“Athens, the mighty city!”
For the strong house of the Alcmaeonids
This is the finest prelude
To lay as foundation stone
Of my chariot song.
Pindar went on to hint at his subject’s troubles, writing of “envy requiting your fine deeds,” but the ode implies that Megacles felt neither shame for his exile nor resentment against his city.
In 482 the last and greatest of the enemies of Themistocles fell victim to an ostracism. On this occasion, in the run-up to the vote, an illiterate farm worker from the countryside went up to Aristides. He handed over his potsherd and asked him to write the name of Aristides on it.
Aristides was taken aback and inquired of the man what harm Aristides had ever done him. “None at all,” he replied. “I don’t even know him. I am just sick and tired of hearing everyone call him the Just.” Aristides scratched his name on the ostrakon and handed it back without a word.
By far the largest number of unearthed potsherds (more than 4,500) for these years name Themistocles. Citizens must have voted against him at every opportunity, although never a majority of them. He will have guessed that his immunity would not last forever, and that one day he would share the fate of the rotting triremes on the beach at Phaleron.
—
But for now he had work to do if he was to transform Athens into the greatest naval power among the Hellenes, for from 484 onwards news trickled in from the east: the Great King was indeed preparing a vast military expedition.
In all the shipyards of his domains, in Cyprus, Egypt, and the great ports of Phoenicia, along the coastline of Asia Minor, and on the southern littoral of the Black Sea, keels were being laid down and triremes and military transports launched in their hundreds. An advance force of engineers and workmen was busy digging a canal about one mile and a half long through the peninsula of Athos. When finished it was wide enough to allow two triremes to pass one another. Ten years previously Darius’s navy had come to grief trying to round Athos; this time history would not be allowed to repeat itself. Also from the Hellespont to Greece roads were constructed or improved and rivers bridged or furnished with ferries.
Nobody needed to ask what destination Xerxes had in mind. There was little time for Themistocles to deliver his ships.
10
Invasion
Xerxes, the Great King, was something of an aesthete and, when he first considered the matter, not in the least interested in leading a fresh invasion of Greece.
Like all upper-class Persians he preferred to cultivate his gardens.
In October 481, en route to Sardis where his army was mustering for the campaign, he passed Callatebus, a town famous for a sweet confection made from wheat and syrup of the tamarisk. Along the road he happened upon a magnificent plane tree. He was so impressed by it that he decorated it with gold ornaments, necklaces and bracelets, and (it is reported) even one of his royal robes. He detailed a member of his army’s elite corps, the Immortals, to stay there and guard it.
To treat a tree as if it were a beautiful woman who needed protection seems like odd behavior, but Persians loved to manage nature and were enthusiastic gardeners. A Persian prince later in the century boasted that, whenever he was not on military service, he regularly did some gardening before dinner. Every imperial palace came with a walled park. Irrigated by water flowing along narrow channels, this was an oasis of green, shady cool in dry landscapes. A combination of a garden and open land well stocked with animals, it was a pleasant place for taking exercise; for hunting with spears and arrows from specially constructed towers; or just going for a ride.
Mardonius, who had lost his fleet in a storm on the way to invade Greece and been discharged from military office, returned to favor under Xerxes and often put the case for a new, more ambitious expedition against the Greeks. To the usual argument for revenge against the Athenians, he added:
Europe is a very beautiful place. It produces every kind of garden tree. The land there is everything that land should be. In short, it is too good for any human being except the Great King.
In other words, Mardonius, going somewhat beyond the evidence so far as rocky Hellas is concerned, was tempting Xerxes with the prospect of acquiring a vast new paradeisor, or paradise.
These exchanges between monarch and commander are retailed by Herodotus and may be no more than a happy trouvaille. But they give a picture of a ruler who regarded his empire as recreation ground on the largest possible scale, who decided everything, but did not take the trouble to do anything himself. That task was left to the servants.
On this occasion, though, after the embarrassing failure at Marathon, the Great King took the highly unusual decision to lead the expedition against the Greeks in person.
—
Xerxes committed himself to the invasion of Greece no later than 484 after rebellious Egypt had been reclaimed. The work of preparation that then began was interrupted by an insurrection in Babylon. But at last, towards the end of March 480 the Great King and his expeditionary force started out from Sardis on the long march up to the Hellespont, through Thrace, and down into Thessaly and Hellas.
It made a splendid and overpowering spectacle. Almost all the adult male members of the royal family were present in one position of command or other. For anyone to apply for exemption from service was to risk terminal disapproval. A multimillionaire, who was a generous donor to the Achaemenid cause and high in favor, told the Great King that all his five sons had joined up.
“I am an old man, Majesty,” he said, “and beg you to release my eldest son to look after me and my property.”
Xerxes lost his temper over what he saw as rank disloyalty. He ordered that executioners should seek out the son, cut him in half, and place the two halves on each side of the road and have the army march off between them.
The procession of men in column of route must have taken hours to pass through this grisly display. First came the baggage and technical units, followed by a mixed body of soldiers from every nationality. It was a colorful, multilingual throng. They accounted for more than half the army. A gap ensued to separate them from the Great King and his entourage.
Two crack brigades of cavalry and spear-bearers, with golden pomegranates on their spear butts, led the way. Ten sacred horses from Media followed, and eight grays drew a sacred chariot for Ahura Mazda, lord of the universe. No human being was allowed to ride on it, so the charioteer walked behind on the ground holding the reins. Then came the Great King himself in his chariot accompanied by a charioteer. When he felt like a rest and some privacy he got down and took his seat in a covered carriage.
After him marched another thousand spear-bearers, with either gold or silver pomegranates on their spear butts, and then another thousand cavalry. The royal escort was completed by the Immortals, ten thousand heavily armed foot soldiers. They were so-called because their number was never allowed to slip; if anyone dropped out as a result of death or illness they were immediately replaced.
The Immortals were well looked after. They were magnificently dressed with lavish gold adornments. Their high status entitled them to bring covered wagons on campaign for their mistresses and to employ well-dressed servants. Camels and other beasts of burden carried the Immortals’ special rations.
An interval of two furlongs preceded the rest of the army, which brought up the rear—another large body of horse and a column of infantry divisions.
—
A question arises. How numerous was this vast mass of humanity? It is a hard one to answer, for government records have not survived and classical historians gave absurdly inflated numbers. Herodotus reports that Xerxes assembled 1,700,000 infantry and 80,000 cavalry. To this he added 20,000 for camels and chariots and 300,000 for Thracians and Greeks recruited en route. As for the fleet, 1,207 triremes at 200 oarsmen per ship add up to an estimated 241,400 men and 36,210 marines at 30 per ship. Additional warships required crews totaling 284,000. Herodotus then doubles the total to allow for camp followers and their animals and hangers-on (among them, we are told, eunuchs, female cooks, concubines, and Indian dogs). This produces a grand total of 5,283,220 souls.