Trembling Tresantes? Spartan Survivors of Thermopylae

For it is fine to die in the front line,

a brave man fighting for his fatherland

Tyrtaios fr. 10, 1-2

Invoking the name of the Thermopylae usually conjures up notions of the heroic sacrifice of Leonidas and the 300 Spartans, giving their lives so that Greece might be free. Of course, the reality of the situation and that sacrifice is much more involved. Indeed, in pure numerical terms, there were several thousand Greek survivors of the battle, with the majority of the pan-Hellenic force withdrew or was sent away by Leonidas (Herodotus VII.219, 220) when word that their position in the Pass of Thermopylae had been compromised by the Persians.

Even then, the subsequent Greek rearguard action was not undertaken solely by the Spartans. Perhaps 2,000 men stayed in the pass in an attempt to hold the position, choosing to die fighting whilst also providing the others time to withdraw. This rearguard was made up of Leonidas and the 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians under Demophilus, around 900 helots and 400 Thebans. All of these men seemingly fought to the death, except the Thebans who reputedly surrendered (Herodotus VII.225), although this is not proof that they were only there as hostages to prevent Thebes from defecting; indeed, the Thebans at Thermopylae could well have been Hellenic loyalists who refused to follow their city’s increasing Persian leanings. Leonidas would surely have sent them away had this been unreliable hostages (Lazenby (1993) 144-145).

A cynic might question if all of the other 1,600 truly fought to the death - a Thespian or helot might have managed to escape before the final climax. But that is all supposition. What is known is that not all 300 Spartans (or 301 if Leonidas was at the head of a 300-strong core) died at Thermopylae. Two of their number are known to have survived the campaign for separate and indeed respectable reasons.

The first Spartan survivor of the Thermopylae expedition was called Pantites. He survived the battle through not being present, not due to any cowardice on his part but because he was following the orders of his king. Before the battle began, Leonidas had sent Pantites on an embassy to Thessaly, probably to gather intelligence and/or recruitment. Thessalian cavalry would certainly have been useful to the Greek cause, raiding the massive Persian column, striking at Xerxes’ supply lines and on the battlefield as a counterweight to the Persian horse.

As it was, Pantites did not make it back to Thermopylae in time to take part in the battle. Presumably distance, terrain and Persian scouts made the journey difficult. But this legitimate reason to miss the fighting did not play back in Sparta. Pantites was treated as a cowardly outcast – τρέσας, tresas, literally a ‘trembler’ – by his fellow Spartans. And being unable to live with the shame and ridicule, he hanged himself (Herodotus VII.232).

The other Spartan survivor of Thermopylae stems from an outbreak of some kind of eye complaint in the Spartan camp by the third day of the battle. This saw two afflicted Spartan soldiers, Aristodemus and Eurytus, ordered to leave the camp by Leonidas, either because he felt that they would be no good in the fight to come, they were cursed or he did not want the affliction to spread to the rest of the Greek army.

Modern attempts to identify what might have afflicted the two men (Hogewind et al. (2013)) focused on three possibilities - a psychosomatic disorder brought on by the mental stress of the situation, a self-inflicted wound to avoid the coming slaughter or the consumption poisonous berries, possibly those of the Atropa belladonna, better known as deadly nightshade. Given the circumstances, the most likely, although not certain, cause was considered to be a reaction to poisonous berries.

Some of those circumstances include the actions of the two dismissed Spartans. Guided some of their helots, they had made it back to the small town of Alpenoi situated near what had been the main Greek camp. When there, they received word that the Persians had forced their way along the goat path that allowed access to the Greek rear.

The two men discussed what they should do but could not agree - Eurytus favoured rejoining the fight in the pass, while “Aristodemus’ heart failed him” (Herodotus VII.229) or he thought to follow Leonidas’ orders to return home. With that, Eurytus had his helot help him put on his armour and lead him to the battlefield, where he “rushed into the press and was slain” (Herodotus VII.229).

Aristodemus decided to return home, but despite having been excused from combat by Leonidas, he was treated as a coward because the similarly afflicted Eurytus had participated and died in the battle. Herodotus VII.229 supposes that if Aristodemus had been the only man excused or Euryalus had returned with him, “the Spartans would not have been angry”.

Herodotus VII.230 relates an alternative version of Aristodemus’ survival, with him being sent to deliver a message and then deliberately loitering in order to miss the battle, despite the man who accompanied him on the mission fighting and dying at Thermopylae. This sounds more like the story ascribed to Pantites, with the added notion of cowardice, which would certainly explain the reaction to Pantites and his shame leading to his suicide. Regardless of how he came to survive, Aristodemus, fairly or not, was regarded as a ‘trembler’ - “no Spartan would give him fire, nor speak with him” (Herodotus VII.231).

He bore this shame for the next year, until the Battle of Plataea in late August 479BC, where he took part in the fighting, although it is not certain where he fought. This is because the exact circumstances of being labelled a tresas/‘trembler’ are unclear. It could be that Aristodemus and all other tresantes definitely lost their citizenship; at the very least, they seem to have suffered some political degradation – they remained members of Spartan society, not completely ejected from it (Ducat (2006) 29-30).

A summation, albeit lacking in definitive status, of the treatment of tresantes in Sparta comes from Xenophon…

In Sparta, “everyone would be ashamed to have a coward with him at the mess or to be matched with him in a wrestling bout. Often when sides are picked for a game of ball he is the odd man left out; in the chorus he is banished to the ignominious place; in the streets he is bound to make way; when he occupies a seat he must needs give it up, even to a junior; he must support his spinster relatives at home and must explain to them why they are old maids: he must make the best of a fireside without a wife, and yet pay forfeit for that: he may not stroll about with a cheerful countenance, nor behave as though he were a man of unsullied fame, or else he must submit to be beaten by his betters… Small wonder, I think, that where such a load of dishonour is laid on the coward, death seems preferable to a life so dishonoured, so ignominious”

Xenophon, Lac. Pol. 9.4-6

This description does not make it completely clear if the punishment that came with being classed (if it was a ‘class’ at all) a ‘trembler’ meant that they could not serve in the army. It may be that tresantes “were removed from the army for the duration of their punishment” (Ducat (2006) 30), which would make Aristodemus’ appearance on the battlefield at Plataea against ‘common’ practice.

The sources do not give full testimony on the nature of Aristodemus’ deployment at Plataea. He was clearly fighting in the vicinity of the Spartan army for his exploits to be seen, but it seems unlikely that a ‘trembler’ would be allowed to take his place in the Spartiate phalanx, especially not if he had lost his Spartan citizenship. Might he have been serving along with some of the non-Spartiate units of the Spartan army, perhaps alongside other disenfranchised? This could suggest that tresantes were allowed to fight, giving “them a chance of redemption and at least partial rehabilitation” (Kulesza (2008) 16). Or if he was removed from every form of Spartan military service, could Aristodemus even have been present with some of the Spartan allies such as the Tegeans?

Whatever his degradation in status, it did not prevent Aristodemus from having a substantial impact on affairs during the decisive moments of the Battle of Plataea. He was judged by Herodotus to have been the bravest of all during the battle (Herodotus IX.71). This was because he launched a berserker-like charge at the Persian ranks whilst the Spartans hesitated due to a lack of good sacrificial omens. Might Aristodemus’ charge, along with that of the Tegeans, have shamed the Spartans into action? If a ‘trembler’ was so willing to fight, what did that mean for the rest of the Spartans waiting to hear about the battle’s outlook from goat entrails? Or would that be to overlook the depth and even the importance of Spartan superstition in needing to win divine favour before joining battle (cf. Xenophon, Lac Pol. 13.3)?

While Herodotus may have thought that Aristodemus was the bravest at Plataea, the Spartans had a slightly different view. They felt that by fighting with such a suicidal recklessness, out of the battle line and perhaps even before the omens were favourable because he had “desired death” (Herodotus IX.71), Aristodemus might had removed some of the black mark against his name but was not worthy of any extra honour. This has been used to suggest that for a tresas “full rehabilitation was impossible” (Kulesza (2008) 16), but really, apart from Aristodemus, we do not know if subsequent bravery could remove previous disgrace from perceived ‘trembling’. It is also unclear whether the punishment meted out to cowards was of a permanent, temporary or even hereditary character (MacDowell (1986) 46; Ducat (2006) 33-35).

Given the Spartan military reputation, you might think that such ‘tremblers’ were a miniscule minority, but as they had their own specific name and possibly a political status to go with it, tresantes were clearly not unheard of in the Spartan system. And it was not necessarily just a single individual who could ‘tremble’. There were the 120 Spartiates who surrendered to Athens during the Battle of Sphacteria in 425BC. When these men were returned to Sparta, they were stripped of their citizenship, removed from any office they held and barred from commerce, although it was eventually restored (Thucydides V.34.2). While there is some doubt over whether these men were specifically labelled tresantes (Kulesza (2008) 13 and the Thucydides passage does not mention the term tresantes, instead thinking that the 120 Spartiates were ‘infected’ with democratic ideas by being in Athens), that the 120 Spartans were allowed to regain lost citizenship could help explain the extent of the panic felt in Sparta about getting them back.

Another large group of Spartans confronted with accusations of ‘trembling’ were the 300 Spartiate survivors of the epochal defeat at the Battle of Leuctra by Thebes in 371BC. In reporting on their proposed treatment in Sparta, Plutarch gives a little more insight into how life might be for a tresas…

“For such men are not only debarred from every office, but intermarriage with any of them is a disgrace, and any one who meets them may strike them if he pleases. Moreover, they are obliged to go about unkempt and squalid, wearing cloaks that are patched with dyed stuffs, half of their beards shaven, and half left to grow.”

Plutarch, Agesilaus 30.3

This same passage hints that it was as aspect of Spartan law that saw such tresantes being punished, rather than a more social outcasting. However, on this occasion, the Spartans “hesitated to inflict the disabilities required by the laws, since the men were numerous and powerful, for fear that they might stir up a revolution” (Plutarch, Agesilaus 30.2), a rather startling admission – the Spartan government feared what a section of its own people might do if the law was applied. Indeed, Agesilaus’ reign had already seen such trouble in the form of the so-called ‘Conspiracy of Cinadon’ in 400BC. But what is perhaps the more pressing reason for not punishing this 300 who did not die at Leuctra was that Sparta “lacked not a few soldiers” (Plutarch, Agesilaus 30.4).

Seemingly then, Sparta found it easier to treat individuals like Pantites and Aristodemus as ‘tremblers’, reducing or removing their political status, than it was to permanently exclude 120 or 300 Spartans from its social, political and military hierarchy. While there were perhaps perfectly good reasons to regard neither Pantites nor Aristodemus as any sort of shirker, the circumstances of 480BC likely worked against them. Sparta may have been happy to have the object lesson of the treatment of a tresas in the city to the 10,000 Spartiates who might soon be called upon to face the Persian menace. However, in 425BC and 371BC, a decline in manpower and overall circumstances – an Athenian victory in Messenia and an impending Theban invasion of the Peloponnese respectively – allowed the Spartan state to take into consideration arguments over whether the men at Sphacteria and Leuctra had actually ‘trembled’.

Clearly, both sets of men had fought at their respective battles, unlike Aristodemus at Thermopylae. Maybe the likes of Agesilaus recognised that not only was there a desperate need for Spartan manpower but also that there was something of an unrealistic notion, maybe even a hypocrisy given the importance put on not throwing your life away (the reason given for Aristodemus not being honoured at Plataea), at the heart of the Spartan military. Were the Spartiates of Sphacteria and Leuctra really to be considered tresantes for not fighting to the death in a lost cause?

While they had such disdain for ‘tremblers’, the Spartans were not headless ‘win or die at all costs’ types. Tactical withdrawal was considered acceptable and even necessary in war. We see it at Thermopylae and Plataea, with the Spartan-led rearguard retiring to a hill for their final stand at the former, while the latter saw a Spartan withdrawal from the Asopus river back towards the lowlands of Mount Cithaeron (even if one Spartan sub-commander, Amompharetus, possibly thought that such retreat was forbidden by Spartan law – Herodotus VII.104 has the deposed Spartan king Demaratus inform Xerxes that Spartan law “forbids them to flee from battle however great the force confronting them; remaining at their post, they must overcome or perish” – repeating an aspect of the ‘mirage’ of Spartan exceptionalism?). Indeed, Diodorus XV. 34.2 records there being a trumpet signal for withdrawal, with Agesilaus using it during a battle with the Thebans in 377BC. They would hardly have had such a signal, recognisable in the heat and din of battle, if withdrawal was an alien concept.

This all makes it seem that the very status of tresantes was not completely clear even in Sparta or was still in stages of development over the course of the century between Thermopylae and Leuctra, brought on by the changing position of Sparta, particularly with regard to manpower. Military, political, economic and social pragmatism brought on by oliganthropia may have made the Spartan state take a closer look at how it was treating the men who had not been dying on its behalf.

There was enough of a turn around over the decades following Leuctra that in 331BC after a serious defeat by the Macedonian Antipater at Megalopolis, the Spartans unanimously supported a decree that “relieved from ignominy those who had survived the defeat” (Diodorus Siculus XIX.70.5). Well, almost unanimously… the only detractor was Acrotatus, son of Cleomenes II. His opposition was so offensive that many of those who would have been punished by the ‘trembling’ penalties banded together, “gave him a beating” (Diodorus Siculus XIX.70.5) and effectively hounded him into a Sicilian exile.

But if the lesson had been learned about cutting out a section of the Spartan populace from economic, military and even procreative activity, it would seem to have been too late and perhaps never would have been enough. Spartan population troubles were much deeper rooted that refusing to pardon ‘tremblers’ more willingly.

As an aside on Aristodemus, the historical personage does not appear in Frank Miller‘s 1998 graphic novel 300 and the subsequent movie adaptation of 2006, but he is clearly an inspiration for the character of Dilios, who took part in the events of Thermopylae and acts as a partial narrator of the story – essentially, in its last scene, it appears that the movie is really a recounting of the story of Leonidas and the 300 Spartans by Dilios to his fellow soldiers just before they engage the Persians at Plataea. Unlike Aristodemus, Dilios survives his charge at Plataea and, furthermore, while the Dilios character has received an eye injury, he had not been sent away from the fighting at Thermopylae because of it or on an embassy to Thessaly like either of the historical Spartiate survivors of the battle. In 300, Leonidas instead sends Dilios away to tell the story of his comrades in order to inspire Sparta to join the fight against Persia fully. Because of this royal order, Dilios does not face any accusations of ‘trembling’, even though Aristodemus may well have been following orders to retreat. Perhaps Dilios serving as a storyteller is Frank Miller’s answer to the question “if the entire Greek rearguard (overlooking the surrendering Thebans?) died at Thermopylae, who was there to record their final actions in the pass?”

Thanks to Barry Trainor for the insight into the tresantes as a group – that was a welcome rabbit hole to fall down!

Bibliography

Ducat, J. ‘The Spartan ‘Tremblers’’, in Hodkinson, S. and Powell, A. Sparta and War. Swansea (2006) 1-56

Hogewind, B.F., Coebergh, J.A., Gritters-van den Oever, N.C., de Wolf, M.W. and van der Wielen, G.J. ‘The ocular disease of Aristodemus and Eurytus 480 BC: diagnostic considerations’, International Ophthalmology 33 (2013) 107-109

Holland, T. Persian Fire. London (2005).

Kulesza, R. ‘“With this shield or upon it”: Military Death and Cowardice in Sparta’, Akme, Studia historica 2 (2008) 1-18.

Lazenby J.F. The Defence of Greece 490- 479BC. Oxford (1993).

Lupi, M. ‘Tremblers (tresantes) at Sparta’, Encyclopedia of Ancient History (2018).

MacDowell D.M. Spartan Law. Edinburgh (1986).

Powell, A. and Hodkinson, S. (eds.) Sparta: Beyond the Mirage. Swansea (2002).