PLATAEA

In the summer of 480 BCE, the Great King of Persia, Xerxes, led an immense army and fleet into Europe with the goal of conquering Greece. Fifteen years earlier the Athenians had played a minor part in the five-year revolt of his Greek subjects spread across the western fringe of his empire, and in 490 BCE they had added injury to insult at Marathon by comprehensively defeating a punitive expedition launched by Darius, Xerxes’ father. Darius had planned a second expedition in overwhelming force, but this was delayed by insurrection in Egypt and his death in 485 BCE. It was Xerxes’ duty as Darius’ successor to execute the plan.

In strategic terms, the conquest of mainland Greece and the islands and northern seaboard of the Aegean would stabilise the empire’s western frontier. Then, as ‘Great King, King of Kings, Ruler of the Lands’, Xerxes or his successors might have turned their thoughts beyond Greece to Sicily and Italy. More would then be at stake even than Greece’s future and the golden age of classical civilisation.

Herodotus, our foremost source for these critical years, puts these words into Xerxes’ mouth in a speech to his council of leading Persians: “If we conquer the Athenians and their neighbours, we shall extend the territory of Persia to the very edge of the earth, even where it joins with God’s heaven. When I have passed through Europe, there will be no lands under the sun that lie outside our borders, because I will make all lands one land.” The speech is invented, but it plausibly represents Xerxes’ vision and sense of destiny.

Just over 30 of the hundreds of Greek city states resisted the Persian invasion – fortunately this included four of the most powerful: Athens, Sparta, Corinth and Aegina. These cities were appalled at the prospect of falling under tyrannical rule sustained by external power, especially if that power flowed from a towering throne hundreds of kilometres away. This would be a contradiction of their developing concepts of freedom (eleutheria): self-rule with no external constraints, and autonomy (autonomia): a state’s exclusive right to make and implement its own laws, determine how to manage its wealth and decide when to go to war. Under Persian rule, any form of government might have been allowed, even emerging democratic systems as at Athens, but tribute would have to be paid and military service could be required at any time. At the level of the state and by individual (male)