by Tom Holland
The Greeks, clutching at straws, presumed to attribute the extravagances of such a campaigning style to effeminacy: a woeful betrayal of their own lack of sophistication. Having given ample demonstrations of his courage while still a young man, Xerxes had no intention of risking his life in battle now, not with a great army and fleet both looking to him for leadership, and a campaign of unprecedented complexity to direct. The royal tent may have been monumental, but it had to be if it were to provide an adequate nerve-centre for a global superpower. As at Persepolis, so on the wayside of the road to Thermopylae, the Great King did not disdain advice but rather demanded it, having recognised that the wisest master is the one who makes best use of his slaves. Xerxes, whose subordinates were rarely short of obedience and courage, evidently had a talent for inspiring devotion in them: not for nothing did his name mean 'He Who Rules Over Heroes'.
No less than the Spartans, then, the Great King's followers were steeled by a rigorous discipline. Protocol, even on campaign, even for heroes, was rigid and sacrosanct. No matter how violently the gales outside the tent might rage, or how alarming the news from the front might prove to be, the Great King, seated in due magnificence upon a throne of solid gold, conducted his councils of war precisely as though presiding at Persepolis. Only in the degree to which the royal ear might bend itself to foreigners did the very different circumstances of Thermopylae intrude upon proceedings. Filled by the Great King's relatives and intimates though the top ranks in the military were, not everyone honoured with a summons to the royal presence was necessarily a Persian. There were two sons of Datis, for instance, in command of the cavalry; and then, of course, the key adviser on everything Greek, there was Demaratus. Even as Xerxes, periodically dispatching his troops into the Hot Gates, continued to probe the defenders of the pass for any suggestion of weakening, he pumped the exiled king for insights into Spartan psychology. Overwhelming force and a mastery of data: the twin characteristics, as they had ever been, of the Persian way of making war. To synthesise these adequately, in order to neutralise a problem such as the one presented by defenders of Thermopylae, was a challenge that could only really be met in the tent of the King of Kings, where princes of the royal blood, and intelligence agents, and logistics chiefs, and Greek renegades, all might equally be summoned and have their reports and judgements pooled:
And Xerxes, though enraged by the defence of the Hot Gates, did not surrender to his frustration, but rather consulted his briefings, made calculations, gave orders and kept his patience. The king of a mountain people, it hardly came as any great revelation to him that a narrow pass might be rendered impregnable to a frontal attack. The Syrian Gates, for instance, through which Datis and his army had snaked on their way to Marathon, bristled with fortifications far more imposing than those of Thermopylae: a tourniquet ever ready to be applied, in case of emergency, to the flow of the Royal Road. Yet even when 'a natural gateway exactly imitates the defences raised by human ingenuity',27 it will invariably, as the Persian military well knew, betray a fatal weakness — for there are few gorges that cannot somehow be bypassed by a path across their heights. The Syrian Gates, and the Cilician Gates, and the Persian Gates: all were vulnerable to being outflanked by mountain roads. Why not the Hot Gates, too?
With the Greeks holding out against all that could be thrown directly at them, this became, hour by hour, an ever more pressing question. There can be little doubt that Persian agents, even before the arrival of the Great King, would have been fanning out over the foothills of Oeta and Callidromus, scanning the lie of the land, waving gold before peasants, appealing for native guides. None had been forthcoming: Trachis, perched above the fissure of the nearby, boulder-strewn Asopus gorge, was openly hostile to the Great King, and most of the locals had fled either into the mountains or to Leonidas. Some were left, however, and all it would take was for one Greek, just one, intimidated by the spectacle of the Great King's magnificence, to crack; and magnificence, of course, was something that the Great King did surpassingly, superlatively well.
In particular, colossal in the middle of the sprawling camp, the imperial war banners decorated with eagles flapping imperiously above it, there was Xerxes' own tent. This was not merely a campaign headquarters, but, thanks to its careful reproduction of the layout of Persepolis, right down to the very last detail, a mobile master-class in the dynamics of royal power. Oblivious to these as only savages on the outer rim of the world could be, the Greeks were to be dazzled, overawed and terrified out of their lamentable ignorance. Attempting to explain to Xerxes the significance of the Lycurgan code, Demaratus had boldly asserted that the Spartans feared it 'more than your subjects fear you —at which the King of Kings, 'showing no anger', had merely laughed, 'and then with great gentleness dismissed him'.29 Perhaps the bristling provincialism of a homesick exile was altogether too pathetic a joke to anger the master of a superpower. And perhaps — for the Spartans were a people who had dared to kill his father's ambassadors, and had sent their king with only three hundred men to oppose the whole might of his army — their arrogance was something that Xerxes could hardly doubt. 'The typical Greek: a man who envies the good fortune of others, and resents the power of those stronger than himself.'30 This, delivered with crushing but not inaccurate condescension, was the considered judgement of the Persian high command on the psychology of their enemy. Precisely the same profile, however, could once have been applied to the Medes, the Babylonians, or the Egyptians — and all those ancient peoples had been sternly shown the error of their ways.
That the Great King felt a solemn obligation to open the eyes of Europe to its future in the new world order could be gauged from the leisurely pace of his advance from the Hellespont. This had left him arriving at Thermopylae perilously late in the campaigning season; but it had been important to Xerxes to instruct his new subjects very precisely in the character of the submission that they owed to him. While a succession of parades, regattas and horse-races had continued to flaunt the global scale of the Great King's resources, so the contribution that the natives themselves were to make to this magnificence, and the abasement that they would graciously be permitted to display to their master, had been similarly driven home. Over the winter, every city on the expedition's path had been instructed to prepare a feast fit for a king. For months, the natives had done little except panic over menus. To be charged with preparing a dinner-party to the opulent standards of Persepolis would have been headache enough for any hosts, but that was almost the least of their obligations. There were also the Great King's soldiers to be fed, and his horses, mules and camels. Wood had to be provided for the fires of the royal cooks. The cups on the Great King's table had to be fashioned of silver and gold, the fittings of finest linen, the rugs and carpets of the softest and most luxurious materials that the wretched citizenry could afford. Nor, once these had been used, was there any prospect of then selling them off to help recoup expenses, since the Persians, like the worst kind of house-guest, were in the habit of crating up all the furnishings 'and marching off, leaving not a single thing behind'.31 No wonder that one wag, bled white by the 'honour' of hosting the imperial army, had called on his fellow citizens to offer up thanks to the gods 'that King Xerxes was not in the habit of demanding breakfast as well'.32
No wonder either that Alexander of Macedon, back in May, when confronted by the prospect of a Greek holding force bedding down at Tempe on the southern borders of his kingdom, had sent it a frantic message, warning its commanders that their position was untenable. Perfectly true, of course — and a conclusion that the Greeks had already begun drawing for themselves — but the security of the task force had been, from Alexander's point of view, merely incidental. Rather, his principal concern had been to ensure as short a stay for the Persian army in Macedonia as possible. Vassal of the King of Kings that he was, Alexander had been painfully aware that his master regarded the whole empire as his larder — that 'the various delicacies of the countries over which he ruled, the
choicest first-fruits of each',33 were all his due, a tribute to be skimmed for the exclusive benefit of the royal table. The feasts scraped together with such expense and agony by those on Xerxes' path had been portrayed as the gifts, not of those who had provided them, but of the Great King himself, magnanimously bestowed upon his followers: the 'King's Dinner'. It was also said, conversely, that Xerxes had refused any Greek specialities, and ordered them taken away if they were ever served — for only the fat of his own subjects' lands could be permitted to pass the Great King's lips. Time enough for Attic figs once Xerxes sat in conquered Athens.
The prospect, then, that his army might starve, or even — perish the thought - that the royal table itself might stand empty, was a crisis of far more than mere logistics: for at risk were the very foundations of imperial prestige. Deprive the Great King of his pudding, and morale might start to plummet. Not that it was an easy matter to catch out a bureaucracy so attentive to detail that it was in the habit of issuing travel chits to ducks. Extensive preparations had been made for just such a moment of crisis as was brewing at Thermopylae. Waterfowl would certainly have been brought in the imperial baggage train, but so also would any number of the other delicacies to which the royal palate had grown accustomed: acanthus oil from Carmania, dates from Babylon, cumin from Ethiopia. Even the Great King's drinking water had been transported in great jars from a river near Susa.
All the same, the supply of ingredients — and particularly fresh ingredients — had its limits, even for the peerless logistics chiefs of Persia. By the sixth day of the enforced halt at Thermopylae, the situation beyond the gilded confines of the royal tent, out among the teeming multitudes of the rank and file, was turning serious. The appetites of Iranians, in particular, did not readily lend themselves to belt-tightening. The Greeks, who tended to eat only the meat of animals that had first been sacrificed to the gods, told wide-eyed stories of their enemy's carnivorous tastes. A Persian, it was said, would think nothing of baking a whole donkey by way of a birthday celebration; or even, if he were particularly well off, a camel. Soldiers on campaign took a regular supply of 'oxen, asses, deer, smaller animals, ostriches, geese and cocks'34 as their daily right. The approaches to Thermopylae, never abundant in ostriches at the best of times, were proving an alarming culinary let-down to the men of the Great King's army. Persian cooks, celebrated though they were for the inventiveness of their recipes, could hardly magic meals out of fields stripped wholly bare.
Yet Xerxes, though anxious about the rumbling in his soldiers' stomachs, knew that there were others who would be feeling the pinch even worse. The presence of the Persian army on their doorstep threatened local landowners with ruin. Since responsibility for this regrettable state of affairs clearly stopped with Leonidas and his pestilential little army, the obvious - indeed, the only - way for the natives to spare themselves utter destitution was to help the Great King flush the Hot Gates clear of its obstruction. Surely, then, Xerxes had to trust, where the spectacle of royal invincibility had so far failed to recruit a guide, self-interest was bound to succeed?
And so in the end it did, as, amid the dust and disappointments of the second day's fighting, the Greek capacity for back-stabbing came to the rescue of the Persian high command. For almost a week the imperial army had been encamped before Thermopylae — and now, at last, an informant was brought cringeing into the royal tent. His name was Ephialtes, a native of the plain on which the Persian army was camped, and he it was who revealed to his interrogators that Callidromus did indeed possess a secret. 'In the hope of a rich reward, he told the king about the trail which led over the mountain to Thermopylae'11 — and even offered, in the truly fatal act of treachery, to serve the invaders as their guide.
Immediately the fearsome machinery of the imperial army was set into smooth and deadly motion. Late in the day though it already was, further delay was clearly out of the question: the ascent of Callidromus was ordered for that very night. Nor was it to be attempted by the light infantry that Leonidas had presumed would be the only troops capable of making such a journey. The Immortals, their toughness bred amid the uplands of Iran, were a squad made for such an adventure. Bloodied the previous day in the pass, there was not a man among them who would not have relished his chance of revenge. For their commander, in particular, the mission had a particular piquancy. Hydarnes was son and namesake of the co-conspirator with Darius who, forty-one years previously, had held the Khorasan Highway against a vast army of rebel Medes. Now, given the perfect opportunity to add to his family's battle honours, Hydarnes would serve Darius' son, not by holding, but by clearing a vital pass.
He and his ten thousand men left at dusk. Their route began several miles west of the Hot Gates, west too of Trachis and of the Asopus gorge above which it stood.36 Behind them, as they began their ascent, watch-fires were already starting to dot the plain, but soon the view of the camp was lost. Fortunately, just as Ephialtes had said it would be, the trail was easy to follow, and the moon, the fateful Carneian moon, full in a cloudless sky, outshone even the brilliance of the August stars. For hours the Immortals marched, through silver light and shadow, swinging left across the broad plain which stretched beyond the high cliffs of Trachis, down into a valley and then over the River Asopus. Here, beyond the far bank, the way at last grew steeper. Even now, however, despite being weighed down by shields and armour, the Persians could still make their ascent without zig-zagging, and after an hour or so, breasting a fringe of oaks and pines, they reached the edge of another wide plateau. Ahead of them, past more woods, and over occasional stretches of open grass, the path wound on, still climbing, but gently once more, and the Immortals, picking up speed again, began to round the peak that now loomed between them and Thermopylae. Between them and their view of the eastern horizon, too. But gradually, as the stars began to fade, so the marching Persians could sense the coming of morning, and that the sun, bright with the eternal beauty of Ahura Mazda, would soon be rising over the Hot Gates. The gradient began to flatten out. The Immortals passed into a wood of oaks. Even beneath the trees, however, the way ahead of them remained perfectly visible, for not only was it growing lighter by the minute, but the recent gales had swept bare the trellis of branches above them. The leaves, already dry, crackled underfoot. Then, above the rustling and the tramping of ten thousand pairs of feet, there came a sudden ringing: the sound of metal.
Stepping forward to the edge of the trees, the Immortals' commander saw, to his consternation, a garrison of hoplites blocking his path. He had clearly taken them by surprise, for the Greeks were still struggling to pull on their armour; but Hydarnes, who had learned the hard way not to underestimate the Spartans, wanted his rematch with them at the Hot Gates, not on the heights above the pass. When Ephialtes, however, pointing to the lack of scarlet tunics and cloaks among the enemy, reassured his master that he was not facing Leonidas' men, but the soldiers of another city, most likely Phocis, Hydarnes immediately gave his men the order to attack. Drawing their bows, the Immortals duly fired a withering volley at the half-formed phalanx. The Phocians, lacking the strategic good sense that would have been supplied to them, perhaps, by the presence of a Spartan officer, and taking it for granted that the barbarians had marched through the night with the specific goal of wiping them out, retreated chaotically to the top of a nearby hill. Here they steeled themselves to make a heroic final stand — only to see the Immortals sweep contemptuously past them, and continue along the open path.
Hydarnes, as he began his descent towards the Hot Gates, now had to presume that there was a Phocian runner on the trail ahead, hurrying to alert Leonidas. It is unlikely that this reflection greatly unsettled him; it may even have been Persian strategy to give the Greeks warning of their doom. Shortly before sunrise, and the Immortals' clash with the Phocians, a deserter from the Great King's camp had slipped into the Hot Gates. He was an Ionian, one Tyrrhastiades — motivated, he insisted, purely by concern for his fellow Greeks. Perhaps he was — e
xcept that there appears to have been more than a whiff of the Persian dirty-tricks department about his arrival. Quite apart from the fact that it is unusual for rats to join a sinking ship, the timing of his appearance in the Greek camp had shown every sign of the most careful calculation. Too late to enable Leonidas to reinforce the Phocians, it simultaneously tempted him with the hope that there might yet be the chance of a withdrawal. Which was, of course, precisely what the Great King wanted him to believe: for the
Greeks, if they opted to defend both ends of the Hot Gates against the pincer movement being deployed against them, might yet hold the pass for days. Catch them retreating on the open road, however, and the Persian cavalry would have no problem cutting them to pieces. The pass would be clear, five thousand Greek hoplites would have been eliminated from the military balance sheet, and the Great King's triumph would be complete.
But would Leonidas take the bait? The commander-in-chief of the Allied League, desperate not to see his whole army lost, but also pledged, as a Spartan king, not to abandon Thermopylae, had a third option. Once it had been confirmed that disaster could be read in the entrails of goats killed in sacrifice, he summoned the bleary-eyed leaders of the other contingents to a council of war. Confusion and alarm, not surprisingly, was general at this meeting, with some refusing to countenance evacuation, while the majority demanded that it begin at once. Leonidas, silencing the uproar, announced that it was the intention of his bodyguard to hold the breach against the enemy, no matter what was thrown against them. Then he not merely permitted but positively ordered the main body of the army to leave, and as fast as possible, to give itself every chance of surviving to fight another day. The Thespians, famously cussed, refused to abandon their posts; so too — for with their city now doomed to medise, they had nothing to return to, save the prospect of being purged — did the loyalist Thebans.37 Leonidas ordered the helots to remain at the Hot Gates as well, to help the Spartans prepare for battle, to serve as light infantry and to die in the cause of their masters' freedom. Some 1500 men in all, then, fingering their notched and battered weapons with clammy fingers, feeling the sun's first rays against their faces, trying not to let their expressions betray their emotions, whether of scorn, resignation or envy, watched their comrades pack up their armour, leave the camp and head south.38 A fading of the sound of marching feet, a dispersal of white dust on the morning breeze, and the tiny holding force was left alone to the reek and the closeness of the pass. Nothing to disturb the calm came from the westward slopes of Callidromus, down which