WaybackWire

THERMOPYLAE.—For four days the king made no move from his camp at Trachis, expecting the Greeks in the pass to run away at any minute. They did not stir.

In those days letters passed between the two kings, it is reported from the Greek camp. Xerxes wrote offering Leonidas the rule of all Greece: “It is possible for you, by not fighting against God but by ranging yourself on my side, to be the sole ruler of Greece”.

Leonidas replied that he would sooner die: “for me to die for Greece is better than to be the sole ruler over the people of my race”. When the king wrote again, demanding that the Greeks give up their arms, Leonidas wrote back: “Come and take them”.

A Spartan, Dieneces, was told by a man of Trachis that the Persians were so many that, when they shot, their arrows hid the sun. He made light of it: if the Medes hid the sun, he said, the Greeks would fight in the shade.

On the fifth day the king grew angry and sent the Medes and Cissians against the pass. Many Medes fell, and the fighting lasted all day.

Then the Persians whom the king calls the Immortals went in, in their turn, under Hydarnes.

ARTEMISIUM.—The storm off Magnesia has cost the king no fewer than 400 warships, it is said, with men past counting and great wealth. The grain ships and other craft lost are beyond reckoning.

The news came on the second day after the storm broke, when the scouts on the headlands of Euboea ran down and told the Greeks of the wreck.

It came out of a clear, still sky, on a strong east wind the people there call the Hellespontian. Ships caught in the open were driven onto the rocks called the Ovens at Pelion or onto the beach.

The Greeks prayed to Poseidon as their saviour, poured libations and hurried back from Chalcis to Artemisium, hoping to find few ships against them.

When the wind dropped on the fourth day, the king’s fleet came round the headland of Magnesia into the gulf towards Pagasae and anchored at Aphetae.

ARTEMISIUM.—For three days, the same days as the fighting in the pass, the allied fleet has fought the king’s ships off Artemisium.

When the Greeks saw the king’s ships launched in such numbers at Aphetae four days ago, they lost heart and began to talk of flight homewards. The Euboeans begged Eurybiades to wait until they had moved their children and households out, and Adeimantus son of Ocytus, the Corinthian admiral, said he would not stay but would sail away.

A diver, Scyllias of Scione, came over from the Persians and told the admirals that 200 ships had been sent round Euboea to trap the fleet. The council resolved to stay where it was that day and put to sea after midnight to meet them.

The next day word came that the squadron sent round Euboea had been caught by storm and rain off the Hollows of Euboea and driven onto the rocks. Fifty-three more Attic ships came in, and the Greeks, heartened, fell on some Cilician ships and destroyed them.

On the third day the king’s admirals put out about midday. It was a hard day for both: many Greek ships and men were lost, and far more of the enemy’s. The Greeks were left in possession of the dead and the wrecks.

But half the Athenian ships were damaged, and the commanders’ counsel was to fall back to the inner waters of Hellas.

SALAMIS.—The allied fleet has put in at Salamis at the Athenians’ request, after leaving Artemisium on the news from the pass.

An Athenian, Abronichus son of Lysicles, had been posted with Leonidas with a thirty-oared boat, ready to carry word to Artemisium if the army fared ill. He came and told the fleet what had befallen Leonidas and his men.

The Greeks delayed no longer. They left in their appointed order, the Corinthians first and the Athenians last.

Themistocles took the most seaworthy Athenian ships to the watering places and had words cut into the rocks for the Ionians in the king’s fleet. The message opens: “Men of Ionia, you do wrongly to fight against the land of your fathers and bring slavery upon Hellas.” It bids them come over to the Greeks, or at least stand out of the war, or hold back in battle.

The Athenians want to take their children and women out of Attica and take counsel what to do.

They had looked to find all the Peloponnesians in Boeotia, waiting for the king. Instead they have learned that the Peloponnesians are making the defence of the Peloponnese their first care, and are looking to the Isthmus.