including 10,000 specially trained ‘Immortals’ (so called because casualties in this
division were immediately replaced to keep the numbers constant), accompanied by
a fleet of perhaps 1,000 ships. He cut a canal across the isthmus of Mount Athos
where an earlier Persian fleet had been shipwrecked. The Greeks held a congress at
the Isthmus of Corinth where Sparta assumed the leadership. The first Greek
resistance was made at the pass of Thermopylae in northern Greece where the
Spartan king Leonidas was in command of a force of 6,000 men. He held the pass for
several days until Xerxes sent the Immortals through the mountains with the intention
of attacking the Greeks at the rear. When Leonidas had intelligence of this, he
dismissed most of his force except for the 300 Spartans and contingents from
Thespiae and Thebes who were subsequently overwhelmed from front and rear.
Herodotus records the epitaph composed for the Spartans by the poet Simonides:
Stranger, go tell the Spartans that we lie here
Obedient to their laws.
(7, 228)The actions of Leonidas and his 300 Spartans at Thermopylae consolidated their
reputation throughout Greece.
The prominent statesman and general Themistocles now persuaded the
Athenians to abandon their city, which at this time was not defended by walls. A far-
sighted leader, he had earlier diverted money earned from a silver mine discovered
at Laurium in Attica in the 480s to a fund for building up the Athenian fleet. He now
persuaded the Athenians to trust to their ships and thereby laid the foundations of
Athenian naval power, by which Athens came to dominate the Aegean. In the
confrontation with Persia Themistocles prevented the Spartans from withdrawing the
fleet south of the isthmus and opposed the Persians in the narrow waters off the island
of Salamis, where their numerical superiority and the size of their ships proved to be
a positive disadvantage. As at Marathon, intelligent tactics had triumphed over
seemingly impossible odds. The battle of Salamis in 480 destroyed much of the
Persian navy and Xerxes retired to Persia, leaving the army under the command of
Mardonius. The Spartans were persuaded to oppose the Persians north of the isthmus
and under their leader Pausanias won a famous victory in 479 at the battle of Plataea.
The Athenians now returned to Athens and Themistocles persuaded them to
fortify their city and harbour. Later the building of long walls uniting the two, which
were completed between 461 and 451, made the city invulnerable to attacks by land
and fully able to capitalise upon her naval superiority.
The Persians retreated, but in the face of an obviously continuing threat, the
states of the Aegean islands, the northern coast and Ionia came together on the
sacred island of Delos, the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, to form a voluntary
HISTORY 59