The History of the Imagination: Myths and Legends

      Legends often provide interesting clues in the detective work of piecing together history. Not wholly invented, legends usually grow around a real person who is larger than life, a hero like Alexander the Great. Since the hero is already braver, stronger, or somehow greater than average, legends tend to highlight these qualities. Though legends show plenty of imagination, at the heart, there is always some historic truth.
      Several legends are attached to the life of Alexander:

• On the day of Alexander's birth, several extraordinary events occurred: there was a solar eclipse; the temple of Artemis at Ephesus caught fire; and an eagle, the bird of Zeus, sat on the roof of the building where Alexander was born. These were all taken to be signs of Alexander's future greatness.
• Also on the day of Alexander's birth, his father, King Philip, was told of two other happy events: one of his generals had won a great victory, and one of his horses won a race at the Olympic Games.
• While in the midst of his conquest of Persia, Alexander stopped at a place called Gordian. He was shown a famous wagon roped to a yoke pole by a mysterious knot. None of the ends of the rope were visible. Alexander was told that whoever was able to unravel the knot would conquer the world. At first Alexander was puzzled, but then he drew out his sword, cut through the knot, and fulfilled the prophecy his own way!
• While visiting Corinth, Alexander learned that the philosopher Diogenes was nearby. On his visit, Alexander was constantly surrounded by crowds of well-wishers, yet Diogenes did not seek him out like the others. So Alexander stood over him and asked if there was anything he would like Alexander to do. Diogenes replied, "Stand a little out of my sun." Impressed by this attitude, Alexander said: "Verily, if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes."

Writing: ECHOES from the Past published by McGraw-Hill Ryderson Ltd. 

The Road to Persia: Alexander The Great

      As a result of the Peloponnesian War, Sparta, with Persian support, tried to dominate the other Greek city-states as Athens had done. In reaction to this, new alliances were made against Sparta. Corinth, for example, joined with its old rival Athens to prevent Spartan interference. For a brief time (371-361 BCE), Thebes, another city-state, defeated the Spartans and assumed Greek leadership. It was able to achieve this because of changes in military tactics, including the use of a very deep formation of men (called a phalanx) who used longer than normal spears to punch holes through enemy lines. Theban dominance ended with the death of its best general, Epaminondas. The careful balance of power between the leading Greek city-states was soon to be upset by a new force from the north, the kingdom of Macedonia.

Philip of Macedon

      The broad plains and hill country of the North Aegean were home to a people considered backward cousins of the Greeks. The Macedonians spoke a Greek dialect, but they were farmers and shepherds, not craftspeople and traders. They were behind their southern cousins in wealth and culture. In the fourth century BCE, several kings rose to unite the Macedonians and bring them success in battle against their enemy neighbours. The key figure in this success was Philip the Great. As a hostage in Thebes fro three years, he had learned the new battle tactics of the Thebans. He create a professional army with a strong cavalry and more flexible units on the battlefield. As a result, Philip was able not only to unite his country, but also to defeat the southern Greeks at the Battle of Chaeronaea in 338 BCE. For the first time, all mainland Greeks were joined together under the rule of a single leader. It is likely that this ruthless, ambitious monarch planned to turn the combined Greek forces against their old enemy, Persia, but before he could launch such an expedition, he was assassinated by one of his own officers at a wedding celebration.
      I one of the most exciting discoveries in Greek archaeology this century, a royal burial chamber was excavated at Vergina in nothern Greece. The outside facade had a painting of a lion hunt with figures identified as Philip the Great and a young Alexander. Inside the vaulted chamber were found silver drinking cups, bronze armour, and a heavy gold box containing a beautiful golden wreath of oak leaves. Wrapped in a purple and gold cloth were the burnt bones of a man whom many believe was Philip the Great himself. Many others now think this tomb actually belonged to Philip's son, Philip III Arrhidaeus, the half brother of Alexander.

Alexander the Great

      After Philip's death, rule fell to his 20-year old son Alexander. He was a student of Aristotle and one of the most successful military leaders the world has known. he took his father's experienced, professional army, his own genius for finding the weaknesses of his enemies, and Philip's ambitious plans for conquest, and in 334 BCE set out against the Persians. He never returned to Europe. Intentionally or not, he conquered the entire Near East as far as India, in a grueling, decade-long campaign.
      How could such a young man with a relatively small army of 35 000 foot soldiers defeat the Persian Empire? The Macedonian army now represented the ultimate in improved Greek warfare. The Macedonians were led by seasoned commanders and all were devoted to Alexander. The Persian army, though much larger, was made up of many different subject peoples. Darius, the Persian king, was a despot the Persian foot soldiers, the rest of the Persian troops lost their eagerness to fight. The battle of Gaugamela on 1 October 331 BCE, was the final blow against the Persians, whose land and wealthy fell into Alexander's hands. Even this, however, did not satisfy Alexander. He forced his weary army eastward against several great kingdoms, reaching all the way to the Indus River valley before turning back, disappointed that he had not reached the eastern ocean.
      Alexander had dreamed of conquering the entire world as far as the Indian Ocean, but finally faced the fact that he now had to govern what he had won. Though as a boy, Alexander had been tutored by Aristotle, as an adult, his ideas about how to make a better empire otu of all these foreign peoples were probably his own. He tried to make Greek culture and language a kind of common, uniting force. At the same time, he respected the customs and laws of the peoples he had conquered and encouraged their leaders to help him rule the various parts of his empire. This was a wise decision on Alexander's part, since each nationality had its own culture and might have rebelled if forced to adopt Greek customs completely.
      Perhaps Alexander's great experiment would have worked, but he died of an illness just short of his thirty-third birthday. The empire that he fought so hard to create soon split apart as each of his best generals grabbed a large piece of its territory for himself.

Writing: ECHOES from the Past published by McGraw-Hill Ryderson Ltd. 

The Classical Moment

Literature

      Fifth-century BCE Athens was the focal point of the brief age of brilliance sometimes referred to as the Classical Moment. With Pericles as leader and people like the playwright Sophocles and the sculptor Pheidias expressing Greek ideals in artistic forms, Athenian society reached a cultural peak. It was a period of optimism, when the Greeks believed that their world could be made better, and that troubles they faced could be overcome. In Antigone, Sophocles wrote this hymn to humankind:

There are many wonders, but none more wondrous than man
Across the white-caped sea in the storms of winter this creature makes his way on through the billowing waves. And earth, the oldest of the gods, the undecaying and unwearied one, he wears away with constant ploughing, back and forth, year after year, turning the soil with horses he has bred ...
Language, thought swift as the wind, and the patterns of city life he has taught himself, and escape from the shafts of storms, and the shelter -- piercing frosts of clear days. He can cope with everything, never unprepared whatever the future brings. Only from death does he fail to contrive escape. Even for diseases thought hopeless he has figured out cures. Clever, with ingenuity and skill beyond imagining, He veers now toward evil, not toward good ...

Antigone 1.322-368

      Other playwrights, such as Aeschylus and Euripides, hoped to improved their world by examining serious issues like the basis of justice, and the status of women in Greek society. The comic playwright Aristophanes also aimed to change his world -- by making fun of ti. In Lysistrata, he turns the world upside down by having Greek women go on strike -- they refuse to have sexual relations with their husbands in order to force the men to end their destructive war: 

When the War begin, like the prudent, dutiful wives that we are, we tolerated you men, and endured your actions in silence. (Small wonder--you wouldn't let us say boo.) You were not precisely the answer to a matron's prayer--we knew you too well, and found out more. Too many times, as we sat in the hosue, we'd hear that you'd done it again--manhandled another affair of state with your usual staggering incompetence. Then, we'd ask you, brightly, "How was the Assembly today, dear? Anything in the minutes about PEace?" And my husband would give his stock reply.
"What's that to you? Shut up!" And I did...
But this time was really too much:...
We women met in immediate convention and passed a unanimous resolution: To work in concert for safety and Peace in Greece. We have valuable advice to impart, and if you can possibly deign to emulate our silence, and take your turn as audience, we'll rectify you--we'll straighten you out and set you right. 

Aristophanes Lysistrata 1.507-528

Architecture

      The most celebrated of all Greek buildings ever constructed is the Parthenon, built in Periclean Athens as a showpiece of Athenian wealth and power. It dominated all of Athens from its perch high on the Acropolis. Designed by Pheidias and the architect Ictinus, this temple to Athena is a marvel of skill and beauty, inspired in part by the Greek victories over the Persians.

       The construction of the Parthenon would not have been possible without masonry and sculpture techniques Greeks had learned 200 years earlier in Egypt. Each block of this huge temple was carved with incredible accuracy, using only hand tools.

       It is the Parthenon's sculpture, however, that is its most striking feature. Though some remains in Athens, most of the sculpture fro around the temple is now kept in the British Museum in London. The figures show the ideal forms of human beauty, serenely calm and unaffected by the momentary events of the world around them. Represented in the sculpture are mythological battles such as the Battle of the Gods and the Giants. The Birth of Athena, the goddess to whom the temple is dedicated is also portrayed. The Greeks chose not to represent the real battle with the Persians because they believed that such pride (hubris) in their own victory would surely be punished by the gods. 

       Housed in the great cella (centre room) of the Parthenon was a towering statue of the warrior goddess Athena, made by the artist Pheidias. It was over 12 m high and made of ivory and gold plates set on a wooden frame. a reflecting pool sat in front of it. Once can only imagine the awe that it inspired. Such magnificent works of art were not cheap and it was the revenue from Athens's Empire, a forced federation, that paid for much of this beauty. 

Writing: ECHOES from the Past published by McGraw-Hill Ryderson Ltd. 

The Peloponnesian War

      Corinth was a rich trading city like Athens, but it belonged to Sparta's Peloponnesian League and so remained quite independent. Athens kept Corinth's merchants away from the profitable trade of the Aegean area and provoked Megara, another state, by likewise excluding her from ports of the Athenian Empire. When Athens began to interfere with Corinth's colonies, it was accused of breaking its peace treaty with Sparta and provoked the so-called Peloponneisan War. This was the longest, most bitter and costly war the Greeks ever fought. Almost every city-state aligned itself with one side or the other. At the outset, Athens seemed the strongest of the combatants and the best prepared for war.
      Pericles knew that Attica (greater Athens) could be invaded yearly by the more powerful land army of the Spartans. He therefore arranged for food to be imported and for the people to take refuge behind the Long Walls connecting the seaport of Piraeus with Athens whenever Attica was attacked. The Athenian fleet was strong and could raid the coast of the Peloponnese at will, and there was a big surplus in Athen's treasury. Prospects for victory looked good.
      What Pericles could not have foreseen was the plague that struck Athens in 430 BCE, the second year of the Peloponnesian War. Athenians had sought refuge between the Long Walls when Sparta invaded that year, and in the cramped, unsanitary conditions, a horrible disease struck. Thucydides, who wrote a history of this war, caught the plague himself but survived. He left a detailed description of its terrible symptoms. In two years, perhaps a third of the Athenians died, including their great leader Pericles. With Pericles out of the picture, the two opponents were now on more equal ground.
     The conflict lasted for 27 years. First one side gained a strategic victory, then the other. After 300 Spartiates were trapped and captured alive off the coast of the Peloponnese, Sparta wanted peace. Then Sparta successfully attacked Athens's allies in the North Aegean, and Athens wanted peace. Finally, King Brasidas of Sparta, and Cleon, the leader of the radical democrats in Athens, were killed in battle at Amphipolis in the North Aegean. This provoked a brief peace in 421 BCE.
      Athens found a new leader who pushed for further hostilities. He was Alcibiades, the nephew and ward of Pericles. In 418 BCE, Athens put together an alliance to fight Sparta on land; the attack was not very successful. In 416 BCE, Athens attacked Melos, killing or enslaving its population and bringing this island into the Athenian Empire. Sparta was on the point of attacking Athens again.
      At this critical point, Athens foolishly decided to try to conquer Syracuse, the most powerful city on the distant island of Sicily. this two-year campaign (415-413 BCE) required huge quantities of ships, manpower, and money to undertake. It was a total disaster. Alcibiades strongly supported the expedition and could have saved it, but having been charged with a school boy prank at a drinking party, he was forced to flee to Sparta for several years. When he finally returned to Athens to help its sinking cause in 411 BCE, he was able to turn the war effort around for a short time. When he went into exile again for losing a small naval engagement, Athens could find no other general to take his place.
      By 408 BCE, the Persians had begun supporting the Spartans, providing ships to fight the Athenians. the Spartan general, Lysander, developed more effective ways to combat the Athenian fleet. Athens became desperate as its money for new ships dwindled and losses at sea continued. After one Athenian victory at sea in 406 BCE, a storm suddenly blew up and prevented the Athenians from picking up 2000 men drifting away from their wrecked triremes. Athens recalled its ten commanders to stand trial for this added loss. Only six of them dared to return for the trial, including Pericles, the son of the great Athenian leader of the same name. All six were found guilty and executed.
      The decisive, final battle occurred in 405 BCE at Aegospotami in the Hellespont area. Athens put one last fleet on the water, depending on it for victory. After days of maneuvering against the Peloponnesian fleet without a battle, the Athenian sailors beached their ships to collect food for their lunch as they had on previous days. The Pelopponnesians caught them off guard, burned or captured their ships, and rounded up the sailors. The end had come. Just as the Athenians had killed all the men of Melos in 416 BCE and enslaved their women and children, now they could expect the same treatment.
      Sparta's allies, Thebes and Corinth, forcefully encouraged Sparta to do exactly as Athens had done to Melos. What a tragic loss it would have been for Greece. In the end, Sparta spared Athens. As punishment, Athens was required to tear down its Long Walls, surrender all but 12 ships of its fleet, take back its political exiles, and acknowledge Spartan leadership in matters of peace and war.
      The loss of freedom was just the beginning of dark days for the Athenians. Thirty men, backed by a Spartan garrison, were granted the authority to rule in Athens. These men, who came to be  known as the 30 Tyrants, unleashed a reign of terror during which many people were declared outlaws and killed. Over the course of eight months, 1500 men died. Finally, the city was retaken by exiles favouring democracy. The blood bath came to an end in 403 BCE, after which Athens then began a remarkably swift recovery, but it was never again a great power.

Thucydides

      Thucydides, writer of the remarkable history of the Peloponesian War, was old enough to recall and record the war's events right from the outbreak of the hostilities; he also fought in the war as an Athenian commander. His refusal to help the Athenians near Amphipolis in 424 BCE proved to be a disaster for his military career, but a blessing for future generations. Rather than fight, he chose to go into exile instead, and from that neutral vantage point he had a better perspective on all the events of the war. Though he lived to see the end of the Peloponnesian War, his book ends in mid-sentence in the year 411 BCE, seven years from the war's end. It is possible that another Greek historian edited and prepared his account for publication.
      The introduction to The Peloponnesian War tells us much about Thucydides and his goals.

I lived through the whole of it, being of an age to understand what was happening, and I put my mind to the subject so as to get an accurate view of it. It happened, too, that I was banished from my country fro twenty years after my command at Amphipolis; I was what was being done on both sides, particularly on the Peloponnesian side, because of my exile, and this leisure gave me rather exceptional facilities for looking into things.

Thucydides The Peloponnesian War 1.1; V.26

Writing: ECHOES from the Past published by McGraw-Hill Ryderson Ltd.

Athens Builds an Empire

      The Greeks repulsed the mighty Persian invasion of 480-479 BCE and took a small piece of land along the coast of Asia Minor from Persia's huge empire. As the Persians were expected to attack again, at least to recover their lost territory, the Greeks discussed a permanent alliance to continue fighting them. Sparta refused to participate in affairs outside the Peloponnese, and so Athens needed a strong fleet and leaders with vision. Aristeides, acting for Athens, helped organize the Dalian League to defend the Greek states should Persia attack again. Each state signed a defense treaty with Athens and agreed to pay an annual tribute toward maintaining a common fleet. Aristeides was the first to calculate how much tribute each member of the League should pay, and his fairness earned him the name, "Aristeides the Just." Athens provided all the officials and commanders of the League, and swore not to interfere in the internal affairs of its allies. The treasury and meetings were held at the great sanctuary of Apollo on the island of Delos, hence the name Delian League.
      This League was originally a voluntary association but soon became a forced union. some states that did not want to join were compelled to enter the alliance while others that wanted to drop out when the Persian threat receded were forced to remain and pay their share. Kimon, the son of Miltiades, who won the  Battle of Marathon, moulded the League into an effective force to fight the Persians. As the fleet's commander, Kimon beat the Persians decisively in 467 BCE to keep them from any further attacks in the Aegean Sea. After this success, the League, led by young Pericles of Athens, felt strong enough to try to free te Greeks on the island of Cyprus and help in a new revolt against the Persians in Egypt. The Egyptian expedition ca. 450 BCE turned into a catastrophe when a Persian force trapped the Greek fleet in one branch of the Nile River and wiped it out. Fearing a Persian reprisal by sea, in 454 BCE, Pericles moved the League's treasury from the island of Delos back to Athens. This was taken as final proof that the League had now become an empire controlled by Athens.

Pericles and Democracy

      The city of Athens, just one of more than 300 Greek city-states, enjoyed its greatest period of wealthy and power -- 30 years -- under the guidance of Pericles. To us today, the term democracy means an opportunity to elect politicians who share our views and to voice opinions through the media and public meetings. in the Athens of Pericles's day, democracy meant far more. Every citizen could speak and vote on every piece of legislation in the Assembly. Every citizen had an equal chance to hold public office, with the exception of offices such as army general, which were elected positions. All law cases were decided by majority vote of citizen juries of between 201 and 1501 people. The law and the government were firmly in the hands of the citizens. Pericles proclaimed, "We judge the man who takes no part at all [in public affairs] a useless, not just a quiet person."
      Pericles himself was elected annually to the Board of Generals in Athens and so maintained his leading position in the city. Te other civic offices, even the archonships, were only one-year positions and candidates were selected by lottery from a list proposed by the tribes. The introduction of pay for serving on the Council of 500, on juries, and in the various civic offices, allowed even the poorest citizen to take time away from his work. Paid civil service was a radical departure from the earlier system for government.
      In his funeral oration for the Athenian dead at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, Pericles declared:

Our constitution is called a democracy, because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which a man possesses. No one, so long as he has it in him to be of service to the state, is kept in political obscurity because of poverty.  

Thucydides The Peloponnesian War 11.37

      There were far more opportunities for citizens to participate in political affairs in ancient Athens than in our modern democracies. There was no pay for attending the Assembly until the fourth century BCE, s at this time many poor people could not afford to attend. Women, slaves, and foreign residents could still not hold citizenship, and Pericles himself introduced a law that limited citizenship to only those men whose parents had been born of citizen fathers.

Rivalry between Sparta and Athens

      While he held office as general, Kimon had acted to defuse the long-standing rivalry between Sparta and Athens, the two main powers in Greece. Things had changed when Sparta asked Athens for help during a dangerous Helot revolt in 462 BCE, Kimon convinced  the Athenians to send soldiers to help Sparta, but when they arrived, Sparta refused their help and sent the Athenians home. This insult led to Kimon's ostracism the following  year, and the quick rise of Pericles to political prominence.
      During the 450s BCE, under the leadership of Pericles, Athens tried to build a land empire in central Greece that truly was a threat to Sparta's traditional power base, although it did not last long, the attempt by Athens increased tensions between the two states. To try to ease the increasingly bitter rivalry, Athens and Sparta signed a 30-year peace treaty in 445 BCE, agreeing to stay out of each other's internal affairs. Sparta still led the Peloponnesian League, which included some members or allies in central Greece, while Athens held tight rein on the many coastal and island states of her empire in the Aegean. Despite the peace treaty, the rivalry between Athens and Sparta continued, leading them into all-out war.
      There were basic differences between Sparta and Athens. Sparta was a land power, with a conservative oligarchic government, backward in terms of trade, wealthy, and recent advances in Greek culture such as rhetoric, philosophy, and literature. it sought leadership among Greek states simply in order to protect itself and its narrow interests, rather than out of a desire for wealthy, power, or expansion. Athens was the opposite. A sea power governed by a radical democracy, Athens was at the forefront of advances in culture. It was a progressive, wealthy, trading nation. Athens maintained and tried to expand its empire for the sake of the power and income it provided. These differences lone caused suspicion and dislike between the two states, but it was the other states, especially Corinth, that finally pushed the two toward war.
   

Writing: ECHOES from the past published by McGraw-Hill Ryderson Ltd.

Early Greek Art: Cross-Cultural Influences

      The great wars against Persia highlight the differences between the civilization developing in Greece and the older civilizations of the East. The Greeks beat back the Eastern threat to their freedom and won the opportunity to develop their own culture, accepting outside influences only if they appealed to Greek taste. This paid great dividends in the coming centuries, as the greatest Greek artists, writers, philosophers, and scientists began to explore their world in new ways and to new heights. But the Greeks were not ready to move forward until after they had absorbed many important ideas and influences from the East, Egypt, and other regions during the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. At this earlier time, Greek representational an (art that attempts to depict the world as it appears), for example, was so far behind that of the East that it was easily influenced by forms of Eastern art -- scenes of people, animals, and mythical creatures like griffins and sphinxes. This period in Greek art is actually called Orientalizing because of the strong Eastern influence.
      For Greek art, the opening up of Egypt to Greek merchants and travellers was very important. In Egypt, the Greeks observed monumental statues carved in fine, hard stone and soon imitated these in the finest white marble of their homeland. Greek architects learned how to build great temples in stone after viewing the marvels of Karnak, Luxor, and Memphis. Greek artists began to appreciate the fine skills of drawing and the use of colour after seeing wall painting adoring buildings and tombs all along the Nile. Likewise, metal-working skills, glass making, and other important crafts were picked up very quickly and brought back to Greece. In every case, the Greeks were not simply imitators. They did not merely acquire skills, they also adapted them and applied them to their own needs and tastes. This is one of the keys to the greatness of Greek art and civilization.
     We can see some of the great strides made in Greek art from the Dark Ages to the Persian Wars by looking at temple architecture. Temples changed from modest wood and clay "houses" for cult statues to grand marble showcases from Greek treasures, such as the temple of Artemis at Ephesus. This sanctuary was one of the largest in all the Greek world -- the temple alone occupied an area almost the size of a football field -- and was home to hundreds of marble sculptures of people, gods, and animals.
     Sculpture was transformed from rather abstract figurines in bronze or clay to natural-looking, life-size statues in marble, bronze, or even a combination of gold and ivory. Vase painting also shows a similar transformation, changing from little black stickfigures to wonderfully fluid, idealized characters against a black, red, or white background.
      Greek philosophy and science also took their first tentative steps during the Archaic Period. Thinkers from Miletus, like the astronomer Thales, were the first to ask, "How did the world originate?" and not be satisfied with the answer, "The gods created it." They wanted to know exactly how the Earth was formed and from what. They proposed theories about the world's origin, suggesting that all things had been formed from basic elements such as moisture or air or fire, through various fundamental processes, like condensation and vaporization. These ideas are no longer accepted, but it is significant that the development of philosophy (from the Greek phileo, "to love," and sophia, "wisdom") and a type of systematic science began in Greece.
      Greek literature passed from the age of epic poems like the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer to an age of lyric poetry in dozens of forms. Drinking songs, war songs, poems such by choruses or by a single person love poems, and poems in praise of athletic victories are just a few of the new themes that appeared.
      One of the lyric poets was a woman named Sappho of Lesbos, who was admired by some Greeks as much as Homer. This is remarkable, given women's generally lowly status in Greek society. Even those belonging to wealthier citizen families enjoyed few freedoms; they were married to men chosen for them, had no right to vote or possess property, and could not go to public places unaccompanied.
      Besides lyric poetry, the very first dramatic plays were written in Athens just before th Persian Wars. They were performed in honour of the god Dionysos, god of wine and fertility.

History Continues to Unfold

      By the end of the fifth century BCE, the Greeks were poised to enter their greatest adventure yet. The Persian threat had been beaten back and the way was clear for the Athenians to build their empire and created unprecedented heights of cultural and political achievement. The level of civilization to come in the Classical Period of Greek history would be looked back on by people and empires to come as a golden age.

Writing: ECHOES from the past published by McGraw-Hill Ryderson Ltd. 

The Persian Wars: Greece Unites In Conflict

      The Greeks took longer to recover from the serious political and economic turmoil at the end of the second millennium than their Near Eastern neighbours the Assyrians, Phoenicians, Babylonians, and Egyptians, all of whom quickly began accumulating wealthy and territory. After centuries of great wars, it was the Persians, along with their close neighbours, the Medes, who emerged as the most powerful empire. By the sixth century BCE, the Persians threatened the Greek homeland itself. Somehow,the fiercely independent Greek city-states need to find a way to cooperate to beat back the menace from the est.
      Compared with the huge empires of the Near East, particularly Persia, Greek city-states were tiny. Even a coalition that included every Greek town would only equal a fraction of this eastern power. The fact that the Greek states were weekended by fighting among themselves and rarely agreed on anything long enough to act together, made defense against a mighty empire appear impossible. On the positive side, Greek soldiers were tough, their battle tactics and weapons inferior to none, and when they were finally ready to cooperate, they found good leaders.
      The empire of the Persians and Medes had expanded northward toward the eastern Greek (or Ionian) cities in the early sixth century BCE, but was stopped by the wealthy power of the Lydians in west-central Asia Minor. While the Lydians acted as a buffer, keeping the Medes and Persians away from the Aegean for another 40 years, eventually the  Lydians themselves took over the eastern Greek cities, which were unable to unite even to resist a foreign invader. King Croesus of Lydia, fro example, was famed for his generosity to Greek sanctuaries:

      Croesus now attempted to win the favour of the Delphian Apollo by a magnificent sacrifice, ,,, he melted down an enormous quantity of gold into one hundred and seventeen ingots about eighteen inches long, nin inches wide, and three inches think; four of the ingots were of refined gold weighing approximately a hundred and forth-two pounds each: the rest were alloyed and weighed about a hundred and fourteen pounds. He also caused the image of a line to be made of refined gold, in weight some five hundred and seventy pounds.

Herodotus Histories 1.50-51

      In 559 BCE, a great king and general rose to the throne of Persia -- Cyrus the Great.  Cyrus gained power over the Medes as well, and continued to expand the Persian Empire, which already stretched across Asia in the east to the shores of the Mediterranean in the west. A chance to expand further occurred when Croesus of Lydia decided to attack Cyrus across the old boundary between their eepires bou 546 BCE. We are told that the oracle at Delphi proclaimed that if Croesus crossed the Halys river, he would destroy a might empire. Little did Croesus know that it would be his own!
      The fall of Sardis, capital of Lydia, brought the Ionian Greek states face to face with the "barbarian" Persians. Unable to secure favourable peace terms, the Greeks tried to fight, but again enough to achieve any  success. The Ionian states then surrendered to the Persians and accepted service in the Persian army. When the Greek a revolt among the Ionians in 499 BCE, a cal for only 20 warships from Athens and five from Eretria in 494 BCE ended the revolt. The Persians destroyed the city, killed many of the men, and sent the rest of the population into exile.

The Battle of Marathon

      In 490 BCE, Darius, now King of Persia, sent a fleet with about 20 000 soldiers to punish Athens and Eretria for helping in the Ionian Revolt. After first burning and plundering Eretria, the Persian fleet sailed south to the eastern coast of Attica where a sheltered beach and small plain provided a perfect base for the Persian army. The plain was called Marathon.
      The Athenians sent a professional messenger ("all-day runner") to Sparta, 250 km away, pleading for help. He returned about four days later saying that the Spartans would only come after the full moon, still a week or more away. So the Athenian citizen army of 9000 warriors went alone to Marathon to meet the Persians. Eventually, the only help to arrive was less than a thousand soldiers from Plataea, a close neighbor to the north.
      After much debate, Miltiades, one of the Athenian generals, convinced his fellow commanders to attack, and thus won the Athenians everlasting glory. The Greeks in their heavy armour charged the Persians on the run and cut them down as they fled to their ships. Herodotus says 6400 Persians were killed but only 192 Athenians. Archaeological excavation of the burial mound of the Plataean dead has yielded less than a dozen bodies, including a young boy, perhaps their piper. The Persian threat had been beaten back, but its empire was far from destroyed.

Thermopylae: Greek Cooperation Defeats Persia

      The victory at Marathon provided the mainland Greeks with ten-year break from further Persian attacks. Then in 480 BCE, Xerxes, the Persian king who succeeded Darius, crossed the Hellespont (the narrow strait between the Greek mainland and Asia Minor). Xerxes did this by having win bridges constructed of boats held together by cables made of linen and papyrus as thick as a human torso! Herodotus says that the Persian infantry alone numbered 1.7 million soldiers, and that with the fleet, cavalry, and other contingents and attendants, over common with ancient writers, these figures are no doubt vastly exaggerated -- Xerxes's army probably consisted of about 200 000 soldiers, still an immense force for the time.
      The Greeks had done little to prepare themselves for this latest Persian attack, and many of them intended simply to accept Persian domination without resistance. Athens, at least, had used the money from a rich new strike of silver at its mines near Laurion to build a strong fleet of 200 ships, and gathered with Sparta fro a congress at Corinth to plan the strategic decision was made to defend a narrow pass in central Greece called Thermopylae (the Hot Gates) through which the Persians had to pass.
      A small force of 4000 soldiers led by King Leonidas of Sparta and his bodyguard of 300 was sent to hold the pass until the full Greek army arrives. This small force was backed by the Greek fleet waiting just offshore. The Spartan stand was heroic but a local Greek shepherd betrayed them by showing Xerxes a mountain path around Thermopylae. Leonidas and about a thousand soldiers who refused to escape the Persian trap died fighting bravely. The epitaph at the site where the Spartans died read, "Go tell at Sparta, thou that passest by, that here obedient to her word, we lie." The Persian army poured southward through Boeotia to Athens and took revenge on the city for its defeat at Marathon.

Salamis and Plataea

      The combined Greek fleet of over 300 triremes (fast Greek ships with three levels of rowers) remained at Salamis, a large island just off the coast of Attica to the west of Athens. After much delay, about 600 Perisan ships were enticed into the straits where they were attacked by the swift, well-crewed Greek ships. Xerxes could only watch in despair from his throne set high on a hill above the action. Aeschylus, a Greek playwright who probably fought at Salamis, puts these words into the mouth of a Persian messenger in one of his plays:

First, then, the torrent of our Persian fleet bore up; but when the press of shipping jammed there in the strait, then none could help another, but our ships fouled each other with their rams, and sheared away each other's banks of oars. But the Greek ships, skillfully handled, kept the outer station, and struck in; till hulls rolled over, and the sea itself was hidden, strewn with their wreckage, dyed with blood of men. The dead lay thick on all the reefs and beaches, and flight broke out, all order lost; and all our eastern ships rowed hard to get away. 

Aeschylus The Persians 412-423

      The battle was a severe loss for the Persians. Xerxes himself escaped from Greece but he left behind his army under the general Mardonius. 

      In the new year (479 BCE), Mardonius took up a position on the southern edge of the Boeotian plain near the town of Plataea. Here, the united army of the Greek city-states, led by the Spartans, met the barbarians in all-out battle. The Greeks were victorious. Mardonius was killed, a vast amount of Persian wealthy and luxury goods was captured, and the remnants of the great invasion force hastily retreated from Greece. After Plataea, the Greek navy attacked the Persians again in Asia Minor and freed the Ionian Greeks. 

Writing: ECHOES from the past published by McGraw-Hill Ryderson Ltd.