Xerxes, seated at a vantage point, watched the course of the fighting with growing dismay. After a stormy night, the Persians resumed the onslaught, but with no better luck. The Great King faced an unbreakable stalemate and he had no idea what to do next. Autumn was approaching and the fighting season would be over. And it would not be possible to provision his huge army and navy indefinitely. Unless his luck changed, he would be obliged to make a humiliating withdrawal. Then, unexpectedly, it did change.
A local man called Ephialtes came forward, doubtless as a result of Persian appeals, and volunteered, for a handsome consideration, to show the Persians a track that ran through the hills to just beyond the eastern end of the pass. That very night, with Ephialtes as guide, a detachment of Immortals was dispatched along the route. The Phocian guard heard them rustle dead oak leaves in the dark as they walked along, but Persian archers showered the irresolute defenders with arrows and they immediately fled up the mountainside.
At dawn lookout men came running down from the hills and informed Leonidas of the defeat of the Phocians. He realized that it would not be long before he and his troops were encircled and convened a council. The end was near.
Different opinions were expressed at the meeting, but the king took the view that it would be “unbecoming” for him, his Spartans, and their helots to desert their post. End of discussion. He sent away most of the other contingents, but kept the doubtful Thebans and another group from a Boeotian city hostile to Thebes. Perhaps this was to show that Greek unity could survive the certainty of annihilation. Leonidas told the men who were staying, with dour Spartan wit: “Have a quick breakfast, for you will be eating dinner in the underworld, in Hades.”
To give the Immortals time to come down from the mountain and seal off the back of the pass, the Great King did not resume the onslaught until an hour or so before noon. When his troops reentered Thermopylae they found that the Greeks had advanced in front of their defensive wall. Herodotus tells the stirring tale.
Many of the barbarians fell; behind them the company commanders flogged them indiscriminately with their whips, driving the men forward. Many fell into the sea and were drowned, and still more were trampled alive by one another. No one could count the number of the dead. The Greeks, who knew that the enemy were on their way round by the mountain track and that death was inevitable, put forth all their strength and fought with fury and desperation. By this time most of their spears were broken, and they were killing Persians with their swords.
Leonidas fell fighting bravely and a Homeric struggle ensued to rescue his body, echoing the fight over the corpse of Patroclus in the Iliad. It was recovered just before the approach of Immortals in their rear. Soon completely surrounded, the surviving Greeks withdrew to the mound behind the wall, where they fought tooth and nail to the last man. That is to say, all except for the Thebans, who after fighting bravely (it has to be admitted) stood aside and surrendered.
Anecdotes throw light on opposing attitudes to soldierly honor. Once the last Greek was safely dead, Xerxes toured the battlefield and made his way among the corpses, among them that of Leonidas. Resentful at all the trouble the Spartan king had caused him, he had his head cut off and impaled on a stake. He worried that visitors would see the high price he had paid for his victory and ordered that most of the Persian dead should be buried in shallow trenches or covered with earth and leaves, leaving only one thousand visible.
Two of the three hundred Spartans were suffering from acute inflammation of the eyes (a common ailment in classical times) and, before the fighting started, had been sent back to a village in the rear to recuperate. One of them, when he heard that the Persians had turned the pass, ordered his batman, a helot, to lead him to the battlefield. He plunged into the fray and was killed. The other, a certain Aristodemus, lost his nerve and stayed where he was. When he returned to Sparta he found himself in disgrace. No citizen would offer him a light to kindle his fire or speak to him. He was nicknamed the Trembler.
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The allies at Artemisium watched the huge Persian fleet sail into Aphetae, a bay on the northern coast of the strait, and saw the land swarming with enemy infantry. By a lucky chance thirteen Persian ships mistook their opponents’ fleet for their own and sailed into captivity, but that was only a minor boost for morale. It did not stop the Greeks from panicking. Perhaps the expedition north had been foolhardy, they thought. Surely they should make their excuses now and leave? But even critics of the forward strategy could recognize the danger in such a move. If the fleet abandoned Artemisium, Leonidas would be left isolated to fend for himself.
However, if Herodotus is to be believed, Eurybiades lost his nerve and decided on flight. The terrified Euboeans petitioned him to wait a little while before leaving so that they could evacuate their women and children to places of safety. When he refused, they had a word with Themistocles and offered him a bribe of thirty talents if he could persuade the high command to stand and fight. He pocketed the money and went to see Eurybiades. He stiffened the Spartan’s resolve with a backhander of five talents, which he pretended to have found from his own pocket (throughout this history we shall find Spartans who were brought up in austerity at home and fell for gold when abroad). The fleet would stay. Themistocles never saw any harm in making a profit from doing the right thing.
On September 17, the same day as that on which the Great King launched his first assault on Leonidas at Thermopylae, the Persian fleet did not come out to fight. This was despite the fact that it had made good, so far as possible, the damage caused by the great storm. Also its commanders now knew that for all their losses they still massively outnumbered the Greeks.
But there was a good reason for inactivity. That afternoon two hundred Persian warships set sail northwards from Sciathos. Once the Greeks lost sight of them, they turned east out to sea and then sailed down the hundred-mile length of Euboea. The plan was to round the island’s southern tips and proceed up the channel between Euboea and the mainland. Their destination was Euripus, a strait only wide enough to allow a single ship to pass through at a time. Here they would wait.
Once the flotilla was in position on the following day, the Great King’s main fleet was to attack and rout the Greeks at Artemisium, whose only escape route was down the channel towards the Euripus narrows. They would be caught in the jaws of a lethal trap.
That was the idea, but secrecy was essential. Luckily, a dissident Greek diver in the Great King’s service swam or rowed unnoticed across the few miles of water from Aphetae to Artemisium and revealed the stratagem. After they had briefly considered a plan to lay an ambush themselves at the Euripus narrows, Eurybiades and Themistocles made the intelligent and brave decision to offer battle at once. It was essential to discover the enemy’s battle tactics and to test the efficacy of their own.
The Persians made no move, so the Greeks challenged them. They rowed into open water from their beach in a line more than two miles long. The Persians responded by coming out themselves and forming an even longer line. They began to outflank and envelop the Greeks, who on a signal backed water and formed themselves into a circle, with all the ships’ bows pointing outwards. This made things difficult for the Persians, who liked to come alongside enemy triremes and board them. By contrast the Greeks preferred to row forward and disable their opponents by ramming them in the side or stern, and for this their hedgehog layout was ideal.