Monday, 2/23: Salamis and Plataea

Salamis

• After Thermopylae and Artemesium, Xerxes' army and fleet are on the move, plundering Phocis and Euboia. Boiotia submits.
• Greek land forces planning to make a stand at the Isthmus -- Attica undefended
• Greek fleet in Saronic gulf, helping to evacuate Athens
  • 'wooden walls' oracle
  • small garrison on Athenian acropolis
    
• Persians take Athens, Persian fleet at Phaleron
• Greek fleet mustered in straits of Salamis
  • outflank any Persian naval move against the Peloponnese
  • Some Peloponnesians want to move fleet back to support Isthmus directly
  • Themistocles argues that the better place to make as stand was in the narrow waters of the straits
    • Hdt's story of Themistocles' trick
    • evidence of the Themistocles decree, and issues of interepretation
      
• Xerxes sends detachment of Egyptian ships around Salamis to block escape route west, keeps main fleet at sea overnight in case Grek fleet tries to escape into Saronic gulf
• Persian contingent on island of Psyttaleia
• Morning: Xerxes moves fleet into straits to engage Greek fleet
  • details somewhat unclear (Aeschylus' Persians)
  • Greeks probably engaged just as Persians come out of narrows, flank head of column as it starts to fan out
  • Greeks take 200 ships, lose 40

Aftermath:

• waiting to see what happens next -- Persian fleet is still substantial
• Second day after battle, scouts report that the Persian fleet had left Phaleron
• Xerxes decides to withdraw from Greece:
  • control of the sea uncertain, potential supply problems, bridge on the Hellespont threatened
  • winter coming on, and with the huge army it would be difficult to keep it provisioned over the course of the winter.
• Mardonius remains behind with smaller army
  • Hdt. says 300,000 -- probably more like 60,000
  • Winters in Thessaly
  • Tries to get free Greek cities to defect

Spring 479: Mardonius moves south again

• Athenians forced to abandon city a second time
  • Convince Spartans that, if they want the help of the Athenian fleet to defend the Peloponnese, they need ot help Athens on land
  • Peloponnesian army of c. 38,000 mobilized under Pausanias, regent for Leonidas' young son
• Mardonius, after occupying Athens, withdraws into southern Boiotia
  • Attica is not the best cavalry country
  • Attca is a eninsula with limited access: potential of being cornered
  • Boiotia better cavalry country, and has the support of Thebes
• He sets up a stockade just north of the Asopus river.
• The Greeks come in over the Eleutherae pass
  • assemble in the foothills of Mt. Kithairon at Erythrae
  • Athenian archers repel an attack by Mardonius' cavalry
• After several days of stalemate, Pausanias moves Greek army west near Plataea
  • group of knolls c. 1 mile from foot of Kithairon, good water supply, room for camps
  • uses Dryoskephalai pass for supplies
• Mardonius sends cavalry around Greek army, destroys Greek food convoy coming over pass
• Pausanias realizes he needs to camp closer to pass to protect supply line:
  • Moves the Peloponnesian center south at night, to cover the pass
  • leaves the Athenian left wing and Spartan right wing in place for the moment
  • The Spartan right, in withdrawing, draws out the Persian cavalry at first light, and the Athenian left is supposed to move right to close the gap and support the Spartans with their archers.
  • But as the Athenian left begins to move, it draws out the northern Greek cavalry from Mardonius' right.
    • Former Spartan center (now guarding pass) is supposed to move forward as the left and right converge, to outflank the attacking Persian cavalry
    • Athenian left gets held up on the streams of the Oiroe river, set upon by N. Greek cavalry and Boiotian infantry
    • Former center instead splits into two bodies to cover the Athenian flanks
    • The left wing, which included the Megarian infantry, meets heavy losses at the hands of the North Greek cavalry
  • Persian center is slowed by the terrain, never gets a chance to engage
  • Spartans on the right hold off under Persian arrow fire, until the Persians were deeply massed, at whicfh point they charged
    • break Persian line, many casualties, including Mardonius
    • Persians and allies take flight
  • Greeks storm Persian camp, then Thebes
  • Persian threat on land decisively ended

Wednesday, 2/25: The End of the Persian Wars

Aftermath of Plataea

• huge slaughter of Persians
• Artabazos, commanding the center, managed to escape with his troops when they saw the disaster unfolding
  • Greeks decide not to pursue, and he is able to bring his forces back to Asia
• tremendous booty from Persian camp
  • some went to individual cities
  • some dedicated at pan-Hellenic sanctuaries
    • serpent column, recording names of cities that resisted the Persians
      
• Thebes beseiged
  • pro-Persian leaders taken prisoner and executed

Battle of Mycale

• Leotychides the Spartan with fleet of 110 ships at Delos
  • receives appeal from Samos to instigate revolt against Persia
  • Samian representatives swear oath of alliance with the Greek allies
• Greek fleet sails for Samos
  • Persian forces withdraw to mainland
  • Samos liberated
  • 500 Athenian prisoners freed
• Persian fleet took defensive stand on south side of Mykale promontory
  • beached ships
  • built stockade for defense of ships
  • support of Tigranes, commander of Persian land forces in Ionia
    • Hdt. says 60,000. More like 6,000?
• Greek fleet at Samos consideres ignoring Persians at Mykale, sailing instead for Hellespont
  • disrupt Persian lines between Asia and Europe
• Decision taken to deal with local situation first
• Leotychides embarks fleet, sails along shore when he sees no Persian resistance on sea
  • shouted to Ionian Greeks among Persian forces to defect
  • sailed past Persian position, landed ships, disembarked troops
    • strong force of marines on board; sailors themselves possibly equipped with light infantry weapons
• Persians form defensive line
  • disarm Samians and station Milesian allies to guard pass in the rear
    • suspicious of possible treachery
• Greek line:
  • Athens, Corinth, Sicyon and Troizen fill up the space between the shoreline and the foothills
  • Spartans on right have to move through foothills
• Greek left engages first (Spartan right moving more slowly over rougher terrain)
• Persians form line of defence outside the stockade
  • Tigarnes hoping to engage half the Greek army while other half was still en route?
  • Held their ground for a while, until Athenians broke the Persian shield-line in a mass assault
• Persians attempt to retreat within their stockade, but Greeks manage to force their way in
  • Persian allies flee; Persians themselves make a stand, but were defeated
    • Tigranes among the casualties
  • Spartans arrive while the Persians are still holding out, help finish the conflict
    • Samians and other Ionians start attacking Persians as well
    • Milesians guarding rear pass misdirect retreating Persians, bring them back among the Greeks, join in the battle.

Aftermath

• Greeks plunder Persian camp, burn ships
  • Sail back to Samos, consider how best to protect the newly-liberated Ionian cities
  • proposed evacuation of Ionians to the mainland dismissed as impractical,
  • but so were permanent garrisons in Ionia to protect against any Persian attempt to reconsolidate Asia
  • Enrolled several islands into Greek alliance
• Sail for the Hellespont, planning to destroy Persian bridge
  • discover that it has already been wrecked
• Peloponnesians sail home
• Athenians and Ionians under Xanthippos decide to remain, to liberate the area
  • Blockade Sestos, where Persians in the area had converged
    • Persians hold out for a while, but were unprepared for a seige
    • Autumn arrives, Athenians anxious to return home, but hold out
    • Persians eventually escape during the night, local Greeks open the gates and welcome the Athenians
      • Persians captured in Thrace and at Aegospotamoi up the coast from Sestos
    • Xanthippus returns to Athens with the cables from the Persian bridge, captured at Sestos

End of Herodotus' account

• Immediate Persian threat over, but Persian remains a strong force
• Hostilities not 'officially' over until the middle of the fifth century
• Thucydides' Pentekontaitia
  • Hellanicus' history

Greek political situation in wake of the Persian wars

• Greek alliance against Persia still officially active
  • Still some cities to be liberated, Medizing cities to be punished, and, officially at least, the Persian desecration of Greek temples is to be avenged.
• In Athens, work is begun restoring the city, rebuilding the walls
  
  • Sparta, Corinth, and Aegina concerned about Athens' naval power
    • Sparta tries to convince Athens not to build walls
      • pretext is that fortified towns outside the Peloponnes could be used by an invading enemy
  • Themistocles' trick
    • Fortification of Pireaus
      

Follow-up campaigns in 478:

• Greek fleet under Pausanias and Aristides wins over most of Cyprus, reduces Byzantion
• Greek fleet and army under Leotychides and Themistocles occupies northern Greece
• commitment to take vengance on all Medizers abandoned when the scope of the enterprise became clear
  • But Medizing governments in Phocis, Thasos, and parts of Thessaly are ejected
  • Larisa in Thessaly makes peace
  • story of Leotychides bribery; recall and exile in Tegea (476)
• By 477, Pausanias' tyrannical behavior has made him unpopular with liberated Greeks
  • recalled to Sparta
  • his replacement, Dorcis, unable to maintain control
• liberated Greeks now following the lead of Athens (Ionian kinship with Athens)
• Sparta withdraws from overseas operations

Friday, 2/27: First Exam