Athens, City-State of

Themistocles, whose father, Neocles, came of the aristocratic Lycomid family and was not poor, but whose mother was a concubine, non-Athenian, possibly non-Greek, thus owes his citizenship to the legislation of Cleisthenes, which, in 508, had made citizens of all free men of Athens.

Elected archon in 493, he sponsors the first public works destined to make the defensible rocky bays of Piraeus, five miles from Athens, into harbors, replacing the nearer but unprotected beaches of Phaleron.

Miltiades, having arrived in Athens, is bound to raise animosities here because of his fabulous wealth, his foreign wife Hegesipyle (who bore him a son, Cimon the younger, about 510), and his past as a “tyrant”.

As archon, Themistocles must be concerned in the trial of Miltiades, who is prosecuted for his tyrannical role in the Chersonese, probably at the instigation of the rival clan of the pro-Persian Alcmaeonids, but he is triumphantly acquitted as the champion of resistance to Persian encroachments upon Greek freedom.

Having firsthand experience of the Persians, Miltiades is chosen, from 493 onward, as one of the ten generals of the Athenian land forces.

Unlike Themistocles, he is still thinking in terms of land warfare and of an agreement with Sparta, which is favored by the Athenian landowners, the peasantry, and the rural middle class.

Most Athenians think that the danger is past after Marathon, but Themistocles sees that Marathon—a victory for Athens' spearmen, middle-class men who can afford the costly bronze panoply—cannot be repeated if the enemy, strong in archers and cavalry, comes again in much greater force.

The only hope is to exploit the invader's supply difficulties, which will be great if Persia's naval allies, including the formidable Phoenicians, can be beaten at sea.

To carry out this strategy, however, Greece needs far more warships—the newly developed, specialized triremes—than it then has.

Themistocles urges that the Athenian fleet, seventy strong, be doubled or trebled, but he is opposed.

The opposition is not without political overtones.

Building a strong navy will require the wealthy to pay higher taxes to purchase new ships while giving political weight to the men who row the galleys, the poorer voters.

Maintaining a land-oriented defense, by comparison, will cost less and will increase the status of the infantry, whose ranks are drawn primarily from the middle class.

The 480s BCE in Athens are a period of intense political struggle.

Miltiades had died in disgrace and from 487 BCE to 483 BCE other leaders are successively ostracized.

Though never himself defeated, Themistocles is doubtless attacked repeatedly; he is the man accused by his enemies of being a danger to the established order.

Nonetheless, in 483 BCE he wins his greatest triumph.

The state-owned silver mines at Laurium, worked since Mycenaean times, are the site of a rich strike, and he persuades the assembly, instead of “declaring a dividend,” to devote the whole surplus to increasing the navy.

Thus when Xerxes I, the Persian king, finally marches against the Greeks in 480 BCE, Athens is to have two hundred triremes, though many of the rowers will still be untrained.

Themistocles further succeeds in selling his naval strategy to the Peloponnesians, headed by Sparta, who can raise another one hundred and fifty triremes.

The combined fleet is to fight not on their own doorstep, as Greeks prefer to do, but as far forward as possible, exploiting the geographical situation.

Aristides is ostracized and banned from Athens in 482 BCE, probably because he opposes Themistocles' plan to finance the building of a large fleet by using the silver from the new vein.

The huge Achaemenid army is at first successful, conquering Thessaly; …

…the Persian host then moves south into the Balkan peninsula in August, using the one and a half-mile- (two point four kilometer-) long canal dug through the isthmus of Áyion Óros (Mount Athos) on the orders of Xerxes, who thereby avoids taking his fleet around the treacherous cape.

The strategic and narrow pass of Thermopylae lies between Mount Oeta and the Gulf of Malia's southern shore on the route from Thessaly to Locris.

Its name, meaning “hot gates,” is derived from its hot sulfur springs.

The Spartans have sent their king Leonidas to Thermopylae with a force of four thousand Peloponnesians, including three hundred full Spartan citizens and perhaps a helot contingent as well.

Mycenae, now an independent Dorian city-state, dispatches a contingent to help the Spartans.

Some three thousand central Greeks, including Boeotians from Thespiae and Thebes, join the Peloponnesians.

Leonidas surely knows that the Greeks cannot hold the pass indefinitely, but he also knows that an oracle has said that Sparta will be devastated unless one of its kings is killed.

For three days, Leonidas withstands attacks by the Persians.

However, on the second night, a Greek traitor guides the best Persian troops around the pass behind the Greek army.

Leonidas then orders most of his Peloponnesian and central Greek troops to retreat to the safety of the south, and he and his three hundred Spartans, together with their helots, and eleven hundred Thespian and Theban Boeotians, fight to the last man.

Although the Persians win at Thermopylae, they suffer considerable losses in the battle.

This episode makes a deep impression on the Greek imagination and gives rise to the legend that Spartans never surrender.

Sparta's single-minded dedication to rule by a militarized oligarchy precludes any hope of a political unification of classical Greece, but it performs a great service by its heroic stand at Thermopylae and its subsequent leadership in the Greco-Persian wars.

Thebes and most Boeotian cities side with the Persians after the defeat of the Greeks at Thermopylae, but …

…Thespiae and …

…Plataea continue to resist them.