Xerxes by Jacob Abbott (good books for 7th graders TXT) π
One chief source of his solicitude was lest he should be detected by means of his ears! Some years before, when he was in a comparatively obscure position, he had in some way or other offended his sovereign, and was punished by having his ears cut off. It was necessary, therefore, to keep the marks of this mutilation carefully concealed by means of his hair and his head-dress, and even with these precautions he could never feel perfectly secure.
At last one of the nobles of the court, a sagacious and observing man, suspected the imposture. He had no access to Smerdis himself, but his daughter, whose name was Phædyma, was one of Smerdis's wives. The nobleman was excluded from all direct intercour
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The city of Athens.
The Athenians were a totally different people. The leading classes in their commonwealth were cultivated, intellectual, and refined. The city of Athens was renowned for the splendor of its architecture, its temples, its citadels, its statues, and its various public institutions, which in subsequent times made it the great intellectual center of Europe. It was populous and wealthy. It had a great commerce and a powerful fleet. The Spartan character, in a word, was stern, gloomy, indomitable, and wholly unadorned. The Athenians were rich, intellectual, and refined. The two nations were nearly equal in power, and were engaged in a perpetual and incessant rivalry.
Earth and water.
Spirit of the Spartans.
There were various other states and cities in Greece, but Athens and Sparta were at this time the most considerable, and they were altogether the most resolute and determined in their refusal to submit to the Persian sway. In fact, so well known and understood was the spirit of defiance with which these two powers were disposed to regard the Persian invasion, that when Xerxes sent his summons demanding submission, to the other states of Greece, he did not send any to these. When Darius invaded Greece some years before, he had summoned Athens and Sparta as well as the others, but his demands were indignantly rejected. It seems that the custom was for a government or a prince, when acknowledging the dominion of a superior power, to send, as a token of territorial submission, a little earth and water, which was a sort of legal form of giving up possession of their country to the sovereign who claimed it. Accordingly, when Darius sent his embassadors into Greece to summon the country to surrender, the embassadors, according to the usual form, called upon the governments of the several states to send earth and water to the king. The Athenians, as has been already said, indignantly refused to comply with this demand. The Spartans, not content with a simple refusal, seized the embassadors and threw them into a well, telling them, as they went down, that if they wanted earth and water for the King of Persia, they might get it there.
The Greeks had obtained some information of Xerxes's designs against them before they received his summons. The first intelligence was communicated to the Spartans by Demaratus himself, while he was at Susa, in the following singular manner. It was the custom, in those days, to write with a steel point on a smooth surface of wax. The wax was spread for this purpose on a board or tablet of metal, in a very thin stratum, forming a ground upon which the letters traced with the point were easily legible. Demaratus took two writing-tablets such as these, and removing the wax from them, he wrote a brief account of the proposed Persian invasion, by tracing the characters upon the surface of the wood or metal itself, beneath; then, restoring the wax so as to conceal the letters, he sent the two tablets, seemingly blank, to Leonidas, king of Sparta. The messengers who bore them had other pretexts for their journey, and they had various other articles to carry. The Persian guards who stopped and examined the messengers from time to time along the route, thought nothing of the blank tablets, and so they reached Leonidas in safety.
His wife discovers the writing on the tablets.
Leonidas being a blunt, rough soldier, and not much accustomed to cunning contrivances himself, was not usually much upon the watch for them from others, and when he saw no obvious communication upon the tablets, he threw them aside, not knowing what the sending of them could mean, and not feeling any strong interest in ascertaining. His wife, howeverβher name was Gorgoβhad more curiosity. There was something mysterious about the affair, and she wished to solve it. She examined the tablets attentively in every part, and at length removed cautiously a little of the wax. The letters began to appear. Full of excitement and pleasure, she proceeded with the work until the whole cereous coating was removed. The result was, that the communication was revealed, and Greece received the warning.
When the Greeks heard that Xerxes was at Sardis, they sent three messengers in disguise, to ascertain the facts in respect to the Persian army assembled there, and, so far as possible, to learn the plans and designs of the king. Notwithstanding all the efforts of these men to preserve their concealment and disguise, they were discovered, seized, and tortured by the Persian officer who took them, until they confessed that they were spies. The officer was about to put them to death, when Xerxes himself received information of the circumstances. He forbade the execution, and directed, on the other hand, that the men should be conducted through all his encampments, and be allowed to view and examine every thing. He then dismissed them, with orders to return to Greece and report what they had seen. He thought, he said, that the Greeks would be more likely to surrender if they knew how immense his preparations were for effectually vanquishing them if they attempted resistance.
The Greeks consult the Delphic oracle.
The responses.
The city of Athens, being farther north than Sparta, would be the one first exposed to danger from the invasion, and when the people heard of Xerxes's approach, the whole city was filled with anxiety and alarm. Some of the inhabitants were panic-stricken, and wished to submit; others were enraged, and uttered nothing but threats and defiance. A thousand different plans of defense were proposed and eagerly discussed. At length the government sent messengers to the oracle at Delphi, to learn what their destiny was to be, and to obtain, if possible, divine direction in respect to the best mode of averting the danger. The messengers received an awful response, portending, in wild and solemn, though dark and mysterious language, the most dreadful calamities to the ill-fated city. The messengers were filled with alarm at hearing this reply. One of the inhabitants of Delphi, the city in which the oracle was situated, proposed to them to make a second application, in the character of the most humble supplicants, and to implore that the oracle would give them some directions in respect to the best course for them to pursue in order to avoid, or, at least, to mitigate the impending danger. They did so, and after a time they received an answer, vague, mysterious, and almost unintelligible, but which seemed to denote that the safety of the city was connected in some manner with Salamis, and with certain "wooden walls," to which the inspired distich of the response obscurely alluded.
The messengers returned to Athens and reported the answer which they had received. The people were puzzled and perplexed in their attempts to understand it. It seems that the citadel of Athens had been formerly surrounded by a wooden palisade. Some thought that this was what was referred to by the "wooden walls," and that the meaning of the oracle was that they must rebuild the palisade, and then retreat to the citadel when the Persians should approach, and defend themselves there.
Others conceived that the phrase referred to ships, and that the oracle meant to direct them to meet their enemies with a fleet upon the sea. Salamis, which was also mentioned by the oracle, was an island not far from Athens, being west of the city, between it and the Isthmus of Corinth. Those who supposed that by the "wooden walls" was denoted the fleet, thought that Salamis might have been alluded to as the place near which the great naval battle was to be fought. This was the interpretation which seemed finally to prevail.
The Athenians had a fleet of about two hundred galleys. These vessels had been purchased and built, some time before this, for the Athenian government, through the influence of a certain public officer of high rank and influence, named Themistocles. It seems that a large sum had accumulated in the public treasury, the produce of certain mines belonging to the city, and a proposal was made to divide it among the citizens, which would have given a small sum to each man. Themistocles opposed this proposition, and urged instead that the government should build and equip a fleet with the money. This plan was finally adopted. The fleet was built, and it was now determined to call it into active service to meet and repel the Persians, though the naval armament of Xerxes was six times as large.
Council of Spartans and Athenians.
The next measure was to establish a confederation, if possible, of the Grecian states, or at least of all those who were willing to combine, and thus to form an allied army to resist the invader. The smaller states were very generally panic-stricken, and had either already signified their submission to the Persian rule, or were timidly hesitating, in doubt whether it would be safer for them to submit to the overwhelming force which was advancing against them, or to join the Athenians and the Spartans in their almost desperate attempts to resist it. The Athenians and Spartans settled, for the time, their own quarrels, and held a council to take the necessary measures for forming a more extended confederation.
All this took place while Xerxes was slowly advancing from Sardis to the Hellespont, and from the Hellespont to Doriscus, as described in the preceding chapter.
The council resolved on dispatching an embassy at once to all the states of Greece, as well as to some of the remoter neighboring powers, asking them to join the alliance.
The first Greek city to which these embassadors came was Argos, which was the capital of a kingdom or state lying between Athens and Sparta, though within the Peloponnesus. The states of Argos and of Sparta, being neighbors, had been constantly at war. Argos had recently lost six thousand men in a battle with the Spartans, and were, consequently, not likely to be in a very favorable mood for a treaty of friendship and alliance.
When the embassadors had delivered their message, the Argolians replied that they had anticipated such a proposal from the time that they had heard that Xerxes had commenced his march toward Greece, and that they had applied, accordingly, to the oracle at Delphi, to know what it would be best for them to do in case the proposal were made. The answer of the oracle had been, they said, unfavorable to their entering into an alliance with the Greeks. They were willing, however, they added, notwithstanding this, to enter into an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the Spartans, for thirty years, on condition that they should themselves have the command of half the Peloponnesian troops. They were entitled to the
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