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HISTORY

10 Forgotten Tales From Persias Invasion Of

Greece
MARK OLIVER MARCH 9, 2017

There was a time when Persia was the greatest empire in the world. They marched upon Greece with an
army of 2.5 million fightersbut, because they lost, we have only heard the story through the words of
their enemies.

Most people today know it through the story of Leonidas and his 300 Spartansbut that was just a
small moment in a much bigger war. The real story revolved around the Persian King Xerxesand it was
a bit different from how you might be picturing it.

Sparta Apologized for Throwing a Messenger down a Well

10
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That famous moment when the Spartans kicked a Persian messenger down a well really happenedbut
a lot of details got left out, and they will completely change the way you see it.

Xerxes father sent messengers to every ruler in Greece demanding a tribute of earth and water as a
show of submission to Persia. It was not just the Spartans who refusedthe Athenians threw their
messenger down a pit, too. They had the courtesy to give him a trial first, though. The Spartans just told
him to Dig out Spartas earth and water yourself! and threw him in.

By the time Xerxes became king, he did not even bother sending messengers to Athens or Sparta. He did
not have to, anyway. The Spartans came to him and said they were sorry.

After throwing the Persian in the well, the Spartans became convinced that they were cursed. The gods
stopped answering their prayers, and they were pretty sure it was because they had mistreated a
messenger. So, to make the gods happy, they sent two human sacrifices to Xerxes. They apologized and
offered to let him execute them to even the score.

Xerxes spared them. Partly, he was trying to take the high road, but mainly he just had his mind set on
revenge. The death of two men, he told them, would not acquit the Spartans from the guilt they have
contracted.

The Greeks Practically Begged Xerxes to Invade Them

9

Xerxes, originally, wanted to leave Greece alone. His father had led a long and painful campaign against
the Greeks and lost, and Xerxes was not eager to follow in his footsteps. Some of his generals pushed for
him to go to war, but he was not going to listen to themuntil the Greeks asked him to.

A lot of Greeks actually loved Persia. They thought they were an incredibly diverse and progressive
nation. Some of them were so eager to become a part of the empire that they actually came to Persia
and asked Xerxes to be their leader.

First, the Aleuadae family came over and offered to pay Xerxes to come to Greece. Then another family,
the Pisistratidae, came and offered him even more. They even brought an oracle with them, who told
Xerxes he was destined to build a floating bridge and conquer Greece.
By the time they had left, Xerxes was convinced he was meant to rule Greece. He called together his
people and announced that they would be going to war. I will never rest, he declared, until I have taken
Athens and burnt it.

Xerxes Made His Men Whip a River for Misbehaving

8

Xerxes bought into the prophecy the Greeks gave him. He wanted to play out every moment they
described leading to his victory, and so he set up a floating bridge across the Hellespont River. It did not
work outas soon as the bridge went up, a storm knocked it down.

Xerxes had some issues with anger. If someone made him mad, he got revengeeven if that someone
was a body of water. He ordered his men to put chains on the river and whip it for its insolence. So, they
tossed some chains in the water and gave the river 300 lashes, yelling, You are a turbid and briny river!

It gets weirder. Xerxes, apparently, felt bad about whipping the river, because, once he got his bridge to
stay up, he apologized to it. He burned incense on the bridge and threw golden bottles into the water
which, according to Herodotus, was his attempt to apologize to the sea.

Xerxes Cut a Man in Half for Draft Dodging

7

Before he crossed the bridge, one of Xerxes men, named Pythius, came to him and asked for a favor. Hed
had visions that the war would fail, and he feared his sons, who were marching off to war, would die.
Take pity on me in my advanced age, Pythius begged, and release one of my sons, the eldest, from
service.

Xerxes short fuse went off. After cursing Pythius out for a full minute, he barked, You shall be punished
by the life of the one you must desire to keep. He sent his men out to get Pythius son and had him cut
in half.
One half of his body was put on the right side of the road and the other half on left, so that the army had
to march between his severed corpse on the road to Greece.

Xerxes Tore Down a Mountain Just Because He Could

6

Before he left for Greece, Xerxes ordered his men to build a massive canal. His fathers fleet had been
swept away in a storm when he invaded Greece, and Xerxes did not want to make the same mistake. He
ordered his men to plow through a mountain and build a massive, artificial canal that stretched over two
kilometers.

It took three years of whipping workers to make it, but they did it. They made a canal so massive that
the whole Persian fleet could cross it. This was such a massive feat that, until fairly recently, people
thought it was a myth. Until land surveyors found proof that it really did exist, we thought it was
impossible.

The Greeks, though, did not really understand why he was doing it. With no trouble they could have
drawn their ships across the isthmus, Herodotus wrote about it, pointing to a natural strip of land that
would have kept the ships safe.

He had another theory. Xerxes gave the command for this digging out of pride, wishing to display his
power and leave a memorial. If he is right, it workedthe canal outlived its creators.
 The Spartans Got Ready for Battle by Making Their Hair Look Pretty
5

Meanwhile, the Spartans were getting ready for battle in their own way. The Spartan army kept their hair
long, believing that long, wild hair would strike terror in the hearts of their enemies. Before battle, they
did their exercises and combed their long hair, preparing for warbut that was not exactly how the
Persians saw it.

Xerxes sent a spy ahead to scope out the Spartan forces, and he was not impressed by what he saw. He
reported back that the Spartans were sitting around dancing and making sure their hair looked pretty
instead of getting ready for war.

A Spartan defector, Demaratus, tried to explain to him that Spartans prepare their hair before fighting. In
part, it let them die with dignity, but their thick braids also worked as a type of armor. Xerxes, though,
was not impressed. He made a joke about them being sissies and marched on.

The Persian Army Had Every Bad Omen Possible

4

As the Persian army approached they saw things that, according to the Greeks, were bad omens
everywhere they looked. First, they walked past a mare giving birth to a hare, which, according to the
Greeks, symbolized that Xerxes would flee for his life.

Then they saw the birth of a hermaphroditic mule, with both male and female genitals. Our source for
this is Herodotus, who saw this as such an obvious omen that it is not even worth explaining. The
meaning of it was easy to guess, he writes, before scoffing at Xerxes because he took no account of
either sign and journeyed onward.

Those omens have lost a lot of their meaningbut anybody would be worried about what happened
next. As they marched forward, they started getting attacked by every lion that they saw. Every night,
lions would come out of their homes just to kill their camelsand some started to wonder if maybe the
gods just did not like them that much.

Xerxes Defiled Leonidas Body

3
The Battle of Thermopylae followed. Leonidas and 300 Spartans met the Persian army and held out
against them to the last man. But the story does not end with Leonidas death.

After the 300 Spartans were defeated, the Persians marched on. They rained arrows upon the Spartans
until the last one was dead, and slaughtered every person they could find. They tore down the walls of
Thermopylae. Every single Spartan they could find was killed.

When Leonidas was shot down, his men-at-arms tried to protect his body and get it to a safe place
where it could be put to rest with dignity. Xerxes, though, would not allow it. Once his men had crushed
their way through, he had Leonidas head chopped off and his body crucified on a spike.

The Greeks Nearly Lost Because of a Love Spat over a Handsome Boy
2
Leonidas, though, was not the real hero of the war. The man who really made it possible for the Greeks
to win was Themistocles.

Before Persia had even set its sights on Greece, Themistocles was building warships to get ready. It was
the Navy that really beat the Persians. Themistocles tricked Xerxes into sending his ships into a narrow
canal called Salamis, where he surprised him with a stronger defense than he had expected. It was the
turning point in the war; the moment that made a Greek victory possible.

It nearly did not happen, though, because of Themistocles penchant for young boys. He and a man
named Aristides had been fighting over the love of a good-looking boy named Stesilaus. Aristides was so
mad about it that he fought Themistocles at every turn.

Out of spite, he nearly stopped Themistocles from building his navy. Themistocles managed to get
Aristides kicked out Athens and built his ships, if he had not, the Persians would have wonall because
of a spat between the jealous lovers of a young boy.

Themistocles Joined the Persian Army

1

This war changed all of Western history. Had it not been for Themistocles, Greece never would have
developed into the philosophic cultural cornerstone it became. He saved Greeceand then, promptly
afterward, switched sides.

After the war, Themistocles worked on building up the Athenian military to get them ready to fight the
Spartans. The Spartans found out and, in retaliation, spread rumors that he was planning on betraying
Athens to the Persians. It worked. The Athenians kicked him out.

Frustrated, Themistocles decided that if they thought he was helping the Persians, then maybe he
should just do it anyway. He sailed off to Persia and spent the rest of his life as a Persian governor. He
worked for Xerxes son until the very end, serving the army he had once defeated.
 MARK OLIVER
Mark Oliver is a regular contributor to Listverse. His writing also appears on a number of other sites,
including The Onion's StarWipe and Cracked.com. His website is regularly updated with everything he
writes.
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