The Defence Of Plataea

At the foot of Mount Cithaeron, one of the most beautiful of the

mountains of Greece, winds the small river Asopus, and between, on a

slope of the mountain, may to-day be seen the ruins of Plataea, one of

the most memorable of the cities of ancient Greece. This city had its

day of glory and its day of woe. Here, in the year 479 B.C., was fought

that famous battle which drove the Persians forever from Greece. And

here P usanias declared that the territory on which the battle was

fought should forever be sacred ground to all of Grecian birth. Forever

is seldom a very long period in human history. In this case it lasted

just fifty years.



War had broken out between Sparta and its allies and Athens and its

dominion, and all Greece was in turmoil. Of the two leading cities of

Boeotia, Thebes was an ally of the Lacedaemonians, Plataea of the

Athenians. The war broke out by an attack of the Thebans upon Plataea.

Two years afterwards, in the year 429 B.C., Archidamus, the Spartan

king, led his whole force against this ally of Athens. In his army

marched the Thebans, men of a city but two hours' journey from Plataea,

and citizens of the same state, yet its bitterest foes. The Plataeans

were summoned to surrender, to consent to remain neutral, or to leave

their city and go where they would; all of which alternatives they

declined. Thereupon the Spartan force invested the city, and prepared to

take it by dint of arms. And thus Sparta kept the pledge of Plataean

sacredness made by her king Pausanias half a century before.



Plataea was a small place, probably not very strongly fortified, and

contained a garrison of only four hundred and eighty men, of whom eighty

were Athenians. Fortunately, all the women and children had been sent to

Athens, the only women remaining in the town being about a hundred

slaves, who served as cooks. Around this small place gathered the entire

army of Sparta and her allies, a force against which it seemed as if the

few defenders could not hold out a week. But these faithful few were

brave and resolute, and for a year and more they defied every effort of

their foes.



The story of this siege is of interest as showing how the ancients

assailed a fortified town. Defences which in our times would not stand a

day, in those times took months and years to overcome. The army of

Sparta, defied by the brave garrison, at first took steps to enclose the

town. If the defenders would not let them in, they would not let the

defenders out. They laid waste the cultivated land, cut down the

fruit-trees, and used these to build a strong palisade around the entire

city, with the determination that not a Plataean should escape. This

done, they began to erect a great mound of wood, stones, and earth

against the city wall, forming an inclined plane up which they proposed

to rush and take the city by assault. The sides of this mound were

enclosed by cross-beams of wood, so as to hold its materials in place.



For seventy days and nights the whole army worked busily at this sloping

mound, and at the end of this time it had reached nearly the height of

the wall. But the Plataeans had not been idle while their foes were thus

at work. They raised the height of their old wall at this point by an

additional wall of wood, backed up by brickwork, which they tore down

houses to obtain. In front of this they suspended hides, so as to

prevent fire-bearing arrows from setting the wood on fire. Then they

made a hole through the lower part of the town wall, and through it

pulled the earth from the bottom of the mound, so that the top fell in.



The besiegers now let down quantities of stiff clay rolled up in wattled

reeds, which could not be thus pulled away. Yet their mound continued to

sink, in spite of the new materials they heaped on top, and they could

not tell why. In fact, the Plataeans had dug an underground passage from

within the town, and through this carried away the foundations of the

mound. And thus for more than two months the besiegers built and the

garrison destroyed their works.



Not content with this, the Plataeans built a new portion of wall within

the town, joining the old wall on both sides of the mound, so that if

the besiegers should complete their mound and rush up it in assault,

they would find a new wall staring them in the face, and all their labor

lost.



This was not all that was done. Battering engines were used against the

walls to break them down. These the defenders caught by long ropes,

pulling the heads of the engines upward or sideways. They also fixed

heavy wooden beams in such a manner that when the head of an engine came

near the wall they could drop a beam suddenly upon it, and break off its

projecting beak.



In these rude ways the attack and defence went on, until three months

had passed, and Archidamus and his army found themselves where they had

begun, and the garrison still safe and defiant. The besiegers next tried

to destroy the town by fire. From the top of the mound they hurled

fagots as far as they could within the walls. They then threw in pitch

and other quick-burning material, and finally set the whole on fire. In

a brief time the flames burst out hotly, and burnt with so fierce a

conflagration that the whole town was in imminent danger of destruction.

Nothing could have saved it had the wind favored the flames. There is a

story also that a thunder-storm came up to extinguish the fire,--but

such opportune rains seem somewhat too common in ancient history. As it

was, part of the town was destroyed, but the most of it remained, and

the brave inmates continued defiant of their foes.



Archidamus was almost in despair. Was this small town, with its few

hundred men, to defy and defeat his large army? He had tried the various

ancient ways of attack in vain. The Spartans, with all their prowess in

the field, lacked skill in the assault of walled towns, and were rarely

successful in the art of siege. The Plataeans had proved more than their

match, and there only remained to be tried the wearisome and costly

process of blockade and famine.



Determined that Plataea should not escape, this plan was in the end

adopted, and a wall built round the entire city, to prevent escape or

the entrance of aid from without. In fact, two walls were built, sixteen

feet apart, and these were covered in on top, so that they looked like

one very thick wall. There were also two ditches, from which the bricks

of the wall had been dug, one on the inside, and one without to prevent

relief by a foreign force. The covered space within the walls served as

quarters for the troops left on guard, its top as a convenient place for

sentry duty. This done, the main army marched away. It needed no great

host to keep the few Plataeans within their walls until they should

consume all their food and yield to famine, a slower but more

irresistible foe than all the Lacedaemonian power.



Fortunately for the besieged, they were well provisioned, and for more

than a year remained in peace within their city, not attacked by their

foes and receiving no aid from friends. Besides the eighty Athenians

within the walls no help came to the Plataeans during the long siege. At

length provisions began to fail. It was evident that they must die like

rats in a cage, surrender to their foes, or make a desperate break for

freedom.



The last expedient was proposed by their general. It was daring, and

seemed desperate, to seek to escape over the blockading wall with its

armed guards. So desperate did it appear that half the garrison feared

to attempt it, deeming that it would end in certain death. The other

half, more than two hundred in number, decided that it was better to

dare death in the field than to meet death in the streets.



The wall was furnished with frequent battlements and occasional towers,

and its whole circuit was kept under watch day and night. But as time

went on the besiegers grew more lax in discipline, and on wet nights

sought the shelter of the towers, leaving the spaces between without

guards. This left a chance for escape which the Plataeans determined to

embrace.



By counting the layers of bricks in the blockading wall they were able

to estimate its height, and prepared ladders long enough to reach its

top. Then they waited for a suitable time. At length it came, a cold,

dark, stormy December night, with a roaring wind, and showers of rain

and sleet.



The shivering guards cowered within their sheltering towers. Out from

their gates marched the Plataeans, lightly armed, and, to avoid any

sound, with the right foot naked. The left was shod, that it might have

firmer hold on the muddy ground. Moving with the wind in their faces,

and so far apart that their arms could not strike and clatter, they

reached and crossed the ditch and lifted their ladders against the wall.

Eleven men, armed only with sword and breastplate, mounted first. Others

bearing spears followed, leaving their shields for their comrades below

to carry up and hand to them. This first company was to attack and

master the two towers right and left. This they did, surprising and

slaying the guards without the alarm having spread. Then the others

rapidly mounted the wall.



At this critical moment one of them struck a loose tile with his foot

and sent it clattering down the wall. This unlucky accident gave the

alarm. In an instant shouts came from the towers, and the garrison below

sprang to arms and hurried to the top of the wall. But they knew not

where to seek the foe, and their perplexity was increased by the

garrison within the city, which made a false attack on the other side.



Not knowing what to do or where to go, the blockaders remained at their

posts, except a body of three hundred men, who were kept in readiness to

patrol the outside of the outer ditch. Fire-signals were raised to warn

their allies in Thebes, but the garrison in the town also kindled

fire-signals so as to destroy the meaning of those of the besiegers.



Meanwhile the escaping warriors were actively engaged. Some held with

spear and javelin the towers they had captured. Others drew up the

ladders and planted them against the outer wall. Then down the ladders

they hurried, waded across the outer ditch, and reached level ground

beyond. Each man, as he gained this space, stood ready with his weapons

to repel assault from without. When all the others were down, the men

who had held the towers fled to the ladders and safely descended.



The outer ditch was nearly full of water from the rain and covered with

thin ice. Yet they scrambled through it, and when the three hundred of

the outer guard approached with torches, they suddenly found themselves

assailed with arrows and javelins from a foe invisible in the darkness.

They were thus kept back till the last Plataean had crossed the ditch,

when the bold fugitives marched speedily away, leaving but one of their

number a prisoner in the hands of the foe.



They first marched towards Thebes, while their pursuers took the

opposite direction. Then they turned, struck eastward, entered the

mountains, and finally--two hundred and twelve in number--made their way

safely to Athens, to tell their families and allies the thrilling story

of their escape.



A few who lost heart returned from the inner wall to the town, and told

those within that the whole band had perished. The truth was only

learned within the town when on the next morning a herald was sent out

to solicit a truce for burial of the dead bodies. The herald brought

back the glad tidings that there were no dead to bury, that the whole

bold band had escaped.



Happy had it been for the remaining garrison had they also fled, even at

the risk of death. With the provisions left they held out till the next

summer, when they were forced to yield. In the end, after the form of a

trial, they were all slaughtered by their foes, and the city itself was

razed to the ground by its Theban enemies, only the Heraeum, or temple of

Here, being left. Such was the fate of a city to which eternal

sacredness had been pledged.