The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [28]
Movies and legends ignore the reality of historical situations. Xerxes was dependent on his navy to supply his army and keep him safe from sea raiders. The navy Xerxes brought was huge, in keeping with the way mighty eastern monarchs of the day liked to do things. He was trying to show the small and disjoined Greek states they were powerless against him. The Athenians seemed to agree, since they abandoned their city and fled to nearby islands—but things are not always as they appear.
The Oracle at Delphi played a large role in Greek society. This famous Oracle had the ability, it seemed, to foresee events and give advice about them. The city of Athens sent emissaries to the Oracle asking what to do about the Persian invasion. The answer was mystifying (as usual), “You will be saved only by the wooden wall.” What was that supposed to mean?
Themistocles (another arduous Greek name), a brilliant Athenian commander, thought he knew—the wooden wall was ships. He lobbied for an expansion of the Athenian navy. After a lot of haggling, common in democracies to this day, it was agreed and Themistocles set about preparing for the unequal battle. As the Persian army advanced on vacant Athens and burned it, the new and larger Athenian navy was setting a trap. In a narrow straight between the island of Salamis and the mainland, the Greeks awaited the Persians. The Greeks, under the command of Themistocles, managed to sucker the Persians into attacking into the narrow straight, where the faster and easier-to-handle Greek triremes destroyed a large part of the Persian fleet.[29]
Salamis was THE victory of the Persian wars, more important than Thermopylae or the later victory at Plataea. Without his navy, Xerxes’ supply lines and lines of communication back to Persia were in danger of disruption by naval raids. Very large armies require very large amounts of supply, and cut supply lines were a grave danger to the Persian force. So, Xerxes quickly determined he had won the war. After all, he marched his army into the center of Greece, burned Athens, and beat up many other Greek city-states around the Aegean Sea. Athens, as the chief offender among Greek cities aiding the Ionian Revolt, and the victor at Marathon, was reduced to ashes and therefore suitably punished. Why wait around for the surrender of a bunch of individual cities?
Xerxes declared victory and went home with his huge army, but left a smaller army behind to hold the ground won. The next year, the Greeks assembled in concert against the reduced Persian army, smashing them at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC. The Persian defeat freed the Greeks from Persian tyranny, and the individual remained greater than the state.
After the Persians—The Peloponnesian War
The Greeks would celebrate their victory over the Persians for centuries to come, but unity and cooperation dissolved with Persia’s retreat. Soon after the Persian threat departed, Athens decided to build an empire and formed the Delian League. This league encompassed Greek cities around the Aegean, and involved trading partnerships and agreements for mutual defense. Athens was the three-hundred-pound gorilla in the organization, and it soon began to show. Athens raised taxes on their “partners” and generally started acting as if they owned the other city-states. Since Athens’ main rival was Sparta, some of the cities threatened to join with Sparta to escape from the “voluntary” league. Soon, Athens and Sparta were engaged in a long and especially brutal war for control of Greece and its many colonies.
The terrible Peloponnesian War was fought between 431 and 404 BC. Athens foresaw the war (well, they should have since they started it), and knew they could not defeat the Spartan Army in a straight up battle. To counter the Spartan Army, they constructed a walled corridor between Athens and their port of Piraeus (the long walls). When the Spartans invaded, the Athenians withdrew behind their walls and waited the Spartan Army out. The Spartans could not successfully storm the long walls; subsequently, the war degenerated