narrow path between the mountains and the sea. (Since antiquity the shoreline has retreated a
considerable distance from the mountains as a result of silting from deforestation and the flow of the
Spercheius River.) This position had the further advantage of being near the northern entrance to the
channel separating the island of Euboea from the mainland, a position at which the Greek naval forces
were not at too great a disadvantage against the larger Persian fleet.
As it happened, the pass at Thermopylae was held for about four days by a contingent of a mere 300
Spartans and some of their allies, under the leadership of the Spartan King Leonidas. At about the same
time, a sudden storm arose, which drove a number of the Persian vessels against the rocky coast,
wrecking several of them. Although the Persian fleet still maintained numerical superiority over the
Greek, this fortuitous occurrence – or gift from the gods, as the Greeks would have considered it – served
to make the numbers somewhat more even. Leonidas and his Spartan troops, however, were not able to
prevent the Persian army from forcing the pass at Thermopylae, particularly after a local Greek guide
showed the Persians a mountain path by which they could outflank the Spartan position. The Spartans
fought and died with a determination that immediately became legendary. After all, in a case like this,
where there are no survivors, a legendary account is the only one available. Leonidas and his 299
companions were memorialized in a contemporary epitaph that contributed to the legend:
Take a message to the Spartans, passer-by:
We followed their orders, and here we lie.The report of the heroic stand of the Spartans at Thermopylae seems to have inspired the remaining
Greeks with a conviction that resistance to the Persians could still hold rewards, even if the reward
consisted only in the assurance of a glorious death. There was, however, no other place where the terrain
afforded a suitable location for resistance to the Persian army except at the isthmus that joins the
Peloponnese to central Greece. This meant that Athens would have to be abandoned, and so, before the
invading army reached Attica, the Athenian non-combatants were ferried to safety in the northern
Peloponnese. When the Persians took possession of the city they occupied the ACROPOLIS, burning the
temples and throwing down all the statues and other dedicatory offerings. The burning of Sardis during the
Ionian Revolt had now been avenged, but Greece had not yet been conquered. The Greek fleet was drawn
up in the channel between the coast of Attica and the island of Salamis. The Peloponnesian contingent
would have preferred to retreat and defend the coast of the Peloponnese, but Themistocles, who was in
command of the Athenian navy, manipulated the situation so as to force an engagement in the waters off
Salamis. This was a considerable help to the Greeks, as the Persians could not take full advantage of their
numerical superiority in the narrow channel, and the Greek fleet won a resounding victory.
ACROPOLIS Literally “the highest point of the city,” a rocky eminence sometimes used as the site
of a citadel during Mycenaean times and later serving as the religious focal point of the polis from
the Archaic Period onward; often used specifically to refer to the acropolis of Athens (figure 47).