'To Make a New Thermopylae': Hellenism, Greek Liberation, and the Battle of Thermopylae

Author(s): Ian Macgregor Morris

Source: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Oct., 2000), pp. 211-230
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/826935
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Greece& Rome, Vol. 47, No. 2, October2000

TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE:

HELLENISM, GREEK LIBERATION, AND THE
BATTLE OF THERMOPYLAE*

By IAN MACGREGOR MORRIS

In the eighteenth century, attitudes towards ancient Greece were

changing from an antiquarian interest in literature and art, into a
wider emotional affiliation that permeated many aspects of artistic and
political life. With this new attitude came an interest in contemporary
Greece and an awareness of and concern about her state under Turkish
rule which, by the early nineteenth century, culminated in growing
sympathy for the cause of Greek liberation. Of all the characters and
incidents of ancient Greek history, none played such a central part in
this tradition as those involved in the Battle of Thermopylae of 480
B.C., so that by the very eve of the Greek revolution in 1821 Byron
could call on his contemporaries to 'make a new Thermopylae'. The
history of Thermopylae in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries is, in many ways, the history of contemporary hellenism.
The story of the eighteenth-century obsession with Thermopylae
begins in earnest in 1737. Richard Glover, at the age of 25, published
Leonidas,a blank verse epic poem in nine books, some 5,000 lines long.
Modern critics have been less than kind to Glover, usually dismissing his
work without reason or evidence.1 Yet in the eighteenth century the
reaction was quite different. The poem was 'for a short time the most
popular poem in the English language,'2 and its popularity encouraged
Glover to publish an extended version in 1770 and to write a sequel
published posthumously in 1787. It went through three editions in the
first year, was translated into French, into German four times, and into
Danish; eminent artists illustrated scenes from it, and it was twice
adapted for the stage.3 Glover himself became the toast of literary
circles: Swift, in a letter to Pope - a close acquaintance of Glover -
wrote that Leonidas 'hath great vogue';4 Joseph Warton and John Scott
praised it for its classical 'simplicity', and Robert Southey for its
'classical propriety', claiming that he read it more than any other
poem, and did so 'always with renewed pleasure'.5 Henry Fielding
described Glover as 'a celebrated poet of our nation',6 and Byron
212 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE

included him in a list of poet-orators of whom he wrote: 'These are great

names, I may imitate, I can never equal them'.7
The poem is a retelling of the events before and during the battle of
Thermopylae. Glover closely follows his historical sources - mainly
Herodotus, Diodorus, and Plutarch - adding embellishments only
where they allow.8 Although modern critics have accused him of writing
the poem on behalf of a political faction opposed to Robert Walpole's
ministry,9 any objective reading of the poem refutes such a claim.
Although there are political elements to the poem, they are implicitly
critical of the partisan politics of the time and remain secondary to
artistic concerns. Glover's objective was to compose a poem on the
Homeric model, and his direct rejection of many of the norms of neo-
classical epic theory - as epitomized by Dryden and even Pope - place
him in the forefront of the new literarytrends that came to fruition in the
romanticism of the early nineteenth century. He lies somewhere in
between neo-classicism and romanticism, and while describing him as
a Romantic would be going too far, to describe him as a hellenist
would not.
Glover's hellenism can be seen in two ways, the first literary, and the
second political. Firstly, he avoids what many at the time saw as the
over-sophistication and artificiality of modern poetry, in favour of
'simplicity', an ambiguous term, but one often favourably applied to
Glover. Critics such as Joseph Warton and William Cowper considered
'simplicity' as the very essence of ancient Greek poetry, especially
Homer. Contemporaries saw in Glover's poetry a conscious emulation
of Homer, an attempt to return to ancient models of poetry.?1 In the
seventeenth century, during the height of the literary genre that would
later be termed 'neo-classicism', writers such as Milton and Dryden,
while greatly admiring ancient literaturehad tended to believe that their
Christian age could improve upon it." However, one of the central
tenets of the hellenism of the eighteenth century was the belief that,
despite the great literature of the Augustan age, no such improvement
had been made. As such, imitation was a virtue. Secondly, there is
Glover's attitude to the Greeks themselves. Glover was among a
growing group of writers who were turning from Roman to Greek
models, not just in literary, but also in moral terms. In Leonidas, the
characters - both Greek and Persian - epitomize varying ideals and
aspects of virtue. Glover is not so simplistic as to create perfect
exemplars in his characters, a quality Dryden had thought essential
for an epic hero.'2 Rather, he uses the characters to elucidate the ideas
 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE 213

which ancient Greece was increasingly being seen to represent. For

example, Leonidas' address to the Spartan assembly:
Why this astonishment on ev'ry face,
Ye men of Sparta? Does the name of death
Create this fear and wonder? O my friends!
Why do we labour through the arduous paths,
Which lead to virtue? Fruitless were the toil,
Above the reach of human feet were plac'd
The distant summit, if the fear of death
Could intercept our passage. But in vain
His blackest frowns and terrours he assumes
To shake the firmness of the mind, which knows,
That wanting virtue life is pain and woe,
That wanting liberty ev'n virtue mourns,
And looks around for happiness in vain.
(Leonidas I.126-38)

Liberty and virtue: two concepts inextricably linked and seen, by many,
to be embodied in their purest form in ancient Greece. The placing of
these ideals in ancient Greece was the real beginning of hellenism. In
Glover there was an attitude of admiration to the ancient Greeks that
was primarily concerned with the people themselves. Before the eight-
eenth century, while there had been much admiration for the artistic
achievements of ancient Greece, the people of ancient Greece them-
selves were viewed with a general suspicion.13 As such, the concentra-
tion on the people rather than their art was something new. James
Thomson, in both TheSeasons (1726-44) and Liberty(1735) had shown
elements of this, but in both of these works the Greeks were not
portrayed as an exceptional people, but merely as worthy of comparison
with Romans and Britons. While Glover never actually claimed the
ancient Greeks were exceptional, within his concentration on a Greek
story and Greek virtue lay the seeds of such an idea.
Furthermore, while Thomson's Liberty,or Mark Akenside's Pleasures
of The Imagination (1742) both placed eighteenth-century ideals in
Ancient Greece, Glover took this one step further. His poem associated
these ideals with one specific event and group of characters, and the
success of Leonidasensured this association in the popular imagination.
Such an association was not completely new: the ideals of liberty, virtue,
and patriotism can be found in connection with Thermopylae in
Simonides and Herodotus, throughout antiquity, and in mediaeval
and renaissance accounts. However, the success of this poem meant
that Thermopylae was increasingly identified as the exemplar of these
214 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE

ideals. In the 1720s, James Thomson had made no mention of Leonidas

among his list of Greek 'worthies' in The Seasons,but in the final revised
edition of the poem, published in 1744, the Spartan stands as the best
example of Lycurgan schooling. In the wake of Leonidas,Thermopylae
had become an essential archetype.
* * *

In the mid-eighteenth century, travel to Greece itself, though still not

part of the Grand Tour, was gradualiy becoming more common. These
travellersvaried in intent, ranging from trade and botany to the study of
antiquities, but they all contributed to an awareness of Greece, not
merely as the scene and origin of classical literature, but as an actual
place. Travellers' accounts of this seemingly exotic land were fuelled by,
and in turn further fuelled, the growing passion for hellenism. Although
the primary interest of many of these earlier travellerslay in the remains
of ancient art, by the 1750s a new aspect was beginning to emerge.
Robert Wood's The Ruins of Palmyra, published in 1753, is a painstak-
ingly illustrated record of that ancient city. However a passage in the
preface shows that Wood's interests lay beyond archaeology:
It is impossible to consider with indifference those countries which gave birth to letters
and arts, where soldiers, orators, philosophers, poets and artists have shewn the boldest
and happiest flights of genius, and done the greatest honour to human nature.
Circumstances of climate and situation, otherwise trivial, became interesting from that
connection with great men, and great actions, which history and poetry have given them:
the life of Miltiades or Leonidas could never be read with so much pleasure, as on the
plains of Marathon or at the streights of Thermopylae; the Iliad has new beauties on the
banks of the Scamander, and the Odyssey is most pleasing in the countries where
Ulysses travelled and Homer sung. The particular pleasure, it is true, which an
imagination warmed on the spot receives from those scenes of heroick actions, the
traveller can only feel, nor is it to be communicated by description. But classical ground
not only makes us always relish the poet, or historian more, but sometimes helps us to
understand them better.

Wood was, along with James Stuart, among the first English travellersto
visit Thermopylae. His fascination with the landscape is the beginning
of a trend that was to reach its climax with the Romantic poets. The
Greek landscape, for Wood, represents a continuity with antiquity, that
is in some ways more powerful than the ruins. In his later work on
Homer,14 Wood used the geography of Troy to explicate the Iliad, and
much as modern classicists may scorn his method, his contemporaries
did not. There arose a belief, fostered by the likes of Winckelmann and
Goethe, in the importance of visiting the setting of ancient literatureif it
 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE 215

was to be fully appreciated, and with this new attitude came an

inevitable concentration on the subject-matter of the literature, rather
than simply on the literature itself. Moreover, Wood's choice of ex-
amples - Troy, Marathon, Thermopylae - places the emphasis on
actions rather than art: Troy, in this case, was important not merely
as the setting of Homer's poem, but also as the site of a great historical -
as far as Wood was concerned - event. Later writers, especially those
concerned with Thermopylae, turned more and more to the land itself
for simile and allegory. Robert Collvil, writing in 1771, defined heroism
as being like 'Sparta o'er the Malian bay'; John Scott in 1782 visualized
how 'epic's voice sonorous calls to Oeta's cliffs'; and eleven years later
Henry Boyd called on his readers to: 'Reflect on Sparta, and revere those
rites, and that far celebrated soil, Which bred Leonidas.'l5 In each case it
was the natural imagery - Sparta hanging over the bay, the cliffs of Oeta,
the soil of Sparta - that lent power and meaning to the piece.
This growing emphasis on the relevance of and reaction to location
and landscape can be clearly seen in a contrast of two traveller's
accounts written some sixty years apart. Richard Pococke visited
Thermopylae in about 1740 and relates the event in simple terms:
Our road was between the sea and high mountains; these mountains are called
Coumaita, and are doubtless the old mount Oeta, so that I began to look for the
famous passage called Thermopylae, where the Spartans with a few men opposed the
great army of the Persians.16

On finding the change in the landscape,17he is equally passionless:

. . . The sea must have lost, and left the passage wider, though possibly it was a way
round the cape by the sea side, where there might be some narrow passes.

Edward Dodwell's account of his visit to the Pass in 1805 is quite

different:
As we approached the Pass of Thermopylae, the scenery assumed at once an aspect of
more beauty and sublimity. To our left were the lofty and shattered precipices of Oeta,
covered with forests, while silver lines of descending springs sparkledin the shade ... The
scene was one of voluptuous blandishments. No gratification was wanting which the
enraptured lover of landscape could desire ... We now approached the spot where the
best blood of Greece, and of other nations, had so often been spilt.'1

And his reaction to the change in the landscape:

... The whole country has since experienced great physical as well as moral revolutions.
The sea has retired; rivers have altered their courses, and towns, castles, and temples
216 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE

have been swept from the face of the earth, or ingulfed in marshes, and overgrown with
weeds and bushes.

Here a moral element emerged, the change in the landscape reflecting

the degeneration of Greece: the very land itself is affected by the general
malaise. Pococke's reaction was one of reporting his observations with
an objective accuracy, while Dodwell's was a passionate hymn to the
location of a great event. Pococke was both interested and curious about
the event that took place here, but it was only the interest of an
antiquarian. His failure to see the pass as he had visualized it brings
only the question as to whether the geography had indeed changed, and
the comment, without any sense of disappointment, that he might have
been in the wrong place. However, Dodwell presented a sharp change in
emphasis. The beauty of the location, itself a testament to nature, also
served as a simile to the momentous events that took place there.
Moreover, the change in that landscape was both representative of,
and indeed part of, the moral change that had swept Greece. Not only
have the monuments fallen into ruin and the people themselves into a
moral degradation but, in this location so synonymous with liberty, even
the very land itself had metamorphosed.
Dodwell was an accomplished artist and during his trips in Greece
made some 400 sketches, along with 600 sketches made by his travelling
companion, an Italian artist named Pomardi. From these he selected
thirty which were reproduced as coloured prints in Views of Greece
(1821). While regretting the restriction on the number of prints he could
reproduce, Dodwell informed his readers that the views selected
... comprise of nearly all the remains of any note in Greece, as well as those scenes
which have become particularly celebrated, and by their connexion with the ancient
history of that country, have obtained the admiration and recollection of the modern
traveller.19

Thermopylae was one of these selected views, and his print of the Pass
[Figure 1] reflects his impression of its beauty. In his explanation of the
print, Dodwell described how
... the eye is attracted to the massy form of Mt. Oeta, covered with forests and broken
with glens and valleys. The sun was setting behind the mountain, which was enveloped
in a tint of aerial blue.20

The physical beauty again predominated. Dodwell saw no need to

discuss the events that took place here, that is, the reason this scene
was 'particularlycelebrated'. That would have been well known to his
 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE 217

Fig. 1: 'Thermopylae' by Edward Dodwell from Views in Greece(1821).

readers. The mere act of selecting Thermopylae for inclusion was

testament enough to the importance of the place. However his con-
centration on the beauty of the place served to emphasize this im-
portance.
This highly sentimental reaction to landscape is pivotal in the way
Dodwell viewed Thermopylae. The 'sublimity' of the place for the
Romantics was an inextricable combination of aesthetic beauty - its
appearance - and spiritual beauty - effectively the events that took place
there and the ideas those events represented. Yet not all travellers found
the Pass beautiful. Edward Clarke had visited the Pass some five years
before Dodwell, and provides a sharp contrast. His anticipation as he
approached it reveals his feelings on the subject:
We now set out upon the most interesting part of all our travels, - an expedition to the
STRAITS OF THERMOPYLAE.21

This is a significant statement for a man whose travels had already taken
in much of Europe, Egypt, Palestine, and Greece. His thoughts on
leaving the pass are worth quoting in full:
We looked back towards the whole passage with regret; marvelling, at the same time, that
we should quit with reluctance a place, which, without the interest thrown over it by
antient history, would be one of the most disagreeable upon earth. Unwholesome air,
218 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE

mephitic exhalations bursting through the rifted and rotten surface of a corrupted soil, as
if the land around were diseased; a filthy and fetid quagmire; 'a heaven fat with frogs';
stagnant but reeking pools; hot and sulphureous springs; in short, such a scene of
morbid nature, as suggested to the fertile imagination of the antient Poets their ideas of a
land poisoned by 'the blood of Nessus', and that calls to mind their descriptions of
Tartarus.22

This picturesque description leaves little doubt as to Clarke's impres-

sion. Dodwell's 'voluptuous blandishments' find no place in such a
landscape. And yet Clarke proved himself as much a Romantic as
Dodwell. Despite the physical appearance, Thermopylae was still
sublime:
... [such a scene] can only become delightful from the most powerful circumstances of
association that were ever produced by causes diametrically opposite;- an association
combining, in the mere mention of the place, all that is great, and good, and honourable;
all that has been embalmed as most dear in the minds of grateful prosperity. In the
overwhelming recollection of the sacrifice that was here offered, every other considera-
tion is forgotten; the Pass of Thermopylaebecomes consecrated; it is made a source of the
best feelings of the human heart; and it 'shall be had in ever lasting remembrance'.23

For Clarke, Thermopylae's spiritualbeauty is emphasized by its physical

ugliness. Despite the 'fetid quagmire', it is still 'consecrated'. While
Dodwell had expressed the sublimity of the place in terms of its beauty,
and illustrated it with his painting, Clarke saw it in terms of the
remembrance of the event. Yet Clarke clearly felt he could not ignore
the landscape, and so rather than avoid the seeming paradox between
the physical appearance and the spiritual 'beauty', he uses them
together. Thus his illustration of the Pass [Figure 2] concentrates on
the heroes who fell there. His identification of the tumulus as the
Spartans' grave - the polyandrium mentioned by Strabo - was confident
and boldly stated.24His engraving of it served to illustratewhat he saw as
the most significant aspect of the site, namely the sacrifice of the Greeks:
this predominates over 'every other consideration'. This too is part of
the landscape.
Thus while only one of these writers expressed Thermopylae in terms
of the landscape, both the Romantic writers reacted to it, and both used
it to emphasize the 'sublime' nature of the place. In essence, their
attitudes to what the Pass representedwas remarkablysimilar. However,
it was, of course, the Romantic poets who most fully realized the power
of landscape, and within this context it was Byron who most fully
illustrated it. In The Gaiour, written in 1813, some two years after his
first visit to Greece, he uses the landscape to its fullest effect:
 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE 219

. ::: .. ... ...

,:::, ~~~~~~~~
:::: ::: :::::S:::,s:s:s:s:.-::.
x::::::;::::::
::::i:::::::
:

Fig. 2: 'The Tomb of the Spartans' from E. Clarke, Travels in Various Countries,
vol. 4 (1812).

Clime of the unforgotten brave! -

Whose land from plain to mountain-cave
Was Freedoms's home or Glory's grave -
Shrine of the mighty! Can it be,
That this is all remains of thee?
Approach thou craven crouching slave -
Say, is this not Thermopylae?
These waters blue that round you lave
Oh servile offspring of the free -
Pronounce what sea, what shore is this?
The gulf, the rock of Salamis!
... Bear witness, Greece, thy living page,
Attest it many a deathless age!
While kings in dusty darkness hid,
Have left a nameless pyramid,
Thy heroes - though the general doom
Hath swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command,
The mountains of their native land!25

Here Thermopylae and Salamis exist in the land, and yet not in the
people. Moreover, the land is the monument to the ancient heroes in
220 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE

ways which marble can never be: not only is it where they fought, but
also it is what they fought for. Indeed, man-made monuments seem to
speak more of man's vanity than his deeds: one is reminded of Shelley's
Ozymandias. Thus, in turning to landscape instead of monuments, the
focus of idealization of the ancient world is changed from art to action.
The worth of the ancients was best seen in their deeds, which display
their virtue, rather than their genius for art. This is not to say that
ancient art was ignored, but that admiration of ancient Greece was
concentrating on the ancient Greeks themselves.
In the extracts from Dodwell and Byron one can see the source of
philhellenism. Like many travellers,they were shocked by the state of the
Greece they saw. The Greeks displayed an ignorance of their own past
and a seeming contentment with 'slavery' which seemed quite at odds
with the virtues of their supposed ancestors. Many turned away, blaming
the situation on the moral degradation of the Greeks, and becoming what
one modern commentator described as 'miso-hellenists'.26 For these
observers, the modern Greeks had betrayed their heritage, and were so
far changed that no reversal of their fortune was possible. A few,
however, not only blamed this state of affairs on the Turks, but also
sought to rectify it. This is perhaps the best definition of philhellenism.
Working on the idea that liberty and virtue are inextricable - an idea
common throughout the eighteenth century and shown in Glover's
speech of Leonidas to his Spartans quoted above - they hoped for
both a political and moral regeneration of Greece. The solution lay in
educating the Greeks to their glorious past, and then inspiring them with
exemplars from it. And the most powerful of these exemplars was
Thermopylae.
* * *

Before going on to illustrate the ways in which Thermopylae was used

within this political context, it should be explained why Thermopylae, as
opposed to any other exemplar, is so powerful. The first reason is a
practical one: for the purposes of rousing the Greeks against the Turks,
Leonidas was simply the most suitable Greek figure. To the philhellenes,
the age after Alexander was one of decline whilst Byzantium was not
even seen as Greek. Within the limited period they considered, many
military figures abound, but each had certain limitations. Alexander,
despite his victories, had too many personal vices and often appeared as
an example to avoid, not to emulate; Epaminondas, although militarily
successful and seemingly virtuous, made his reputation in battles against
 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE 221

other Greeks, and as such was hardly suitable as a unifying figure. Only
the characters of the Persian Wars presented the right image of patriotic
defence of liberty, whilst the wars also provided an easy parallelbetween
the Turks and the Persians. Yet of the heroes of the Persian Wars, which
would serve as the best exemplar? There is Miltiades of Marathon, later
convicted of tyranny; Themistocles of Salamis, who later was ostracized
and sought refuge in Persia; Pausanias of Plataea, later accused of
attempts at tyranny; Leotychides of Mycale, later disgraced over
bribery. The fact that by dying in battle, Leonidas could not blacken
his own name is not unimportant. He alone was untainted.
The second reason for Thermopylae's importance is the key to the
continual power of the battle as an exemplar, from antiquity to the
present day. In dying, Leonidas became a martyr for Greece. Modern
historians may argue that he was thinking only of Sparta, but the idea
that he was a pan-hellenist dates back at least to Plutarch, and is implied
by Herodotus. Moreover, both Herodotus and Plutarch agree - itself a
rare occurrence - that Leonidas knew he was going to die, and chose
only those 'with sons living' to accompany him. Thermopylae was not a
defeat, it was a sacrifice. As such it becomes a moral act, as much as the
death of Socrates or Jesus.27Three extracts from the writings of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge serve to illustrate the idea. The first is taken from his
notebooks:

Moral excellence almost essential to the sublime effect of particular action, Leonidas &
his Spartans - the 23rd Dragoons at Talavera - still more the Mamaluke & Winkelried.28

Coleridge is contrasting two kinds of courage, on the one hand that of

Leonidas or Winkelried,29 on the other that of the Dragoons at
Talavera30 or the Mamaluke.31 He differentiates the types of heroism
shown by Winkelried and the Mamaluke as follows:

In the former the state of mind arose from Reason, Morals, Liberty, the sense of duty
owing to the independence of his country etc - in short, containing or compatible with
the highest perfection & development of the human Faculties, Moral & Intellectual - in
the latter, predicative only of mere animal Habit, Ferocity, & unreasoned Antipathy to
Strangers .. .32

The essence of these definitions, as shown in the first extract, can also be
applied to Leonidas as opposed to the Dragoons.33 In an article in The
Courier, Coleridge takes the idea further, again using Leonidas as an
example of the positive kind of heroism:
222 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE

The splendid qualities of courage and enthusiasm, which, being the frequent com-
panions and in given circumstances the necessary agents of virtue, are too often
themselves hailed as virtues by their own title. But courage and enthusiasm have equally
characterised the best and worst beings, a Satan, equally with an Abdiel - a Bonaparte
equally with a Leonidas.34

These extracts show Coleridge's thinking clearly: the heroism of a

Leonidas is a moral heroism. While it necessitates physical bravery, it
is much more than that because the source of that bravery is moral. It is
premeditated and inspired by a love of 'liberty', which to the eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century mind was inextricably connected to 'virtue', as is
shown in the quote from Glover's Leonidas.The patriotic self-sacrifice
for liberty is the ultimate act of virtue, and so in the case of Thermopylae
the martial overtones are secondary to the virtues of the heroes. As such
Thermopylae serves as a perfect exemplar for philhellenism. Firstly, the
martial element serves as a perfect military exemplar, the battling of
overwhelming odds against the 'old enemy', the Turks being identified
with the Persians. The fact that Thermopylae was a defeat is unim-
portant because as an exemplar it shows the attitude and courage with
which such a battle should be fought, and furthermore it was seen as the
first step to the eventual Greek victory. Secondly, its overriding moral
element provides for the idea of moral regeneration. As such the twin
aims of philhellenism - moral and political regeneration - find their ideal
exemplar in Thermopylae.
* * *

The use of Thermopylae, and of Leonidas in particular, to encourage

ideas of, and support for, Greek liberation, can be seen clearly in the
1770s. Marie Gabriel Auguste Florent, Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier
visited Greece in the late 1770s and published VoyagePittoresquede la
Grece in 1782. That he later became the French ambassador to the
Ottoman Empire and completely recanted his philhellenic sentiments is
not important here. What is significant is his use of Leonidas. The
frontispiece to the Voyage [Figure 3] depicts 'Greece in chains', and is
explained in detail. She is surrounded by monuments to classical Greek
heroes who fought for liberty, and rests on the tomb of Leonidas, behind
which is a pillar bearing Simonides' famous epigram to the Spartans. On
the rock above her are the words 'Exoriare Aliquis'. That much is
explained. Any eighteenth-century reader cognisant with the classics
would understand the implication. The quote comes from Virgil:
'exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor'35- 'let some avenging spirit
 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE 223

Fig. 3: 'Greece in Chains' from Choiseul-Gouffier, Voyage Pittoresque de la

Grece (1782).

arise from these bones' - and is Dido's final curse on the departing
Aeneas. The inference is unmistakable: while other heroes have monu-
ments, only Leonidas is described as having a tomb. Of all the heroes
mentioned, Leonidas has pride of place, and it is on his remains that the
chained figure of Greece rests. As such, the call for an avenger centres
around him. While other heroes can serve as inspiration, it is the spirit of
Leonidas that must be emulated.
As one would expect, it is Byron who most fully illustrates this idea.
224 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE

ChildeHarold'sPilgrimagewas mostly written in Greece, during Byron's

first visit in 1810-11.
Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!
Immortal, though no more! though fallen, great!
Who now shall lead thy scatter'd children forth,
And now long accustom'd bondage uncreate?
Not such thy sons who whilome did await,
The hopeless warriors of a willing doom,
In bleak Thermopylae's sepulchral strait-
Oh! who that gallant spirit shall resume,
Leap from Eurotas' banks, and call thee from the tomb?36

He compares the glorious past with the degraded present state of

Greece, and then calls on Leonidas - 'that gallant spirit' - having already
shown him to be the height of ancient excellence, as the spirit the
modern Greeks must emulate. The difference between ancient and
modern Greece - the 'departed worth' - is the presence of such a spirit.
A year after Childe Harold appeared, William Haygarth published
Greece,a Poem. Little is known of Haygarth, and his poem was over-
shadowed by Byron's,37 but in it he expressed a much more fervent
philhellenism than any other writer of the time:
I have ventured to predict in poetry what I certainly should not be so hardy as foretell in
prose - the moral regeneration of Greece.38
Few at the time dared to show such optimism, even the likes of Byron
restricting themselves to calls for such a regeneration. No other poet so
illustrates the philhellenic notion that the Greeks needed to be educated
as to their past. Haygarth imagined himself with a Greek peasant at the
site of Thermopylae, promising:
I will strive
To raise thy broken spirit, and with tales
Of thy forefathers' deeds, waken the fire
Which slumbers, not extinguish'd, in thy breast.
(Greece 1.517-20)

There follows a stirring account of the 'heroes who here fell In Free-
dom's phalanx' (1.522-3) and 'died, as they had liv'd, triumphantly'
(1.573). Then Haygarth told the peasant the purpose of the tale:
Deeply impress this tale upon thy breast;
And when thy country calls thee from thy plains
To fight for liberty, remember those
Who bled, unconquer'd, with Leonidas!
(Greece 1.574-77)
 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE 225

Haygarth thus explained clearly the purpose of these classical exem-

plars: the inspiring of the modern Greeks to the moral regeneration
which was the precondition of political regeneration. Furthermore, he
showed his optimism for such a regeneration in asking not whether such
a revolt will occur, but rather when it will happen. In ancient Greece
'ev'ry father taught his child these tales' (1.578-79) but now 'those times
are past' (1.590). It is the foreigner's task to tell the tales:

... now a stranger's hand

Must sweep the strings, and feebly wake the chords
To tell Greece, how noble were the sires,
How weak and how degen'rate are the sons.
(Greece 1.590-93)

Haygarth not only sought to inspire the idea of a Greek revival, but even
described the role the philhellenes would have to play. This philhellen-
ism permeated every aspect of his poem. He emphasized the importance
of Thermopylae in his water-colour of the Pass [Figure 4], one of nine
plates that adorned the poem. Here the view is dominated by Mt. Oeta,
that 'Bulwark of Greece, whilst Greece still had a name' (1.601). Once
again there is the recurrent theme of landscape, yet while Dodwell used
the landscape of Thermopylae to show how much Greece had changed,
Haygarth highlighted that which remained the same. He used the image
of the mountain to show what the Greeks had fought for: the gates, and
very freedom, of Greece. In so doing, he drew attention to the present
plight of Greece and the idea of regaining that freedom. For even though
freedom has flown, the gates still stand.
Six years later, on the very eve of the Greek War of Independence,
Byron made the call even more clear. 'The Isles of Greece' is a song
within Don Juan sung by a Greek bard lamenting the condition of his
country. He reflects on Marathon where he 'dream'd that Greece might
still be free', and on 'sea-born Salamis', but they are only memories.
Then he makes what is probably philhellenism's most direct invocation
to Thermopylae:

Must we but weep o'er days more blest?

Must we but blush? - Our fathers bled.
Earth! render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopylae!39
226 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE

Fig. 4: 'Thermopylae' by William Haygarth from Greece, a Poem (1814).

It is by recreating the spirit of Thermopylae that Greece, in both a moral

and political sense, can be rejuvenated. That is what is meant by making
a new Thermopylae. It is the reclaiming of the spirit that, for the
philhellenes, was the very essence of ancient Greece.
* * *

The effects of philhellenism on the attainment of Greek Independence is

too broad a question to address here. Suffice it to say that the
philhellenes who fought in Greece itself died in sufficient numbers to
warm western Europe to the cause. Furthermore, despite the persistent
opposition of the Great Powers to any form of Greek Independence, it
was those same Powers that seemingly inadvertently ensured it. Of all
the senior British politicians of the time, only George Canning was a
philhellene, Byron describing him as 'our last, our best, our only
orator'.40 It was under Canning's brief ministry in 1827 that the
Treaty of London, that called for an end to the ongoing war in
Greece, was signed; and it was under the provisions of that treaty that
Edward Codrington, himself a philhellene, led the allied fleet into
Navarino.
It was in terms of awakening the Greeks to their past, or at least the
 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE 227

philhellenic interpretation of that past, that philhellenism's real success

lay. Among Greeks educated outside Greece itself western-style phil-
hellenism, based on an admiration of antiquity, was taking root. Rigas
Velestinlis, although born in Thessaly, spent much of his life travelling
and worked at the French consulate in Wallachia. Executed by the
Turks in 1798, he became a martyr for Greek liberation, and his Hellenic
Marseillaise a revolutionary anthem. Translated by Byron as a Greek
War Song, the poem, having called upon the Greeks to rise, then turns to
the most powerful of classical exemplars:
Sparta, Sparta, why in slumbers
Lethargic dost thou lie?
Awake and join thy numbers
With Athens, old ally!
Leonidas recalling,
That chief of ancient song,
Who sav'd ye once from falling,
The terrible! the strong!
Who made that bold diversion
In old Thermopylae,
And warring with the Persian
To keep his country free;
With his three hundred waging
The battle, long he stood,
And like a lion raging,
Expir'd in seas of blood.
(stanza 3)

Rigas called the spirit of Leonidas from the grave as Choiseul-Gouffier

had done, and related the events of the battle, thus fulfilling the
philhellenists' aim of educating the Greeks to their own past. Antonios
Martelaos, a resident on the Ionian islands which during his lifetime
were under Venetian, French, Russian, and British control, also wrote a
Marseillaise.He too called on Leonidas:
Rise to see how many
Like Leonidas there will be!
Rise and feel happy,
For Greece will live again.
Rise and you will see
How bravely we fight;
How we beat our enemies;
How much we resemble you!41

These verses, written in the years between the two great revolts against
the Turks, not surprisingly focused on the martial element, and
228 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE

Leonidas was evoked as a martial figure. However, after Greece had

won her independence Thermopylae began to take on the moral
connotations implicit in the writings of Coleridge and others. Con-
stantine Cavafy's Thermopylaewas written some seventy years after the
end of the war and shows what Thermopylae had come to represent: a
moral idea, shed of its martial overtones, a paradigm of the very kind of
moral excellence the miso-hellenists had thought to be missing and the
philhellenes had sought to restore. The poem shows that, even if only
within the bounds of literature, they had succeeded:
Honour to those who in the life they lead
define and guard a Thermopylae.
Never betraying what is right,
consistent and just in all they do ...
And even more honour is due to them
when they foresee (as many do foresee)
That Ephialtes will turn up in the end,
that the Medes will break through after all.42

NOTES

* The illustrations to this article are reproduced with the permission of the Librarian, John
Rylands University Library of Manchester.
1. George Saintsbury claimed that it would be 'difficult to imagine, and would hardly be possible
to find, even in the long list of mistaken 'long poem' writers of the last two centuries, more tedious
stuff than his' (The CambridgeHistory of English Literature,vol. X (1913), 149); E. M. W. Tillyard
goes so far as to redefine epic poetry itself, and specifically excludes Leonidas(The EnglishEpic and
its Background(1968), 6, 494). However neither critic supports his claims. William Cowper once
wrote that TheAthenaid, Glover's sequel to Leonidas,was 'condemned I dare say by those who have
never read the half of it' (letter to Lady Hesketh, 4 Feb 1789), and his words can be taken for the
vast majority of modern critics' attitudes to Glover's work in general. See my article on Glover in
P. N. Review (forthcoming).
2. J. Collins, The GreekInfluenceon English Poetry (1910), 63.
3. Joseph Simpson, The Patriot (1785); J. P. Roberdeau, Thermopylae,or Invasion Repulsed
(1792).
4. May 31, 1737. See Worksof Swift, ed. Scott (1824), 73.
5. J. Warton, Essay on the Genius of Pope (1782), ii. 401n; J. Scott, Poetical Works(1782) 207;
R. Southey, Joan of Arc (1794), preface; letter to H. W. Bedford, 13 November 1794 (in The Life
and Correspondence of RobertSouthey, ed. Charles Southey (London, 1849), i. 191).
6. H. Fielding, A Journey From this World into the Next (1742) c. 7. Goldgar argues that
Fielding's praise of Glover is a 'remnant of his anti-Walpole partisanship', a vestige of the faction -
of which both Fielding and Glover were a part - that sought to depose Robert Walpole's ministry
(Weslyan Edition of the Worksof Henry Fielding:Miscellanies Vol. II, ed. B. A. Goldgar (1983), 37
n. 2). However, the work was completed after Walpole's fall from power, and as Fielding felt free to
criticize many of his former colleagues in the faction (ibid, xxv), any praise that remains is surely
not such a 'remnant'.
7. Letter to John Hanson, April 2, 1807; see Byron's Letters and Journals, vol. I, ed
L. A. Marchand (1993), 113.
8. The only case in which he deviates from the sources is in having Leonidas as the last of the
Greeks to die, a necessary device for the central hero of an epic poem.
 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE 229

9. For example T. Arnold, TheEnglishPoets, ed. Ward (1889), 239; W. Minto, Literaturein the
GeorgianEra (1894), 75; Percival, Political Ballads (1916), 144; E. Rothstein, Restorationand 18th
Century Poetry (1981), 205; L. Sutherland, Politics and Finance in the 18th Century (1984), 78;
C. Gerrard, The Patriot Oppositionto Walpole(1994), 80.
10. Henry Pemberton wrote the work of literary criticism Observationson Poetry, Especially the
Epic, Occasionedby the Late Poem Upon Leonidas (1738), pointing out at great length Glover's
Homeric qualities. Poets, too, made the connection. See, for example, Matthew Green, who
described Glover as:
This, this is he, that was foretold
Should emulate our Greeks of old.
(From TheSpleen (1737); see Alexander Chamlers, The Worksof the EnglishPoets (1810), xv. 167).
Similarly, William Thompson wrote to Glover that 'Homer's Self revives again in thee' (From To
the Author of Leonidas:A Poem, An Epistle (1757), line 37).
11. T. Ram, The Neo-classicalEpic 1650-1720 (1971).
12. Ibid., 182.
13. Ibid., 8-14, 32ff.
14. R. Wood, A Comparative View of the Antient and present State of the Troade. To which is
prefixed an Essay on the Original Genius of Homer (1767); later republished as An Essay on the
Original Geniusand Writingsof Homer, with a ComparativeViewof theAncientand presentState of the
Troade,ed. J. Bryant (1775).
15. R. Collvil, 'The Caledonian Heroine', line 355, in OccasionalPoems (1771); J. Scott, 'The
Muse', lines 48-9, in The Poetical Worksof John Scott (1782); H. Boyd, 'The Helots - A Tragedy',
lines 313-15, in Poems (1793).
16. R. Pococke, A Descriptionof the East, vol. I (1743), 42.
17. In 480 B.C. the Pass of Thermopylae, sandwiched between the mountains and the sea, was
wide enough only for two carts to pass one another. A gradual deposit of silt has now created a plain
some four miles wide, although it has been estimated that in the early nineteenth century it was
considerably less than that (G. Szemler et al., Thermopylai:Myth and Reality in 480 B.C. (Chicago
1996), Map I).
18. E. Dodwell, A Classicaland TopologicalTour ThroughGreeceduringthe Years1801, 1805 and
1806 (London, 1819), ii. 66.
19. E. Dodwell, Views of Greece(London, 1821), preface.
20. Ibid, Descriptionto Plate of Thermopylae.
21. E. Clarke, Travels in Various Countries,vol. 4 (London, 1812), 238.
22. Ibid., 251.
23. Ibid., 251-2
24. Ibid., 240-1.
25. Lines 103-13 and 126-33.
26. G. Dandoulakis, The Strugglefor GreekIndependence:the Contributionof Greekand English
Poetry, Dissertation, Loughborough University of Technology (1985), 305.
27. The idea of comparing Leonidas with Jesus appeared in The Athenaid, Glover's 30-book
sequel to Leonidas. Although Herodotus records that Xerxes had the Spartan's head erected on a
pole, Glover has the Persian king crucify Leonidas' corpse. The passages make an implicit
comparison with the crucifixion of Jesus and the idea of self-sacrifice. See The Athenaid 15.244-
87, 17.327-34, 20.246-355, 24.292-97, 26.145-48 and 313-22.
28. K. Coburn (ed.), TheNotebooksof Samuel Taylor Coleridge(London, 1973), vol.3, no. 3637.
29. Arnold von Winkelried, a Swiss national hero who died at the battle of Semprach in 1386
against the Hapsburgs. Coleridge describes how he 'with his bundle of Spears turned towards his
Breast in order to break the Austrian Pike-men' (Coleridge, Notebooks,vol. 3, no.3312) sacrificed
his life to win Swiss freedom. See F. Adams and C. Cunningham, The Swiss Confederation(London,
1889) 6, and G. Thuirer, Free and Swiss (London, 1970), 36.
30. At the battle of Talavera in 1809 the 23rd Dragoons charged the French guns, and although
the charge was broken by an unseen watercourse they continued the attack, heroically if somewhat
pointlessly, losing over half their complement in the process. See J. Fortescue, The History of the
British Army (London, 1912), vii. 251-4, who claims the dragoons attacked 'without any word of
command' and describes the charge as a 'mad exploit' (p.253).
230 TO MAKE A NEW THERMOPYLAE

31. The Mamalukes (or Mamelukes) were Egyptian mercenaries. Coleridge (Notebooks,vol. 3,
no. 3312) relates the story of one who, when his horse refused to charge the French lines, backed
the animal onto the enemy, killing himself in the process.
32. Notebooks,vol. 3, no. 3312.
33. It should be noted that Coleridge's definition of the Dragoons' actions is not as harsh or
negative as that of the Mamaluke, although the motivation behind those actions - violent instinct
rather than moral excellence - is similar.
34. The Courier, 13 January 1809.
35. Aeneid 4.625.
36. Canto II, stanza 73.
37. Terence Spencer wrote that 'of all the philhellenic poets of the first two decades of the
nineteenth century, the one who was most cruelly crushed out of existence by the reputation of
Byron was William Haygarth ... [his poem] was published, a splendid quarto, in 1814 - too late; for
the sun of Byron was already above the horizon.' (Fair Greece,Sad Relic, 2nd ed., 1974, 281). The
effect of this 'crushing' out of existence seems all the harsher when one discovers that Haygarth
wrote much of his poem in 1811 while still in Greece, before Byron completed Childe Harold, and
did not publish until 1814 merely because of what he described as 'the natural apprehension which
the Author feels for the fate of a first performance' (Greece,a Poem, preface, v).
38. Greece,a Poem, in threeparts; with Notes, Classical Illustrations,and Sketchesof the Scenery
(London, 1814), Notes p. 276.
39. Canto III, stanza 86, verse 7 (lines 725-30).
40. Age of Bronze (1823), stanza 13, line 552.
41. Translated by G. Dandoulakis, op. cit., 278.
42. Translated by E. Keeley, Passions and Ancient Days (1972).