Christian Cameron: The Great King

I mentioned the gods, and I talked about Hellas — the idea of being Greek.

It probably wasn’t much a speech, but here’s the part that I remember. ‘You all hurt,’ I said. ‘Many of you took a wound yesterday, and we face odds of three ships to one.’ I pointed off to the west — towards Thermopylae. ‘The King of Sparta is fighting today at odds of ten to one or more, and he’s on his third day.’

That got their attention.

‘If we lose today, we will be done. The Persians will have us, and our cities will burn, and Leonidas will be forced to retreat.’ I looked at them, and they were silent. It was cool and pleasant, despite the time of year — a strong east wind was coming up, and the sun was red, like a big grape on the horizon.

‘If we win today, we will win the right to fight again tomorrow!’ I said. ‘That is all we will win today. And if we win tomorrow. .’ I smiled. ‘Then we win the right to fight again the next day — and the next and the next until the Great King wearies of the contest or he runs out of slaves or we run out of free men to face him. And if we win? If we defeat the Great King?’ I held up my wounded hand.

Some men cheered.

‘Then we win the right to fight him again the next time he comes against us. This is what freedom is. The Great King has no idea how poor we are, or what we have in herds or in olive trees. He seeks only to own us.’ I smiled to think of Xerxes in his hall in Susa, who was attacking us mostly to satisfy Mardonius.

And for pride.

‘We must win today, and tomorrow, and again the day after, and then we must go home and train our sons to win again,’ I said.

How they cheered.

I stumbled off my rostrum, and Themistocles took my hand — and hurt me, as it was my left hand he grabbed.

‘That was remarkable!’ he said. ‘You hide your light too much!’

I laughed, uncomfortable, but let’s be honest, pleased with his praise, and I saw his eyes harden.

Aristides came up to me.

Themistocles let go of my hand. He didn’t glance away, but said, ‘By now, the exile must have been lifted.’

‘Until the assembly informs me so, I serve only as a Plataean,’ Aristides said.

Themistocles nodded. He turned to me, and said one of the few genuine, unposturing things I ever heard from him. He said, ‘When Athens exiles me, will I too be welcome in Plataea?’

‘How’re your farming skills?’ I asked.

Aristides laughed and slapped my shoulders. ‘I hope you give him shelter, when I have him sent away. He is dangerous — but he may have saved Greece.’

When you think of us — Athenians and Corinthians and Aeginians and Spartans and all — remember this.

We didn’t agree about anything except that the Great King had to be defeated.

We formed well. The oarsmen were tired, but I had us go to ramming speed for about sixty heartbeats, all together, on the way to our station, and then everyone’s muscles were loose — like men stretching for the Olympics, really.

By the time Eurybiades raised his shield in the centre of the line, the Persians were coming off their beaches. I have heard since that they were amazed that we were coming to fight with such a small fleet, and came into the water in no great order, each eager to make a kill.

That’s what it looked like to us. They had so many ships that I couldn’t begin to know, but we think — now that years have passed and all the Ionians are friends again — that there were about six hundred of them facing two hundred and seventy-one of us. But instead of forming a line, they came at us in a long mass, shaped like an egg — the first ships off the beach in the lead. And then they split — every captain for himself — to encircle us.

As soon as we were sure they were coming — and by the gods, my friends, it was hard to swallow! I’m not sure I have ever known such pure fear as that morning, watching that behemoth come for our little fleet — Eurybiades signalled for the wheel.

I had Brasidas with me. He was in a good panoply. Bless rich men — my Cimon had a full spare panoply that fitted our Spartan escapee. Brasidas passed the navarch’s signals, and we began to back-water.

The lead Ionian ships went to ramming speed, despite being twenty stades away. They were that eager. Never doubt, my friends, that they wanted to defeat us. I have heard a great deal since Artemesium about how we won because the Ionians fought badly. That’s foolishness. No one fights ‘badly’ in a sea fight where all the losers drown.

We backed faster, and I watched the front face of the wheel form up. The Corinthians were going to face the first rush. And by Poseidon, for all the crap I’ve said about Adamenteis, that day he was a Greek. Perhaps I’m wrong, and he was never a traitor. Or perhaps, confronted with the choice to fight or die, he fought well.

Either way, we had longer to form the wheel than we’d ever had in practice, because the fool Ionians charged into what had been our centre, instead of going for the edges where the ships weren’t in the formation yet — and then flinched away. They turned away rather than face the serried phalanx of the Corinthians, and only then did they begin to circle like sharks — but by then, Lydia’ s stern was nestled against Black Raven on one side and Nemesis on the other, and I could see Aristides coasting in beside Cimon’s magnificent Ajax as we, the outermost arms of the fleet, closed and locked.

We were in.

I’m not sure any Greek fleet — or any fleet anywhere — had ever formed such a big wheel. I suppose it was awesome — Ionians and Phoenicians who were there have told me so — but to us, it seemed very small, and the fleet against us surrounded us, and I, for one, began to doubt the strategy we’d adopted. Because we went after the Persian fleet, we were well across the straight, far from our camp and unable to swim for shore.

Only then, trapped in the wheel, did it occur to me that my captures and my camp and all our spare masts and all of our food were sitting on the beach, and all the Persians needed to do to win the war was to dispatch twenty ships to burn our camp.

War is the strangest of man’s endeavours, ruled by the whims of the gods and men’s foolishness more than by stratagems and intellect. The Persians never sent a ship to burn our camp. They wanted to fight us ship to ship.

Twice, whole squadrons of them rushed our wheel.

A lone trireme out on the water is barely stable. It has to be balanced. When ten marines cross the deck, the oarsmen curse. Eh? And the ram has to be powered to do damage — at least the speed of a cantering horse.

But tie two hundred ships in a circle, and the decks are steady, moving only up and down with the swell, and the rams — in close series like spears — are steady. They don’t move backwards or bounce. The rowers — all free men — don’t need to row. If every one of them has a spear or a javelin, you have, in effect, two hundred marines in every ship.

Did I mention the swell? The wind was mild, from the east, but the sea was running higher and higher, and the swell was beginning to make it difficult to maintain formation.

At any rate, as I say, they rushed us twice — once the Samians and once Carians.

They retreated and we didn’t pursue. But they made no impression whatsoever.

The sun passed the top of the sky. I passed out water and watched Aegyptians watching us.

We were doing it. We were holding the whole might of Persia.

Brasidas had been regaling us — if a nearly silent man who speaks fifteen words an hour can be said to regale — with the Babylonian revolt. He turned and handed young Pericles, who had apparently joined our ship, his water. ‘Eurybiades is signalling “attention!”’ he said.