event in other contexts as well. That it is derived from a fictionalized embellishment of an historical event
serves as a pointed reminder that “history” is just what posterity makes of its past.

The Persian Wars: Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea

While the battle of Marathon was to become the stuff of legend among the Greeks, it was an affront to the
dignity and might of the Persian king. Darius set about making preparations for an invasion of Greece on
an even larger scale, but he died in 486 BC before those preparations could be completed. Darius was
succeeded by his son Xerxes, who inherited, along with the Persian throne, a rebellion in Egypt and a
commitment to punish the Athenians for the burning of Sardis and, now, for defeating the king’s forces at
Marathon. Xerxes attended first to the Egyptian revolt, which he quelled in short order, and then began
massive preparations for an invasion of Greece. The Persian king and his advisers had learned from the
setbacks suffered by their navy in the northern Aegean in 492 and by their army at Marathon in 490, and
they were determined to leave nothing to chance. Fully four years were taken up with raising the forces
that would invade Greece by both land and sea and with making such arrangements that would ensure the
success of the invasion. These arrangements included the storage of vast quantities of provisions along the
route to be followed by the army and navy, the cutting of a canal through the peninsula of Mount Athos,
and the construction of two pontoon bridges, each over a kilometer in length, across the Hellespont. And
so the ruler of the world’s lone superpower, convinced that his mission had divine support, prepared to
complete a job that he considered his father to have left unfinished 10 years before, by leading a vast and
heavily equipped multi-ethnic invasion of a land on another continent that posed no threat to the security
of his mighty empire.

The Greeks were well aware of these preparations and of their magnitude, and it must have been obvious
to all that the Persians would readily succeed in overcoming any opposition. Indeed, the conspicuous
measures that the Persians were taking seem to have been designed in part to ensure that there would be
no opposition. Consequently, by the time the Persian forces were ready to cross over into Europe in the
spring of 480, most of the Greek cities were prepared to come to terms with the invaders. After all, it was
felt that the Persian attack was primarily directed at Athens and Sparta, the two cities that had refused to
give “earth and water” to the ambassadors of King Darius, who had gone around to the Greek cities in the
late 490s to demand these traditional tokens of submission to Persian authority. If any of the cities was in
some doubt as to what should be done in the face of the imminent invasion, the Delphic oracle could be
consulted and could be counted on to give sound advice fortified by divine sanction: In every instance that
we know of, the oracle of Apollo advised either accommodation with the Persians or wholesale
emigration. So, for example, when the Athenians sent ambassadors to Delphi in the hope of receiving
some encouragement from the oracle, the god instructed the Athenians to abandon their homes and to “flee
to the ends of the earth,” as there was no hope that Athens could be saved. When pressed to provide a
somewhat less discouraging response, the god suggested that the only thing that would not be ravaged by
the invaders was “a wooden wall,” which would give some help to the Athenians. The wooden wall was
pretty clearly intended as a reference to the ships of the Athenian navy which, the oracle seemed to be
indicating, could be used to transport the population of Athens to a new and distant home. There were
those in Athens, however, who interpreted the words of the god to mean that the Persians could be
defeated in a naval engagement.

The leader of this group of seriously deluded optimists was an Athenian named Themistocles, who had a
vested interest in promoting the merits of the Athenian navy. For Themistocles was himself largely
responsible for the fact that, in 480 BC, the Athenian fleet was the largest in Greece. Not long before that
time Athens was engaged in a war with its neighbor and rival, the island of Aegina, with neither the