Many of the other Greeks
gave no assistance. In reality it was a fight of the Great King and
his subjects against Sparta, Athens, and their allies.
The conquest of this great horde by two small peoples appeared at that
time as a prodigy. The gods, said the Greeks, had fought for them. But
there is less wonder when we examine the two antagonists more closely:
the Persian army was innumerable, and Xerxes had thought that victory
was a matter of numbers. But this multitude was an embarrassment to
itself. It did not know where to secure food for itself, it advanced
but slowly, and it choked itself on the day of combat. Likewise the
ships arranged in too close order drove their prows into neighboring
ships and shattered their oars. Then in this immense crowd there were,
according to Herodotus, many men but few soldiers. Only the Persians
and Medes, the flower of the army, fought with energy; the rest
advanced only under the lash, they had come under pressure to a war
which had no interest for them, ill-armed and without discipline,
ready to desert as soon as no one was watching them. At Plataea the
Medes and Persians were the only ones to do any fighting; the subjects
kept aloof.
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