Leonidas and Thermopylae: Go Tell the Spartans.

Spartan Kings were held to be descendants of the God Heracles. The prophecy seemed obvious. Either Sparta must oppose the Persian invaders and sacrifice a King or she would be destroyed. Still Sparta was loathed to commit. Finally, she relented and dispatched King Leonidas with 300 soldiers of the Spartan Army.

The Persian Army disembarked on the Peleponneseum Isthmus. Numbering some 80,000 to advance any further, however, it had to move through the narrow pass at Thermopylae. The Greek coalition rushed a force of 7,000 to block the pass. They were joined there by Leonidas who took command. For five days Xerxes waited expecting the Greeks to come to their senses and surrender. When they did not, angered by their stubbornness, he ordered his army to attack expecting a swift victory.

The pass was narrow and a full-frontal assault seemed the only strategy available. Leonidas blocked the pass with a shield and spear wall – the phalanx. Under the weight of the attack Leonidas’s troops held firm. He rotated his men so as to avoid fatigue and every so often would feign a retreat so as to draw in the Persians who would then be cut down by his reserves. Late in the day Xerxes sent in his Immortals, 10,000 strong and the elite of the Persian army. They were decimated, Xerxes was furious. Despite his anger Xerxes was loathe to attack again.

That night a Greek goat herder, Ephialtes, approached the Persians. He would, he said, show them a route down the pass that would enable them to encircle the Greek army, for a reward of course. The Phocians, who had been sent by Leonidas to guard the pass on seeing the advance of the Persian army, withdrew to a nearby hill allowing them through to surround the Greeks. On hearing the news of the Phocian withdrawal Leonidas held an emergency war council. Surrounded by an overwhelming force their position was hopeless. Many of the Greeks wanted to withdraw while they still could. Leonidas refused. He would hold the pass at Thermopylae, alone if necessary. Perhaps, aware that the other Greeks were unwilling to remain, he ordered them to withdraw. Demophilus, the leader of the contingent of 700 troops from the city of Thespiae, refused to abandon Leonidas. They would all die at Thermopylae.

Convinced that Leonidas must surely now see that his position was untenable, Xerxes sent emissaries to negotiate a surrender. He offered the defenders land, wealth, and even the honorary title of “Friends of the Persian People” if they would surrender. Leonidas refused, when the Persian Ambassador angrily demanded that the Greeks lay down their arms, Leonidas famously replied, “come and get them”. Battle was inevitable but still Xerxes hesitated hoping that the Greeks would simply disperse. Finally, he ordered an all out attack. To his astonishment not only was his attack repulsed but Leonidas ordered a counter-attack during which many Persians were killed. It was as he led this counter-attack that Leonidas himself was slain.

A furious fight now ensued for the retention of his body. The Greeks won taking it back to the low hill where they would make their final stand. Now few in number and many unarmed they continued to repulse further Persian attacks. Herodotus writes that “Here they defended themselves to the last, those who still had swords using them, others resisting with their hands and teeth”. Tired of the sacrifice of his men, Xerxes ordered his archers to finish the job. They rained arrows down on the defenders until not one was left alive. Usually, respectful of valiant opponents the Persians mutilated the bodies of the Greek defenders at Thermopylae. Leonidas’ body Xerxes had decapitated and the torso crucified.

Why did Leonidas fight to the death at Thermopylae? Tactically and strategically it was unnecessary. The Greek cities in the path of any Persian advance had already been abandoned, including Athens. Certainly the reputation of the gallant Spartan warrior was established beyond reproach at Thermopylae. Perhaps, Leonidas was also aware that the Delphic Oracle had prophesied the sacrifice of a Spartan King.

Just a few months after Thermopylae, the Persian Fleet was destroyed in the Straits of Salamis. A year later the Greek army under Spartan command decisively defeated the Persian army at the Battle of Plataea. Western civilisation had been saved. Thermopylae contributed little to final victory but it lives in the annals as an epic of world history.