Plataea 479 BC

[Patrick Waterson]

Plataea 479 BC

Greeks: Pausanias, king of Sparta, with 38,700 hoplites and 69,500 light troops (Herodotus).
Persians: Mardoninus with c.300,000 Persians and subjects and c.50,000 allied Greeks (Herodotus).
(Other sources: Greeks 100,000 and the Persians 500,000 (Diodorus); 300,000 Persians and an unstated number of Greeks including 8,000 Athenians (Plutarch).  Modern estimates are smaller.)

Principal source: Herodotus IX.58-70.
Additional sources: Diodorus Siculus XI.28-33, Plutarch, Life of Aristides 16-19, Ctesias, Persica 28 and allusions in various Greek playwrights.

Herodotus IX.58-70.  (The actual fighting is in bold for those who wish to avoid the long scene-setting preamble.)

[The Greeks plan to change base after the Persian cavalry spoils their water supply.  A stubborn Spartan lochagos delays them.]

58. When Mardonius learned that the Greeks had departed under cover of night and saw the ground deserted, he called to him Thorax of Larissa and his brothers Eurypylus and Thrasydeius and said: [2] "What will you say now, sons of Aleuas, when you see this place deserted? For you, who are their neighbors, kept telling me that Lacedaemonians fled from no battlefield and were the masters of warfare. These same men, however, you just saw changing their post, and now you and all of us see that they have fled during the night. The moment they had to measure themselves in battle with those that are in very truth the bravest on earth, they plainly showed that they are men of no account, and all other Greeks likewise."   [More in this vein omitted.]

59. [With that, he led the Persians with all speed across the Asopus in pursuit of the Greeks, supposing that they were in flight; it was the army of Lacedaemon and Tegea alone which was his goal, for the Athenians marched another way over the broken ground, and were out of his sight. [2] Seeing the Persians setting forth in pursuit of the Greeks, the rest of the barbarian battalions straightway raised their standards and also gave pursuit, each at top speed, no battalion having order in its ranks nor place assigned in the line.

60. So they ran pell-mell and shouting, as though they would utterly make an end of the Greeks. Pausanias, however, when the cavalry attacked him, sent a horseman to the Athenians with this message: "Men of Athens, in this great contest which must give freedom or slavery to Hellas, we Lacedaemonians and you Athenians have been betrayed by the flight of our allies in the night that is past. [2] I have accordingly now resolved what we must do; we must protect each other by fighting as best we can. If the cavalry had attacked you first, it would have been the duty of both ourselves and the Tegeans, who are faithful to Hellas, to aid you; but now, seeing that the whole brunt of their assault falls on us, it is right that you should come to the aid of that division which is hardest pressed. [3] But if, as may be, anything has befallen you which makes it impossible for you to aid us, do us the service of sending us your archers. We are sure that you will obey us, as knowing that you have been by far more zealous than all others in this present war."

61. When the Athenians heard that, they attempted to help the Lacedaemonians and defend them with all their might. But when their march had already begun, they were set upon by the Greeks posted opposite them, who had joined themselves to the king. For this reason, being now under attack by the foe which was closest, they could at the time send no aid. [2] The Lacedaemonians and Tegeans accordingly stood alone, men-at-arms and light-armed together; there were of the Lacedaemonians fifty thousand and of the Tegeans, who had never been parted from the Lacedaemonians, three thousand. These offered sacrifice so that they would fare better in battle with Mardonius and the army which was with him. [3] They could get no favorable omen from their sacrifices, and in the meanwhile many of them were killed and by far more wounded (for the Persians set up their shields for a fence, and shot showers of arrows). Since the Spartans were being hard-pressed and their sacrifices were of no avail, Pausanias lifted up his eyes to the temple of Hera at Plataea and called on the goddess, praying that they might not be disappointed in their hope.

62. While he was still in the act of praying, the men of Tegea leapt out before the rest and charged the barbarians, and immediately after Pausanias' prayer the sacrifices of the Lacedaemonians became favorable. Now they too charged the Persians, and the Persians met them, throwing away their bows. [2] First they fought by the fence of shields, and when that was down, there was a fierce and long fight around the temple of Demeter itself, until they came to blows at close quarters. For the barbarians laid hold of the spears and broke them short. [3] Now the Persians were neither less valorous nor weaker, but they had no armor; moreover, since they were unskilled and no match for their adversaries in craft, they would rush out singly and in tens or in groups great or small, hurling themselves on the Spartans and so perishing.


63. Where Mardonius was himself, riding a white horse in the battle and surrounded by a thousand picked men who were the flower of the Persians, there they pressed their adversaries hardest. So long as Mardonius was alive the Persians stood their ground and defended themselves, overthrowing many Lacedaemonians. [2] When, however, Mardonius was killed and his guards, who were the strongest part of the army, had also fallen, then the rest too yielded and gave ground before the men of Lacedaemon. For what harmed them the most was the fact that they wore no armor over their clothes and fought, as it were, naked against men fully armed.  [Note: see commentary, below.]

64. On that day the Spartans, as the oracle had foretold, gained from Mardonius their full measure of vengeance for the slaying of Leonidas, and the most glorious of victories of all which we know was won by Pausanias, the son of Cleombrotus, who was the son of Anaxandrides. [2] (I have named the rest of Pausanias' ancestors in the lineage of Leonidas, for they are the same for both.) As for Mardonius, he was killed by Aeimnestus, a Spartan of note who long after the Persian business led three hundred men to battle at Stenyclerus against the whole army of Messenia, and was there killed, he and his three hundred.

65. At Plataea, however, the Persians, routed by the Lacedaemonians, fled in disorder to their own camp and inside the wooden walls which they had made in the territory of Thebes. [2] It is indeed a marvel that although the battle was right by the grove of Demeter, there was no sign that any Persian had been killed in the precinct or entered into it; most of them fell near the temple in unconsecrated ground. I think—if it is necessary to judge the ways of the gods—that the goddess herself denied them entry, since they had burnt her temple, the shrine at Eleusis.

66. This, then, is what happened in this battle. But Artabazus son of Pharnaces had from the very first disapproved of the king's leaving Mardonius, and now all his counselling not to join battle had been of no avail. In his displeasure at what Mardonius was doing, he himself did as I will show. [2] He had with him a great army, as many as forty thousand men. He knew full well what the outcome of the battle would be, and no sooner had the Greeks and Persians met than he led these with a fixed purpose, telling them to follow him all together wherever he should lead them, whatever they thought his intent might be. [3] With that command he pretended to lead them into battle. As he came farther on his way, he saw the Persians already fleeing and accordingly led his men, no longer in the same array, but took to his heels and fled with all speed not to the wooden fort nor to the walled city of Thebes, but to Phocis, so that he might make his way with all haste to the Hellespont.

67. So Artabazus and his army turned that way. All the rest of the Greeks who were on the king's side fought badly on purpose, but not so the Boeotians; they fought for a long time against the Athenians. For those Thebans who were on the Persian side had great enthusiasm in the battle, and did not want to fight in a cowardly manner. As a result of this, three hundred of their first and best were killed there by the Athenians. At last, however, the Boeotians too yielded and they fled to Thebes, but not by the way which the Persians had fled and the multitude of the allies which had fought no fight to the end nor achieved any feat of arms.

68. This flight of theirs which took place before the actual closing of battle and was prompted because they saw the Persians flee, proves to me that it was on the Persians that the fortune of the barbarians hung. They accordingly all fled, save the cavalry, Boeotian and other; this helped the fleeing men in so far as it remained between them and their enemies and shielded its friends from the Greeks in their flight.

69. So the Greeks, now having the upper hand, followed Xerxes' men, pursuing and slaying. During this steadily growing rout there came a message to the rest of the Greeks, who were by the temple of Hera and had stayed out of the fighting, that there had been a battle and that Pausanias' men were victorious. When they heard this, they set forth in no ordered array, those who were with the Corinthians keeping to the spurs of the mountain and the hill country, by the road that led upward straight to the temple of Demeter, and those who were with the Megarians and Philasians taking the most level route over the plain. [2] However, when the Megarians and Philasians had come near the enemy, the Theban horsemen (whose captain was Asopodorus son of Timander) caught sight of them approaching in haste and disorder, and rode at them; in this attack they trampled six hundred of them, and pursued and drove the rest to Cithaeron.

70. So these perished without anyone noticing. But when the Persians and the rest of the multitude had fled within the wooden wall, they managed to get up on the towers before the coming of the Lacedaemonians; then they strengthened the wall as best they could. When the Athenians arrived, an intense battle for the wall began. [2] For as long as the Athenians were not there, the barbarians defended themselves and had a great advantage over the Lacedaemonians who had no skill in the assault of walls. When the Athenians came up, however, the fight for the wall became intense and lasted for a long time. In the end the Athenians, by valor and constant effort, scaled the wall and breached it. The Greeks poured in through the opening they had made; [3] the first to enter were the Tegeans, and it was they who plundered the tent of Mardonius, taking from it besides everything else the feeding trough of his horses which was all of bronze and a thing well worth looking at. The Tegeans dedicated this feeding trough of Mardonius in the temple of Athena Alea. Everything else which they took they brought into the common pool, as did the rest of the Greeks. [4] As for the barbarians, they did not form a unified body again once the wall was down, nor did anyone think of defense because the terrified men in the tiny space and the many myriads herded together were in great distress. [5] Such a slaughter were the Greeks able to make, that of two hundred and sixty thousand who remained after Artabazus had fled with his forty thousand, scarcely three thousand were left alive. Of the Lacedaemonians from Sparta ninety-one all together were killed in battle; of the Tegeans, seventeen and of the Athenians, fifty-two.


Commentary:
Plataea was a smashing Greek victory against the best that Persia could offer - and although the Greek army was seriously outnumbered overall, the piecemeal arrival of both armies and non-participation of many of the Persian contingents meant that the actual number of troops engaged on each side may have been quite similar.

The two points of engagement were 1) the Persians against the Spartans near the Temple of Demeter, and 2) the (pro-Persian) Thebans against the Athenians.  The Persian contingent would have been perhaps six 10,000-strong baivarabam, for a total of 60,000 (perhaps less a little attrition over the past year) while the Spartans (according to Herodotus IX.61) had 10,000 hoplites with 35,000 Helots in attendance and about 5,000 Peloponnesian light infantry – a total of 50,000 – plus 3,000 Tegeans, presumably divided between light troops and hoplites.  The Athenians mustered 8,000 (Herodotus IX.28), with a similar number of light troops, while their Theban opponents were probably not too dissimilar in numbers, as most of the 50,000 Greeks Herodotus has in the Persian army did not participate, or 'fought badly on purpose'. 

The infantry fighting went very much against the Persians, and once Mardonius fell and the Persians broke the remaining contingents of the Persian army appear to have just fled – having seen that the best troops in the army break and presumably hearing that the C-in-C was dead.  The Athenian-Theban clash seems to have been more even, the Athenians taking 52 casualties and inflicting 300.

The Persian and Theban cavalry appear to have moved on once Mardonius and the Persian infantry contingent came up with the Spartans.  Herodotus has the Theban cavalry mow down Megarians and Philasians: Diodorus adds the Persian cavalry to this action and then has them chased off by the victorious Athenians.  Thereafter Herodotus has the Persian and Theban cavalry acting as a rearguard of sorts while their infantry routed back to camp.  This sequence of events seems credible.

Mardonius' death was fatal to the Persian army because there seems to have been nobody capable of assuming authority to coordinate the defence of the camp: Artabazus, the ranking general after Mardonius, is said to have decamped with 40,000 men (maybe the relics of a 60,000-man contingent) and in the absence of a commander the camp and all within it were basically doomed once the Athenians showed the other Greeks how to get in.

Casualties vary among our sources: Herodotus has 160 Greeks (presumably listing only hoplites) fall in the actual fighting, plus 600 Megarians and Philasians caught by the Theban cavalry, while Plutarch gives 1,360 Greek casualties and Diodorus avers that there were 'more than 10,000' Greek deaths.  Herodotus and Plutarch agree that the bulk of the 300,000 men of Mardonius' army perished, with Artabazus and 40,000 men making their way off unhindered but few others surviving.  Diodorus assigns the Persians 100,000 dead but 400,000 survivors.  Herodotus' and Plutarch's near-annihilation of the Persian army accords much better with the subsequent unopposed progress of the Greek army to Thebes, and the consequent Theban capitulation.

The actual battle seems to have arisen from a series of misunderstandings by Mardonius, the Persian commander.  In days previous to the Greek departure, both armies had draw up in line of battle, but the Spartans had declined to encounter Persians and had exchanged places in line with the Athenians (Herodotus IX.46-48).  This seems to have led Mardonius to expect that Spartans, for all their reputation, would not be able to face Persians in open battle, whatever they may have achieved in the confines of Thermopylae.  Now, just as both sides were supposedly shaping up for the decisive encounter, the Persian 'dawn patrol' brought him news that the Greek army had decamped during the night.  To his mind, this could mean only one thing – cowardice – and Herodotus has him say as much.  He at once moves out with the Persian contingent, leading the army off in pursuit without stopping to arrange it in any sort of order.  It is even possible that, in their haste, they left off their armour to 'run' (dromo) – in pursuit of the Spartans.  Catching up with them, the Spartans shrank behind their shields and did not move – a passivity easy to equate with cowardice.

Mardonius seems to have thought he had cornered the 'cowards' and was about to give them a good thrashing: he does not seem to have devoted any attention to coordinating or marshalling any of his other contingents, but just moved up with his Persians and let fly.  The Spartans stood (or sat) and 'took it' until the omens showed themselves favourable (possibly reflecting the departure of the Persian and Theban cavalry) and then closed to melee, at which point the Persians were basically doomed.  Herodotus notes that once the shield wall was down, they were 'as if naked men against armoured' because they were 'he esthes eremos anousa hoplon', i.e. 'over their clothing devoid of protection'.  This could be a way of indicating they were at a disadvantage because they were now shieldless, or it could mean they had left their armour behind at camp in order to lose no time in pursuing the Greeks.

A note about Mardonius and his 1,000 picked troops: none of our sources claim or indicate that they were cavalry, even though Mardonius himself was mounted.  We can reasonably assume that they were elite infantry, as they seem not to have manoeuvred but to have been consistently in the forefront of an infantry battle.