The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean by John Julius Norwich Read Free Book Online

next onslaught. Her leader Themistocles, who had been elected archon–titular head of state–in 493 BC , was convinced that her best hope lay in sea power and set about building a navy. By an extraordinary stroke of good luck a rich new vein of silver had just been discovered in the mines at nearby Laurium, so finance was not a serious problem. Fortunately too the Persians were heavily engaged in putting down a rebellion in Egypt, and the death of Darius in 486 BC delayed them still further. Finally, however, in the spring of 481 BC , a new expedition of 100,000 men under Darius’s son and successor, Xerxes, crossed the Hellespont (Dandanelles) on a bridge of boats and marched through Thrace into Thessaly; it was said to be so huge a horde that the men and pack animals together drank the rivers dry. The anxious Athenians consulted the oracle at Delphi and were told to put their faith in their wooden walls; but as nobody knew whether this was meant to refer to the fortifications of the Acropolis or the new ships, it did not help much. At any rate, they ignored the advice and–accompanied this time by a fair-sized contingent from Sparta, under the Spartan King Leonidas–marched north to meet the enemy.
    They decided to make their stand at the pass of Thermopylae, the gateway to Boeotia and Attica. Spartans and Athenians fought valiantly side by side for three days, but then a local guide showed Xerxes a narrow path through the mountains by which he could fall upon the Spartans from behind. While the main body of Greeks retired to the south, Leonidas and 300 picked troops fought a desperate rearguard action–and were killed to the last man. Now the way to Athens lay open. Themistocles evacuated the city and established a new headquarters on the neighbouring island of Salamis, summoning all his available ships–they amounted, we are told, to 378 vessels–to assemble in the Saronic Gulf. They did so, only to find themselves almost immediately bottled up by the Persian fleet of nearly 600. But then, instead of trying to burst through the blockade, they craftily withdrew into the narrow waters behind Salamis, luring the Persians in after them. Fighting at close quarters, the Greek triremes proved far nimbler and more manoeuvrable than the heavy Persian war galleys, which they rammed mercilessly while the increasingly furious Xerxes, seated on a silver-footed throne under a golden umbrella, watched the progress of the engagement from the Attic shore. By the time the battle was over, the Greeks had sunk almost half his ships, at a cost of forty of their own. He returned to his capital at Susa, and never set foot in Greece again. In Thessaly he left an army of some 30,000 men under a general named Mardonius; this was defeated at the battle of Plataea the following year, and–traditionally on the same day–a last naval engagement off Cape Mycale in Asia Minor did for the few Persian ships remaining. The war was won.
    Inevitably, the outcome of the Persian War was seen as a victory of western liberty over eastern autocracy and absolutism: the Great King, with all his huge and lumbering war machine, had been unable to destroy a mere handful of Greek city-states. But why, it may be asked, only a handful? Athens and Plataea, Sparta and the few other cities that made up the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League had distinguished themselves nobly; what about the rest? The truth is that the vast majority of Greek states had not lifted a finger. Some, doubtless, had collaborated with the Persians out of fear; others had simply accepted life under a probably tolerant and undemanding satrap 12 with a shrug: after all, the great cities of the Ionian coast–Pergamum and Ephesus, Miletus and Priene–had lived under the banner of the Great King for the past forty years without complaint. Finally, there were many upper-class, conservative Greeks all over the Aegean who shuddered at the radical steps towards popular democracy that had been taken