And perhaps once they would have done. Perhaps once they would have chosen to forsake all their dreams of independence, accept that there might indeed be submission with honor, bow their necks to the King of Kings. But much had changed. A sense of the preciousness of freedom, instilled in the Athenian people by the thirty-year experiment that was their democracy, and by the experience of having fought to defend it against the most terrifying odds imaginable, had left the Assembly unwilling now to barter it for peace. “The degree to which we are put in the shadow by the Medes’ strength is hardly something that you need to bring to our attention,” they told Alexander. “We are already well aware of it. But even so, such is our love of liberty, that we will never surrender.”40 Brave words indeed: for the Athenian people, having uttered them, once again faced the prospect of their city’s annihilation.
And the Spartan ambassadors? It is hard to believe that they were not moved by such defiance. Even as they left Athens, the squatter camps were starting to empty, as evacuees, for the second time in ten months, began pushing their handcarts down to the beaches. Not that admiration of Athenian spirit necessarily implied any sense of obligation on the part of the Spartans themselves—and yet the ambassadors, on their return, would surely have warned the ephors that the crisis brewing in Attica did indeed imperil Sparta. Stirringly though it had been proclaimed, the Athenians’ love of liberty might yet be pushed to breaking point. Only their illusion that the Spartans were pledged to cross the Isthmus in their defense was serving to keep the talk of appeasement at bay. “Get your army into the field as soon as you can.” Such had been the parting words of Aristeides. “Quickly, before Mardonius appears in our country, you must join with us, and confront him in Boeotia.”41
So it was that when the barbarian, sweeping southward into Attica, occupied a deserted Athens for the second time, Peloponnesians everywhere felt a sudden tremor of alarm. King Leotychides, still cruising off Delos with the allied fleet, saw, on the western horizon, a distant pinprick of fire, then another, then another in turn, as beacons, linking Attica directly to the imperial information network, broadcast to distant Sardis the news of Athens’ fall. Meanwhile, in Lacedaemon, the ephors had been brought an even more unsettling communication: Mardonius, it was reported, had sent his envoys across the straits to Salamis and repeated his peace terms to the Athenian evacuees. This time, a prominent nobleman, Lycidas, had dared to speak out openly in favor of accepting them. A straw in the wind, surely—despite the fact that his fellow citizens, cornered and despairing as they were, had promptly stoned the would-be medizer. Lycidas’ wife and children too, surrounded by the women camped out on Salamis, had been similarly pulped to death. Athenian defiance, it appeared, was turning pathological. The more savage it became, and the more suspicious, the greater the risk that it might buckle.
By now it was June. The Spartans, inevitably, were celebrating yet another festival, this time the Hyacinthia, a great spectacle of songs and feasting held in honor of a dead lover of Apollo. Once again, just as had happened in the dark days before Marathon, an Athenian embassy arrived in Lacedaemon desperate for military assistance, only to find everyone having a party.42 Behind the scenes, however, wheels were already turning. Ten days the Athenian ambassadors were kept in Sparta. Ten days they cooled their heels. On the eleventh day, their patience finally cracked. They delivered an explicit ultimatum: either the Spartans abandoned their festivities and went to war or the Athenians would be obliged to accept Mardonius’ terms. The ephors, far from panicking, or working themselves up into a fit of righteous indignation, merely smiled, then revealed all. Why, they exclaimed blandly, had the ambassadors not heard? The Spartan army was already on the march.
A true coup de théâtre—and the Athenians were far from the only ones to whom it came as a bolt from the blue. The Argives, having vowed to obstruct any Spartan expedition before it could reach the Isthmus, suddenly woke to find themselves bypassed. “The whole fighting force of Lacedaemon is on the march,” they reported frantically to Mardonius, “and we are powerless to stop it.”43 Mardonius himself, still camped out in Attica, promptly abandoned his attempts to woo the Athenians and put what remained of their city, “walls, houses, temples and all,” to the torch.44 Then, determined to lure the Peloponnesians as far north from the Isthmus as he could, he withdrew from Attica into Boeotia. Here, having been guided along the safest paths by enthusiastic Theban liaison officers, he finally halted. He was now in prime cavalry country. The perfect spot to build his camp. The perfect spot to fight a battle.
Four miles south of Thebes, on the bank of the broadest river in Boeotia, the Asopus, Mardonius duly ordered the construction of a palisade. Again he had chosen his position well. Beyond the river there stretched the gently undulating territory of Thebes’ old enemy, Plataea. Beyond the fields of the Plataeans there rose foothills, and beyond them, the heights of a mountain with extensive spurs and ridges, Cithaeron. The allies, if they wished to bring Mardonius to battle, would first have to cross a host of barriers—and cross them knowing that defeat would mean their certain annihilation. There could be no easy retreat back to the Isthmus from Plataea. Nor, equally, for Mardonius, if he lost, back to Thessaly. If the allies came, then the moment of truth would come as well.
The Dorian Spear
Long delayed it may have been, but there were no half measures about the advance of the Peloponnesians from their bunk hole when it came. Making good their demolition work of the previous summer, engineers had already repaired the land route to Megara, and it was just as well that they had not botched their responsibility, for the Isthmus road, shuddering under thousands of tramping feet, had never before had to bear the weight of such an army. Indeed, a Greek expeditionary force to rival it had not been seen since the fabled times of the Trojan War. From Corinth to Mycenae, from Tegea to Troezen, an immense coalition of Peloponnesians had answered the Spartans’ call. Naturally, the Spartans themselves, five thousand of them, almost three-quarters of their city’s total manpower, provided the task force with its most menacing spear thrust. With five thousand further hoplites recruited from the outlying townships of Lacedaemon, and thousands of helots rounded up to serve as orderlies and light infantry, it was almost certainly the largest army that Sparta had ever committed to the field.45
Even cowards had been mobilized; or rather—which was not necessarily the same thing—men whom the Spartans had labeled cowards. One of these, an unfortunate veteran by the name of Aristodemus, was particularly grateful to have been given a chance to redeem his honor, for this was not the first time that he had marched to war against the barbarians. Less than a year previously, he had been one of the three hundred who had accompanied Leonidas to Thermopylae. Arriving at the pass, he and a fellow Spartan had fallen sick with an eye inflammation, and the two men had been dismissed and ordered to recuperate. Come the fateful morning of their king’s last stand, however, Aristodemus’ partner, rising from his sickbed, had instructed a helot to lead him, blind as he still was, into the thick of the fighting. Aristodemus, preferring to obey Leonidas’ direct orders, had invalided himself home. There, on his arrival, he had been greeted with revulsion. His fellow citizens had branded him “trembler”: the single most shameful word in the Spartan lexicon.