07-22-2006, 02:08 AM
Quote:it showed how men who are citizens, and not subjects, can fightThis is the legend, of course. I like the legend, because I think that today, it needs to be stressed that failure can be honorable. Still, Herodotus' story remains a legend, a legend, and nothing but a legend. We don't know how many people were killed by the Spartans and we do not know why the Spartans did not leave the pass.
Like Hignett (Xerxes' Invasion of Greece), I think that when Hydarnes was moving down from the hill, Leonidas ordered a retreat, but that he was cut off before he, the Thespians, and the Thebans could make it to safety. What happened after the moment Leonidas' men were cut off, is just unknown, because there were no survivors. Herodotus' account of the final hour is a reconstruction, including the certainly invented detail that a fight was waged over the body of Leonidas, as if he were some sort of homeric hero. Hoplites didn't fight like that. What happened in that final hour remains the ultimate riddle.
I think the anti-Persian bias of Herodotus' account deserves some attention. Xerxes' men were at Trachis for a week, but still we have to believe that the Persian scouts (who had already found roads to circumvene Tempe) were incapable of discovering the paths through the mountains, and we are supposed to believe that a traitor was needed. (Herodotus himself mentions variant traditions.) As Herodotus presents the story, the Persians were poor warriors, Xerxes was effeminate (not controlling his emotions), the Spartans were unbeatable, so the fall of Thermopylae had to be the result of treason.
I think that we are closer to the historical facts if we assume that the Persians simply did what they had to do. There's no pass in the world that cannot be turned, and after a week, the Persian mounted scouts had discovered the detour.
However, Leonidas is like Gandhi: not the real man is important, but the legend. We like Gandhi as a symbol of peaceful resistance, and prefer to ignore his enthusiasm for the World Wars and his proposal to solve India's need for food by forcing the people to eat their excrements. Likewise, we prefer the legend of the courageous Leonidas, inspiring even in defeat, and we ignore that by putting only 1,000 Phocians on the Anopaea, he was defending the front door and leaving the rear door open.
The defeat at Thermopylae, as Julius Beloch pointed out in the nineteenth century, had the advantage that it liberated the Greeks from an incapable commander. That's the sad epitaph of the real Leonidas. Still, the legend, from Herodotus to Kavafis, remains a great and inspiring one.
