Courage: The Politics of Life and Limb

2. Martial Courage and Honor

two Martial Courage and Honor La lessive de l’honneur ne se coule qu’au sang. [The laundry of honor can be bleached only with blood.] —French proverb Good heavens, Mardonius, what kind of men are these that you have brought us to fight against—men who compete with one another for no material­ reward, but only for honor! —Xerxes, king of Persia, after learning of Spartan courage (Herodotus Histories 8.26) Thermopylae: Martial Courage Epitomized Any discussion of courage must begin with a discussion of men in battle—with martial courage. From time immemorial, this is when courage comes most vividly to the fore. It is where men prove their manly worth and cowards cannot escape the bright light of day. 23 24  Courage And if we want to talk about courage and its relationship to honor, few cases are as luminous as ancient Sparta and, in particular, the story from Thermopylae, where the famous Spartan Three Hundred met the invading Persian hordes. The battle took place in 480 bc, ten years after the Athenians had routed the Persians at Marathon . This rout, while a setback to Persian imperial designs, was inconsequential for the general measure of Persian military power.1 More meaningful, however, is the reaction of Darius, the Persian king. He regarded the defeat not in technical and empirical terms but in terms of insult and dishonor. Thus he vowed revenge and began preparations but died before his army marched. The insult was bequeathed to his son and heir, Xerxes, who was determined to get “satisfaction and revenge [timwrh/sasqai]” (7.8a) or to “punish the Athenians for the outrage [a)/dika] they committed upon my father and upon us” (7.8b). Xerxes assembled a massive force and marched on Greece not only to avenge the loss at Marathon but to redress another “insult” the Persians had suffered at Sardis (5.102). According to Herodotus , when the Persians returned they had marshaled 1,207 triremes manned by 241,000 sailors as well as 1,700,000 infantry and a cavalry of 80,000. With the contingents picked up en route, Xerxes arrived with a fighting force of 2,641,610. Herodotus claims that with the servants, the camp followers, the crews of the provision boats, and so on, “Xerxes, the son of Darius, reached Sepias and Thermopylae at the head of an army consisting, in all, of 5,283,220 men” (7.186). The immensity of the force, even by modern standards , must have been awe-inspiring.2 It is thus in the context of insult and revenge (timwrh/sasqai) that the battle of Thermopylae must be understood.3 Herodotus’s story goes like this: after Xerxes led his massive force into Greece, the Greeks, contrary to their normal ways, confederated against the foreign invaders. Whereas normally they quarreled constantly among themselves for honor, the invasion brought them together as only the threat of violent destruction can (7.145).4 The confederacy , known as the Hellenic League, was still vastly outnumbered, so their usual way of fighting, in phalanxes on smooth and open ground, would serve them poorly. Thus, as Herodotus says, “The Martial Courage and Honor   25 Greeks on their return to the Isthmus then discussed, in consideration of the warning they had received from Alexander, where they should make a stand. The proposal which found most favor was to guard the pass of Thermopylae, on the grounds that it was narrower than the pass into Thessaly and at the same time nearer home” (7.175). Strategically speaking, the decision was sound. The pass at Thermopylae, Herodotus reports, was fifty feet wide and both to the east and the west narrowed to a single wagon track (7.176).5 The idea was to determine a place of battle eliminating advantage by limiting the number of troops able to be employed at any one time. The pass at Thermopylae was well suited for this, and the Greeks, after careful consideration, came to “the realization that the Persians would be unable, in the narrows of the pass, to use their cavalry or to take advantage of their numbers” (7.177). By fighting in the narrows at Thermopylae, then, the battle would pit the Greek way of war against the Persian. It would eliminate flanking maneuvers and keep the fight equal until one side simply ran out of replacements . The reason this battle epitomizes martial courage is...