Persian Fire

by Tom Holland

And the Persians, watching him fall, knew the battle lost. Mardonius’ guardsmen, holding their ground heroically, were wiped out where they stood, but the remainder of the divisions, demoralized by the death of their charismatic general, began to run, and soon the rout was general over the battlefield. Forty thousand men, led by a quick-thinking officer, managed to escape northward onto the road to Thessaly, but most, stampeding in their panic, made for the fort, and the Lacedaemonians and Tegeans pursued them there. Soon enough, Pausanias was joined before the gates of the fort by the Athenians, whose bitter grudge match against the Thebans had ended with the medizers breaking and fleeing for their city. Now, together at last, the victorious allies forced the palisade. The massacre that followed was almost total: of the shattered remnants of Mardonius’ army, barely three thousand were spared. And so ended the enterprise of the Great King against the West.