Persian Fire

by Tom Holland

supreme contest of valor and endurance, then to fall in battle, yet so also, in Greek tradition, might a hero display an instinct for self-preservation and be no less a hero. Achilles, offered by his mother the alternatives of a happy but obscure old age or an early death and undying glory, had not hesitated; but Homer, in his second great epic, had sung the exploits of a man who made a very different choice. Odysseus, as barrel-chested as Themistocles and quite as much a “man of twists and turns,” had wanted nothing more, having sacked Troy, than to return home to his wife. In the cause of achieving that, he had held no ploy, no deception, no ruse beneath him. This was why Athena had admired him and honored him above all her favorites: for “here among mortal men,” as she told Odysseus, “you’re the best at tactics, spinning yarns, and I am famous among the gods for wisdom, cunning wiles, too.”9 So it was that she loved the Athenians, who were held to be the most intelligent of the Greeks; and so it was, too, whenever the impossible appeared suddenly possible, and the solution to a seemingly insuperable problem began to glimmer into view, that a mortal could know Athena stood by his side. Themistocles, weighing up the odds of battle, turning fresh stratagems over in his mind, would surely not have confined himself to raising prayers to the north wind alone.

If the Great King could not make a breakthrough soon, his army would start to starve. It was already late in the campaigning season, and the barbarians were far from home. If they could merely avoid defeat, and keep the Mede at bay, that, for the Greeks, would surely prove victory enough.

It seems likeliest, then, that the order to engage the enemy in the straits was given to the Persian fleet shortly after sunrise, and that it came directly from the King of Kings himself. We do not know how the signal was broadcast, nor whether Xerxes was able to communicate to his admirals a sudden and thrilling spectacle, clearly visible to him from his vantage point above the straits: the apparent disintegration of the whole Greek battle line.

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.

Set in Susa, it offered, for the delectation of the Athenian people, a dramatic reconstruction of Xerxes’ return home from Salamis. The king who had left Persia in the full pomp of his majesty was portrayed limping back in rags; the courtiers who had thought to hail a conquering hero were heard wailing in misery. All most enjoyable—and comforting—for the audience, of course. The Great King was indeed cowed, Aeschylus reassured his fellow citizens; and Athens, the city which had defeated him, was now a beacon of liberty to nations everywhere. “For the people of Asia will not endure to remain the slaves of Persia for long; to be strong-armed into paying tribute to their master; to prostrate themselves before him on the ground. Kingship itself and all its power are dead.”69 The world, in other words, had been made safe for Athens—and for democracy.