What Happened in the Aftermath of Thermopylae? (480 BC) DOCUMENTARY

The Greco-Persian Wars, and in particular the Battle of Thermopylae, stand as some of the most well-known events of the era. However, lost in these highlight reels of history are the smaller moments, which give us a better idea of what it was like to actually experience these flashpoints of the past from the ground's eye view. So today, let's pick up where the credits usually start rolling, by reliving the aftermath of Thermopylae. Today's video is sponsored by the Amazon App Store, and I'd like to introduce you to World of Tanks Blitz. It's a free-to-play MMO game where you drive war machines into massive 7-on-7 battles, featuring over 400 vehicles, 30 maps, and 8 modes. It's easy to learn, fun to play, and what's more, the game is always improving. For instance, recent updates overhauled the aiming system, implemented quality of life and graphical changes, added a new branch of Japanese heavy tanks, and rolled out with a marathon of fantastic modes. 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They next carved an entire canal through Mount Athos to protect his fleet against the violent storms that had shipwrecked a Persian fleet around that same peninsula 12 years earlier. From here, Xerxes marched west through Thrace and Macedon, lands that had been subjugated by his father Darius, while his vast fleet shadowed him along the coast. Then, he turned south and advanced into Greece under the shadow of Mount Olympus. Many Greeks were already part of the Persian Empire, and many others now agreed to submit. Only a small group of states decided to resist. The Spartans and their allies were leaders of this coalition. At first, the anti-Persian alliance hoped to stop Xerxes at the Pass of Tempe in northern Thessaly on the border of Macedon. But when they realized how easily their position could be turned if their enemy marched by a different road into Thessaly, they abandoned the position and went home. The Thessalians, with no one left to support them, surrendered to Xerxes. The Persians continued their southward advance unopposed. Desperate deliberations followed among the dwindling allies. The enemy seemed inexorable. Could a stand be made? And if so, where would that be? Whose homes would be abandoned beyond this line of defense? Finally, a plan was advanced to hold the invaders by land and sea at Thermopylae and Artemisium, respectively, while fallback defenses were prepared. These positions gave the defender a huge strategic advantage to hold against a numerically superior force. Unfortunately, logistical and religious limitations prevented a full force from being deployed at the hot gates immediately. However, perhaps heeding prophecy, Leonidas would lead a vanguard force to hold the pass along with a large contingent of local allies and the fleet. Herodotus reports the following. The rest of the allies planned to do likewise, for the Olympiad coincided with these events. They, accordingly, sent their advance guard, not expecting the war at Thermopylae to be decided so quickly. This is what they intended, but the Hellenes at Thermopylae, when the Persians drew near the pass, fearfully took counsel on whether to depart. The rest of the Peloponnesians were for returning to the Peloponnese and guarding the Isthmus of Corinth, but the Phokians and Locrians were greatly angered by this counsel. Leonidas voted to remain where they were and send messengers to the cities, bidding them to send help, since they were too few to ward off the army of the Medes. What followed were three hard-fought days of combat. At sea, the fleet clashed in a series of engagements, while on land, the Greek allies held a wall across the pass against constant assaults. Time and again, the Persians were kept at bay. Eventually, however, the invaders discovered a mountain path around the rear of this position. Tradition pins blame on the traitor Iphialtes, but the revelation could just as easily have come from the Thessalians. Once discovered and the guards bypassed, it doomed the resistance. Thus, on the morning of the third day, most of the defenders were dismissed by Leonidas. Those who remained would hold to the last in a final rearguard action. This included the 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians, and 400 helots. Forsaking the wall, they now charged to meet the Persians in the more open areas of the pass. Here is how Herodotus describes the scene. Far more were trampled alive by each other, with no regard for who perished. Since the Hellenes knew that they must die at the hands of those who had come around the mountain, they displayed the greatest strength they had against the barbarians, fighting recklessly and desperately. By this time, most of them had their spears broken and were killing the Persians with swords. Leonidas, proving himself extremely valiant, fell in that struggle, and with him other famous Spartans. Two brothers of Xerxes accordingly fought and fell there. There was a great struggle between the Persians and Lacedaemonians over Leonidas' body, until the Hellenes, by their courageous prowess, dragged it away and routed their enemies four times. The battle went on until the men with the phialtes arrived. When the Hellenes saw that they had come, the contest turned, for they retired to the narrow part of the way, passed behind the wall, and took their position, crowded together on the hill, all except the Thebans. This hill is at the mouth of the pass, where the stone line in honor of Leonidas now stands. In that place, they defended themselves with swords, if they still had them, and with hands and teeth. The barbarians buried them with missiles, some attacking from the front and throwing down the defensive wall, others surrounding them on all sides. And as the arrows fell, King Xerxes was victorious. With Thermopylae now his, the gates to Greece were open. Ahead lay the road to Athens. But rather than roll credits or immediately jump ahead to the next major clash at Salamis, let us now slow down the timeline and truly appreciate what happened in the aftermath of Thermopylae. On the battlefield itself, the Greeks record two acts of uncommon cruelty which followed immediately after the defeat. The first involved the capture of the Theban contingent. These had ultimately surrendered rather than fight to the death, pledging to submit their city to the Persians in exchange for mercy. This the king accepted, but to drive home his dominance of the Greeks, Xerxes ordered his men to brand the captives in the face with his royal seal. It was a humiliating mark of enslavement, which was first administered to their general, Leontiades, so everyone could see that even the highest-ranking Greeks now belonged to the king of kings. The next act of cruelty occurred when Xerxes sought to deal with the other Greeks which had perished rather than surrender. The mounds of corpses were scoured to uncover the body of Leontiades. When it was found, Xerxes now ordered his men to cut off the Spartan king's head and impale it on a stick. The Lacedaemonians were outraged at this and would later refuse to do the same when given the opportunity. But for the Persians, it was not unusual. Xerxes' father, Darius, boasted that he had done far worse to the kings who rebelled against him early in his reign. He did this because the Persian kings presented themselves as rulers of the entire world and protectors of divine order and justice. Anyone who rejected their power and fought against them was not just an enemy of the Persians, but of all people and the gods and their plan for the world. This cosmic injustice could not go unpunished. It was crucial then, not just to win battles against a rebel like Leontiades, but to inflict the king's wrath on his body. This display of Leontiades' mutilated corpse showed everyone how righteous and powerful the King of Kings really was. According to Herodotus, Xerxes' next power move was to put the rest of the dead on display. In an apparent act of propaganda, he would lay out the 4,000 Greeks across the field whilst only leaving 1,000 Persian dead across from them. The rest of the supposed 19,000 casualties meanwhile were secretly buried in a mass grave outside of view. The battlefield thus having been prepared, Xerxes opened the field to his army and the men of the fleet. The Persians were suitably impressed. They thought all the Greek dead were Spartiates, even though, as Herodotus points out, there are many other warriors and even helots among them. This tale of the hidden dead makes for a nice story, but it should not necessarily be taken at face value. For instance, we might question how such reports would have made their way to Herodotus in the first place. After all, much of the Persian land army consisted of foreigners who would not have been in a position to pass on the story. The fleet meanwhile, which was crewed by many Greeks, was in fact not witness to the hiding of the dead, as is the very point of the tale itself. Thus, a plausible interpretation is that the number of Persian dead was not as catastrophically high as claimed by later Greek sources. Xerxes' trick, therefore, may have been a convenient way for Herodotus to both elevate the true scale of Greek heroes whilst painting the Persians in an even more negative light. Whatever the case, once the victorious Xerxes had completed his affairs at the hot gates, he marched south with his army. The lands of mainland Greece, which lay ahead, were at his mercy. Under normal circumstances, the Persians were lenient to those who submitted voluntarily and ruthlessly punished those who resisted them. On this occasion, however, the majority of the Greek communities had already made their choice by fighting at Thermopylae and Artemisium. They had elected the way of pain. Xerxes now asserted his authority over his defeated enemies with acts of extreme violence. In this crusade, he was guided by the Thessalians, who had their own old grudges to settle against their southern neighbors. One of the first targets was Phocis, a region of small towns and cities which lay just beyond the pass of Thermopylae. The Phocians were arch enemies of the Thessalians. Moreover, they had sent 1,000 men to fight with Leonidas. These were the men who had been stationed on the goat path over the mountains. The Thessalians now offered to protect them from Xerxes' wrath in exchange for a bribe, but the Phocians refused. As a result, their land was utterly devastated. The sackings were brutal. In these matters, we hear the names of 12 towns that were plundered and put to the torch. Luckily, most of the Phocians found refuge on a mountain in their territory, but some were caught by the invaders. Here, Herodotus tells us something about the brutalities of war that Greek authors usually pass over in silence. The fact being that some of the captured women, he says, were gang-raped to death. In this whole chapter, only one place escaped the scouring of Phocis. That being the Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, one of the most famous and important sanctuaries in the Greek world. Here, the Persians sent a small force to capture it, but were driven off. Great stories are told about the defense of this sacred place. The attackers were supposedly struck by lightning and falling rocks. A cry of victory was heard echoing from the Temple of Athena. Heroes from local myth appeared as giants in full armor, advancing on the Persians. The stories go on and on, and it's impossible to know just how much of these legendary aspects are rooted in some grain of truth. Perhaps there was really a thunderstorm and an avalanche at the exact same moment the Persians arrived. Perhaps the Delphians, guarding the sanctuary, managed to resist them. But whatever the case, for the wavering Greek alliance though, it was crucially important to believe these myths, as they meant that the gods had stood up in defense of their own shrines and the Greek people. Meanwhile, news of the defeat at Thermopylae spread through the Greek world, as the contingents that had left Leonidas on the final morning made their way home. The Greek fleet at Artemisium simultaneously learned of the defeat from its own sentries, and was forced to retreat south, warning people to evacuate as they went. The Spartans themselves would have heard what happened from runners and the trickle of men who returned to Laconia. Among them were the only two remaining Spartan survivors. Each breath they took was a dishonor to the plaque which would later be set at the site of battle, stating quote, And so these men would be shunned as cowards. Pantides is said to have hanged himself, while Aristodamus suffered this shame in silence, until given a chance to redeem himself as a lion in the later battle of Plataea. For now though, the disaster at the pass would plunge the anti-Persian alliance into crisis. When the yet undefeated fleet returned to Athens, they expected to find the full Spartan army mustered and ready to march north to avenge the Phocaeans and to stop Xerxes. But there was not a single Spartan to be seen. Despite their promises, the Spartans never intended to send their army to fight for their allies north of the Peloponnese. Instead, they had begun to fortify the Isthmus of Corinth. Their wall would protect their sphere of influence, but it would sacrifice Boeotia and Athens to the Persians. By building this wall, Sparta sent a clear message to the Athenians that it had no intention of doing anything more to protect them. With the massive Persian army bearing down on them, fresh from its victory at Thermopylae, there was nothing the outraged Athenians could do on their own. They had no other choice but to evacuate their city and make their last stand with the fleet in exile. The evacuation of Athens must have been an enormous logistical undertaking. A population of several hundred thousand had to be removed from farmsteads, villages, and towns across a territory the size of modern Luxembourg. The process would have taken many days, if not weeks, to complete. Messengers would have been sent to the far corners of the country to announce the measure, and people would have to make what preparations they could, pack up, or hide their most precious belongings before making the journey to the newly built port southwest of Athens. It would be here that throngs of refugees would merge with those arriving from further north, as central Greek populations fled ahead of the Persian onslaught. It is likely that every trader, cargo ship, and fishing boat that happened to be docked in the harbor was pressed into service like an ancient Dunkirk. Many Athenians were taken to nearby Salamis, but others were shipped across to Aegina or the friendly town of Troisen in the Peloponnese. Such refugees were able to survive, thanks to a daily allowance to buy food voted by the assembly and paid by rich ex-magistrates out of their own pockets. While Athens was being evacuated, Xerxes' army wasted no time. The Persians immediately marched into Boeotia. Here, Thebes and most of the other cities in the region submitted immediately to the mercy of the conquerors. But for Thespia and Plataea, their doom was already sealed. After all, the men of Thespia had fought to the death with Leonidas at Thermopylae, while the Plataeans had supported the Athenians a decade earlier at the Battle of Marathon. Persia's justice would not be stayed. Both cities were razed to the ground. Departing the ashes, the invaders now crossed the passes of Cithaeron into Attica, burning and pillaging the countryside as they went. In the last days of summer, Xerxes entered Athens unopposed. But the city was not entirely empty. While most had departed, heeding the counsel of Domesticles to trust in the fleet, some remained behind. They did so with faith in the Oracle's prophecy that quote, Though all else shall be taken, Zeus, the all-seeing, grants that the wooden wall only shall not fail. Thus, a small group of poor citizens and priests had fortified the Acropolis with a wooden wall of their own making. For a time, the strength of Athens' citadel allowed them to drive back the Persians. And yet Xerxes would not be denied his victory. The attackers eventually managed to climb up the cliffs, swarming over the walls and slaughtering the defenders. The great temple was torn down and ashes rained down from the sky as the heart of the city was burned in a great conflagration that could be seen for miles. The fall of Athens and full sight of the Greeks nearly split their alliance apart. The Spartans viewed their position at the Isthmus as the best chance to hold the Persians at bay. And yet, the fleet was needed to protect its flank and should therefore withdraw immediately to join the defensive position. Why risk an engagement alongside the corpse of an already destroyed Athens? However, the Athenians argued that the straits of nearby Salamis gave the Allies a unique advantage to take on the numerically superior Persians. In theory, this could work, but the endeavor was certainly risky. The Peloponnesian Allies agreed with the more conservative Spartan approach. Understandably, the Athenians felt betrayed and abandoned. Yet, unable to persuade the Allies, they now laid down an ultimatum. If the others would not fight with them at Salamis, then the Athenians would abandon the alliance entirely to found a new city in Italy. This was a serious threat. The Athenians made up more than half of the Allied fleet. Without them, the Peloponnesians would have no chance of stopping the Persian Navy, which in turn would be able to sail around their peninsula and land troops wherever and whenever it wanted. This would be the end of their cause and the fall of all of Greece. Reluctantly, the Spartan Admiral Euribides agreed to keep the fleet in the straits of Salamis. Late September of 480 BC was the undeniable low point for the Greek alliance. Much of the mainland lay in flames or had bent the knee. The Spartans had lost a king and the best of their men in battle, while the Athenians had been driven from their homes with but one final chance left to save their lives. To make matters worse, the repeated failures of the Peloponnesians to commit more than a token force in defense of the northern communities had nearly caused the entire alliance to fracture. Meanwhile, Xerxes stood stronger than ever. The morale of his troops was soaring, while what losses he had suffered was more than made up for by the absorption of the defeated. To all observers, the Persians seemingly had victory in their clutches, while the Greeks stared down the jaws of defeat. I hope that this examination of the aftermath of Thermopylae has given you a greater appreciation for the stakes of the upcoming clash at Salamis. We shall continue this saga in videos to come, but for now you can head on over to our Patreon to catch script previews, get HD downloads of all our art, and participate in polls. 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