Thermopylae: The Night Raid

The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, writing in the first century BC, related a story about the Battle of Thermopylae some 400 years earlier that was not recorded in Herodotus. Diodorus and other later historians claim that on the night of the second day of the battle, knowing that his flank had been turned, Leonidas sent a raid into the Persian camp in order to murder the Persian Emperor Xerxes. Most modern historians dismiss this tale as mere legend. Today I want to look more closely at the legend.

The Pass at Thermopylae as it looks today.

In his book on the Battle of Thermopylae, Ernle Bradford* both relates and dismisses the tale of a night raid in the following language: "Diodorus and others also tell a tale, which most authorities have considered suspect, that Leonidas, knowing all was lost, personally led a suicidal attempt on the Persian lines to try to kill Xerxes. We can be sure that this is untrue, for we know that Leonidas stayed to the last at Thermopylae, as was his duty and as befitted a Spartan king." (137)

Tom Holland in his book Persian Fire** is less conclusive commenting in a note that: "Several sources claim that Leonidas, on the eve of the Spartan' last stand, launched a raid on the royal tent and was killed. It is hard to know what is made of this story -- since Leonidas himself certainly died in battle -- unless it hints at a garbled memory of a foiled mission to assassinate Xerxes." (282)

As both historians emphasize, the notion of Leonidas leading a raid into the enemy camp on the eve of the final day of battle is both absurd and demonstrably untrue. First, the C-in-C of an large army composed of diverse allied forces does not take the role of a platoon leader. Leonidas was C-in-C because he commanded the trust and respect of the allied commanders; he could not risk the disintegration of the entire operation by exposing himself to unnecessary risk. Likewise, a Spartan king's place in the line of battle was very rigidly circumscribed by tradition. A Spartan king led from the front protected only by his personal guard, which included Olympic victors. It was considered a great honor in Sparta to be allowed to fight in front of the king. Finally and most importantly, Leonidas died far too publicly on the third day of battle. There were thousands of witnesses to his last hours on the Persian side who lived to tell about it. His corpse was fought over, then mutilated and displayed. Herodotus had the opportunity to speak with the survivors of Thermopylae and his account of Leonidas' death can be trusted in this. There is no way Leonidas led -- and died -- on a raid the night before.

But does that mean the raid itself is impossible? 

In his article "Thermopylae: A glorious sacrifice or failed 'black operation'" Stefanos Skarmintzos notes that Diodorus claims Leonidas had additional Laconian troops with him in addition to the 300 Spartiates of his personal guard. Certainly Spartan fielded 5,000 perioiki hoplites at the Battle of Plataea, and it is thus probably that Leonidas had at least some perioiki troops with him at Thermopylae as well. This may have included the Skiritan, Sparta's light cavalry scouts. Skarmintzos suggests Leonidas may have taken elements of the Krypteia with him as well. 

Assuming there was a Krypteia at this time (and more and more historians question this, arguing it was not created until after the helot revolt of 465), the members of such a unit would have been well-trained and experienced in both night operations and murder. Yet, even if the Krypteia had not yet been created, is it completely unreasonable to imagine some sort of equivalent to the British SAS or U.S. Navy Seals? If not a permanent institution, we should not forget that all Spartan hoplites were trained to move and operate in the dark and the creation of an ad hoc "special task force" to undertake a dangerous and secret mission is hardly unreasonable.

Furthermore, Leonidas had every reason to want to kill the tyrant who had initiated the invasion of the Greek peninsula. Yes, his personal mission was to command the defense at the Pass. That was his place and he knew it was his destiny to die there. However, that is not the same thing as assuming that everyone else was going to die with him or that the sacrifice of his life would be in vain, i.e. in a defeat. 

Leonidas did not go to Thermopylae to die. He went to halt the Persian invasion. His "job" was to do that anyway he could. The assassination of the man driving forward that invasion, of the supreme leader of an absolutist state, offered the prospect of, at a minimum, creating temporary confusion in the enemy camp and, at best, causing the entire invasion to collapse due to fights over the succession. If a spy or a scout suggested to Leonidas that it might be possible to smuggle Spartan (or other Greek) troops into the Persian camp with a chance of gaining access to Xerxes tent and killing him, Leonidas would have been a fool not to attempt such an operation. 

As Skarmintzos puts it: "If the night raid [had been] successful, today we would talk about the great victory at Thermopylae and how a few Greeks resisted the might of an Empire." Yet because it failed, we cannot be sure it ever happened at all. 

Like Stephen Pressfield, I find the notion of a night raid by a select body of Spartan troops tasked with eliminating the man who commanded the might of Persia irresistible as a novelist. A night raid, therefore, features in:

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* Bradford, Ernle. Thermopylae: The Battle for the West.(New York: Da Capo Press, 1993)

** Holland, Tom, Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West (New York: Anchor Books, 2005)

The Road to Thermopylae: Diplomatic Exchange

Darius gave Athens, Eretria and all the other cities of Greece the opportunity to submit without war.  Many Greek states, having witnessed the brutality of the Persian suppression of the Ionian revolt, submitted voluntarily. Key among these was Aegina -- a rival of Athens that sat dangerously close.

Sparta's most dangerous enemy and neighbor, on the other hand, was Argos. Sparta had just defeated Argos a decisive battle that included slaughtering a generation of fighting men. It would have been understandable if the Argives had sought Persian "protection" by submitting. That they didn't is to their credit. 

What they did do, however, is less clear. Herodotus relates that conflicting stories circulated about the policy of Argos. The Argives themselves said they offered to join the anti-Persian coalition on the condition they received a 30-year truce from Sparta -- and joint command; the Spartans offered them a single voice in a trio of commanders composed of the two Spartan kings and the Argive commander. Other (unnamed) sources claimed that the Persians sent word that they (the Persians) considered the Argives "of the same blood" (going back to a joint ancestor in the Iliad) and so should not fight one another. Fact is that Argos refused to join the anti-Persian coalition, and so remained a threat to Sparta, but did not exactly submit to Persia either.

Both Athens and Sparta rejected the Persian offer to "come to terms" without conflict with exceptional -- indeed shocking -- vehemence. In both cases, contrary to prevailing customs, the Persian envoys were killed. The Athenians threw the Persians into a pit and the Spartans threw them down a well. 

Curiously, however, it was the Spartans rather than the Athenians who suffered remorse. Herodotus tells us in Book Seven (133-136) the following story. The Spartans (also notable) had a temple to Agamemnon's herald Talthybius. After throwing the Persian ambassadors down a well to their death, the Spartans noticed strange things happening at the temple to Talthybius (some sources speak of strange lights and sounds) and realized that the gods were angry.  They also made a connection between the murder of the Persian Ambassadors and the anger of this god and felt compelled to appease his anger.

So, the Spartans held frequent assemblies at which they asked for volunteers to go to the Persian court. What they expected is made clear by the question asked at Assembly: "Is there any Spartan willing to die for his country?" The fate awaiting these men was expected to be so horrible that the question had to be asked repeatedly before two volunteers were found: Sperchias, son of Aneristus, and Bulis, son of Nicoles. The Spartiates "both men of good family and great wealth, volunteered to offer their lives to Xerxes in atonement for Darius' messengers who had been killed in Sparta." 

The two sacrificial envoys set out for Persia, stopping first at the palace of the Persian satrap on the Asian coast of the Aegean, Hydarnes. The latter feasted the Spartan ambassadors with great pomp and during the meal advised the two Spartiates to become "friends" to the Persian king. He drew attention to his own wealth and position, and then told the Spartan ambassadors that, being men of merit and courage, that if they submitted to Xerxes they might find themselves "in authority over lands in Greece which [Xerxes] would give you."

According to Herodotus, the Spartan envoys answered: "Hydarnes, the advice you give does not spring from full knowledge of the situation. You know one half of what is involved but not the other half. You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced.... If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too."

So the Spartan ambassadors continued to Susa and were brought before Xerxes. As soon as they entered the King's presence, the royal bodyguard tried to force them to bow down on the floor in an act of abject submission or worship, but the Spartans absolutely refused, fighting back against the guards that tried to push their heads to the floor. They said Spartans did not worship "a mere man like themselves." They also, somehow, managed to tell Xerxes why they were there.

Xerxes with restraint quite uncharacteristic of him (if we are to believe Herodotus' other tales about him) did not order the two Spartans tortured, flayed alive, dissected, or dismembered. Instead, he replied that he "would not behave like the Spartans, who by murdering the ambassadors of a foreign power had broken the law which all the world holds sacred." Xerxes "had no intention of doing the very thing for which he blamed them." Thus to their utter amazement, not only were Sperchias and Bulis' lives spared, they were also allowed to return to Sparta in all honor. 

There was only one catch. Because Xerxes had refused to take the lives of the ambassadors, the debt had not been paid to Talthybius, nor had the Spartan crime against the recognized international law of diplomatic immunity been atoned. Sparta still owed not only Persia but the gods for what they had done to the Persian ambassadors.

Both the murder of the Persian ambassadors and the mission of Sperchias and Bulis are described in "A Heroic King":

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The Road to Thermopylae: Xerxes

 Today, I offer a brief biographical sketch of the man who would lead the invading Persian forces in 480 BC and face Leonidas across the battlefield at Thermopylae: Xerxes

The Persian campaign ending in the Battle of Marathon was viewed by both sides as a victory and settled nothing. The Persian King Darius became more determined than ever to crush Athens because he now felt he had to punish both Athens' support for the Ionian rebellion and for humiliating his army at Marathon. He announced his intention to personally lead an army -- greater than any before -- against Athens. To provide that army with the necessary ships, horses, weapons and provisions, however, took time and taxes. The Egyptians objected to the taxes and rebelled, and as it turned out Darius did not have the time he needed either. He died in 486 at 64 years of age. 

Darius was succeeded not by his eldest son, but a younger son born to a daughter of Cyrus the Great. He was at the time of his succession already 36 years old and had been carefully groomed for his future as king by serving twelve years as governor in Babylon. After coming to power, he successfully quelled rebellions in both Egypt and Babylon. Significantly, in the later he broke with his father's tradition of religious tolerance and melted down the most important statue of the God Bel. 

By 483 his attentions had turned to Greece. Xerxes' actions suggest that he was anxious to complete his father's unfinished campaign against Greece and thereby avenge the "humiliation" of his father. Herodotus, however, suggests that he was goaded into action by his cousin Mardonius.

Herodotus puts the following speech into Mardonius' mouth:

"...you will not allow the wretched Ionians in Europe to make fools of us. It would indeed be a fearsom thing if we who have defeated and enslaved the Sacae, Indians, Ethiopians, Assyrians, and many other great nations who did us no injury ... should fail now to punish the Greeks who have been guilty of injuring us without provocation. (Book 7:9)

Once Xerxes had made up his mind to attack Greece, there is no question that he undertook a campaign with single-mindedness, determination, and foresight. Massive amounts of provisions were pre-positioned along the invasion route. In addition, to avoid losing his fleet as Mardonius had done in 492, he ordered a canal cut across the Athos peninsula.  Herodous, however, dismisses the later as "mere ostentation" because (he claims) there would have been "no difficulty" hauling the ships overland. Xerxes built the canal, Herodotus says "to show his power and to leave something to be remembered by." (Book 7: 34)

This is the tone of Herodotus' commentary, which he underlines with examples Xerxes arrogance and cruelty. On the one hand, we have the story of Xerxes ordering the waters of the Hellespont lashed 300 times (like a disobedient slave) because a storm had destroyed his pontoon bridge -- an action that epitomizes the stupid arrogance of a man obsessed with his own allegedly "divine" power. On the other hand, he tells the gruesome story of the Lydian noble Pythius. The latter voluntarily offered lavish hospitality to Xerxes and his army and also put his fortune at Xerxes disposal for the war -- to the tune of 3,993,000 gold Darics (a vast fortune). Yet when he asked that the eldest of his five sons be exempted from service in the army, Xerxes gave the following answer (according to Herodotus):

"You miserable fellow," he cried, "have you the face to mention your son, when I, in person, am marching to war against Greece with my sons and brothers and kinsmen and friends -- you, my slave, whose duty it was to come to me with every member of your house, including your wife? ... now your punishment will be less than your impudence deserves. Yourself and four of your sons are saved by the entertainment you gave me; but you shall pay with the life of the fifth, whom you cling to most."

Herodotus continues:

Having answered Pythius in these words Xerxes at once gave orders that the men to whom such duties fell should find Pythius' eldest son and cut him in half and put the two halves one on each side of the road, for the army to march out between them. The order was performed.

Propaganda? Maybe, but Herodotus was capable of showing respect and offering praise to Xerxes predecessors Cyrus and Darius. That the tone of his commentary is so decidedly different must have a cause beyond mere prejudice or politics. The fact that he can site incident after incident of Xerxes' bizarre behavior also suggests that there is at least some basis for his characterization. 

Tellingly, Xerxes had thrones set up in safe places from which to watch his battles -- whether Thermopylae or Salamis. Xerxes sent other men to die, often under the lashing of whips, rather than leading from the front. And when things went badly, he just went home with some of his army while abandoning the rest of his "slaves," those he expected to bleed for him. 

After returning to Susa, he appears to have lost interest in military affairs and to have focused on grandiose construction projects, including a palace that was twice the size of his father's. It is hard to escape parallels with other dictators like Hitler and Stalin. 

In 465, Xerxes was assassinated by the commander of the royal bodyguard. That too tells us something about his popularity among his closest associates.

Spartans and their unique culture are depicted as realistically as possible in all my Spartan novels:

    

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