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Subject:
A bit of history: 11 August 480 BC: Remember The Battle of Thermopylae and speak with honour
tjkhan
8/10/2006 4:57:02 AM
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Let me start with a quote from the Greek poet Kavafis who wrote the poem entitled "Thermopylae" in 1903:
Let honor be to those in whose life
it was set to guard Thermopylae.
Never moving away from duty;
Just and equals in all of their acts
But with sadness and compassion
Brave once they are rich and when
They are poor, again brave
Coming to aid as much as they can;
Always speaking the truth
But without hate for those who lie.
And even more honor they deserve
When its predicted (and many predict)
That Ephialtes will appear in the end
And the Medes will finally pass through
So now from Wikipedia:
Background
Size of the Persian Army
Xerxes I, king of Persia, had been preparing for years to continue the war against the Greeks started by his father Darius. In 481 BC, after four years of preparation, the army and navy of Xerxes arrived in Asia Minor and built a bridge of ships across the Hellespont at Abydos to march his troops across. Herodotus gives Xerxes' army as follows:
Fleet crew: 517,610
Infantry: 1,700,000
Cavalry: 80,000
Arabs and Libyans: 20,000
Total 2,317,610
This number needs to be at least doubled in order to account for support troops giving thus at least 5,283,220 men, which is obviously excessive. Herodotus also wrote that the army drank entire rivers and ate the food supplies of entire cities. The poet Simonides estimated four million. Ctesias of Cnedus who was Artaxerxes Mnemon's personal physician and wrote a history of Persia according to Persian sources (that unfortunately has not survived) gives 800,000 as the total number of the original army that met in Doriskos which is repeated by several later historians. Some modern historians have gone the other way in underestimating the Persian troops. Sir Frederick Maurice [1], who was a British general in World War I, claims that the army could not have surpassed 175,000 due to lack of water. Others have given numbers as low as 60,000-120,000.
It is possible to make an estimate. At the battle of Plataea the Persian army numbered according to Herodotus 300,000 troops which is considered realistic for two reasons: First of all it gives a realistic 3 to 1 ratio with the 110,000 Greek army. Secondly Herodotus, as Munro and Macan have pointed out, also gives the name of 6 superior commanders and 29 leaders of baivarabam [2].
The baivabaram, basic unit of the Persian infantry, numbered 10,000 strong [3]. If there was loss of troops due to attrition the Persians preferred to dissolve baivabarams and fill the ranks of others [4]. Also another force that included Xerxes' personal bodyguard, The Immortals, that has been estimated at sixty thousand, left along with its leader after the battle of Salamis [5]. Adding casualties of the battle and attrition due to the need to guard cities and strategic passes this gives an estimate of over 400,000.
The Persian empire of the Achemenids did not have any trouble raising this size army. By 492 BC it had an area of over 4,000,000 square kilometers, and it is estimated that its population in the 4th century BC was about 70,000,000 inhabitants [6]. Xenophon, who was an eye-witness, reports that at the battle of Cunaxa, Cyrus had a troop of over 100,000 while king Artaxerxes had over 1,000,000 [7]. While it is possible that he exaggerated the size of the enemy force, there is no reason to do so for his own, which we must remember was from only one of the thirty satrapies. Darius at the battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC had a troop that numbered according to the smallest number given (by Curtius) 45,000 cavalry and 200,000 infantry drafted from forces of Armenia, Mesopotamia, Persia and the Eastern satrapies which was not all that even this fragment of the empire could give since Alexander the Great later faced 20,000-40,000 infantry at the Persian Gates, drafted from one year's soldiers of Persia alone 30,000 troops, and fought significant forces in the Eastern satrapies [8]. The supply of Xerxes' troops was very well taken care of until the frontier of the Persian empire, which in 480 BC was Macedonia [9] by five depots that had been set up on the path. After all according to Herodotus it took only 13 days to go from the last depot at Therme to Thermopylae.
It must be noted the 110,000 Greek troops of Plataea did not include forces from Thebes, Thessaly and the northern Greek kingdoms, which, from a belief of inevitable Greek defeat and desire to save their land from destruction or hope for a change in the political status in Greece that would put them on top, defected to the Persian side after the Persian army advanced to their region. Had they not, the Greek army could have matched Maurice's number. But even if it did not, with a 1.5 to 1 ratio the Greek army could have sought battle on an open field with a very realistic chance of defeating the invaders, since during the Ionian Revolt and the battle of Marathon the phalanx formation showed that it could match and even defeat superior numbers of Persian infantry. It is very hard to produce feelings of futility in resisting the Persian invasion, which had also gripped the Oracle of Delphi, had the invading force not been several times the defending forces. Also such a victory over a similar or slightly larger army might have probably not urged Herodotus to write down its tale for the next generations not to forget, as he states it was his aim in the introduction of his work, and thus become "the Father of History" as Cicero called him.
Greek preparations
A congress was called in Corinth in late autumn of 481 BC, and a confederate alliance of Greek city-states was formed, headed by the militaristic Sparta, whose supremely disciplined warriors were trained from birth to be the best soldiers in Greece and among the fiercest in the ancient world. Very little is known about the internal workings in the congress or the discussion during its proceedings.
The Persian army first encountered a joint force of 10,000 Athenian and Spartan hoplites led by Euanetus and Themistocles in the vale of Tempe. Upon hearing this, Xerxes sent the army through the Sarantaporo straight which was unguarded and sidestepped them. The hoplites, warned by Alexander I of Macedon, vacated the pass.[10] The next strategic choke point where the Persian army could have been stopped was Thermopylae.
Xerxes' huge army was relying on a constant food supply and support by sea. Using the fleet the army could have also crossed the Maliacos bay and sidestep the Greek army. For this reason the Greek fleet was engaging the Persian fleet at Artemision. There is disagreement on what was the Greek high strategy. Some modern historians like Bengtson [11] claim that it was to slow down the army while the navy was defeated at sea. While this was probably Themistocles' strategy it is not probably what the congress of Corinth which was dominated by Sparta decided. More probably its decision was that the way to victory was to wear down the Persian Army and hold it as north as possible until it was forced out of the country due to attrition, epidemics, and lack of food.
Some modern historians have suggested that Xerxes could have used the same tactic as at Tempe and sidestep Thermopylae through the paths of Mt. Kallidromo. Considering how huge the Persian army was it required a royal road to cross and could not have fit through mountain trails.
Topography of the battlefield and Greek forces
At the time the mountain pass of Thermopylae consisted of a pass so narrow that two chariots could barely move abreast?on the western side of the pass stood the sheer side of the mountain, while the east side was the sea. Along the path was a series of three "gates," and at the center gate a short wall that had been erected by the Phocians in the previous century to aid in their defense against Thessalian invasions. It was here in the August of 480 BC that an army of some 7,000 Greeks, led by the 300 Spartans of the royal guard, stood to receive the full force of the Persian army, numbering perhaps some sixty times its size. The Greek army included according to Herodotus [12] the following forces
Spartans: 300
Mantineans: 500
Tegeans: 500
Arcadian Orchomenos: 120
Other Arcadians: 1,000
Corinthians: 400
Floians: 200
Mycenaeans: 80
Thespians: 700
Thebans: 400
Phocians and Opuntan Locrians: 1,000
Total forces: 5,200
To this number we have to add 1,000 other Lacedemonians mentioned by Diodorus Siculus [13] and some 800 auxiliary troops from other Greek cities. Diodorus gives 4,000 as the total Greek troops, while modern historians, which usually consider Herodotus more reliable, prefer his claim of 7,000 men. It has been argued that this force was only intended to slow and not stop the invasion force. However it seems that the Athenians at least felt confident that this army and Leonidas' presence were enough to stop the Persians, otherwise they would have already vacated their city and sent their whole army to Thermopylae.
According to Herodotus the main reason that a force this small was sent was that the Spartans were awaiting the end of the Karneia Festival and the other Greeks the end of the Olympic Games. It is more probable, though, that a small force was sent because the site favored a small defending force. We know of one case in which a small force did stop a bigger invading force from the north; in 353 BC/352 BC the Athenians managed to stop the forces of Philip II of Macedon by deploying 5,000 hoplites and 400 horsemen.
Knowing the likely outcome of the battle, Leonidas selected his men on one simple criterion: he took only men who had fathered sons that were old enough to take over the family responsibilities of their fathers. The rationale behind this criterion was that the Spartans knew their death was almost certain at Thermopylae. Plutarch mentions, in his Sayings of Spartan Women, that after encouraging her husband before his departure for the battlefield, Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas I asked him what she should do when he had left. To this, Leonidas replied:
Marry a good man, and have good children.
When Xerxes reached Thermopylae, he sent emisaries to the Greek forces. At first he asked Leonidas to come on his side and offered him to be king of all of Greece. Leonidas answered:
If you knew what is good in life, you would abstain from wishing for foreign things. For me it is better to die for Greece than to be monarch over my compatriots (Plutarch, Moralia, 225, 10)
Then Xerxes asked him more forcefully to surrender their arms. To this Leonidas gave his very famous answer:
Μολών Λαβέ
(pronounced /molɔ:n labe/)
which meant "Come take them".
This quote has been repeated by many later generals, and even a few politicians, in order to express the Greeks' determination to risk a huge sacrifice rather than surrender without a fight.
The Battle
When scouts initially informed Xerxes of the size of the Greek force, and of the Spartans who were performing preparations which included naked calisthenics and combing their hair, Xerxes found the reports laughable. Not understanding the ritual significance of the Spartan preparations as the actions of men with the resolution to fight to the end, he expected the force to disband at any moment and waited four days for the Greek force to retreat. When they did not, he became increasingly frustrated by what he perceived as foolish impudence on the part of the small Greek force. On the fifth day Xerxes ordered his troops into the pass.
The Greeks deployed themselves in a phalanx, a wall of overlapping shields and layered spearpoints, spanning the entire width of the pass. The Persians, armed with arrows and short spears, could not break through the long spears of the Greek phalanx, nor were their lightly armoured men a match for the superior armour, weaponry and discipline of the Greek hoplites. Because of the terrain, the Persians were unable to surround or flank the Greeks, thus rendering their superior numbers almost useless. Greek morale was high. Herodotus wrote that when Dienekes, a Spartan soldier, was informed that Persian arrows were so numerous that they blotted out the sun, he remarked with characteristically laconic prose, "So much the better, we shall fight in the shade." At first Xerxes sent the Medes because he preferred them for their bravery or because perhaps he wanted all of them to be exterminated. This is because the Medes still had an arrogant stature since the independence of their ancestors was recently ended by the Persians (Diodorus Siculus, Library, XI,6,3)
Along with them he sent relatives of those who had fallen at the battle of Marathon ten years earlier. According to Ctesias the first wave numbered 10,000 soldiers under Artapanus. Enormous casualties were sustained by the Persians as the disciplined Spartans who sought to maximise enemy casualties orchestrated a series of feint retreats, followed by a quick turn back into formation. Waves upon waves of soldiers would go to the front, stepping upon the bodies of their dead comrades, only to die. Ctesias then narrates that Xerxes sent 20,000 more men driven by whip-wielding officers who flogged them whenever they retreated. But these also failed. Fifty thousand more Persians attacked on the second day of battle, but they also failed. After watching his troops fall before the Greeks, Xerxes decided to send his legendary Persian Immortals. Leonidas arranged a system of relays between the hoplites of the various cities so as to constantly have fresh troops on the front line. Yet in the heat of the battle the voracity [of the Greeks] was such that the units that had been set in rotation to take part in the battle did not accept to change but fighting constantly and overcoming the bounds of the battle killed many of the elite Persian. (Diodorus Siculus, Library, XI,8,2) Thus even the Immortals lacked the power to break the determined and driven phalanx, and they, too, were forced to retreat with heavy casualties. The casualties on the Greek side were small. Ctesias claims that the first 10,000 Persians killed only two or three Greeks. It seemed that with regular reinforcements the Greeks could go on ad infinitum. Despair gripped Xerxes.
After the second day of fighting, a local shepherd named Ephialtes defected to the Persians and informed Xerxes of a separate path through Thermopylae, which the Persians could use to outflank the Greeks. The pass was defended by the other 1000 Greeks, from Phocis, who had been placed there when the Greeks learned of the alternate route just before the battle, but they were not expecting to engage the Persians. Xerxes sent Hydarnes with the Immortals through the pass. Surprised by the Persian attack, the Phocians offered only a brief resistance before retreating higher up the mountain to regroup. Instead of pursuing them, however, the Persians simply advanced through the pass unopposed. For his act Ephialtes made his name synonymous with traitor in Greek.
Final stand of the Spartans and Thespians
Leonidas, realizing that further fighting would be futile, dismissed all Greek forces save the surviving Spartans and Thebans on August 11; the Spartans having pledged themselves to fight to the death, and the Thebans held as hostages as Thebes' loyalty to Greece was questioned. However, a contingent of about 700 Thespians, led by Demophilus, refused to leave with the other Greeks. Instead, they chose to stay in the sacrificial effort to delay the advance and allow the rest of the Greek army to escape.
The significance of the Thespians' refusal should not be passed over. The Spartans, brave as their sacrifice indubitably was, were professional soldiers, trained from birth to be ready to give their lives in combat as Spartan law dictated. Conversely, the Thespians were citizen-soldiers (Demophilus, for example, made his living as an architect) who elected to add whatever they could to the fight, rather than allow the Spartans to be annihilated alone. Furthermore, the Spartan royal bodyguard had to stay because of their king's order. No one forced the Thespians to do so; it was their free will.
Though their bravery is often overlooked by history, it was most certainly not overlooked by the Spartans, who are said to have exchanged cloaks with the Thespians and promised to be allies for eternity.
The fighting was said to have been extremely brutal, even for hoplite combat. As their numbers diminished the Greeks retreated to a small hill in the narrowest part of the pass. The Thebans took this opportunity to surrender to the Persians[14]. After their spears broke, the Spartans and Thespians kept fighting with their xiphos short swords, and after those broke, they were said to have fought with their bare hands, teeth and nails.
Although the Greeks killed many Persians, including two of Xerxes' brothers, Leonidas was eventually killed, but rather than surrender the Spartans fought fanatically to defend his body. To avoid losing any more men the Persians killed the last of the Spartans with flights of arrows.
Aftermath
When the body of Leonidas was recovered by the Persians, Xerxes, in a rage at the loss of so many of his soldiers, ordered that the head be cut off, and the body crucified. The mutilation of a corpse, even one of the enemy, carried a great social stigma for the Persians, and it was an act that Xerxes was said to have deeply regretted afterwards. Leonidas' body was later cut down and returned to the Spartans, where he was buried with full honors.
While a tactical victory for the Persians, the enormous casualties caused by less than a thousand Greek soldiers was a significant blow to the Persian army. Current estimates stand at 20,000 Persians dead, including the elite Immortals. Likewise, it significantly boosted the resolve of the Greeks to face the Persian onslaught. The simultaneous naval Battle of Artemisium was a draw, whereupon the Greek (or more accurately, Athenian) navy retreated. The Persians had control of the Aegean Sea and all of Greece as far south as Attica; the Spartans prepared to defend the Isthmus of Corinth and the Peloponnese, while Xerxes sacked Athens, whose inhabitants had already fled to Salamis Island. In September the Greeks defeated the Persians at the naval Battle of Salamis, which led to the rapid retreat of Xerxes. The remaining Persian army, left under the charge of Mardonius, was defeated in the Battle of Plataea by a combined Greek army again led by the Spartans, under the regent Pausanias.
This battle, along with Sogdian Rock and similar actions, is used in military academies around the world to show how a small group of well-trained and well-led soldiers can have an impact out of all proportion to their numbers. It is worth noting also that the effectiveness of the Greeks against such a vastly larger army was due in no small part to the battlefield itself. Had this battle been fought on an open field, rather than a narrow pass, the smaller Greek army could have been surrounded and defeated with ease, despite the quality of the Greek infantry. Thus Thermopylae is also regarded as being as much a lesson in the importance of favorable terrain and good strategy as it is in good training and discipline.
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