The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae (29 page)

I had trouble getting my fighting gear off because of damage to my right shoulder. I only noticed it after the fighting had ended. That night, camped up on the beach, a fast boat brought a message from Leonidas. The Persians had attacked and been repelled, so both the army and the fleet could fight again the next day knowing their rear was protected.

Next day after a poor night’s sleep disturbed by the cries of the wounded and dying we were back in the ships early enough to watch the sun rise from the deck. My right shoulder was a nasty mix of purple and livid yellow; I’d not be throwing any spears, that’s for sure. We went for the same tactics; bring them onto us then when they fouled each other because of their numbers go for them. The only way to learn how to fight at sea is by doing it and we were learning quickly.

The day followed a similar pattern but the fighting started earlier and by noon the sea between Artemisium and Aphetai was filled with skirmishing ships. Any battle plan only lasts until the moment of the first engagement, but Themistocles was quick to pick up what was possible to co- ordinate from
the deck of a trireme. He kept the Athene Nike towards the rear of the Athenian contingent so we didn’t engage, which for me was a relief as I doubted my ability to wield a sword in my right hand.

From this position Themistocles attempted to direct the actions of as much of the fleet as he could. As the light began to fade, both sides again disengaged and returned to base claiming victory. But it was more of a victory for us as we’d taken on the full might of the Persian fleet for two days and lost fewer ships. As Themistocles said that night after we dragged the ship up onto the beach,

“Our ships are quicker to break formation than theirs. If only we could lure them into a position where we want them, where they have to come at us. Then I think we could force them into an engagement where there was no possibility of retreat, where we could destroy them.”

But that was the last bit of optimistic thinking we enjoyed that night. When Lysias came back to our campfire from the officers’ meeting, he was glum-faced.

“The admirals think we can only fight like this one more day: they can field fresh ships from their reserves, we’ve already committed all ours.”

He was right, and anyway triremes aren’t built to withstand continuous days of fighting. They soon get the stuffing knocked out of them. We knew this from the state of the Athene Nike, which was still taking on water from the damage done during our ramming action the day before. But we could tell from his expression that wasn’t the only bad news. This was confirmed when Cimon asked him,

“But what about the Spartans? They’re depending on us to secure their flank.”

Lysias didn’t answer, just gazed at the fire. Cimon repeated,

“What about the Spartans?”

Lysias took a slug of wine, spat in the fire before grunting,

“There’s been no word from Thermopylae.”

We sat thinking through the implications of this as the flickering fire cast weird shadows. The whole camp was silent. Presumably there was a conversation like this round each ship’s company fire. Somewhere across the bay the Persians were sitting round the campfires they shared with traitors like Metiochus and Hipparchus. Their conversation would be more cheerful: they faced neither of our major problems.

Lysias would have made a good Spartan; he was as laconic as they were. Eventually he said,

“So we can fight one more day, then we leave the Spartans exposed. Or …”

He faltered, Cimon prompted,

“Or?”

But I think we’d worked out the answer before Lysias said,

“Or there are no Spartans anymore and we’re already outflanked.”

We turned in shortly after; the conversation had taken from us any energy we still possessed. But the night wasn’t finished with us. Sometime later, I’m not sure how long although the stars had shifted position, I was shaken out of a disturbed doze by a hand placed over my mouth. A voice said,

“Ssh, keep quiet, Mandrocles, get up and follow.”

It was Ariston. I blearily struggled to my feet and followed him scrunching across the shingle to where a small knot of men stood by the Athene Nike’s stern. I recognised Cimon, Lysias and, to my surprise, the Spartan admiral Eurybiades looking tired and I think a little drunk. Themistocles began speaking as soon as I we arrived.

“The message we expected from Leonidas has not come: there’s been no boat so I’ve …”

He managed to correct himself in time.

“That is we, rather, that is Admiral Eurybiades, has
decided to send our best and quickest ship overnight to Thermopylae to ascertain the position. There they are to inform King Leonidas, if he still lives, that we will hold one more day then withdraw. That will give him time to make his own dispositions.”

I glanced towards Eurybiades, he looked as if he was about to be sick, didn’t even make a show of commanding. Themistocles continued.

“But if Leonidas is dead and Thermopylae is in the hands of the Persians, come directly back and warn us of the new danger we face. It is a desperate voyage at night for a damaged trireme but yours is the crew I trust most. The fate of Greece depends on you so may the Gods protect and go with you.”

That nightmare mission to Thermopylae was like entering a large crowded room at night lit only by a dim lamp in one corner. You sense there is much going on but can only see the little that surrounds you. In fact, that’s true of our voyage through the night to Thermopylae as well; we knew there were rocks and shallows lurking in the darkness but couldn’t see them. That’s why the journey took so long, with Ariston grumbling the whole way that we shouldn’t be sailing these waters at night. But despite his fears he got us there, albeit at a snail’s pace.

Sometime after dawn, the sea fret we sailed through lifted and we saw the mountains above the pass. Even from a distance we could tell the narrow pass was a seething mass of activity, but which way things were going there we had no idea. War is confusion seen through the eyes of ignorance, and at a distance that confusion is compounded.

It takes nerve sailing into a mooring which may well be held by your mortal enemy but we had no choice. Our one consolation was that as long as there was still fighting then there was still hope and the closer we got the clearer it became that there was fighting, and hard fighting at that. By the time we pulled up to the shore we found chaos: it was
like the worst pit of Hades. Lysias took the only sensible decision he could.

“Helmsman, keep the boat offshore and in readiness to pull away at once if threatened, no one leaves their place at the rowing benches. The marines will remain on board. If we don’t return within two hours or you hear no word, get back quick as you can to the fleet and tell the commanders that the pass is lost and they are outflanked.”

Good leadership, that. Ariston was impressed; all he said in reply though was,

“Aye, trierarch, and the Gods go with you.”

We jumped to land and the Athene Nike pulled a short way off into the channel ready to run for it at the sight of trouble. Three of us only, although I think Aeschylus would have joined us given the chance. Cimon, as the son of the hero of Marathon, led the party out of respect to Leonidas, or in the event of his death to whoever now commanded the Spartans. Lysias and I comprised his retinue.

We scrambled up the steep track and arrived on the pass about seventy paces behind the wall. The place was scarcely recognisable, strewn with broken weapons and broken men. It was clear that most of the non-combatants had withdrawn. In fact apart from a contingent from one of the allies clustered together by the cliff face and looking ready to surrender the wall was undefended. There was plenty of evidence that it had been defended in the wounds disfiguring the bloody scattered dead.

The noise of fighting came from beyond the wall, the Persian side. This we couldn’t understand; it seemed impossible to believe that the Spartans had gone on the offensive as that would be suicide. We had no alternative but to follow the noise of battle, picking our way through the dead and dying and cross over the wall. Thermopylae is a terrible place.

We made our way through the detritus of war to the wall but as we reached it the howl of battle ceased, except for the groans of the maimed and dying that is. Our arrival by good fortune coincided with one of those lulls that occur in all battles when weary men driven beyond endurance pause to draw breath. So we had some moments to observe the carnage that had raged in the pass.

Two lines of Spartans with a small reserve stood with their backs to us. At a glance it was clear that the dead Spartans we’d walked across combined with the ones on the ground this side of the wall far outnumbered those still standing. Those still standing were ragged and bloody.

But beyond them, on a patch of ground slippery with blood and entrails, lay corpses. Heaped into piles, mostly Persian but with some Spartans and a knot of other Greeks lying dead together. It’s hard to describe that horror even now, despite all the other scenes of slaughter I’ve seen since. Beyond the dead packed densely together in the pass were the Persians, stretching back beyond where the eye could see. I recognised the black garb of the immortals at the front.

I could see they were using the pause to bring fresh men from the rear up to the forward battle line, a luxury not afforded to the Spartans. At Marathon we’d forced the immortals to run; they wouldn’t run from here. We’d arrived in time for the death throes of the battle. We knew now what message we had to take back: the fleet had to withdraw. The stricken field was lost and with it perhaps the war.

Lysias and I were turning to leave, to get away while there was still time, when one of those strange twists of fate occurred. A Spartan turned and saw us, shouted something. There was a command and both lines, keeping formation, backed towards us.

I’ve never liked Spartans, never trusted them and for good reason, but there, there in that blood soaked patch
of ground strewn with the mutilated dead and dying, they stood in their element; and for an instant I saw something magnificent. Cimon saw it too, except for him it came to define and ultimately ruin his life.

None of them was without a wound but as we stared at these creatures entering their own deaths the ranks parted and a man from the front rank approached us. In my memory, looking back it seemed to have all happened in silence but with the noise of the dying that can’t have been the case.

Then Leonidas stood before us, huge and grim like the God of war. Bare armed but wearing body armour behind his great shield. He was streaked in sweat and blood, cut about all over. His massive arms were slippery, streaked with grime, oil and blood. But it was his eyes you saw before everything else.

His eyes were somewhere else, not with us, like those of the temple servants who imbibe the fragrant smoke in order to receive the words of the Goddess. Cimon’s eyes were on him, fixated. And to be fair to Cimon, I too felt a compulsion to stare at Leonidas, but he himself broke that spell.

“Welcome, Athenians, I expected you earlier in answer to the message I sent.”

Speaking for Cimon, Lysias replied,

“We got no message, lord. Themistocles, son of Neocles, sent us to enquire if there is any way in which he can aid you.”

Sounds unbelievable, reader, doesn’t it, that in those circumstances men should address each other as if they stood before the assembly. But I promise you that actually was what Lysias said. Leonidas replied,

“No, there’s no aid he can send us, we’re beyond aid here. As for you, you’ve seen all you need. You see how things stand with us.”

We knew and that should have been the end of it; our
duty was to get the information back to the fleet. Lysias and I were already turning to go when Cimon asked him,

“But why leave your defensive position?”

It was a good question but not for there and then, we had to be away. Then a remarkable thing happened. Leonidas threw back his head and laughed as his mouth opened wide I could see the blood running over his lips and into his beard. The men around him began to laugh and through the laughter he said,

“If you care to hang around long enough on the other side of the wall, you’ll see why we’ve decided to enjoy the change of scenery over here.”

They laughed harder at this. I think Leonidas saw the hero worship in the young man’s eyes and decided to go easy on him. He controlled the laughter and said,

“Soon a second Persian army will come up behind us; in fact I’m surprised they’re not already in sight. So instead of waiting to be finished off like rats in a trap we decided to come out here onto open ground for our last stand and give them a lesson in how Spartans sell their lives.”

I could see that Cimon wanted to join them; his hand went to his sword hilt. Leonidas must have seen it too; he said,

“Your place is not with us, son of Miltiades, your duty is to warn the fleet and tell the rest of the Greeks how Spartans died, obedient to their word. So you’d better get off to your ship. I’ll pass on your respects to your father when I see him later today in the depths of Hades.”

I’m not even sure Cimon was listening to this. He asked,

“But how could they get behind you?”

“How? We were betrayed, boy, some treacherous Greek led them through the pass I expect.”

“But it was guarded.”

Leonidas ignored this; his gaze was returning to the battle, he said to Lysias,

“Tell Themistocles what you saw here. Tell him I kept my word and I expect him to do the same.”

Lysias began to reply but Leonidas wasn’t listening anymore. There was a howling from the Persian ranks and he turned and rejoined the front rank, throwing back a strange last comment.

“If you want to bid farewell to your friend, you’ll find him at the foot of the wall.”

Cimon didn’t react; I think he still wanted to die with them. But I knew what Leonidas had meant. I moved back to the wall and after a few moments picking my way through the dead and dying I found him: Brasidas. He wasn’t dead; well not quite dead but close, soon his spirit would fly wailing to join the other dead. The broken off stump of a javelin protruded from his shoulder, his leather corselet was gashed and pierced, most of his blood was seeping into the dry earth he lay on. He was conscious, recognised me.

I began to loosen the straps on the corselet to make him more comfortable. He stopped me.

“Don’t, Mandrocles, the hurt’s too bad, my guts will spill out, don’t want that, I’m a dead man anyway, rather die looking like a soldier.”

His lips were dry and cracked I tried to give him some water, he didn’t want that either.

“No, not with a stomach wound. Fought well here; made up for the stain on our reputation at Marathon.”

He coughed up more blood and began to choke, then with a great effort of will that I think took the last of his spirit he said,

“Never had a son. You’re a good boy, Mandrocles, fought well at Marathon, was proud of …”

Then his eyes glazed over and he was gone, the only Spartan friend I ever made. Lysias touched my shoulder.

“We have to go now, Mandrocles.”

I staggered to my feet; none of this seemed real. I felt like I was walking through a dream. Cimon still stood twenty yards in front of the wall watching the Spartans; he wouldn’t come when we shouted, so we had to fetch him. As we were pulling at him a remarkable thing unfolded before us. The seventy or so surviving men with Leonidas at their head charged at the massed Persian ranks. Suicide.

The Persians let fly a dense black cloud of spears and arrows. Leonidas stumbled, turned half round and crashed to the ground along with half his men. There was a desperate struggle around Leonidas’s body like something out of the heroic poems of Troy. It lasted less than a minute and the remaining few Spartans, with the body of their king, withdrew to a small mound upon which grew a desiccated stump of a tree, the only other living thing in this arid, deathly pass.

There they stood in a circle with the king’s body in the centre. The Persians massed round them, then stopped; the two sides stared at each other. The ragged Spartan survivors with their broken spears and jagged swords protecting the body of their king, and the thousands of fresh Persian troops who’d been fed through from the rear for their turn to fight.

We grabbed Cimon and legged it for the boat and just in time because on the road behind the wall on the Greek side, we could see the skirmishers of the army that had come over the mountain pass heading straight at us. At the top of the path down to the Athene Nike, Cimon shrugged us off and turned to look back. We turned with him. That’s how we came to see the end.

Don’t expect to read what the stories say, reader. Don’t expect the myth about the Spartans fighting to the end with fists and knives because their weapons were broken. Believe me, you can’t fight thousands of men, hefting long spears, with fists and knives. You can’t do that because you can’t get beyond the spear points.

The way it ended, the Persians didn’t use their spears. These fresh troops didn’t even need to get their hands dirty. They just watched as their Scythian archers launched volley after volley of shafts into the small circle of men standing on the mound. The Spartans disappeared under the rain of arrows; it took only seconds.

The other Greeks we’d seen earlier huddled behind the wall threw down their weapons and waited for whatever fate had in store for them. It was all over, the pass was taken, the battle lost, the fleet outflanked.

We scrambled down the track, into the sea and were hauled over the side into the Athene Nike, which pulled away from the shore with Theodorus calling the stroke. I don’t think the Persians even bothered to fire any arrows after us. Cimon was weeping.

And that’s how it happened. I was there, I know.

The famous story about the Persians threatening to block out the sun with their arrows and the Spartan reply that it suited them to fight in the shade; I don’t think that happened and they didn’t fight with fists and teeth at the end, that certainly didn’t happen. They stood and were mown down like grass for fodder.

The courage, though? Well, that’s a different matter; we saw that. Or was what we saw merely pride? Perhaps the two go together. Whatever; they ended up doing what Spartans do best: dying hard. They died very hard.

The Persians thought so too. They’d fought against them for three days and what they probably thought would be not much more difficult than a stroll though the meadows cost them more lives than they could ever have imagined. I think that’s why they mutilated Leonidas’s corpse the way they did. Emasculated him in death the way they couldn’t while he lived.

Then they cut off his head and stuck it on a spike to
watch over the pass he’d defended so well. I believe his spirit watches it still.

The real legacy of the three hundred was that they showed Greece they were prepared to die for a cause. They created a myth and the legacy of that myth, inspired other Greeks who otherwise would have given up. I still hate the bastards, but …

We didn’t talk much on the voyage; there are things that kill the desire to talk. We sat there, each man wrapped in his own thoughts. Sometime later Aeschylus tried to get me to explain what I’d seen and felt back there. He was looking for material to use in his plays. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t; so think yourself lucky, reader, because you’re the first one I’ve ever told.