When the Persians arrived at Thermopylae in mid-August, they initially waited for three days for the Allies to disperse. When Xerxes was eventually persuaded that the Allies intended to contest the pass, he sent his troops to attack.[138] However, the Allied position was ideally suited to hoplite warfare, the Persian contingents being forced to attack the Greek phalanx head on.[139] The Allies withstood two full days of Persian attacks, including those by the elite Persian Immortals. However, towards the end of the second day, they were betrayed by a local resident named Ephialtes who revealed to Xerxes a mountain path that led behind the Allied lines, according to Herodotus. Herodotus has often been dismissed as a 'story teller', by Aristotle himself amongst others, and this may be a piece of folklore to create a more engaging narrative. In any case, it is impossible to determine with absolute certainty the legitimacy of Ephialtes' involvement in the battle. The Anopoea path was defended by roughly 1000 Phocians, according to Herodotus, who reportedly fled when confronted by the Persians. Made aware by scouts that they were being outflanked, Leonidas dismissed most of the Allied army, remaining to guard the rear with perhaps 2,000 men. On the final day of the battle, the remaining Allies sallied forth from the wall to meet the Persians in the wider part of the pass to slaughter as many Persians as they could, but eventually they were all killed or captured.[140]
After Byzantium, the Spartans were allegedly eager to end their involvement in the war. The Spartans were supposedly of the view that, with the liberation of mainland Greece and the Greek cities of Asia Minor, the war's purpose had already been reached. There was also perhaps a feeling that securing long-term security for the Asian Greeks would prove impossible.[186] In the aftermath of Mycale, the Spartan king Leotychides had proposed transplanting all the Greeks from Asia Minor to Europe as the only method of permanently freeing them from Persian dominion. Xanthippus, the Athenian commander at Mycale, had furiously rejected this; the Ionian cities were originally Athenian colonies, and the Athenians, if no one else, would protect the Ionians.[186] This marks the point at which the leadership of the Greek Alliance effectively passed to the Athenians.[186] With the Spartan withdrawal after Byzantium, the leadership of the Athenians became explicit.
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The spirits of the Greeks, particularly the Athenians, soared. They had beaten not only the Persians but the odds. And a glorious day it was, but only a moment's thrill, for they knew that Darius had hardly brought the full weight of the Persian Empire to bear on them. If he had, it's not likely they could have withstood the assault. Besides, Greece itself had really saved them and that lay at the heart of the imperious god-king's miscalculation, the tyrant's conviction that the stiff-backed, free-thinking Athenians would surely retreat in the face of such an overwhelming force. When all a person knows is slaves and satraps, he comes to expect that a beating will break, not stiffen, a person's back. 2ff7e9595c
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