12. Ancient Greece’s Greatest Traitor
In 480 BC, Persia’s king Xerxes invaded Greece with a huge army. The Malians, in northeastern Greece, were among the many Greeks in the Persian army’s path who chose discretion over valor, and collaborated with the Persians against their fellow Greeks. Along the Persian army’s route through Malian lands was a narrow pass known as Thermopylae, or “hot gates”, situated between mountains to the south and the cliff-lined shore of the Malian Gulf to the north. A small Spartan-led Greek force, under the command of Sparta’s King Leonidas, occupied and fortified the pass at Thermopylae. The Persians, forced to attack directly up the pass on a narrow front, were unable to make use of their advantages in numbers and cavalry and were repeatedly bested by the more heavily armed and armored Greeks, especially the elite core of superbly trained Spartans.
The Persians were stuck at Thermopylae for three days, until a Malian, Ephialtes of Traches, told Xerxes of a mountain track that bypassed Thermopylae and reemerged to join the road behind the Greek position. In exchange for the promise of rich rewards, Ephialtes showed the Persians the way. Alerted that he was about to be outflanked, Leonidas sent the rest of the Greeks away but stayed behind with what remained of a 300-strong contingent of Spartans, who fought to the death until they were wiped out. Ephialtes was reviled, and his name came to mean “nightmare” in Greek. He never collected his reward because the Persians were defeated at Salamis later that year, and at Platea, the following year and their invasion of Greece collapsed. Ephialtes fled, with a reward on his head. He was killed ten years later over an unrelated matter, but the Spartans rewarded his killer anyhow.