Plataea 479 BC - Greece's Bloodiest battle - 2nd Persian invasion

It’s the final day of the clash at Plataea.  Spartan regent Pausanias shelters beneath his shield, one of thousands of Spartiates  and Tegeans weathering the merciless storm of arrow volleys. As he rises in  desperate prayer to the goddess Hera, Pausanias sees that his Tegean allies are  moving forward.

“The omens are good,” a voice triumphantly assures the young general.  With a roar, this nephew of Leonides, orders his Spartan brothers to follow on, his  spear pointing menacingly at the distant figure of Mardonius astride his magnificent white steed. The  fight for free Greece was nearing its conclusion.

Following Salamis, the Greek fleet had  pursued the Persians as far as Andros, but – even though victorious – they were still  wary of meeting their foes in the open seas. The Persian fleet, though demoralised and damaged,  still sailed for Samos where it could guard the Ionian region against possible rebellion. Xerxes, meanwhile, having split his forces and headed towards the Hellespont with  the remainder, set a leisurely pace, making it there in forty-five days.

Accompanied  by Artabazus, the Great King found the boat bridge destroyed by a storm – nature doing what  he had feared the Greeks would following Salamis. Xerxes was able to cross into Asia Minor  via ship, leaving Artabazus to head back to rejoin Mardonius in Thessaly. Artabazus was,  however, delayed by rebellion.

Mercilessly crushing resistance at Olynthus, Artabazus  was unable to take the nearby city of Potidaea and decided to move on to winter quarters. The confidence of Mardonius in yet being able to secure Greece as a satrapy for his king, and  himself as its governor, was perhaps reflected in his sending of Alexander I, king of Macedon,  to the Athenians. Indeed, if their emissary could persuade this great foe to Medize then half  the Greek navy would switch sides, leaving the remaining Greek resistance in dire straits.

Reaching Athens, Alexander proposed tempting terms: firstly, Mardonius offered  the security the Athenians so craved, while also pledging to repair the damages done  the previous year. What’s more the Athenians could even add to their territory under the Great  King’s protection. The Athenians – perhaps still angry that no attempt had been made to confront  Xerxes in Attica months before – allowed word of this to spread south to the Spartans.

In response the Lacedaemonians urged their own ambassadors swiftly north. The  Athenians, delaying their response, awaited the Spartans – who heatedly urged them not  to trust the Persian leader – before delivering an unambiguous reply: “We trust in the gods  and heroes whose shrines he has violated, and we swear by the unchanging course of the  Sun that we will never make peace with Xerxes. ” Alexander was commanded not to repeat such an  offer, before the Athenians turned to their Spartan allies, assuring them that their  fears of their medizing were misplaced: “No amount of gold or land could persuade  us to join the Persians and enslave Greece.

We want vengeance for the destruction of our  temples, not a deal with their destroyer. . .

As long as one single Athenian survives,  there will never be peace with Xerxes! ” Brave words to be sure and much appreciated  by Sparta and their allies, however, the Athenian words were also sure to provoke a  deadly response. What Athens required now was for the Spartans to take to the field; all free Greece  would have to face down Mardonius if their proud words of defiance were not to be just that.

The Athenians moved into Boeotia and indeed Mardonius swept south, avoiding them and for  the second time in nine months the Persian army occupied and fired Athens. What had been  previously spared was reduced to ash, the temples reduced further too. In a grim instance of déjà  vu the Athenians had evacuated back to Salamis, certainly angered and demoralised.

Despite their earlier rejection, Mardonius sent another messenger with his  proposal. En route to Athens he had been advised by his Medized Greek allies to use gold to divide  his enemies. Possibly, in at least one case, this had had the desired effect.

Within the Council on  Salamis a man named Lycides declared himself open to considering the deal; however, his peers were  having none of it and in a brutal rejection of the Persian deal Lycides was stoned to death,  and his wife and children sadly suffered the same fate soon after at the hands of the women. With their fears of an Athenian betrayal soothed, the Spartans had perhaps relaxed in the  Peloponnese. The wall at the Isthmus afforded some protection against a landward approach  of the enemy; however, if their intention was simply to sit out the storm overtaking  Attica then the Athenians had other ideas.

Sending their own delegation to Sparta, led  among others by Xanthippus and perhaps Aristides, they hinted that if the Spartans did not rouse  themselves and march north that they would find some other way out of their predicament;  this seemed to be a not too subtle threat to carry out the previous year’s plan to permanently  evacuate the populace of Athens to southern Italy, which would effectively leave their  remaining allies vulnerable to conquest. Aside from this they also made clear that though  they had rejected them on two occasions now the terms offered by Mardonius were still very  attractive. The Spartans for their part perhaps cited their commitment to the festival  of Hyacinthia that was on-going and the continued work to add to the defences at the Isthmus. 

The Spartan Ephors delayed a firm response for ten days, tempers simmering towards the boil. This deadlock was apparently broken when Chileus of Tegea, a day before the last audience with  the Athenians, pointed out the fact that the wall would not protect them from the Persians  without the Athenian contribution to the fleet. The Persians, with dominance at sea, could simply  land wherever they wished in the Peloponnese.

This moved the Ephors to finally mobilise  five thousand Spartan citizens, accompanied by around thirty-five thousand helots. Later on, the Athenians attended their final audience, bitterly condemning the lack of  Spartan action, before being cooly informed that the city’s army had already departed and  was heading north as they spoke. Perhaps relieved (if a bit miffed at this deception) the  Athenian ambassadors also left the city in the company of a further five thousand perioikoi.

Despite the secrecy of his enemy’s mobilisation, however, Mardonius was swiftly informed  by a runner sent from Argos and, cognisant of the unsuitability of Attica for  his cavalry, the Persian general withdrew northwards towards Thebes. This would gift him  the ground he desired, while also ensuring that a friendly Medized city lay at his rear. En route Mardonius learned that an advanced guard of a thousand Lacedaemonians  were at Megara and reoriented his army towards it.

His cavalry forces went ahead  overrunning the outskirts of the city, however, upon learning that the main body of the enemy were  still at the Isthmus and, perhaps suspicious he was being drawn into a battle on unfavourable  terrain, he resumed his march towards Thebes. The Persians marched into Boeotia through Tanagra  and then moved along the river Asopus. Mardonius set his men to the work of clearing the general  area of trees and obstacles.

This was for the ends of further making this ground amenable to cavalry  movements whilst also utilising the gathered wood to construct the palisade of a fortified camp that  could house some sixty to seventy thousand men, including his cavalry. The army itself was  deployed along a roughly eight-kilometre front, stretching from Skolos (opposite  Erythrae) to a position opposite Plataea. Meanwhile, the free Greeks were no less  restless.

Moving from the Isthmus to Eleusis, the Spartan-led Peloponnesian army merged  with the Athenians. It was here too that all the soldiers of the Greek allied army  swore the so-called ‘Oath of Plataea. ’ Their oaths sworn and certainly their  spirits lifted the Greeks, under the supreme command of Spartan regent Pausanias,  entered into Boeotia over Mount Cithaeron; however, perfectly aware that the flatter,  open ground closer to Mardonius’s position favoured their foes, they kept their camps  close to the higher ground at their backs.

Meanwhile at sea, a much-reduced allied fleet had  reassembled at Aegina under the command of the Eurypontid Spartan king. They sailed to Delos,  anchoring there to intercept any Persian fleet wishing to ravage the Greek coastline while the  focus was at Plataea. As for the Persian fleet, it was content to remain near Samos, certainly  retaining the numbers advantage since Salamis but their morale remaining shattered.

Having deployed in their own rough line parallel to their enemies, from Erythrae  in the east to beyond Hysiae in the west, Mardonius had made no attempt to disrupt this, the  foothills presenting an unappealing prospect for his cavalry. The Spartans naturally positioned  themselves in the place of honour to the right. They were led by the young Pausanias, regent of  Sparta in the name of Pleistarchus – successor to Leonidas.

Pausanias was a man in his early  twenties, though his inexperience was offset with the appointment of another of Leonidas’  nephews Euryanax as his senior advisor. The left as the second-place of honour  was taken up by Athens, with the rest of the allies occupying the centre positions. At  Plataea the Athenian command fell to Aristides, who had also fought at Salamis.

Uniquely in  the army, the Athenians fielded a significant number of archers that would prove useful in the  coming days, and ‘days’ it most certainly was. With both sides unwilling to surrender  the advantages of their respective ground, it was Mardonius who broke the impasse by  ordering his cavalry to assault the Greek lines. Mardonius may have wished to soften  up the enemy ranks or perhaps provoke a bold response that he could then exploit if the Greeks  moved off of their perches on the higher ground.

The Persian cavalry attacked in squadrons, under  the leadership of a certain Masistius. Tall and handsome, the Persian commander glittered  in his golden-scale armour, his purple tunic no doubt whipping in the wind as he led his  similarly spectacular steed against the Greeks. Unfortunately for the three thousand Megarians  these charges were particularly effective, given they occupied a position opposite  flatter more accessible terrain that allowed Masistius to concentrate his  charges.

Riding to within range before unleashing their storms of arrow volleys  and javelins, the Megarians could do little to ward off the attackers, who  shouted that the Greeks were women. Hard-pressed, the Megarians sent word to the  commanders requesting aid, declaring that they would retreat if not assisted. Only the Athenians  nearby assented to send aid: marching to their position were an elite unit of three hundred  hoplites, perhaps Aristides’ own bodyguard and comparable to the three hundred at Thermopylae;  with them also marched several hundred archers.

Their arrival soon stabilised the situation,  with the Athenian archers able to retaliate in kind. Indeed one such arrow even turned  the tide. Masistius’ horse was struck, the beast rearing up in pain and throwing its  master.

Then the Greeks were on him. Initially, their blows had little effect, the Persian  officer’s armour serving him well, however, his luck quickly ended with a sharp stab to the eye. The Persians were initially ignorant of their commander’s demise, but when the reality dawned  on them they attacked the position en masse desperate to recover Masistius’ corpse.

Having  also called on infantry support, their efforts were in vain as further Greek support beat back  the assault. Thoroughly impressed by the stature of their grisly trophy, the Greeks paraded the  body along the lines in a cart, whilst opposite the Persians mourned their fallen leader. With this triumph under their collective belts, Pausanias was confident in ordering the army  forward to a more vulnerable position closer to the river.

This would, however, grant  the Greeks access to a more plentiful water supply courtesy of the Gargaphia Spring. As for Mardonius, it’s likely he welcomed the change, as the movement into more  open ground suited him and his cavalry, while it could also only increase the Greek  lines of supply. In any case any large-scale attack may have been ineffective given his cavalry  needed to rest from their previous engagement.

Meanwhile, it seems a conflict of sorts had broken  out within the Greek army itself. The Spartans had taken their customary place on the right as usual  but now the Athenian position on the far left was disputed. The Tegeans also claimed it, citing  their place as Sparta’s oldest ally.

The Athenians though were having none of it and after citing  a number of legendary deeds and finishing by pointing out that they had stood alone against the  Persians at Marathon, they were left in possession of the left. The Tegeans it would turn out,  would play a decisive role in the action on the right alongside their Spartan allies. As is normal before ancient battles, each individual commander ordered sacrifices to be  carried out to presage the outcome.

Interestingly, both sides predicted that they would be  victorious in a defensive action, while only defeat awaited the army that attacked. After a week-long stand-off, it was the Persian commander who flinched first. In a night-time  attack, Mardonius ordered his cavalry to move to the base of the pass through Cithaeron and  here they fell upon a Greek supply column.

After pacifying the column, they then herded the  surviving animals towards their own lines. This set-back could only have shaken the  Greeks. It demonstrated that Mardonius could have similarly flanked or repositioned  some or significant numbers of his men behind their lines.

Mardonius and his army must have been  assured by this small success that went some way to answering for Masistius; however, if so, it was  still two more days until he would finally act. Artabazus urged Mardonius to move the army into  Thebes, and use Persian gold to undermine Greek unity; however, all recent experience suggested  this would fail and it was doubtful Thebes could even accommodate their vast army anyway.  Instead, Mardonius settled on an attack at dawn.

Herodotus now informs us that with their  minds set, Alexander of Macedon rode out to the Athenians to warn them of the  impending attack at first light. Likely to their relief too they learned that the  Persian supplies were also dwindling and that even if Mardonius calls it off they should  wait as an attack must come before too long. That the Spartans and Athenians swapped  positions at this stage is unlikely.

Such a blatant manoeuvre of thousands of men  would be clear as day and any competent general would not flinch at exploiting it,  even in the evening. However, if indeed true, Mardonius used the shuffling about  of wings in both armies to taunt the Spartans for being unwilling to face the Medes. A similar act of bravado came with a final offer that the two armies should settle this in a  smaller-scale fight between their best men, a contest reminiscent of the ‘Battle of  the Champions’ fought between Sparta and Argos in the sixth century.

This offer  was met with stony Spartan silence. Later in the afternoon Mardonius finally  ordered his cavalry to charge. Deadly and nimble as always, the javelin and arrow  volleys shredded the Greek lines once more; with their foes frustratingly out of reach for  hand-to-hand combat, Pausanias was forced to order a withdrawal; in the process, the Persians  managed to capture and foul the Gargaphia Spring.

The situation for the Greeks was therefore dire.  Mardonius had successfully driven them back from their chief water source, with the river itself  also out of reach. Worse still, the cavalry had also cut off their line of supply to their rear,  not to mention that the Greek army’s occupation of the same ground for days had inevitably had  its own horrid consequences in terms of hygiene.

In another council, Pausanias decided on  re-deployment to the south-west around an area called ‘the island’ – the land wedged between  two channels of the River Oeroe. This would prove easier said than done, however. Things began to go  wrong when the Allied centre ignored Pausanias by moving further than ordered.

They came to rest  just outside the city of Plataea itself, while back on the right Pausanias had a more immediate  issue with insubordination to deal with. Amompharetus, son of Poliades, refused Pausanias’  command to re-deploy. Perhaps taken aback by the instructions given he had not been at the council  that decided the move, Amompharetus stubbornly refused to ‘run away’ from the strangers.

The  row continued, with the disobedient divisional commander even picking up a large rock and  throwing it at his young commander’s feet, declaring that with ‘pebble’ he voted to  remain and fight the enemy where they were. A bit miffed (if not suspicious) at the Spartans’  lack of movement, the Athenian-led left-wing had sent a rider to find out what was happening.  The left was ordered to link up with the right and follow its lead.

By daybreak, however, this almost  comical (if dangerous) impasse was only broken with Pausanias finally overcoming his reluctance  to potentially sacrifice this division by moving the rest of the right-wing back regardless. Amompharetus’ bluff had been called and perhaps with much cursing he did begrudgingly obey  orders and moved off soon after. Though moving at a slower pace, the almost-renegade  division luckily rejoined the right-wing just in time.

Having spied the empty land ahead of him,  Mardonius’s cavalry had thundered out, only to engage just as Amompharetus reached his comrades. Mardonius, seeing his supposedly-legendary enemy withdrawing, assumed this was the beginning of  a full retreat and, contrary to earlier omens advising against an attack across the Asopus, he  ordered a general attack. This was certainly no orderly advance, however.

Perhaps long days  of frustrating wait had taken its toll, the disorganised Persian foot simply eager to finally  get to grips with their fleeing foes and avenge the wrongs done to them and their Great King. At the contact with the enemy cavalry, Pausanias had sent word for Athenian support. Though  obliging at first, the left-wing had troubles of their own.

On moving to join the right, the  medized Greeks of Mardonius’s army, having spied this, crossed the river and attacked. The Thebans and other Boeotians fought ferociously on even terms as though Herodotus’s  description is brief, it indicates the matter was no walk over for the allied left. The Thebans  even lost all of their three hundred best men, though despite their undoubted commitment, it  was the Boeotian lines that broke first, and the survivors fled northwards back towards Thebes.

Meanwhile around the same time, the Spartans and Tegeans stood alone against the bulk of  Mardonius’s forces. The relief at the short cessation of the cavalry’s arrow storms was  swiftly broken with the arriving infantry and their heavier and sustained bombardment. Felling  many Greeks from behind their wall of shields, the Persians may have felt their  time for victory had finally dawned.

Pausanias, though hard-pressed was even then  reluctant to commit to a full-on fight. The omens were still unfavourable. Yet as he rose  desperately to face towards the temple of Hera in Plataea, the better to beg the goddess not  to thwart their hopes, the Tegeans stood up and charged towards the enemy.

It was at  the same instant that the omens finally favoured the Spartans, and they followed suit. Smashing through the Persian shield wall, both Spartans and Tegeans were aided in their efforts  by the newly-arriving enemy infantry pressing in at the rear of their immediate foes, negating the  usual mobility afforded to such lighter troops. Though disorganised in their charge, the Persian  infantry still fought well, the Spartans bloodily beating a path onwards.

During the fighting,  one Aristodemus redeemed himself in the eyes of Herodotus. Having been excused from the fighting  at the battle of Thermopylae due to an eye injury, he had returned to Sparta in disgrace; however,  breaking ranks and charging the Persians alone he ultimately shared the same fate as his fallen  brothers and king at Thermopylae, dying for Hellas and for Sparta. Though Herodotus credited Aristodemus as having fought the most ferociously,  the Spartans themselves honoured Posidonius as he has fought to the death while wishing to  live, as had the obstinate Amompharetus.

Under assault from the combined strength of the  Persians, Medes, Bactrians, Indians and Sacae, the Spartan and Tegean warriors stood their  ground, even as their assailants snatched away their spears and broke them. Unsheathing  their swords to contend with the enemy akinakes it was the invading army who broke first. Like Masistius before him, Mardonius was all too conspicuous on his own splendid white  charger.

In the thick of the action, it seems his thousand-strong bodyguard of the Empire’s  greatest warriors could not shield him from the wrath of Aeimnestus of Sparta who felled the  Persian commander using a rock to crush his skull. This was the moment of turning, though the  Persian withdrawal was hardly a disorderly rout. Thousands of surviving warriors under  the direction of Artabazus made it to the initial safety of the Persian camp. 

It’s likely the Persian cavalry did much to screen this withdrawal as we know that the  Greek medized cavalry did violently check the disorganised advance of the as-yet uninvolved  Greek centre when they caught word of the victory on the right and set off to pursue. This set-back cost several hundred lives, as elements of the advancing centre  were cutdown by the Theban horse, with the survivors pushed back to Cithaeron. That the Persian defeat south of the Asopus was not a wild undisciplined rout is also evidenced by  the fact that now tens of thousands of surviving Persians were holed up in their camp and even  had time to man the towers and strengthen their palisade with their shields.

This was all  for nothing though as though the Spartans thought twice about assaulting the place,  they being unaccustomed to siege warfare, the Tegeans and the Athenians had no such qualms. The Tegeans were the first to breach the place and with the Athenians following it was then that the  Greeks encountered the uncontrollable terror of the hemmed-in survivors. Once the massacre had  ebbed, the invading army was left with heavy losses, though the fanciful figures of Herodotus,  who states that merely three thousand survived the battle, is probably just that.

The Greeks remained at the battle site for a few days, honouring their best fighters, burying  their dead and distributing the spoils. Thebes did not escape retribution for their support for  the enemy. The avenging Free Greek army ravaged the area around the city that had already been  denuded by the invaders and then besieged Thebes itself for around three weeks.

After finally  agreeing to hand over the pro-Persian leaders the victorious Greek army finally disbanded. Meanwhile, around the same time Plataea had been fought the Greek fleet had sailed to Samos  to confront the Persians there. Avoiding a sea battle, the Persian forces barricaded themselves  behind fortifications on Mount Mycale under the leadership of Tigranes with his land force.

In  a similar fashion to the conclusion of Plataea, however, these men too were overcome. Following Mycale and having sailed back to Samos, the allied fleet decided to sail to the  Hellespont, only to discover Xerxes’ bridge had already been destroyed. With the Spartan-led  Peloponnesian contingent heading back home, this left Xanthippus and the Athenians  to continue operations in the region.

With these two victories and the death of  Greece’s would-be governor the threat to Hellas was removed once and for all, while growing  tensions in the Greek world would inevitably focus Athenian and Spartan minds inwards  and on each other in the run-up to another epic conflict of history: the Peloponnesian  war; but that is a story for another time.