In 480 B.C.E, two opposing fleets met in the Strait of Salamis. One fleet was that of the Greeks; the other that of the invading Persians. In a most unlikely outcome, the smaller Greek fleet defeated the Persians, all in all destroying four hundred of the invader’s ships. King Xerxes retreated, not only from the strait but also from the war, withdrawing the main of his force back to Persia.
The battle in the Strait of Salamis is celebrated for having effectively ended the Persian War of 480. In truth, however, the outcome of Salamis could have gone another way entirely, with victory going to King Xerxes and his Persians, if it had not been for the outcome of another battle, a battle whose end was not victorious for the Greeks. For if it had not been for this battle, the Greek fleet would never have had the time to sail for the Strait of Salamis—where the conditions favored the Greek ships—and there defeat, and ultimately win the war against, the Persians. If the Battle of Thermopylae had never occurred, then Greece would have fallen to Persia.
Persian
When theKing Darius of Persia, first attempted an invasion of Greece, it had been at Marathon in 490. The attempt was unsuccessful: his great army was defeated in one battle against a contingent of hoplites, mainly from Athens.[1] Thus discouraged, Darius returned to his throne. After deliberation and argument with his counselors, his son, Xerxes, the Great King, invaded Greece again, in 480. This time he would take no foolish chances—he had underestimated the Greeks once and had paid dearly for it—and he planned a two-pronged attack: his army would march through Thessaly, and gain access to Greece via the mountain pass at Thermopylae, while his great fleet would sail to meet them along Thessalian coastlines.[2]
Greece
To meet this attack, Greece allied in what would come to be known as the Peloponnesian League, though then the Greeks only called it ‘the Spartans and their allies’. Sparta had taken control of allied Greece, for they were acknowledged to be the greatest land power in Greece.
The Plan
It was the Athenian Themistocles, however, who conceived the plan of action. Themistocles was a general and a politician of Athens, who had been granted supreme control of Athenian forces. According to his plan, the allied Greek force was split much like the force of Xerxes, into a two-pronged defense. The Greek fleet would be stationed at Artemisium, off the coast of Northern Eubonea, near the Euripus Strait, under the command of Spartan King Eurybiades. As to the other prong: six thousand hoplites, which were special, elite form of Greek soldiers—made mainly of Locrians, Phocians, and Spartans—under King Leonidas I of Sparta* were stationed at the mountain pass Thermopylae.[3]
Why Thermopylae?
Apart from being a major factor as to why the Greeks won the war, Thermopylae was such an important place because it was the easiest way for a marching army to gain access into Central Greece. To the west of Thermopylae lay an impassable spur of Mount Oeta; to the east, the sea, neither a route for an army to take. If an invading army could push its way through Thermopylae, they would be free to raze Central Greece from any direction. Perhaps most importantly, they would have a near-unrestricted route to Athens, for most of Central Greece was neutral in the war. And any army to take Athens would strike a demoralizing blow, for Athens was a power most important in Greece.
Thermopylae itself was an ideal place to defend. The path was between forty-nine and ninety-eight feet wide, and in some places quite narrow. It is not impossible for a war to be won entirely if an army can consistently turn invaders from this pass.[4] There is, however, one weakness which the pass at Thermopylae suffers: the Anopaia path. This was a path that wound through the perilous cliffs and jagged spurs belonging to Mount Oeta, and lead around to the other side of the pass. Could an invading army find it, the consequences would be dire. In order to assuage this point of tension, Leonidas stationed one thousand Phocians at the base of the Anopaia path.[5]
The Battle
For two days Leonidas held off the Persian army at Thermopylae. None of the army could get through the hoplites—not even Xerxes’ elite force of soldiers—his ‘Immortals’.[6] Leonidas might have held Thermopylae indefinitely, had it not been for Medism. Medism was, at the very least, passive support of Persia; at the very worst, betrayal.[7]
A man from Malis Medized—the man Ephialtes. Defecting from Leonidas’ force, Ephialtes told the Persians of the Anopaia path. And that proved to be the undoing of Leonidas and his hoplites. On the dawn of the third day, when it was ‘the time of the greatest crowd in the marketplace’ as Herodotus writes, the Persians sent a contingent along this path, a move fatal for the Greeks.[8]
Despite the precautions Leonidas had taken to guard the Anopaia path, the one thousand Phocian hoplites meant to guard the path were easily defeated by the Persian Immortals.
For reasons much debated, Leonidas dismissed the majority of his remaining force, sending away all but 299 Spartans. A handful of Thespians also stayed behind, though their number was not many.[9]
Then the saga of legendary Spartan strength and bravery began. Seeking and gaining the widest point of the Thermopylae pass, Leonidas and his men fought to their deaths. When the Persians finally broke through the pass, there was not one survivor of Leonidas’ force, not even the Spartan king himself.
Though the Leonidas had been defeated, and the Persians were through the pass, his actions were not wholly useless. In doing what he did, Leonidas delayed the Persian army for approximately a week.
After The Fall...
In the original plan of Themistocles, Thermopylae and Artemisium were inter-dependent locations.[10] If one fell, it was more than probable that so would the other. However, due to Leonidas’ courage at Thermopylae—and a week’s worth of ravaging storms at sea, delaying the monstrous Persian fleet—Artemisium did not fall. By means of the week Leonidas had bought them, the Greek fleet set sail from the Euripus Strait, abandoning Artemisium, and congregating in the Strait of Salamis. And it was there, at Salamis, that the Greek and Persian fleets finally met, and where the Greeks won the Persian War of 480.
The battle at Thermopylae was essentially instrumental to this Greek victory of war and of Salamis. If Leonidas had not held the pass as he did, had not sacrificed himself and his men has he did, then it is dubious as to whether or not the Greek fleet would have had time to reach Salamis before Xerxes. That fact, in and of itself, puts into indisputable light the significance and the historical, militaristic legacy of the battle of Thermopylae.
There is yet another significant point of the legacy of Thermopylae, though. This legacy is one that cannot be so clearly seen when viewed through an analytical historical lens. Rather, it must be viewed with something that oftentimes sees more clearly than the eye—the heart.
After taking the pass at Thermopylae, Xerxes’ army took Athens. Though the city-state had been evacuated, Xerxes still struck a hard blow to the Greeks when he took it. The Great King of Persia burned Athens. [11]
Because Athens was so important a power, such a pinnacle in Greek society, such a blow could have proved lethal to the Greek forces by means of morale. Without a certain degree of morale, without a will to fight, not even the largest of armies can be victorious in their battles.
However, though Athens had been taken and burned, the Greeks still had something to grasp, something to boost however far their morale flagged at the loss of Athens. They had the saga of Thermopylae, and the legacy of the sacrifice and bravery of the three hundred Spartans that there fought to the death. Perhaps no one can put it as truly as Victor Davis Hanson does in his book, Wars of the Ancient Greeks:
“…but the martyrs of Thermopylae had proved that Greek courage and discipline might prevail, if the Persian numerical superiority could somehow be neutralized through either wise generalship or Persian folly. In the Greek mind, the Spartan king—who had been mutilated and decapitated—had not been beaten but betrayed.”
Sources
Grant, Michael. The Classical Greeks. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1989
Grant, Michael. Readings in the Classical Historians. New York: Michael Grant Publications, 1992
Hanson, Victor Davis. Wars of the Ancient Greeks. New Work: Smithsonian Books, 2004
[1] Michael Grant, The Classical Greeks (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1989), 10.
[2]Grant, The Classical Greeks, 11.
[3] Michael Grant, The Classical Greeks (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1989), 11
[4] Victor Davis Hanson, Wars of the Ancient Greeks (New York: Smithsonian Books:2004), 97
[5] Victor Davis Hanson, Wars of the Ancient Greeks (New York: Smithsonian Books:2004), 97
[6] Herodotus, Herodotus VII. 139, trans D.Genre, in Readings in the Classical Historians ed. Michael Grant, (New York: Michael Grant Publications, Ltd., 1992)
[7] Michael Grant, The Classical Greeks (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1989), 11
[8] Herodotus, Herodotus VII. 139, trans D.Genre, in Readings in the Classical Historians ed. Michael Grant, (New York: Michael Grant Publications, Ltd., 1992)
[9] Grant, The Classical Greeks, 11
[10] Michael Grant, The Classical Greeks (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1989), 11
[11] Michael Grant, The Classical Greeks (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1984), 11
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