And in this confined space they could not use their cavalry, nor the archers who had made Persia a world force from the Aegean to India. For two days the Persians attacked in force, only to retreat badly mauled. But the Greek position had a flaw. Informed by a local of a route through the hills, the Persians sent a crack force overnight on the second day to descend behind the Greeks with the daylight.
Alerted to the flanking march the bulk of the Greek army withdrew early on the third day, while a hard core led by the Spartan king Leonidas stayed on. Surrounded, the remainers retreated to a steep hill and fought on desperately until the Persians tired of the losses and shot them down with arrows. Within a month the Greeks broke the Persian navy at the Battle of Salamis. The following summer they defeated the Persian army decisively at the battle of Plataea. Plataea and Salamis changed the course of the war — and European history.
Thermopylae did not. But Thermopylae, with its tale of courage against the odds and resolution in the face of death, captured the imagination and it maintains its hold two and a half millennia later as the definitive last stand and the ultimate patriotic sacrifice.
The story is well known and easily told. But the battle throws up a number of lasting puzzles. We have no contemporary account. Our earliest source, Herodotus, began his research perhaps 30 years or more after the event.
He had no written records to draw on, so he had to rely on oral sources. For the last stand in particular credible witnesses were hard to find.
The Persians were meticulous record keepers; but no Persian source has survived. But by the time Herodotus began work the battle had long passed into legend. There were about 7, Greek warriors in the pass.
But the narratives already centred on the Spartans at the core and especially their king Leonidas. Legends began to take hold, like that concerning the Spartan soldier Dieneces. The Greek writer Plutarch in the first century AD wrote that the Persians sent a messenger ordering the Greeks to hand over their weapons. The accretion of legend in the narratives is matched by physical change in the landscape. These springs, and seismic action and silt from the nearby River Spercheios, have added 20 metres of soil, so that where once a steep mountainside fell sharply to the sea there is a flat plain, and the tall hill of the last stand has become a low knoll.
Only a Herculean effort of imagination — or digital imaging — can picture the pass as it was when the Greeks stopped the Persians in their tracks. So questions abound. For a start, what were the odds? Our sources agree that there were about 7, Greeks. But we have no reliable source for the number of Persians, and nor did they. Herodotus gives a figure of 1,, infantry and almost three million overall. This number was already literally set in stone before he began his research.
An inscription for the contingents from southern Greece placed on the spot soon after the Greek victory in the war said:. The Persian figure is wildly unrealistic. The infantry alone would make the invasion half as big again as the D-Day landings in June But it is easier to query the numbers than to correct them. Modern guesstimates by different means arrive at around , This would still be huge by ancient standards; even half that would leave Leonidas facing odds of 15 to one.
By any calculation the Greek stand at Thermopylae was an act of real courage. The numbers invite the question: what did the Greeks think they were doing? Our earliest sources assume that this was a serious attempt to stop the invasion.
Also known as 'The Hot Gateway' due to the numerous sulfur springs. According to the accounts of the Greek historian Herodotus, the two armies fought for three days by the end of which the Spartans fought to the last man, defending the only road through which the Persian army could pass.
This battle was the inspiration for the Hollywood blockbuster ' Barbie de Bocage in to illustrate the Travels of Anacharsis. Anacharsis was a Scythian philosopher who travelled from his homeland on the northern shores of the Black Sea to Athens in the early 6th century BCe. Apparently he made a great impression on the Greeks, who considered him a forthright, outspoken 'barbarian. He is considered a forerunner of the Cynics. Cartographer Jean Denis Barbie du Bocage - and his son Jean-Guillaume Barbie du Bocage - were French cartographers and cosmographers active in Paris during late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Source Barbie du Bocage, J. Very good. Original platemark visible. Original fold lines visible.
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