Mykale, a naval battle?

[Dithrambus]

I have read various accounts of the battle fought at Mykale in August, 479 bc, invariably Mykale is refered to as a 'naval battle', Herodotus (9.90 - 9.106) states quite plainly that the Persian fleet elected not to engage the Greeks in a naval encounter and disembarked their ships, which were pulled on to the beach and surrounded by a blockade wall and the Persian marines sought protection of the sizable garrison left there by Xerxes to guard against an Ionian revolt. The Greeks likewise disembarked their triremes and attacked the Persian camp, resulting in a decisive victory for the Greeks. The Persian ships were in fact destroyed, however, they were burned on the beach and not destroyed in the context of a 'naval battle'.

This battle, the last of the Greek-Persian Wars of 480-79 bc, does not enjoy the fame of Thermopylae, Artimesion, Salamis and Plataea and this seems to diminish it's importance, but if one considers that a substantial Persian ground force was defeated and many Persian ships were destroyed, the true importance of the Greek victory at Mykale is brought into better focus.

Any comments or thoughts on this subject?

[Jona Lendering]

I think that you are right that a "naval expedition" is not the same as a "naval battle". And indeed, Mycale is a forgotten battle. The inhabitants of the small village on the site are probably the only ones in Turkey who are aware of it.

There is indeed something strange with many accounts of the Persian War. After Plataea, there was the battle of Mycale (479), the siege of Sestus )479/478); next, naval expeditions to Cyprus and Byzantium and a Spartan raid on Thessaly (478); the founding of the Delian League (478); and the fall of the last Persian stronghold in Europe, Eion (476?). It is all forgotten (cf. Tom Holland's Persian Fire) because it is not dealt with by Herodotus (except the two first items). What happens is that we make our historical judgment dependent on the chance preservation of our sources. That is very, very bad method.

[MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS]

Especially when discounting archaeological evidence...

M.VIB.M.

[hoplite14gr]

Well the battle showed that Greek could operated from both sides the Aegean, that Persian were weary of Greek navy and that once a Greek army was in Asia Minor the Ionians could not be counted to support the High King.

Kind regards

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

I think,Stefane,that each one of these things held already true,since the Ionian revolt!
The Persians feared the greek navy since it wouldn't be strange if the Persian navy was actually smaller than the greek one at this point. They had already lost the battle of Salamis(we don't know casualties there,but probably great enough.And they had already sent the Phoenician fleet back to Phoenicia.
Herodotus gives the Persians six myriads (60.000 men) in Mycale.That would actually be a huge archaic army! And the battle seems to have been fierce! One wonders what exactly it means that "for as long as the wicker shield wall of the Perisans was pright ,they were defending themselves and had no disadvantage in the battle". it is also interesting that although the center of the Persian army (where the Persians themselves were fighting) was surrounded by the lacedaemonians, the greeks had many casualties! Another account of how valiantly the Persians were actually fighting,because by that time,not only they were the only ones still fighting,but they didn't colapse even when they were surrounded.
In the end Mykale looks like a persian catastorphy,because not only they lost the battle,but they were betrayed many times by the Ionians and the Samians both during and after the battle!
The Samians and other ionians had been actually stripped from weapons duting the battle! they also lost their fleet.
Now, the distruction of the fleet alone is important enough to justofy the battle as one of the most important on the War! Because obviously the Persians lost in Salamis,but their fleet was in no way destroyed there.
http://www.losttrails.com/pages/Tales/I ... tml#Mycale
Khairete
Giannis

[Dithrambus]

Great comments guys! Thats what I love about RAT!

I agree with everyone so far, especially Giannis' comment on the scale and ferocity of the combat, this was no small skirmish!!

Herodotus adds a bit of a twist to his narrative, he claims the Greeks at Mykale were inspired by news of victory at Plataea, fought on that very day! This seems unlikely at best, maybe not impossible but certainly improbable.

Opinions?

[Jona Lendering]

Herodotus adds a bit of a twist to his narrative, he claims the Greeks at Mykale were inspired by news of victory at Plataea, fought on that very day! This seems unlikely at best, maybe not impossible but certainly improbable.

Possible: there were smoke signals and light signals, as described in Aeschylus' Agamemnon. Experiments with similar telegraphs in Spain and France in the nineteenth century proved that it could work pretty swift - news got from Madrid to Paris in about five hours, if I recall correctly.

Nevertheless: that what is possible is not always what happened. So I agree with "not impossible but improbable".

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

Agreed! Even Homer mentions fire signals,no? It seems improbable,but on the other hand,it is true that Herodotus must have strongly believed it true. It seems as if his sourses were quite clear about it,because he speaks as if he himself finds it improbable,and tries to justify his statement regardless.
Khairete
Giannis

[Dithrambus]

Herodotus mentions a heralds staff found on the beach (a portent perhaps?), yet he does not elaborate further on this. At one point he attributes the news of Plataea to divine intervention, in the next paragraph he justifies the news reaching Mykale by stating that Plataea was fought early in the day with Mykale being fought late in the day. It would have been nice if he had simply told us by what means the news travelled so quickly! That would be too easy for us though! :lol:

[Old Husker]

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

[hoplite14gr]

In the OTE (Greek telecom company) museum there lots of communication types available to the ancient Greeks.
http://www.ote.gr/portal/page/portal/OT ... ikoinwniwn
I think there must be thread at the Civilization section.

One think that Mycale signaled wast the Greeks were capable of operating at the other side of the Aegean Again - notion that was seriously challenged during Xerxes campaign.

Kind regards

[immortal]

This is an interesting thread for me, thank you for the information. I am currently looking into Persian shields after an insightful trip to Iran. I am starting to wonder if the Spara was ever actually held or whether it was only used as a palisade.
I will pick up the book mentioned, I have not read about this battle in detail yet.

[hoplite14gr]

I an wandering too if the front rankers of the Persian army were "doubly shileded".

Kind regards

[immortal]

All of the reproductions of the Persian depicted on the gateway in Darius' palace at Persepolis always show him holding a handle on the wicker 'shield' in front of him. While at Persepolis I noticed that this doesn't actually exist... there is no handle at all. Interestingly their spears are very long, 9-10 feet in length.

The only positive Persian depiction of a shield we have is the 'violin/dipylon/waisted' shield at Persepolis. I don't use Greek depictions as evidence as the 'Persians' do not actually wear Iranian clothing or use Iranian Weapons!

[Dithrambus]

In the OTE (Greek telecom company) museum there lots of communication types available to the ancient Greeks.
http://www.ote.gr/portal/page/portal/OT

Thank you Stefanos, this link led to an informative article on ancient communication, some interesting images also. 8)