Battle of Thermopylae

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The Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC set an alliance of Greek city-states against an invading Persian army. Though vastly outnumbered, the Greeks held back the Persian advance until a defector informed the Persians of an alternate route, leading to the defeat of the Greek army and the sacking of Athens.

Background

Xerxes I, king of Persia, had been preparing for years to continue the war against the Greeks started by his father Darius. In 484 BC the army and navy of Xerxes arrived in Asia Minor and built a bridge of ships across the Hellespont at Abydos to march his troops across. According to Herodotus, Xerxes had over five million men, while the poet Simonides estimated three million; Herodotus also wrote that the army drank entire rivers and ate the food supplies of entire cities. While these are certainly exaggerations, it is clear the Greeks were enormously outnumbered.

A confederate alliance of Greek city-states was quickly formed, headed by Sparta. The states held back from sending the full force of their armies, however, citing religious reasons. Political squabbling and the excuse of the Carneia festival resulted in Sparta sending only a contingent of 300 hoplites, hand-picked and commanded by King Leonidas.

Because of its defensible terrain, the mountain pass of Thermopylae, the "Hot Gates", was chosen as the site of battle. At the time it consisted of a pass so narrow two chariots could barely move abreast. Along the path were a series of three "gates", and at the center gate a short wall was hastily erected by the Greek army to help in their defense. It was here in the August of 480 BC that an army of some 7000 Greeks, led by 300 Spartans, stood to receive the full force of the Persian army, numbering perhaps some forty times its size.

Battle

Xerxes did not believe such a small force would oppose him, and gave the Greeks three or four days to retreat. The Persians were initially astounded upon seeing the Spartans oiling themselves and performing calisthenics, not understanding its ritual significance, performed by men with the resolution to fight to the end. Meanwhile, the Persian army was growing restless, and Xerxes sent his troops into the pass with hellish results. The Persians, with arrows and short spears, could not break through the long spears of the Greek hoplites' phalanx. Enormous casualties were sustained by the Persians as the disciplined Spartans orchestrated a series of feint retreats, followed by a quick turn back into formation. Morale was high. Herodotus wrote that when Dienekes, a Spartan soldier, was informed that Persian arrows blotted out the sun, he remarked with characteristically laconic prose, "So much the better, we shall fight in the shade." The 6000 Greeks defending the pass defeated the Persians in a similar manner on the second day of battle, fighting in a relay manner.

After the second day a Greek named Ephialtes defected to the Persians and informed Xerxes of a separate path through Thermopylae. The pass was defended by the other 1000 Greeks, from Phocis, who had been placed there when the Greeks learned of the alternate route just before the battle, but they were not expecting to engage the Persians. The Phocians offered a brief resistance before fleeing, and the Persians advanced unopposed.

Leonidas then realized that further fighting would be futile. On August 11 he dismissed all but the 300 Spartans. A contingent of Thespians, led by Demophilus, stayed as well in a suicidal effort to delay the advance. Leonidas also had a force of Thebans, but after some fighting they defected to the Persians. Although the Greeks killed many Persians, including two of Xerxes' brothers, Leonidas was eventually killed, along with all 300 of his men. The last Spartans were killed by a barrage of arrows after fighting fanatically to recover their king's body, after having been driven back into the narrowest part of the pass onto a small hill in the pass.

There is an epitaph on a monument at site of the battle with Simonides's epigram, which can be found in Herodotus's work The Histories (7.228), to the Spartans:

ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
(O xein', angellein Lakedaimoniois hoti täde)
κείμεθα τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.
(keimetha tois keinon rhämasi peithomenoi.)

Which to keep the poetic context can be translated as:

Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,
that here, obedient to their laws, we lie

or more literally as:

Oh foreigner, tell the Lacedaemonians
that here we lie, obeying those words.

Aftermath

While a technical victory for the Persians, the enormous casualties caused by a few thousand Greeks was a significant blow to the Persian army. Likewise, it significantly boosted the resolve of the Greeks to face the Persian onslaught. The simultaneous naval Battle of Artemisium was a draw, whereupon the Greek navy retreated. The Persians had control of the Aegean Sea and all of Greece as far south as Attica; the Spartans prepared to defend the Isthmus of Corinth and the Peloponnese, while Xerxes sacked Athens, whose inhabitants had already fled to Salamis Island. In September the Greeks defeated the Persians at the naval Battle of Salamis, which led to the rapid retreat of Xerxes. The remaining Persian army, left under the charge of Mardonius, was defeated at Plataea by a combined Greek army again led by the Spartans, under the regent Pausanias. The Persians, never to return to Greece, were soon to fall under the shadow of Alexander the Great.

Inspiration

This battle, along with Sogdian Rock and similar actions, is used in military academies around the world to show how a small group of well-trained and well-led soldiers can have an impact out of all proportion to their numbers. It is worth noting also that the effectiveness of the Greeks against such a vastly larger army was due in no small part to the battlefield itself. Had this battle been fought on an open field, rather than a narrow pass, the smaller Greek army could have been surrounded and defeated with ease, despite the quality of the Greek infantry. Thus Thermopylae is also regarded as being as much a lesson in the importance of favorable terrain and good strategy as it is in good training and discipline.

External links

• The battle in Herodotus' Histories
• Map of the battlefield
• Size of the Persian army

de:Schlacht an den Thermopylen es:Batalla de las Termópilas fr:Bataille des Thermopyles hr:Bitka kod Termopila it:Battaglia delle Termopili ja:テルモピレーの戦い