The complete change from their former strategy on land which the Greeks had shown by their advance into Bœotia had its counterpart in the contemporaneous exploits of the fleet Herodotus has already described, not without rhetorical exaggeration, that dread of the unknown which kept the Greeks in the Western Ægean, and prevented them from carrying the war to the Asian coast. But at some period, presumably in the late summer of this year 479, all this fear was suddenly dispelled, and in consequence of certain information given by some Samian refugees, and of an appeal made by them, it was determined to carry the war into the enemy’s waters. It is probable that this was by no means the sole definite information which reached the ears of the European Greeks with respect to the state of affairs on the Ionian coast. Throughout the whole summer, in fact ever since Salamis, more or less authenticated reports must have come to them of the possibilities of the situation in those parts, which finally confirmed them in the opinion that the time had come for offensive action. But the message from Samos was very definite, and brought the news for which the Greeks had long been waiting, that the Ionians, if supported by the presence of a fleet upon this Asiatic coast, would revolt. The appeal, moreover, was couched in a form which stirred the very depths of that peculiar national spirit which abhorred the idea of the Hellene being any man’s subject. Hegesistratos the Samian called upon them, “by the gods they all worshipped, to save Greeks from slavery and drive away the barbarian.” A PHASE OF THE HELLENIC SPIRIT. This Hellenic spirit was, and is, a very noble thing, noblest perhaps in a peculiar limitation to which it would be hard to find a parallel in history. It ever prompted those inspired with it to trade-venture all the civilized world over,—to colonization which necessitated indeed an encroachment on the territory of others, but which never in any single instance aimed at the acquisition of dominion over the lands or persons of others beyond what was absolutely requisite for the new plantation. More than this it did not demand. It knew not land-hunger. All that it postulated was that the Greek should be free to settle where he liked, in the form he liked, and with that political freedom which meant so much to him. And so it is even now. A race, largely alien in blood, has imbibed the very spirit of the land, and amid the struggles of the last century has demanded with persistence the rights of freedom for all who bear the name of Greek, but has never in any single instance sought to extend its dominions over peoples who cannot claim the Hellenic name. It was perhaps the very exclusiveness of the spirit which gave it that pent-up strength which enabled it, under the ægis of the bastard Hellenism of Macedonia, to establish in a few short years an influence destined to last for centuries over a wide area of civilization peculiarly alien to its own.

It is a very noticeable fact in the history of the fifth century that, neither at this particular time nor later, is there any national idea of action in Asia aiming at the expulsion of the Persian from regions wherein the Greek had not settled. Even throughout the history of Greek action in the whole region of the Mediterranean in the fifth century only two apparent violations of the spirit are to be met with,—the Athenian expedition to Egypt, and the aspirations with regard to Carthage which Aristophanes attributes to the Athenian populace at the time of the Peloponnesian War. And even these exceptions are rather apparent than real, aiming, as they evidently did, not at the acquisition of dominion over others, but at an assault on the jealous “protectionist” policy of the Phœnician trader.

The summons from Samos was therefore one which was calculated to stir the inmost nature of those to whom it was addressed; and sentiment, combined with opportunity, induced the European Greeks to venture that from which they had shrunk but a few months before.

Apart from this, it is quite plain that those who directed the great operations had determined late in the summer of 479 to adopt the offensive by sea as well as land, should a favourable opportunity for so doing present itself; and it is a fact of extreme significance for the study of military history in the historians of the fifth century that no mention of such a design is found in Herodotus. It is quite evident that he was seldom, if ever, able to acquire information as to the plans upon which the operations of the war were carried on.

One of the assertions of the Samian Hegesistratos is striking from its lack of correspondence with the general evidence on the subject of the comparative merits of the Greek and Persian ships of this time. H. ix. 90, ad fin. He says that the Persians “are bad sailors, and not capable of meeting the Greeks in battle.” In point of sailing qualities the reference can only be to the non-Phœnician portion of the Persian fleet. The Phœnician vessels of this time were handier and, probably, better handled than the Greek; and some of the improvements made a few years later by Kimon in Greek naval architecture were undoubtedly suggested to his experience by certain points of superiority in the vessels produced by the skilled shipwrights of Tyre and Sidon.

Hegesistratos was, of course, the advocate of intervention. H. ix. 91. Leutychides, the Spartan commander of the Greek fleet, is represented as having been persuaded by his advocacy, and to have accepted his offer to accompany the fleet with the other members of the deputation, in the guise of hostages for the truth of their assertion. But much must have taken place before this time to render such a decision on the part of a Spartan commander possible.

The fleet made straight from Delos to Samos, along the line of islands. MYKALE. They arrived first at a place in Samos called Kalamoi, whose position is not now known, but which, judging from the story of what took place immediately afterwards, was probably on the east coast of the island. H. viii. 130. The Persian fleet had been stationed at the town of Samos ever since the beginning of the year, but now, on the approach of the Greeks, it passed across the channel to the mainland. For some inscrutable reason,—possibly because they could not keep it in the Ægean against its will,—the Phœnician contingent had been allowed to sail away. H. viii. 130. The number of ships in the fleet originally stationed here had been three hundred, but though still formidable in quantity, it must have been inferior in quality. The Phœnicians had gone; and the Ionians would have been dangerous allies were a Greek fleet on the east side of the Ægean. The Persians therefore wished to decline an engagement, and retired to Mykale, where a large land army, under the command of Tigranes, placed there by Xerxes’ orders, was watching the Ionian towns. They intended to place the fleet under the protection of this force, drawing up the ships on shore, and running a stockade around them. This plan was carried out. Strabo, 636. Landing at the mouth of a brook named Guison, Pliny, v. 113, etc. which was on the south side of Mykale, the Persians took up their station at a place whose name Skolopœis suggests that it was derived from the stockade constructed on this occasion. Herodotus further adds that there was a temple of Eleusinian Demeter in the immediate neighbourhood.

The stockade constructed was apparently of a formidable character, made of wood and stone. H. ix. 97. Herodotus says of it that it was prepared alike in view of a siege and of a victory, referring doubtless to some feature in its design which cannot now be conjectured.

The retirement of the Persian fleet to this strong position, and its practical conversion into a land force, placed the Greeks at Samos in a situation of considerable difficulty. They were, as might be expected, prepared to contest the supremacy of the enemy by sea rather than by land; and Leutychides may well have hesitated to employ the force he had with him for an attack in which the fleet, as fleet, could play little if any part. It was debated whether, under the circumstances, they should sail to the Hellespont or return to Greece. It was finally decided to take the bold course and to assail the enemy at Mykale, though everything about the fleet was made ready in case, after all, the Persians should risk a sea-fight.

On their reaching Mykale the enemy showed no sign whatever of a disposition to put out and meet them. Seeing this, Leutychides in his own ship sailed close in shore, and sought by means of a herald to enter into communication with the Ionians in the enemy’s army, and to persuade them to desert the Persians during the coming engagement, a policy in which, as Herodotus remarks, he imitated that of Themistocles at Artemisium. No immediate effect resulting from this appeal, H. ix. 99. Leutychides disembarked his troops without any opposition on the part of the enemy, presumably, therefore, at some distance from their camp. But whether owing to Leutychides’ action, or to the distrust of the Ionians which the circumstances of the time must inevitably have aroused among the Persians, measures were taken to render them as innocuous as the situation permitted. The Samian contingent was forthwith disarmed. The people of that island had rendered themselves peculiarly open to suspicion by ransoming and forwarding home five hundred Athenian prisoners which the Persians had picked up in Attica at the time of Xerxes’ invasion. The Milesians also were despatched from the camp on the pretext of acting as guards of the passes over the peaks of Mykale, but really, so Herodotus says, in order to obviate the danger of keeping them within the actual fortifications.

The Greeks now advanced to the attack. In reference to this advance Herodotus mentions a curious tale. He says that a report ran through the army at this moment to the effect that the Greeks were victorious over Mardonius in Bœotia. Naturally enough, he ascribes this strange rumour to supernatural influence, since, according to his narrative, the two battles occurred on the same day. A STRANGE REPORT. It is not perhaps impious to suggest that if, as he positively asserts, the battle at Mykale was fought on the same day as the final engagement at Platæa, the report which reached the Greek army in Asia related to the success attained in the first position at Platæa some weeks before this time, but was referred by later tradition to the final defeat of Mardonius’ army. However the report arose, it greatly cheered the Greeks. Herodotus, in speaking of their exultation, mentions incidentally two noticeable facts with regard to their feelings at this time. He says that their fear had been not for themselves, but for the success of the Greeks against Mardonius. If it be remembered that the fleet when at Delos must have heard of Mardonius’ retirement from Attica, and had also, it would seem, heard of the march of the home army into Bœotia, their fear strongly supports the conjecture that they knew that the object of that army was not to merely guard the passes of Kithæron, but to take the offensive against the Persian. It is hardly conceivable that, after Mardonius’ retirement, they should have felt apprehensions of this nature about the army, had its object been merely the defence of the Kithæron range, since the enemy had plainly shown by his retreat from Athens that his main desire was to be north of that range, and that he would have but little motive for throwing his men against mere defenders of passes which he had shown that he did not want to use. Furthermore, the possible intentions of Mardonius in making Thebes his headquarters may have alarmed the Greeks by indicating the nature of a policy, not indeed so terrible as that wherewith the expedition was originally undertaken, but constituting, all the same, a most serious danger to all the states of Southern Greece.

Relieved of this fear, they went into battle with a good heart, feeling, says Herodotus, “that the Hellespont and the Islands would be the prize of victory.” Not a word of the Ionian towns on the mainland. The Persian position was indeed too strong in respect to these.

The march was evidently parallel with the shore, along it and the level ground in its neighbourhood, and also along the hillside, cut up, as the hillsides of that land always are, by numerous water-courses. The result was that the Athenians and those with them, advancing along the unimpeded level, came into contact with the enemy before the Lacedæmonians, who were advancing along the slope of the mountain. If Herodotus’ description is strictly worded, H. ix. 102. the Lacedæmonians were engaged in some kind of a turning movement.

The Athenians were therefore probably guilty of a tactical error in beginning the attack before the movement was complete.

The Persians adopted the same form of defence as in the last fight at Platæa, using their shields as a breastwork; and for some time the battle was fought without advantage to either side, until the Athenians and those with them, eager to win the victory before the Lacedæmonians came up, broke through this barrier and fell in a mass upon the Persians, who, after an obstinate resistance, retreated within their fortifications. The Athenians, Corinthians, Sikyonians, and Trœzenians, however, followed close on their heels, and seem to have reached the breastwork with the fugitives, so that it was captured without difficulty. Except the native Persian contingent, the enemy now took to flight the former, however, resisted in scattered groups with all the bravery of a great reputation,—the Old Guard of this Asiatic Waterloo. In this combat two out of the four Persian generals fell. The Lacedæmonians came up while it was in progress, and their arrival put the coping stone on the enemy’s discomfiture. But the assailants, and especially the Sikyonians, paid dearly for their victory, so Herodotus says; and Greek historians are not in the habit of exaggerating Greek losses in battles with barbarians. Meanwhile the disarmed Samians did what they could to help the Greeks, and, following their lead, the other Ionians attacked the Persians in the camp. The Milesians, who had been sent to the peaks of Mykale, now played the part which, under the circumstances, they might be expected to play. So far from acting as guides to safety, they led the routed fugitives into the very hands of the Greeks, and themselves took part with zeal in the slaughter which ensued. At last Miletus had the opportunity of avenging its destruction at the end of the Ionian revolt, and it is certain that the bitterness of the last fourteen years found ample expression and ample satisfaction on this day of revenge.

“Thus,” says Herodotus, “Ionia revolted a second time from the Persians.”

He makes no comment upon the fact. It would have been difficult for him to do so. He had regarded the first revolt as a conspicuous blunder, probably because he looked upon it as premature. Even now he sings no pæan of emancipation. Maybe the Halikarnassian believed that, in spite of the brilliant success of the year, the permanent freedom of the Ionian towns could never be secured so long as Persia retained its hold on West Asia. He wrote with well-nigh a century of experience behind him; he died a century before there arose a power upon the Ægean whose unity of strength made it fit to cope with the dead weight of the Persian power in Asia.

The Athenians were credited by popular tradition with having played the greatest part in the battle; but it may be suspected that had Leutychides’ version of the fighting survived, it might have contained some criticism of the error of a premature attack, to which the escape of a large part of the Persian army was probably due.

After destroying the enemy’s camp and fleet the Greeks withdrew to Samos with such booty as they had captured.

The action of the Ionians at Mykale had raised the whole question of the future of the Asiatic Greeks. There was a large section in the fleet who saw,—what the sequel proved to be correct,—that the European Greeks were not in a position to maintain the freedom of continental Ionia against the Persians for an indefinite space of time. That would have meant the maintenance of a large garrison within the various towns, such as the highly composite Greek alliance could not regard as within the realm of practical politics. It was consequently proposed to tranship the Ionians en masse to the European shore, and to leave Ionia to the Persian. The strategic position of the Ionian cities was indeed fatally weak.

But, after all, it would hardly be the strategical question that presented itself to the Greeks gathered at Samos. What they did know was that these Ionian cities had failed to resist conquest by Lydia and Persia, and had failed in one tremendous effort to throw off the Persian yoke; and that one of the conspicuous causes of failure had been the difficulty of sustained united action. Of the commercial advantages and their causes, they were probably as well aware as the best instructed modern student with the best maps at his disposal.

It was, no doubt, this balance of advantage and disadvantage which led to the division of opinion in the council as to the best course to be pursued. H. ix. 106. The Peloponnesians were in favour of planting the Ionians on the lands of the medized Greeks at home. To this proposal the Athenians offered an uncompromising resistance, and claimed that they alone had the right to decide the matter, since the Ionians were colonists of their own. The claim was a shadowy one; but the resistance was successful. It is noticeable, however, that the Asiatic Greeks who were in the first instance received into the alliance were Samians, Chians, Lesbians, and the other islanders, but none of the inhabitants of the cities of the mainland. Thus were sown the seeds of that famous Delian League which was destined in the near future to play so great a part in the history of the fifth century.

Throughout Greek history the Hellespontine region is the link between Europe and Asia. To it the Oriental seeking to win empire in Europe ever turned, while the European, whether on the defensive or the offensive against the power of the East, was at all times anxious to secure its possession. H. ix. 114. And thither now the fleet from Samos sailed, under the impression, says Herodotus, that it would find the bridge in existence. If such an impression did actually exist with the Greeks at this time, the fact bears strong evidence to the silence and desertion which in these years brooded over that highway of the nations—the Ægean. The fleet was delayed on the voyage by adverse winds, and was obliged to anchor for a time at Lektos. Thence it sailed to Abydos, where the Greeks discovered for the first time that the bridge was no longer in existence.

Hitherto Leutychides and the Spartans with him had shown in this expedition an enterprise peculiarly foreign to them; but now once more a fatal national characteristic began to reassert itself. THE FLEET SAILS TO THE HELLESPONT. Whether because of that homesick conservatism of the race which made it averse to ventures far beyond its borders, and anxious when engaged in them to get quit of the matter in hand at the earliest possible opportunity, or from a lack of intelligence which failed to grasp the proper issue of a situation, Sparta was ever wont to leave her tasks unfinished, especially if they demanded absence far from home. And so it was now. On the plea that the only object of the expedition to the Hellespont had been to ensure the destruction of the bridge, they renounced all idea of further operations for the time being, and set sail for home. It may be doubted whether they genuinely believed that the disappearance of the bridge had removed all necessity for further action in this region. The Athenians, at any rate, under their leader Xanthippos, saw that the peril from Persia must ever be recurrent, if that power continued to hold the Thracian Chersonese, that tongue of land which in both ancient and modern times, though for different reasons, has ever been of the greatest strategical importance to Mediterranean powers. They determined therefore to clear the enemy out of this, their tête-du-pont in Europe.

The chief strategic position in the peninsula at that time was Sestos. It lay on the European side of the great ferry of the Hellespont at Abydos, and so commanded the main route from Asia to Europe.

As a place of great military importance, it was the strongest fortress in those parts; and on the news of the arrival of the Greeks at the Hellespont, the Persian population from all the neighbouring towns collected thither under the command of Artauktes, the governor of the region. He was a man who had got an evil reputation among the Greeks owing to sacrilegious behaviour of the grossest character, peculiarly calculated to arouse their most fierce resentment. The arrival of the Greeks in the Hellespont had been so unexpected that he was taken unawares, having made no preparations for a siege. But the inexperience and incapacity of the Athenian assailants in the attack on walled towns, despite the reputation they enjoyed among their fellow-countrymen, who were themselves hopelessly impotent in this department of the art of war, caused the siege to drag out a weary length, until the wane of autumn brought with it that severity of wintry weather from which all the lands within reach of the inhospitable Euxine suffer at that time of year.

The Athenian soldiers and sailors began to weary of the apparently endless blockade, and demanded of their leaders that they should be taken home once more. This request Xanthippos and his captains refused, saying that they must bide where they were until either the town were taken or the Athenian Government sent for them. So they continued to bear their hardships as best they could. Meanwhile the besieged, reduced to the last extremity of want, ate even the leathern straps of their beds. At last, in desperation, the Persian portion of the inmates of the town escaped by night through the besiegers’ lines at a point where there were but few men on guard; but here their success ended. The natives of the Chersonese who were in the town informed the Athenians by signal of their flight, and the latter started in hot pursuit. One body of the fugitives made its escape to Thrace, to meet with a miserable fate at the hands of the wild tribes of that region; but the main body, under Artauktes, was overtaken by the Athenians near Ægospotami, and after an obstinate defence, such as survived, including Artauktes, were brought back as prisoners to Sestos. A tale which Herodotus tells shows that the Persian commander had some apprehension with regard to the retribution which his sacrilegious conduct might bring upon him; for he made an offer to Xanthippos to pay one hundred talents’ compensation for the outrage, and two hundred talents’ ransom for himself and his son. To this offer Xanthippos turned a deaf ear.

The punishment inflicted on the Persian was a blot on Greek civilization. He was nailed to a board, and his son was stoned to death before his eyes. The Greek nature was capable in moments of revenge of inflicting the death penalty in wholesale fashion on enemies who had excited its bitter resentment; but the torture of a captured foe was wholly alien to the spirit of the people. END OF THE CAMPAIGN. Doubtless the Persians, with the ineradicable cruelty of the Oriental, had given many precedents for such a form of revenge; but whether that be so or not, this particular act was inexcusable in a people who claimed for themselves a standard of civilization infinitely higher than that of the world around them.

With the capture of Sestos the campaign of this famous year ended, and with it the great war for the liberation of European Greece. Many years were indeed fated to pass before the present struggle ceased. But from this time forward the war entered upon a new phase, in which the Greek was the assailant. Hitherto he had been acting purely on the defensive; even the expedition across the Ægean had been but an act of the great drama which was being played in Greece. The West had triumphed over the East in one great effort, wherein the success had been rapid and striking. But henceforward the tide of success was destined to flow more slowly,—so slowly, indeed, that ere the end came, victor and vanquished alike had sunk into decay, and alike had fallen into subjection to that newer, broader, and more vigorous but less genuine Hellenism which Macedonia evolved from her heritage in the older type.