Battle of Thermopylae
From Freepedia
| Battle of Thermopylae | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Image:Leonidas.jpg Leonidas at Thermopylae, by Jacques-Louis David (1814) | |||
| Conflict: Persian Wars | |||
| Date: August, 480 BC | |||
| Place: Thermopylae | |||
| Outcome: Persian victory | |||
| Combatants | |||
| Greek city-states | Persia | ||
| Commanders | |||
| Leonidas† | Xerxes I of Persia | ||
| Strength | |||
| About 7000 | Herodotus claims a total strength of 3.4 million; today's estimates range from 170,000 to 200,000 | ||
| Casualties | |||
| At least 300; likely over 4,000 | Possibly 30,000 | ||
| |||
In the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC an alliance of Greek city-states, called the Delian League, fought the invading Persian army in a mountain pass. Though vastly outnumbered, the Greeks held back the Persian advance until a defector informed the Persians of a bypass. Leonidas, the Spartan King commanding the army, sent away all but 300 Spartans to hold up the enemy in one of the most famous last stands of history. Afterwards the Persians sacked Athens, but they had been delayed long enough for the Greeks to prepare for the battle of Salamis, which would turn out a victory for the Greek navy, and the end of the Persian threat to Greece.
Contents |
Background
Xerxes I, king of Persia, had been preparing for years to continue the war against the Greeks started by his father Darius. In 484 BC 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. According to Herodotus, Xerxes had over five million men, while the poet Simonides estimated three million; Herodotus also wrote that the army drank entire rivers and ate the food supplies of entire cities. While these are certainly exaggerations, it is clear the Greeks were enormously outnumbered.
A confederate alliance of Greek city-states was quickly formed, headed by the militaristic Sparta, whose supremely disciplined warriors were trained from birth to be the best soldiers in the ancient world. The Greek states held back from sending the full force of their armies, however, citing religious reasons. Fearing an uprising of their huge slave population, and fearful of going to war before the conclusion of the Carneia festival, the deeply superstitious Spartans contributed only a small force of 300 hoplites, hand-picked and commanded by King Leonidas. The loyalty of Thebans to the Greek alliance was questioned by others, and so Leonidas insisted that a contingent of Thebans lead by Leontiades the son of Eurymachos join the small allied army[1].
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 battle field, 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.
Because of its defensible terrain, the mountain pass of Thermopylae, the "Hot Gates," was chosen as the site of battle. At the time it consisted of a pass so narrow two chariots could barely move abreast—one side stood the sheer side of the mountain, while the other was a cliff drop into the sea. Along the path was a series of three "gates," and at the center gate a short wall was hastily erected by the Greek army to aid in their defense. It was here in the August of 480 BC that an army of some 7000 Greeks, led by 300 Spartans, stood to receive the full force of the Persian army, numbering perhaps some forty times its size.
Battle
Xerxes did not believe such a small force would oppose him, and gave the Greeks three or four days to retreat. The Persians were initially astounded upon seeing the Spartans oiling themselves and performing calisthenics, not understanding its ritual significance as a performance by men with the resolution to fight to the end. The Greeks deployed themselves in a phalanx, a wall of overlapping shields and layered spearpoints, spanning the entire width of the pass. Meanwhile, the Persian army was growing restless, and Xerxes sent his troops into the pass with hellish results. The Persians, with arrows and short spears, could not break through the long spears of the Greek phalanx, nor were their lightly armed and armoured men a match for the vastly superior armour and weaponry of the better trained and equipped hoplites. Enormous casualties were sustained by the Persians as the disciplined Spartans orchestrated a series of feint retreats, followed by a quick turn back into formation. 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 blotted out the sun, he remarked with characteristically laconic prose, "So much the better, we shall fight in the shade." The Greeks defending the pass slew the Persians in a similar manner on the second day of battle, fighting in a relay manner. After watching his troops fall before the Greeks, Xerxes decided to send his legendary Persian Immortals. However, even the Immortals lacked the power to break the Spartan phalanx and they were forced to retreat with heavy casualties.
After the second day a Greek 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. The Phocians offered a brief resistance before fleeing, and the Persians advanced unopposed.
Leonidas realized that further fighting would be futile. On August 11 he dismissed all but what remained of the 300 Spartans, who had already resigned themselves to fighting to the death and the Thebans who he kept as hostages[2]. However, a contingent of about 600 Thespians, led by Demophilus, refused to leave with the other Greeks. Instead, they chose to stay in the suicidal effort to delay the advance. 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. 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[3]. 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 and teeth. 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.
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 honours.
There is an epitaph on a monument at site of the battle with Simonides's epigram, which can be found in Herodotus's work The Histories (7.228), to the Spartans:
- ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
- (O xein', angellein Lakedaimoniois hoti täde)
- κείμεθα τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.
- (keimetha tois keinon rhämasi peithomenoi.)
Which to keep the poetic context can be translated as:
- Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,
- that here, obedient to their laws, we lie
or more literally as:
- Oh foreigner, tell the Lacedaemonians
- that here we lie, obeying their words.
Another translation (by Michael Dodson, 1951) captures the spirit of enduring service to the state which was taught to all Spartan warriors:
- Friend, tell the Spartans that on this hill we lie obedient to them still.
Frank Miller, in his comic series 300, translated it still differently:
- Go tell the Spartans, passerby,
- That here, by Spartan law, we lie
It has also been interpreted as:
- Go tell the Spartans, you who have read;
- That we have followed their orders, and now are dead
Aftermath
While a technical victory for the Persians, the enormous casualties caused by almost a thousand Greek soldiers was a significant blow to the Persian army. 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.
Inspiration
The legend of Thermopylae, as told by Herodotus, has it that Sparta consulted the Oracle at Delphi before setting out to meet the Persian army. The Oracle is said to have made the following prophecy in hexameter verse:
- O ye men who dwell in the streets of broad Lacedaemon!
- Either your glorious town shall be sacked by the children of Perseus,
- Or, in exchange, must all through the whole Laconian country
- Mourn for the loss of a king, descendant of great Heracles.
- He cannot be withstood by the courage of bulls nor of lions,
- Strive as they may; he is mighty as Jove; there is naught that shall stay him,
- Till he have got for his prey your king, or your glorious city.
In essence, the Oracle's warning was that either Sparta would be conquered and left in ruins, or one of her two hereditary kings must sacrifice his life to save her.
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.
A. E. Housman wrote a poem called The Oracles which can be found in his book Last Poems:
- 'Tis mute, the word they went to hear on high Dodona mountain
- When winds were in the oakenshaws and all the cauldrons tolled,
- And mute's the midland navel-stone beside the singing fountain,
- And echoes list to silence now where gods told lies of old.
- I took my question to the shrine that has not ceased from speaking,
- The heart within, that tells the truth and tells it twice as plain;
- And from the cave of oracles I heard the priestess shrieking
- That she and I should surely die and never live again.
- Oh priestess, what you cry is clear, and sound good sense I think it;
- But let the screaming echoes rest, and froth your mouth no more.
- 'Tis true there's better boose than brine, but he that drowns must drink it;
- And oh, my lass, the news is news that men have heard before.
- The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning;
- His fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air,
- And he that stands will die for nought, and home there's no returning.
- The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair.
German author and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient Heinrich Böll wrote a story Wanderer, kommst Du nach Spa..., (published in 1950), which takes its title from the German translation of the inscription on the Spartans' tomb. In it a young German soldier at the end of the Second World War is wounded on the Eastern Front and is brought to a field hospital which was a school. He wonders if it could be his school, which he only recently left to become a soldier. On seeing the partially erased quotation of the title on a chalkboard, his question is answered.
A Hollywood epic, The 300 Spartans, was made in 1962, directed by Rudolph Maté. The battle is also referred to in the context of the Vietnam war in the film Go Tell the Spartans (1978).
Gene Wolfe's novels Soldier of the Mist (1986) and Soldier of Arete (1989) are narrated by Latro, a soldier who fought on the Persian side at Plataea (after Thermopylae) and suffered a serious head wound there, which makes him forget everything after 24 hours.
Frank Miller wrote and illustrated (with Lynn Varley) a 1998 comic book called 300 about the battle, and the last stand of the Spartans. A film based on it, titled 300 ([4]), has been announced for 2006. References also appear in the plot of the Sin City story The Big Fat Kill, and in the name of Hot Gates, a minor character in his Batman tale, The Dark Knight Returns.
Gates Of Fire by Steven Pressfield is a largely accurate telling of the story from the eyes of Xeones, a fictional Spartan warrior who makes his stand at Thermopylae. A movie based on this novel is planned.
The Spartans by Paul Cartledge, published in 2002, includes a fairly detailed description of the battle fought at Thermopylae, the personal stories of Dienekes, King Leonidas and a wealth of information about Sparta.
Ω ξείν... (O stranger) is a poetic book by Dimitris Varos written in 1974.
In "The Last Samurai (2003)", character Nathan Algren, played by Academy Award Nominee Tom Cruise uses the example of the Battle of Thermopylae to give inspiration to character Katsumoto, played by Academy Award Nominee Ken Watanabe in the final battle between the traditional Samurai and the new Japanese government.
An episode of the animated action series 'Samurai Jack' reflects on the story of the 300 spartans. The episode is called "Jack and the Spartans" and is the second-to-last of the second season, episode 25. In it, Jack meets the Spartans on his journey up a mountain, and enlists their aid in an epic battle. It is said to be an homage to Frank Millers interpretation in his comic series '300'.
Bibliography
- Herodotus "The Histories of Herodotus"
Notes
- ^ Herodotus Bibliography VII:205
- ^ Herodotus Bibliography VII:222 – Other sources (including Plutarch) claim that Herodotus was biased against Thebans.
- ^ Herodotus Bibliography VII:223
External links
- The battle in Herodotus' Histories
- Map of the battlefield
- Size of the Persian army
- Livius Picture Archive: the battle of Thermopylae (480 BCE)
