The resulting three-day stand comes down to us as one of the most noble and enduring clashes of arms in history. At Thermopylae, six thousand Greeks, including men from Athens and Thebes, accompanied three hundred Spartans in the defense of the pass. The Spartans certainly bore the brunt of the fighting, but to say they were alone is simply inaccurate.
The immense Persian army came upon the Greeks holding the narrow pass and began their assault. Because of the nature of the terrain, the fighting favored the Greeks. As at Marathon, maneuver here was impossible. Persian horses and archers were useless, and the heavily armored Greeks with their ponderous shields, stabbing spears, and cleaving swords were in their element. By necessity, the Persians attacked the Greek wall of shields and men head-on, and a slaughter resulted as the lightly protected Persians failed to penetrate the Greek line. The Persian shields were (probably) wicker, their swords light, and they wore little armor in keeping with their philosophy of speed and maneuver to win battles. Like the German Army at Stalingrad in 1942, the Persian army was committed to a battle it was not designed to fight; consequently, the Persians failed to breach the Greek line. Even after two days of hard fighting, the Spartans and their allies held against the gargantuan eastern army. The Persians needed a new approach or they would likely spend a long time, and lose men unnecessarily, fighting for the pass.
Then the Persians got a break. A Greek who knew the area came to Xerxes telling him of a sinuous mountain trail around the pass that would allow the Persians to surround the Greeks and defeat them quickly. Xerxes sent his troops by night through the mountains, but the Greeks discovered the move and most fled the trap. The Spartans, and about one thousand men from Thebes, stayed and prepared for death. The Persians surrounded the remaining Greeks demanding surrender, but the Spartans and their allies refused. Xerxes ordered his men forward. All the Greeks died, fighting to the last man. Legend claims the Spartans fought until their swords and spears were broken, finally dying while scratching and clawing at their assailants. No man surrendered, so he would die free rather than suffer slavery for even a moment. And so it ended after three days. Xerxes and his prodigious army marched on leaving the blood-soaked ground behind. The Greeks erected a marker at the pass, reading, “O traveler, go tell the Spartans that here we lie in obedience to their commands.”
Movies and legends ignore the reality of historical situations. Xerxes was dependent on his navy to supply his army and keep him safe from sea raiders. The navy Xerxes brought was huge, in keeping with the way mighty eastern monarchs of the day liked to do things. He was trying to show the small and disjoined Greek states they were powerless against him. The Athenians seemed to agree, since they abandoned their city and fled to nearby islands—but things are not always as they appear.
The Oracle at Delphi played a large role in Greek society. This famous Oracle had the ability, it seemed, to foresee events and give advice about them. The city of Athens sent emissaries to the Oracle asking what to do about the Persian invasion. The answer was mystifying (as usual), “You will be saved only by the wooden wall.” What was that supposed to mean?
Themistocles (another arduous Greek name), a brilliant Athenian commander, thought he knew—the wooden wall was ships. He lobbied for an expansion of the Athenian navy. After a lot of haggling, common in democracies to this day, it was agreed and Themistocles set about preparing for the unequal battle. As the Persian army advanced on vacant Athens and burned it, the new and larger Athenian navy was setting a trap. In a narrow straight between the island of Salamis and the mainland, the Greeks awaited the Persians. The Greeks, under the command of Themistocles, managed to sucker the Persians into attacking into the narrow straight, where the faster and easier-to-handle Greek triremes destroyed a large part of the Persian fleet.[29]
Salamis was THE victory of the Persian wars, more important than Thermopylae or the later victory at Plataea. Without his navy, Xerxes’ supply lines and lines of communication back to Persia were in danger of disruption by naval raids. Very large armies require very large amounts of supply, and cut supply lines were a grave danger to the Persian force. So, Xerxes quickly determined he had won the war. After all, he marched his army into the center of Greece, burned Athens, and beat up many other Greek city-states around the Aegean Sea. Athens, as the chief offender among Greek cities aiding the Ionian Revolt, and the victor at Marathon, was reduced to ashes and therefore suitably punished. Why wait around for the surrender of a bunch of individual cities?
Xerxes declared victory and went home with his huge army, but left a smaller army behind to hold the ground won. The next year, the Greeks assembled in concert against the reduced Persian army, smashing them at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC. The Persian defeat freed the Greeks from Persian tyranny, and the individual remained greater than the state.
After the Persians—The Peloponnesian War
The Greeks would celebrate their victory over the Persians for centuries to come, but unity and cooperation dissolved with Persia’s retreat. Soon after the Persian threat departed, Athens decided to build an empire and formed the Delian League. This league encompassed Greek cities around the Aegean, and involved trading partnerships and agreements for mutual defense. Athens was the three-hundred-pound gorilla in the organization, and it soon began to show. Athens raised taxes on their “partners” and generally started acting as if they owned the other city-states. Since Athens’ main rival was Sparta, some of the cities threatened to join with Sparta to escape from the “voluntary” league. Soon, Athens and Sparta were engaged in a long and especially brutal war for control of Greece and its many colonies.
The terrible Peloponnesian War was fought between 431 and 404 BC. Athens foresaw the war (well, they should have since they started it), and knew they could not defeat the Spartan Army in a straight up battle. To counter the Spartan Army, they constructed a walled corridor between Athens and their port of Piraeus (the long walls). When the Spartans invaded, the Athenians withdrew behind their walls and waited the Spartan Army out. The Spartans could not successfully storm the long walls; subsequently, the war degenerated into Athenian naval raids on the Peloponnesian peninsula (the area controlled by Sparta) and Spartan attacks into Athenian territory to burn crops and hold the Athenians inside the long walls.
Athens survived a ghastly plague and the Spartan raids, but they could not survive the death of their war leader, Pericles. A new leader, Alcibiades, advocated increasing aggressive action, eventually convincing Athens to launch an expedition to conquer the city of Syracuse on the island of Sicily. The Athenians put together a massive fleet and an impressive army; nevertheless, distance, mismanagement from the outset, a spirited defense by the citizens of Syracuse, and significant help from Sparta destroyed the imposing Athenian fleet and army.[30] After the debacle, Athens was without reserves or money. Ultimately, she surrendered to the Spartans, dropping the curtain on the magnificent intellectual and artistic pageant of ancient Greece.
Several items are worth noting about the Peloponnesian War. Guess who sponsored the Spartans financially? The Persians financed the Spartans in a brilliant diplomatic move that destroyed their rivals by pitting the Greeks against one another. Only one Greek historian, Herodotus, wrote about the Persian Wars, and only one Greek historian, Thucydides, wrote about the Peloponnesian War. Finally, there was the short-lived Spartan victory. Shortly after Sparta “won” the war with Athens, other city-states defeated the Spartans (Thebes mainly); and, once more, Greece fell back into the warring city-states fiasco. The wars went on until Phillip of Macedonia[31] conquered Greece at the battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, and placed it under the rule of an eastern-style king.
The splendor of Greece comes from its many accomplishments in art, literature, philosophy, science, democracy, and more. Its tragedy stems from an inability to unite and quell their desire for more. Athens fed its ambition; and Sparta, though it wanted to be left alone, bowed to its predestined clash with Athens. The failure was diplomatic as
well as military. Like the start of World War I, the parties could not put away their human nature, their distrust of one another, their craving for power, their ambitions, the desire to control, and the fear that if they were not in control, others would control them. In Athens, charismatic orators captured the crowds’ attention, convincing them to vote for really dumb ideas. This chapter in Athenian history should convince anyone of the dangers in democratic governments. The divided Greeks could not avoid war any more than a divided world can. Plato, a famous Greek philosopher, wrote, “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” Thus far, over 2,000 years of history—and human nature—prove him correct.
Alexander the Great
334 to 323 BC
Figure 10 Alexander’s Empire
We must mention one more small item before we move on to Rome, and that “small item” is Alexander the Great. Alexander was the son of Phillip, who died by assassination about 334 BC making Alexander king; thereafter, Alexander set out to conquer Persia. In 334 BC, he landed in Asia Minor, present-day Turkey, and began a conquest that many say is unequalled to this day. He defeated the coastal cities along the eastern Mediterranean to establish a base for supplies, vanquished Egypt, and then turned on the Persian Empire. In a series of engagements the Greeks under Alexander defeated huge, but poorly led, armies of the Persians.
His main victories were at Issus in 333 BC and Gaugamela in 331 BC. At Gaugamela, Alexander went forward even though outnumbered, and on a battlefield chosen by Darius III, ruler of the Persian Empire. During the battle, Alexander moved his cavalry to the right, while he was riding at its head. Darius moved his lines to match, and this caused an opening in the Persian line, near the center, into which Alexander promptly charged. This was the key moment in the action, and Darius, recognizing defeat was upon him, left the field. Alexander decided not to pursue the Great King immediately, because his left flank was in trouble, and he returned to aid his comrades. Darius’ own commander murdered him, but Alexander in turn executed the commander for his actions. Even with Persia at his feet, Alexander was unfulfilled; so he drove on to India. Alexander was primed to go further, but his tired and lonely army wanted to go home. Though undefeated, they had been away from home for years; and the Greek geographers told Alexander the end of the world was right over the next hill. Alexander and his Greeks turned back.
Alexander soon died (323 BC), and his empire was split into four areas (Macedon, Egypt, Syria, and Pergamum) each ruled by one of his chief commanders. What to do with the memory of Alexander? A fantastic general, a good administrator, and a man who wanted to bring the Greek and Asian world together; however, he died soon after his conquest, so his dream of unity failed. The great general died young. Had he lived, he might have been able to do more than any person after him to unite the East with the West. When Alexander died, he may have taken the best chance for a unity of ideas and culture between East and West with him to the grave.
Rome
753BC to AD 1453
Rome was THE CITY ruling the Mediterranean and Western Europe for over a thousand years. Its history is long, and complex; thus, we will break Rome into two eras, The Republic and The Empire. Rome started as a Repubic about 753 BC, and grew to rule Western Europe, and the Mediterranean Sea, before morphing into the Empire era after Caesar’s death in 44 BC. The huge empire was difficult to govern; consequently, the Romans divided it into eastern and western regions in AD 284 with an emperor in charge of each. Pressure from nomads invading from central Asia destroyed the Western Roman Empire about AD 455, but the Eastern Roman Empire lived on and prospered until finally conquered by the Turks in 1453. After the split, the city of Rome remained the center of governance in the west; while in the east, Constantinople became the empire’s center, growing to enormous wealth and power. Under Justinian the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) nearly equaled the size of Rome, and its wealth was vast.
How to describe Rome? Given only one word, it would be grandeur. The Romans lived large. Roman engineers were the best in the world, and those skills were on display throughout the realm. Roman cities boasted wonderful heated public baths, running water at public fountains, paved roads, magnificent buildings, theaters, and sports arenas. The Coliseum at Rome was incomparable. The Romans constructed numerous underground passageways in the Coliseum where people and animals could pass under the stadium, popping up inside the arena to amaze the crowds. The Romans even staged naval battles there by filling the arena with water. Built outside the Coliseum were shops and offices, much like our modern malls. Even underground Rome was a wonder, where excellent outsized sewers carried away the waste products of urban life. Everywhere the Romans constructed a city these amenities were common. Another Roman invention was cement. Not just any cement, but a kind made with volcanic ash that was much harder than cement in common use today and much longer lasting.
Very well constructed Roman roads, running in straight lines for miles, were crowned so water would run off, surfaced with stone, and had distance markers at regular intervals. These roads allowed swift, safe travel. The numerous roads tied the empire together as nothing else could. Along their roads the Roman legions traveled 20 miles per day, if necessary, to reach trouble spots throughout the Roman world. Trade, a bulwark of civilization, moved safely throughout Rome on these same roads.
Roman skill and vision were simply beyond compare in the ancient world. Still standing today, and in use in the twentieth century, are Roman aqueducts that brought fresh water down from the mountains to refresh the citizens of Rome 2,000 years ago. Such aqueducts were common throughout Rome, as well as open-air theaters, ostentatious villas, and arenas for sport and entertainment. At Caesura in Palestine, (modern day Israel) what was probably the world’s first artificial harbor was constructed, and it was huge. All over the Rome, brilliant feats of engineering were commonplace; thus, the incredible became the feasible.
These engineering feats differed from those in other ancient civilizations. In Mesopotamia, Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, and Meso-America, royalty and religion reserved the massive building projects. In Rome, the massive construction was for the people. The Coliseum, aqueducts, Trajan’s Forum, fountains, roads, and the wonderful baths were constructed for the citizens of Rome. There were glorious temples to the gods, but the majority of Roman construction was to benefit the people and not kings, queens, priests, or the gods—at least not at first.
Rome established the law as a key component of Western life, a concept still deeply rooted in Western thought. The idea of codified law came to Europe from Rome. Perhaps no other concept transferred from Rome to the West was as important as the way Romans thought about law and its central position in society. Around 451 BC the decemvirs, a board of ten lawmakers, set out the first written laws of Rome, which were then debated, amended, and passed by an assembly of all the people. The laws were written down on Twelve Tables and set in the Forum for all to read. The Roman Forum was a gathering place for the populace where matters of state were debated. The decisions of the Roman Republic were made in public, for all to hear. Open debate, freedom of speech, open government, and voting for who would run Rome were the hallmarks of the Republic of Rome.
The need for written laws was to ease the strife between the patricians, and plebeians. Patricians were the old landholding families; thus, “fathers” of Rome—patrician means father—while the plebeians were the non-fathers, or everyone who was not a patrician, usually the non-landholding masses including slaves. For years these written laws quelled the problems between the antagonistic groups. With the added institution of the Tribune, or person protecting the plebs from injustice, the system markedly improved. Only a plebe could hold the office of Tribune. Through the scheme of reducing laws to writing and plebe protection through the Tribune, Rome achieved societal peace for hundreds of years while waging relentless war on their frontiers.
Rome grew slowly and by conquest.[32] Its first major rival outside of Italy was the city-state of Carthage, loca
ted on the coast of North Africa. Carthage was in the way of Roman expansion because it controlled the island of Sicily, the southern coast of Spain, and a large portion of the northern coast of Africa. War was inevitable, and it came in the form of three wars, all of which Carthage lost. The three Punic Wars determined who would rule the Mediterranean.
The Punic Wars
Carthage was founded by a group of seafarers from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, the Phoenicians (Punic is a form of the word Phoenician). The Phoenicians were expert sailors, and legend has it that they sailed around the continent of Africa. They founded many cities to secure their trading routes since they were traders and good executives above all else. The colonies and cities they founded were footholds in the local areas, expanding their ability to trade with local inhabitants. Carthage became a great city because of its excellent harbor, access to the interior of Africa where gold, ivory, pottery, and many other valuable goods were located, and its site near the center of the Mediterranean. As it accumulated power, Carthage founded colonies in Spain, Sicily, and key locations around the western Mediterranean which were eventually in the path of Roman expansion. The first Punic War began over Sicily. This developed into a naval war,[33] but Carthage and its splendid navy managed to lose it. As the war started Carthage was winning, since its navy was superior to Rome’s. Then the Romans got an idea. Their strength was their ideal land army, so they simply had to get their army into the naval fight and they could prevail. The Romans accomplished this by using grappling hooks to hook the Carthaginian vessels and pull them over to the Roman ships, and then the Romans dropped planks (called ravens) across to the enemy ship. Their army units (waiting on the Roman ship) stormed across and easily defeated the Carthaginian crews. Quite a trick, and one Carthage never managed to counter. The net result was a total Roman victory over Carthage’s naval power. After a twenty-three-year war, Carthage lost Sicily and gained an implacable enemy.
The Super Summary of World History Page 7