07-06-2010, 05:19 PM
Jona Lendering's insightful comments about the Greek/Persian conflict strike a special chord with me, as I recall once sailing near the Mycale battleground on a commercial cruise, whose site-seeing agenda made no mention at all of a golden chance for passengers to go out on deck and view this very historic location as we passed slowly by! His list of Greek vs Persian actions should be a good reminder to all that real ancient history is always so very much richer than can be seen in the general references and documentaries most people read and see. Learning about such little-discussed episodes is what keeps bringing me back to RAT and its incredibly well-informed threads again and again!
More specifically on Mycale, I once struggled to do a reconstruction of this engagement, trying to fill in the many blanks in our scanty records with what was hopefully reasonably researched guesswork. What I came up with pretty much follows the discussion on this thread so far, Mycale undoubtedly being a land action resulting from (as Jona so well put it) a 'naval expedition' rather than a naval battle proper. I think the whole 'naval battle' thing comes from a few poorly informed general sources that ignorantly misinterpreted the destruction of the Persian fleet as coming at sea, rather than on shore as was actually the case. My own estimate of the Persian army at Mycale runs much under that of Herodotus (as always seems to be the case) and I would suggest that the force on hand might have been an order of magnitude smaller in the form of only about 6,000 combatants (an understrength regiment or baivarabam assigned to the Sardis satrapy: note that this discounts Ionian Greeks of questionable loyalty who were also present from the beached fleet). Even so, this would probably have been nearly 50% greater manpower than was available to the Greek amphibious force (some 3,700 hoplites and 440 Athenian archers, all per the composition and capacity of a fleet of 110 Athenian and 65 allied triremes and discounting any contribution by armed rowers).
The ensuing battle seems to have been an interesting example of the use of field works, as the Persians both built gated walls across the beach to protect their grounded ships and advanced to dig a shallow trench for better seating their forward shield wall. As it turns out, only about half the Greek landing force appears to have been able to take part in the battle (under Athenian command with Xanthippus, father of Pericles) as the other half (a nominal 'right wing' under Spartan leadership with king Leotychides, who held overall command of the expedition) had swung landward (and away from what would be the battle site) in an attempt to compromise the 'hardened' Persian position by maneuver. However, even though a sudden sally from their pallisade's eastern gate allowed the Persians to catch the Greeks thus split, the hoplites, as so often before (at Marathon, Thermopylae, Psyttaleia, and Plataea), were able to spear and push through and rout their foes. Chasing the imperials inside their still open gate, the Greek victors were soon joined by the Spartan-led troops in slaughtering most of the Persians that remained inside (some, perhaps half, managed to escape out the western gate on the other side). One ironic note is that among the Persian commanders lost in this last battle of Xerxes' war on Greece was Tigranes, who had led the Medes against Leonidias and his Greeks in the war's opening engagement at Thermopylae.
There's an excellent account of Mycale in A.R. Burn's Persia and the Greeks (1984, Duckworth, p. 547-552). a book that I can't recommend enough to anyone interested in the 'Persian Wars' in general. - Fred
More specifically on Mycale, I once struggled to do a reconstruction of this engagement, trying to fill in the many blanks in our scanty records with what was hopefully reasonably researched guesswork. What I came up with pretty much follows the discussion on this thread so far, Mycale undoubtedly being a land action resulting from (as Jona so well put it) a 'naval expedition' rather than a naval battle proper. I think the whole 'naval battle' thing comes from a few poorly informed general sources that ignorantly misinterpreted the destruction of the Persian fleet as coming at sea, rather than on shore as was actually the case. My own estimate of the Persian army at Mycale runs much under that of Herodotus (as always seems to be the case) and I would suggest that the force on hand might have been an order of magnitude smaller in the form of only about 6,000 combatants (an understrength regiment or baivarabam assigned to the Sardis satrapy: note that this discounts Ionian Greeks of questionable loyalty who were also present from the beached fleet). Even so, this would probably have been nearly 50% greater manpower than was available to the Greek amphibious force (some 3,700 hoplites and 440 Athenian archers, all per the composition and capacity of a fleet of 110 Athenian and 65 allied triremes and discounting any contribution by armed rowers).
The ensuing battle seems to have been an interesting example of the use of field works, as the Persians both built gated walls across the beach to protect their grounded ships and advanced to dig a shallow trench for better seating their forward shield wall. As it turns out, only about half the Greek landing force appears to have been able to take part in the battle (under Athenian command with Xanthippus, father of Pericles) as the other half (a nominal 'right wing' under Spartan leadership with king Leotychides, who held overall command of the expedition) had swung landward (and away from what would be the battle site) in an attempt to compromise the 'hardened' Persian position by maneuver. However, even though a sudden sally from their pallisade's eastern gate allowed the Persians to catch the Greeks thus split, the hoplites, as so often before (at Marathon, Thermopylae, Psyttaleia, and Plataea), were able to spear and push through and rout their foes. Chasing the imperials inside their still open gate, the Greek victors were soon joined by the Spartan-led troops in slaughtering most of the Persians that remained inside (some, perhaps half, managed to escape out the western gate on the other side). One ironic note is that among the Persian commanders lost in this last battle of Xerxes' war on Greece was Tigranes, who had led the Medes against Leonidias and his Greeks in the war's opening engagement at Thermopylae.
There's an excellent account of Mycale in A.R. Burn's Persia and the Greeks (1984, Duckworth, p. 547-552). a book that I can't recommend enough to anyone interested in the 'Persian Wars' in general. - Fred
It\'s only by appreciating accurate accounts of real combat past and present that we can begin to approach the Greek hoplite\'s hard-won awareness of war\'s potential merits and ultimate limitations.
- Fred Eugene Ray (aka "Old Husker")
- Fred Eugene Ray (aka "Old Husker")
