Mission to Gelon tyrant of Syracuse. 481 B.C.

tion and a power second only to that of Sparta or of Athens: and it was as natural to suppose that Gelon would stand on his dignity and insist on co-ordinate power with those two states as that they should refuse to admit his claim. This idea has taken shape in the tale which relates how the messengers from the Congress told him of the coming of the Persian, professedly for the purpose of taking vengeance on Athens, but really with the design of inslaving all the Greeks, and besought him, in his own interest as well as theirs, to unite hand and heart in the effort to break his power. 'It is vain to think,' they urged, that the Persian will not come against you, if we are conquered. Take heed in time. By aiding us thou savest thyself; and a good issue commonly follows wise counsel.' The answer of Gelon was a vehement outburst against their grasping selfishness. "When I sought your aid,' he said, ' against the men of Karchêdôn (Carthage), and promised to open to you markets from which you have reaped rich gains,1 ye would not come: and, as far as lies with you, all this country had been under the barbarians to this day. But I have prospered; and now that war threatens you, ye begin to remember Gelon. I will not, however, deal with you, as ye have dealt with me. I will give you 200 triremes and 20,000 hoplites, with horsemen and archers, slingers and runners. I will also give corn for all the army of the Greeks as long as the war may last but I will do this only on condition that I be the chieftain and leader of the Greeks against the barbarians.' This demand over-taxed the patience of the Spartan Syagros. 'In very deed,' he said, 'would Agamemnon the son of Pelops mourn, if he were to hear that the Spartans had been robbed of their honour by Gelon and the Syracusans. Dream not that we shall ever yield it to you. If thou choosest to aid Hellas, do so under the Spartans: if thou wilt not have it so, then stay at home.' But Gelon was ready with his answer. Spartan friend,' he said, 'abuse commonly makes a man angry; but I will not pay back insults in kind, and thus far I will yield. If ye rule by sea, I will rule by land; and if ye rule by land, then must I rule on the sea.' But here the Athenian messenger stood forth and said, 'King of the Syracusans, the Hellenes have sent us not because they want a leader, but because they want an army. Of an army thou sayest little; about the command much. When thou didst ask to lead us all, we left it to the Spartans to speak: but as to ruling on the sea, that we cannot yield. We grudge not to the Spartans their power by land; but we will give place to none on the sea. We have more seamen than all the Greeks; we are of all Greeks the

1 Herod. vii. 158.

most ancient nation, and in the war of which Homer sings, our leader was the best of those who came to Ilion to set an army in battle array.' 'Athenians,' answered Gelon, 'you seem likely to have many leaders, but few to be led. But since ye will yield nothing and grasp everything, hasten home and tell the Greeks that the spring-time has been taken out of their year.' Such is the tale which Herodotos relates as most generally believed among the continental Greeks about the conduct of Gelon during the Persian war; but he has the candour to give other accounts which deprive the popular tradition of all its value. According to one of these stories Gelon sent Kadmos of Kos with a charge similar to that which was given to the commander of the Korkyraian fleet. He was to go with a large sum of money to Delphoi ; and if the Persian gained the victory, he was to present the money to Xerxes as a peace-offering. If the Greeks should gain the day, he was to bring it back again. The historian, having added that to his great credit he did bring it back, goes on to give the Sicilian version of the affair which asserted that in spite of Spartan supremacy Gelon would still have aided the Greeks, had not Terillos the banished tyrant of Himera brought against him under Hamilkar a host of Phenicians, Libyans, Iberians and other tribes equal in number to the Persians who fought under Mardonios at Plataiai,' and that therefore, being unable to help them with men, he sent a supply of money for their use to Delphoi.

Abandon

ment of the Tempe.

pass of

480 B.C.

But if Argos and Korkyra, Krete and Syracuse, were not to be trusted, and if Thebes with the Boiotian cities was bitterly hostile, it was still possible to preserve the Hellenic tribes which lay to the south of the pass of Tempe and to secure their aid against the invader. In any effort to guard the defile of Tempe the Thessalians declared themselves eager to take part to the utmost of their power: but they admitted plainly that their geographical position left them absolutely dependent on the aid of their Hellenic kinsfolk, and that, if this aid were withheld, they must secure their safety by making a covenant with the Persian king which would assuredly constrain them to fight against those whom they would infinitely prefer to help. It might well have been thought that no post could have been more easily tenable than this Thessalian defile, along which for a distance of five miles a road stretches, nowhere more than 20, and sometimes not more than 13 feet in width. Hence no time was lost in occupying the pass with 10,000 hoplites, aided by the Thessalian cavalry, under the com2 Ib. vii. 165.

1 Herod. ii. 554.

mand of the Spartan Euainetos and the Athenian Themistokles. But they held the pass for a few days only; and popular traditions, as usual, assigned its abandonment to different motives. The thought of guarding Tempe being given up, it was resolved that a stand should be made in the defile of Thermopylai while the fleet should take up its station on the northernmost coast of Euboia which received its name from a temple of Artemis. It would have suited better with the Greek tactics of this day to await the Persians in the narrower pass of the strait which separated Chalkis from the Boiotian coast: but to do this would have been to allow the Persian fleet to take the guardians of Thermopylai in the rear.

The mission

of Leonidas

from Sparta

to Thermo

480 B.C.

The accumulation of mud at the mouth of the Spercheios has in the course of three-and-twenty centuries so changed the coast of the Malian gulf that some of the most material features in the description of Herodotos no longer characterise this memorable spot. In his day the Sperpylai. June. cheios, which drained the plain between the range of Tymphrestos and Othrys on the north and that of Oita on the south precisely as the Peneios drained the great Thessalian plain to the south of Pindos, ran into the gulf near the town of Antikyra at a point about 22 miles due west of the Kenaian or northwesternmost promontory of Euboia. From its mouth the coast, having stretched southwards for somewhat more than two miles, trended away to the east; and at short intervals the sea here received the small streams of the Dyras, Melas, and Asopos. These insignificant rivers are now discharged into the Spercheios which, flowing on the south instead of on the north side of Antikyra, reaches the sea at a point considerably to the east of Thermopylai. We look therefore in vain for the narrow space which, leaving room for nothing more than a cart track, gave access to the pass within which so many Persians were to meet their death. Close above the town of Anthela, the ridge of Oita, known there by the name Anopaia, came down so close to the water as to leave only this narrow pathway. Between this point, at a distance of perhaps a mile and a half to the east and a little to the west of the first Lokrian hamlet of Alpenoi, another spur of the mountain locked in the wider space within which the army of Leonidas took up its post, but which for all practical purposes was as narrow as the passes at either extremity which received the name of the Gates or the Hot Gates (Pylai, or Thermopylai). This narrow road was hemmed in by the precipitous mountain on the one side, and on the other by the marshes produced by the hot springs. But to render the passage still more difficult than nature had made it, the

Phokians had led the mineral waters almost over the whole of it and had also built across it near the western entrance a wall with strong gates. Much of this work had fallen from age; but it was now repaired, and behind it we are told that the Greek army determined to await the attack of the Persians. Here, about the summer solstice, when Xerxes had already reached Thermê, was assembled a force of Spartans and their allies under Leonidas who to his surprise had succeeded to the kingly office. Of his two elder brothers Dorieus had been killed in Sicily,' and Kleomenes had died without sons. Thus Leonidas became the representative of Eurysthenes and, as Spartan custom permitted, married his brother's daughter who had foiled the efforts of the Milesian Aristagoras to bribe her father into undertaking a wild and desperate enterprise." He had set out on this his first and last expedition as king with three hundred picked hoplites or heavyarmed citizens. On his march he had been joined, it is said, by 1000 from Tegea and Mantineia, by 120 Arkadians from Orchomenos and 1000 more from other cities, together with 400 Corinthians, 200 from Phlious and 80 from Mykenai, the once proud city of Agamemnon. As he drew near to the pass, his army was increased by 1000 Phokians, by the whole force of the Lokrians of Opous, by 700 Thespians, and lastly by 400 Thebans whom Leonidas was anxious to take with him as hostages for the good faith of a city strongly suspected of Medism. The fact remains, if the narrative generally deserve any credit, that at a time when they supposed the Persians to be coming against them almost with millions, they were content to send forward for the maintenance of a pass second in importance only to the defile of Tempe a body of troops not exceeding 10,000 men. It was the month, Herodotos tells us, of the Karneian festival, during which it was forbidden to Dorians to go out to war. It was also the time of the great Olympic feast; and the conclusion is forced upon us that this was regarded at Sparta as a sufficient reason for sending on an advanced guard of only 300 heavy-armed citizens, and by the Athenians as a reason for sending none at all. But according to the story the power of the Persians was still too great to allow to the Greeks even the possibility of resistance; and the terror which already oppressed them was deepened when they heard that ten of the fastest sailing ships of the Persian fleet had fallen in with the three scout ships which the Greeks had stationed off the island of Skiathos about three miles to the east of the southernmost promontory of Magnesia. At the sight of the Persian vessels the 2 See p. 138.

1 See p. 65.

Greek ships fled; but the Troizenian ship was soon taken. The Athenian ship steered straight for the mouth of the Peneios, and, wonderful to say, found its way safely along a coast some eighty miles in length through the throng of Persian ships which were hurrying southwards. The crew left the stranded hull to the barbarians, and by a good luck still more wonderful contrived to march through Thessaly then occupied by some three or four millions of Persians, and so to reach Athens. But the tidings of this first encounter of Hellenes and barbarians at sea had been conveyed by fire signals from Skiathos to the fleet at Artemision; and the commanders at once sailed to Chalkis with the intention of guarding the Euripos.

Destruction

of a portion of the Per

sian fleet by

a storm on

the Magne

sian coast.

Starting from Thermê, eleven days after the departure of Xerxes with the land-forces, the Persian fleet reached, we are told, after a single day's sail the southern part of the strip of coast stretching from the mouth of the Peneios to the promontory which marks the entrance of the gulf of Pagasai. In utter unconsciousness of danger the Persian commanders moored upon the Magnesian beach those ships which came first, while the rest lay beyond them at anchor, ranged in rows eight deep facing the sea. At break of day the air was clear, and the sea still: but the breeze, here called the wind of the Hellespont, soon rose and gathered to a storm. Those who had time drew their ships upon the shore and escaped; but all the vessels which were out at sea were borne away and dashed upon the Ovens of Pelion and all along the beach as far as Meliboia and Kasthanaia. Of the corn-ships and, other vessels that were wrecked the numbers were never known: but with the wood obtained from them the captains threw up a strong fortification on the shore as a precaution, it is said, against attacks from the Thessalians. Meanwhile the Greeks, who on the second day of the storm had heard of the mischief done to their enemies, plucked up courage and through the comparatively smooth waters of the Euboian sea sailed back to Artemision. The barbarians, however, were not so sorely crippled as the Greeks had hoped to find them. When the storm abated, their ships, drawn down from the shore, sailed to Aphetai at the entrance of the Pagasaian gulf and took up their position precisely opposite to the Greek fleet at Artemision. Some hours later,

1 Herod. vii. 191. The statement is singularly inconsistent with the conduct ascribed to the Thessalians after the abandonment of the pass of Tempe by Themistokles. But is it credible that even Thessalian wreckers would venture on practising their

vocation upon men whose wrongs might be avenged by an army of many millions or even many myriads then passing on the other side of the ridge which had proved so fatal to the Persian fleet ?