The Danger Zone (DZ)

What were Xerxes plans for invading Greece. What were the Greek plans for resisting them? We’re now in the period of calm just before the storm.

As John Gaddis says about plans in his book On Grand Strategy they involve drawing:

upon principles extending across time and space, so that you'll have a sense of what's worked before and what hasn't. You then apply these to the situation at hand: that's the role of scale. The result is a plan, informed by the past, linked to the present, for achieving some future goal.

The engagement, however, won't in all respects follow the plan. Not only will its outcome depend on what the other side does — the "known unknowns," of which former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld famously spoke — but it will also reflect "unknown unknowns," which are all the things that can go wrong before you've even encountered an adversary. Together, these constitute what Clausewitz called "friction," the collision of theory with reality

Over the rest of this series we’ll see how this understanding plays out.

Tag words: Xerxes; Ancient Greece; John Gaddis; On Grand Strategy; Donald Rumsfeld; Persian invasion; Greco-Persian War; Decisive Battles of the Western World; JFC Fuller; Herodotus; The Histories; John Marincola;

Sometimes we think of these ancient peoples that I’m talking about, like Xerxes the ruler of the Persian Empire, who lived in this ancient, primitive world, as not being as sophisticated as we are. But that might not be true.

Was this campaign to invade Greece, just a part of his strategic plan to destroy the entire Greek world and its colonies including in Sicily? So was Xerxes pursuing a Grand Strategy to win his jewel of taking over all of Europe as well as Greece. As he told his nobles in Part 2 of this series:

if we crush the Athenians and their neighbours who dwell in the land of Pelops the Phrygian, we shall so extend the empire of Persia that its boundaries will be God's own sky, so that the sun will not look down upon any land beyond the boundaries of what is ours. With your help I shall pass through Europe from end to end and make it all one country. For if what I am told is true, there is not a city or nation in the world which will be able to withstand us, once these are out of the way.

Was the war begun by Xerxes invasion of Greece, truly the first world war?

Tag words: Xerxes; Persian Empire; Greek world; Grand Strategy; Athenians; Gelon; tyrant of Syracuse; Spartans; Hamilcar; Carthage; Salamis; John Marincola; Herodotus; The Histories; Diodorus Siculus; JFC Fuller; Decisive Battles of the Western World Volume 1; the Magi; Artachaees;

Xerxes was given a lesson in the determination of the Spartans not to give up their freedom to some foreign conquering ruler. They could have immortally told their tormentor, Xerxes, Give me liberty or give me death and beaten American Patrick Henry to the punch by 2,200 years, but the Spartans were fighting men with no time for fine words. The two Spartans who visited Xerxes spoke more bluntly.

Athens got the depressing prophecy from the oracle at Delphi that it was doomed if it resisted the Persians, in a prophecy that was blunt and not obscure like the one that poor Croesus received which I talked about in Part 8 of this series. But Athens resolved to fight on – even if the gods were against them. But they took the precaution of asking for a second opinion from the Oracle – perhaps an insult to the gods that may have made things worse. This prophecy was classic Delphic causing debate among the Athenians about what the prophecy meant.

Let me reveal all now.

Tag words: Xerxes; Persians; Athens; Croesus; Delphi Oracle; Demartus; Spartans; Herodotus; The Histories; the wooden wall; Divine Salamis; Gelon;

Xerxes had bound Europe to Asia with the two bridges that he had had thrown across the Hellespont. Now his mighty army was ready to cross. It was going to take several days and nights to achieve this task and Xerxes delivered a pep talk to the leaders before they began on the expedition.

Tag words: Xerxes; Artabanus; Susa; Persians; Herodotus; The Histories; Oracle of Dephi; Croesus; Cyrus; Aeschylus; The Persians; Alan Sommerstein; John Marincola; Artemesia; Demartus; Spartans;

Was Xerxes a hedgehog or a fox? Since there’s an overwhelming chance that you have no idea what I’m talking about I am going to have to explain aren’t I.

But first to get some context. Xerxes plans for invading Greece had received an enthusiastic response from everyone except his uncle, Artabanus. Now poised on the brink of crossing from Asia to Europe, Xerxes wanted to revisit this question with his uncle one last time. I think he’d like him to volunteer that he is now wholly behind the project, without being threatened by a ghost.

Tag words: Xerxes; Artabanus; Greece; Herodotus’ The Histories; John Lewis Gaddis; On Grand Strategy; Bosphorous; Aeschylus; The Persians; Darius; Isaiah Berlin; The Hedgehog and the Fox; Umberto Eco; Foucault’s Pendulum; Philip Tetlock; Expert Political Judgment

Xerxes grand, triumphal parade to conquer Greece took a detour to visit the ruins of Helen’s legendary Troy. How Cyrus the Great conquered the most impregnable city fortress in the world without shedding any blood, while inside the city a ghostly hand was writing a message of doom to the ruler of Babylon. And finally Xerxes arranged to see the might and irresistible power that he had assembled to crush the pesky Greeks. All of this will be covered now.

Tag words: Xerxes; Troy; Helen; Priam; Cyrus the Great; Babylon; Pythias, the Lydian; Herodotus;Magi; Bible; book of Daniel; Euphrates River; Belshazzar; Nabonidus; Belteshazzar; Book of Isaiah;

It was a triumphal victory march like none before or since even up to today, when Xerxes set out to conquer Greece, the whole of Europe even.

John Lewis Gaddis, Professor of History at Yale University, founding director of the Brady-Johnson Programme in Grand Strategy, and 2012 Pullitzer Prize Winner for his biography of George F Kennan, an American diplomat who advocated a containment policy of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, had this to say about Xerxes, on the brink of crossing over from Asia to Europe to conquer everything that stood in his way without submitting.

The date is 480 B.C.E. The place is Abydos, the town on the Asian side of the Hellespont where it narrows to just over a mile in width. The scene is worthy of Hollywood in its heyday. Xerxes, Persia's King of Kings, ascends a throne on a promontory from which he can see armies assembled, the historian Herodotus tells us, of over a million and a half men. Had the number been only a tenth of that, as is more likely, it would still have approximated the size of Eisenhower's forces on D-day in 1944. The Hellespont has no bridge now, but Xerxes had two then: one rested on 360 boats lashed together, the other on 314, both curved to accommodate winds and currents. For after an earlier bridge had broken apart in a storm, the furious king beheaded the builders and ordered the waters themselves whipped and branded. Somewhere on the bottom there presumably lie, to this day, the iron fetters he had thrown in for good.

This is a part of the story of Xerxes invasion that, like everything about his invasion is remarkable, recounted in such vivid and memorable colour by the Greek historian Herodotus.

Tag words: Xerxes; Greece; John Lewis Gaddis; On Grand Strategy; Hellespont; Artabanus; the Magi; Darius; Herodotus; The Histories; Pythius;

From the time of making the decision to invade Greece, military contingents, and their entourages from all over the Persian Empire descended on the capital, Susa. Herodotus tells us that this was made up of 2,641,610 fighting men. He says that he conservatively allows for an equal number of servants, camp followers, crews of provision boats and other craft that sailed with the expedition. So no less than 5,283,220 men and women descended on Susa.

With all of those powerful individuals gathered together in Xerxes capital, Susa, it was natural for Xerxes to want to show off, among other possessions, his beautiful wife, the Queen – but not in a way that she was likely to approve of.

Tag words: Persian Empire; Herodotus; The Histories; Xerxes; Candaules; The English Patient; Kristin-Scott Thomas; Gyges; Queen Vashti; Book of Esther; Bible; Mordecai;

In the world of the ancients, humans were the playthings of the gods. Xerxes, as you will remember, was thinking about not invading Greece which, as you will soon learn, would have been defying his gods’ given destiny. He was beginning to think that Artabanus, his uncle, was right. Why invade Greece? To set Xerxes on the correct trajectory, the gods wanted him to take, a little prodding was going to be needed from a transparent friend.

Tag words: Xerxes; Artabanus; Greece; Darius; Magi;