The battle of Thermopylae took place at the same time, on a strip of coast that was the only way past the range of mountains. The sea has retreated there today, with new land creeping in. It is no longer possible to see what Leonidas saw, not exactly. Yet he would have been in contact with the fleet. For three days or so, he prevented the Persian advance on land, while Athens and her allies fought their fleet at sea. It was a coordinated effort – and the purpose was to give the main Greek forces time to assemble and make ready.
It is true that Leonidas had been to the oracle at Delphi. There he was told that the Spartans would mourn the loss of their city or the loss of a king descended from Heracles – the bloodline of Leonidas. In essence, the king would have to choose between saving his own life and saving Sparta. I suspect that explains why he did not leave the pass of Thermopylae, even right at the end, when he sent most of them away and remained with just his elite guard, and around a thousand others. Interestingly, his helot slaves remained with him, though they would have known there was no escape at that point. Leonidas knew it was the end – and he accepted it. For some reason, that aspect of his thinking does not usually feature when the story is told, though it may be the most heroic part.
* * *
In the great strait that runs along the east coast of Attica, ship-to-ship actions went on for three days, dawn to dusk. The Persians had what must have seemed an unlimited number of warships, but the Greeks were better motivated, with free citizens as rowers, men who had families in Athens.
When Leonidas was finally killed, the Persian land army surged through the pass. It was only then that Themistocles made his extraordinary decision – to pull back and evacuate Athens. The Spartan navarch, Eurybiades, wanted to pull the fleet right to the Peloponnese, but Themistocles overruled him, saying if he did, it would be without the Athenian ships. In bending the Spartan to his will, Themistocles kept the fleet together. Pericles, son of Xanthippus and Agariste, was part of that mass movement of people to the island of Salamis, the boy aged around fifteen. It would have been a memory that stayed with him his entire life.
* * *
In the evacuation, crews rowed themselves to exhaustion, back and forth, crammed each time with fearful women and children. They managed it, but when the Persian fleet appeared, the Greek galleys remained to finish the job – stuck in the narrow strait by Salamis, once again denied the open sea they desperately needed to manoeuvre. On the land, visible to all, they saw the plume of smoke that meant the Persian army had begun to burn Athens to the ground.
* * *
Hope died, but Themistocles was there. It is rare to be able to say one man saved a country, on one day. In the case of Themistocles, that is the simple truth – as I’ll describe in the next book.
Conn Iggulden, London, 2019
About the Author
Author picture by © Emelie Asplund
CONN IGGULDEN is one of the most successful authors of historical fiction writing today. Among many other bestselling novels, he is the author of Ravenspur, The Abbot’s Tale, and The Falcon of Sparta, all available from Pegasus Books. Conn lives in London with his family.
THE GATES OF ATHENS
Pegasus Books, Ltd.
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Copyright © 2021 by Conn Iggulden
First Pegasus Books cloth edition January 2021
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ISBN: 978-1-64313-666-0
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The Gates of Athens Page 40