Chapter 9
Once the suppressive campaign was over, the victorious army and navy of the empire, loaded with glory and loot, was probably disbanded. Their personnel had been campaigning for at least two years or rather two expeditionary periods and the intervening winter (Her VI.31). Some of the crews and subject troops had to return to their farms, stores and professions to keep the royal taxes incoming, while the slaves had to be brought to the sovereign’s presence to hear their sentence. Thus, Herodotus’ statement that the leadership of this victorious army was suspended and replaced by another team (Her V.43,1) is somewhat odd. Once the army was disbanded, the leaders were also demobilized and assumed their peacetime offices.
In any case, the next year another task force emerged, army and navy. It is likely that the fleet mobilized and crewed was the same, as their access route took a month at worst; the army must have consisted of other mobilized classes, since the access time was measured in months and thus the veterans could not be further spent on the road, even on the king’s one. The Marshal (Karana or Spadapatis?) of the next year’s campaign was Mardonius, a young aristocrat, nephew of Darius and married to one of his daughters in true Darius nepotistic style (Her VI.43,1). He may have been included in the previous year’s expeditionary force (Lewis 1980; Burn 1962) and the stellar performance of that army had him promoted on the spot; Datis, the commander-in-chief of that immensely successful Persian army was superseded and must have been green with jealousy (Burn 1962), which possibly accounts for Herodotus’ enigmatic reference to a change in leadership. Obviously, the previous commander would have loved to see his commitment through with another year in charge, as his successes would have been a most powerful argument. And this is especially so if he had indeed been Datis the Mede, a man capable enough to succeed where the bridegrooms of the king’s daughters had ultimately failed. A man who had been able to access the hard core not only of the Persian nation, but of the familial cadre of royal bandaka/subordinates, viceroys and commanders or generals; a man destined to gain prominence in history for his checkered performance in the battle of Marathon in 490 BC.
Starting from Susa or Persepolis, and following the King’s Road, Mardonius, who had returned to the capital to be decorated and promoted, initiated his campaign; he brought his army in Cilicia and left it to his deputies to bring it to Ionia (Her VI.43,2), most probably Sardis, the western endpoint of the King’s Road (Her V.53). From there to the Hellespont the army probably followed the itinerary Xerxes was to follow a dozen years later (Her VII.42–4); or the opposite of that of Daurices (Map 8.1). Although the raising of a new army is the most probable course of action, it may have been that he led massive reinforcements and actually took charge of the army on the spot (Grundy 1901), since Persian armies could remain afield for many years, as was the case with Cambyses’ army in Egypt. In any case, Mardonius joined his assigned fleet, mustered at Cilicia as well, and sailed to the Aegean (Her V.43,3); a very logical decision if indeed he had served the previous year under Datis in the fleet (Burn 1962; Lewis 1980) and thus had developed contacts and relations.
Having plenty of time at his disposal while waiting for the army, he is said to have revised the regimes in the Ionian cities of the mainland towards a democratic or at least representative constitution and in any case abolishing the tyrannies, the up-to-then operative motto of the Persian occupation (Her VI.25,1 & V.27,2 & V.96,2 & V.11,2 & III.147). It is true that on this particular occasion, the Persians had the luxury of relaxing the constitutional rules in these cities, in which the island states, Caria and the Dorian cities of the south were not included (Burn 1962). This was so because the most radical elements (individuals, political parties and whole social groups) had been eliminated during the rebellion or in the wake of its suppression, with mass-murdering and massive deportations in the form of chattel slaves, eunuchs and harem members. Additionally, the financial reforms initiated by Artaphrenes (Her VI.42) removed the extra-heavy taxation (Grundy 1901; Burn 1962); a fact that Herodotus does not recognize as he specifically says that the amount was more or less the same as before (Her V.42,2). This is not consistent with the great energy spent on the fixation of new sums (Her V.42,2). Probably the new way to estimate the taxation kept more or less the same yield but changed the distribution of the burdens by using more objective criteria based on land, and thus on land income, meaning the higher classes; consequently, some burden was lifted from the commerce and the commoners (Burn 1962).
The combination of financial bleeding and a most oppressive, obsolete and exploratory form of government had proved toxic for the realm and even Artaphrenes was able to grasp this truth. Easing taxation would boost the economy, produce more income for the state and less incentive for future rebellions, as people having a good livelihood have little propensity to revolt and endure physical hardship and dangers. Some fifteen years after their contact with Cleisthenic Athens, the Persians had correctly assessed the issues involved and found democracy not a bit less gullible or more definitively hostile to their interests, rule and authority than more authoritarian forms of (self)-government. Democracies, additionally, with the chaos they entail by definition, make very difficult a clandestine state-backed plotting for rebellion, a delicate issue as proven by Aristagoras’ proceedings. Having addressed the issues of domestic oppression and taxation, the Asiatic Greeks, or rather the surviving ones, were not overly set to their national and racial ideals; some of them fought valiantly against them in Salamis, a dozen years later.
Mardonius had a clear mandate, to round off the suppression of the Ionian Revolt by winning the peace and by delivering submission and, where needed, punishment beyond the borders of the Empire. The revolt proper had been quelled and the instigators and the participants were crushed and subdued with savagery. The extra cruelty shown to flourishing Miletus, the foremost city in Ionia at the time, which was not to recover and be of any consequence under Persian authority, was to be expected due to its focal role but also to its privileged status as a voluntary ally of Cyrus, something striking a nerve – or, rather, two – with Darius and perhaps leading to the original alienation between the sovereign and the citizen body, which brought about the revolt with such fervour. In all, the Ionian cities of the coast, between the invasion of Harpagus and the suppression by Datis, were ultimately reduced to insignificance. One need only compare the only 100 triremes supplied to Xerxes’ armada (Her VII.94) with the Ionian contributions to the fleet at Lade (Her VI.8) to reach such a conclusion.
Still, there had been assistance from their mainland brethren, who had the audacity to invade and pillage imperial lands and assault subjects. Darius knew that, if unanswered, this outrage would find imitators and would also sap his prestige and paternal image; a repetition of the events with the Scythians. He intended to invade Greece anyhow (Her III.134,6), but now he had the pretext, additional causes and, most importantly, the momentum. Mardonius had as an objective to deliver punishment to Athens and Eretria, the former being not just aggressors, but also oath-breakers and insurgents. They were not one bit less culpable than their Asiatic Ionian brethren; on the contrary, they were much worse offenders, since they had, of their own accord and spontaneously, asked, received and accepted the imperial protection (Her V.73).
The main phase of the campaign was to start from Sardis and the fleet would ferry the army across the Hellespont; no bridges and such luxuries were projected this time. From there on, they would re-assert the imperial control in Europe, where it had never been firm, but had slackened to insignificance as a result of the severing of communications with the body of the empire due to the rebellion. There is no need to assume Mardonius was tasked with limited objectives, as maintained by some scholars (Lazenby 1993; Holland 2005; Shepherd 2010). Once the formalities with former subjects who had proven lacking in terms of faith and loyalty were concluded a full-blown invasion south would round things up in terms of the revolt and secure the western border (Grundy 1901; Green 1970). The ambitious invasion of Europe-at-large, a set intent of Darius (Her III.134 & V.31 & VI.2) would follow in successive steps. Having seen what he had, Darius and his staff doubted any ability, not to mention propensity, of the mainland Greeks to resist effectively.
The first part of the plan worked smoothly. Thrace was brought under control once more and communication was re-established with the isolated Persian outposts. The fate of King Olorus, the father-in-law and host of Miltiades is not mentioned. Thasos, the prosperous island with its mainland wealth was reduced to servitude just for the sake – and profit – of it (Her VI.44 & 46,3); not even its resistance against Histiaeus (Her VI.28,1), without which the Persian operations to mop up resistance might have been seriously hindered, was to matter before the conquering hunger of the King of Kings and his apostle.
But while being in Macedonian territory, or, most probably, in its eastern vicinity, and set to bring the astute Alexander I of Macedon in line, disaster struck Mardonius; and it struck twice in quick succession. It is very strange that Herodotus, a most pious man, always seeking the divine intervention in and interpretation of events unfolding (Her IX.100,2 & IX.65,2 & VIII.20,2), fails repeatedly to identify any heavenly retaliation against Darius and his staff, as he did with Cambyses and then with Xerxes, sometimes clearly crossing the limits of exaggeration. Or how he failed to connect the eerie series of disasters falling upon the Chians, which he does acknowledge as of divine will (Her VI.27), with their attitude towards the Lydian rebel Pactyes who was seeking refuge from the wrath of Cyrus the Great (Her I.160). As if the democratic Athenians kept some reverence for the alien monarch who had offered them his protection in their time of need, back in the early 500s BC.
The first disaster that befell the expedition was a massive wreckage of the Persian fleet off Mount Athos (Her VI.44). It made painfully obvious that the celebrated Phoenician mariners of the imperial fleet had little experience of the weather and other particularities near the Greek shores, which makes doubtful the assertion of Herodotus regarding Phoenician presence in the Archipelago, and Thasos in particular in ages past (Her VI.47). The fleet must have been the one of the previous year with any casualties made good, which means 600 vessels (Her VI.9,1) plus a relatively small number of merchantmen for provisions and support of both fleet and army, an arrangement allowing fast movement of the latter, without encumbrances from the heavy transportation trains and local shortages. There is no mention of any Ionian conscripts or quota, which is understandable as the area had just been pacified and conscription was not organized as the available manpower was striving to integrate once more into the imperial normality. They were neither trusted, nor in a position to participate. They were still vanquished foes, not yet fully accepted as subjects ready to atone for their misdeeds.
On these grounds, the loss reported by Herodotus is no exaggeration; massive naval losses are attested for the classical period around Mount Athos (all 50 triremes of a fleet and only 12 surviving crew members) and even worse ones in different locations in the Mediterranean (Rados 1915). Three hundred vessels were reported destroyed (VI.44,3). The 20,000 casualties (Her VI.44,3) were a logical 33 per cent of the shipwrecked sailors, a total of 60,000 as produced by 200 men per trireme (Her VIII.184,1) for 300 triremes (Her VI.44,3), had all the shipwrecked vessels been triremes. Herodotus never implies, in this case, that the destroyed vessels were all triremes, and thus counted against the battle fleet; still, triremes were notoriously vulnerable to poor weather, especially compared to merchantmen and pentekonters. The fleet was badly mauled, the condition of the rest of the vessels might have been compromised and the same was true for the crews and, understandably, for their morale. The losses should not have led to the abortion of the naval campaign; twelve years later, a massive loss in two successive storms (Her VIII.7 & 13 & VII.190) of slightly less than half the number of triremes of the royal Grand Fleet (Her VII.89,1 & 184,1) plus transports and support ships (Her VII.191,1) did not fully compromise its operational ability, although it did degrade it considerably (Her VII.236,2).
But, almost concurrently, a man-made disaster struck the Persian army. A nearby tribe, the Brygi, made a night attack, infiltrated the imperial advanced lines and wrought havoc, killing quite a number, wounding Mardonius and causing chaos (Her VI.45). It is a recurring issue; another successful general, after a re-subjugation campaign running most successfully, had been too cocky, too confident, and was ambushed – not assaulted in his camp, as in this case – at night, ending very dead and his army exterminated (Her V.121). He too was the husband of a daughter of Darius. His name was Daurices (Her V.116). To maintain that the Brygi had been made privy to the Persian ineptitude is not impossible, but is overreaching. The European tribesmen had always employed night attacks as an equaliser tactic, along with ambuscades in broken ground. In any case, Mardonius somehow had failed to learn any lessons from the sorry end of his relative. He survived, he did not lose his entire army, and in fact, he was able to subdue and conquer the culprits (Her VI.45,1), showing great persistence and resilience. Surprisingly, he did not annihilate them to a man, or at least he is not reported to have done so, although this little adventure was sure to cost him his career.
An intact army might have been able to continue with the remains of the fleet, at least up to a point. An intact fleet might have been able to toss the army some more distance, to Thessaly, which was shimmering after losing her grasp over Phocis and Boeotia, perhaps just a generation ago (Buck 1972). But with both arms beaten, and the Karana wounded, further advance was inadvisable. Mardonius might have made contact with the Thessalian tyrants (or princes) of the Clan of Aleuas around that very time, possibly within the territory of Alexander I. This presupposes that he advanced far more to the west than usually suggested, past Mygdonia, and near to the Gulf of Therma – a good distance from the longitude of the disaster of his fleet (Map 10.1).
The uncelebrated return of a victor
But he prudently decided that with both arms crippled he had to return (Her VI.45,2) and be satisfied himself – and his liege – with the re-establishment of the Persian rule all the way to Macedon and, most probably, with the fixation of the border of the empire proper to Strymon river (Boteva 2011), at the middle of the longitudinal width of the Haemus Peninsula. This is implied by the fact that when Xerxes retreated and Mardonius had been exterminated, the westernmost of the Persian garrisons that remained in the northern Aegean coast was Eion (Lazenby 1993); additionally, the ceremonies performed by the Persian Magi to cross this river (Her VII.113–4) and not the much larger ones like Nestos and Hebrus, indicate a different kind of passage, not merely geographical but to another, foreign land. Beyond Strymon, in Macedon, there were tributaries, not subjects. But the Skudra was re-established and was probably attached to Dascylium, or it potentially formed a new satrapy, with Sestos as capital (Her IX.115–6).
Darius must have been furious and considering both events, especially the massive shipwreck off Athos, as gross incompetence; his view of the Brygi night attack would have been even more severe, especially after the checkered records of Daurices and Hymaes. Mardonius had obviously taken no heed of Daurices’ blunder leading to the night ambush. It must be noted that the Persians were quick to take in lessons and adapt in sectors where they were defective; both their next campaigns to Greece were meticulously planned to evade issues with Athos, the Accursed Mountain (Grundy 1901), either cutting a canal behind it, for the invasion of Xerxes (Her VII.22,1), or avoiding it altogether under Datis and Artaphrenes (Her VI.95,2). In other cases, though, they seem less responsive. Nocturnal action was an established weakness. After the blunders of Daurices and Mardonius, it is no strange thing that Leonidas tried the same against Xerxes (Diod XI.9,4); the latter though may have indeed learned something and thus survived the attempt. In the days of Xenophon, the lesson had been learned and the Persians encamped very far away from their Greek mercenary opponents (Xen Anab III.4,34) while in the days of Alexander the Great, at Gaugamela Darius III kept his host in position, awake, all night long in explicit fear of a nocturnal attack (Plut Vit Alex 31,4).
Darius I was a bit slow in learning lessons but was learning them well. The young haughty, aggressive and arrogant aristocrats he collected for his daughters were meant to be a personal defence against impostors. But in terms of leadership, they were not proving a sustainable solution, as their defeats outweighed their victories in every case. Mardonius had wrecked a perfectly good army, which had to be disbanded and replaced by raising a new one; that meant it would be some time before the empire would be able to resume the offensive. This was a really bad development, as the momentum built by the previous victories was to decay and the prospective and future enemies had much more time to prepare; and a most definite warning. With the fleet it was even worse; a victorious fleet had been wrecked and their morale was lower than grass. Replacing the casualties alone would strain the treasury, which meant the vassals would start bellyaching. Terror was a perfect means to inhibit revolt, but although it was cheap, indeed, it was not proving very successful. The lull, however, was a nice opportunity for diplomacy and Darius, while the message of terror from Miletus was being driven home, sent heralds to demand tokens of submission, earth and water, from the cities of the Greek mainland (Her VI.48,1) and perhaps from the western Greek colonies of Sicily and Italy as well, not bothering to conceal his true intentions any further. It was an ultimatum, tantamount to a declaration of war. As a careful reader may notice, Darius reverted to diplomacy after his invasion plan, based on surprise, shock and awe, was ruined; not before. Diplomacy was the conduct (not continuation) of war with other means, especially when the main ones seem inadequate, and this is particularly evident in this case.
For the new endeavour, Darius turned again to a seasoned general, who had led a most successful campaign and had been overridden for the sake of in-family. He was Datis the Mede (Her VI.94,2), Datis who delivered, Datis, his royal inspector in Sardis just before the final campaign (Holland 2005; Lewis 1980). Datis, who had revolutionary operational ideas (Burn 1962; Bradford 1980); too revolutionary for a Persian, as he was a Mede. Moreover, he was a most capable, proven commander and seasoned administrator, able to deal with Artaphrenes, the maverick Satrap of Sardis. Darius might not have held the revolt against his brother, as he was himself quite used to such events. But the near loss of his capital, Sardis, and the six years needed for the quelling along with royal reinforcements (a whole fleet) were somewhat disappointing, despite the obvious responsibilities of the relief generals, who were all choices of the sovereign and his relatives by wedlock. Last, but not least, Darius must have entertained many and disquieting thoughts after Artaphrenes’ cold-blooded murder of Histiaeus (Her VI.30,1), a move never sanctioned by the king who must have had many questions over the issue of how his trusted and beloved henchman turned traitor only to endorse a cause lost from the very beginning in the long term. Thus, Datis’ ability to ‘co-operate’ with Artaphrenes during his inspection tour of 495 BC, but also during the campaign of 494–3 BC, was much appreciated.
Datis had known Artaphrenes and worked with him successfully. Both had a hidden disgust or simply beef with Mardonius. Mardonius was appointed general to invade Thrace and Greece, in 492 BC, after being a subordinate to Datis for two short seasons in 494–3 BC; which means that Datis was superseded and bypassed, if not overlooked. This was very hard for the Mede to swallow (Burn 1962). Artaphrenes was also frustrated to the extreme, as his long-due intervention to lower or transform the taxation on the Ionians and to establish institutions for resolving their differences (Her VI.42,2) – possibly without the interference of the satrap or any imperial official, insinuating limited autonomy – was, to a degree, credited to Mardonius (Bradford 2001). The latter came to Ionia for the second time in his life, actually as a passer-by, and declared the abolishment of tyrannies and the establishment of more representative forms of government in Ionia (Her VI.43,3), both taking credit for such a move and sapping the authority of Artaphrenes who had been keen on setting tyrannies (Her VI.25,1 & V.27,2 & V.96,2), as per standard Persian policy (Her III.147 & V.11,2). A royal nephew coming in his yard and making major concessions sanctioned by the king (Grundy 1901), concessions that were mirror opposites of his own constitutional policy, was an undermining of his authority and a massive loss of prestige he could not have taken lightly. Thus, somehow, from the whole of Ionia, not one pilot or mariner warned Mardonius about the temperamental nature of Mount Athos.
It was a given that an expedition sanctioned by Darius would include at least one family member sharing the leadership. Aristagoras against Naxos had Megabates (Her V.32), Datis against Miletus had Mardonius (Lewis 1980), who was the son of Darius’ sister and of Gobryas, one of the seven conspirators, chamberlain to the king and second most powerful man in the empire (Hyland 2018; Fields 2007; Waters 2004; Sekunda 2002), or rather fourth (after the regal Trinity was re-established and Xerxes became co-regent and heir apparent). Now, once more Datis would have to put up with a young scion of Achaemenid lineage. This time it was to be another nephew of the king; Artaphrenes the Younger, son of Artaphrenes the Elder (Her VI.94,2), a good choice and a guarantee that the satrap would not undermine the expedition. Actually, the concept of dual leadership in expeditionary forces seems to apply whenever a stranger was heading them, a very safe indication that Aristagoras might well have been in charge of the failed campaign against Naxos in 500 BC and, at the same time, that Megabates had exceptional powers, especially to inspect, audit and report on him, exactly as inferred from the narrative of Herodotus.
The forces (i) of Artybius in Cyprus, (ii) of the three sons-in-law of Darius in the Ionian Revolt, (iii) of Mardonius in 492 BC, (iv) of Megabazus and (v) then Otanes in Thrace and (vi) of the generals/proxies of Darius mentioned in the Behistun inscription during 521–519 BC operations were headed by a single commander each. Cases (i), (ii) and (v) used local expeditionary forces and this must be the case for (vi). Cases (iii) and (iv) were imperial projects and a royal expeditionary force, similar to the one Mardonius undertook in 479 BC in Greece, had been assigned in each case. And, finally, cases (i), (iii) and (v) included naval assets. This suggests another possibility for dual leadership: the participation of royal units from the heartland along with satrapal/local musters, to beef up the latter; the use of a naval component per se is not important as a factor for dual leadership.