Thermopylae (7 page)

The hero of the hour was inevitably Miltiades, whose policy of marching out from the city and engaging the enemy at Marathon had been amply justified. It was natural under the circumstances that considerable attention should be paid to his advice as to the further conduct of Athenian policy. The islands of the Cyclades lying like a circling shield to the south were, he pointed out, essential to the defence of Athens. All of them were now under Persian control, representing a dangerous threat to the Greek mainland and, above all, to the shipping routes of the Aegean. ‘Attack at once!’ was his advice, to reinforce the security which Marathon had, for the moment, given them. This was strategically very sensible but there were many who did not approve of the venture, not least because they sensed in Miltiades a potential tyrant. The cost of such an expedition was also a deterrent, but this objection was overruled when Miltiades more or less guaranteed that he would make it pay its way by exacting indemnities from the islands which had medised. Herodotus casts a bad reflection on the motives of Miltiades, implying that it was no more than personal ambition which drove him to propose the Cycladic expedition. This seems highly unlikely, and the judgement of the historian stems most probably from hindsight - from the fact that the whole affair proved a costly failure. In the siege of Paros, the primary objective (for it was felt that if Paros, one of the richest and most important islands, was captured, then most of the others would automatically yield to Athens), Miltiades himself was seriously wounded. The fleet returned to Athens and the enemies of Miltiades seized their opportunity. He was accused of ‘deceiving the people’, and the death sentence was demanded. Marathon, however, and the part that Miltiades had played in that brilliant campaign, could not easily be forgotten. Miltiades himself died from gangrene, but not before he was sentenced to pay the large sum of fifty talents - a fine which left his son financially ruined. Athenian politics was always ruthless.

Ultimately they were to prove no less harsh in the career of the man who became Miltiades’ successor - perhaps the greatest Greek politician who ever lived, and the man who was destined to save Greece from the far greater threat that was posed by Xerxes. This was Themistocles, who was to become the most prominent figure in Athenian political affairs during the years in which the fate of Europe was decided. He was unpopular with many of his fellow citizens, particularly those of the conservative caste of mind, for he was a radical, who saw far in advance of his other educated contemporaries that the future of a city-seaport like Athens lay in her navy and, therefore, in the men who commanded and manned her ships. This was a policy that was unlikely to prove palatable to the richer, land-owning classes, for it was they who would have to foot a large part of the bill for the ship-building, victualling, and maintenance. The armoured knight, or hoplite, who had seen the victory of his class at Marathon, was hardly likely to be sympathetic towards a policy that favoured sailors and oarsmen who, even though they might indeed be free citizens of Athens, were a long remove from the great families like the Alcmaeonids and the Peisistradids.

The picture that one gains of Themistocles from most Greek historians, including Herodotus and Plutarch, is of a conniving and self-seeking man who was always concerned with his own interests and was even ready to do a deal with the Persians at the moment of Greece’s greatest peril. As a Greek and an Athenian, it was unlikely that Themistocles did not have some degree of self-interest at heart: he would have been totally unlike his race if he had not. But even Plutarch, who accused him of ‘malignity’, and in any case was writing long after the events, was forced to admit that a bust-portrait which he had seen of him showed a man who appeared to be noble and heroic. (A copy of this portrait made in Roman times shows a thick-necked, rather flat-faced man, with a large sensitive mouth and an open-eyed ‘bulldog’ appearance. Except for the beard and the moustache, Themistocles has a Churchillian aspect.) Thucydides, one of the greatest and most impartial historians of all times, described him in the following terms:

Themistocles was a man who most clearly presents the phenomenon of natural genius … to a quite extraordinary and exceptional degree. By sheer personal intelligence, without either previous study or special briefing, he showed both the best grasp of an emergency situation at the shortest notice, and the most far-reaching appreciation of probable further developments. He was good at explaining what he had in hand; and even of things outside his previous experience he did not fail to form a shrewd judgement. No man so well foresaw the advantages and disadvantages of a course in the still uncertain future. In short, by natural power and speed in reflection, he was the best of all men at determining promptly what had to be done.

Had he lived in the twentieth century he might have been a Greek guerilla-leader in the Second World War, a ship-owner subsequently, and then - possibly - Prime Minister. In any case, he would finally have been banished, exiled, or assassinated. The Greeks, the only people in history who have made four major contributions to human culture and civilisation (the spring of Minoan Crete, the summer of fifth-century Athens, the golden autumn of the Alexandrian empire, and the wintry splendour of Byzantium), have so competitive a spirit that they cannot tolerate for long the exceptional brilliance of one man. Nevertheless, it was Themistocles above all others who was to give the lead to his people and to other Greeks in the struggle that was soon to be renewed against Europe by Persia.

Themistocles was not slow to see (like the maligned Miltiades before him) that a powerful navy was essential for the salvation of Greece. Fine though the Attic hoplites had proved to be at Marathon, outstanding the warriors of Sparta, the strange and rocky land of Greece with its small population could never compete in the long run with the immense manpower of the Persian Empire. Bravery, superior technology, the ‘last ditch’ attitude of men who are defending their homeland against a foreign invader - these were qualities that the Greeks possessed in plenty. But their enemy was numbered ‘as the sands of the sea’. Furthermore, the Phoenician and Egyptian navies, as well as the ships of Cyprus, Ionia, and most of the Aegean islands, far outnumbered the Athenian navy and its allies. It seemed that Greece, and Athens in particular, could only be saved by a miracle: something in which the pragmatic Greeks, unlike the Hebrews, found it difficult to believe.

The miracle occurred, although in no spiritual form, but in the discovery of a rich vein of silver in the mining area of Laurium near Cape Sunium in 483. The mines were all state-owned and, under normal conditions, the profits from them were shared out among the citizens. The unexpected windfall of the new seam, which would have given every citizen about ten drachmas (a small sum), was diverted by the persuasive powers of Themistocles into building one hundred triremes - a new type of three-banked warship which would for some years give the Greeks command of most of the Mediterranean. It is evidence that the hard-headed Assembly whom Themistocles had to convince were sensible enough of the impending threat to Greece to be prepared to divert the ‘silver windfall’ from their own pockets and those of their fellow citizens into such a vast expenditure on defence.

Since the name of Athens herself, as well as of the far-sighted Themistocles, will always be associated with the word ‘trireme’, and its importance in the forthcoming Persian invasion would affect the whole issue, the vessel and its crew are dealt with separately. For the moment, however, what mattered was that the brilliance of Themistocles and the intelligence of the Athenian Assembly led to the construction of a great new fleet. Themistocles had an additional argument with which to convince those in the

Assembly who were sceptical of a further Persian invasion, and therefore demurred at such an expenditure of money. He could point across the water at Athens’ ancient enemy, the island of Aegina, and remind them that the Aeginetans were hostile as ever to Athens and that their navy was even larger.

The Spartans were something of an enigma even to their fellow Greeks. They formed the most powerful state in the Peloponnese, and later in all of Greece. Their capital Sparta was situated at the northern end of the central Laconian plain on the River Eurotas. It commanded the only land-routes into Laconia as well as the two principal valleys from Arcadia to the north and the main pass over Mount Taygetus leading to Messenia. Tradition has it that the city was founded by Lacedaemon, a son of the god Zeus. Unlike the Ionian Greeks, however, including the Athenians, the Spartans came of a different branch of the Greek stock known as Dorians, who had invaded the Peloponnese in waves about 1000 B.C., dividing into several branches, one of which pushed on south down the Eurotas valley to found their capital at the point south of the junction of the Eurotas river with the Oenus. Thus was Sparta born.

The language of these Dorians was Greek like that of the Ionians, but with some differences, including a broader accent. The nation that was to become known as Lacedaemonia or Sparta (after two place-names) settled the fertile hill-girt plain which had been described earlier by Homer as ‘hollow Lacedaemon’. Of a different temperament to the Ionians in many respects, being less lively and considerably less individualistic, they were destined to evolve a strange and austere state-system unlike that of other Greeks and, indeed, unlike almost any other that has followed in human history. Notwithstanding this, the Spartan values and disciplines were to arouse the admiration of a number of later Greek philosophers for the very reason that they were so different from the anarchy that so often prevailed in other Greek states.

The expansion of Sparta entailed securing the upper Eurotas valley, then the land to the south, and ultimately the whole of Laconia. This inevitably brought them into conflict with the ancient city of Argos whose territory had included the whole of the eastern coast of the Peloponnese and the island of Cythera. The Argives, formidable though their history was, were driven back. They were never to forgive or forget and, as their conduct would later show during the Persian invasion of Greece, they were prepared to stand aside and even come to terms with the Persians rather than fight together with, let alone under, Spartan command. By the middle of the sixth century B.C., after a series of other local wars, some fought with savage intensity, the Spartans had come to be recognised as the foremost state in all Greece and the bulwark of Hellenism.

From the very start, having conquered the native peoples of the Eurotas valley, the Spartans, unlike most other Greeks, do not seem to have intermingled with the subject people, not intermarrying, and holding themselves curiously aloof, except in their role as masters. In this very beginning lay the seeds of their future state. Some Greek writers, Herodotus among them, thought that the institutions of Sparta derived from those of the Dorian city-states to be found in Crete. Plutarch and others were also of this opinion. It seems perhaps more likely that a similarity of structure was due to common racial origins and a shared outlook.

At the head of the rigidly stratified society which evolved in Sparta there were at the top the Dorian conquerors, the ‘Spartiates’. They formed, as it were, ‘The Master-Race’. They were the only people to have the vote, and they lived in military messes in the capital. Below them came the Perioikoi or Neighbours - free men who marched and fought along with the Spartiates, but did not have voting rights. The third stratum of the society was formed by the Helots. These, who may well have been descendants of the indigenous inhabitants, worked on the farms that belonged to the Spartiates. They were not slaves in the classical sense of the word but cultivated the land and gave half their produce to the Spartiate citizens. That they were a proud, even if subject, people is shown by the fact that the Spartiates had to keep a close eye on them and be on their guard against a Helot uprising. Nevertheless many of them fought at Thermopylae and again at Plataea. Long after the campaign of Xerxes there was, indeed, a big Helot revolt (which the Spartans put down ferociously), but at the time that Greece was in such danger relations between the rulers and the ruled seem to have been basically amicable. But the threat, however veiled, was always there, and for this reason and because of the other conquered people around them the Spartans had always to keep a proportion of their army at home. They could never field all their fighting manpower.

Something else which made the Spartans an inward-looking warrior-race was that, being a land-power, they did not, like the other Greek city-states, solve population problems by sending out emigrant ships to the new-found lands of Sicily and Italy. It was true that Sparta had done so in a few cases, most noticeably Tarenturn (Taranto). But their real solution was war, as when they turned on their next-door, western neighbour of Messenia and, after two long and bitter wars, finally annexed the land and enslaved the population. This gave them a further problem: quite apart from the Helots,and the other conquered lands, they now had the hatred of the Messenians to deal with. The conclusion must be that, apart from any inborn qualities, they became a warrior-race largely because it was essential for them. (Grundy calculated that the proportion of Free to Non-Free in the Spartan state was i :i5.) To maintain a ruling class out of such a disproportionate relationship meant that the citizen of Sparta, the Spartiate, must of necessity have made himself so hard and fine a soldier that his efficiency outweighed the balance.

As the poems of Aleman {circa the mid-seventh century B.C.) reveal, there had been an earlier Sparta. It had been aristocratic, certainly, but far from the Sparta that we hear of later, and which figured so prominently in the fight against the Persians some two centuries later. Even then, it must be noted that Aleman was a foreigner, and there was only one Spartan poet of whose work a little is known and that consists of injunctions to the warrior -martial poems set to music in fact. It seems that the wars against their neighbours eliminated a Sparta which, although not much of a producer of fine pottery and artefacts, certainly imported them from other Greek states.