and ingratitude, than to live basely, a self-constituted object of suspicion, an exile in a hostile land, and the creature of a foreign tyrant, like Themistokles, the great, but alas! not good, Athenian. IV. PAUSANIAS, THE SPARTAN. HIS BATTLE OF PLATAIA; HIS CAMPAIGNS, CHARACTER, AND CONDUCT. Ir is not a little remarkable, that of the greatest Hellenic captains, several, and those not the least distinguished of the early times, were what the Greeks termed uovóuazot, or single fighters, not in the usual sense of single combatants or gladiators, but men distinguished for their conduct in a single battle. Of this class were Miltiades, Themistokles, Pausanias, the subject of the present notice, Kimon, and others scarcely inferior to these in celebrity. This great and fortunate leader was of the royal blood of Sparta, though not himself a king, being the son of Kleombrotos, and so descended directly from Hyllos, son of Herakles; but, as cousin german and next of kin to Pleistarchos, son of Leonides, who had succeeded to his father's dignity although a minor, he was appointed to be his guardian, and to command the confederate land forces, after the battle of Salamis and the flight of Xerxes. His colleague Leotychides, the other king of Lakedaimon, was absent with the fleet which he commanded, and which was now employed in liberating the Ionians of the islands and observing the Persian squadrons in the Hellespont and on the coasts of Asia Minor. We have seen above* that the battle of Thermopylai occurred during the celebration of the Karnean festival at Sparta, and the Olympic games at Elis-the coincidence of which shows that it took place in the beginning of the Athenian month Metageitnion, corresponding to the end of our August and the beginning of our September. The sea-fight of Salamis ensued in the October of the same year, and the flight of Xerxes with the main body of his host followed without an interval. Mardonios, however, was left behind with three hundred thousand picked troops, independent of camp-followers, composed of the Persian Immortals and horse-cuirassiers, all the Medes, Sakians, Bactrians, and Indians, both horse and foot, together with the best men of the other national contingents. These troops had all wintered in Makedonia and Thessaly, where all the Greeks had Medized, and where the fertile and extensive plains afforded grain for his men and forage for his numerous cavalry, which he could not have procured in the barren and limited territory of Attika, already devastated by the circumstances of the last campaign. Sixty thousand men, however, under Artabazos, having been detached as an escort to the king, had been employed during three months of the winter in the reduction of Potidaia and Pallene, which had revolted, had lost great numbers of their force by a violent and unexampled irruption of the sea, and had now rejoined Mardonios, greatly diminished in strength; though this loss was more than compensated by the alliance of the Medizing Gree! s Thessalians, Boiotians, and Phokians, the latter of whom fought reluctantly and on compulsion. These Hellenic allies are computed vaguely by Herodotus at fifty thousand, in round numbers, though he states that they were never enumerated; and he * Miltiades. farther estimates the Persians at full thirty myriads, which can, of course, be considered merely as an approximation, since that is the exact force said to have been originally left by Xerxes, without any allowance for the heavy losses of Artabazos, or the unavoidable casualties of so large a body of men encamped in a foreign country. The following campaign appears to have opened early by a descent on Attika, in force, made contrary to the advice of the Medizing Greeks, who strongly urged it on Mardonios to remain in a state of "masterly inactivity," trusting to the international jealousies and selfishness of the confederated Greeks, and to the influence of his bribery, for which he had unbounded means, in plate, coin, bullion, rich raiment, and the like; by which he might disperse the allied forces gathering at the Isthmus, and so reduce the enemy in detail. And such, it can hardly be doubted, would have been the result, had that sound advice been followed; but Mardonios, influenced partly by a puerile vanity, and partly by the desire of conveying to his king tidings of the reoccupation of Athens, by fire-signals through the islands, insisted on active operations; and, re-taking Attika, proceeded to destroy and lay waste all that had escaped the ravages of the preceding year. It is stated, by that enlightened traveller, Colonel Leake, to whose topographical researches I am largely indebted, that for the transmission of such fire-signals the following stations would. have sufficed Mount Hymettos, the isles of Tia, Syra, Myconos, Nicaria, and Samos, across the Aigean, and mounts Gallesos and Tmolus, in Asia Minor. It is not a little curious to contrast with this route, drawn up from actual survey by an intelligent and experienced geographer, the long line of fire telegraphs, described by Aischylos, in his Agamemnon,* over the same country, with *It need not be premised that in the poetic narrative of Aischylos, the line of route, instead of following down the shore of Asia Minor to the narrowest part of the Archipelago, where the islands lie the thickest, this exception only, that the one line runs from Troy to Argos, the other from Athens to Sardis; the starting places and terminations being respectively within a hundred miles one of the other. Previous, however, to entering Attika, Mardonios sent Alexander of Makedon to treat with the Athenians, in the hope of inducing them to Medize; and so greatly were the Peloponnesians, then engaged in fortifying the Isthmus, alarmed at the prospect of their defection, that they also sent ambassadors, to promise aid and confirm their resolution. But there was no occasion crosses directly to the European side, and descends the long indented coast of Thessaly and Upper Greece, the stations being so far apart, above sixty miles on the average, as to render the transmission of news by any ordinary system of lights impossible. The lines are, however, so spirited, and it seems so probable that the idea was suggested to Aischylos by this device of Mardonios, that I have not scrupled to introduce them here, from my own version of the noble tragedy named above. The Choreutes asks Klytaimnestra, what messenger could have conveyed to her, so speedily, the tidings of the fall of Troy, and she makes answer Hephaistos, forth from Ida sending light. Zeus' height of Athos did in turn receive The third great ball of flame. The vigorous glare Joy's harbinger to skim the ridgy sea, Up to Makistos' watch towers. Nothing loth |