Xerxes was confident of victory after his scout reported that the Spartans appeared to be preparing for battle by performing stretching exercises and combing their long hair. But as wave upon wave of Persians tried to force their way through the pass the next day, they were cut down in their thousands. The oncoming Persians were forced to scale a wall of their fallen comrades, and then they found themselves in a death trap. After three days of hurling tens of thousands of men at the small band of Greeks, Xerxes withdrew to rethink.
Had it not been for the actions of one man, the Delphic Oracle might have been proved false. But when a Greek traitor called Ephialtes showed the Persians a hidden path that led behind Greek lines, the fate of Leonidas was sealed. Leonidas sent away the bulk of his army. With 700 Thespians who chose to stay, and 400 Thebans who deserted almost immediately, Leonidas and his 300 Spartans set themselves up as a rearguard to delay the Persian advance and protect the retreating Greeks. They knew they would die fighting.
They fought with spears. When their spears shattered they fought with swords. Once those were broken, they fought with teeth and hands until they fell. The historian Herodotus estimated that this tiny band inflicted losses of 20,000 on the Persians. When Leonidas’ body was recovered, Xerxes, raging impotently at his ignominious victory, ordered that the dead king be decapitated and his body crucified. Forty years later Leonidas’ remains were finally returned to the Spartans, to be buried with the honor they were due.
Leonidas’ last stand inspired the Greeks to rally and fight for their freedom. Their subsequent victories over the Persians at sea (Salamis) and on land (Plataea) ensured that Xerxes was the first, and last, Persian sovereign to set foot on Greek soil. The suicidal bravery of the Spartans, so gloriously victorious in defeat, is commemorated in a famous epitaph inscribed on a stone marking the place where they fell at Thermopylae:
Go tell it in Sparta, stranger passing by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
HERODOTUS
?484–430/420 BC
[I write] in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done.
Herodotus, The Histories, Book I
Herodotus was the West’s “Father of History.” An adventurous traveler, he used his gift for storytelling to recount the upheavals affecting the lands where Europe, Asia and Africa meet. He is best known as a hawk-eyed observer of the epic wars between Greece and Persia in the 5th century BC, but he also charted the growing rivalry between Athens and Sparta.
Herodotus was the first to employ many of the techniques of modern historical writing, and although his credibility has sometimes been called into question, modern research has often proved him right.
He was probably born in Halicarnassus, then under Persian rule, but he lived for much of his life in Athens, where he met the Greek dramatist Sophocles. Herodotus left Athens for Thurii, a colony in southern Italy that was sponsored by Athens. The last event recorded by Herodotus took place in 430 BC, although it is not certain when he died.
If our knowledge of his life is sketchy, our understanding of Herodotus’ times is exceptional, thanks to the work he undertook. He traveled extensively through Egypt, Libya, Syria, Babylonia, Lydia and Phrygia. He sailed up the Hellespont to Byzantium, visited Thrace and Macedonia, and journeyed north to the Danube, then traveled east along the northern coast of the Black Sea.
Herodotus’ masterpiece was his Histories, divided into nine books, each named after one of the Greek muses. The first five books concern the background to the Greco-Persian Wars of 499–479 BC. The final four comprise a history of the wars themselves, culminating in the invasion of Greece by the Persian king Xerxes at the head of a vast army.
The books setting up the background to the wars are subtle works that give a wealth of geographical and political information about the Persian empire and its rulers. They also chart the fundamental differences between Persian and Greek society, with a level of comparison that was unmatched by the city chroniclers who had been the writers of history before Herodotus. Herodotus notes how the Persian empire, although made up of diverse peoples divided by religion, geography and language, nevertheless acts with a remarkable unity. The Greeks, by contrast, drawn from a relatively small pool of culturally homogeneous city-states, are prone to faction and infighting.
Such astute general observations help to provide an explanation for the events contemporary with Herodotus’ own life, when the political rivalries and disputes within Athens affected the course of the bloody contests between the Athenians and the Spartans. This grand, thematic approach was something quite new in historical writing.
The Histories is a detailed account of four generations of Persian kings and their conquests. Herodotus first describes Cyrus the Great’s expedition to Lydia, followed by Cambyses’ conquest of Egypt and his stalled expedition to Ethiopia. After Cambyses’ madness and death comes the reorganization and further expansion of the empire under Darius the Great, and finally Herodotus recounts the campaigns led by Xerxes against the Greeks.
Herodotus tends to attach importance to the actions, personalities and squabbles of individual protagonists. Xerxes is portrayed as arrogant, petulant, savage and cruel, and Herodotus suggests that it was these defects of character that caused his invasion to fail.
For Herodotus, pride always comes before a fall, but he emphasizes that such failures are not the punishment of the gods, but rather result from human mistakes. This rational approach, in which the gods did not intervene in the affairs of men, was a major innovation and formed the basis for the tradition of Western history.
The “Father of History,” has also been called the “Father of Lies.” It is true that some of his tales, such as that of the giant man-eating ants, are fables. But his methods were those of a true historian: he compared his sources wherever possible. He was also a consummate storyteller; the first historian, and arguably one of the greatest ever.
ALCIBIADES
c. 450–404 BC
It is wiser not to rear a lion’s whelp, but if you do, you must accept its ways.
The dramatist Aeschylus’ verdict on Alcibiades (as represented by Aristophanes in his play The Frogs)
Alcibiades was the gilded youth in the golden age of classical Greece, who took center stage in the life-and-death struggle that enveloped Athens in the second half of the 5th century BC. A dazzling politician and brilliant military leader, he was uniquely blessed: well-born, charming, beautiful, charismatic, quick-witted, eloquent. But his virtues were matched by deep flaws: vanity, unscrupulousness and egotism. Hamstrung by his political enemies and by his own shortcomings, in the end he was unable to harness his talents to save his city from destruction.
At the time of Alcibiades’ birth in or just before 450 BC, the city of Athens was at the height of its power and wealth. Less than thirty years earlier, the Athenians had led an alliance of Greek states to turn back the armies of Persian invaders rolling in from the east. But what had started as a voluntary league of equals had gradually been transformed into an Athenian maritime empire. Throughout Alcibiades’ adolescence there had been growing tension and eventually, in 431, Sparta, a conservative state increasingly alarmed at the expansive imperial ambitions of Athens, could take no more and attacked, so precipitating the Peloponnesian War. This was to engulf the Greek world for the next twenty-seven years and finally led to the total defeat of Athens.
Alcibiades’ father had died in battle in 447, leaving the boy to be raised in the household of Pericles, the greatest Athenian statesman and heroic leader of the day. Alcibiades was a follower of the philosopher Socrates and his superb oratorical skills must in part have been due to the excellent grounding in rhetoric he received at the hands of Socrates and Pericles.
In 421, after ten years of indecisive fighting, Athens and Sparta negotiated the precarious Peace of Nicias. Piqued at being considered too young to take part in the peace talks, Alcibiades instead set about undermining them, fi
rst holding private discussions with the Spartan ambassadors and then attempting to ridicule them before the Athenian assembly. He was elected general in 420 and orchestrated a new alliance against Sparta, but his aggressive ambitions were thwarted two years later when the new allies were heavily defeated by the Spartans at Mantinea.
The defining moment of Alcibiades’ career came in 415, when he once again took up the cause of the war party by championing an ambitious plan to send a major expeditionary force to attack the city of Syracuse in Sicily. His view prevailed and he was appointed one of the three generals to lead the expedition. However, as he was about to set sail, his enemies managed to embroil him (perhaps unjustly) in scandal when the hermoi—sacred boundary posts positioned all around Athens—were mysteriously mutilated. The outrage was considered a bad omen for the mission, which nevertheless set sail with the charges unresolved.
Recalled to face trial, Alcibiades fled and was sentenced to death in his absence. Now revealing the full depths of his vengeance, he defected to Sparta and persuaded them to send forces to reinforce Syracuse, which contributed to the catastrophic defeat of the Athenians two years later. Then he encouraged Sparta to build a fortified outpost at Decelea, in sight of the city of Athens. This cut off the Athenians from their homes, crops and silver mines, forcing them to live inside the city walls all year round.
Having caused trouble for Athens at home, Alcibiades moved east to Ionia (Asia Minor), fomenting revolts among Athens’ subject allies. However, his scheming with Sparta came to an abrupt end when he was suspected of having an affair with the Spartan king’s wife. In mortal danger, he defected once again, this time to Persia. Now in negotiation with the Persians, Alcibiades was involved in stirring up political unrest in Athens, where in 411 a new (albeit short-lived) oligarchic regime was set up.
Believing (unrealistic) promises of Persian assistance, the Athenian fleet reinstated Alcibiades as general. Between 411 and 408 he redeemed himself by leading the Athenians to a spectacular recovery with a series of military successes. Most notably, he inflicted a crushing defeat on the Spartan fleet at Cyzicus in 410 and helped Athens regain control over the supply route through the Black Sea.
Invited back to Athens and cleared of any impropriety, Alcibiades was given complete command of the war on land and at sea. But following a naval setback at Notium in 406 (due to the disobedience of one of his subordinates—Alcibiades himself was absent), he lost his position. In 405, following a catastrophic naval defeat at Aegospotami—which occurred despite Alcibiades’ warnings to the Athenian commanders—he returned to Persia, where he was murdered, probably at the instigation of Sparta, in 404.
Alcibiades was a mass of contradictions, a fascinating, duplicitous meteor capable of brilliance one moment and dark recklessness the next. At its times of greatest need, Athens could not trust him enough to make use of his colossal talents, leading finally to his own destruction and that of his city.
PLATO
c. 428–347 BC
Courage is knowing what not to fear.
Plato
Pupil of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, Plato showed such vision and originality in his thinking that he stands as the second and central figure in the great triumvirate that laid the foundations of Western thought.
Born to a noble Athenian family, Plato could trace his ancestry back to the last kings of Athens. He was a disciple and fervent admirer of the plebeian Socrates, whose refusal to toe the line and temper his ideas brought about his enforced suicide for impiety and corruption of youth in 399 BC.
Disappointed by the demagogic democracy of Athens, Plato traveled abroad, to Italy and to Syracuse. On his return to Athens he founded the Academy in 387 BC, an institution that trained the greatest thinkers of the next generation, of which Aristotle was the brightest star. Teaching at the Academy until his death forty years later, Plato wrote his greatest works, including the many Socratic dialogues featuring his inspirational tutor and the monumental Republic, in which he outlines the ideal state.
It has been said that Western philosophy exists as footnotes to Plato. An extreme rationalist, Plato was a proponent of the philosopher-ruler of the Republic, who would reign only according to reason. But as experience suggested that no man was capable of such restraint, he proposed that laws must rigidly circumscribe a ruler’s actions. He adopted the ideas of Socrates in arguing that the good is an immutable and fundamental concept or “form.” While opinion may shift, Plato argued, knowledge is eternal and unchanging; goodness is objective, inextricably linked to justice and personal well-being.
Plato was the first major thinker to express the idea that the higher functions of the mind (psyche) are, or should be, in control of the base passions and appetites of the body. His belief that the soul is a prisoner inside the body was countered by Aristotle’s view that it is an inherent part of the body. However despite these differences in their philosophy, his disciple Aristotle so esteemed Plato that he considered it “blasphemy in the extreme even to praise” such a genius.
ARISTOTLE
384–322 BC
Aristotle was, and still is, the sovereign lord of the understanding.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Aristotle was the philosophical giant who, along with Plato and Socrates, laid the principal foundations of Western thought. He was the ultimate polymath: ethicist, physicist, biologist, psychologist, metaphysicist, logician, literary and political theorist. Being tutor to Alexander the Great ensured that his feet stayed firmly on the ground.
The son of Macedonia’s court physician, Aristotle spent twenty years studying under Plato at his Academy in Athens. His unquenchable thirst for knowledge prompted his tutor to comment that he needed “a bridle,” and Aristotle’s enthusiasm shines through in his scientific works. His History of Animals, begun in the decade he spent traveling after Plato’s death, is a complete record of every species of animal known to the Greek world; he charts innumerable organisms, using his minute observations to explain their structure. There are of course some errors (a bison, for instance, is unlikely to defend itself by projectile excretion), but this work of genius and tireless energy nevertheless paved the way for the science of zoology.
A willingness to refine or contradict previous doctrines and opinions; to pose questions to which he did not know the answers; to wrestle with his own ideas—in all these ways, Aristotle transformed the methodology of thought. His surviving works do not make easy reading. They are mostly fragments, used as notes when he lectured at the academies he established on his travels and at the Lyceum, the covered garden in which he taught on his return to Athens. The school of philosophy that Aristotle founded—the Peripatetic school—is believed to have been named after the Lyceum’s walkway (peripatos), where he delivered his lectures with lucidity and wit. Greece’s brightest youth flocked to learn from him.
This wealthy dandy, who sported jewelry and a fashionable haircut, championed the mind above all else. Aristotle’s philosophy insisted on thought as man’s greatest attribute. Philosophical speculation implied civilization: only when a person had secured everything else could he afford the luxury of pure, untrammeled thought. In his works on ethics Aristotle came to the conclusion that human goodness derives from rational thought—that “the good of man is the active exercise of his soul’s faculties in conformity with excellence”; it is an assertion of the uniqueness of mankind that has influenced our understanding of civilization ever since.
The reputedly lisping logician established a new vocabulary of thought. Aristotle made logic an independent branch of philosophy. Struggling to express his meaning more precisely, he coined new terms for his concepts: substance, essence, potential, energy. He argued that as language is a distinctively human trait, it is therefore an expression of the soul. He developed the idea that analysis of our words is the key to understanding our thought. His system of syllogistic logic (e.g. “All men are mortal; Greeks are men; therefore Greeks are mortal”) was the cornerstone
of logical analysis for over 2000 years.
At the age of forty-two, Aristotle returned to his homeland to tutor the Macedonian king’s thirteen-year-old son Alexander. Aristotle tried to instill in his charge two of Greece’s greatest contributions to civilization: epic heroism and philosophy. How much of Aristotle’s political theory he absorbed is open to debate. Aristotle’s ideas were based on the belief that Greeks were superior to other races. While he recognized that governments must be chosen in accordance with their citizens’ needs and capacities, he favored the city-state ruled by an enlightened oligarchy as the best form of government. Such ideas may not have had much impact on Alexander as that autocratic ruler forged his empire. Nevertheless, Aristotle’s beliefs were a vast advance on contemporary political concepts and they fundamentally influenced the development of Greek civilization.
In his Poetics Aristotle established the fundamentals of tragedy that would long be observed in drama: unity of action and a central character whose tragic flaw, such as hubris (excess of pride), brings about his downfall. Aristotle also identified a process of cleansing or purification (catharsis) in which the audience’s feelings of pity and fear are purged by experiencing them vicariously through the actions played out on stage.
The death of Alexander in 323 BC released a wave of anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens, forcing Aristotle to flee the city. Referring to the death of that other great thinker Socrates, Aristotle reportedly said he feared the Athenians would sin twice against philosophy. He withdrew to his mother’s estates on the island of Euboea but died of a stomach complaint just one year later.