Leonidas I of
Sparta, the hero of Thermopylae, is probably the most famous of all
Spartans. His wife, Gorgo, is the most quoted of all Spartan women. Yet
very little is known about their lives.
Leonidas was the
third son of the Agiad king Anaxandridas II, who reigned from roughly
560-520 AD. He must have been born late in his
father's life because his father, happily married to his
sister's daughter, had to be reprimanded by the ephors for
failing to assure the survival of his line. Midway through
his reign he was still without children, and the ephors ordered
Anaxandridas to divorce his wife and marry a woman who would bear him
sons. According to Herodotus, Anaxandridas replied that he would do
neither, since his wife was "blameless" and
that the ephors' suggestion was
"improper." Eventually the ephors made a
second proposal that – contrary to Spartan law and custom
– Anaxandridas would be allowed to take a second wife, whose
children would be recognized as legitimate heirs, while his first wife
could "continue in all the privileges she now
enjoys." (See Herodotus, V:40). Anaxandridas
consented to this proposal, and the ephors then selected a young woman
for him. She was a descendant of Chilon the Wise, but
otherwise nameless in history.
In due time, this second wife became pregnant and gave birth to a son,
who was named Cleomenes. But to the wonderment of the
Spartans, shortly after Cleomenes was born, Anaxandridas'
first wife – who had been barren so long –
announced that she too was pregnant. So great was the
suspicion that this was a trick that the ephors insisted on being
physically present at the delivery, but to their amazement, she did
give birth to a son, who was called Dorieus. Thereafter the
accounts differ. Some sources claim Dorieus was the first of triplets,
with Leonidas and Cleombrotus being born immediately afterwards.
Other sources say that Anaxandridas' first wife
became pregnant again twice, once with Leonidas and then again with
Cleombrotus, or that the latter were twins. It is fair to say
that after the birth of Cleomenes and Dorieus, no one was particularly
interested in the latter sons and so the recording was careless.
The only thing certain is that Leonidas and Cleombrotus were
born after both Cleomenes and Dorieus – possibly several
years later.
Because Cleomenes was the firstborn son, he was exempt from the agoge,
but all three of the other sons attended it, undergoing the same
upbringing as common Spartiates. Dorieus proved to be the
"finest of his generation" and convinced himself
that in consequence, when his father died, the Spartans would make him
king rather than his elder brother Cleomenes, who was already showing
signs of mental instability. Anaxandridas died when Cleomenes
was roughly 20 years old and Dorieus a year younger.
Cleomenes was at once recognized as king by the Spartan
Council and Assembly. This so angered Dorieus that he could not endure
serving under his half brother and just a few years later (ca. 517) he
left Sparta with a small group of followers to set up a colony in
Africa. When the colonists were driven away by the
Carthaginians, Dorieus returned to Sparta but only long enough to raise
new capital and support for another colonial adventure, this time on
Sicily. There he died, probably in about 510.
Neither Leonidas nor Cleombrotus supported Dorieus in either
of his adventures and both remained in Sparta.
Meanwhile, Cleomenes had embarked upon a colorful political career
that included two sieges of the Acropolis in Athens, war with Argos,
and the bribing of the Oracle of Delphi to enable the removal of his
co-regent Demaratus. Cleomenes' rule involved many
unpredictable twists and turns and was controversial in his own time.
He made bitter enemies at home and alienated allies abroad,
causing constitutional changes to limit the rights of the kings and
turning the Peloponnesian League into a more powerful and democratic
body, because the allies refused to follow his lead blindly after being
tricked once too often. No source, however, reports Leonidas' role in, or his opinion of, his brother's often
risky and unpopular campaigns and policies. This seems
surprising, if he had indeed been seen as the heir apparent by his
contemporaries. One explanation of the disinterest in
Leonidas' early manhood may be that Cleomenes had a living
son who was his heir apparent, and Leonidas was therefore just an
"ordinary citizen." It is fair to assume,
however, that given the bitterness between Cleomenes and Dorieus (and
no doubt their respective mothers), Leonidas was more likely to be a
critic than a supporter of Cleomenes' behavior and policies.
While it seems highly likely that Cleomenes had a
son, history records only a daughter, a girl named Gorgo.
The name, which according to some commentators means Gorgon
(a mythical female creature with snakes for hair so hideous that those who looked at her turned to
stone), suggests her father did not find her very pretty at birth, the
date of which is unknown. Others, however, point out that the
word simply means something like "loud-voiced" or "roaring." Very likely it
comes from the same root from which we get the word Gorge – implying throat, as
in gorget, disgorge, etc. That Gorgo was a loud, roaring
baby seems wholly fitting. At all events, Gorgo made a
precocious entry into history. Herodotus claims that when
Aristagoras of Miletus came to beg Spartan help for an Ionian revolt
against the Persians, Gorgo was present. Aristagoras showed
Cleomenes a map of the Persian empire, trying to fire Cleomenes' greed
for conquering vast riches, but on learning that the Persian capital
was a three-month march from the sea, Cleomenes declared: "Your proposal to take
Lacedaemonians a three month's journey from the sea is a
highly improper one." Cleomenes then
walked out on Aristagoras to go home. As Herodotus tells the
story: Aristagoras
followed him, beseeching Cleomenes to listen to him "and send
the child away" because his "only
daughter," Gorgo, was with him. Cleomenes agreed to listen,
but
pointedly refused to send his daughter away. Aristagoras then proceeded
to attempt to bribe Cleomenes until
"the little girl suddenly
exclaimed: ‘Father, you had better send this man away, or the
stranger will corrupt you.'"
(Herodotus, V:51)
There is no exact dating of this embassy, but Gorgo's age is
given as "eight or nine." Although some
commentators suggest that Herododus exaggerated her youth to make
Cleomenes look bad, it is significant that regardless of her age, her
father insisted on her staying to listen to a foreign ambassador, that
she was not afraid to speak up in front of a strange man, and that her
father was not ashamed to take her advice. These factors
suggest that whether Cleomenes thought she was ugly or not, he valued
her as a person. This exchange corroborates other evidence
about the status of women in Sparta. In no other Greek city
is it conceivable that even a full-grown woman would have been present,
much less have spoken, in the presence of an ambassador.
Rejected by Sparta, Aristagoras went to Athens and received the support
he wanted. This in turn provoked Persian anger, and thereafter
the ancient world moved toward confrontation between the vast empire of
the "Great King" and the fiercely independent
collection of democratic city-states on the Greek peninsula.
Leonidas' role throughout this period is unrecorded. As a
citizen of Sparta, he would have taken part in the various campaigns
initiated by his aggressive older brother. Most
significantly, he would have taken part in the campaign against
Sparta's arch-rival and hereditary enemy, Argos.
Here, although the Spartans won a crushing defeat over the Argive army,
Cleomenes blemished the victory by slaughtering apparently hundreds of
Argive soldiers who had taken refuge in a "sacred"
wood, thereby displeasing many of Sparta's more pious
citizens. Cleomenes displeased other citizens by failing to
follow up his victory in the field by capturing the city of Argos
itself. There is no way of knowing what side of this issue
Leonidas took in the subsequent public debate, but it is probable that
he distinguished himself militarily. Otherwise, it is not
credible that he would have been entrusted with the sole command of the
entire allied Greek army just a few years later. Furthermore,
his command at Thermopylae, which is meticulously recorded, shows both
that he understood warfare better than most and that he commanded the devoted
loyalty of his troops. These are not qualities even Spartans
were born with. Neither of his elder brothers possessed
them. He most probably would have learned them campaigning
under Cleomenes.
Given his subsequent actions, it is safe to say that Leonidas probably
supported the majority of citizens who, shortly after the defeat of
Argos, rejected Persian demands for submission to the "Great
King." As is well recorded, "the
Spartans" threw the ambassadors down a well and told them to
get all the earth and water they wanted there. This does not
sound like the ephors or the Council gave orders, but rather as if an angry
Assembly took matters into their own hands. (The Spartans also later
regretted this act so much that two citizens volunteered to go to
Persia to be killed in reprisal, but that is a different story.)
Leonidas would by this time have been in the prime of life.
The oldest estimates put him at 42, but he could have been as
much as 10 years younger. He would have been at an age where
it was a disgrace not to be married: i.e., he would have been fined,
prohibited from attending certain festivals, and possibly publicly
ridiculed (allegedly women even dragged bachelors around an altar by
their hair). Nothing suggests this was the case. In
all probability he was married. The question is to
whom? It is not inconceivable that he was already married to
his niece Gorgo, if one allows for her age at the time of the encounter
with Aristogoras to have been closer to eleven than eight.
Alternatively, Leonidas was married to another woman who
died (in childbed?), leaving him free to marry Gorgo
later.
By now, however, Cleomenes'
insanity was becoming more evident and his actions
more reckless. There had never been any love lost between
Cleomenes and his co-regent, Demaratus, but Cleomenes became embittered
enough to decide to eliminate him. He first talked Demaratus,
a distant male relative, into swearing that Demaratus was a bastard, and
then bribed the oracle at Delphi into confirming this assertion when,
as Cleomenes knew they would, the Spartans asked Delphi for guidance.
The result was that Demaratus lost his throne and became an
ordinary citizen, while his heir, Leotychidas, became the Eurypontid
king. Leotychidas was not satisfied with his success, but
insisted on humiliating the former king in public, causing him to go
into exile and take refuge in the Persian court at a time when
Greek-Persian hostility was steadily mounting.
Cleomenes' role in the affair, however, rapidly came to light
and he was exiled. Cleomenes chose not to follow Demaratus to
Persia, but stayed closer to home in neighboring Arcadia.
Here he tried to entice the Arcadians into attacking Sparta.
Cleomenes was credited with enough persuasive powers for the
Spartans to decide he was more dangerous abroad than at home, and he
was invited to return to Sparta. His erratic behavior had
become so obvious and offensive, however, that – according to
Herodotus – "his relatives" put him in
the stocks. These relatives could have been none other than
his only surviving child, Gorgo and/or his half-brothers Cleombrotus and Leonidas. It is even conceivable that
the
entire "invitation" back to Sparta was engineered
by the astute and loyal Gorgo, who may have been intent on preventing her
father from causing more trouble for Sparta. She may have
induced the Assembly, Council, and ephors into inviting her father back
by promising that she would "take care of him" once
he was home. She may have underestimated how difficult her
father would be to control and discovered that she needed the help of
greater force – i.e., the help of her uncles. It is
almost certain that by this time, 491, Leonidas and Gorgo
were married.
Marriages between uncles and nieces were very common in the Spartan
royal families. Leonidas' own mother had been his
father's niece. The fact that Leonidas was
Cleomenes' heir probably made it all the more convenient and
politically expedient for Leonidas to marry Cleomenes' daughter. Had Gorgo married
another man and had a son by him, she might have insisted that her son took
precedence over Leonidas, and her husband might have attempted to rule
as regent for his minor son. By marrying Leonidas, all such
constitutional crises were neatly avoided. Whether Cleomenes
or Leonidas was behind the idea is unknown, but given the rivalry and
bitterness between the two branches of the family, it hardly seems
likely that Cleomenes would have favored it. On the
contrary, Cleomenes seemed far more fascinated with the exotic and
liked to entertain foreigners and to travel. It would have
been more in character for him to try to buy outside support for his
various policies by marrying Gorgo to someone he thought
useful. If that were the case, the initiative for the
marriage to Leonidas might have come from the remarkable Gorgo herself.
But clearly it was to Leonidas' advantage, and so the most
reasonable explanation is that he proposed the marriage to ensure his
succession. This would also explain a late marriage, as he
would have had to wait until Gorgo reached a marriageable age of 18.
In any case, Cleomenes did not submit gracefully to the indignation of
being put in the stocks. According to Herodotus, he bullied a
helot into giving him a knife, and with this started cutting his legs in
strips and then his thighs, and finally when he reached his belly he
died – presumably from loss of blood. Some modern
commentators find this story incredulous and hypothesize foul play on
the part of those who had the most to benefit – i.e., Leonidas
himself. In fact, however, self-mutilation is a common
feature of paranoid schizophrenia, and Cleomenes’ behavior
throughout his reign is consistent with schizophrenia.
Furthermore, it is very difficult to see why Leonidas would suddenly
turn fratricidal after a lifetime of loyalty, and even harder to imagine
the outspoken Gorgo standing idly by while her husband killed her
father.
Meanwhile, the Persians under the
"Great King" Darius had sent a fleet of
"six hundred triremes," with countless transports
filled with horses and provisions, to attack Athens and Eretria. The
commanders had orders to reduce both Greek city-states to slavery and
bring the slaves before the "Great King."
On their way they destroyed a series of smaller cities,
enslaving their populations as well. Athens, seeing the
juggernaut coming, sent to Sparta for aid. "The
Spartans" – not more closely identified by
Herodotus – agreed to send troops, but declared they could not march
"before the full moon." This lack of decisiveness,
usually taken as a sign of Sparta's invariable piousness, may rather
have reflected an internal power struggle.
Leotychidas, the Eurypontid king, was in disgrace.
In fact, the Spartans were so angry with him that they had turned him over
to the wrath of the Aeginetans. While he escaped with his life, he was
definitely persona non grata in Sparta at this time.
Cleomenes was dead. Why wasn't Leonidas the
recognized Agiad king? Why couldn't he lead an army
to assist Athens – as he did 10 years later? One
possibility is that Leonidas and Cleombrotus were indeed twins, and that the
latter chose to challenge Leonidas' right to the throne on
Cleomenes' death. Cleombrotus might have argued
that Gorgo was the daughter of a madman and would bring unhealthy blood
into the royal line. Or, were Leonidas still childless – possibly despite having had two wives – Cleombrotus might have presented
himself as the better candidate because he already had a son in his
teens. A hint at such a power struggle is found in one of the
few recorded quotes of Leonidas that does not refer to the defense at
Thermopylae. He is said to have been taunted with the words: "Except for being
king, you are not at all superior to us." To
which Leonidas replied: "But
were I not better than you, I should not be king."
Change but the one word "us" at the end of the
taunt to "me," and one has an exchange between twin
brothers.
All history records, however, is that 2000 Spartan troops left Sparta
at the full moon, and despite the remarkable feat of covering 120 miles
in three days, they reached Athens after the Battle of Marathon had
been won by Athens and Plataea.
In typical Spartan fashion, the Spartans – most probably
commanded by Leonidas, whether he was recognized as king yet or not
– insisted on seeing the Persian dead and the battlefield.
From his battlefield inspection and from interviewing as many
participants as possible, Leonidas undoubtedly learned a great deal of
valuable information that would be of use to him ten years later.
While the immediate threat to Greece had been repelled, the ire of the
Persian kings remained ,and after the death of Darius in 486, his son
Xerxes appears to have become obsessed with the idea of humiliating the
Greeks. To this end he set about raising the largest armed
expedition the world had ever known. The force was drawn from
all his various subject lands and composed of 100,000's of troops and
thousands of ships.
The former Eurypontid king Demaratus, still in the Persian
king's court, felt compelled to warn his former countrymen
about the coming invasion. He feared he would be executed if
his new master learned he was warning his former subjects. He
therefore wrote a message on the wood under the wax of a writing
tablet. Because the messages were usually written in the wax, the
tablet appeared to be blank. According to Herodotus, when the
wax tablet arrived at its destination, no one knew what to make of it
– until Gorgo suggested they scrape away the wax and look
underneath. This anecdote underscores Gorgo's
reputation for intelligence and also indicates that she was still very
much, now with her husband rather than her father, involved in affairs
of state.
Not long afterwards, the Persians
were ready to launch their invasion,
and they sent to the various Greek cities demanding they accept the
Great King as their overlord or – so they implied
– face certain destruction. Only Sparta and Athens were not
again asked to make a choice; Xerxes was determined to destroy them
both for the humiliation his father's ambassadors
had received at Spartan hands and for Marathon.
The Persian demands divided the rest of the Greek city-states into two
camps: those willing to pay tribute to the Persians to retain their
lives, and those who preferred to oppose the Persian claims even at the
price of their lives. While usually portrayed as a fight for
liberty and democracy, it is not really clear to what degree the
Persian king would have forced the Greeks to abandon their traditional
forms of government. But clearly those opposing the Persians
thought that they would be placed under unbearable burdens of taxation
and no longer free to pursue their own interests. Those that
chose to reject the Persian demands met at Corinth to plan a joint
defense. They represented only about one-third of the Greek city-states. Although Athens was the largest and richest of the cities
represented, had started the conflict with Persia by supporting the
Ionian revolt, and had shown military prowess at Marathon, still the
Spartans were elected the leaders of the alliance. That said,
it was obvious that land and naval forces would have to work together,
and Athens controlled the largest fleet. Despite a nominal Spartan
commander, effective control of the naval forces was ceded to
Athens. After an attempt to hold a position far to the north
proved impractical, the defensive alliance agreed to oppose the
Persians at Thermopylae by land and Artemisium by
sea.
Thus the stage was set for Leonidas to make his mark in history. There
are various theories on why he marched north with so small a
contingent. Officially, the Spartans were sending only an advance guard
and the full army would follow after the end of the Karneia.
While this
excuse seems flimsy, it should be noted in Sparta's defense
that many other Greeks also delayed sending troops because the Olympics
were in progress and they wanted to see them to an end first.
According to Herodotus, the 300 Spartans were to "encourage
the other confederates to fight and prevent them from going over to the
enemy." Given the large number of allied troops from the
areas closer to Thermopylae – i.e. who were defending their own homes –
possibly Sparta really thought 300 Spartiates (supported, remember, by
maybe as many as a thousand perioikoi auxiliaries and hundreds of helot
attendants) would provide sufficient "stiffening"
of the line to make it unnecessary to send more. Leonidas
himself is said to have answered the rebuke of other Greeks decrying
his small number of troops: "If
you think that I should rely on numbers, then not even the whole of
Greece is enough, since it is a small fraction of [the Persian] horde;
but if am to rely on courage, then even this number is quite
adequate."
Some modern historians suspect that the Spartans did
not want to send a large force north of the Isthmus because they
thought it was pointless and they expected to need the troops to defend
their own homes later. Conceivably opinions were divided and Leonidas
had to act on his own. The fact that he took exactly 300 Spartiates
suggests a Spartan king with the 300 "Knights," or
Guard, an elite force whose duty was to protect the kings in battle.
But the contemporary accounts stress that Leonidas hand-picked his
force (from volunteers) and took only men who already had sons.
This requirement does not, as some suggest, imply that
Leonidas expected all his men to die with him. Leonidas
simply realized that some of his men would certainly die in such an
unequal fight, and ― since he could not know who it would be ― wanted
no man with him, who had no heir. With respect to his own fate, he was
in no doubt however. The Spartans had received an oracle from Delphi
that said: "Listen, O
Spartans of the open plains: Either Xerxes will sack your gracious
town, And place your women and children in chains, Or you will mourn a
king of great renown.” Leonidas accepted that he
would be that king. His last words to Gorgo as he departed Sparta were:
“Marry
a good man and bear good children.”
What happened at Thermopylae is accounted in literally thousands of
accounts and does not need repetition here. Instead, allow me to quote
Leonidas' own words in response to the Persian
king's offer to make him king of all Greece: "If you understood
what was honorable in life, you would avoid lusting after what belongs
to others. For me, it is better to die for Greece than to be monarch of
the people of my race." When Xerxes
demanded he give up his arms, he said simply: "Come and take
them." Xerxes did, but to Leonidas
– not the victor – went the laurels of the hero.
Even in defeat, Leonidas became a symbol of the defense of
Democracy against tyranny, and a reminder of the need for sacrifice in
order to win that victory.
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