The Miracle of Freedom

by Ted Stewart

  ^2. Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, 266.

  ^3. Ibid., 271, 275–76.

  ^4. For information regarding the Assyrian Empire and its military might and tactics, see Coogan, Oxford History, 236–58; De Mieroop, History of the Ancient Near East, 229–33; Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 1:272; and Rizza, Assyrians and the Babylonians, 130–98.

  ^5. For information regarding the ancient city Nineveh, see Russell, Final Sack of Nineveh, 2, 16–17, 66–67; www.britannica.com; www.bible-history.com /assyria_archaeology; www.associatedcontent.com/article/447190/history_of_the_ancient_city_of_nineveh.html.

  ^6. For information regarding the battle for Jerusalem, see 2 Kings 18–19; 2 Chronicles 32.

  ^7. See De Mieroop, History of the Ancient Near East, 227.

  ^8. For information about the kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their kings, see Thiele, Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings.

  ^9. For information about the fall of the kingdom of Israel, see Coogan, Oxford History, 206–40, 256; De Mieroop, History of the Ancient Near East, 233, 251; Josephus, Works of Flavius Josephus, 262–63.

  ^10. Cowley, What If? 3.

  ^11. This account is contained in the King James Version of the Old Testament at 2 Kings 18–19, 2 Chronicles 32, and Isaiah 36–37.

  ^12. See Josephus, Works of Flavius Josephus, 265.

  ^13. Coogan, Oxford History, 252.

  ^14. See De Mieroop, History of the Ancient Near East, 255.

  ^15. For information about the Assyrian assault on Judah, see Coogan, Oxford History, 244–56; Josephus, Works of Flavius Josephus, 264–66; Cowley, What If? 3–12.

  ^16. Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, 1:283.

  ^17. For information about the fall of the kingdom of Judah and its exile, see Coogan, Oxford History, 258–86.

  ^18. Cowley, What If? 5.

  ^19. Ibid., 5–6.

  ^20. Lewis, Middle East, 26.

  ^21. Quoted in Henry T. Auben, “The Rescue of Jerusalem,” Assyrian Campaigns: Ancient Mesopotamia, http://joseph_berrigan.tripod.com/ancientbabylon/id21 .html.

  Chapter 2

  How the Greeks Saved the West

  And dying, died not.

  Simonides, the Greek poet, in his epitaph to the Greek warriors who died in the battles against the Persians

  The world is a warring place. It is a jarring, unforgiving, and violent place, with power and riches going mainly to the strong. In its long history, there have been thousands of battles fought. Millions of soldiers and civilians have died. Tyrants have been defeated. Heroes have been made.

  But none of these battles affected the future of the human race more, or created greater heroes, than did the two battles fought between the Greeks and the unconquerable Persians at Thermopylae and Salamis, in the nation of the Greeks.

  Western Persia Kingdom March, 480 BC

  He was a king. He was a Spartan. He was a warrior and a leader of the most advanced civilization on the earth.

  Or at least he used to be.

  Now he was something else.

  He was a traitor. A collaborator. A man whose lust for power was greater than even his love for kin. For a chance to reclaim his old crown—or for even a few cities, it would seem—he would betray his own people.

  The Persian king knew what kind of man the dethroned Spartan had become, for that had been established when the Spartan had first approached him and offered to be his guide. They may have haggled over the price, but what the blackness in the old Spartan’s heart had led him to was not in question anymore. After a short time, they had agreed on the coastal cities of Pergamum, Teuthrania, and Halisarna, a small price to pay in order for the Persian ruler to own the former Spartan king.

  Knowing what he was, King Xerxes understood he could never trust the man completely. So, though he listened to him, he was cautious in accepting what he heard.

  Demaratus, the Spartan, lifted his head bravely to the Persian king, daring to look upon his face. Xerxes was incredibly intimidating—dark and tall and strong. He sat on a massive wood and gold throne, mobile (for he intended to travel with his army), but only barely, for it took many men to lift the enormous chair. The spoils of war around him represented the Persians’ unbelievable wealth and power: gold from the Phoenicians, emeralds from the mines in the Azbek highlands, pearls from the mouth of the Nile, red sandalwood from the jungles of eastern India—the display of wealth dazzled like the sun.

  The granite slabs beneath the king’s feet were from the territories of the Black Sea to the north, the slaves from the fallen cities of Babylon, from whence the most beautiful women in the world were known to come. The tent was high and strong, large as any Greek temple, with the exception of the Athena Polias that looked down on Athens. Around the fearsome king, the Immortals stood—large men in thick armor that held the scratches, dents, and bloodstains from many battles, the warriors leaving the chinks intact as a memory of every conquest they had made.

  Xerxes leaned forward. “Tell me about your brother Spartans,” he commanded.

  Demaratus hesitated. “O King, forgive me, but I must know. Do I speak of things as you wish they were? Or do you want to hear truth?”

  Xerxes shrugged as if it didn’t matter, then answered, “As they are, Demaratus.”

  The dethroned king, loser of a bitter power struggle in his old home of Sparta, lifted his head. “Spartans do not fight for a king or empire, my lord. They do not fight for riches or captured booty. They will not fight under the sting of the whip or the threat of blood. They do not fight for greed or lust or power. They fight for something very different.” He stopped and took a breath. When he continued, his voice was as soft as the night breeze that moved outside the thick tent walls. “They fight for each other. For their families. For the idea that men should live free.”

  Xerxes scoffed. Freedom! Liberty! Greek words, foreign to him. There was nothing in his language that came close to explaining what the Spartan even meant.

  Demaratus saw the uncertainty in the Persian’s face and knew he had to seize the moment or he would lose the king. And it didn’t matter much if he sounded like a fool. It was the truth. All he could do was tell it. Let Xerxes decide what to do with what he was about to say. “One against one, they are as good as anyone in the world. But when they fight in a body, they are the best of all. For though they are free men, they are not entirely free. They accept law as their master. And they respect this master more than your subjects respect you.” The Spartan paused. “Whatever the law commands, they do. And that command never changes: It forbids them to flee in battle, whatever the number of their foes. It requires them to stand firm—to conquer or die.”1

  Xerxes’ eyes narrowed and he thought a long moment. He was the most powerful man in the world, maybe the most powerful man who had ever lived. A million men would live or die by a single word he said. But his fathers had taught him to listen and deliberate before he settled on a plan.

  “But these Spartans, they are not many,” he volleyed back.

  “True, lord. But the Spartan soldiers are not like anything you have ever faced before. They believe they are the master race. Six hundred years of unpolluted Spartan lineage must be proven before a man-child is brought into the circle of Spartan warriors. Once selected, a child is taken from his mother and trained to be nothing but a master of war. They dedicate their lives, steeling themselves to die in battle if that is their cause. They grow their hair long, work their bodies into muscle, keep their spirits lean, their stomachs hungry. They are fearless when committed. And they will be committed now.”

  Xerxes was unimpressed. “All men are committed when faced with certain death,” he said. “The sword of Persia brings out commitment. Believe me, Demaratus, I have defeated many committed men before.”

  “You haven’t fought against free men
,” Demaratus answered simply.

  The great one moved forward on his throne. “What is the difference?” he sneered. “Rule of law? Rule of an emperor? Show me a single place or time in history when the rule of law meant anything to anyone!”

  Demaratus didn’t answer. There was no example he could call upon. The Greeks were first. That was why it was impossible for the king to understand.

  The two men were silent for a moment. The entire court had fallen still. The slaves stayed in the background, nearly bare bodies hovering behind the heavy draperies upon the walls, ready to spring forward if the king showed even the slightest need or desire. The Immortals eyed the Spartan traitor most carefully. As the king’s personal warriors, they knew that, for a man who sought the favor of the king, Demaratus spoke much too loudly. Too honestly. Much too full of confidence. Those who were wise enough to see that were interested by it, for it seemed to prove his point. Even as a fallen Spartan, Demaratus was still poised and much too proud.

  “Will they really fight against us?” King Xerxes asked for the final time.

  Demaratus didn’t hesitate. “I can’t speak for the Athenians, but this much I know: Sparta will never accept your terms. They will die a thousand times before they accept earth and water, for to do so would reduce them all to slavery, a thing they could never do. Even if all of Greece were to lie down before your army, the Spartans would stand and fight. It matters not how many or how few. If only a thousand should take the battle before your army of a million, they will stand and fight.”

  “You think too highly of your people,” Xerxes shot back. “Time will show that you are a braggart and your crowing will prove weak. We outnumber them fifty, maybe a hundred, maybe a thousand to one! Yet you say that they will stand before me!”

  “I am certain that they will! And remember, Great King, I speak not out of love for Sparta. They have robbed me of my rank and my honors, left me in exile, put my name and lineage under shame. But mark my words, O King, and make me not an enemy for speaking the truth. They will stand and fight you if there is but one Spartan warrior left. It is their law. It is their honor. It is the reason they were born. They will stand to stop you. And though you may destroy them, you will also pay the price.”

  • • •

  Two hundred miles across the Aegean Sea, the Spartan king, Leonidas, watched the sun crest the mountains to the east, the light sparkling atop the heavy dew on the tips of the spring grass. He sucked a breath and held it as he stood on the wooden portico that surrounded his home. Behind him, his wife was sleeping, his children too. As he listened to the calm of the morning, he felt a sudden surge of fear. Leonidas was a warrior, but he was no fool. He loved life. He loved his family. He loved his people, sometimes weak though they were. He wanted to live.

  He was by nature a good man, and the times and challenges that befell him were not something he would have sought.

  But such were his days and he would not turn away.

  Tall. Dark-skinned. Dark-eyed. Thick arms. Leonidas was the epitome of everything a Spartan warrior was supposed to be. Strong as oak. Quick with a sword. Fearless. Intelligent. Beyond the reach of pain. Hardened by a lifetime of preparation to fight and kill and die in war.

  He felt a sudden surge of energy as he looked out on the land he loved. Greece. Home of the gods. He turned, taking in the narrow valleys and steep mountains that rose around him, the greenery broken by random outcroppings of granite slabs that jutted from the ground. The mountains were thick with low shrubs and thistle. The air was cool and smelled of juniper, and he took another long breath, holding it in his lungs.

  He thought again of the words the oracle of Apollo had told them: The fate of Sparta was to see their great city destroyed, or to see the death of a great king.

  Which of the two it was to be, he did not know. No one did. But of this much he was certain: War was coming. The messengers from Xerxes had made that very clear. Which meant they had to stand against an army so large that it was said that when they stopped to drink, they would drain the rivers dry!

  His people were not ready. And that frightened him to the core.

  The Seed of a Republic

  A little less than a century after the brutal Assyrians faced the city walls at Jerusalem and walked away without victory (as noted in the previous chapter), the Assyrians met their demise at the hands of the Babylonians. In 612 BC, those lands that had once been controlled by the Assyrians were divided between the Median Empire to the north and the Babylonians to the south. In 540 BC, the center of power suddenly shifted once again when Babylon fell under the rising Persian power. King Cyrus and his Persian army conquered not only Babylon but all of Asia Minor.

  Cyrus, who had no bone to pick with the small and relatively unimportant kingdom of Judah, had allowed the Jews to return to their homeland, something that happened only a few decades after they had been taken captive into Babylon. (Throughout his reign, Cyrus the Great was known for his tolerance of the religions of the people, his treatment of the Jews being only one example.)

  During all of this upheaval, primarily because of their relatively protected location away from the warring empires, the Greek city-states had progressed beyond any other culture or society in the ancient world. By any standard, their achievements were remarkable, and few if any societies can claim such a long-standing and positive influence on cultures or nations yet to come. In so many critical human endeavors, the Greeks stood alone. United by a common language, religion, and alphabet, and with the rise of the Roman Empire still a few centuries in the future, the Greeks

  . . . created a literature which is still living, still read: laid the basis, through Pythagoras, Euclid, Archimedes and others, of nearly 2000 years of geometry: commenced, with Herodotus and Thucydides, history as we both know and practise it: created diverse schools of philosophy which still exercise the minds of men: invented political science: laid the foundations of biology: created geography and extended cosmology: developed medicine far beyond anything previously known to the ancient world. And these were but a few of their achievements which can be rivalled in this period of human history by none.2

  Yet none of these great achievements could occur if the Greeks were to be defeated by the mighty Persian army, for most of them wouldn’t be achieved until after the battles at Thermopylae and Salamis were fought.

  Who Were the Greeks?

  Though the emergence of their culture can be traced back to the eighth century BC, the Greeks exerted their greatest and longest-lasting influence on the world during their Classical and Hellenistic periods, dating roughly from 500 BC until shortly after they were overcome by the Roman Empire in 146 BC.

  For all their achievements in so many noble fields of human endeavor, the greatest contribution of the ancient Greeks was their experimentation and success in establishing the concepts of the rights of the individual, personal liberty, and self-government or democracy.

  One of the primary reasons for the phenomenal progress of the Greeks, not just in democratic thinking but in so many other areas, was their early adoption of the city-state form of government. The Greeks organized themselves around their local cities. Adjoining areas were considered part of the city-state; for example, the city-state of Athens included the entire Attica peninsula, roughly a thousand square miles.

  On occasion, the city-states would unite together in leagues, primarily for mutual protection through military alliances, but also to enrich themselves through trade. But these leagues were always limited in scope and subject to shifting membership. Indeed, they were so fleeting that they could often not be relied upon, for the fiercely independent Greeks were determined not to become just another small part of someone else’s greater kingdom or empire.

  Although their resistance to uniting made them vulnerable to more powerful forces, the Greeks’ city-state form of government had many significant adv
antages. Each city-state was small, locally governed, and in vibrant competition with its fellow Greek city-states. Each set its own priorities and its own agenda. This facilitated innovation and creative genius. One scholar declared them to be examples of “extreme chauvinism . . . highly individualistic and autonomous . . . all that had allowed the creation and growth of a free landowning citizenry like none other.”3

  Other scholars have noted:

  From the close of the Greek Middle Age (ca. 750 b.c.) Greek civilization developed with remarkable rapidity. No other Indo-European or Oriental people has achieved results comparable to those of the next centuries. The one institution more responsible for this extraordinary achievement than any other was the city-state (polis). . . .

  . . . [T]he city-state made possible boundless versatility in the fields of literature, art, and philosophy. Perhaps its most precious contribution to civilization is republican government, which the Greeks devised in endless variety and which assured to the citizens a varying degree of liberty and self-government.4

  Although not alone, the city-state most active in experimenting with self-government was Athens. Over decades its government evolved from a kingship, to a king with a council made up of aristocrats, to rule by a broad collection of aristocrats, to a representative government of all citizens. This evolution was not without its failures and the occasional tyrant or two, but for the quarter century before 480 BC, the city-state of Athens had tested the limits of democracy and found it acceptable. After 480, it continued to experiment and achieved an even higher degree of self-government.5

  Of the Athenians it was said, “They bow to no man and are no man’s slaves.”6