Atlantis: Gate by Robert Doherty Read Free Book Online Page A

another two hundred thousand troops were camped in varying degrees of discomfort. Most weren’t even Persian but levies raised by vassal states to answer the call of Xerxes rather than face his wrath. There were even Greeks camped there, Ionians, who had chosen to side with the powerful ruler from their side of the Aegean. Their decision was understandable given the reluctance of Athens and the other mainland Greek states to send troops or ships to their defense when the Persians came marching out of central Turkey.
    There were also Babylonians, Arabs, Egyptians, Phrygians, Medes, Cissians and dozens of other states represented. The mixture of weaponry, armor and languages had not been seen in ten years, since Darius had set forth for Greece. There were soldiers from three continents, which encompassed the entire known world for the Persians.
    The massive camp sprawled along the western edge of the Hellesponte, which separated Europe from Asia. Other than going around the Black Sea through southern Russia, this thin strip of water running from the Black Sea to the Aegean was the easiest place for an invading army to cross. At its narrowest, directly ahead of the army, the straight was only a mile and a quarter wide.
    And on that water, even in the midst of the howling storm, engineers had been at work all night, adding boat after boat to the pontoon bridge they were constructing. It stretched almost a mile now, the far shore close enough to add impetus to the muscles laying the planks and stringing the ropes that connected the boats.
    Each boat was a penteknoters , a fifty-oar galley. They were set about ten feet apart, side-to-side, and secured to each other first with rope, then heavy planks that constituted what would be the roadway. The entire affair was at a critical stage as water kicked up by the storm surged through the Hellesponte and the wind added its own fury. A cluster of penteknoters , oars manned by slaves, was tied off to the un-anchored end, desperately trying to keep it in place as another boat was brought into line.
    Disaster struck slowly but irrevocably. One by one, minor lines to the anchor boats began parting, the strain too great. The main control line, over a foot and a half thick was soon the only thing holding the end of the bridge to the anchor boats. Men desperately tried throwing new lines to the boats, but the wind made the effort futile, whipping the ropes into the water with ease. A few intrepid engineers even tied lines to the bridge and the other end around their waists and attempted to swim out to the boats.
    The six-foot swell and the weight of the rope took each of these men under. Then their dead weight added to that of the bridge, and their bodies, pulled by the current, added to the horizontal strain.
    The main cable parted, the sound louder than that even of the thunder, the two ends whipping through the air, slicing men in half and cutting through wood like sand. The bridge gave way, curving, the road boards cracking and splitting, the remaining control ropes snapping easily.
    Xerxes and his generals, alerted by the sound, ran out into the storm and watched futilely as the work of a week was destroyed in less than a minute.
    What had never been bridged by man, would not give in so easily.
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    Thermopylae. In Greek it means ‘hot gates’. The name comes from numerous hot springs in the area. It is a pass southeast of Lamia, between Mount Oeta and the Malian Gulf. It is the primary passageway from Thessalia in northern Greece into Locris and the rest of southern Greece, where the major city-states were. Other than by sea, it was the main thoroughfare by which an invading army had to travel to conquer the southern half of Greece, where Athens and Sparta lay.
    There were other passes to the west, but Thermopylae was next to the sea, where a fleet could cover an invading army’s flank and also, something most who were not military men did not understand, but was of utmost