07 - Xerxes, Makers of History by Jacob Abbott

Dive into the fascinating history of Xerxes, the formidable ruler of the Persian Empire, as he leads his forces in the dramatic invasion of Greece. Join Deon Gines as he unravels the intricate tapestry of power, conflict, and legacy during this pivotal era.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter seven of Xerxes by Jacob Abbott. The LibriVox recording
is in the public domain. Recording by Dion Jins Salt
Lake City, Utah. The Preparations of the Greeks for Defense b. C.
Four eighty. We must now leave for a time the

(00:22):
operations of Xerxes and his army, and turn our attention
to the Greeks and to the preparations which they were
making to meet the emergency. The two states of Greece
which were most prominent in the transactions connected with the
invasion of Xerxes were Athens and Sparta. By referring to

(00:46):
the map, Athens will be found to have been situated
upon a promontory just without the Peloponnesus, while Sparta, on
the other hand, was in the center of a valley
which lay in the southern part of the peninsula. Each
of these cities was the center and stronghold of a small,

(01:08):
but very energetic and powerful commonwealth. The two states were
entirely independent of each other, and each had its own
peculiar system of government, of usages and of laws. These systems,
and in fact the characters of the two communities, in

(01:29):
all respects, were extremely dissimilar. Both these states, though in
name republics, had certain magistrates called commonly in history kings.
These kings were, however, in fact, only military chieftains, commanders
of the armies, rather than sovereign rulers of the state.

(01:52):
The name by which such a chieftain was actually called
by the people themselves in those days was tyrone, the
name from which our word tyrant is derived. As however,
the word tyrannus had none of that opprobrious import which
is associated with its English derivative. The latter is not

(02:16):
now a suitable substitute for the former. Historians therefore commonly
use the word king instead, though the word does not
properly express the idea. They were commanders, chieftains, hereditary generals,
but not strictly kings. We shall, however, often call them

(02:38):
kings in these narratives in conformity with the general usage. Dematus,
who had fled from Sparta to seek refuge with Darius,
and who was now accompanying Xerxes on his march to Greece,
was one of these kings. It was a peculiarity in

(02:58):
the constitution of Sparta that, from a very early period
of its history there had been always two kings who
had each other like the Roman consuls in later times.
This custom was sustained partly by the idea that by
this division of the executive power of the state, the

(03:20):
exercise of the power was less likely to become despotic
or tyrannical. It had its origin, however, according to the
ancient legends in the following singular occurrences, at a very
early period in the history of Sparta, when the people
had always been accustomed, like other states, to have one

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prince or chieftain, a certain prince died, leaving his wife,
whose name was Argea, and two infant children as his survivors.
The children were twins, and the father had died almost
immediately after they were born. Now, the office of king
was in a certain sense hereditary, and yet not absolutely so,

(04:09):
for the people were accustomed to assemble on the death
of the king and determine who should be his successor,
always choosing, however, the oldest son of the former monarch,
unless there was some very extraordinary and imperious reason for
not doing so. In this case, they decided as usual

(04:32):
that the oldest son should be king. But here a
very serious difficulty arose, which was to determine which of
the twins was the oldest son. They resembled each other
so closely that no stranger could distinguish one from the
other at all. The mother said that she could not

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distinguish them, and that she did not know which was
the first born. This was not strictly true, for she
did in fact know, and only denied her power to
decide the question because she wished to have both of
her children kings. In this perplexity, the Spartans sent to

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the oracle at Delphi to know what they were to do.
The oracle gave, as usual, an ambiguous and unsatisfactory response.
It directed the people to make both the children kings,
but to render the highest honors to the firstborn. When
this answer was reported at Sparta, it only increased the difficulty,

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for how were they to render peculiar honors to the
firstborn unless they could ascertain which was the firstborn. In
this dilemma, some person suggested to the magistrates that perhaps
Urgea really knew which was the eldest child, and that
if so, by watching her to see whether she washed

(06:03):
and fed one uniformly before the other, or gave it precedence.
In any other way by which her latent maternal instinct
or partiality might appear, the question might possibly be determined.
This plan was accordingly adopted. The magistrates contrived means to

(06:24):
place a servant maid in the house to watch the
mother in the way proposed, and the result was that
the true order of birth was revealed. From that time forward,
while they were both considered as princes, the one now
supposed to be the first born took precedence of the other. When, however,

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the children arrived at an age to assume the exercise
of the governmental power. As there was no perceptible difference
between them in age, or strength or accomplishments, the one
who had been decided to be the younger was little
disposed to submit to the other. Each had his friends

(07:07):
and adherents. Parties were formed, and a long and angry
civil dissension ensued. In the end, the question was compromised,
the command was divided, and the system of having two
chief magistrates became gradually established, the power descending in two

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lines from father to son through many generations. Of course,
there was perpetual jealousy and dissension, and often open and
terrible conflicts between these two rival lines. The Spartans were
an agricultural people, cultivating the valley in the southwestern part

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of the Peloponnesus, the waters of which were collected and
conveyed to the sea by the River Eurotas and its branches,
in the plainest possible manner, and prided themselves on the
stern and stoical resolution with which they rejected all the

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refinements and luxuries of society. Courage, hardihood, indifference to life,
and the power to endure without a murmur. The most
severe and protracted sufferings were the qualities which they valued.
They despised wealth, just as other nations despise effeminacy and foppery.

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Their laws discouraged commerce lest it should make some of
the people rich. Their clothes were scanty and plain, their
houses were comfortless, their food was of coarse bread, hard
and brown, and their money was of iron. With all this, however,
they were the most ferocious and terrible soldiers in the world.

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They were, moreover, with all their plainness of manners and
of life, of a very proud and lofty spirit. All
agricultural toil and every other species of manual labor in
their state were performed by a servile peasantry, while the
free citizens, whose profession was exclusively that of arms, were

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as aristocratic and exalted in soul as any nobles on earth.
People are sometimes, in our day, when money is so
much valued, proud notwithstanding their poverty. The Spartans were proud
of their poverty itself. They could be rich if they chose,

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but they despised riches. They looked down on all the
refinements and delicacies of dress and of living from an
elevation far above them. They looked down on labor, too,
with the same contempt. They were yet very nice and
particular about their dress and military appearance, though everything pertaining

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to both was coarse and simple, and they had slaves
to wait upon them even in their campaigns. The Athenians
were a totally different people. The leading classes in their
commonwealth were cultivated, intellectual, and refined. The city of Athens
was renowned for the splendor of its architecture, its temples,

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its citadels, its statues, and its various public institutions, which
in subsequent times made it the great intellectual center of Europe.
It was populous and wealthy. It had a great commerce
and a powerful fleet. The Spartan character, in a word,
was stern, gloomy, indomitable, and holy, unadorned. The Athenians were rich, intellectual,

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and refined. The two nations were nearly equal in power,
and were engaged in a perpetual and incessant rivalry. There
were various other states and cities in Greece, but Athens
and Sparta were at this time the most considerable, and
they were altogether the most resolute and determined in their

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refusal to submit to the Persian's way. In fact, so
well known and understood was the spirit of defiance with
which these two powers were disposed to regard the Persian invasion,
that when Xerxes sent his summons demanding submission to the
other states of Greece, he did not send any to these.

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When Darius invaded Greece some years before, he had summoned
Athens and Sparta as well as the others, but his
demands were indignantly rejected. It seems that the custom was
for a government or a prince, when acknowledging the dominion
of a superior power, to send as a token of

(12:04):
territorial submission, a little earth and water, which was a
sort of legal form of giving up possession of their
country to the sovereign who claimed it. Accordingly, when Darius
sent his ambassadors into Greece to summon the country to surrender,
the ambassadors, according to the usual form, called upon the

(12:26):
governments of the several states to send earth and water
to the king. The Athenians, as has been already said,
indignantly refused to comply with this demand. The Spartans, not
content with a simple refusal, seized the ambassadors and threw
them into a well, telling them as they went down

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that if they wanted earth and water for the King
of Persia, they might get it there. The Greeks had
obtained some information of Xerxes design against them before they
received his summons. The first intelligence was communicated to the
Spartans by Demadus himself while he was at Susa, in

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the following singular manner. It was the custom in those
days to write with a steel point on a smooth
surface of wax. The wax was spread for this purpose
on a board or tablet of metal in a very
thin stratum, forming a ground upon which the letters traced

(13:32):
with the point were easily legible. Demadus took two writing
tablets such as these, and removing the wax from them,
he wrote a brief account of the proposed Persian invasion
by tracing the characters upon the surface of the wood
or metal itself beneath, then restoring the wax so as

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to conceal the letters. He sent the two tablets seemingly blank,
to Leonidas, King of Sparta. The messengers who bore them
had other pretexts for their journey, and they had various
other articles to carry. The Persian guards, who stopped and
examined the messengers from time to time along the route,

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thought nothing of the blank tablets, and so they reached
Leonidas in safety. Leonidas, being a blunt, rough soldier and
not much accustomed to cunning contrivances himself, was not usually
much upon the watch for them from others, and when
he saw no obvious communication upon the tablets, he threw

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them aside, not knowing what the sending of them could mean,
and not feeling any strong interest in ascertaining. His wife, however,
her name was Gorgo, had more curiosity. There was something
mysterious about the affair, and she wished to solve it.
She examined the tablets attentively in every part, and at

(15:04):
length removed cautiously a little of the wax. The letters
began to appear, full of excitement and pleasure. She proceeded
with the work until the whole serious coding was removed.
The result was that the communication was revealed and Greece
received the warning. When the Greeks heard that Xerxes was

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at Sardis, they sent three messengers in disguise to ascertain
the facts in respect to the Persian army assembled there,
and so far as possible to learn the plans and
designs of the king. Notwithstanding all the efforts of these
men to preserve their concealment and disguise, they were discovered, seized,

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and tortured by the Persian officers, who took them until
they confessed that they were spies. The officer was about
to put them to death, when Xerxes himself received information
of the circumstances. He forbade the execution and directed, on
the other hand, that the men should be conducted through

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all his encampments and be allowed to view and examine everything.
He then dismissed them with orders to return to Greece
and report what they had seen he thought. He said
that the Greeks would be more likely to surrender if
they knew how immense his preparations were for effectually vanquishing

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them if they attempted resistance. The city of Athens, being
farther north than Sparta, would be the one first exposed
to danger from the invasion, and when the people heard
of Xerxes's approach, the whole city was filled with anxiety
and alarm. Some of the inhabitants were panic stricken and

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wished to submit. Others were enraged and uttered nothing but
threats and defiance. One thousand different plans of defense were
proposed and eagerly discussed at length. The government sent messengers
to the oracle at Delphi to learn what their destiny
was to be, and to obtain, if possible, divine direction

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in respect to the best mode of averting the danger.
The messengers received an awful response, pretending in wild and solemn,
though dark and mysterious language, the most dreadful calamities to
the ill fated city. The messengers were filled with alarm

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at hearing this reply. One of the inhabitants of Delphi,
the city in which the oracle was situated, proposed to
them to make a second application, in the character of
the most humble supplicants, to implore that the oracle would
give them some directions in respect to the best course

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for them to pursue in order to avoid, or at
least to mitigate the impending danger. They did so, and
after a time they received an answer, vague, mysterious, and
almost unintelligible, but which seemed to denote that the safety
of the city was connected in some manner with Solemnus,

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and with certain wooden walls, to which the inspired distange
of the response obscurely alluded. The messengers returned to Athens
and reported the answer which they had received. The people
were puzzled and perplexed in their attempts to understand it.
It seems that the citadel of Athens had been formerly

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surrounded by a wooden palisade. Some thought that this was
what was referred to by the wooden walls, and that
the meaning of the oracle was that they must rebuild
the palisade and then retreat to the citadel when the
Persians should approach and defend themselves there. Others conceived that

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the phrase referred to ships, and that the oracle meant
to direct them to meet their enemies with a fleet
upon the sea. Solamis, which was also mentioned by the oracle,
was an island not far from Athens, being west of
the city, between it and the Isthmus of Corinth. Those

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who supposed that by the wooden walls was denoted the
fleet thought that Salamis might have been alluded to as
the place near which the great naval battle was to
be fought. This was the interpretation which seemed finally to prevail.
The Athenians had a fleet of about two hundred galleys.

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These vessels had been purchased and built some time before
this for the Athenian government, through the influence of a
certain public officer of high rank and influence named the Mystocles.
It seems that a large sum had accumulated in the
public treasury the produce of certain minds belonging to the city,

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and a proposal was made to divide it among the citizens,
which would have given a small sum to each man.
The Mystocles opposed this proposition and urged instead that the
government should build and equip a fleet with the money.
This plan was finally adopted. The fleet was built, and

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it was now determined to call it into active service
to meet and repel the Persians, though the naval armament
of Xerxes was six times as large. The next mention
sure was to establish a confederation, if possible, of the
Grecian states, or at least of all those who were

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willing to combine, and thus to form an allied army
to resist the invader. The smaller states were very generally
panic stricken, and had either already signified their submission to
the Persian rule or were timidly hesitating in doubt whether
it would be safer for them to submit to the

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overwhelming force which was advancing against them, or to join
the Athenians and the Spartans in their almost desperate attempts
to resist it. The Athenians and Spartans settled for the
time their own quarrels and held a council to take
the necessary measures for forming a more extended confederation. All

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this took place while Xerxes was slowly advancing from start
to the Health Pont, and from the health Pond to Doriscus.
As described in the preceding chapter. The council resolved on
dispatching an embassy at once to all the states of Greece,
as well as to some of the remoter neighboring powers,

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asking them to join the alliance. The first Greek city
to which these ambassadors came was Argos, which was the
capital of a kingdom or state lying between Athens and Sparta.
Though within the Peloponnesus, the states of Argos and of Sparta,
being neighbors, had been constantly at war, Argos had recently

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lost six thousand men in a battle with the Spartans,
and were consequently not likely to be in a very
favorable mood for a treaty of friendship and alliance. When
the ambassadors had delivered their message, the Argolians replied that
they had anticipated such a proposal from the time that

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they had heard that Xerxes had commenced his march toward Greece,
and that they had applied accordingly to the oracle at
Delphi to know what it would be best for them
to do in case the proposal were made. The answer
of the oracle had been, they said, unfavorable to their

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entering into an alliance with the Greeks. They were willing, however,
they added, notwithstanding this, to enter into an alliance offensive
and defensive with the Spartans for thirty years, on condition
that they should themselves have the command of half the
Peloponnesian troops. They were entitled to the command of the whole,

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being as they contended the superior nation in rank, but
that they would waive their just claim and be satisfied
with half if the Spartans would agree to that arrangement.
The Spartans replied that they could not agree to those conditions.
They were themselves, they said, the superior nation in rank

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and entitled to the whole command, And as they had
two kings and Argos but one, there was a double
difficulty in complying with the argive demand. They could not
surrender one half of the command without depriving one of
their kings of his rightful power. Thus the proposed alliance

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failed entirely, the people of Argos saying that they would
as willingly submit to the dominion of Xerxes as to
the insolent demands and assumptions of superiority made by the
government of Sparta. The ambassadors, among other countries which they
visited in their attempts to obtain alliance and aid, went

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to Sicily Glan was the king of Sicily, and Syracuse
was his capital. Here, the same difficulty occurred which had
broken up the negotiations at Argos. The ambassadors, when they
arrived at Syracuse, represented to Dillen that if the Persians
subdued Greece, they would come to Sicily next, and that

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it was better for him and his countrymen that they
should meet the enemy while he was still at a distance,
rather than to wait until he came near. Gillan admitted
the justice of this reasoning, and said that he would
furnish a large force, both of ships and men, for

(25:41):
carrying on the war, provided that he might have the
command of the combined army. To this, of course, the
Spartans would not agree. He then asked that he might
command the fleet on condition of giving up his claim
to the land forces. Proposition the Athenian ambassadors rejected, saying

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to Gellen that what they were in need of and
came to him to obtain was a supply of troops,
not of leaders. The Athenians, they said, were to command
the fleet, being not only the most ancient nation of Greece,
but also the most immediately exposed to the invasion, so

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that they were doubly entitled to be considered as the
principles and leaders in the war. Gellen then told the
ambassadors that since they wished to obtain everything and to
concede nothing, they had better leave his dominions without delay
and report to their countrymen that they had nothing to

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expect from Sicily. The ambassadors then went to Corsa, a
large island on the western coast of Greece in the
Adriatic Sea. It is now called Corfu. Here they seemed
to meet with their first success. The people of Corsah
acceded to the proposals made to them, and promised at

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once to equip and man their fleet and send it
round into the Aegean Sea. They immediately engaged in the
work and seemed to be honestly intent on fulfilling their promises.
They were, however, in fact, only pretending they were really undecided,

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which caused to espouse the Greek or the Persian, and
kept their promised squadron back by means of various delays
until its aid was no longer needed. But the most
important of all these negotiations of the Athenians and Spartans
with the neighboring states were those opened with Thesaly. Thessaly

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was a kingdom in the northern part of Greece. It
was therefore the territory which the Persian armies would first
enter on turning the northwestern corner of the Aegean Sea.
There were, moreover, certain points in its geographical position and
in the physical conformation of the country that gave it

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a peculiar importance in respect to the approaching conflict. By
referring to the map placed at the commencement of the
fifth chapter, it will be seen that Thessaly was a
vast valley, surrounded on all sides by mountainous land and
drained by the river Penneus and its branches. The Penneus

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flows eastwardly to the Aegean Sea and escapes from the
great Valley through a narrow and romantic pass lying between
the mountains Olympus and Osa. This pass was called in
ancient times the Olympic Straits, and a part of it
formed a romantic and beautiful glen called the Vale of Tempe.

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There was a road through this pass, which was the
only access by which Thessaly could be entered from the eastward.
To the south of the Vale of Tempe, The mountains,
as will appear from the map, crowded so hard upon
the sea as not to allow any passage to the
eastward of them. The natural route of Xerxes, therefore, in

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descending into Greece, would be to come down along the
coast until he reached the mouth of the Peneus, and
then following the river up through the Vale of Tempe
into Thessaly, to pass down toward the Peloponnesus on the
western side of Osa and Pelian and of the other

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mountains near the sea. If he could get through the
Olympic Straits and the Vale of Tempe, the way would
be open and unobstructed until he should reach the southern
frontier of Thessaly, where there was another narrow pass leading
from Thessaly into Greece. This last defile was close to

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the sea and was called the Straits of Thermopylae. Ths
Cerxes and his hosts, in continuing their march to the southward,
must necessarily traverse Thessaly, and in doing so they would
have two narrow and dangerous files to pass, one at
Mount Olympus to get into the country, and the other

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at Thermopylae to get out of it. It consequently became
a point of great importance to the Greeks to determine
at which of these two passes they should make their
stand against the torrent which was coming down upon them.
This question would of course depend very much upon the

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disposition of Thescia herself. The government of that country, understanding
the critical situation in which they were placed, had not
waited for the Athenians and Spartans to send ambassadors to them.
But at a very early period of the war, before
in fact, Xerxes had yet crossed the hellspot, had sent

(31:21):
messengers to Athens to concert some plan of action. These
messengers were to say to the Athenians that the government
of Thessaly were expecting every day to receive a summons
from Xerxes, and that they must speedily decide what they
were to do, That they themselves were very unwilling to

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submit to him, but that they could not undertake to
make a stand against his immense host alone. That the
Southern Greeks might include Thessaly in their plan of defense
or exclude it, just as they thought best. If they
decided to include it, then they must make a stand

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at the Olympic Straits, that is at the pass between
Olympus and Osa, and to do that it would be
necessary to send a strong force immediately to take possession
of the pass. If on the contrary, they decided not
to defend Thessaly, then the pass of Thermopylae would be

(32:27):
the point at which they must make their stand, and
in that case Thessaly must be at liberty to submit.
On the first Persian summons, the Greeks, after consultation on
the subject, decided that it would be best for them
to defend Thessaly and to take their stand accordingly at

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the straits of Olympus. They immediately put a large force
on board their fleet, armed and equipped for the expedition.
This was at the time when Zerxies was just about
crossing the hill's pont. The fleet sailed from the port
of Athens, passed up through the narrow strait called Europus,

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lying between the island of Euboa and the mainland, and
finally landed at a favorable point of disembarkation south of Thessaly.
From this point the forces marched to the northward until
they reached the Peneus, and then established themselves at the
narrowest part of the passage between the mountains, strengthened their

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position there as much as possible, and awaited the coming
of the enemy. The amount of the force was ten
thousand men. They had not been here many days before
a messenger came to them from the King of Macedon,
which country, it will be seen, lies immediately north of Thessaly, earnestly,

(33:57):
dissuading them from attempting to make a stand at the
Veil of Tempe. Xerxes was coming on, he said, with
an immense and overwhelming force, one against which it would
be utterly impossible for them to make good their defense.
At such a point as that, it would be far

(34:18):
better for them to fall back to Thermopylae, which, being
a narrower and more rugged pass could be more easily defended.
Besides this, the messenger said that it was possible for
Xerxes to enter Thessly without going through the Veil of
Tempe at all. The country between Thessaly and Macedon was mountainous,

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but it was not impassable, and Xerxes would very probably
come by that way. The only security therefore for the
Greeks would be to fall back and entrench themselves at Thermopylaie,
nor was there any time to be lost. Xerxes was
crossing the hellspont and the whole country was full of

(35:05):
excitement and terror. The Greeks determined to act upon this advice.
They broke up their encampment at the Olympic Straits, and,
retreating to the southward, established themselves at Thermopylae to await
there the coming of the conqueror. The people of Thessaly

(35:25):
then surrendered to Xerxes as soon as they received his summons. Xerxes,
from his encampment at Therma, where we left him at
the close of the last chapter, saw the peaks of
Olympus and Osa in the southern horizon. They were distant,
perhaps fifty miles from where he stood. He inquired about them,

(35:48):
and was told that the river Peneus flowed between them
to the sea, and that through the same defile there
lay the main entrance to Thessaly. Previously determined to march
his army round the other way, as the King of
Macedon had suggested, but he said that he should like

(36:10):
to see this defile. So he ordered a swift Sedonian
galley to be prepared, and taking with him suitable guides
and a fleet of other vessels in attendance. On his galley,
he sailed to the mouth of the Peneus, and, entering
that river, he ascended it till he came to the

(36:30):
defile seen from any of the lower elevations which projected
from the bases of the mountains. At the head of
this defile, Thessaly lay spread out before the eye as
one vast valley, level, verdant, fertile, and bounded by distant
groups and ranges of mountains, which formed a blue and

(36:51):
beautiful horizon on every side. Through the midst of this
scene of rural loveliness, the Pennius, within its countless branches,
gracefully meandered, gathering the water from every part of the valley,
and then pouring it forth in a deep and calm
current through the gap in the mountains At the observer's feet.

(37:15):
Xerxes asked his guides if it would be possible to
find any other place where the waters of the Pennius
could be conducted to the sea. They replied that it
would not be, for the valley was bounded on every
side by ranges of mountainous land. Then, said Xerxes, the

(37:36):
Thessalonians were wise in submitting at once to my summons,
for if they had not done so, I would have
raised a vast embankment across the valley here, and thus
stopped the river, turned their country into a lake, and
drowned them all. End of Chapter seven.