The Spartan Army by J. F. Lazenby

Author:J. F. Lazenby
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461751991
Publisher: Stackpole Books (NBN)
Published: 2016-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

Plataea

Following the forcing of the Thermopylai pass, and the withdrawal of the Greek fleet from Artemision, all central Greece lay open to the invading Persians. The Greek fleet put in at Salamis, at the urgent request of the Athenians and now, if not before, the population of Attica was evacuated. The Persian forces poured southwards, overrunning Attica and capturing the city of Athens, empty of all save a few fanatical or dedicated defenders of the Acropolis. But three weeks or so later, towards the end of September, the Persian fleet was heavily defeated in the straits between Salamis and the mainland and Xerxes himself returned to Asia, though he left an army behind him under his brother-in-law, Mardonios. Mardonios wintered in Thessaly and after failing to win over the Athenians through the agency of Alexander, King of Macedonia, marched south again in the summer of 479, to re-occupy a once more deserted Athens. After considerable Athenian pressure (cf. Herodotos 8. 144.4–5, 9.6–7), the Spartans at last mobilized – it is somehow typical of them that they should have marched in the end without telling the Athenians, so that when Athenian envoys arrived to issue a final ultimatum, threatening to go over to the Persians, they were blandly informed that the Spartan army had already reached Orestheion on its march against ‘the strangers’ (Herodotos 9.11.2).

The campaign that followed, culminating in the battle of Plataea, is perhaps the most interesting of the Persian Wars since it allows us to see for the first time how easily the Persians might have won. The Greek army was again commanded by a Spartan – the regent Pausanias – and although the Spartan contingent formed less than a seventh of the whole Greek force, if Herodotos’ figures are correct it was the Spartans, perioikoi and Tegeates who played the principal part in the victory. The 5,000 Spartans who took part, moreover, possibly formed the largest body of Spartan regular soldiers ever to take part in a single battle, and if they all really were Spartiates, as Herodotos describes them, this was almost certainly the largest number of Spartiates ever to fight together.1

Plataea is a curiously neglected battle in some respects: in recent years, for example, two popular books have appeared with the titles The Year of Salamis and The Year of Thermopylae, but we have yet to see a Year of Plataea.2 However, whatever some scholars seem to think, in the end Plataea was at least as ‘decisive’ as Salamis, since even the Peloponnese could not have been conquered by sea-power alone, and however true it may be that the Isthmus of Corinth could not have been held if the Greek fleet had been defeated, it is equally true that without Plataea all Greece north of the Isthmus might well have remained in Persian hands, with incalculable results for the future attitude of the Athenians and hence of the better part of the Greek fleet. In the end nearly all wars, except those involving islands or other states dependent on sea-power, are won and lost by the clash of armies.

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