The First Clash (22 page)

The Persians were certainly aware of these Greek conflicts, and they were quick to employ their established diplomatic practice of playing potential foes off against one another during the run-up to war. In fact, Aegina was to offer earth and water and become a Persian ally in the year before the Battle of Marathon, and Argos (along with Thebes) Medized during the Persian invasion of 480 BC. As both Athens and Sparta understood the magnitude of the Persian forces that would march on Greece as soon as they had subdued Ionia, it was imperative for them to put their own houses in order. The odds of defeating the Persian Empire already appeared slim, but they would be much worse if the Spartan and Athenian hoplites also had to worry about being stabbed in the back by another Greek city. They needed to clear the decks before the Persian onslaught. It was at this point that Sparta made its great contribution to Greek independence.
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It had been fifty years since the Spartans and Argives had fought the Battle of the 300 Champions, which had led to a general engagement of both cities’ main armies. This had resulted in the breaking of Argos as a military power and the ceding of Thyrea to Sparta. Argos had spent the intervening five decades restoring its military power, and by 494 BC it felt ready once again to contest Sparta for supremacy of the Peloponnesus. In keeping with Spartan tradition and piety, Cleomenes consulted the oracle at Delphi on the advisability of attacking Argos. For once, the notoriously ambiguous oracle was the model of clarity: Cleomenes would defeat Argos.
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In 494 BC, Cleomenes once again led the Spartan army out on campaign.
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This time, there was no call for the Peloponnesian allies to come to Sparta’s aid. Sparta would deal with this affair on its own. Cleomenes led the army to the banks of the Erasinos River, approximately three miles south of Argos, where he found the Argive hoplites massed, prepared to contest his crossing. Cleomenes ordered a sacrifice and the omens read. However, these were not found favorable, and Cleomenes was informed
that the river would not care to be crossed at present. To this he responded, “How patriotic of it.”
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Although he was reluctant to test the omen and tempt the fates, he was not ready to give up the campaign. In fact, Cleomenes appears to have been prepared to find the direct route to Argos barred to him. As the Argives, sheltering behind the Erasinos, had no knowledge of these bad omens, they remained at their posts as Cleomenes marched his army away from the Erasinos to the coast of Thyrea. Here, Aeginetan and Sicyonian vessels waited to ferry the Spartans across the gulf to Nauplia and into the rear of the Argive army. That the Spartans had massed these ships exactly where Cleomenes needed them indicates that this was a well-thought-out campaign many months or years in the planning. It also demonstrates that the march to the Erasinos may have been a feint, designed to draw the Argives away from the true direction of the Spartan attack. In this case, one may infer that Cleomenes might well have paid for the omens he desired, although that would go against what we know of Spartan piety.

When news of the Spartan landing reached the Argives, they force marched to Tiryns and deployed at Sepeia. For several days, the armies watched each other without engaging, until Cleomenes noticed the Argives had entered into a routine he could exploit. Day after day, both armies stood to arms from daybreak until the noon meal (there was no breakfast). Cleomenes noted that the Argives soon began mimicking his army and were using Spartan bugle calls to alert them when the Spartan army was about to break for the day. When Spartan bugles called for assembly, the Argives assembled and stood to, and when the bugles announced dinner, the Argives broke ranks and ate, just as the Spartans were doing. On the appointed day, Cleomenes had the bugles blow assembly as usual. All day, both armies baked in the hot sun as gleaming ranks faced each other. When the appointed hour arrived, the Spartan bugles made the meal call. Both armies began to break up and go to eat. But without warning or any signal, the Spartans hastily re-formed and advanced. Caught unprepared, the Argives could not reassemble their phalanx and were crushed.

Plutarch presents a different version. According to him, the Argives had asked for and received a seven-day armistice, but on the third night of that truce, the Spartans attacked. When someone later reproached Cleomenes for this violation of an oath, he said that he had made a truce for days but had said nothing about nights.
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In this same passage, when asked why he
had not slaughtered all the people of Argos, Cleomenes replied, “Oh, we will not kill them off, for we want to have some left for our young men to train on.”
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The Argive survivors retreated into the sacred Grove of Argos, where the pious Spartans refused to follow. Instead, they blockaded the grove, and at length Cleomenes inquired of several deserters the names of some of the Argives huddled in the forest. He then had heralds call into the forest the names of these men, informing them that their ransom had been paid and they were free to go. As each emerged, the Spartans murdered him. Approximately fifty Argives met this gruesome end before the Argives discovered what was happening and refused to emerge from the forest. At his wits’ end, Cleomenes ordered helots traveling with the army to pile brush around the grove and set it afire. In this way, any guilt (and accompanying curses) for the sacrilege of burning down a sacred grove would fall on the helots, not on the Spartans. When the hideous deed was done, some six thousand Argive hoplites had perished in the battle and fire. Sparta had broken Argive power. The city would not assert itself again for over a generation.

Sparta was now undisputed master of the Peloponnesus and the dominant military power in Greece. In acknowledgment of this fact, Athens in 491 BC sent envoys to Sparta to request help with their problems with Aegina.
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By this time, Aegina was a member of the Peloponnesian League, as evidenced by its contribution of ships to assist Cleomenes’ end run around the Argive army. However, it was also a trading city, with substantial interests along the coasts of the Persian Empire. Thus, when Darius’s heralds arrived in the wake of the Ionian revolt’s collapse, demanding earth and water, Aegina submitted. By now, the Athenians had become convinced that Mardonius’s march through Thrace, in the wake of Ionia’s defeat, was a prelude to a Persian descent on Greece. Even though that expedition had met with disaster off Mount Athos, the Athenians were acutely aware that Persia was already constructing a fleet and assembling an army in Ionia aimed directly at them. As far as they could see, Aegina’s submission meant the Aeginetans planned to stab them (and Greece) in the back as they confronted the Persian foe. Even the Spartans became worried about Aegina’s intentions, and Cleomenes decided it needed to be coerced back into line.

On his own (probably with his elite bodyguard), he went to Aegina and demanded hostages to ensure its good conduct. However, his co-king, Demaratus, once again wrecked his plans. He sent a message to Aegina’s
leader, Krios, that he did not support Cleomenes’ action. Here we are left to wonder whether Demaratus hated Cleomenes so much that he would oppose any policy his co-king offered. Assuming he was a loyal Spartan, the only other explanation is that he believed Sparta could not stand against Persia’s might.
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Whatever his reasons, he succeeded in pulling the rug out from under Cleomenes. Krios asked if he had the full support of the other Spartans or if he was acting in this fashion because Athens had bribed him with silver. Lacking support at home and with few troops, Cleomenes gave up. But before leaving, he told Krios (which means “ram”), in a play on his name, “to gild his horns and enjoy his moment.” In religious rites, the Greeks gilded a sacrificial ram’s horns just prior to leading the animal to slaughter. Humiliated once again through the actions of Demaratus, Cleomenes returned to Sparta in a rage, determined to have Demaratus deposed.

When Demaratus was born, his father, Ariston, was told of the birth while meeting with the ephors. After counting out the months of his marriage on his fingers, he swore an oath: “He could not be my son.” Later he decided the birth had been premature, but the seeds of doubt were planted. Now, Cleomenes used that doubt to claim Demaratus was not a rightful king. In this he received the assistance of Leotychidas, who was next in line for the throne and had other reasons to detest Demaratus.
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At trial, Leotychidas both prosecuted the case and swore an oath that Demaratus was not the true son of Ariston. When the trial ended, the Spartans remained undecided. At Cleomenes’ suggestion, they sent emissaries to consult the oracle at Delphi. Here, Cleomenes had already prepared the ground, so he was not surprised when the oracle proclaimed that Demaratus was not the son of Ariston. With that, the Spartans deposed Demaratus. Soon thereafter, after suffering intolerable taunts from Leotychidas, Demaratus left Sparta and took up residence in the Persian court. When he is next heard from, he is accompanying Xerxes as an adviser during the invasion of 480 BC.
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Cleomenes wasted no time returning to Aegina, this time with Leotychidas alongside him. Standing up to Sparta when it was of two minds on a matter was one thing. It was quite different to consider making a stand when confronted by the unified will of both kings. With no opposition, Cleomenes seized Krios and nine other Aeginetan leaders as hostages. However, he did not bring them back to Sparta. Instead, he turned them over to their mortal enemy Athens. Herodotus tells us that when Cleomenes returned to Sparta, the Spartan assembly discovered that he
had bribed the oracle as part of his plan to depose Demaratus. Fearing punishment, Cleomenes withdrew from Sparta and went to Arcadia, where he began to stir up a revolt against Sparta. Since we do not know anything more than this fact, we may deduce that his likely intent was to raise a force sufficiently large to cause the Spartans to invite him back to resume his position rather than risk a major revolt of the helots. So when word came that Sparta wanted him to return, he must have thought his plan had succeeded. Once he arrived, however, the Spartans seized him and placed him in stocks, where he later committed suicide or was murdered. Herodotus tells us that the Spartans locked him up because he had gone insane from drinking too much unadulterated wine, whereupon he threatened a helot standing nearby until the panicked man gave him a knife, with which he mutilated himself. Whatever the cause of Cleomenes’ death, it was an inglorious end for the man who made Sparta the greatest power in Greece.
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Soon after hearing of Cleomenes’ death, Aegina sent a delegation to Sparta to denounce Leotychidas for turning over their leading citizens to the hated Athenians, despite the fact that Aegina was a member in good standing of the Peloponnesian League. Leotychidas, who was already under severe criticism for having gained the throne through deceitful methods, was put on trial. The Spartans found that Leotychidas did indeed inflict a grievous insult upon the Aeginetans and decided to hand him over to them for punishment. As the Aeginetans led their captive away, a Spartan of some distinction, Theasides, arose and said: “What are you planning to do, Aeginetans? Will you really seize the king of the Spartans now being surrendered by his own citizens? Even if the Spartans made this decision in anger, you, if you do this, will have to worry that they will later repent it and invade and utterly destroy your land.”
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Upon further reconsideration, the Aeginetans thought better of punishing a Spartan king and asked Leotychidas to go with them to Athens to plead for the release of the hostages.

When the Athenians refused to release the hostages, the Aeginetans retaliated by seizing a sacred vessel carrying many important Athenians returning from a religious festival. This led to a renewed round of warfare between Aegina and Athens on the very eve of the Persian invasion. As the war went against Aegina, they sent to Argos for help. After losing three-quarters of its hoplites at the Battle of Sepeia, Argos had little to offer. It did, however, allow volunteers to go to Aegina, and one thousand men went. Herodotus tells us that few of them ever returned, as they were
killed by the Athenians in a great battle on Aegina. Besides recording some inconsequential fighting at sea, Herodotus tells nothing of this last phase of the war with Aegina, in favor of his starting the story of the Marathon campaign.
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What are we to make of this? For one thing, we know the Athenians invaded Aegina and won a battle decisively enough to kill most of the thousand Argives present, which would indicate that the Aeginetans must have suffered great losses as well. As the Athenians referred to this stage of the conflict as the “War of Reprisal,” we have some indication of how incensed they were over the Aeginetans’ attack on their religious leaders. It also provides some insight into the frame of mind of the hoplites who landed on Aegina. One can assume that the Athenians freed the hostages seized by the Aeginetans, while continuing to hold on to their own hostages.

We are also presented further proof, if more is required, that the Athenians who fought at Marathon were much more than simple farmers. And once again we see the hand of a supremely talented military commander at the tiller. With virtually no notice, someone (one can assume it is Callimachus) organized a large amphibious expedition, invaded a well-defended island, defeated a reinforced Aeginetan army, and returned in time to prepare to meet the Persians. As for the quality of the veteran Athenian hoplites, they appear to have had no trouble crushing the Aeginetan army in short order.

While Athens was embroiled in the war with Aegina, Miltiades returned home from the Chersonese. Despite the likelihood that Miltiades’ reputation as the general who led Athens to victory at Marathon was a result of later propaganda, there is no denying that he figures prominently in every account of the battle from Herodotus to the present. It is therefore advantageous to relate some of the details of Miltiades’ remarkable career. His uncle Miltiades the Elder had been sent to the Chersonese by Pisistratus to rule as a tyrant and protect Athenian interests in that strategic location. Miltiades the Elder was succeeded by his stepbrother Cimon’s son Stesagoras. Miltiades the Younger (of Marathon fame) in turn replaced Stesagoras.