Embassy of the Spartans to Athens.

The tidings of this change in Persian policy had reached Sparta and awakened there the liveliest alarm. The counter-proposal which they made through ambassadors hurriedly sent was that they would maintain the households of the Athenians as long as the war should last, if only they would hold out stoutly against Mardonios. The alleged reply of the Athenians to both their suitors is marked by that real dignity which springs from the consciousness of thoroughly disinterested motives. Whether it has been handed down as it was uttered, or not, we can well understand the glow of pride with which the Athenians of a later day recalled these utterances of exalted patriotism. To Alexandros they said, 'We know that the army of the Medes is much larger than ours, and there is no need to cast this in our teeth: but in the struggle for freedom we will beat them off with all our might. And now tell Mardonios what we say, "As long as the sun shall keep the same path in the heaven, we will never make peace with Xerxes: but we will face him, trusting in the help of gods and heroes, whom he has insulted by burning their homes and shrines." Then turning to the Spartans they said, 'It was perhaps natural that you should dread our making peace with the barbarian; but you know little of the mind of the Athenians, for not all the gold throughout all the world could tempt us to take the part of the Medes and help to inslave Hellas. Even if we were willing to do so, there are many things to hinder us, and chiefly the shrines and dwellings of the gods which they have burnt and thrown down. Yet more, the whole Hellenic race is of the same blood and speech with us; we share in common the temples of our gods; we have the same sacrifices and the same way of life; and these the Athenians can never betray. Be assured now, if you knew it not before, that so long as but one Athenian shall remain, we will never make any covenant with Xerxes. For your goodwill to us we thank you: but we will struggle on as well as we can without giving you trouble. All that we pray you to do is to send out your army with all speed, for assuredly the barbarian will soon be in our land, when he learns that we will not do as he would have us; and we ought to meet him in Boiotia before he can advance as far as Attica.'

Beautiful, however, though these words may be, yet either they were put together at a later day, or the sequel of the narrative has been falsified. At the time of the Re-occupaembassy to Athens the Isthmian wall remained unfinished, as it had been when Xerxes began his homeward journey: but the pledges which they had received of Athenian stedfastness encouraged them to the most strenuous

tion of Athens by Mardonios.

efforts for its immediate completion. With its completion came back seemingly the old indifference; and the Persians were again in Attica before a single Spartan troop had advanced beyond the isthmus. Nay more, no sooner had the wall been finished, than Kleombrotos led the Spartan army hurriedly back to Sparta1 because an eclipse of the sun had taken place. On his death, which happened almost immediately after, his son Pausanias was appointed general, and guardian of his cousin Pleistarchos the young son of Leonidas. Taken altogether, things looked better for Mardonios than ever they had looked for Xerxes. He was at the head of a more compact and manageable army; and his Hellenic allies seemed to be stirred by redoubled zeal in his cause. But Mardonios, as Herodotos believed, was feverishly anxious to repossess himself of Athens, partly because he was suffering from divinely inflicted frenzy, and partly because he wished to send the tidings of his own glorification to Sousa. His caution in avoiding acts of violence on retaking the city sufficiently disproves these inferences. Mardonios was as steadily intent on winning over the Athenians as Xerxes had been on punishing them. There was yet the chance that their stubborn will might give way when they saw their soil again trodden by invading armies, while the care of the general in protecting their city might justify them in trusting to any covenant which they might make with him. To carry out this plan he crossed the frontiers of Attica. Once more the Athenians conveyed their families and household goods to Salamis; and ten months after the capture of the Akropolis by Xerxes Mardonios entered a silent and desolate city. Still hoping that his scheme might succeed, he dispatched a Hellespontian named Mourychides to Salamis with the same terms which he had already offered through Alexandros. The terms were rejected: but the Athenian people at once informed the Peloponnesians that, unless they received immediate aid, they must devise some means of escape from their present troubles. That these words indicate submission to Persia, is patent from the speech which at this point the historian puts into the mouth of the Athenian, Plataian, and Megarian ambassadors at Sparta. Here we have a recapitulation of the terms offered by Mardonios: but this is no longer followed by the impassioned declaration that the sun should fall from heaven sooner than Athens would submit to the enemy and that, if but one Athenian survived, that Athenian would rather die than make any paction with the tyrant. Instead of this, we have

1 Such a fact as this shows how little reliance is to be placed on the words which, put into the mouth of Leonidas, represent retreat as an

impossibility for a Spartan leader. Herod. ix. 10.

2 Herod. ix. 1.

215 the tranquil declaration that they heartily desire the welfare of Hellas, and that they will make no paction with the enemy, if they can avoid the so doing. The speech is a wretched bathos after the lofty protestations uttered in the hearing of the Makedonian chieftain, and the two traditions exclude each other.

March of the

under Pau

sanias from

The reproaches of the Athenians, so the story runs, fell for the present on deaf ears. The Lakedaimonians were keeping the feast of the Hyakinthian Apollon; and exactness of religious ceremonial was to them of greater moment Spartans than resistance to the barbarian. They could also comfort themselves with the thought that the Isth- Sparta. mian wall had all but received its coping stones and battlements. They could afford therefore to put off the Athenian ambassadors by specious excuses from day to day; and they succeeded in so putting them off for ten days until Chileos of Tegea, hearing from the ephors the substance of the Athenian demands, assured them that their wall would be of very little use, if by virtue of any covenant made with Mardonios the Athenian fleet should cooperate with the Persian land-army. As if this very obvious remark came with the merit of absolute novelty, the ephors, we are told, took the words of Chileos seriously to heart, and on that very night dispatched from Sparta five thousand hoplites under Pausanias, son of Kleombrotos, each hoplite being attended by seven helots-in other words, a force amounting to 40,000 men. Early the following morning the ambassadors of the extra-Peloponnesian cities informed the ephors in few words that they were free to remain at home and keep festival to their hearts' content, but that the Athenians would at once make with the Persians the best terms which could now be obtained. They are gone,' replied the ephors, 'and are already in the Oresteion on their march to meet the strangers.' 'Who are gone, and who are the strangers?' asked the Athenians in reply to these mysterious tidings. Our Spartans have gone with their helots,' they answered, forty thousand men in all, and the strangers are the Persians.' In utter amazement the ambassadors hastened away, accompanied by 5,000 picked hoplites from the Lakedaimonian Perioikoi.

Paction of with Mar

the Argives

The explanation of all this mystery is found in the simple statement that the Argives were under a promise to Mardonios to prevent by force, if force should be necessary, the departure of any Spartan army from the Peloponnesos.1 If any part of the narrative deserve credit, it would be the unadorned and simple story of the conduct of Mardonios on the second invasion of Attica. Feeling that with the submission

1 Herod. ix. 12.

donios.

or the independent alliance of Athens his task would be practically done, he saw further that the Athenians would be best won over if the pressure put upon them should stop short of the devastation of their country and the burning of their houses. But there would be no chance of preventing pillage and plunder, if Attica should be made a battle-field. Hence it became of the utmost importance to him that no Peloponnesian force should be allowed to advance beyond the Isthmus; and the pledge given by the Argives seemed to assure him that from this quarter there was no danger to be feared. That the agreement between the Argives and Mardonios should come to the knowledge of the Spartan ephors, is not very surprising. Argos had from the first stood aloof in the contest; and her sympathies were known to be rather with the Persians than with their opponents. But the knowledge of this secret covenant between the Argives and the Persian general imposed on the ephors the need of absolute secrecy on their side in any military plans which they might desire to carry out, and made it scarcely less necessary to keep these plans from the knowledge of the Athenians than to prevent their being discovered by the Argives. If the latter were under any such pledge, nothing but secrecy could enable the Spartans to leave the Peloponnesos without fighting their way through Argive territory; and when owing to this secrecy their plan succeeded and the Argives sent word to Athens to say that they had failed to prevent the departure of the Spartans, Mardonios felt that his own scheme had likewise become hopeless. At once the whole land was abandoned to his soldiers. Athens was set on fire; and any walls and buildings which had escaped the ravages of the first invasion were dismantled and thrown down. He could not afford to stay and fight in a country which was ill-suited for cavalry and from which in case of defeat he would have to lead his army through narrow and dangerous passes. The order for retreat was therefore given; and Mardonios in a little while found himself once again on the plain of Thebes. The epical method of Herodotos is again disclosed as he approaches the great battle in which, according to the promise of Xerxes, Mardonios was to give to the Spartans satisfaction for the death of Leonidas. The pride and arrogance of the Persian leader are strengthened, while the hopes of his followers are represented as dying away. But the tale which tells how a blindness sent by the gods was on his eyes, while others foresaw the ruin, can be given only in the words of the historian.

The feast of

Attaginos.

479 B.C.

'While the barbarians were working on their fortified camp, Attaginos the son of Phrynon, a Theban, called Mardonios, with fifty of the chief men among the Persians, to a great banquet

which he had made ready in Thebes. The rest of this story I heard from Thersandros, a great man among the Orchomenians, who told me that he had been invited to this feast with fifty men of the Thebans and that they lay down to meat, not separately, but one Persian and one Theban together on each couch. When the feast was ended, as they were drinking wine, the Persian who lay on the couch with him asked him in the Greek language who he was: and when he answered that he was a man of Orchomenos, the Persian said, "Thou hast sat at the same table and shared the same cup with me, and I wish to leave thee a memorial of my foresight, that thou mayest be able by wise counsel to provide also for thyself. Thou seest the Persians who are with us at this banquet, and the army which we have left encamped on the river's bank. Yet a little while, and of all these but a very few shall remain alive." As the Persian said this, he wept bitterly; and Thersandros, marvelling at him, answered, "Is it not right that Mardonios should hear this and the Persians who are of weight with him?" But the other replied, "O friend, that which Heaven is bringing to pass it is impossible for man to turn aside, for no one will believe though one spake ever so truly. All this many of us Persians know well, but yet we follow, bound by a strong necessity and of all the pains which men may suffer the most hateful and wretched is this, to see the evils that are coming and yet be unable to overcome them." This story I heard from Thersandros himself, who also added that he had told the tale to many others before the battle was fought in Plataiai.'

Historical

value of the

story.

is ascribed

The sentiment put into the mouth of the Persian at the banquet of Attaginos seems to be not less distinctively Greek than those which are uttered by the seven conspirators against the usurpation of the Magians. The expression of any foreboding however slight, of any remark on the uncertainty of life as vague and general as that which to Xerxes when he surveyed his fleet in its glory,2 would unconsciously shape itself in the mind of Thersandros into that moral or religious form which imparts to the tale its perpetual freshness. But if we may not, on such testimony, assume that this anticipation of utter ruin was present to the mind of the Persian leaders (and that it oppressed the Persians generally we have no evidence whatever), the anecdote from every other point of view becomes superfluous. In the ethical conception of the history Mardonios was already doomed from the hour when Artabanos warned him that from his westward journey there would for him be no return; and the parting words of Xerxes consecrated him

3

1 See p. 124.

2 See p. 165.

3 Herod. vii. 10.