Herodotus - Histories, Book 7, 99-105 lyrics

I pa** over all the other officers, because there is no need for me to mention them, except for Artemisia, because I find it particularly remarkable that a woman should have taken part in the expedition against Greece. She took over the tyranny after her husband's d**h, and although she had a grown-up son and did not have to join the expedition, her manly courage impelled her to do so. Artemisia was her name, and she was the daughter of Lygdamis; her father's family came from Halicarna**us, and her mother's was Cretan. She came with five ships and with men from Halicarnas¬sus, Cos, Nisyros, and Calydna under her command. Hers was the second most famous squadron in the entire navy, after the one from Sidon. None of Xerxes' allies gave him better advice than her. All the places I have listed as being under her command were Dorian in nationality, since the Halicarna**ians were originally from Troezen and the others from Epidaurus. So much for the fleet. When the army had been counted and organized into units, Xerxes decided that he would like to ride among them in person and review them. Later, then, that is exactly what he did. He rode on his chariot past each and every tribal unit and asked question, with his scribes taking notes, until he had gone from one end of the army to the other and reviewed both the cavalry and the infantry. Then he had the ships hauled back down into the water and he exchanged his chariot for a Sidonian ship; he sat under a golden canopy and sailed past the prows of the ships, asking the same kinds of questions about each group of ships as he had done with the land army, and having notes taken. The ships' captains had sailed about four plethra from the shore and were riding at anchor, all in a row, with their prows facing land and their marines armed and ready for battle. Xerxes reviewed them while his boat pa**ed between the prows of the ships and the shoreline. Once he was back on land afterwards, he sent for Demaratus the son of Ariston, who had accompanied him on the expedition against Greece, and when he arrived he said, 'I have a now, Demaratus, to question you about something I want to know. You are Greek, and from what you and other Greeks I've spoken to have told me, you come from one of the most important and powerful Greek cities. So tell me: will the Greeks stand their ground against me? Will they resist? It seems to me that all the Greeks, and even the combined forces of the entire western world, would be incapable of withstanding my advance, unless they formed a unified front. But I want to hear what you have to say about this.' In response to this question Demaratus asked, 'Would you like a truthful answer, my lord, or a comforting one?' Xerxes told him to be honest and promised that he would not find himself in a less favourable situation than before. So Demaratus said, 'My lord, you have asked me to tell the whole truth-the kind of truth that you will not be able to prove false at a later date. There has never been a time when poverty was not a factor in the rearing of the Greeks, but their courage has been acquired as a result of intelligence and the force of law. Greece has relied on this courage to keep poverty and despotism at bay. I admire all the Greeks who live in those Dorian lands but I shall restrict what I have to say to the Lacedaemonians alone. First, then, there's no way in which they will ever listen to any proposals of yours which will bring slavery on Greece; second, they will certainly resist you, even if all the other Greeks come over to your side. As for the size of their army, there's no point in your asking how, in terms of numbers, they can do this. If there are in fact only a thousand men to march out against you (though it may be fewer or it may be more), then a thousand men will fight you.' Xerxes' response was to laugh and say, ‘Demaratus, how can you say such a thing? The very idea of a thousand men fighting an army the size of mine! Now, come on. You say you used to be these people's king, so tell me: would you be prepared to fight ten men, for example? Of course not, but if everything you've told me about your political system is true, it is right that you, their king, should take on twice as many men as anyone else: that is in keeping with your customs. If each of them is worth ten men from my army, I'd expect you to be worth twenty. That would fit in with what you've been telling me. I suppose they are men like you and the other Greeks I've met, with the same qualities as you, and bodies of the same size. But if that's so, are you sure these proud boasts you Greeks make are not just nonsense? Look, let's be completely rational about this. How could a thousand men—or ten thousand or fifty thousand, for that matter—when every man among them is as free as the next man and they do not have a single leader, oppose an army the size of ours? After all, let's suppose there are five thousand of them: we will then outnumber them by more than a thousand to one! If they had a single leader in the Persian mould, fear of him might make them excel themselves and, urged on by the whip, they might attack a numerically superior force, but all this is out of the question if they're allowed their freedom. As a matter of fact, it is my belief that the Greeks would find it hard to take on just the Persians, even if they had the same number of troops as us. No, we're the only ones who have the quality you're talking about—at least a few of us do. After all, there are men in my personal guard who would be prepared to fight three Greeks at once. But you're just talking rubbish from a position of ignorance.' ‘My lord,' Demaratus replied, ‘I knew from the start that I wasn't going to endear myself to you if I spoke the truth, but you insisted on absolute honesty, so I told you how things stand with the Spartans. How much I love them at the moment you know perfectly well, since they deposed me, robbed me of my ancestral rights, and made me a stateless exile, while your father took me in and gave me a home and an income—the sort of act of kindness it would be sheer stupidity for anyone to reject rather than appreciate. I'd rather not take on a single opponent, let alone two or ten—an ability I'm certainly not claiming to have. If I had no choice in the matter, however, or if so much was at stake that I was motivated to do so, I'd gladly fight—especially one of those men who claims to be a match for three Greeks. That's how the Lacedaemonians are: they're as good as anyone in the world when it comes to fighting one to one, but they're the best when it comes to fighting in groups. The point is that although they're free, they're not entirely free: their master is the law, and they're far more afraid of this than your men are of you. At any rate, they do whatever the law commands, and its command never changes: it is that they should not turn tail in battle no matter how many men are ranged against them, but should maintain their positions and either win or die. If this seems nonsense to you, I shall hold my peace from now on. I only spoke because you insisted. I only hope that everything goes satisfactorily for you, my lord.' Xerxes laughed and made a joke of this reply by Demaratus. He was not at all angry, but dismissed him civilly.