who had been driven out of his government by Thero of Akragas. An immense army, 300,000 in number, composed, after the manner of the Carthaginian armies, of nearly all the peoples in the Western Mediterranean, invaded Sicily by way of Himera.

Such is Herodotus’ account of the events in Sicily at this critical time, an account which closes with words of great significance, which put a somewhat different complexion on the tale of the sending of the treasure-ship to Delphi “Thus, not being able to help the Greeks (owing to this invasion), Gelo sent the treasure to Delphi.”

Even if there existed no other evidence with regard to the events of this period than that which Herodotus supplies, his narrative as it stands would raise several serious difficulties.

It is, in the first place, quite impossible that an expedition of the magnitude of that despatched by Carthage could have been got ready without prolonged preparations such as could not have remained a secret from the surrounding peoples, and especially from the Sicilian Greeks. It would be calculated to excite the liveliest alarm among all who could conceive themselves to be the objects of attack. Of the magnitude of the expedition there can be no doubt. The numbers given in Herodotus may not be correct, probably are not so; but, be that as it may, Sicily itself bore testimony of an exceedingly practical kind to the magnitude of the victory which was subsequently won at Himera. ◆Head. Hist. Numm.◆ The victory itself, and the prosperity to which it gave rise, caused something like a revolution in the coinage of Syracuse and of the Siciliot states generally.

It is impossible to suppose that Gelo was unaware that the expedition was being prepared, and, indeed, that Sicily was the object of it, long before the expedition itself started. #LIBERTY AND TYRANNY.# It is therefore, to say the least of it, doubtful whether he can ever have entertained, or even have professed to entertain, any idea of sending a force to help the Greeks at home. ◆H. vii. 165, _ad fin._◆ Even in Herodotus’ narrative it is stated that Gelo was aware of the coming of the great Carthaginian expedition before the treasure was despatched to Delphi. Why should Gelo have sought to buy off a Persian attack from a distance when the great invasion was close upon him? If he succumbed to the latter, the money would be thrown away. If he were successful in warding it off, he might reasonably expect to be able to resist any force which Persia could bring against him. The Ionian Sea was not a Hellespont which might be bridged.

The tale of this despatch of treasure to Delphi is a strange one. It may not be true. In any case the motive for it in Herodotus is manifestly impossible. But the tale is not one which can be ignored. The Greek of the fifth century was just as capable of suppressing as of making history. His patriotism had a tendency to run on party lines. The very intensity of the sympathy which he felt for all that was Hellenic made him intensely hostile to any political system in the Hellenic world, or to any representative of a system, which was opposed to his own ideas; _optimi corruptio pessima_. The tyranny of the great king over his subjects, even if they were Greeks, aroused but a lukewarm resentment in the breast of the Greek democrat. He hated with a much fiercer passion the tyranny of Greek over Greek. The barbarian knew no better, because he was a barbarian; the Greek ought to know, because he was a Greek. Nowhere and at no time in Greek history can this feeling have been stronger than in the Athens of the middle of the fifth century, under whose influence Herodotus so manifestly wrote. The Great War had in his day become a story; he just saved it from becoming a myth. The creative genius of the Greek did not discriminate in subject-matter. History, both Ancient and Modern, went alike info the melting-pot of his imagination, to be cast into a fable, often beautiful, with a moral in its train. To such an influence as this Herodotus was peculiarly susceptible. His genuinely conscientious desire to write history in all truth was tinged with a piety which induced an unconscious reservation of fact. He preferred the improbable combined with a distinct moral lesson to the probable when no moral lesson was conveyed. He wished to teach as well as to inform.

It is not necessary to suppose—there are, indeed, many reasons for thinking it improbable,—that he ever departed from what he believed to be true; but, at the same time, he was not possessed of the keen critical faculty which would have been necessary to unravel the truth from the falsehood of the tales which must have formed so largely the basis of the history of the earlier part of the fifth century. His account of Gelo is doubtless coloured by, if not reproduced from, the tradition of the Greece of his time with regard to this incident in the history of the great war. That war was regarded as far the greatest of the triumphs of Hellenic freedom, a triumph of free institutions over the monarchical system. The nature of the triumph would have been largely discounted had it been necessary to record the name of a hated tyrant upon the roll of fame. And so, may be, the connection between Gelo’s victory and the war of liberation in Greece itself was a thing almost forgotten in Hellas by the time of Herodotus. It may have been hardly known to his generation, or only sufficiently known to be resented and buried in silence. The tale as it was told was a grand moral lesson to the democratic Greek. Even in the stress of the severest need the free Greek had refused to sell his birthright of command to a hated tyranny, though the price offered had been great. And yet the issue had been triumphant. Could it be bearable that the tyrant should be accorded a share in the triumph? The tradition which Herodotus followed had some such motive behind it.

#PERSIA AND CARTHAGE.#

It may not be possible at the present time to arrive at aught resembling a detailed knowledge of this side plot of the great drama of 480, and even the circumstances of the information are not of such a kind as to allow us to speak with ultimate assurance on the main outlines of it; but the evidence, actual and presumptive, when the several items are added and subtracted, leaves a large balance of probability in favour of a view very different from that which Herodotus has given to the world.

It is not, perhaps, unnatural that knowledge after the event should tend to obscure the true appreciation of all that preceded it. There is, however, one phase of the Persian expedition of 480 which stands out above all others; and that is the splendid character of the organization which placed the enormous host of Xerxes in middle Greece. It was not merely the outcome of the experience of years of campaigning half the world over; it must have been the outcome of some years of preparation with an express end in view. Can it be supposed that in these years the advantages of a diversion in the western world of Greece escaped the notice of a people who gave such practical proof of capacity? It cannot be too often said that it is a great historical mistake to read the incapacity of the Persia of the fourth century into its history at the beginning of the fifth.

The means of creating the diversion were both obvious and easy. Persia, through the intermediary of her subjects the Phœnicians, had excellent means of communicating with and influencing the great Carthaginian power. This influence must have been largely increased by the favour which Persia showed to the Phœnician as against the Greek trader.

It is unnecessary to point to the fact that Carthage would presumably require but little persuasion to attack the rival Greek in Sicily at a time when no help could possibly be given from Greece itself.

◆H vii. 166.◆

The Sicilian Greek seems to have had no sort of doubt as to the connection between the invasion of his own island and that of the mother country. ◆H. vii. 165. _ad init._◆ Herodotus, even in spite of his bias towards the Greek version of the story, ◆H vii. 166.◆ gives some hint of a different version in Sicily. ◆Frag. Hist. Græc.◆ He does not apparently know much about it, as he does not mention Himera as the locality of the decisive battle.

◆Frag. III. Schol. Pind.◆

It is in a fragment of Ephoros that occurs the first extant historical reference to the connection between the two expeditions. ◆Pyth. i. 146.◆ He says that Persian and Phœnician ambassadors were sent to the Carthaginians, “ordering” them to invade Sicily with as large an expedition as possible, and after subduing it, to come on to the Peloponnese. Discredit has been cast on the passage in consequence of the use of the word “order,” because, so it is said, the Persians were not in a position to give orders to Carthage. But, supposing the use of the word is not merely an instance of verbal inaccuracy, it is quite conceivable that a Greek historian might use such an expression to describe the supposed relations between the mother state of Phœnicia and her colony. ◆Diod. xi. 1.◆ The historian Diodorus recognizes the same connection between the two expeditions. He does not, however, make any reference to Phœnician agency in the matter, nor does he speak of an “order,” but of a diplomatic agreement.[106]

#SICILIAN TRADITION.#

One question remains: Did Gelo ever seriously entertain the idea of sending help to the mother country? It is hardly conceivable that he did. The Carthaginian preparations were on such a scale that he must have been long forewarned of the coming storm. Whether he made any sort of offer to the Greek embassy is quite another question.

If the Greek version of the story of the time provokes the suspicion that it arose under influences inimical to the strict truth, the Sicilian also, of which there is a hint in Herodotus, and some detail in Diodorus, suggests in certain of its passages that it is not an unadorned tale. That sentiment of the free Greek which, when the history of the great war came to be written, led him to deny the Sicilian tyrant all share in its glory, met a counter-sentiment in Sicily, which claimed for the Sicilian Greek a share in the famous triumph. Under such influences both exaggeration and suppression of the truth were sure to take place. The Sicilian version was not content with confining itself to the just claim that Gelo and Sicily in the victory at Himera had contributed to the triumphant result of the great war. It sought evidently to ascribe to the Sicilian Greek a sympathetic, if not actual, share in the liberation of Greece itself. ◆Diod. xi 26.◆ Gelo is represented as having, after the victory of Himera, prepared a fleet with a view to sending help to Greece, but to have desisted from the design on receiving news of the victory at Salamis. This is neither capable of proof nor disproof. The exact date of Himera is not known, though there was a tradition that it was fought on the same day as Salamis. If that be accepted, this addition to the Sicilian version must be rejected; but if the tradition was merely of that class which is found represented in the history of the time, and which supplied the eternal demand for curious coincidences, then it is possible that Himera was fought sufficiently long before Salamis to make it possible for Gelo to entertain such a design; nor would it have been strange had he sought to avenge himself on Persia for an attack which she had provoked against him. It is possible, too, that the epigram reported to have been engraved on an offering of Gelo at Delphi[107] refers not merely to the true significance of Himera, but also to the preparation of this expedition which was never sent.

This war in Sicily, and the questions which arise concerning it, are of much greater importance to the study of this period of Greek history than the comparative brevity of their treatment by Greek historians might suggest to the mind of a reader who did not realize to himself their full significance. The Greek tyrant in Sicily played no small part in spreading and developing certain sides of that Greek civilization which has contributed so largely towards the civilization of the present day. The view, therefore, which was taken by one of the greatest and most able of those tyrants as to the part which he should play at a time when that civilization was threatened with extinction, is not a minor matter in the history of Greece, or, indeed, of the world. Nor, again, can the part played by Persia in the invasion of Sicily be of small account. Persia at this time represented, in certain respects,—and especially with respect to sheer capacity and breadth of view, —the highest development which the great empires of the East were able to attain; and its connection or lack of connection with the attack on Sicily cannot but affect the judgment which the modern world must pass on that capacity.[108]

To the Greeks gathered in council at the Isthmus the outlook, after their retreat from Tempe, and after the return of the embassies, must have been a gloomy one. Nothing had been gained, and much had been lost. Thessaly with its cavalry, that arm in which the Greeks were peculiarly weak, and their enemy peculiarly strong, had been perforce left to its fate; and no one could doubt what that would be. The states between Kithæron and Œta were wavering, ready to desert. They could hardly be blamed. The backbone of the future resistance seemed to be with Sparta and the states of the Peloponnesian league who followed her lead. #QUESTION OF THE LINE OF DEFENCE.# It might well be suspected, perhaps even then it was known, that, if they could have their way, the defence of the Isthmus would be the beginning and the end of their design. Northern Greece seemed but too likely to be left to its fate, just as Thessaly had been. Was it strange that it should seek to make terms of submission? In one of its states, moreover, and that the most powerful from a military point of view, Bœotia, more sinister influences were at work. The oligarchical party, at all times strong in that country whose comparatively open nature left the many at the mercy of the powerful few, seemed only too ready to play a part similar to that which the Aleuadæ had played in Thessaly.

The attitude of Argos was also calculated to cause alarm. It must be pointed out at the same time, that though it aggravated the situation to a certain extent, it did not affect it so decisively as has been imagined by modern commentators. The possibility of the landing of Persian troops behind the defences of the Isthmus was not a question so much dependent on the action of Argos as on the success or failure of the Greek fleet in checking the advance of the enemy’s ships before they succeeded in crossing the Saronic Gulf. Had the Persian fleet once succeeded in establishing itself in some harbour of the coast of Argolis, the defence of the Isthmus must have collapsed, whatever the attitude of Argos might have been. This State, owing to the losses it had suffered in the great defeat which Kleomenes and the Spartans inflicted upon it, can hardly have been in a position to offer serious resistance to a landing on its coasts.

Note.—The relation of date between the return of the embassies and the retreat from Tempe is of considerable importance to a right appreciation of the situation at this critical time. Herodotus dates the events in Greece by the advance of Xerxes’ army. Thus the expedition to Tempe is stated to have taken place βασιλέος τε μέλλοντος διαβαίνειν ἐς τῆν Εὐρώπην ἐκ τὴς Ἀσίης, καὶ εὄντος ἤδη ἐν Ἀβύδῳ. H. vii. 174.

Again, the embassies seem to have been despatched simultaneously to Sicily, Corcyra, Crete and Argos (H. vii. 148, 153, etc.). That to Sicily would almost certainly be the last to return. Gelo did not send the treasure-ships to Delphi until after the visit of the embassy (H. vii. 163, _ad init._), and he did not send them till _after_ he had heard that Xerxes had crossed the Hellespont.

If, then, the rough chronology of Herodotus can be relied upon,—and there is not any other source of information upon the subject available,—the Greeks who assembled at the Isthmus after the withdrawal from Tempe must have known that the resources then at their disposal were all upon which they could reckon in the coming struggle.

_Note on the Carthaginian Invasion of Sicily._

The satisfactorily attested fact that a large Carthaginian Army attacked Sicily simultaneously with the invasion of Greece by Xerxes raises the very difficult question whether the coincidence in time between the two attacks was anything more than accidental; and, if it was, as to the exact nature of the relation between them. Before discussing the question, it may be well to collect together the various passages in ancient authors in which reference is made to the nature of the Carthaginian campaign.

H. vii. 165.

Λέγεται δὲ καὶ τάδε ὑπὸ τῶν ἐν Σικελίῃ οἰκημένων, ὡς ὅμως, καὶ μέλλων ἄρχεσθαι ὑπὸ Λακεδαιμονίων, ὁ Γέλων ἐβοήθησε ἂν τοῖσι Ἕλλησι, εἰ μὴ ὑπὸ Θήρωνος τοῦ Αἰνησιδήμου Ἀκραγαντίνων μουνάρχου ἐξελασθεὶς ἐξ Ἱμέρης Τήριλλος ὁ Κρινίππου, τύραννος ἐὼν Ἱμέρης, ἐπῆγε ὑπ’ αὐτὸν τὸν χρόνον τοῦτον φοινίκων καὶ Λιβύων καὶ Ἰβήρων καὶ Λιγύων καὶ Ἑλισύκων καὶ Σαρδονίων καὶ Κυρνίων τριήκοντα μυριάδας, καὶ στρατηγὸν αὐτῶν Ἀμίλκαν τὸν Ἄννωνος, Καρχηδονίων ἐόντα βασιλέα˙ κατὰ ξεινίην τε τὴν ἑωυτοῦ ὁ Τήριλλος ἀναγνώσας, καὶ μάλιστα διὰ τὴν Ἀναξίλεω τοῦ Κρητίνεω προθυμίην, ὁς Ῥηγίου ἐὼν τύραννος, τὰ ἑωυτοῦ τέκνα δοὺς ὁμήρους Ἀμίλκᾳ, ἐπῆγε μιν ἐπὶ τὴν Σικελίαν, τιμωρέων τῷ πενθερῷ·

Then there follows the statement that Gelon and Theron defeated Hamilcar in Sicily the same day as Salamis was fought, after which we get two accounts—the first presumably Greek, probably Syracusan, the second Carthaginian—of Hamilcar’s disappearance in the battle, and a further statement to the effect that the Carthaginians sacrificed to him, and set up statues to him in Carthage and her colonies.

It is noticeable that in neither account does Herodotus mention Himera as the locality of the battle.

Of the treasures sent by Gelon to Delphi, he tells us (vii. 163) that Gelon, fearing that the Greeks might succumb to the Persian, but considering it quite an impossible thing for the tyrant of Sicily to go to Peloponnese to be put under the command of Lacedæmonians, sent, immediately on hearing of the passage of the Hellespont by the Persians, a certain Cadmus with three ships to Delphi with much treasure and friendly words (καραδοκήσαντα τὴν μάχην ᾕ πεσέεται˙ καὶ ἤν μὲν ὁ βάρβαρος νικᾷ, τὰ τε χρήματα αὐτῷ διδόναι, καὶ γῆν τε καὶ ὕδωρ τῶν ἄρχει ὅ Γέλων˙ ἤν δὲ οἱ Ἕλληνες, ὀπίσω ἀπάγειν), and (_VII_. 164) we are told that when the Greeks won in the sea-fight, and Xerxes departed, Cadmus returned to Sicily, bringing all the treasure with him.

A fragment of the history of Ephorus (Frag. _III_ Schol. Pind. Pyth. I. 146) gives the following account of the matter:—

Ἐκ δὲ Περσῶν καὶ Φοινίκων πρέσβεις πρὸς Καρχηδονίους [παραγενέσθαι] προστάσσοντας ὡς πλεῖστον δέοι στόλον˙ εἰς Σικελίαν τε βαδίζειν, καὶ καταστρεψαμένους τοὺς τὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων φρονοῦντας πλεῖν ἐπὶ Πελοπόννησον.

#THE CARTAGINIAN INVASION OF SICILY.#

Diodorus, xi. 1, says:—

“Ὁ δὲ Ξέρξης.... βονλόμενος πάντας τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἀναστάτους ποιῆσαι, διεπρεσβεύσατο πρὸς Καρχηδονίους περὶ κοινοπραγίας, καὶ συνέθετο πρὸς αὐτοὺς. ὥστε αὐτὸν μὲν ἐπὶ τοὺς τὴν Ἑλλάδα κατοικοῦντας Ἕλληνας στρατεύειν,

“Καρχηδονίους δὲ τοῖς αὐτοῖς χρόνοις μεγάλας παρασκευάσασθαι δυνάμεις, καὶ καταπολεμῆσαι τῶν Ἑλλήνων τοὺς περὶ Σικελίαν καὶ Ἰταλίαν οἰκοῦντας.”

These are the historical passages which bear on the subject.

Of non-historical passages, we have in the “Poetics” of Aristotle, 23, a reference to the coincidence in date of the battles of Salamis and Himera.

It is needless to say that we are here in the presence of evidence which, if not actually conflicting, is at any rate extremely difficult to reconcile.

Only one great fact stands out with certainty, namely, that two great simultaneous attacks were made in 480 B.C. on the two great divisions of the free Hellenic world. The question is: Were they part of one great scheme, or was their coincidence purely fortuitous?

To speak with the appearance of assuredness on such a question would be delusive, in that it would assume that there existed in the evidence attainable a conclusiveness to which it cannot lay any claim. Such as it is, it can only be judged by the law of probabilities.

Let us first take the probabilities of the case apart from the evidence actually quoted here.

Phœnicia, the mother country of Carthage, was at this time within the Persian dominion. Its population seems, on the whole, to have received exceptionally favourable treatment from the Persian Government, probably because it supplied the best material, animate and inanimate, to the fleet of the empire. It would also be to the interest of the Persian Government to encourage the most enterprising traders of its dominion. Furthermore, the subjugation of Phœnicia had not broken the tie of relationship between the mother country and the greatest of its colonies. When, under Cambyses, the Persian dominions had been extended as far as the Greater Syrtis, the Phœnicians had refused to prosecute the war further against their kin (H. iii. 17–19); and it had apparently been thought wise, if not necessary, to submit to this refusal. From that time forward there had, in so far as is known, been no unfriendly relations between Persia and Carthage. So long as the Phœnician was well treated there was hardly a point on which they could clash. In the present instance their interests manifestly coincided. It was certainly to the interest of Xerxes that the Sicilian Greeks should have their hands full at the time of his great attack on Greece. The Persians had plenty of means of knowing that there was a great Greek military power in Sicily which might render important aid to the Greeks in the coming struggle. The Carthaginian, on the other hand, might well think this a favourable opportunity for crushing the ever-increasing Greek trade competition in the richest island in the Mediterranean, at a time when the Sicilian Greek could not expect help from the mother country.

It is, when we consider the part played by the Phœnicians in Xerxes’ expedition, infinitely more probable that there was a connection between the two expeditions than that there was not. Whether the connection was of the intimate kind described by Diodorus may perhaps be doubted, but certainly cannot be disproved. Ephoros and Diodorus believe it to have been intimate; and the latter seems, in so far as can be seen from the nature of the fragment of Ephoros, to have had evidence on the subject quite independent of it.

No true canon of criticism can possibly assume that the silence of Herodotus or any other ancient author on this or any other point in ancient history is in any way conclusive. Not to speak of the difficulties of gaining information at a period in which few written records can have existed, the narrative of Herodotus is not unaffected by the special influences to which the author was exposed. On the question of evidence, it may be said that it would be in Sicily and not in Greece that we should expect that written records of the connection between the two expeditions would exist,—records which Diodorus might have seen, though they never came to the knowledge of Herodotus; and, on the question of influence, it would not be in disaccord with Greek practice if the fact that Gelo refused to send aid to Hellas should, quite apart from the grounds of his refusal, have led the Greek world to ignore his participation in the great battle for Greek liberty. The nature of his government could hardly fail to emphasize such a tendency.

The animus of the tradition which Herodotus followed is clearly shown by the motive attached to the reported despatch of the treasure-ship to the Corinthian Gulf. Was it likely that Gelo would worry himself about the distant danger from Persia, when the more immediate and, to him, greater danger from Carthage threatened? Why should he attempt to buy off a doubly hypothetical Persian attack when he was face to face with an enormously powerful foe near at hand? If the treasure-ship was sent, the sending of it looks like the act of a man who wished to provide against possible disaster in Sicily. He had to place it beyond reach of the Carthaginian fleet. He had to speculate on the ultimate success of the Greeks. There was absolutely no other place in the world where it was likely to be more safe than in the Corinthian Gulf, though that might not be an ideal place of security.

[Illustration: MOUNTAINS OF THERMOPYLÆ, FROM PHALARA.

_From Sketch by E. Lear._]

1. Kallidromos (11 1⁄2 miles).

2. The Great Gable (Path of Anopæa).

3. Great Ravine at Thermopylæ.

4. Malian Gulf.

5. Mount Giona (28 miles).

6. Asopos Ravine.

7. Trachinian Cliffs.

8. Hot Springs.

[_To face page_ 257.

]