With his hopes for a successful conquest of Greece smashed on the waters off the coast of Salamis, Xerxes withdrew with the bulk of his forces back to the empire. Themistocles, meanwhile, was at the height of his popularity back in Athens. But the war was not over yet; one of Xerxes's key generals, Mardonius, had been left in Greece in command of a vast army. The Greek coalition would have to stay together for one final year, until the two sides met on opposite ends of the fields outside the Greek city of Plataea. The final battle to save Greece was coming.

Check out my previous blog on the Battle of Salamis, 480 BC

THE SIEGES OF POTIDAEA AND OLYNTHUS

[ABOVE: A map of Chalkidike, northern Greece, showing the locations of both Olynthus and Potidaea]

Xerxes was escorted back to Asia over the Hellespont by a distinguished Persian named Artabazus. Turning back and marching through Thrace, he eventually reached the peninsula of Pallene in Chalkidiki, whereupon he found the city of Potidaea revolting against Persian rule. Not in any rush to meet up with Mardonius’s forces stationed in Thessaly, Artabazus intended to storm Potidaea and reduced its population to slavery. While besieging Potidaea, he also put Olynthus under siege, suspecting they too might have joined this same rebellion against the king. The city was held by a native tribe called the Bottiaeans, who were kicked out of their native homeland by the Macedonians. Artabazus soon took the city after a siege, took the Bottiaean people outside the city walls, and had them all slaughtered by a lakeside, soon after handing over Olynthus’s governance back to the local Chalcidians.

[ABOVE: A coin from Hellespontine Phrygia, the satrap ruled by Artabazus I, c.500-450 BC]

With the revolt of Olynthus suppressed, Artabazus’s attention turned back to Potidaea. Seemingly out of nowhere, a commander named Timoxenus from Scione, a city further south in the peninsular, agreed to betray the city to him. They sent secret messages to each other about taking the city via wrapping letters up in the feathers of an arrow shot from a bow, however their ploy was discovered when one of them misfired, wounding a Potidaean man, whereupon those who went to the man’s aid read the letter. After three months of sieging the city, a low tide swept across the peninsular, allowing the Persians to approach Potidaea itself. It was while the Persian army was halfway across the peninsular that the tide returned, drowning many Persians. The Greeks took to their boats and killed any remaining men they could. Those that survived alongside Artabazus fled south to Mardonius, and joined his army.

MARDONIUS’S DIPLOMATIC ATTEMPT ON ATHENS

[ABOVE: Gobryas depicted on the tomb of Darius I, Gobryas was the father of Mardonius]

Mardonius’s army, aside from the men Xerxes had let him keep from the main invasion force, consisted of further Macedonian and Thracian-born troops Mardonius recruited himself. Diodorus Siculus claims this army at current was 200,000 strong. Wintered in Thessaly, Mardonius sent a man to various oracles across Greece. The message he intended to have relayed to these oracles is not exactly known, but best assumptions would of course be that he wished to know, given his current position, what his best move would be. Reading the oracles given to him, Mardonius sent for Alexander I of Macedon to Athens, hoping to sway the people of the ruined city over to his side, which would give him much better control of the Aegean while he already had great command of the land with his main army.

The Athenians had returned to their city since they were now expecting a Peloponnesian relief force to emerge from the south, given the victory at Salamis recently had greatly affected Persia’s power in the region, but Sparta delayed. Reaching Athens, Alexander relayed Mardonius’s message, which was on behalf of Xerxes, stating that the king would grant the city amnesty, allow them self-governance, allow them any more land they wished to have, and would supervise and help fund the rebuilding of their city and its structures. As kind as this sounded, it was joined with a threat, warning the Athenians that they could not run from the empire forever, and that bigger armies would always come after any they happened to beat. Alexander himself offered his own plea for the Athenians to surrender and break from the Greek alliance they had formed.

Sparta eventually got word of Alexander’s pleas to Athens. This worried them, since they had previously heard of an oracle of their own warning that all Spartans and Doric Greeks alike would one day be kicked out of Greece altogether by a combined Athenian and Persian army. Out of fear for their homeland, Sparta sent their own delegation to Athens. Their messenger happened to arrive at the same time as Alexander had, and after Alexander spoke, the Spartan messenger warned Athens not to give in to Persian deception. Athens thanked Alexander for his warning, but told them that they would fight for their freedom no matter what. They then told the Spartans that they had too much on their plate to consider allying with the very people that laid waste to their city, and that whatever Athens and Sparta’s differences, they were fellow Greeks. They also told the Spartans to assemble an army, and prepare for an inevitable clash in Boeotia.

MARDONIUS TAKES ATHENS

Receiving the reply, Mardonius set out straight away, marching his army from Thessaly towards Athens, gaining conscripts from loyal settlements he past on the way. Upon reaching Thebes, the Thebans recommended Mardonius stay there and use the city as his base of operations for a complete subjugation of all Greece by bribing any states he could over to his side, and putting down any who resisted by force. This suggestion wasn’t acted upon, however, a Mardonius was too keen on punishing Athens further. After a few day’s march, he reached Athens, but it was empty. The people had left once they heard that Mardonius was in Boeotia, and they were either back on Salamis or with the navy, so Mardonius gained an abandoned city. It had been nine months since Xerxes captured and burnt Athens. From Athens, Mardonius sent envoys to Salamis, relaying the same message he’d told Alexander to relay to Athens, thinking now that all of Attica was again under Persian rule, Athens would more seriously consider surrender.

ATHENS REACHES OUT TO SPARTA

The Athenians on Salamis received his message. Some, including a man named Lycides, argued that they should comply and ask the people what they thought of the vote. Lycides did, and this proposal left the people outraged, so much so that Lycides was surrounded by the people and stoned to death. Even the Athenian women went to Lycides’s home and stoned his wife to death. Clearly, the people of Athens wanted freedom or nothing. The Athenians on Salamis then sent messages to Sparta, complaining that their lack of aid had allowed the Persians to storm through Boeotia and Attica unopposed, and that with their help they could have combined forces and held off Mardonius.

Sparta’s delay was down to a holiday; they were celebrating a religious festival known as the Hyacinthia, and it required them to cater to the gods. The Athenian-led delegation told the Spartan ephors of Xerxes’s grand offer, and that they had refused it. They accused Sparta of being scared of Persia, given their recent lack of contribution to the war and their construction of the wall, which was now near completion. They finished their delegation by demanding Sparta put an army to the field and fight the Persians in Attica. The ephors asked for a day’s grace before replying, but the following day, no reply was given, again. In fact, their delay lasted ten whole days, in which time the wall across the Isthmus was completed. It was here that Sparta finally sent an army, presumably now that they felt that their homeland was safer behind walls for once.

PAUSANIAS

[ABOVE: Bust of Pausanias, c.479 BC, now in the Capitoline Museum, Rome]

Sparta sent five thousand citizen hoplites and another five thousand perioikoi (freed second-class Spartan citizens) hoplites towards Attica, each citizen hoplite accompanied by seven helots - that’s forty-five thousand men in total. The son of King Cleombrotus, Pausanias, took command, as Cleombrotus had recently died suddenly. Now the regent-king, Pausanias was the guardian and cousin of Pleistarchus as he was the son of Leonidas, but he was still just a child. Pausanias’s chosen co-commander was Euryanax, son of Dorieus.

MARDONIUS: FROM ATHENS TO THEBES

Argive messengers, loyal to Persia, soon got word of Pausanias’s army on the march. Running to Mardonius in Athens and warning him, Mardonius felt inclined to leave Attica and head back north, especially since the Argives had previously told him that they could prevent the Spartans from leaving the Peloponnese altogether, and since he hadn’t ravaged Attica’s countryside, hoping the Athenians would capitulate to his demands. Before leaving Athens itself, however, he ordered the entire city torched for a second time, before heading north towards flatter territory more suited for his cavalry, and so headed for their Theban allies. Before leaving the city, however, Mardonius received reports that an advanced guard of one-thousand Spartans had reached the city of Megara ahead of Pausanias’s main army. Wanting to beat this army first, he turned his cavalry detachment back round to face them instead. Megara would be as far West as Persia would ever go.

[ABOVE: The Moschophoros (c.560 BC), discovered as part of the Perserschutt, "Persian Rubble", from the sack of Athens]

Next, hearing of Pausanias’s army reaching the Isthmus of Corinth, Mardonius marched back south to meet him. Along the way, he had the areas he marched through deforested, wishing to build a defensive fortification for his army to fall back on should the coming battle be a failure. His army reached the River Asopus, occupying land stretching all the way to Plataean territory. This is where he built his stockade defence. While encamped in Boeotia, Mardonius’s cavalry contingent regrouped with the main army, while local Greeks loyal to Persia supplied Mardonius with more soldiers, including a thousand Phocians led by their prominent commander Harmocydes. However, word started spreading around Mardonius’s Greek contingents that he was going to have these Phocians killed.

Harmocydes eventually got word of this too, and gave a rousing speech to his men rallying them against the Persians. Mardonius had the Phocians surrounded with his cavalry as the Phocians prepared a defensive formation. It’s likely this sturdy formation that caused Mardonius to withdraw his cavalry, fearing it could get them defeated. It’s likely that this incident was Mardonius testing the bravery of these Phocians, as Mardonius is said to have praised them personally, saying they would be highly rewarded for their services. Convened, the Greeks, meanwhile, agreed to unite and celebrate the Festival of Liberty at Plataea should they win the battle. They also swore an oath to endure the fight no matter what:

I will not hold life dearer than liberty, nor will I desert the leaders, whether they be living or dead, but I will bury all the allies who have perished in the battle; and if I overcome the barbarians in the war, I will not destroy any one of the cities which have participated in the struggle; nor will I rebuild any one of the sanctuaries which have been burnt or demolished, but I will let them be and leave them as a reminder to coming generations of the impiety of the barbarians.

BATTLE OF PLATAEA

BATTLE AT MOUNT CITHAERON

[ABOVE: Mount Cithaeron shown in relation to Plataea, which lies to its north]

Pausanias encamped his army at the Isthmus of Corinth. Gaining favourable omens, they then marched to Eleusis, making further sacrifices. On their way from Eleusis, Pausanias was joined by the Athenian detachment still stationed at Salamis. At Erythrae, Pausanias got word of where Mardonius was encamped, so took up position opposite the Persian army at the feet of Mount Cithaeron, gaining a great high ground advantage.

[ABOVE: The Death of Masistius, depicted in M. A. Barth's "Vorzeit und Gegenwart", 1832]

Mardonius sent his cavalry, led by Masistius, to attack the Greeks head-on. These deadly on-and-off charges inflicted heavy casualties on the Greeks, as Masistius and his men taunted them, calling them women. Megarian Greeks took the brunt of these attacks, so much so that they sent a message to Pausanias, saying that if they did not receive help in the next attack, they would abandon their post. While most Greeks in the army refused to put themselves at the more vulnerable flank of the army, Olympiodorus, Aristides's sent his elite three-hundred strong bodyguard to aid the Megarians, alongside some archers. Masistius resumed his attacks, and his horse was struck down by arrow fire, causing the horse to rear up and throw Masistius off his back. Olympiodorus and his hoplites seized the moment, charged forward, and killed Masistius, and his horse, while he lay on the ground. His armour prevented them from killing him straight away, and so one Athenian struck him in the eye with his spear. The rest of the cavalry didn’t notice this happening straight away, still busy and moving with their attack-retreat tactic, but when they eventually noticed the lack of command they were receiving, they regrouped and charged en-mass uphill. Noticing this, Olympiodorus rallied the rest of his army to aid him, while the Persian horsemen struggled to receive Masistius’s body. Olympiodorus and his men struggled to keep the mass of Persian horses at bay while reinforcements arrived. When they did, the Persians took heavy casualties and failed to recover Masistius’s corpse, pulling back to their camp. Mardonius and his army mourned Masistius’s death, while the Greeks mounted the corpse on a cart and paraded it across their army.

GREEK BATTLE ORDER

With the success at Mount Cithaeron, Pausanias’s army marched to Plataea. While they would no longer have such a good high ground advantage, the lands around Plataea were better supplied with local fresh water. There, on more level ground, they formed up in battle lines, in contingents based on their nationalities. In this troop arrangement, a quarrel rose up between the Athenians and Tegeans, as the Spartans, leading the army, took up the honorary position on the right wing, so only the left wing remained, and both contingents believed they deserved it, but the Athenian argument, relying on telling of their recent military deeds at Marathon, Artemisium and Salamis, won over.

[ABOVE: Early pre-battle movements and troop orders]

So the Greek battle line was as follows, from the right wing to the left: 10,000 Spartans, (5,000 of which were the elite citizen hoplites, and all accompanied by their 35,000 helot slaves) 1,500 Tegeans, 5,000 Corinthians, 300 Potidaeans, 600 Arcadians, 3,000 Sicyonians, 800 Epidaurians, 1,000 from Troezen, 200 Lepreumians, 400 from Mycenae and Tiryns, 1,000 Phleiasians, 3,000 from Hermione, 600 Eritreans and Styrans, 400 from Chalcis, 500 from Abracia, 800 from Leucas and Anactorium, 200 from Pale, 500 from Aegina, 3,000 Megarians, 600 Plataeans (led by Arimnestos), and finally 8,000 Athenians. As for the helots: 35,000 stood with their Spartan masters, and a further 34,500 from across Lacedaemonia stood with the rest of the army, roughly one man per hoplite. In total: 38,700 hoplites, and 69,500 lightly-armed helots - 108,200 men. A further contingent of 1,800 surviving Thespians supposedly brought this total to a more neat 110,000. For once, this doesn’t steer too far from modern estimates, which stand around 80,000 men in total, although most of these men - the helot/slave fighters - apparently did not actually have weapons on them, so likely wouldn’t have taken part in the fight.

ARISTIDES

[ABOVE: "Aristides and the Citizens", depicted in W. H. Weston's "Plutarch's Lives for Boys and Girls: Being Selected Lives Freely Retold", 1900]

Known as "the Just", Aristides was a well-known Athenian statesman and general. After loosing a past feud with Themistocles before the second Persian invasion, Aristides had been ostracised from Athens. During the war though, Themistocles was concerned that Aristides may have been disgruntled enough at that point to join the Persians instead. Fearing this possibility, Themistocles introduced a new law stating that so long as an exile hadn’t been ostracised for life, they could return for the best interests of the state and Greece as a whole, and this is what happened to Aristides.

Timocreon of Rhodes, a lyric poet writing years later, made an attack on Themistocles in one of his works, claiming that he’d arranged for exiles to be restored to their state for a charge, like Aristides, yet took bribes to leave him in the lurch, in spite of the fact that Themistocles and Aristides were at least on decent speaking terms:

You may sing the praises of Pausanias or Xanthippus
or Leotychidas, but I praise Aristides,
The one honest man to come from holy Athens.
Leto loathes Themistocles - that liar, cheat and traitor -
Who allowed himself to be swayed by base money
And refused to bring back home to Ialysus
Timocreon, for all that he was his guest-friend.
No, he took his three talents and sailed off to perdition.
Some he never brought back home who never deserved it,
Others he sent packing into exile, still other he killed;
Stuffed with money, at the Isthmus he played mine host,
Making a fool of himself by serving up cold meat-
They ate, while praying for Themistocles’ death.

PERSIAN BATTLE ORDER

Mardonius had set up a fort surrounded by a ditch next to the Asopus River. Once mourning Masistius had finished, Mardonius moved opposite Pausanias’s army, and deployed as so, from left to right: the Persians stood opposite the Spartans and Tegeans, (these were his strongest men, and it was the Thebans who recommended that his strongest contingent should face the Spartans) the Medes, Bactrians, Indians, Sacae, and finally the Boeotians and Macedonians stood opposite the Athenian-led left wing. Among the ranks were men from across the Greek world, as well as Thracians, Ethiopians, and Egyptians originally from the Persian fleet. In total, the historian Herodotus estimates a total of 300,000 from across the empire, and 50,000 Greeks - 350,000 men, outnumbering Pausanias 3-to-1, but this doesn’t include the cavalry, who were deployed separately. Diodorus Siculus puts Persian numbers at 500,000, and Greek numbers at 100,000. While most likely highly exaggerated, these numbers do attest to the larger army Pausanias and his men now had to face.

TISAMENUS AND THE SACRIFICES

Organised into formations, each side made sacrifices. The Greek diviner, Tisamenus, made the sacrifices for the Greeks. Originally a citizen of Elis, Tisamenus was given Spartan citizenship; after misinterpreting a Delphic oracle about him winning five great contests to mean sporting contests instead of military ones, the Spartans noticed his talents and offered him great wealth to help lead their armies. Tisamenus counter-offered and wished for citizenship. Sparta at first refused this offer, but soon took him in once Persia started advancing further south into Greece, and it was here that he was brought to Plataea to make the sacrifices, where he also demanded his brother, Hagia, be allowed to join too, under the same conditions. This is a small event in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a notable event since it’s the first and only time that Sparta accepted a complete outsider as a citizen.

Anyway, Tisamenus made the sacrifices. From the animal entrails, he told Pausanias that the day would be favourable for him if he kept his army on the defensive. Meanwhile, the Theban Timagenidas made sacrifices for Mardonius, advising him to patrol the passes around Mount Cithaeron, knowing that several Greek reinforcements arriving to Pausanias’s army would come from these passes. This suggestion was made after the two armies had been facing each other for eight whole days. On this eighth night, Mardonius sent his cavalry towards these passes. Overall, this was a good move; they captured 500 yoke-animals and their carters, who were transporting food to Pausanias and his men. Nearly all the people and animals were killed, and whoever was left was sent to Mardonius.

THE PRE-BATTLE

Two further days passed and no movement by either army was made. Impatient, Mardonius marched his army closer to the River Asopus that separated the two forces, but the Greeks didn’t budge. Mardonius’s Theban-led cavalry, however, did make constant hit-and-run attacks, keen to goad the rest of the army into a battle. On the eleventh day, more Greek allies had joined Pausanias’s army by now, causing Mardonius and Artabazus to meet. Artabazus suggested striking camp and withdrawing back to Thebes, where they would be protected by high walls, would have plenty of food, and would be able to make hand-outs to their Greek allies and thus indirectly weaken their Greek enemies without a fight. Going against this advice, and the sacrificial entrails, Mardonius, as overall commander, argued for the aggressive, head-on approach.

[ABOVE: Aristides being informed by Alexander I of Macedon of Mardonius's unfavourable omens]

Late that night, Alexander, king of Macedon, rode to the Greek camp and asked to speak with the Athenian commanders. Convened, he told them that he would not be here, even while he was working for the Persians, if he didn’t have the best interests of Greece at heart. He told them that no favourable omens had been given to Mardonius, and that he now intended to hastily attack the next day, before riding back to the Persian camp in the night. This was immediately relayed to Pausanias, who told the Athenians to be the ones to take on the Persian contingent instead of them, since they were more familiar with their tactics having fought and won against them twice now, while the Spartans had great experience in fighting Boeotians and Thessalians, who would be on the opposite wing of the Persian army, to the delight of the Athenians. Mardonius, however, noticed this manoeuvre, and switched his wings around too. Pausanias noticed, and so left his Spartans on their original honorary right wing, and kept the Athenians at their original left wing. Mardonius noticed this and sent heralds to Pausanias and his Spartans, calling them cowards for wishing to fight “mere slaves” instead of proper fighters, even challenging the apparently-brave Spartans to take on the entire Asian army by themselves. To Mardonius’s delight, no reply to this offer was given. Mardonius thus charged his cavalry froward across the river to attack. Casualties were inflicted by javelins and arrows. In this charge, the horsemen also blocked off the local spring, which was supplying the Greek army with fresh water.

RELOCATING THE ARMY

Convening, the Greeks agreed to move their army to a river-surrounded inland island near Plataea in the cover of night, for the water would give them supplies and a better defended area from cavalry attacks, while half the army was dispatched to meet the rest of the trapped reinforcements by Mount Cithaeron and gather more supplies. The following morning saw the Greeks under more Persian cavalry harassment until the afternoon. Come that night, the Greek army moved. However the army had no intent on reaching the island; their eagerness to escape the Persian cavalry attacks made them move closer to Plataea, eventually reaching the sanctuary of Hera that stands in front of the town. Seeing the other half supposedly doing as they were commanded, Pausanias ordered his Spartans on the right wing to follow them. However, the Spartan Amompharetus, in charge of the company from Pitana, stated that he would not ever wish to be seen pulling back from the enemy forces. Furious, Pausanias kept his Spartans where they were, while he attempted to sway Amompharetus to obey him, as the Spartan and Tegean wing had been left alone. Aristides’s Athenian contingent had not abandoned their position, but sent a messenger to Pausanias to ask what was happening. What the messenger found was quarrelling Greeks: Amompharetus remained certain that they should not pull back from the Persian line across the river Asopus. Pausanias thus told the Athenian messenger to tell Aristides of the ongoing quarrelling, and for the Athenian contingent to simply follow the Spartans.

Come the morning, Pausanias, seeing he would not be able to sway Amompharetus, chose to pull back his Spartan and Tegean contingent to the hills of Cithaeron, where they would be protected by hills to the right of them, the Asopus to the left of them, and rough terrain in front of them. This would - they hoped - nullify the wide line of the Persian formation. The Athenians mirrored the Spartan movement and set off back down towards the plain. Amompharetus didn’t believe Pausanias would simply abandon him and his men, but when he saw they were eventually a good distance apart, Amompharetus pulled his centre back towards Plataea. The Spartans remained just behind the river Moloeis, a tributary of the Asopus that now separated Pausanias’s right wing from Amompharetus’s centre division. Just as Amompharetus regrouped with the Spartans, Persian cavalry had crossed the Asopus and attacked his line from all angles. Seeing this, Mardonius, unimpressed with the Spartans seemingly withdrawing from a fight, ordered his entire army into a thicker battle line, allowed them to scream their war cries and then ordered them to cross the river and fight. However the terrain blocked off the Persians’ view of the Athenians on the left wing, so it was only Pausanias and Amompharetus that the Persians actually went for. Remaining Persians charged after Mardonius had like an unruly mob. Under attack now, Pausanias sent messages to Athens to ask for their aid, or at least their archers. Before reinforcements could be sent, however, the Athenian line was set upon by the pro-Persian Greeks, and battle ensued.

THE FINAL BATTLE

PAUSANIAS PUSHES FORWARD

[ABOVE: Pausanias offering sacrifices to the Gods before the battle]

Left without support, Pausanias’s wing performed sacrifices and prepared to join in the battle. The omens were unfavourable, however, and Mardonius’s forces, attacking Amompharetus’s contingent, had ordered for his archers to fire down on Pausanias, protected by Persian infantry with a shield wall. While Pausanias invoked prayers of good fortune to the temple of Hera, the Tegeans accompanying the Spartans suddenly set off towards the Persians. Just as Pausanias finished his prayers, he finally received good omens, and so the Spartans joined the Tegeans in the pursuit of the Persians, who, seeing this manoeuvre, lay down their bows and prepared to meet the Greeks head-on. Amid the charge was Aristodamus, one of the very few surviving Spartans from the Battle of Thermopylae last year. Returning home after the defeat of Leonidas, he was named a coward and a disgrace. Motivated now only by shame, he had broken rank early in the fight, and was perhaps the first Spartan among Pausanias’s detachment to personally engage the Persians. While he fought heroically and with great skill, he was eventually killed. Fierce fighting ensued, but eventually the Persian shield wall was broken and Pausanias advanced. Seeing their weapons could not penetrate the Greek armour, and as they wore none themselves, Persian soldiers attempted to grab the Greek spears, breaking several in the process. Armed with less effective weapons, little armour, less discipline and on lower grounds, the Persians were near useless against the Spartan-Tegean line.

[ABOVE: Main phase of the battle, with the messy Greek retreat and the Persians advancing over the Asopus]

MARDONIUS FALLS, ARTABAZUS RETREATS

Mardonius himself joined the fray with his bodyguards, with Persian soldiers around him making it more difficult to kill him. He too, however, fell in the melee, followed by his personal guard. The mere sight of these elite soldiers and their general falling caused the rest of the Persian line to falter and be utterly crushed. Pausanias fulfilled the oracle's words: Leonidas had been avenged. Surviving Persians on this wing broke and ran for the Persian encampment opposite the Asopus. Artabazus, who was never keen on staying in Greece after the battle of Salamis anyway, ordered his contingent of men - some forty-thousand strong, and told them to follow him no matter what. At first marching towards Mardonius’s contingent with the intent to aid them, he soon saw the remaining Persians withdrawing in a blind panic and turned himself and his men back, retreating all the way towards the Hellespont to cross back into Asia, such was the scale of the Greek victory at hand.

[ABOVE: The Battle of Plataea, depicted by Edmund Ollier, 1882]

THE ATHENIANS VS THE GREEKS

Meanwhile, the pro-Persian Greeks attacking the Athenian left wing were deliberately fighting below their best ability, keen to aid their fellow Greeks. This fight, however, still lasted a long time, as the Thebans within this line were still very much pro-Persian til the end, choosing to fight viscously against the Athenians. As a result, however, the Athenians won this fight, and Thebes’s three-hundred best fighters were slain by Athens, while the other “pro-Persian” Greeks retreated back to Thebes.

[ABOVE: A Macedonian soldier fighting for the Persians, depicted wearing the "kausia" Greek flat hat, shown on Xerxes's tomb at Naqsh-e Rustam, c.480 BC]

AMOMPHARETUS JOINS THE PURSUIT

Word eventually reached Amompharetus’s contingent that had pulled back to Plataea that Pausanias had indeed been victorious. He set off after them in a mass disarray, however in their haste they were caught off-guard by a contingent of Theban cavalry, who had broken away from the main Persian force. Six-hundred Greeks were killed in the fight, and the pro-Persian Greeks pursued the survivors towards Mount Cithaeron. Among the fallen here was Amompharetus.

BREACHING THE PERSIAN CAMP

The main portion of the Persian army remained within their fortified encampment. Spartans, however, were never professional siege experts, and so while fighting outside the walls was tough, the Persians remained safe inside their encampment. When the Athenians arrived, however, the Persians were in trouble, since they were much better accustomed to siege warfare than the Spartans. Aristides’s Athenians made a breach in the gate and scaled the walls, allowing the rest of the Greek forces to pour in. Tegeans were the first to enter, and they quickly made for the camp’s loot, including Mardonius’s personal bronze horse manger, later dedicating it to Athena. Remaining Persian soldiers, caught off-guard, panicked and completely surrounded by superior infantry, were utterly butchered.

VICTORY

This was it - Pausanias had led the Greeks to finally fight off the last of the Persian armies in Greece, in a victory the historian Herodotus described as simply, “the most glorious”. At Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea, the biggest reason Persia lost, or won at great cost, was because they were sucked into rougher terrain that didn’t suit them. Casualties for the fight, whether modern or ancient sources are to be believed, showcase the scale of the Greek victory; the primary source of the Persian Wars, Herodotus, puts Greek losses at 91 Spartans, 16 Tegeans and 52 Athenians - 159 in total, while he puts Persian losses so high that out of his 300,000 estimate to the size of the original army, only 3,000 Persians (excluding Artabazus's retreating contingent) survived, but they were all captured. Diodorus puts Greek casualties at 10,000, and Persian casualties at 100,000. Modern estimates tell us that between 50,000 and 90,000 Persians out of a starting 70,000 to 120,000 Persians fell, and around 1,000 Greeks fell. Either way, the Greeks won a stunning victory.

AFTERMATH

THE DEAD

Latecomers to the fight soon emerged, including the Greek Mantineans. Furious on having missed out on the glory, they wanted punishment, but didn’t receive it, and Pausanias didn’t even let them pursue the remaining Persians that were fleeing back to Asia. Meanwhile, a man from Aegina suggested to Pausanias that they should further avenge the death of Leonidas by doing to Mardonius’s corpse what had been done to Leonidas’s: decapitation. However, Pausanias considered this suggestion appalling, if suggested in good will for his uncle. Pausanias instead ordered for the helots to collect everything of value from the battlefield and the Persian camp, whereupon they found gold, jewellery, carts, bowls and all sorts of rich clothing and wearables from the Persian dead. Much of the gold was dedicated to Delphi, Olympia and Corinth, while Pausanias himself received a lion’s share in the loot. Among the loot lost that day was Mardonius’s body, its whereabouts unknown. A portion of the spoils dedicated to Delphi included a gold tripod made from the loot. Inscribed on it was the following passage:

This is the gift the saviours of far-flung Hellas upraised here,
Having delivered their states from loathsome slavery’s bonds.

[ABOVE: A reconstruction of the trophy column]

This monument remained at Delphi for eight-hundred years, until Constantine the Great had it moved to Byzantium (then the new Roman capital city named Constantinople, today’s Istanbul) where it remains to this day in the ancient hippodrome. Separate graves were dug for each Greek nation that participated in the battle. The Spartans dug three graves for the priests, (including Amompharetus) helots and the citizen hoplites, while everyone else dug a single large grave for their dead, whether citizen, priest or otherwise.

THE PUNISHMENT OF THEBES

Pausanias and his army set off from Plataea. Now, the question of how to punish Thebes remained. They decided that should Thebes not hand over the key individuals who had supported the Persians, the city itself should be wiped out. Ten days after leaving Plataea, they put Thebes under siege as the people of the city refused to comply. Its city walls were heavily damaged and its surrounding countryside was looted and ruined. Twenty days into the siege, a prominent Theban, Timagenidas, rallied his people, telling them that if the Greeks merely wanted money that they should give it to them. If, however, they wished to get ahold of every Theban ringleader instead, they should hand themselves over to them for trial. The Theban people agreed to this, and handed over the men. One of these Theban men was Attaginus, who escaped, but not before Pausanias had his sons arrested, but soon released them realising they were simply too young. The other Theban men expected to be handed over, fearing being put on trial, agreed to try and bribe their way out of trouble. Fearing this possibility, Pausanias had the men captured, sent to Corinth and executed.

ARTABAZUS FLEES TO PERSIA

Having covered a good distance now after not participating in the fight at Plataea, Artabazus soon reached Thessaly. The Thessalians there invited him to a banquet, asking him to tell of everything that happened. Knowing that telling them the truth might get him killed, he told them he was on his way to Thrace on “an urgent mission”, and that Mardonius was following closely behind, and should expect the Thessalians to leave a banquet for him too. Soon fleeing for Byzantium, many of his men were killed by Thracians on the way or had starved in the hurried march. What remained of him and his men, however, soon crossed back into Asia.

[ABOVE: Artabazus's satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia, where he returned to straight after crossing the Hellespont]

The Persian offensive in Greece was officially over. Now, it would be the Greek's turn to go on the offensive against Persia.

NEXT BLOG: THE BATTLE OF MYCALE, 479 BC: The Greek Counterattack

SOURCES

• Herodotus, "Histories"
• Diodorus Siculus's "Library of History"
• Plutarch's "Greek Lives"
• Oswyn Murray's "Early Greece"
• Nic Fields's "Thermopylae 480 BC, Last Stand of the 300"

YOUTUBE LINK

(I do NOT own this video)

"The Battle of Plataea 479 BC (3D Animated Documentary) Greco-Persian wars" by "Hoc Est Bellum"

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