Plataea 479 BC: A Botched Night Retreat and Mardonius Killed by a Rock

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In August 479 BC, a year after Salamis, the Persian general Mardonius faced a Greek alliance of Spartans, Athenians, Tegeans and Megarians, around 80,000 men, across the Asopus River near Plataea. For 11 days neither side would attack: the Greeks held the slopes of Mount Cithaeron, the Persians the plain behind a fortified wooden camp. Feeding the Greek army took an estimated 120 tons of food and 300,000 liters of water a day, much of it hauled by some 35,000 helots on a 47-mile supply line. When Persian cavalry slaughtered a supply convoy and fouled the Gargaphia spring, the Greeks had to fall back at night.

The retreat fell apart in the dark. The center got lost, the Athenians were isolated, and the Spartan officer Amompharetus refused to withdraw, slamming a boulder at Pausanias's feet as his vote to stay. At dawn Mardonius saw a broken army and charged. Pausanias held his men under an arrow storm from the Persian wicker shield wall while waiting for favorable sacrifices until the Tegeans charged first. In the crush that followed, a Spartan named Arimnestus killed Mardonius with a thrown rock, the Persian line collapsed, and the Athenians breached the Persian camp.

• The Persian cavalry commander Masistius wore scale armor under his robes and fell only to a blow through the eye.
• Persian soldiers grabbed Greek spears with bare hands trying to snap the shafts during the shoving match.
• Artabazus, who had advised against attacking, marched his contingent intact all the way back toward Asia Minor.
• Pausanias set a Persian feast beside Spartan black broth and mocked the rich invaders who came to rob Greeks of their poverty.
• Captured Persian bronze became the Serpent Column, which Constantine moved and which still stands in Istanbul's Hippodrome.