Different Thermoplyae?

I found an interesting question about the second Greco-Persian War that no one seems to have answered-it's about the Greeks choosing a different location for their last stand to buy time for the evacuation of Athens.....

Rather than necroing the thread I reposted it here. Here it is....

So this is essentially a geographic-military question:

OTL, The initial war-plans by the Spartan-Athenioan alliance/Hellenic league/League of Corinth was to stop the Persian advance at the Thessalian-Macedonian border, well north of the Greece proper.

Specifically, they aimed at holding the Persians at the Tempe pass, at the foot of Mount Olympus. Athenes and Sparta sent 10,000 first class hoplites (as opposed to the 7000 or so odds and sods sent to Thermopylae) to hold the pass with Thessalian cooperation.

There are no contemporary sources as to Thessalian military rosters at the time, but a century later Jason of Pherae employed 20,000-25,000 citzen soldiers in his armies as well as 6,000 mercenaries in 380 BCE. accordingly, 10,000 or so troops, of whom many would be cavalry, in 480 seems realistic.

In the event, The Macedonians (who were playing a double game as not very eager Persian vassals) warned the Sprtan-Athenian command that the vale of Tempe could be outflanked via the Sarantoporo Pass to West.

Absent a strong personality to insist on holding the vale, Themistocles of Athenes ended up pushing for a defense at Thermopylae. This decision, whatever it's purely military merits, was a political catastrophe for the league.

Thessaly, with it's cavalry, pastures and grain stores was forced to vassalize itself to Persia, many of the Northern Greek Polis defected, Thebes, which was best positioned to contrbiute to the defense of Thermopylae, moved to definitive neautrality and the argives all but jumped into bed with Persia.

Since the Persian invasion coincided with the Carnea, and since Leonidas was discredited by the failure of the League at Tempe, the Spartan main army was not commited to Thermopylae, the league force lacked the manpower to block the secondary passes (Leonidas could only spare 1,000 second class Phocian troops to the task) and the battle ended in a massacre of over half the Greek force, and the ravaging of Boeotia, Attica and Euboea.

OTOH, fate and the weather ended up favoring the Greeks at sea, and following Salamis the Persian army found themselves over-extended, unable to maintain most of their forces in central Greece and vulnerable to the Spartan led counter attack in Platea in 479.

However, with the death of Leonidas, the isolationist faction in Sparta eventually gained ascendence, and following the scandal of of the Persian bribery of Pausanias Sparta essentially withdrew from the war in Asia.

Athens, which emerged from the war with it's fleet intact, seemed positioned to benefit most from "liberating" The Islands of the Aegean and the Ionian cities from Persian rule- a goal which Sparta eventually found itself opposing.

An insufficient resource base and rivalry with Sparta and Thebes ended the Athenian empire, and the long period of fraticidal wars which followed failed to establish a single hegemonic power. Rather, the peripherial states (Epirus, Thessaly and Macedon) used that century to consolidate, develop and modernize until Phillip succesfully established Hegamony over Greece.


But what if the Greek expeditionary force has a more forceful and stubborn leadership in Tempe? Say, if Leonidas is appointed commander rather than staying in Sparta? With greater and better manpower could he hold both Tempe and Sarantoporo? Could a stalemate at both land and sea develop which would leave Persia as a common enemy for a generation or more?

If the Second Greek-Persian war ends with Persia still ensconced in Macedon, with Thebes, Argos and other would be fence sitting Greek cities dragooned into the league, would the league be transformed from a short lived alliance to a longer lived federation with durable institutions? WHat prospects would such a Federation have in the post Achamenid world (assuming the Persian empire goes into terminal decline as it did OTL)

Putting aside the political speculations- is the scenario millitarily plausible?

The question can be parsed down into three components:
1. Can the Tempe Vale be held?
2. Does the League expeditionary force+Thessaly have sufficient manpower to hold the Sarantoporo pass as well Vs whatever force the Persians are capable of supplying through that route?
3. Can the Persians outflank the Greeks by sea? If yes, where, and can the Greeks repulse them as they did at Marathon?

Regarding the first two questions, I've hiked both passes and they seem to me eminently defensible, more so, in many ways, than the Phocian passes. Furthermore, a holding action at Tempe holds several advantages for the Hellenes:
1. More and better troops.
2. Better prospects of reinforcements (pre Carnea, Northern Polis less demoralized and pro-Persian factions weaker)
3. Sarantoporo route requires more of a detour than the pass the Persians used to outflank Thermopylae.
4. More time to fortify both passes.

OTOH, the Tempe is much further away from the League power base and much closer to the Persian supply sources than Thermopylae. Still, all other things being equal, I think it is at least plausible that the Greeks can hold the Persians back by land, and inflict unendurable casualties if they try to break through.

The problem is by sea. OTL the Greek fleet was essentially attrited to defeat in the Battle of Artemisium by the time the Persians outflanked Thermopylae. The Greek, essentially Athenian, fleet was green and was outnumbered 3:1.

Better technique, motivation, supplies and leadership enabled it to inflict slightly more casualties on the Persian fleet, but given the initial force ratio numbers this must be judged a near catastrophic defeat. It is only the storms, which sank 2-3 times as many Persian ships as the Greek Trieremes did, which evened the odds and rendered it a tactical stalemate.

TTL, the naval battle will be fought in nearly the same place as OTLs battle of Artemisium. Why? because the Persians can't land and supply a flanking force anywhere north of Pagasetic gulf. The beaches are two narrow and exposed to storms, the mountains separating the beaches from the Thessalian plain too high, and the trails across the mountains too few and narrow.


Still, the naval battle likely ends in a Greek-Athenian defeat. It will likely be fought a month or two earlier than OTL which means fewer storms, and the Athenian fleet is even Greener than it was OTL. So unless Poseidon lends a trident, The Greek fleet is probably forced to withdraw with even fewer ships than OTL. There probably isn't enough of a fleet in being left to pull off a Salamis, even putting aside the incredible fluke it was OTL.

But it's fair to expect that the Persian fleet will be battered as hell, especially if it ends up engaging in a battle to the death with the Greek fleet, rather than inflicting sufficient casualties to force them into withdrawing.

Still, the Persian fleet now dominates the Agean and has a number of options-
0. one of those options is NOT a close flanking manuver against the Greek force at Tempe and assaulting them from both North and south. The Pagasetic Gulf is too far away for that.
1. But they could land at the Pagasetic Gulf and march on Pherae and Larissa, seeking to strip enough Thessalian and Greek forces away from the Northern passes to enable a breakthrough.
2. or they could march on Thermopylae, and isolate Thessaly from Gree proper. Under these conditions the Thessalians might well capitulate.
3. Alternately they might try for a repeat of Marathon and invade Attica to force Athenes out of the war.
4. Or decide the Spartans are the real threat and invade Lacademon.
5. Or else they can seek to support Greek allies- the most accesible and embittered seems to be Argos. And if they land there they may well march on Corinth and seek to Isolate Sparta from Athens.
6. alternately they may avoid pitched battle and just raid the coasts until league members begin defecting.

So the fate of Hellas essentially rests on which option the Persian fleet chooses to pursue and whether the Greek states prove capable of ejecting any beachead which they form and/or preventing defections and preserving political cohesion long enough for Xerxes to grow tired of the campaign and settle for a statues quo ante peace.

It's also worth while noting that the Persian fleet can operate in effectively for maybe two months until storms render large scale transport of men and provisions between the Persian bases in Macedonia and Asia minor and whatever beachead they establish in mainland Greece very costly.

Thoughts?

So, what do you guys think?
 

Hecatee

Donor
A force in the range of 10 000 hoplites is actually rather small, around a fourth of what the modern estimates give the Greek force at Platea. A stronger commitment to holding the vale of Tempe would probably lead to the presence of some 15 000 hoplites and around the same amount of cavalry and light troops, for a total of around 30 000 (to compare with some 40 000 hoplites and up to some 120 000 men maximum once logistics and light infantry had been accounted for).

Logistical constraints mean that such a force could probably not hold in place for more than 3 or 4 weeks due to the lack of Greek preparations. Once more using Platea as a comparison, even 4 weeks would be a stretch : they held for less than 2 weeks due to enemy raids on their logistical convoys, which may not happen here but would be counterbalanced by the distance and the need of foraging the cavalry, which was not an issue at Platea (the Greeks had no cavalry to speak of).

Then you have to take into accounts elements such as agricultaral cycles. If the engagement of both land and sea forces happen some 2 months earlier than Artemisium and Thermopylae, many men would in fact be required in the fields as it is the period for the harvest. It also means that many oxen may be unavailable for logistical transport due to the need for them in the fields.

On the Persian side you have a stronger army (less distance walked so less desertions, less distance to the logistical bases built for the invasion, etc.) which may find it easier to divide its force in two to attack on two fronts.
It is thus highly doubtful that the Greeks would be able to give a definitive defeat to the Persians even with the favorable terrain.

Also don't forget that landscape changes a lot : what you saw is not what they saw, thus for example the Thermopylae were much smaller then than nowadays (at least half less wide), making it that much easier to defend.

Now let's go forward to the aftermath of the battle. Should the Persian win the land battle, we'd have two big differences. If only half of the initial OTL force was Spartan, it would mean around 5000 hoplites and 5 to 8000 hilots.

That's half the hoplite force they deployed at Platea, and their defeat (let's count for some 50% losses due to retreat and large Persian cavalry in open country for the hunt) would mean 1/4th of the male citizen population of the city would die, a tremendous blow that would either force large internal changes of make the city much less powerful further on.

Athens can absorb more easily the shock but it might reinforce the will of those who wanted to flee toward the west, and this would be even more the case if the fleet was beaten of the Artemision. Salamine would thus be nothing but a staging point for Sicily or further west.

But even if they stayed, the defeat would also mean that about 10% of the hoplite forces of Platea would have been defeated, with a major defeat to doom the morale of other city states : as large an army as Platea's would thus become impossible to reunite.

Yet not all is lost : the strong engagement of the Thessalian in the fight means that they cannot hope for the Great King's forgiveness, thus the retreating Greeks may start to burn the Thessalian countryside, including what remains of the harvest which the Persian would thus be unable to use for their own needs. So the Greeks may got some respite, unless the Persians use what remains of their fleet to move quickly by sea to flank and defeat the city states...

Still, I consider the final defeat of mainland Greece as the most probable consequence. What Greece would become under Persia is to be determined... But the Greek spirit would not die and one may expect a new Athens in the West that would give birth to a different kind of Greek golden age, maybe based around Sicily (which would soon be purged of any Carthaginian presence in such a scenario)
 
A force in the range of 10 000 hoplites is actually rather small, around a fourth of what the modern estimates give the Greek force at Platea. A stronger commitment to holding the vale of Tempe would probably lead to the presence of some 15 000 hoplites and around the same amount of cavalry and light troops, for a total of around 30 000 (to compare with some 40 000 hoplites and up to some 120 000 men maximum once logistics and light infantry had been accounted for).

Logistical constraints mean that such a force could probably not hold in place for more than 3 or 4 weeks due to the lack of Greek preparations. Once more using Platea as a comparison, even 4 weeks would be a stretch : they held for less than 2 weeks due to enemy raids on their logistical convoys, which may not happen here but would be counterbalanced by the distance and the need of foraging the cavalry, which was not an issue at Platea (the Greeks had no cavalry to speak of).

Then you have to take into accounts elements such as agricultaral cycles. If the engagement of both land and sea forces happen some 2 months earlier than Artemisium and Thermopylae, many men would in fact be required in the fields as it is the period for the harvest. It also means that many oxen may be unavailable for logistical transport due to the need for them in the fields.

On the Persian side you have a stronger army (less distance walked so less desertions, less distance to the logistical bases built for the invasion, etc.) which may find it easier to divide its force in two to attack on two fronts.
It is thus highly doubtful that the Greeks would be able to give a definitive defeat to the Persians even with the favorable terrain.

Also don't forget that landscape changes a lot : what you saw is not what they saw, thus for example the Thermopylae were much smaller then than nowadays (at least half less wide), making it that much easier to defend.

Now let's go forward to the aftermath of the battle. Should the Persian win the land battle, we'd have two big differences. If only half of the initial OTL force was Spartan, it would mean around 5000 hoplites and 5 to 8000 hilots.

That's half the hoplite force they deployed at Platea, and their defeat (let's count for some 50% losses due to retreat and large Persian cavalry in open country for the hunt) would mean 1/4th of the male citizen population of the city would die, a tremendous blow that would either force large internal changes of make the city much less powerful further on.

Athens can absorb more easily the shock but it might reinforce the will of those who wanted to flee toward the west, and this would be even more the case if the fleet was beaten of the Artemision. Salamine would thus be nothing but a staging point for Sicily or further west.

But even if they stayed, the defeat would also mean that about 10% of the hoplite forces of Platea would have been defeated, with a major defeat to doom the morale of other city states : as large an army as Platea's would thus become impossible to reunite.

Yet not all is lost : the strong engagement of the Thessalian in the fight means that they cannot hope for the Great King's forgiveness, thus the retreating Greeks may start to burn the Thessalian countryside, including what remains of the harvest which the Persian would thus be unable to use for their own needs. So the Greeks may got some respite, unless the Persians use what remains of their fleet to move quickly by sea to flank and defeat the city states...

Still, I consider the final defeat of mainland Greece as the most probable consequence. What Greece would become under Persia is to be determined... But the Greek spirit would not die and one may expect a new Athens in the West that would give birth to a different kind of Greek golden age, maybe based around Sicily (which would soon be purged of any Carthaginian presence in such a scenario)

So logistics will be in the favour of the Persians and not the Greeks in this scenario, and many hoplites will also be unable to muster due to the agricultural needs. And we need to keep in mind that the terrain might not be as favourable.....hmmmm.

Is there no possibility for the Greeks to win? Or, if not at the Vale, at Thermopylae with the full army? Or is the only way to defeat the Persians is via open field combat against their army and winnign a victory at sea?

Personally I think the Greeks have many advantages holding here, mainly political but also some military (Thessalian Calvary will be a great counter to the Persian horse) but as you have brought up several disadvantages as well, the main one of which seem to be time, or the lack thereof.

So altering the OP somewhat, what if the Persian army was somehow delayed by a month or two, thereby giving the Greeks the same time to muster and mobilize when the harvest was over , and to fortify the Vale? Considering how much trouble a relatively ragtag force of hoplites gave the Persians within the narrow confines of a mountain pass, i think a fully stocked up hoplite army backed up with excellent cavalry can hold a similar pass much better, perhaps indefinitely?

And since it was the Macedonians revealing this to the Greeks, is it possible for them to somehow misguide the Perisans into believing that there is no pass, or perhaps even rebelling and joining the Greeks?
 

Hecatee

Donor
So logistics will be in the favour of the Persians and not the Greeks in this scenario, and many hoplites will also be unable to muster due to the agricultural needs. And we need to keep in mind that the terrain might not be as favourable.....hmmmm.

Is there no possibility for the Greeks to win? Or, if not at the Vale, at Thermopylae with the full army? Or is the only way to defeat the Persians is via open field combat against their army and winnign a victory at sea?

Personally I think the Greeks have many advantages holding here, mainly political but also some military (Thessalian Calvary will be a great counter to the Persian horse) but as you have brought up several disadvantages as well, the main one of which seem to be time, or the lack thereof.

So altering the OP somewhat, what if the Persian army was somehow delayed by a month or two, thereby giving the Greeks the same time to muster and mobilize when the harvest was over , and to fortify the Vale? Considering how much trouble a relatively ragtag force of hoplites gave the Persians within the narrow confines of a mountain pass, i think a fully stocked up hoplite army backed up with excellent cavalry can hold a similar pass much better, perhaps indefinitely?

And since it was the Macedonians revealing this to the Greeks, is it possible for them to somehow misguide the Perisans into believing that there is no pass, or perhaps even rebelling and joining the Greeks?

Delaying operations by one or two months would help the Greeks, we could imagine damage to the Bosphorus bridge as a factor for example, but seems strange as the Persians knew they were on a schedule due to both logistics and weather. The Persian land forces would be able to move something between 20 and 30 kilometers a day, due to its sheer size (at this point it might well be around a quarter of a million men strong : modern analysis put it around 120 000 at Platea, when a large part of it had left with Xerxes).

To help you imagine the scale of the logistics our best example is Spacteria, during the Peloponese war : after the Spartian recognized the impossibility to free their 420 hoplites and their accompagning hilots they negociated a truce that did specify how much food they would get during the negociations : it is one of our few precise data on the topic.

The rations were calculated using two units of capacity and not weight, the chenice and the cotyle, which are worth around 1 liter and 0,25 liter respectively.

First their was barley, which weights around 500 to 600 grams per liter. 2 chenices were to be delivered for each spartan hoplit, with one more chenice for each hilot.

This was somewhat on the generous side, as we know thanks to Xenophon that the hoplit's ration at Sphacteria was the same as the spartan king's when he did not eat in the public dining hall. This mean thant those 420 hoplits got aroung 500 kg of barley per day and the force (assuming their was one hilot per hoplit) required some 750kg per day.

Wine was also to be delivered, half a liter per hoplite and one quarter of a liter per hilot, around 300 liters a day in total, so at least 300 kilos plus the container. This means that some 800 men required around 1 ton of food and drink a day, and a lot of water beside (in theory two parts of water for a part of wine, thus around 630 liters for the spartans of Sphacteria, to which we must add cooking water, etc...).

Now Xenophon tells us that a single oxen-driven charriot carries around 25 talents of goods, that's around 650 kg. This mean that the 420 hoplits and their hilots used around 2 charriots of goods every day.

If we bring this to Plateas' numbers we get a global daily food consumption for soldiers and anciliary forces (valets, animal drivers, ...) of some 183 tons a day for around 150 000 men all around. The large convoy captured by the Persians that precipitate the initial retreat of the greeks was 500 animals strong according to Herodote is usually interpreted as being made of 250 chariots, which means around 160 tons of food, or made of 500 carrying animals (donkeys and the like) that would mean something like 50 tons of food (and the men driving the convoy had probably already eaten some of the stocks en route !)

Even if we lower the daily rations (which we may not do that much due to the fact that the men needed their caloric intake) we still have stagering numbers. Just imagine what the weels of the charriots will do to the dirt tracks making up the roads of Greece at the time...

If we carry those numbers to the Persian army we can see that it was not possible for them to delay, thus possibly the reason why they kept banging their head against the 300 at Thermopylae.

To answer your second question, it was not possible to fight a decisive battle at Thermopylae. It was a small passage between the sea and the mountain and only a limited amount of troops could fight at a single time. You could not keep a large army in place, the 6000 were all that was possible but also all that was required due to the geography.

About the advantage Thessalian cavalry would have provided, I'm not sure they would have been worth much for two reasons. The Persian cavalry was superior and the Thessalian had not yet evolved into the rather medium/heavy cavalry of the time of Alexander, and they could only be used in circumstances were the Persian numeric superiority could be exploited : their main use would thus be for raids, counter foraging, land devastation (their land mainly...) and the like, not in battle. Also consider that the Greek city states did not, at such an early date, use much cavalry and thus had no doctrine to do so : that's a great part of the genius of Philip II of Macedonia a century later.

I hope this long and technical answer helps you :) (and sorry, logistic of the classical greek armies was the subject of my MA thesis :p)
 
Delaying operations by one or two months would help the Greeks, we could imagine damage to the Bosphorus bridge as a factor for example, but seems strange as the Persians knew they were on a schedule due to both logistics and weather. The Persian land forces would be able to move something between 20 and 30 kilometers a day, due to its sheer size (at this point it might well be around a quarter of a million men strong : modern analysis put it around 120 000 at Platea, when a large part of it had left with Xerxes).

To help you imagine the scale of the logistics our best example is Spacteria, during the Peloponese war : after the Spartian recognized the impossibility to free their 420 hoplites and their accompagning hilots they negociated a truce that did specify how much food they would get during the negociations : it is one of our few precise data on the topic.

The rations were calculated using two units of capacity and not weight, the chenice and the cotyle, which are worth around 1 liter and 0,25 liter respectively.

First their was barley, which weights around 500 to 600 grams per liter. 2 chenices were to be delivered for each spartan hoplit, with one more chenice for each hilot.

This was somewhat on the generous side, as we know thanks to Xenophon that the hoplit's ration at Sphacteria was the same as the spartan king's when he did not eat in the public dining hall. This mean thant those 420 hoplits got aroung 500 kg of barley per day and the force (assuming their was one hilot per hoplit) required some 750kg per day.

Wine was also to be delivered, half a liter per hoplite and one quarter of a liter per hilot, around 300 liters a day in total, so at least 300 kilos plus the container. This means that some 800 men required around 1 ton of food and drink a day, and a lot of water beside (in theory two parts of water for a part of wine, thus around 630 liters for the spartans of Sphacteria, to which we must add cooking water, etc...).

Now Xenophon tells us that a single oxen-driven charriot carries around 25 talents of goods, that's around 650 kg. This mean that the 420 hoplits and their hilots used around 2 charriots of goods every day.

If we bring this to Plateas' numbers we get a global daily food consumption for soldiers and anciliary forces (valets, animal drivers, ...) of some 183 tons a day for around 150 000 men all around. The large convoy captured by the Persians that precipitate the initial retreat of the greeks was 500 animals strong according to Herodote is usually interpreted as being made of 250 chariots, which means around 160 tons of food, or made of 500 carrying animals (donkeys and the like) that would mean something like 50 tons of food (and the men driving the convoy had probably already eaten some of the stocks en route !)

Even if we lower the daily rations (which we may not do that much due to the fact that the men needed their caloric intake) we still have stagering numbers. Just imagine what the weels of the charriots will do to the dirt tracks making up the roads of Greece at the time...

If we carry those numbers to the Persian army we can see that it was not possible for them to delay, thus possibly the reason why they kept banging their head against the 300 at Thermopylae.

To answer your second question, it was not possible to fight a decisive battle at Thermopylae. It was a small passage between the sea and the mountain and only a limited amount of troops could fight at a single time. You could not keep a large army in place, the 6000 were all that was possible but also all that was required due to the geography.

About the advantage Thessalian cavalry would have provided, I'm not sure they would have been worth much for two reasons. The Persian cavalry was superior and the Thessalian had not yet evolved into the rather medium/heavy cavalry of the time of Alexander, and they could only be used in circumstances were the Persian numeric superiority could be exploited : their main use would thus be for raids, counter foraging, land devastation (their land mainly...) and the like, not in battle. Also consider that the Greek city states did not, at such an early date, use much cavalry and thus had no doctrine to do so : that's a great part of the genius of Philip II of Macedonia a century later.

I hope this long and technical answer helps you :) (and sorry, logistic of the classical greek armies was the subject of my MA thesis :p)


Don't worry, detailed and thoughtful responses like these are what I looked for when I started (or I guess rebumped and old question) this thread!:)

So both the Persians and the Greeks will require massive amounts of logistics to move their respective armies around, and if they decide to hold at the Vale, then the Persians will end better off then OTL because of shorter distance from their base of operations, less desertions, and the Greeks will end off worse because most of the men will have to harvest the crops. And Thessalian cavalry will not be as great of a counter to the Persian cav as thought....

BUT, didn't many of the northern Greek city states ally themselves to the Persians when the league pretty much abandoned them and to quote the OP Thessaly with its prime horse fields and Thebes which is in the best position to defend Thermoplyae moved into the neutral? In this case the Persians will have to fight through all of these Northen cities and Thessaly won't go down without a fight if the league is supporting them, and maybe here their time can come when they raid and disrupt long Persians supply lines, and if the Persians do win their advantage in cavalry will be diminished in my opinion, since they will have to actually fight and the pastures from Thessaly they relied on OTL will be detroyed. Also Thebes can contribute to the secondary defence at Thermoplyae a lot more than OTL, which I guess the Persians will have to run straight into again because of the logistic constraints you have listed.

An interesting thought I had was who will hold the Vale. And I -think- it will be the vaunted Spartans. Unlike other Greeks they have the Helots to do all their harvest work for them and actual Spartan citizens just train for war every single day. So say if Leonidas was at the war council and the decision was made to hold the vale, and the Spartans volunteered themselves both because the Greeks needed strong leadership right now and because they're the only one who can summon full strength troops. A force of Spartans, Periokoi, and Helots move to the Vale and take up defensive positions only a week or so before the Perisans arrive, and are joined by the Thessalians, who also contribute hoplites and importantly cavalry, which strikes and raids the precarious Persian lines. The northern Greek cities also contributed some troops each. This force is a lot more potent then the one OTL at Thermoplyae, and in my humble opinion they could have at the very least dealt almost unbearably high casualties on the Persians, before withdrawing in good order. Also by now Thebes and Athens have hurried the harvest, and preparations have begun at Thermoplyae to hold the narrow mountain passes again, knowing the Persians will have to try to get through. They will be joined by the remnants of the Tempe holding force, and replenish forces while Xerxes takes even more attrition and losses when he has to individually conquer most of the cities in the North instead of having them submit.

So the wildcard really is the Persian fleet.....

Does what I say seem plausible or not?....any comment is welcomed!
 

Hecatee

Donor
Well even with the Spartans making their stand at Thermopylae Thebe did not move to help, so I don't expect them to fight even further from home at Tempe. Don't forget that Persian gold went in front of Persian armies and that bribing was in full force, the Persians wanted to defeat Athens and then Sparta (due to their treatment of their ambassadors) but all did not show the courage of thoses cities...

The force at Tempe was to be some 10 000 hoplites strong, half of them Spartans. That's about half of the Spartan forces. If we imagine to the countrary that they send their full force north, it makes for the same amount of men : if we add the Athenians, that would give some 15 000 hoplites (or around 30 000 men with light forces and support units), about a third of the hoplite forces of Greece at Platea. But those Athenians hoplites would not be availlable for ship duty (in theory a ship of this period carries around a hundred rowers and 20 fighters) which might weaken the fleet.

Also I'm not sure Sparta would send all of its forces so early, due to the need to keep the hilots in check : as the shock of Thermopylae did not yet happen they might be warry of leaving home without any guards. At Platea they did a maximum effort operation taking with them a lot of periekoi and hilots, that made it impossible for the later to revolt. But here that would not be the case, if only because of the harvest's needs.

Thus the 5000 of the PTL proposals seems like its already a very huge spartan commitment.

About how the battle would have turned out, well I'm sure their would have been a lot of dead Persians, more than at Thermopylae, but possibly at too high a cost for the Greeks : loosing a fifth of their combined forces to the ennemy (due to the lenght of the retreat in a terrain giving full capacity to the Persian cavalry, namely the Thessalian plain, with little cavalry of their own and what there is being of mower worth) would probably mean the loss of the war due to two factors :

- no heroics on the scale of the 300 to act as an unifying element (even with that their were dissentions between Athens and Sparta after Thermopylae...),

- more cities afraid of the Persians as they would have defeated the largest greek army since the age of the trojan war,

- Sparta in a state of major disarray (as maybe the two kings would have been sent in the operation instead of just one, thus creating a major succession crisis beside the demographic catastrophe of loosing half of their menfolk),

- the calls to hide behind a wall on the isthmus of Corinth much more efficient, thus leaving Athens at the mercy of the Persians

Thermopylae, Salamine and Platea were really miraculous when you look at all that happened right for the Greeks !
 
Well even with the Spartans making their stand at Thermopylae Thebe did not move to help, so I don't expect them to fight even further from home at Tempe. Don't forget that Persian gold went in front of Persian armies and that bribing was in full force, the Persians wanted to defeat Athens and then Sparta (due to their treatment of their ambassadors) but all did not show the courage of thoses cities...

The force at Tempe was to be some 10 000 hoplites strong, half of them Spartans. That's about half of the Spartan forces. If we imagine to the countrary that they send their full force north, it makes for the same amount of men : if we add the Athenians, that would give some 15 000 hoplites (or around 30 000 men with light forces and support units), about a third of the hoplite forces of Greece at Platea. But those Athenians hoplites would not be availlable for ship duty (in theory a ship of this period carries around a hundred rowers and 20 fighters) which might weaken the fleet.

Also I'm not sure Sparta would send all of its forces so early, due to the need to keep the hilots in check : as the shock of Thermopylae did not yet happen they might be warry of leaving home without any guards. At Platea they did a maximum effort operation taking with them a lot of periekoi and hilots, that made it impossible for the later to revolt. But here that would not be the case, if only because of the harvest's needs.

Thus the 5000 of the PTL proposals seems like its already a very huge spartan commitment.

About how the battle would have turned out, well I'm sure their would have been a lot of dead Persians, more than at Thermopylae, but possibly at too high a cost for the Greeks : loosing a fifth of their combined forces to the ennemy (due to the lenght of the retreat in a terrain giving full capacity to the Persian cavalry, namely the Thessalian plain, with little cavalry of their own and what there is being of mower worth) would probably mean the loss of the war due to two factors :

- no heroics on the scale of the 300 to act as an unifying element (even with that their were dissentions between Athens and Sparta after Thermopylae...),

- more cities afraid of the Persians as they would have defeated the largest greek army since the age of the trojan war,

- Sparta in a state of major disarray (as maybe the two kings would have been sent in the operation instead of just one, thus creating a major succession crisis beside the demographic catastrophe of loosing half of their menfolk),

- the calls to hide behind a wall on the isthmus of Corinth much more efficient, thus leaving Athens at the mercy of the Persians

Thermopylae, Salamine and Platea were really miraculous when you look at all that happened right for the Greeks !


I think that Thebes and the other Greek Cities that submitted did that in OTL since the League abandoned them to the Persians, here the league will be making a statement by actually committing and fighting, so Thebes will probably be, if not actually fighting, at least be pro-League neutral. Also I meant that the Thebes can contribute more to the defence of Thermoplyae, not Tempe, since they were in the best position to do so, and they will still be in their harvest season as you mentioned. And while I agree there will probably be some traitors the majority will be (IMO) be unswayed by Persian gold.

Am I mistaken in believing that the Greeks can hold the narrow mountain passes-be it Tempe or Thermopylae-against the numerically superior Persians? The hoplite phalanx when attacked head on is very formidable and if a large number of them are present at the pass the Greeks can inflict massively disproportionate and lopsided kill ratios in their favour while they keep rotating men in and out of the fighting to keep fatigue to a minimum, while the Persians will burn through men as they keep charging..... I think the forces that will be contributed by the other Greek cities that would have been vassalized or conquered by the Persians can make up for the Athenian manpower, and maybe the navy size can be increased? Because a lot of the concerns here seem to be the fact that the Greeks will lose large numbers of troops (which will be countered here since no retreat from the pass). Also Xerxes should take more time in pacifying the Northern Greek cities that submitted IOTL, giving the League more time to prepare and finish the harvest. Even if Tempe falls there is still Thermoplyae to fall back to and the Persians lost a LOT of men, while the heroics of the Tempe force will be remembered (perhaps even used as propaganda-if the Greeks win-Sparta was fighting while the Athenians were harvesting wheat!).

Of course if Tempe falls all of your objections become valid, but is it possible for the Greeks to hold back the Persians say, until the main force can arrive after finishing the harvest?
 

Hecatee

Donor
Bump/question:

Can the Greeks hold Thermoplyae/Tempe pass with additional forces avalible to them?


Sorry it seems more a conversation than a large debate :) But in my opinion no. After about a week the Persians would go for another route, inland, too little time for the harvesters to gather as an army.

Don't forget that armies do not appear overnigth. We know that in Athens for instance messages would be posted in public places a few days before muster, enough that most people would have come to one of the demes' centers and learned about it.

They would bring with them food for three days (Aristophanes gives us funny scenes of men running around looking for onions and cabbages to go with their 3 days grain supply) while the general would look for money to carry with him and send messages to merchants on the expected road of advance, with the goal of buying food as the army moved.

The Spartans on the other hand would ready charriots with everything deemed necessary for war, from food to tools, and carry it all from Sparta to the place of battle (in itself quite a time consuming travel...) : we see during the Peloponese war that they can't supply themselve in the field for much more than a month even when looting the attic rural areas (obviously a no go in our scenario).

All the other cities would fall somewhere in the middle between those two models. So once a plan's been approved you have about half a month before forces begin to move, then they have to change their roadmap to block the new Persian's invasion road in rather poor areas most men would not be familiar with, and by the time they get where they want they'll probably find the army already passed the chokepoint they intended to defend... More men does thus not help and may in fact increase the logistical issues for the Greeks, especially when dealing with the less developped western areas.
 
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