It is often an invidious task to examine the causes which lie behind any great series of events in military history, because the most efficient of them are in the majority of cases due to human error rather than to human power. The historian of peaceful development is not exempt from the necessity of compiling such records of frailty, but by the very nature of things such tasks fall more frequently to one who narrates the story of periods at which the sanity of the sanest is troubled by the nervous tension involved in participation in events whose issues and their results lie in the immediate, not in the distant future. The errors of war may not be greater, but they are less remediable than those of peace. There may be time to arrest the latter’s slow decay; but the swift and often fatal stab of a lost battle is the work of a moment. Men have in all ages been conscious of the gravity of this truth; and the consciousness of it, apart altogether from the inevitable physical fear, has rendered them less capable at such times of the calculations of reason, or even, in some instances, of common sense.

The great Persian War was of a special type. In the majority of cases in which races and empires have come into collision, each side has had some practical acquaintance with the resources, devices, and fighting qualities of the other; and in many cases such experience has been intimate and prolonged. UNDETERMINED FACTORS. But when the Persian and the Greek of Europe came into collision in 480, such experience can hardly be said to have existed on either side; or, in so far as it did exist, it had been misleading. In only two instances had the European Greek come into contact with the Persian on the field of battle, and in both of them the same Greek state, the Athenian, had alone been represented in the conflict. But, furthermore, the instances had, from a military point of view, been indecisive, if not actually fallacious. At Ephesus, in the first year of the Ionian revolt, a small contingent of Athenians had been present on the defeated side, when the Persians fell on the expedition which had burnt Sardes. Of the battle practically nothing is recorded save the result; but this much may be assumed with certainty,—that a fight in which a small body of European Greeks had been defeated in partnership with hastily raised levies of Ionians could not possibly afford any experience worth calling such to either of the sides who were destined to take part in the war of twenty years later. The Ionians of Asia, long under Persian rule, must have been very deficient in military training when compared with the Greek of Europe. Darius had, indeed, made use of them in the Scythian expedition, but in that instance had employed them to guard the lines of communication. It is manifestly improbable that the Persian Government would encourage any advanced system of military exercises in a people whose position at the very borders of the empire would have rendered them, if accustomed to the use of arms, very dangerous subjects.

Marathon was the other instance. It is a battle of problems, a problem among battles, whose data are woefully imperfect. The only thing about it which seems clear is that, for some reason which can only be conjectured, it formed but an imperfect test of the fighting capacity and methods of Greek and Persian respectively.

Thus, for all practical purposes, when the two races came into conflict in 480 they were, militarily speaking, unknown quantities to one another, and each had to learn how best to meet the strategy and tactics of the enemy. The consequence was inevitable. Both sides made grave mistakes of commission and omission; and it may be even said that the victors made more than the vanquished, though not of such a fatal character. The Corinthians were not indeed wrong when in later days they summed up the causes of the issue of the war by saying that “the Persian was the rock on which he himself made shipwreck;” for of the two main reasons which led to the final victory of the Greeks, one was undoubtedly the fatal nature of the mistakes which the Persians made. They seem, relying on their prestige, and on their enormous numbers, to have held their adversaries too cheaply; and from this fundamental error all their other errors were generated.

Knowledge after the event renders it very difficult to appreciate the circumstances of any particular date in history, and the difficulty is all the greater if the events of the time immediately succeeding be of such a nature as to completely change those circumstances. Such is markedly the case in the instance under consideration. The mental attitude of the Persian towards the Greek power after 479 is well known to the modern world; and it is recognized indeed that a great change must have been brought about in it by the events of that and the preceding year; but the extent of the change is not perhaps realized, because the very real nature of the grounds of confidence with which Persia entered upon the war are not sufficiently taken into consideration, and the efforts made by Herodotus to bring this confidence into prominence are too apt to be regarded as aiming at the greater glorification of his own race.

And yet the grounds for that confidence are plain. In a long and almost unbroken series of wars the Persian had conquered Western Asia. He had never met with the race which could face his own upon the set field of battle, and this, not in an experience of a few years, but of half a century. He might indeed feel that he had been tried in the balance of warfare and not found wanting. Man’s success against him had never been more than temporary.

It now remains to be considered why this confidence was ill-grounded.

The Persian had never seen the Greek heavy-armed infantryman at his best, well disciplined, and fighting on ground suited to his tactics, save perhaps at Marathon, when the test was probably regarded as unconvincing. ARMS AND THE LAND. Herodotus points out the superiority of his panoply to that of the comparatively light-armed Persian. There is much more of the empirical than of the scientific in the lessons of war; and the experience of all ages points to the fact that an army which enjoys a noticeable superiority over its enemy in respect to weapons will in all probability, if other things be equal, come off victorious. Such exceptions as history can adduce to this rule are rather apparent than real, and are, in the vast majority of cases, due to the possessor of the superior arms adopting tactics either unstated to them, or wholly at variance with the nature of the region wherein fighting is being carried on. The Greeks at Platæa made a mistake of the latter kind, which was only annulled by a greater mistake made subsequently by the other side.

In this great war, then, the two most efficient causes of its issue were (1) the undue confidence of the Persian, giving rise to fatal mistakes; (2) the great superiority of the Greek panoply. A third, of a negative character, may perhaps be added, namely, that the nature of the country did not permit of the invader making use of his most formidable arm,—the cavalry. The second and third causes may be included in that wider generalization which has been already discussed;—the West on its own ground must have prevailed over the East.

The immediate preliminaries of the actual invasion of Greek territory bring into prominence the high state of efficiency which must have been attained in the military organization of the Persian empire. Leaving out of consideration the difficulties to be overcome before the huge mixed force was collected at Sardes (which town became for the time being, in place of Susa, the prime military base of the empire), the organization which enabled this great army to be brought without accident, or, in so far as present knowledge goes, without a hitch of any kind, over the eight hundred miles of difficult country which separated its base from Middle Greece, must have been the outcome of a highly effective and highly elaborated system evolved by a people whose experience was indeed large and long, but who must also have been gifted with that very high form of mental capacity which is able to carry out a great work of this nature. The secret of success,—it may almost be said of possibility,—in the present instance was the employment of the fleet for commissariat purposes. It was a method of advance not new to Persian campaigning, the first instance of its employment going back as far as the time of the invasion of Egypt by Cambyses.

On the Greek side organization on so huge a scale was not called for. Numbers were smaller, and distances in comparison insignificant; and only at the end of the campaign, when the Athenian fleet was engaged in the blockade of Sestos, had a long period of absence from the commissariat base to be provided for. Still, what was done must have been done on a system; and the system cannot be supposed to have been a bad one, for there is no hint of its ever having broken down. It was in all probability most severely tried when it became necessary to keep up the supplies of the great host during the weeks it remained at Platæa. Such mention of it as occurs in Herodotus’ narrative is of a purely incidental character. It was a side of the war in which he was not likely to take any great interest, even if he could have obtained much information on the subject, or have appreciated the significance of such information as he did obtain. The disaster to the commissariat train in the pass of Dryoskephalæ is the most prominent of the rare instances in which Herodotus mentions anything connected with this department of the service. His reference to a signalling system extending through Eubœa at the time of Artemisium,—a line of communication which was in all probability carried to the Hellenic base in the Saronic gulf,—shows that there was a certain amount of elaboration in the organization on the Greek side.

When it is borne in mind that the Greeks were in this war carrying on operations on a scale infinitely exceeding anything of which they can have had experience, it must be admitted as remarkable that, whatever the defects of their military policy, whatever the mistakes they made, they managed to evolve out of their experience of operations on a small scale a system of organization which was applicable to the great operations of this war, and which did not in any known instance lead to a breakdown which can be attributed to defect in the system itself.

Of the strategy and tactics of the war itself little can be said which has not been already said in previous chapters; still, it may be convenient to collect together the considerations on this question which are suggested by the history of the two years’ campaigning.

Before doing so it is perhaps necessary to define as clearly as is possible the distinction between strategy and tactics, and that not merely in respect to the application of the terms themselves, but also to a not unimportant difference which may exist between the ways in which they may be employed.

Strategy is a term usually applied to the larger operations of war prior to or intervening between such times as armies are in close contact with one another.

When close contact takes place, and battle is immediately imminent or in progress, the name tactics is applied to the operations which then ensue, and which are necessarily on a smaller scale than those to which the term strategy is applicable.

A further and important distinction is this:⁠—the operations known as tactics are the outcome of full consciousness on the part of the commander or, it may be, of the trained soldiers who employ them,—that is to say, that he or they know not merely what to do, but why to do it. The knowledge acted upon is in a sense scientific, though the reasons for the act may be various:⁠—either that the operation has proved effective in the past, or that the tactics of the enemy demand it, or that it is called for by the nature of the ground. It is in respect to the last reason that tactics and strategy are most nearly comparable; and it is manifest that it is more easy to draw conclusions as to the results of action on a small area of country, all of which may be comprehended in one view, than in a large area such as would form the theatre of strategical operations.

The operations of tactics are so much more mechanical than those of strategy that it is difficult to conceive of them as being unconsciously carried out.

With strategy that is not the case. It may be conscious or unconscious. The strategical conditions of a country such as Greece, or indeed of any country, must ever be fundamentally the same, though liable to modification by the introduction of some great novelty into the act of war, such as long-range missiles. An army operating in Greece or elsewhere may fulfil the strategical conditions of the country consciously or unconsciously. It fulfils them consciously if it appreciates them,—that is to say, if its movements are determined by them; but it may fulfil them unconsciously even if its movements are determined by considerations which cannot be said to rest on any strategical basis.

It is a very important question in the war of 480–479 whether either or both of the two sides operated with a conscious or unconscious strategy. Beyond question many of their operations were strategically correct. This every one who is acquainted with the story of the war must admit; but many of the greatest writers of Greek history have silently or expressly assumed that the agreement between the operations and the strategical conditions of the theatre of war was due to the circumstance that, in a country of such pronounced characteristics as those of Greece, the physical conditions were so marked that the strategical conditions might be fulfilled from motives wholly unconnected with them. This might undoubtedly be the case; but was it so?

Two great strategic designs are apparent in the main plan of the invaders:⁠—

(1) To create a diversion in the Western Mediterranean by stirring up Carthage to attack the Sicilian Greeks, and so prevent aid from that quarter reaching the mother country;

(2) To make fleet and army act in co-operation, and, furthermore, by means of the fleet, to maintain the command of the Ægean and its sea-ways.

On the side of the defence no plans of such magnitude are apparent; for the very good reason that the preparations to meet the invader were made too late for the carrying out of any far-reaching design, even had so composite a resisting force admitted of anything of the kind.

The first strategic action of the Greeks was the expedition to North Thessaly. That was undoubtedly conscious strategy. It was undertaken under the supposition that the Vale of Tempe was the only entrance into the country; and had this supposition been correct the strategy was sound enough. The mistake made was topographical, not strategical.

It was again sound strategy which made the Greeks, when they discovered their error, retire from a position which was indefensible with the numbers present with them. Even had their available force been much larger than it actually was, it would have been a mistake to try to defend a mountain line traversed by several passages. A successful attempt of that nature is rare in history, because the assailant is able to choose the passage on which his main attack shall be directed, whereas the defender has to distribute his force at all the possible points of assault. Moreover, the passage once forced, the assailant can generally threaten the lines of communication of the bodies of troops defending the other passes.

Thermopylæ and Artemisium display most clearly the strategy of the two contending sides. It did not perhaps demand much knowledge or much intelligence to fix upon Thermopylæ as a point of defence. It would be difficult to mention any other great highway in the world on which a defensive position so strong by nature is afforded. It was, on the other hand, a great strategic blunder on the part of Sparta that, having sent a small force to the pass, she did not later forward reinforcements. That was no doubt part of a still greater strategic blunder,—the desire to concentrate the defence at the Isthmus. The three days’ fighting at Thermopylæ proved conclusively that, had an adequate force been present there, the army of Xerxes would in all probability never have carried the pass. Sparta and the Peloponnese generally neither did, nor wished to, appreciate the immense strength of the position.

Did the Persians make a mistake in their assault on the pass? It would seem not. They did not at first know of any way of turning it. They had to take it, because it was the only route by which they could get their baggage train past Mount Œta. That is the difficulty of Greek campaigning. There are perhaps many routes in the country along which a light marching force in moderate numbers can make its way; but those by which troops with the ordinary paraphernalia of an army, and in numbers too large to live on the country, can go, are very few.

The Greeks learnt a lesson from their homeland,—a lesson which Xenophon expressed in striking language to the ten thousand Greeks when they began their famous retreat: “My view is that we should burn our waggons, that our baggage train regulate not our march, but we go by whatever way be expedient for the army.”231 In the present instance Xerxes was confined to the one route: he had to assault the pass, because in the then state of his knowledge of the country he could do nothing else. That he or his generals appreciated the importance of the path of the Anopæa so soon as they were informed of it is shown by the employment of the best troops in the army for its seizure and use.

It is, however, fairly questionable whether the direct assault on the pass formed part of the original Persian design at Thermopylæ. The delay of several days which took place before the actual assault was delivered, taken in connection with the contemporary events at Artemisium, suggests that it was originally intended to wait until the forcing of the Euripus by the fleet made it impossible for the Greeks to maintain their position in the pass for fear of the landing of a force in their rear. If such were the design, it was one which bears testimony to the strategic capacity of him who conceived it. It was brought to nought by a factor outside all human calculation, the storm which broke upon the fleet when anchored at the Sepiad strand.

It was indeed at this period of the war that both the contesting parties gave conspicuous proof of their appreciation of the strategic conditions of the region in which their operations were being carried on. GENIUS AND EXPERIENCE. In point of conception there was little to choose between the plans of the assailant and that of the defender, but in point of execution the Greek plan was wrecked by the deliberate failure of those who were responsible for the land section of the general defence. That of the Persian was upset by causes beyond human control. It is noticeable that the invaders seem to have arrived at Thermopylæ with a fair working knowledge of the region of the Malian gulf and the North Euripus, and it must be suspected that the heralds sent to Greece to demand earth and water acted when there in a twofold capacity.

Whatever failure overtook the Greek defence at this time of the war was due not to the plan, but to the way in which it was carried out. The design to hold the land force of the enemy at Thermopylæ and his fleet at Artemisium was excellently conceived. It was almost certainly the work of Themistocles. Whether honest or dishonest, he was gifted with that rare genius which enables a man to take in the necessities of a situation vast beyond anything within his experience. The other Greek commanders were men of an ordinary kind, who would in all probability have frittered away the defence in a series of measures such as their limited experience dictated, or, still more probably, have concentrated at the Isthmus, where the strength of the land position would have been more than negatived by the weakness of the position at sea.

Eurybiades, the commander-in-chief, is unfortunate in the setting in which he appears in the history of the time. His must have been an unenviable and difficult part. The diplomacy he had to employ in order to accommodate contending policies would seem to both sides a proof of vacillation. Herodotus’ picture of him is not wholly sympathetic; and yet it makes it quite clear that he was intelligent enough to appreciate the genius of the man who was technically his subordinate, and diplomatic enough to give the advocates of the Northern policy a victory without provoking a fatal outbreak among the advocates of a different design. Nor is this a small tribute to the man’s capacity. The Peloponnesians, and especially the Corinthian opponents of the war-policy of Themistocles, were not people who could be kept in order even by the strong hand of Sparta, unless history draws a very misleading picture of the circumstances within the Peloponnesian league; and the man who captained the Greek defence through the troubles within and without of the year 480 cannot have been lacking in ability, even though he had at his side a pilot of the genius of Themistocles.

The failure to support Leonidas at Thermopylæ utterly changed the strategical conditions on which the design of the defence had been hitherto founded, and the practical surrender of the other defensive lines north of the Isthmus completed the wreck of the plan. The Greek fleet on its return to Salamis found that no effort had been made, and no real intention had existed, to send an army even into Bœotia. It is noteworthy, however, that if the fleet really did suppose that the army was in Bœotia, and was not undeceived on this point until it arrived at Salamis, its commanders made a great mistake in not holding the narrows at Chalkis, and thus preventing the landing of Persian troops in rear of the most eminently defensive passage in Bœotia, that long strip of narrow land between Helicon and Kopais which extended from Chæroneia to Haliartos.

The strategy which was forced upon Themistocles by the state of things which he discovered in existence on his return to the Saronic gulf was the strategy of despair. The position taken up at Salamis could only be justified on the plea that there were no other narrow waters between it and the Isthmus where the Greek fleet could be sheltered from the disadvantage of meeting a more numerous fleet in the open, a large portion of which, the Phœnician, was probably superior to it in manœuvring power. Furthermore, if the Persian commanders took the view that the fleet at Salamis must be defeated before an advance to the Isthmus were attempted, and detained their ships on the Attic coast, then the Persian land army, unaccompanied by the fleet, would be rendered incapable of any sustained attack on the fortifications which the Peloponnesians had erected. SALAMIS. But that “if” was one of terrible significance, and the evidently nervous desire of Themistocles to bring about a battle must have been due to his recognition of the precarious position in which the Greeks would be placed supposing that the Persian fleet did choose to ignore them at Salamis. The most fatal weakness in an altogether dangerous situation was that a large portion of the population of Attica was on Salamis Island, and could not possibly be left to the mercy of the foe. How it came about that the Athenians gave such hostages to fortune, instead of removing them to the coast of Argolis, can only be conjectured. The probability is that the interval between the arrival of the Greek fleet at Salamis and that of the Persian at Phaleron had been too brief to render it possible for the whole Attic population to be transported across the Saronic gulf.

The blunder which led Xerxes to attack the Greeks at Salamis was fatal alike tactically and strategically. He had the game in his own hand, if he could only have recognized the fact; but in his confidence of success with the forces at his disposal, he wished not merely to out-manœuvre but to capture the whole Greek fleet.

The results of Salamis were immediate. The defeat and moral disorganization of the Persian fleet made it incapable of maintaining its position on the west side of the Ægean, though in point of material damage, relative to numbers, it is probable that it had not suffered more severely than the fleet which had been opposed to it. Its departure withdrew, as it were, the keystone of the Persian plan of invasion; and the whole edifice of design fell into ruin which was incapable of repair, though the wreck was not so complete as to render it impossible for Mardonius to make use of the materials in the ensuing year. The blow had fallen on the indispensable half of the invading force; and, bereft of the aid of the fleet, the land army could no longer maintain itself in a country whose natural resources were wholly inadequate to supply its wants.

According to the account followed by Herodotus, Themistocles proposed that the Greek fleet should immediately take the offensive on the Asian coast. The evident confusion of the story as to date renders it difficult to say whether the proposal was a wise one or not. It was, however, rejected by Eurybiades, who up to that time had displayed sound common sense; and if it was really made at the date to which Herodotus attributes it, there can be little doubt that Eurybiades was right. The time for offensive operations had not come; for anything of the nature of a reverse on the Asian coast might have restored once more all the evils of the previous situation in Greece; and it is quite possible that some argument to this effect put forward by Eurybiades has been translated into the form of his answer to Themistocles as given by Herodotus.

The actual design which Mardonius had in his mind when he persuaded Xerxes to leave with him in Thessaly the most effective part of the army of invasion is beyond conjecture at the present day. Possibly he had at the time no very definite plan, but was content to guide, and be guided by, events. His retirement to Thessaly was certainly due to the question of commissariat. The country was infinitely richer than the rest of Greece, and, besides, he had to organize a new line of communications along the North Ægean coast. With this intent, probably, Artabazos accompanied the retreat of Xerxes as far as the Hellespont. The winter gave Mardonius time to form his plans for the next campaign, and though Herodotus does not profess to know what the plans were, the operations during the summer of 479 give something more than a clue as to their nature.

Mardonius seems to have formed a design of two alternatives.

He knew, on the one hand, that unless the Persian fleet could be brought back across the Ægean, an attack on the Isthmus would be hopeless, if not impossible; in other words, the complete subjugation of Greece was out of the question. But so long as the Greek fleet remained as powerful as at that moment, it was also hopeless to expect the return of the Persian; and the first problem he had to solve was how to rob the Greek fleet of its strength.

With this intent, negotiations were opened with Athens, through the medium of Alexander the Macedonian. When this line of action proved ineffective, he brought pressure to bear upon the Athenians by once more invading their territory and occupying Athens. DESIGNS OF MARDONIUS. This again had no effect, except to make them even more stubborn in their refusal to treat.

The first alternative plan had failed at its outset, so he now resorted to the second.

After burning Athens and committing devastation in Attica he retired into Bœotia, using Thebes as his base of operations.

There are two remarkable facts in connection with this movement

The disaster at Salamis, and the consequent retirement of the Persian army to Thessaly, had not shaken the loyalty of Bœotia to the Persian cause, and this despite the fact that the Bœotians were not at the end of 480 deeply committed either to the Persian, or against the Greek. Bœotians had, indeed, been present in Xerxes’ army when it invaded Attica; but there is nothing whatever on record which can favour the supposition that the Bœotians had actually fought on the Persian side previous to the winter of 480–479. Consequently they were not deeply committed against the cause of patriotism. They had powerful excuses to urge for their conduct; and had they come over to the side of the defence in that winter, but little fault could have been found with them, even by the most bigoted patriots. Sentiment was not a characteristic of the Bœotian. His policy was ever to join the side from which he had most to expect; and his attitude during the time Mardonius was in Thessaly shows clearly that he was convinced that his interest lay with the Persian. The ruling party in Bœotia believed that their country was destined to become a part of the Persian Empire; and, with the selfishness of interest common to oligarchies, were prepared to accept their fate. They must have been convinced, rightly or wrongly, that Mardonius did not intend to desert them. The conviction was probably correct.

Mardonius’ retirement from Attica was an outward and visible sign of his renunciation of all idea of the complete conquest of Greece. If he had no other scheme of conquest in his mind at that moment, why did he stay his retreat in South Bœotia? Because, so Herodotus says, he thought that that country was more suitable for his cavalry. But that implies that he entertained an expectation which, on the mere question of fact as recorded by Herodotus, he could not possibly have entertained,—that the Greeks would follow him into Bœotia. Up to that time they had absolutely declined to take the offensive; and yet at this moment Mardonius must have had reason to believe that he could force them to change their whole policy in the war, and to become the assailant in a region highly unfavourable to their type of force, and highly favourable to his own.

It was a remarkable situation, the clue to which is not given in any direct statement in Herodotus. It must, therefore, be sought in the actions of the two opponents.

The opening of the campaign of 479 reveals several very important and well-nigh inexplicable changes on the Greek side. The most remarkable is the complete change in the command of the two principal contingents of the Greek forces.

In spite of the conspicuous success of the preceding year, Themistocles and Eurybiades are both set aside, and Xanthippos, Aristides, Pausanias, and Leutychides take their place. The change is extraordinary, unexpected, unexplained. Probably a combination of various motives brought it about, but, in the absence of all real evidence, nothing more than a guess can be made at what they were. The fact that the remainder of the war would have to be fought out on land rather than by sea had doubtless something to do with it. In the most remarkable case, that of Themistocles, politics may have played a part. It has also been suggested that his vexation at the refusal of the Greek fleet at Andros to follow his advice, and to carry the war to the Asian coast, led him to throw up his command.

As far as the course of the war is concerned, the main difference between the general characteristics of the campaign of 480 and 479 brought about by the change of command, is that for the ability of Themistocles to control circumstances was substituted an ability on the part of the new commanders to be guided by them.

There can be no question as to what was at the beginning of this year the Spartan view as to the plan on which the campaign was to be conducted. It comprised nothing beyond a defence of the Isthmus. The method adopted to carry out the plan was characteristic. It was known, of course, that Athens would be absolutely opposed to it, as she had been in the previous year, so not a word was said to her on the subject; nay, she was even led to believe that her own design would be supported by Sparta. Then was adopted a policy of passive resistance,—a resistance so obstinate and so prolonged that the tension upon the bonds which held the patriot states together was all but brought to the breaking point. Whether the astuteness of the Spartan government was sufficiently great to gauge with the utmost accuracy the amount of tension possible without bringing about actual fracture, or whether warning from outside opened its eyes to the fact that it had carried its policy to the extremest edge of danger, must be a matter of opinion. At the very last moment Sparta gave way. Athenian determination had won a victory over Spartan obstinacy. Sparta’s calculation had evidently been all through that if she sat still and allowed circumstances in Attica to develop under the agency of Mardonius, Athens would be forced to surrender her plan of campaign, and to adopt at last, though late, the war policy which the Peloponnesians had consistently advocated from the beginning.

The Athenian plan is definitely stated in Herodotus. It consisted in the first instance in meeting the enemy in Bœotia before he could invade Attica a second time. Its object seems clear,—the salvation of Attica; but if that was the only object, how is it that the plan remained unaltered after Attica had been overrun, and its salvation was no longer in question?

The troops despatched suddenly from Sparta while the Athenian embassy was present there were despatched to the Isthmus. What lever so great did Athens use to induce Pausanias to meet her troops at Eleusis, and take the offensive against Mardonius in Bœotia? Herodotus makes no statement on the subject. It is quite evident, however, from the incompleteness of this part of the history, that he experienced great difficulty in collecting reliable materials for the story of the events between Salamis and Platæa. But if the main circumstances of the time—the facts, that is to say, that Herodotus does mention—be taken into consideration, it is evident that the state of affairs in Northern Greece was such as must have caused the most serious alarm to the patriots. Thessaly had medized long ago of its own free will. Phocis and Opuntian Locris had done so partially and under compulsion; and, worst of all, Bœotia had thrown in her lot with the Persian in the most unequivocal manner. Must it not inevitably have been suggested to the Greeks of the South that there was every fear that the Persian, though his attempt to subjugate all Hellas had failed, was only too likely, if let alone, to be able to push forward his frontier from Macedonia to Bœotia, from Olympus to Kithæron? It was an eventuality that not even the Peloponnesian could regard with equanimity; and if any valid cause can be suggested for the sudden and complete change in the plan of the Lacedæmonian commander-in-chief after his arrival at the Isthmus, it is that his attention was called, probably by the Athenians, to the very serious danger of allowing events in the North an unchecked development. The very fact that Mardonius had deliberately stayed his movement of retreat at Thebes renders it highly probable that the extraordinary offensive movement of the Greeks was called for by a danger that did not exist merely in their own Imagination: in other words, that Mardonius’ alternative design was to keep what he could, since he could not get what he would.

This offensive movement of the Greeks has always been accounted extraordinary by those who have paid special attention to the military history of the time. That it was probably due to Athenian persuasion is generally agreed, but no adequate reason for the exercise of such persuasion on the part of Athens at this particular moment has been put forward, still less has any reason been adduced for the yielding of Sparta to it. The mischief for that year had been done in Attica, and movement into Bœotia could not remedy it. GREEK FLEET IN 479. The winter was drawing nigh, in which Mardonius would—if Attica was all that he aimed at—withdraw northward, as in the previous year. It can only have been the fear that Mardonius had gone to Thebes with intent to stay there, that moved the Greeks to an unprecedented course of action. They knew perfectly well that, from a purely tactical point of view, they had everything to lose and nothing to gain by transferring the war into a country where that much-feared but untried factor, the Persian cavalry, could come into play; and it is inconceivable that they can have moved north except under the stress of what they regarded as a grave necessity. It is quite a different question whether they took what were, under the circumstances, the best strategical measures. Had, for instance, a force been sent with the fleet under Leutychides to the Malian gulf, Mardonius’ position in Bœotia would have become so perilous that it is hardly possible that he would have ventured to retain it; and it may even be doubted whether he could ever have won his way back past Mount Œta.

The best strategy on the Greek side in this year’s campaigning was carried out by the commanders of the fleet; especially by Xanthippos, the admiral of the Athenian contingent. The caution displayed in waiting in the Western Ægean until the Ionians gave some signal was probably wise. A move eastward before receipt of information as to the real state of affairs on the Asian coast, as to the numbers and position of the Persian fleet, and especially as to the whereabouts of the Phœnician section of it, might have unduly hazarded the results of the success already obtained on the western coast of the Ægean. On arrival at Samos, a bold and successful attack was made on the Persian force at Mykale. It was necessary to crush the main resistance before further operations were attempted. After this the Spartans went home, while the Athenians continued the campaign by a strategic move of the highest importance. In attacking Sestos and the Thracian Chersonese, they assailed the all-important tête-du-pont in Europe, and by their success rendered Persian operations from the Asiatic side to the north of the Propontis difficult, if not impossible, as the Chersonese lay on the flank of any advance from the direction of the Bosphorus towards Macedonia and Greece. The command of the Hellespont was also the first step towards the freeing of the great trade route to the corn regions on the north coast of the Euxine.

The strategy of the two contending sides in the war of 480–479 must have been deliberate. It cannot have been unconscious. The agreement with the strategic conditions of the regions wherein fighting took place is too close to render any such view tenable. Nor is it strange that such should have been the case. On the one side was a race with a war experience greater beyond comparison than that of any other contemporary nation; on the other, a people whose quickness of intellect rendered it peculiarly capable of supplying the defects of experience by appreciation of the exigencies of the situation. The Greek was among the nations what Themistocles was among the Greeks.

Though the tactics employed by either side were, as events befell, more decisive of the issue of the war than their strategy, the question relating to them is more simple, and may be discussed more briefly. Of the naval tactics but little is told. From the account of Salamis it would appear as if the aim of the Greek in an engagement was so to steer his ship as to break as much as possible of the enemy’s oarage on one side, and, having thus rendered his opponent’s vessel more or less unmanageable, to ram the weakest part of its structure, the flank, with the beak and stem of his own. It may be safely assumed that it is an anachronism on the part of Herodotus to assign the manœuvre of cutting the line (διέκπλους) to this period.

The fact that the vessels carried each a certain number of heavy-armed infantry, as well as marines, and were fitted with boarding bridges (ἀπόβαθρα), shows clearly that boarding held a prominent place in Greek naval tactics. LAND TACTICS. To Kimon in later years is no doubt due the elaboration of what may be called the “ship tactics” at the expense of the boarding tactics, an innovation most effective in wars between Greek and Greek, but an improvement of doubtful value in wars with other races, where the panoply of the Greek heavy-armed infantryman could hardly fail to be effective in close fighting. It was left for the Roman to prove conclusively the mistake of this policy. Perhaps it was forced on Kimon by the growing unpopularity among the richer classes of hoplite service aboard the fleet in the long years of warfare after 479, and not brought about by purely tactical considerations.

The land tactics were naturally dictated by the armament of the two opponents, the nature of the forces at their disposal, and the ground on which at different times they came into conflict. The composition of the Persian army placed it at a considerable disadvantage in such a country as Greece. This disadvantage was much emphasized by the fact that, during the campaign of 480, and, in a sense, during that of 479 also, it was the attacking force in a country which greatly favoured the defence. Not until Mardonius took up the defensive in Bœotia was it possible for the Persians to chose ground favourable to the nature of their force. Against a foe of greatly superior mobility, the policy of the defensive was the only one which the Greek army could adopt with any hope of success, supposing that the enemy adopted tactics suitable to his force. The difference between the two armies was, that the Greek had everything to hope from close fighting, the Persian from the opposite; and in every case throughout the war in which reverse or disaster fell on either party, it was due to its having been forced, either by the nature of the position or by some tactical error of its own, into adopting that method of combat for which it was least adapted. If it were not a misnomer to speak of that which is manifest as a secret, it might be said that this is the whole secret of tactical success and failure in the war. It was illustrated in the most marked manner in all the three great land battles, at Thermopylæ, at Platæa, at Mykale.

The circumstances at Thermopylæ forced the Persians to adopt tactics involving close fighting. But it is noticeable that the Persian soldiers and the Persian commanders did not altogether take the same view on this question. The commanders evidently thought that they must win the pass by mere pressure of numbers, and be prepared to sustain losses, absolutely great, but, considering the immense disparity between the two armies, relatively small. Probably also circumstances rendered it all-important for them to force the pass as soon as possible; and this could, owing to the nature of the ground, only be accomplished by close fighting.

But the Persian soldier, soon after the attack began, discovered that he was no match for the better-armed Greek, and proceeded, on his own responsibility, to adopt tactics less dangerous to himself, an assault with missiles, to which the enemy could make no effective reply. This is clearly shown by the tactics which the Spartans were compelled to resort to, the charge forward, and then a pretended retreat, with a view to drawing the enemy on. But the circumstances were such that neither side could absolutely force the other to adopt disadvantageous tactics: nor even with whips and other severe methods of encouragement could the Persian commanders induce their men to a sustained assault at close quarters. In the last battle on the mound the Greeks were not cut down, but buried beneath a shower of missiles.

Platæa affords three very remarkable examples of the contrast of tactics. It was a battle of mistakes, in which each side conspicuously failed to play its own game. At the first position of the Greeks the Persian threw away his excellent cavalry in an attack on a necessarily limited portion of the front of the unshaken Greek heavy infantry, where outflanking was impossible, and only close fighting could be really effective. The result was inevitable.

In the second position, the Greeks made the mistake of seeking to maintain an advanced position in the plain, after the object with which they had in all probability attained it, a surprise flank attack on the Persians, had miscarried. TACTICAL MISTAKES. In view of the excessive immobility of their army as compared with that of the enemy, the danger that their line of communication with the passes, short though it was, might be cut, was evident; and their position permitted the cavalry to harass them on all sides by that form of attack to which it was best adapted. The mistake cost them dearly: it ought to have cost them the battle.

On the retirement of the Greeks from this position, Mardonius threw away the success he had gained by hurling his light-armed infantry against the large Spartan contingent. By doing so he threw away all the advantage which he possessed by reason of his mobile force of cavalry. The tactics of Pausanias were excellent, but could only have been possible with a highly trained force, such as that which he had under his command. He held his men back, despite a galling shower of missiles, until, as it would seem, the foremost ranks of the enemy behind their barrier of shields were deprived of all power of retreating by the pressure of the ranks in rear of them. Then he charged; and in the close fighting which ensued, the Persian had no chance, despite that quality of conspicuous bravery in which he appears never to have been lacking.

The same inevitable issue of battle resulted from the close fighting at the assault on the Persian stockade.

At Mykale the Persians again made the mistake of meeting the Greeks in that form of battle which was most eminently favourable to the more heavily armed man, though in that case the extreme embarrassment of the circumstances in which they found themselves may have necessitated the line of action which they adopted.

Such, then, are the conclusions which may be drawn from the history of the war as a whole. Perhaps the story has many morals; it certainly has one which in later days, under the sobering influence of personal experience, Thucydides expressed when he said that “he is the best general who makes the fewest mistakes.” He was doubtless right, owing to the multitude and variability of the factors in war. But in this, the first and greatest of the wars between Greek and Persian, the liability to error was increased by the incalculability of many factors whose exact value only the knowledge of experience could gauge, an experience lacking at the time, but from which both Greek and Macedonian profited in later years.