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“Men of Hellas, I have brought you here because I desired to show you the foolishness of the leader of the Medes who, with such provisions for life as you see, came here to take away from us our possessions which are so pitiful.”
HERODOTUS, HISTORIES, 9.82; A. D. GODLEY TRANSLATION
Summary
Mardonius, along with the 300,000 man army Xerxes left him, returned to Greece and reoccupied Athens. This was ten months after it had been destroyed and the Athenians had not returned to rebuild. Instead, they remained in Salamis, even after their crushing naval victory against the Persians, because the Spartans were dragging their feet concerning the war. It wasn’t until the Spartans were reminded that, if they didn’t send help the Athenians would abandon Greece which would leave the Peloponnese wide open for attack, that the Spartans mobilized and sent 5000 troops.
Mardonius, on hearing the Spartans mobilized, burned down what little was left of Athens, marched to Thebes (in Boeotia), and set up a stronghold for his army nearby. Meanwhile, the Spartans, Athenians, and other Greek allies met together and they camped opposite of the Persians across the Asopus river. Mardonius began having his cavalry harass the Greeks. The cavalry did a lot of harm until the Greeks retaliated and killed the cavalry commander. The Greeks then moved their camp to Plataea, another spot along the Asopus river, because it was better situated. The Persians moved and camped across from them.
Mardonius then received an omen that if he stayed at his position the fighting would go well for him, but if he crossed the Asopus river and attacked the Greeks, it would go badly for him. However, as days passed by, the Greek army continued to get bigger and bigger and didn’t make any moves to attack which began to irritate Mardonius. On one night, the Macedonian king (an ally of the Persians), met secretly with the Athenian generals and informed them that Mardonius was going to attack despite the bad omens. They told Pausanias, the general of the whole Greek army, and he decided to switch up the battle formations so that the Athenians would face the Persians, since they had more experience fighting them, while the Lacedaemonians would face the Greeks who allied with the Persians.
Mardonius misinterpreted the Greeks shuffling their army as the Spartans being afraid of facing the Persians and called them cowards. He shuffled his army every time the Greeks did in order to ensure the Persians would fight the Spartans. When the Spartans didn’t respond to his taunts, he sent the cavalry on them again and spoiled the fresh water spring the Spartans were using.
The Spartans deliberated about what to do and decided they would move to another location along the Asopus called the “Island.” However, in the middle of the night, many Greeks allies decided instead to flee to the nearby temple of Hera. When Pausanius and the Spartans saw them leaving, they followed, not knowing they weren’t going to the Island. When the Spartans paused their march near a shrine to Demeter, the Persians crossed the Asopus and attacked them. Meanwhile, the Athenians had no clue what was going on until a messenger told them of the Persian attack. When the Athenians went to help, they were attacked by the Greeks who sided with the Persians.
The Spartans decimated the Persians and managed to kill Mardonius after they broke through his 1000 man personal guard. The survivors fled the battlefield and returned to their stronghold near Thebes. At the same time, one of the Persian commanders, Artabazus, took his regiment of 40,000 men and returned to Asia, believing Mardonius was a fool to attack the Greeks.
The Athenians prevailed against the Persian-allied Greeks and they too fled back to the stronghold near Thebes. The Spartan and Athenian led armies met up and breached the stronghold and killed many of the remnant. When the Battle of Plataea was over, only about 3000 of the 260,000 men of Mardonius’ army was left (260,000 because Artabazus had 40,000 with him). By contrast, the Greeks only lost about 160 men.
At the same time the Battle of Plataea was playing out, a portion of the Greek army that had been camped out at the island of Delos were visited by a messenger from the island of Samos. The messenger asked for their help in liberating Ionia from the Persians. The Greeks agreed and sailed out to meet the Persians in battle. However, the Persians refused to fight the Greeks at sea and holed themselves up in an outpost on Mykale, a mountain in Asia Minor near Samos. The Greeks landed near Mykale and met the Persians in battle. The Greeks lost a lot of men, but eventually prevailed when the Milesians and Samians betrayed the Persians and did what they could to help out. The outpost was breached, the commanders were killed or escaped, and the Greeks plundered it and burned down the Persian ships before sailing to Samos. The Battle of Mykale was another victory for the Persians.
Herodotus ends his account of the Persian War with the Battle of Sestus. Those Greeks who fought at Plataea made their way to the Hellespont to try and catch the Persians, but found that their bridges were destroyed. The Spartans returned to Greece, but the Athenians decided to besiege Sestus since it was a city the Persians had taken over. The Persian viceroy of the area had also stolen treasure sacred to the Greeks and the Athenians wanted it back. At first, the siege went nowhere. However, when Sestus ran out of provisions and were reduced to boiling leather for food, the viceroy and other Persians who were there fled in the middle of the night. However, they were caught and the viceroy and his son were executed. Sestus was liberated and the treasure was returned. The Athenians then returned to Greece.
The Frustration of Powerlessness
Early on in Book 9, Herodotus tells a story about a banquet the Thebans held for the Persians. Fifty noble Persians were seated together with fifty noble Thebans. One of the Persians happened to speak Greek and he told his Theban companion that he knew most of the Persians at the banquet were not going to survive the war and began to weep.
His Theban companion was shocked to hear this and told him he should inform Mardonius and the other Persians about this. The Persian responded:
“That which a god wills to send no man can turn aside, for even truth sometimes finds no one to believe it. What I have said is known to many of us Persians, but we follow, in the bonds of necessity. It is the most hateful thing for a person to have much knowledge and no power.”
Herodotus, Histories, Book 9.16; A. D. Godley translation
The inability to do what is necessary to make things better, to improve a situation, to right a wrong, to tear down evil, is a very frustrating thing.
I watch anime (Japanese animation) from time to time. In the more action-oriented anime that’s geared toward boys and young men (Shounen anime for those in the know), there are plenty of scenes where a character who has a strong sense of justice, or had a terrible wrong done to them, confront the villain(s). They get beaten to a pulp, or even almost die, before the hero shows up and destroys the villain(s). The hero almost always tries to console the character he saves, telling them their sense of justice won out in the end. How the anime handles the response of the character who was saved depends on the age group the creators are targeting.
Even though it seems like the anime creators are trying to avoid saying this explicitly, the reality is that the hero, and those who think like him, can only see his sense of right and wrong prevail because of the power he wields. He’s usually a chosen one, or has innate talent, or underwent certain circumstances (an usually difficult life, an experiment, etc.) to become strong. The character he saves, who believes like him, will never become as powerful and therefore will never see their revenge or sense of justice play out unless the hero does it for them.
If the anime is being realistic, they will put the character’s frustration on full display. The anime may then show the character work hard and achieve some minor victory, but they’ll never get anywhere close to the level the hero is at. At the end of the day, the hero will still need to step in because there are fights the character will never win.
It’s not that much different in the real world. There are plenty of us who see what’s going on around us—the brokenness and depravity and oppression. We have good ideas about how to resolve many of these issues. The problem is we don’t have enough power to do anything about it.
The best we can do is work hard and achieve minor victories in our neighborhoods and perhaps our towns. The rest will have to be left to those who have the power to actually do something.
This is why Elite Theory, which is talked about a lot in right wing circles, makes so much sense and is gaining traction. There are things only those with a lot of wealth and influence can achieve. Rather than lumping all such men into one negative category and dismissing them, we should instead find those who are aligned closer to our worldview and support them.
We don’t need to idolize them. They don’t need to be worshipped like heroes.
We just need to use them to get the society we want.
The Ancient Greek Andy Dufresne
Hegesistratus was a Greek diviner who allied himself with the Persians due to his hatred toward the Spartans. He was the one who told Mardonius that if he crossed the Asopus river and attacked the Greeks, it would go poorly for him.
What’s even more interesting about Hegesistratus though is his story of how he ended up in his position. I provide the full story below:
This man had been put in prison and condemned to die by the Spartans for the great harm which he had done them. Being in such bad shape inasmuch as he was in peril of his life and was likely to be very grievously maltreated before his death, he did something which was almost beyond belief; made fast in iron-bound stocks, he got an iron weapon which was brought in some way into his prison, and straightway conceived a plan of such courage as we have never known; reckoning how best the rest of it might get free, he cut off his own foot at the instep. This done, he tunneled through the wall out of the way of the guards who kept watch over him, and so escaped to Tegea. All night he journeyed, and all day he hid and lay hidden in the woods, till on the third night he came to Tegea, while all the people of Lacedaemon sought him. The latter were greatly amazed when they saw the half of his foot which had been cut off and lying there but not were unable to find the man himself. This, then, is the way in which he escaped the Lacedaemonians and took refuge in Tegea, which at that time was unfriendly to Lacedaemon. After he was healed and had made himself a foot of wood, he declared himself an open enemy of the Lacedaemonians. Yet the enmity which he bore them brought him no good at the last, for they caught him at his divinations in Zacynthus and killed him.
Herodotus, Histories, Book 9.37; A. D. Godley translation
We Are Living Through Cyrus’ Warning
“Soft lands breed soft men; wondrous fruits of the earth and valiant warriors grow not from the same soil.”
Cyrus the Great; Herodotus, Histories, Book 9.122; A. D. Godley translation
I’m not sure there’s much else to say about this. We’ve got the soft lands and the wondrous fruits of the earth—and as a result we have the soft men rather than valiant warriors. I’m not really an exception. If the “zombie apocalypse” came tomorrow, I would probably be dead in less than a week.
We’ve got a culture that simultaneously laments there are soft men and incentivizes men to be soft. How does this get turned around? What can I do personally to help turn this around? That’s the question I’ve been asking myself.
Develop better habits?
Spend less time on the internet?
Learn new skills—especially ones that don’t require machines or computers?
Read more books?
Start socializing with my neighbors?
Get more involved with my church?
Find a woman to marry—even at my age?
In the meantime, I’ll continue to write these blog posts. Maybe the ancients had something important to say that will help?
Thank You!
Thank you for joining me on my journey through The Histories by Herodotus. I took waaay too long getting through it and I appreciate you putting up with me.
Next week, I will be starting a new author: Euripides. He is the last of the “Big Three” ancient Greek tragedy playwrights along with Aeschylus and Sophocles. 19 of his plays has survived mostly or fully intact, so I’ll be writing on Euripides for a while. I’m just going to follow the order Richmond Lattimore presented Euripides’ plays in his Complete Greek Tragedies series and start with Alcestis.
Euripides has some really good plays and I’m looking forward to reading them again.
That's all for the Histories, Book 9.
May your days be filled with grace.
-Andronikos Anodos
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Thumbnail: The Battle of Plataea. Illustration from The Story of the Greatest Nations, From the Dawn of History to the Twentieth Century by John Steeple Davis, 1900. Public domain.