Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/220

 1/6 Outlines of Europe an History Retreat of Xerxes in the east ; defeat of Carthage in the west Reaction against The- mistocles Persians again in Attica effort to induce Sparta to join with Athens in doing this very thing; but the cautious Spartans could not be prevailed upon to undertake what seemed to them so dangerous an enterprise. Had Themistocles' plan of sending the Greek fleet immediately to the Hellespont been carried out, Greece would have been saved another year of anxious campaigning against the Persian army. With many losses from disease and insufficient supplies, Xerxes retreated to the Hellespont and withdrew into Asia, leaving his able general Mardonius with an army of perhaps fifty thousand men to winter in Thec-saly. Meantime the news reached Greece that an army of Carthaginians which had crossed from Africa to Sicily had been completely defeated by the Greeks under the leadership of Gelon, tyrant of Syra- cuse. Thus the assault of the Asiatics upon the Hellenic world was beaten back in both east and west in the same year (480 B.C.) 1 The brilliant statesmanship of Themistocles, so evident to us of to-day, was not so clear to the Athenians as the winter passed and they realized that the victory at Salamis had not relieved Greece of the presence of a Persian army, and that Mardonius would invade Attica with the coming of spring. Themistocles, whose proposed naval expedition to the Hellespont would have forced the Persian army out of Greece, was removed from command by the factions of his ungrateful city. Nevertheless the most tempting offers from Mardonius could not induce the Athenians to forsake the cause of Greek liberty and join hands with Persia. As Mardonius at the end of the winter rains led his army again into Attica, the unhappy Athenians were obliged to flee as before, this time chiefly to Salamis. Sparta, always reluctant lit is evident that Xerxes by his control of the Phpenician cities had in- duced Phoenician Carthage to attack the Greeks in the west while he himself attacked them in the east. The Persian fleet defeated at Salamis was largely made up of Phoenician ships. The Phoenicians in east and west (Carthage) thus represent the two wings of the great Semitic line, in attack on the Indo- European line (Fig. 49) represented in east and west by the Greeks.