The Greek Search for Wisdom by Michael K. Kellogg

Author:Michael K. Kellogg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Prometheus Books

THE SECOND INVASION: THERMOPYLAE

In the wake of his failed invasion, Darius immediately began gathering a much larger army to try again. This time his objective was total domination of the Greek world and the utter destruction of Athens. But the heavy taxes—in men and materials—that he imposed led to a rebellion in Egypt in 486, and he was forced to turn his attention there. Darius died before he could pacify Egypt or launch a new invasion of Greece. He had ruled the Persian Empire for thirty-six years. His son Xerxes—a name that would become synonymous, thanks to Herodotus, with a willful, cruel, luxury-loving despot—became king.

Xerxes crushed the revolt in Egypt, but he did not share his father's intense desire to punish the Athenians and subdue Greece. He had to be persuaded by Mardonios, who was eager to become satrap (governor) of Greece. Once convinced, however, he devoted enormous resources to the task. He sent men, “laboring under the whip and working in relays,”83 to cut a channel across the Mount Athos peninsula so that his invasion fleet would not have to sail around it and risk violent storms. He arranged for food and other supplies to be deposited in suitable locations for his troops marching overland. Like his father, he also gave the Greek cities—except Athens and Sparta—the chance to offer earth and water as tokens of submission. As before, Herodotus tells us, many Greek states were “eager to medize.”84

Herodotus estimates the initial strength of Xerxes's mixed army of Persians and their allies at more than 1.7 million men. That is surely far too high, and contemporary scholars suggest that Herodotus may have confused the Persian terms chiliarch (1,000) and myriarch (10,000), thereby swelling the number by a factor of ten. Yet even at 170,000, this was a more formidable force than the world had ever seen, and Xerxes added to its numbers from every subject state through which he passed. Herodotus recounts that Greek spies were captured trying to survey the Persian forces. Instead of executing them, Xerxes had them shown around the entire camp and then released, expecting the Greeks to realize that any resistance to so large a force was hopeless.

The overland expedition began symbolically in Sardis, the town once burned by the Ionians and their Athenian allies. There, Pythios, a loyal subject of Xerxes, asked the monarch if the eldest of his five sons might be excused from service and remain at home with him. Furious at this impertinence, Xerxes had the boy cut in two, and the army marched between the halves as they left Sardis. Xerxes rode in splendor, standing in a chariot, but once out of Sardis, and “whenever he thought it prudent to do so,”85 he would dismount and ride in a covered wagon, which is how women and children traveled. A massive throne was brought along so that he could sit upon it at strategic points to review his troops and watch unfolding battles. During one such review, Xerxes wept at

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