T&C: Persian wars

Content similarities between Aeschylus & Herodotus:

• Themistocles delivering a secret message

  • But in Aeschylus, his name is not mentioned! (‘Greek man came from the Athenian fleet and told your son Xerxes…)

• Xerxes watching Salamis from a throne

  • Persae - seated on cliff close to sea (and tears robe when he sees disaster)

• Persians placed on Psytalleia

• 1207 Persian ships

  • Persae lists all the peoples in catalogue (quite sim. to Herodotus)

  • Egyptian born, holy Memphis, Ancient Thebes, mass of Lydians, Sardis, near holy Tmolus

Thematic similarities

• Association of Persians with despotism = theme of lack of freedom of speech

• Yoke as a shared image (acient near Eastern antecedents for this image = taken over in Greek thought about the Orient)

  • Then used for tyrants in later tragedies (not nec. foreign)

  • Any coersion of people into one’s will

• How the Persians view their mission

  • Chorus = divine mission to be world conquerers (‘for Destiny long ago prevailed by divine decree and imposed on the Persians…’) / H Xerxes sees it an ancestral right to conquer

  • Atossa believes that coersion creates better warriors / H Xerxes think that people fight better under the whip

  • (But B5 Athenians were not successful under tyranny but were when freed)

Content similarities between Aeschylus & Herodotus:

• Themistocles delivering a secret message

  • But in Aeschylus, his name is not mentioned! (‘Greek man came from the Athenian fleet and told your son Xerxes…)

• Xerxes watching Salamis from a throne

  • Persae - seated on cliff close to sea (and tears robe when he sees disaster)

• Persians placed on Psytalleia

• 1207 Persian ships

  • Persae lists all the peoples in catalogue (quite sim. to Herodotus)

  • Egyptian born, holy Memphis, Ancient Thebes, mass of Lydians, Sardis, near holy Tmolus

Thematic similarities

• Association of Persians with despotism = theme of lack of freedom of speech

• Yoke as a shared image (acient near Eastern antecedents for this image = taken over in Greek thought about the Orient)

  • Then used for tyrants in later tragedies (not nec. foreign)

  • Any coersion of people into one’s will

• How the Persians view their mission

  • Chorus = divine mission to be world conquerers (‘for Destiny long ago prevailed by divine decree and imposed on the Persians…’) / H Xerxes sees it an ancestral right to conquer

  • Atossa believes that coersion creates better warriors / H Xerxes think that people fight better under the whip

  • (But B5 Athenians were not successful under tyranny but were when freed)

Aesc & Her portrayal of Xerxes

• Both focus on the youth of Xerxes (but would have been 40 at this time = rhetorical)

  • Characterisation of juvenile immaturity

• Motif of the sea (sea as revenge & sea against land)

  • eg. numberless as waves, overwhelmed by waves of disaster

  • Hellespont as sacred thus sea had its revenge (loss of battle of Salamis, by their own disordeliness)

  • Overpassing limits of cosmic order (amplifies the sense of hubris in yoking the sea = treating water - sacred element - as slave)

• And joint revenge of sea & land

  • Slaughter on land (Psyt) and sea (straits)

  • + the melting of the frozen (by god! = all a trick?) river Strymon which makes many fall in and die = solid ground turning to water

  • Herod has a flood time at Potidaea which overwhelms them when they cross the shallows (similar motif)

Key differences between the portrayal of Aesch and Herod

• Portrayal of Greece

• Persae is much more Athenian centric (‘the gods have saved the city of the goddess Pallas’) - Salamis as most important battle, mere 5 lines on Plataea (for Pelop) and one single reference to the Dorian spear

  • Loss of fleet at Salamis is made effectively into the destruction of the force

  • But Salamis also as a pan-hellenic victory (Athenian synonymous with Greece)

  • No divions or classes among Athenians = pointedly contrasting Athenian body with the many Persian states (not!! individualising the Persians)

• But Herod - reflects viewpoints of Athenians AND Spartans (not one ideology to being Greek)

  • More plural self-represenations from more than one community

• Contrasts between the soft & hard

  • Persae effeminises the Persians

  • But Herod is less interested (does have a proud female leader for Persians but not demeaned)

  • Xerxes’ last act is trying to seduce his brother’s wife and then daughter = discreditable anticlimax for man who was going to conquer Greece (contrast to ‘hard’ Cyrus, not the Greeks)

Persae as not wholly binary?

• Darius’ figure undercuts the binary to a degree

  • So a ‘good’ Persian king (he is the foil to Xerxes, not the Greeks necessarily as no singular Greek figure provided)

  • Is the issue just Xerxes / his proud youth?

• But any attempt to dissect the binary? No

  • Esp. in contrast to Herodotus, with many counter-examples to dismantle assumed binaries

Herodotean ethnography antecedents

• Primary antecedent is Odyssey (moves through mythological foreign (and monstrous) peoples)

  • And only have a couple works that are fragmentary that deal with foreign cultures (eg. Mimnermus’ elegiac poetry or Smyrneis overcoming Lydians with Homeric treatment)

  • Simonides’ Plataea ode

• Hecataeus of Miletus (prose antecedent) = divided the world into Europe and Asia in 500BC

  • Was famous = Herod must have engaged with him

  • Separates the ethnography and the genealogy

• But Herod was the first to combine geography, ethnography and recent history (NOT engaged with the mythical past which is surprising)

Herodotean relativism

• Relativism was in the air when he was writing

  • No absolute standards (as might be right for one, but wrong for another)

  • Assoc with the Sophists (loose group of intellectuals who flourished in the late 5th)

  • Interested in semantics - ‘man is the measure of all things’ (nothing as divinely ordained, only societally constructed)

• Herodotean - what is cherished by one community can be hated by another (not in the field of personal ethic, but examines it in an anthropological and ethnographical context)

  • Indians and Greeks meet in Greek court

  • Greeks cremate dead / Indians (allegedely) eat theirs = confronted with each other’s beliefs, they see the other as abonimable

The Magai

• Herod discusses Persian religion and their Magai

  • Elemental gods as original gods (wind, water, land etc.)

  • Have other gods eg. version of Zeus and Aphrodite

  • = sees Herod taking familar classical identity and mapping onto non-Greek (provides name of deity in their language = Mithra but that is god not goddess)

• Is Herod using non-Greek religion to critique Greek religion? Ie. there are other methods that other cultures stand by = not inherent that we should worship anthromorphic gods

• Could also use foreign cultures as means of sharpening one’s own self-definition

  • eg. Persians do not erect statues or temples = but we do (and that is something inherent to us as an identity as peoples not as humans)

  • = ultimately an ethnography of Greece too

Herodotus’ opinions

• Although he is meant to be writing a neutral piece on ethnography, does provide his own views

• Says that boys being kept from their fathers under 5 years of age = ‘sound practice’

  • + approves that the king cannot put a man to death for one single crime

• But disapproves of sacred prostitution (1.199.1)

• After 1-5, most ethnography disappears, but we do see some opinions on reasons for battle decisions

  • Eg.

Slavery in Herodotus

• Artemisia calls the allies of Xerxes his slaves

• Story of Zopyrus the Persian (know it from his grandson, who came to Athens = all pointless!)

  • But suspiciously Greek mythological form (little Iliad - Od mutilates hiself to go into Ilium)

  • High-status Persian mutilates himself to gain access to Babylon, but not forced = power of the king over people’s bodies but also their will (do anything to please him)

  • Actions for the king, not the people and then rewarded by the king

• _____

The ‘barbarian’ in writing

• Saïd discusses Persae in his book on orientalism (hostile views of the East by the West)

  • Politican and military weakness = image that flatters the West and validates its need for domination

  • Persae as first example

• Edith Hall - discusses Greek tragedy & Herodotus’ histories

  • The barbain as oppositional to the Greek (construction of the barbarian tells us more about the Greek conceptualisation of their identity rather than the foreign peoples)

• Homer - Greeks & Trojans are not ethnically distinct

  • Priam is polymagous but presented as harem (never neg.)

  • + Trojans usually presented as making more noise (cannot always communicate with each other) but both can speak same language = communicate

  • This element of language was used in the term ‘barbaros’ = bar-bar = not Greek language

• barbaros even used by the Persians themselves in Persae

barbaroi in Herodotus

• Use of the term barbaros in many different contexts

  • Chp. 1 - ‘the Pelasgians were speakers of a non-Greek tongue’ (barbaron)

  • ‘For the Persians lay claim to Asia and the barbarian races that inhabit it, while they consider that Europe and the Hellenic race is separate’ (one term used for all of Asia…)

  • Xerxes whipping the sea in B7 is loaded - tells the men who whip the sea to utter ‘the barbarous and presumptuous words’

    • Here ‘barbara’ is connected to hubris and despotism = cont. to the free Greeks

• Herodotus is writing half a century later (Aesch is only 8 years after) but both Greek = image-making (even if Hd is somewhat neutral)

  • Can contrast to Persian image-making

Other texts on barbarian despotism

• Democritus fr. 251 - ‘poverty under democracy is as preferable to tyranny as freedom is to slavery’

• Airs, Waters, Places, 16 - ‘for these reasons, I think Asiatics are feeble. Their institutions are a contributory cause, the greater part of Asia being governed by kings. Now where men are not their own masters and independent, but are ruled by despots…’

• Aristotle, Politics 7.7 - ‘the Achaemenid monarchy is an example of pambasileia, found among certain barbarian peoples; becaue the barbarians are more inclined by character to support servitude than Greeks, and the Asiatics more than Europeans, they put up with barbain power without complaint’

Beginning of the Histories:

• Herodotus makes it clear from the start that he is writing an ‘inquiry’ so that the ‘great and marvellous deeds done by Greeks and foreigners and especially the reason why they warred against each other may not lack renown’

  • Provides both Greek and Persian (what he can) perspectives eg. in how the Persians see the kidnapping of Io to Egypt as the beginning of the feud

  • ‘I suppose’ - Cretans stealing Europa (not strong factual foundation)

• Greeks then steal Medea, which leads us into the Troja war (Paris takes Helen because Greeks weren’t giving reparations for stolen women = entirely atheist reasoning for war)

• ‘There is another tale by the Phoenicians’ (doesn’t say which one he believes in but this one is placed last and shorter)

• Will also ‘speak of small and great cities alike. For many states that were once great have no become small…knowing therefore that human prosperity never continues in one stay, I will make mention alike of both kinds’

Candaules:

• Only thing that Hdt knows is that Croesus (son of Alyattes) did unprovoked wrong to Greece

  • ‘As far as we know’ (awareness of gaps) he was first to subdue Greeks and also to become their friend = polis system

• Candaules = last Heraclid ruler of Sardis (last because he ess. forced his guard Gyges to view his wife naked)

  • Gyges disagrees as ‘with the stripping of her tunic, a woman is stripped of the honour due to her’

  • And for Lydians, even the nudity of men was shamful (cultural differences!)

  • Wife realises and prepares revenge (either Gyges will die or he will kill Candaules and take her as wife = only one man can see her naked)

  • Hdt says mentioned in the iambic verses of Archilochus of Parus = evidenced elsewhere!

Rule of Gyges’ lineage:

• People of Lydia very upset by king killed BUT Gyges’ rule is confirmed by the Delphic oracle (does say that the Heraclidae will take their revenge in 5th gen but this goes ignored)

  • ‘this Gyges then was the first foreigner (of our knowledge) who placed offerings at Delphi after the king of Phrygia, Midas son of Gordias’

  • When he came to throne, led army to Miletus and Smyrna but did nothing else great in reign of 38 years (son ruled for 49 then his for 12 = although might be incorrect, provides sense of historical accuracy)

• Alyattes (Croesus’ father) invades Miletus (war inherited from father) and acc. burns temple (Delphi says that he will only be well if rebuilds so he does - ‘thus far I know the truth, for the Delphians told me’)

• Then Croesus, his son, came to the throne at 35 years of age (first attacked Ephesians and then on Ionian and Aeolian citie in turn - would find very paltry reasons for attack)

  • Wants to attack island nations, but man (either Bias or Priene or Pittacus of Mytilene) tells him Greeks will attack with 10,000 so he decides to make friends instead

Solon’s role

• Around this time (when Croesus had subdued all nations west of Halys exc. Cilicians and Lycians), Solon had left Athens to travel (so couldn’t be forced to repeal any of the laws he made)

  • = goes to Sardis and is received well by Croesus

• Croesus, upon showing him his wealth, asked him if he had seen anyone so blessed - Solon: yes (Tellus of Athens)

  • Great man who died with wealth, descendants and nobley in battle

• But Croesus is not even second, as then Cleobis and Biton (who when an oxen had not arrived to be yoked for the chariot, drew it themselves and died shortly after, but blessed by Argive Hera)

  • = Croesus is rich and king of many men but he cannot be blessed until he has died (needs blessed death)

  • No field is rich in every manner = no man can be successful in every way

  • Must look to the end of one’s life to see true prosperity

Book 1.131-40 - Persian customs

• Hdt now provides a long list of cultural customs of the Persians (are they correct?)

• Inc. Persians sacrifice to natural phenomena (not anthropomorphised gods)

  • No libations (cont to Persae)

  • ‘Rivers they chiefly reverence; they will neither make water nor spit nor wash their hands therein’

• Honour birthday greatly, cannot urinate or vomit in front of other, sons are not shown to father until 5 years of age,best man is the one with most sons & best fighting ability

• Have kissing rule based on status & welcome other cultures (Median dress, Egyptian cuirass and unnatural vices from Greeks…)

• ‘This is a law which I praise; and it is a praiseworthy law too which suffers not the king himself to slay any man for one offence, nor any other Persian for one offence to do incurable harm to one of his servants’ = some form of public protection

• All names end in sigma but don’t realise! (stupid)

• And breaks down Magi customs (kill everything with their hands exc man and dog)

3.61-88 - Persian coup

• Cambyses, while away, is dethroned by coup (Magian man who looked like Smerdis was placed on throne instead)

  • Cambyses had killed his brother Smerdis already so perplexed (but still a secret)

  • However, on this expedition, accidentally kills himself (thought he would de in Median Agbatana but instead Syrian)

• ‘When the Persians saw their king weep, they all rent the garments which they wore and lamented loud and long’

• But 8 months after Cambyses’ death, the fake Smerdis is revealed by Otanes (father-in-law to fake Smerdis)

  • Tells his daughter, Phaedyme (named!) to check if it is the true Smerdis she lies with (puts herself at risk of death, by lifting a light to his face = strong female character)

• → leads to a coup against Smerid (of which Darius from Susa is a part of!)

  • Is very reckless and wants to act quick (will sell them out if they don’t follow his lead)

  • Coup is successful and many Magians are slaughtered

Political debate!

• Now when the coup of 7 men are in power, have a debate about what political system they are going to put in place

  • Shows that Hdt believed that Persia could be a democracy

• Otanes - ‘what right order is there to be found in monarchy, when the ruler can do what he will, nor be held to account for it? !!

• But Megabyzus supports an oligarch - ‘nothing is more foolish and violent than a useless mob’

• But Darius fights for monarchy - a couple god men will prefer to fight over the top spot than help their country

• So decide for a monachy, but who? Otanes exits himself from the contest but says that no man shall be allowed to rule over him (and still his house is the only free one in all of Persia)

  • Darius picked by a trick - king be picked by whose horse first neighs at sunrise (groom enduces the stallion to have sex with favourite mare, and then when they ride out they pass the place and so the horse whinnies)

Babylonian revolt - 3.150-60

• The Babylonaisn revolt during the Magian rule, but only solved during Darius’ reign

  • They joke that the Persians will only take babylon when ‘mules bear offspring’

  • 1 year and 7 months waiting & failing but in 8th month, son of 1 of the 7, Zopyrus, has a mule that girls birth = keeps secrte but believes heavens now support their take-over

• = disfigures himself intentionally and tells Darius that he will pretend to desert to the Babylonians and then take their keys for the gate

  • Plan works but at cost of 6000 Persian men who were exploited to validate Zop’s story and gain Babylonians’ trust

• Consequence of revolt = Darius removes their walls and gates (+ impales 3000 of their best men)

B7 and Xerxes’ expedition:

• This book covers Xerxes’ expedition through Greece and the battles that occur

• Currently at 54 at the Hellespont, where Xerxes constructed blasphemous bridge (now throws offerings into the sea, either for the sun god or for atonement for scourging of the Hellespont)

  • So many people that it takes them 7 days to cross - ‘leading the whole world with thee to remove Hellas from it’s place’

  • Ignores an omen (mare giving birth to hare - ‘Xerxes was to march his army to Hellas with great pomp and pride, but to come to the same place fleeing for his life’

  • And another in Sardis - mule gave birth to mule with both genitals…

• And now all troops brought to Doriscus in Thrace (ships towed up too)

  • Hdt tries to describe all the people - ‘cannot with exactness say; for there is no-one who tells us that; but the tale of the whole land army was shown to be a million & 7 hundred thousand’

Persian catalogue

• Hdt now coveres the different peoples arranged in force (+ their armour)

  • Eg. Persians ‘wore on their heads loose caps called tiaras and on their bodies sleeved tunics of diverse coloures with scales of iron like in appearance to the scales of fish…’

  • Also adds that Persians got their name from son of Perseus, Perses - but is a chronological error with what he has said before

  • But also mentions at least 22 different peoples inc. Medes, Bactrians, Cappodocians (all of these are on the Apadana!)

  • And names the captains for each (incredible level of detail)

• + the Persians had the 10,000 (called the Immortals, as if one dies, he is quickly replaced = always 10,000)

• Also lists the cavalry and the number of triremes (from Ionians?)

• ‘Whose names I do not record as not being needful for the purpose of my history’ - what does this mean?

  • Inc. Megabazus - named used in Persae (where did Aeschylus get his names from)

  • Names no other sea captain save Artemisia - ‘who moves me to marvel greatly that a woman should have gone with the armament against Hellas; for her husband being dead, she herself had his sovereignty…and followed the host under no stress of necessity, but of mere high-hearted valour’

Xerxes talks to the crew:

• Return to main narrative, and see Xerxes questioning all of the nations on land and sea (appears involved in the process)

  • + asks Demaratus (exiled king of Sparta) whether the Greeks will fight him (should Dem speak truly or to please Xerxes? - issue of free speech)

  • Dem argues that the Spartans will at least fight (will never accept enslavement) and Xerxes laughs (would Dem like to fight 20 of his men, if the average Spartan could take 10)

  • ‘How should a 1000 or 10,000 or even 50,000, if they be all alike free and not under the rule of one man, withstand so great a host as mine?’ = cannot understand how a free state could fight well (but for Spartans, the law is the master)

• Xerxes is not angered by Dem’s continuous opposition, but laughs (still ignores the advice)

• Xerxes is passing through the lands and compelling peoples to join his army (all countries as far as Thessaly had been enslaved & were paying tribute to the king)

  • Inc. town Pistryrus where lake was drained by thr watering of the beasts of burden

  • + buried 9 people alive when passed town of ‘nine ways’ - Persian custom?

  • All cities that knew they were coming prepared a feast in advance (and would make gold plates & goblets)

Greek tribute giving

• Herodotus kind of uses the journey of Xerxes through the lands of Northern Greece etc. to discuss customs and nature of surrounding areas eg. long description of what Thessaly used to be like (big lake)

• Now comes to the Greek cities to demand tribute (given by Thessalians, Dolopes, Eniens…and all these Greeks declared war on)

  • But they sent no herald to demand earth to Athens or Sparta as the heralds when Darius were chucked into Pit or well

  • Because of this, Spartans lsot all good faith to shrine to Talthybius → send 2 men to Xerxes to be killed and when asked to join their side, say ‘you know well how to be a slave but you have never tasted of freedom, to know whether it be sweet or not’

• Hdt on intention of expedition - ‘professed intent of march was to attack Athens, but in truth, all Hellas was his aim’

  • Those who had refused tribute were afraid, knowing how few ships they had

  • And now Hdt professes opinion he says won’t be taken well - if Athenians had left country or surrended, none would have been able to withstand the king by sea BUT ‘as it is, to say that the Athenians were the saviours of Hellas is to hit the truth’

Greek attempts at alliance:

• Themistocles is first mentioned here, and uses ships that had been built for battle with Aegina (shows internal conflict already)

  • But first of all decides to send out three spies to Asia (Xerxes captures them but doesn’t kill as could return to Greece & reveal the intimidating numbers of soldiers he possesses)

  • Also lets corn ships pass as they will soon be his (assumptive)

• Argos remains neutral in the war: first offered to have 30 year peace with Lacedaimonians if they have rulership but are denied = ‘better to be ruled by foreigners than give way to the Lacedaimonians’

  • This is the Argive account, but another that says that Xerxes pushed their ancestral connection - through Perseus = agreed to stay out of fighting

  • Evidence for this is envoys sent many years to Artexerxes asking if friendship still held

• ‘For myself, though it be my business to set down that which is told me, to believe it is none at all of my business; let that saying hold good for the whole of my history!’

  • In relation to all the stories concerning Argives (another that they invited Persians to end battle with Spartans)

Attempts to bring Sicily over

• Begins with long history of Sicily (and Telines) and the rise of Gelon in Sicily & Syracuse (sold many into slavery = not an emblem of Greek freedom)

  • ‘sold them for slaves to be carried out of Sicily. In like fashion, he dealt with the Euboeans of Sicily…’

• But now Greek envoys come to him for aid

  • But Gelon responds that they never helped him when he was warring against Carthaginians & now West part of the island belongs to them

  • Gelon promises large army to fight ONLY if he may be general and leader against foreigner (Syragrus is shocked as they must obey the Lac)

  • Also rejected for command over sea as Athenians say that is their domain

• After alliance not formalised, Gelon still afraid the Persians would come to him = Cadmus of Cos took three ships full of gold to Delphi = watch battle and see if they need to form Persian alliance if lost

  • Also a story that on the same day that Greeks vanquished Persians, Gelon won battle over Amilcas the Carthaginian = enemies from all sides

Other Greek city-state rejections:

• Envoys also go to Coreyraeans and give same plea, and do agree to send ships (but in the end, simply ancher 60 ships nearby and watch for the outcome)

• Cretans would not aid Greeks because of a prophecy by Delphic oracle that compared the future consequences of fighting to the suffering incurred from Trojan war (returned from Troy to see famine ruined people)

• Thessalians have condition that they will fight if the pass into their land is protected by Greeks (not willing to be destroyed before they can even help in battle)

  • = land army goes up to the pass of Tempe (but messengers from Alexander warn them not to be trodden down by Persians)

  • Obey (but Hdt believes it is instead by fear that they leave)

• This is the reason they go to guard the pass of Thermopylae instead (narrower and with gate made by Phocians in fear of Thessalians who took their land not too long ago)

  • Land army is here while fleet goes to Artemisium

• Ends this discussion with insane guess for the number of the Persian force = 5,283,220 people (inc. slaves & crew)

Moments before Thermopylae

• Xerxes now passes through Achaea and into part of Malis which belongs to Trachis (sep. from the southern part of Malis by the pass which the Greeks are protecting)

  • Greeks ask for more aid - Xerxes was mortal, not a god (!)

  • Leonidas is the leader (all older brothers died) and don’t have as many allies as they would wish for (Locrians & Phocians alone) as many Spartans at home due to feast of Carnea & other cities for Olympics

• Army is so little that Xerxes thinks it is laughable that they are trying to stop his army (has spy scout out and then asks Demaratus - dressing their hair as they do before they face jeopardy)

  • Also says that if he beats them, no-one will be able to defeat him (Spartan bias!)

• Thus, Xerxes waits four days to see if they will flee (doesn’t believe Demaratus) and when they don’t angrily asks that they be brought forth alive

  • But hold themselves well against forces & also the Immortals

  • Xerxes it is said sprang up thrice up from his seat in fear for army

Downfall of Thermopylae

• Epialtes (Melian) brings the downfall of the Greeks as he reveals a path of the mountain to Thermopylae

  • Some think Onetes, but Pylagori put price on E’s head so makes sense for him

  • 1000 Phocians posted here, but completely unaware that Persians are there until too late as not even armed yet

• A seer alerts those at pass of the Persians = some flee & some stay

  • Said that even Leonidas sent many away so they might live, but thought it unseemly for himself and Spartans to desert (coul have renown & prosperity of Sparta not blotted out)

  • As Delphic oracle said that either city fell or king perish = saves his city

• Fight occurs & the Persian forces have to be whipped to keep fighting (!)

  • Hdt here names some famous Persians who fell - ‘there too fell, among other famous Persians, Abercomes and Hyperanthes, two sons of Darius…’

• One man flees back as has ophthalmia so flees back to Sparta (but entirely dishonoured and named a coward)

End of book 7

• Thebans realising the Persians are winning try to betray to Persians (but many are killed indespite)

• Xerxes now asks Dem how he can the remaining Lacedaimonians (sense that only Spartans need to be worried about)

  • = should station some ships on Cythera, by Sparta, so as to distract them (will prioritise own city over Greek land entirely)

  • Xerxes’ brother Achaemenes fears Xerxes will listen to this advice (don’t split up the army!)

• Xerxes listens to brother but stands up for Dem (don’t malign him, he is my friend)

• BUT Dem actually reveals Xerxes’ plan to the Spartans (not entirely a traitor)

  • And it is a women (Gorgo) who discovered the trick (Dem has inscribed message onto wood of wax tablet and poured the wax back over)

Beginning of Book 8

• Begins by describing the fleet - Athenians with 27 ships, with Plataeans manning them

  • Corinthians with 40 and Megaerians 20

  • Total number was 271 besides 50 oared barks

  • Eurybiades as captain as if Athenians had fought over control, Hellas would have been destroyed

• BUT when they realise that Persians have incredible number of ships, do wish to flee (Euboeans failed to persuade Eurybiades to stay, so bribed Themistocles 30 talents to protect Euboea - gave 5 to Eur and 3 to Adimantus when he not agreeing either)

• → battle before Euboea (Persians believes that the Greeks would flee at the sight of their onward attack = set 200 ships off to catch Greeks from behind and pincer them)

  • Greeks told plan by Persian swimmer but then decide to attack remaining ships and are surrounded anyway

  • Night ends battle with 30 destructions by Greeks

• → storm! Even more damage to Persian force (esp those in open sea) & 53 Greek ships sail

  • But now on same day as Thermopylae, Persians go to attack (as fear Xerxes’ anger)

The Greek fleet flees:

• Themistocles has plan to move the Ionian & Carian forces away from Persian navy BUT watcher from Thermopylae comes to notify fleet of disasterous battle and so fleet departs

  • Them does engrave a rock with a message saying that it is wrong for Persian Greeks to fight against ancestors (would at least cause suspicion)

• Xerxes’ fleet now sails to Thermopylae to find Xerxes has tried to make battle seem better for them (buried 20,000 bodies so only 4000:1000 dead = laughable)

• Small anecdote about fleeing Arcadians who alert Xerxes of what Greeks were doing → Olympic festival for crown, not money which Tigranes comments that they contend for the glory of achievement rather than money

• Phocians now reject the Persian force ‘for no other reason than their hatred of the Thessalians’ = not motivated by deep-seated love of freedom but rather infighting

We’re coming to Athens:

• Since Phocians reject offer, Thessalians lead the foreigners into Phocis (but cannot catch any Phocians as have left)

  • ‘This temple, too, they plundered and burnt’ - impiety

  • Greater part of army marches to Athens (Boeotia surrenders) and other part sets off for Delphi (but find miralces there - smitten by thunderbolts & peaks of Parnassus are shorn off and tumble down = earth fighting for Greeks!!)

• By Athenian entreaty, Greek fleet lands at Salamis (so to convey their women and children safely out of Athens)

  • Even goddess fled temple (honey-cakes set out each month in temple left uneaten for first time)

  • Athenians furnished 180 ships for battle = reason why they can threaten to leave

  • Also lists other peoples who furnished ships → 378

• But did they flee?

  • Held a counsil in which they would decide where to fight (majority opinion was to sail to isthmus and do battle to protect Peloponnese - if defeated on Salamis, beleaged on an island)

Attica falls

• During discussion, man of Athens came to announce that the foreigner had arrived in Attica (wasting it with fire)

  • Burns Thespia & Plataea (because had not taken Persian part)

  • Found some old men and temple stewards in Athens (believed the wooden wall to be the refuse, not the ships)

• Couldn’t enter acropolis (where they were hiding) by the entrance (rolling down stones) = climbed sheer cliff past the shrine of Cecrops’ daughter Aglaurus

  • Killed everyone & then burnt entire acropolis

  • Allowed Athenians exiled to offer sacrifice in own manner - ‘some vision seen of him in sleep that led him to give this charge, or that he repented of his burning of the temple’

• Shrine of Erechtheus - burnt down the olive tree there, but next day a sprout a cubit long could be seen (= Athens won’t be destroyed)

Peloponnesians flee:

• When they are told what happened (burnt & destroyed), many from P flee to isthmus = little actual fidelity to cause of protecting Greece

  • Didn’t even wait for assembly - focused on self-preservation

  • Mnesiphilus’ idea to persuade Eurybiades to change idea as reasonable fear that all Greeks will flee back to their own state & thus Hellas will be destroyed

• Adimantus believes they are being too hasty - athlete race metaphor in ‘at the games, Themistocles, they that come forward before their time are beaten with rods’ / ‘Ay, but they that wait too long win no crown’

• Themistocles does not tell the Greeks that they are going to flee (unseemly = social awareness)

  • Provides reasonable explanation that fighting in straits will privilege the smaller and fewer ships than open sea

  • Ad however says that he is stateless and thus has no place in the assembly (interesting) = Them threatens to depart to Siris with possessions

  • Hdt believes it it this which persuades Eur

Departation to Eleusis

• See prophecy about the outcome of the war:

  • Demaratus stands with exile Dicaeos as they look upon the fall of Athens (on Thriasian plain)

  • Dust rises from Eleusis and a voice (seemed to be the Iacchus song of mysteries)

  • Dicaeous prophecises fall of Xerxes’ forces (nobody in Athens thus is heaven’s sending = if to Pelop land army will fall, but if Salamis, then fleet)

  • Dem orders Dicaeos not to spread this anywhere, as no man could save him if it reached the king (‘for this host, the gods shall look to it = leave it to heavens)

  • Reveals Xerxes’ alleged brutality

• And now see the Persian forces moving from Trachis to Histiaea, through Euripus and then to Phalerum

  • Same amount of people as before Thermopylae as gaining allies along the way

• Now to Xerxes asking opinions of seamen (Mardonius should ask they think we should fight at sea)

  • All affirm save Artemisia who provides counterargument (from experience - ‘not been the hindmost in courage or in feats of arms in the fights near Euboea’)

  • Greeks stronger at sea (as men are over women!), already have Athens and Greeks will scatter if you move to the Pelop or even just wait - awareness of the Greek disunity

• Xerxes is pleased by her argument and holds her in higher regard (does not repress free speech and is impressed when people speak against him, but never listens)

  • (Believes Euboea went badly as he wasn’t there)

Peloponnesian peoples:

• Pelop fear for own land (if lose, stuck and own land unguarded)

  • BUT those on the Pelop, not leaving land open but instead destroyed Scironian road and built long wall

  • Those that were there: Lacedaemonians, Arcadians, Eleans, Corinthians… (no-one else cared, and had no excuse of festival…)

• Now move into short passage about the indigenous peoples of Pelop (Arcadians & Cynurians & Achaeans but they moved across the Pelop)

  • Dorians etc. moved from elsewhere

  • Also adds that ‘sat apart from the war; and if I may speak freely, by so doing they took the part of the enemy’

• But now another assembly is called as all fearful:

  • Two sides: go to P / stay and fight for Attica

  • Them realises he is going to be outvoted so sends slave Sicinnus to give message to Persians that Greeks are going to flee = should attack now

  • Trust message so put out to sea and land best men (flowers of Asia) on Psytalleia (+ encircle Salamis)

Greeks realise they are surrounded:

• Hdt quickly mentions oracle (doesn’t say if correct or not but quite clear) - ‘for the justice of heaven shall quench it’ and ‘But Zeus far seeing and hallowed Victory then shall grant that Freedom dawn upon Hellas’

• Aristeides now comes (Hdt think best Athenian) and says they should use rivalry for the better to find best plan of action

  • Pelop don’t believe Aristeides (Them KNEW they wouldn’t believe him)

  • Only believe when Tenian deserters arrive and alert them

• = ready for battle & Them gives great speech

  • → battle (Athenians say Aminias began the fight when all others were trying to beach themselves)

  • BUT Aeginetans say ship sent to Aegine for sons of Aeacus arrived (and saw vision of women who asked how far they would back water)

• Now Hdt mentions two men who took Greek ships - Theomestor of Androdamas and Phylacus of Histiaeus, Samian & called in Persian language, orosangae (benefactors of the king)

  • Is recording feats of barbarians too!

More battle (ft. Artemisia)

• ‘for since the Greeks fought ordely and in array, but the foreigners were by now disordered and did nought of set purpose, it was but reason that they should come to such an end as befell them’

  • Positive?

• To Artemisia - chased by Athenian ship so charges allied ship (all die)

  • Hdt cannot say if accident or if previous quarrel BUT Athenian ship believes Greek or deserter AND reported to Xerxes that she sunk enemy ship

  • ‘My men have become women and my women men’

• Ariabignes killed in battle and many others too (cannot swim so drown AND when front ships flee, the back ones charge into them for fear of Zerxes)

• Xerxes’ cruelty is clear in episode where he executes Phoenicians because they accuse Ionians of treason

• Unluckily for them, a Samothracian ship charged an Attic and since javelin-throwers, managed to ruin an Aeginitan crew and seize their ship

  • ‘that so they might not accuse better men, being themselves cowards’

  • Said that a Persian friend of Ionians was there which might have influenced

Good or bad fighters?

• Aeginetans gain renown by routing foreigners who fled

  • All that escaped the Athenians fell upon them

  • And here Them’s ship and Polycritus’ meet as charge enemy (P shouts for Them to look upon his Persian alliance - ref. to when P & father taken as hostages when Aegina was thought to be in alliance with Persia)

• Best men? Aegenitans, then Athenians!

  • One of best men, Aminias was he who chased Artemisia - ‘for there was great wrath that a woman should come to attack Athens’

• Athenians also add that Corinthian general fled in fear imm. (but brought back by a prophetic boat) BUT no-one else agrees with this take

• And it is Aristeides who routs the Persians on Psytalleia

• Even when battle over, Greeks don’t believe this is the end

  • BUT Xerxes fears that the Greeks will sail to Hellespont to break his ships (thus pretends to fight and all but Mardonius believe)

• + short tangent about the angerion (very fast messenger service that has horses stationed a day along the whole journey)

Xerxes thinks of returning:

• 1st message taken back to Persia is of Athens’ fall = joy & festivities and myrtle BUT 2nd = lament, ripping tunics, holding Mardonius to blame (& feared for Xerxes the most)

• = Mardonius decides that he will battle Greeks by land (either die nobly or win honour for king and enslave the Greeks)

  • Would be killed on return as he urged the expedition

  • Asks Xerxes if he can have 300,000 of men → Xerxes has counsil

• Artemisia urges he leave as if Mard wins, it is his win as his servant but if loses, then no loss for Xerxes (+ already completed what he came here for - to burn Athens)

  • Hdt - ‘in truth, I think that he would not have remained, though all men and woman had counselled him so to do; so panic-stricken was he’

• Anecdote about priestess of Athens growing beard when something bad going to happen to people of Pedasa

Xerxes sends his children off:

• Hermotimus is from the people of Pedasa (sent to look after Xerxes’ bastard children who he took with him) = cannot be as insanely young as Persae presents him to be

  • Herm has bad backstory - was sold by evil man who castrated beautiful boys to sell as eunuchs (can have full trust)

  • But became favourite eunuch of the king’s household!

  • And as king’s eunuch meets Panionius again and forces him to castrate his sons and then they to their father - ‘to you or youts, that you made me to be no man, but a thing of nought?’

• Mardonius has picked his men and Xerxes departs

  • Greeks believe fleet at Phalerum, but when realise fleet has fled they chase it to Andros (hold counsil in which Them reveals intent to break bridge)

  • Eur argues instead that this would trap the enemy in their land

• Them cannot persuade so turns to Athenians (will sail next spring to Hellespont - as if own idea)

  • ‘This he said with intent to put somewhat to his credit with the Persian, so that he might have a place of refuge if ever (as ought chance) he should suffer aught at the hands of the Athenians’

  • Thus tells Persians that he stopped fleet from chasing theirs!

Aeschylus’ Persae

• Only historical extant tragedy (part of trilogy, but how were they connected)

• Phrynicus also wrote historical tragedy - sack of Miletus (493/2) about the Ionian revolt

  • Another about Phoenician women - opens with a eunuch (coloured with effeminising views of the oriental)

• Tragedy usually set in mythological past, but only because there needs to be a dissonance between audience and play - here, the dissonance is geographical

  • + Persian wars significant enough to be aligned with mythical battles (as they were in art - with centaurs and amazons)

  • + could be dissonance of political system (despotism in front of democratic audience with King as compared to Tyrant, favoured role in tragedy)

• Use of double determination (mythical as originated (?) in Iliad)

  • Mortal action and divine manipulation & plotting = tragedy (‘but what mortal man can escape the guileful deception of a god?’)

  • + inclusion of a ghost (supernatural)

Pitying portrayal?

• Iliadic comparisons abound further

  • Also has similes like the Iliad (army like swarm of bees, and men at Salamis speared like tunnies)

  • Have catalogues (but use of names here acts to ostracise & orientalise the dead = names as othering)

  • Scales of the gods used as image by messenger at 345-6

  • Messenger also says ‘not even if I had ten whole days to tell this…’ (used before the catalogue in Il 2)

• = universalised view of warfare? Empathise?

• But use of exotic names (Amistres, Artephrenes, Megabates & Astapes) and Persian terms - balhn for king and Greeks called Ionians

  • No coherent system or attempt to understand the barbarian

  • They are a spectacle

• Nostos (Odyssean) is not triumphalist but piteable

Quotes of lament:

• ‘parents and wives count the days and tremble as the time stretches out’

• ‘A vast throng of women howling out the word “woe” and their linen gowns will be rent and torn’

• ‘Partner unpartnered’

• After messenger leaves = choral ode: ‘many mothers in a piteous plight are rending their veils with their delicate hands and wetting the folds of their garments til they are soaked through’ (+ wives)

  • Persian women mourn = Xerxes feminine even in Persian culture

• Persian court also effeminised by their engagement in grief = popoi, totoi, pheu, ehhh-e, o-aaah (& ‘utter a deep cry of towering woe - a terrible, long-drawn-out howl, a screaming voice of sorrow’)

• ‘As I send forth clearly in Eastern speech my variegated, grief-laden cries that tell of woe’ (grief as Easternised)

Xerxes to blame?

• Post-messenger choral ode:

  • ‘by destroying the army of the boastful and populous Persian nation’

  • ‘Xerxes took them…Xerxes lost them! Xerxes handled everything unwisely, he and his sea boats’

  • Loss of battle as indicative of the fall of empire! ‘Not long now will those in the land of Asia remain under Persian rule, nor continue to pay tribute under the compulsion of their lords…for thr strength of the monarchy has utterly vanished’

  • ‘nor do men any longer keep their tongue under guard’ (free speech will now prosper)

• Ritual to Darius:

  • ‘For he (Darius) was never one to lose many men by disastrous slaughter in war’ (contrasted!)

  • Darius gives lineage of rulers = clarification that it was Xerxes alone who is a shame (exc. Mardus but was killed)

• Prophecy?

• Also apparently was pushed to this expedition, by rumours that he, ‘from unmanliness, was being a stay-at-home warrior and doing nothing to increase the riches he had inherited’ !!

Authentic portrayal of Persians in Persae?

• Greeks believed that Persians reverred water (thus Darius is extremely shocked by Xerxes yoking the sacred stream, ‘as if it were a slave’)

  • Stresses impiety of bridging the Hellespont (breach of nature, but also a cosmic breach - bridges cross boundaries, limits, bind what shouldn’t be bound)

  • But also says that a god lent a hand (725, 742)

  • And fulfilling oracles! (739-41)

  • Adds that it was a disease of the mind

• But actual stabs at authenticity are few

  • No actual Persian gods by Persian names (eg. Ahuramazda) but Greek pantheon used

  • Atossa refers to Phoebus at 206, and Darius names Poseidon and Zeus, who established kings of Persians & punishes the proud

  • Ritual - ‘bringing propitiatory drink-offerings for the father of my child, such as to soothe the dead’ → milk, honey, water, olive tree and garland (accurate?)

• The different system of divinity is underdeveloped - Gaia is the only one mentioned (and libations to the ‘earth’ are just like Greek ones with wine, olive oil and milk)

Quotes of Greek / Persian

• ‘Is the bent bow victorious or has the power of the spearhead’s point conquered?’

  • Persia vs Greece conceptualised in different weaponry

  • See also - ‘that slays with the bow’ (importance of archery for Persians)

• ‘Eager to impose the yoke of slavery on Greece’ (wish for domination!)

  • Yoke also appears in Atossa’s dream: Xerxes tries to yoke Greece and Asia, but Greece bucks and pushes Xerxes to the floor (in embarassment rips his dress as Darius looks on!)

  • But…’sisters of the same stock’ = not entirely distinct

• As Atossa arises, she sees an eagle submit to the attack of a hawk (hawk as smaller and weaker = Greece!)

• Greeks characterised by freedom - ‘for the freedom of your homeland, for the freedom of your children, your wives the temples of your fathers’ gods and the tombs of your ancestors’ (some voice = ALL + ‘they all pulled their oars together’)

First messenger speech:

• Arrives and narrates how all is destroyed (at the massacre of Salamis)

  • ‘whole of the oriental (βαρβαρος) army has been destroyed’

  • ‘surge of Persian speak’ (language!)

  • Sounds of grief - ‘otototoi’ (adds that they are incomprehensible = language barrier?)

• Describes the men dead as ‘shrouded in mantles that drift in the waves’ (mantles were female drapery = sense of the female & foreign conflated)

• Atossa is the one to tell the man to speak (‘still, we mortals have no choice but to endure the sorrows the gods send us; so compose yourself and speak…’) = doesn’t care for the men? Or to show inversion by only woman being the collected head of family

• Long list of Persian men destroyed in brutal manner (‘full, bushy reddish beard got a soaking and a purple dye changed the colour of his skin’

Ghost of Darius appears:

• Darius holds powerful position in the underworld = why is allowed to come back up for a period of time (has legitimate power in divine realm)

  • But he’s still dead…

• Chorus unable to say anything to him - ‘I am too awed to look upon you, I am too awed to speak before you, because I feared you of old’ (awe, power and fear entwined)

  • = Atossa has to speak once again

• When he is told of what Xerxes did, he is incredibly shocked (first question was if it were a plague or civil strife = on par)

  • ‘He thought…that he, a mortal, could lord it over all the gods and over Poseidon’ (god or mortal?)

• Darius characterises Xerxes by his youth - ‘youthful rashness’ & ‘My son Xerxes, though, is still a young man, thinking young man’s thoughts…’

Darius’ omniscience

• Darius here essentially acts as a messenger to alert them of the continued strife of the Persians (none apparently survive to need supernatural being)

• Tells the court of the destruction as they return (army rossing back from Greece will not survive, as Xerxes has left a large portion in Boeotia = battle of Plataea as even worse tragedy than Salamis)

• All as consequences for impiety:

  • ‘did not scruple to plunder the images of gods and set fire to temples: altars have vanished and the abodes of deities have been runed, uprooted, wrenched from their foundations’

  • ‘that one who is mortal should not think arrogant thoughts: outrage has blossomed and has produced a crop of ruin from which it is reaping a harvest of universal sorrow’

• ‘remember Athens & Greece’ (paralleled!)

• Ends his speech by telling Atossa that she must get clothes ready for Xerxes as ‘because of his grief of the disaster, all the threads of his richly dedocated garments are torn and in rags around his body’

• ‘Wealth is of no benefit to the dead’…

Xerxes’ arrival and the end of the play

• ‘Io, io’ are the first words of Xerxes we hear (persistent lament)

  • And has been entirely absent until 150 or so lines til the end

  • ‘Hapless that I am, to have met this dreadful fate, so utterly unpredictable’ (very self-pitying)

  • + ‘It was the Ionian, the Ionian war spirit’ (takes no responsibility)

  • Enters with empty quiver! (devoid of even what makes a Persian great)

• Chorus - ‘the land laments its native youth killed by Xerxes’

• → ends with mourning ritual in which Xerxes leads the lament

  • ‘cry out now in response to my cries’ / ‘a sad answer of sad sound to sad sound’

  • Physical self-attack (beat breasts, ravage white hairs of beard, pluck hair and rent robes)

• Ends with incomprehensible cries of ‘ehhh-ehhh, ehhh-ehhh, the triple-oared-‘ by Xerxes

Femininity in Persae

• Persians constantly effeminised, even by who is present

  • Xerxes is gone for most and too young, chorus are too old, Darius is dead = no strong men of age

  • Atossa is the only head of power (woman!) - was spouse of god and is mother of god = is prostrated too (inversion of power dynamic)

• Whole final scene is of lament = sim. to ending scene of Iliad (lament as connected with women)

  • Xerxes tears his dress in Atossa’s dream and comes onto stage wearing torn dress

  • Peplos is also worn

• Constant reference to the bereaved wives that wail and rent their veils

  • And Asia is configured as a bereaved mother - 61-2, 548-9, 922

Luxury & monarchy

• Everything in the house is golden (several instances of Iliad epithet ‘lots of gold’ (πολυχρυσος)

  • Eg. ‘wealthy palace rich in gold’ in opening

  • Darius arrives in saffron-dyed slippers’

  • Theme of wealth was also an Aeschylean theme of the excessive prosperity of the royal house just before a fall (perishability of ολβος in Oresteia)

• Political system fully in place at time of play (Darius lists eight ancestors)

  • + chorus must prostrate themselves (is acc. to Near Eastern sources though)

  • proskynesis

• Comes with lack of freedom of speech

  • Punishments of beheading (Darius __)

  • Constant theme of the yoke (has long history in Assyrian inscriptions & old testament)

  • Despot cannot be called to account (and uses Greek term! ουχ ύπευθυνος πολει 213)

  • Goaded on by wicked people! No mention of name, but cf. Hippias the Peis in Hdt.

• King as god - whole household referred to as divine

Bisitun relief 1-15:

• ‘I am Darius, king of kings, the king of Persia, the king of countries, the son of Hystaspes’

  • + lists lineage to show he’s always been royal BUT in Herod, overtook throne in coup = attempt to show his rule as legitimate

• ‘By the grace of Ahura Mazda am I king’ = divinely ordained

  • ‘These are the countries which are subject unto me, and by the grace of Ahura Mazda…23 lands in total’

  • ‘Whatsoever commands have been laid on them by me, by night and by day, have bee

Bisitun inscription - Darius’ rise to power:

• How does Darius describe his rise to power?

  • Surprisingly similar to Herodotus’ account

• Cambyses & Smerdis, Cambyses kills Smerdis secretly and leaves for Egypt

  • Now a Magian, Gaumata, raises rebellion pretending to be Smeris (Cambyses dies in Egypt by natural causes)

• BUT Darius was part of dynasty before fake Smerdis took the throne = simply reclaiming his right to rule

• ‘There was none who dared to act against Gaumata, the Magian, until I came. Then I prayed to A; A brought me help’

  • ‘On the 10th day, of month Bagayadis, I, with a few men, slew that Gaumata’

  • Here, Darius is central whereas Herod portrays Otanes as the leader of the coup but still with equal judgement and power within the group = why they have to do odd game to work out who is going to rule

Bisitun inscription 51-76

• Says that fought 19 battles in single year = did he fight? Or did his men - see Xerxes sat on hill watching battle in both H and A

  • + overthrew nine revolting ‘kings’ (lied about being kings of states eg. Elam and Babylon)

  • ‘protect yourself vigorously from lies’ - Hdt correct that Persians despise lying

• Addresses whoever is reading inscription (so high up??) and says that if they conceal it, they should be killed and household ended (capable of extreme violence)

  • Also seen in how he explains his battles - ‘smote the Scythians exceedingly’

• Says that he is not a liar or a despot (how is despot defined?)

• Also lists the men who were with him when he killed Gaumata (‘as my followers’ = inc. Otanes!)

Beginning of the Persian empire

• At 500BC, spans from Libya to India (an empire like this has never existed before)

  • And were even in Thrace by the time of Xerxes’ attack (but never made it past there)

  • Lack of details in Persian accounts of this exploit

• Croesus of Lydia (wealthy man) defeated int he early 6th by Persians

  • Therefore the Greek city states that he took over are subsumed into Persian empire

  • Greeks for the first time have lost their freedom (+ owe tribute to a foreign leader, so no control over own resources)

  • Rhetoric that before this, all Greeks were free

• Persian empire would leave administrative structures intact (but regions had to pay tribute, which was monitored by satrapies = Persian-friendly tyrants)

  • Ability for local elites to gain power

Darius’ role in Persian empire

• Further expands the empire (long reign)

  • + shifts the empire into a formal goverment

  • Forms 514/3 expedition against Scythians which was accepted because had attacked middle East before

  • + 513-10 conquest of Hellespont, Thrace, Macedon (but mostly just surrenders)

• Very present in Greek affairs (significant geo-political entity to form ties with)

  • For some Greeks, was seen as an opportunity for alliance (rather that foreign threat)

  • 507 Athens allegedly (acc. to Herod) seeks alliance with Persian empire when they need help = offers earth & water, but this is debated

  • Persian empire requires that thr Athenians acknowledge that Persians rule over all (goes against Athenian independent democracy) = halt alliance

  • Would this seem like a rebellion? Viewed as subjugated therefore this is a sign of disloyalty (needs to be controlled)

• Siege of Naxos, by Milesian tyrant Aristagoras (fails and thus owes much money to Persian empire for their support) = Ionian revolt?

Ionian revolt why?

• Herodotus narrates how Aristagoras led the Ionian revolt (since owed much to empire)

  • But many historians see this as oversimplified, as why would so many people go to battle just for man in debt

  • But only source is Herod = but have some possible ideas

• Identity of freedom to be reclaimed! But no panhellenic identity at this time (+ non-Greeks involved)

• Economic crisis = no trade allowed, and ties between Asia minor and Greece cut off (but no evidence, and trade inside the nation actually created prospering nations)

• Burden of tribute? Herod. 6.42.2 states that the Persian empire checked afterwards if the tribute was too much (but remained much the same after land assessment and analysis)

  • Same tribute given to Persia as Athens took in Herod’s time…

• Objection to tyranny? Only one tyrant killed and Persia said that they could change their governmental system if they want = don’t require tyranny!

Ionian revolt what?

• Most likely reason might have been the burden of military service

  • Ionians specifically were viewed as suppliers of naval power (but very expensive to run a fleet!)

  • And since hold this great power, can threaten Persian with it

  • Have 350 triremes for just one battle

• The Ionians depose their Persian-backed tyrants

  • Athens and Eritrea agree to support the revolt (Spartans decline as 8 year old kid told them not to)

  • Herod says that a democracy can be swayed by riches and ideology (easier to persuade 40,000 than 1…)

• ‘These ships (sent to support) were the beginning of evils for both Greeks and barbarians’ = Athens as trigger!

• Persians crush the revolt in few years (decisive battle of Lade in 494)

  • Revolt falls apart entirely, and Persian empire moves straight back to expansion

Closer to Greece

• 492 - Mardonius subdoes Thasos & reconquers Thrace and Macedon

• 490 - Datis & Artaphrenes conquer Naxos (!), Cyclades and Euboea

  • Where Eretria is (aid in revolt) = targetting communities that were previously troublesome

  • But desire to conquer mainland ends in battle of Marathon = failure

  • All prior attempts were successful against Greeks = beginning of change

• But 486 - Darius dies and Xerxes takes over → grand invasion of 480

  • (But was first distracted by Egyptian revolt which he quashes)

• Who writes about this invasion? Aeschylus, Herodotus, decree of Themistocles (forgery), Oath of Plataea (fake from 4th c.?) and have fragments of Simonides’ epigrams and later accounts by Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch (had texts that are not extant!)

Persian sources on the invasion of 490BC

• Greek side (that we have) presents the war as great victory for Greece

  • But can we tell the story from the Persian side?

  • Herod was Persian subject! But moved to Athens as exiled to Samos and travelled from thee

• No Persian account

  • Closest allusion is an inscription of Xrrxes where he alludes to certain achievements in the beginning of his expedition

  • ‘I defeated that country’ (which? Egypt, Bactria, Greece?)

  • Discussing rebellion in the abstract (when this happens, this happens)

  • Says that he destryed local cults - dainas, demons - (not what Herod says - Xerxes allows Athenians to pray and Cyrus sends Jews back to Judaea)

• ‘And there was something else that had been done wrong, and that too I put right’

  • So vague - the point is not to record history, but create framework of Xerxes’ improvement

  • If something wrong, he makes it right (general conditional)

  • About an ideology

Pre-Persian war Greek history

• World that Xerxes wishes to invade is very unstable (has to overcome internal conflicts to succeed against the foreign threat)

  • Athens dealing with the recent ostracism of the Peisistratids, then the Alcmaeonids (democracy only after some time)

  • Conflict between states themselves (Sparta & Argos, battle of Sepeia with a massacre of Argive soldiers, 6000 dead as told by Herod)

• War without heralds between Athens & Aegina (truceless without requests for peace)

  • Herod states that the fleet Athens had for later Persian naval battle was for this war

• Spartan rule was quite uncertain too: Demaratus deposed, Leotychidas was prosecuted and Cleomenes exiled (Leonidas was third youngest, and when he dies, his brother takes over)

  • Same political system, but factional strife played out in responses to the king

• Brutal war between Phocis & Thessaly (foreign policy is determined by the alliances of enemies = this conflict as deeper than Persian wars)

Reasons for attacking Greece?

• Greek idea is that it is revenge for the Athenians wronging the empire (but would this drive the entire empire to fight)

  • Very Greek motive as how the Greeks would fight (but not nece. Persians too)

• Persian claim to world domination (from Ahura-Mazda)

  • And Athens as uniquely troublesome as defied their oaths and pledges (and liars must die)

  • And king as protector of divine order and justice

• Obligation to conquer (to legitimise his rule)

• Greek lobbyists in the royal court

  • See Hippias (leads the Persians at Marathon) and Demaratus (has knowledge of Greece)

  • Happy to lead the Persians to achieve their own aim (punish their enemies)

How many in the Persian force?

• Herodotus spends much time breaking down how many people in the force (indulging his ethnographical interest, by displaying all the annexed states of the empire)

• Clearly very powerful force, but hard to believe the numbers H gives us

  • 1000 ‘immortals’ = professional soldiers

  • But then 2.6 million soldiers with 5.2 including slaves, maids and other workers

  • H even has mathematical system to work out number, but still impossible (and not believed for 150 years)

  • High numbers would also make Greeks look better (might have rhetorical reasoning)

• Also says 1000 ships (+ 1207 if the 200 fast ones are extra)

• But the Greeks on other hand would have little numbers and also wouldn’t be professional (conscription of all 18-59 male citizens and would have to buy own weapons so poorer citizens might use slings eg. if shepherd)

Unity & rule

• Athens were the only state not in the Peloponnese that did not give up to the Persians (give earth & water) = commitment

  • ‘I am forced to declare an opinion which will be displeasing to most…’ (currently in Pelop war)

  • Unlike Argives & Syracusians, realises that they would have to work under the Spartans to suceed (quarrel about leadership = Greece will fall)

  • Eurybiades actual leader of the fleet

• Post- Athenians state that not all Greeks were equal in battle (Athens and Sparta who did ALL the work)

Thermopylae

• Xerxes’ campaign began as every invasion of Greece will do (as full of narrow spaces)

• First conquer North Greece → battle of Thermopylae & Artemisium

• Not enough men were sent for the battle of T (was a bitter failure)

  • But the Spartans made it seem like a noble sacrifice to push back the Persians (only did for couple days - Persians realise there is a way around)

  • And not only Spartans - also Thebans and Mycenaeans

  • Moral victory? Not really - actually helped the Persian forces who now had killed a Spartan king!

  • Zero strategic value in the sacricie & Leonidas had zero previous experience

• Consequently, ordinary Greek citizens in Phocis suffered greatly (Spartans did not protect the centrals states properly = see the disaster at Boeotia)

Artemisium & evacuation of Athens

• Artemisium fleet had to give up when they heard of the Spartan defeat

  • But had done quite well at the time (but overwhelmed by T propaganda)

  • The Peloponnesians actually wish to protect nothing but themselves

• Athenians, after Artemisium, come back to Athens to see if Spartans have arrived as they said they would, but are not → evacuation of Athens

• Contrastedly, the Persian army has grown (Greek city states that give in are subsumed into the army)

• And the disunity of the Greek force continues (Salamis or the isthmus)

  • And Themistocles still has to trick the Greeks into fighting at Salamis! Forced into unity

Decisive victory?

• 8.96 - as soon as night falls, are anxious (expect a second battle on the next day)

  • Since the Persians have so many ships left

  • But decide to withdraw…

• Do the Greeks then form a more unified entity?

  • No, mistrust within the alliance continues (as Persians try to persuade the different states to give in - Macedonian king comes to Athens and Sparta rushes to persuade otherwise = don’t trust they won’t give over)

  • Themistocles -

  • And battle of Plataea still had some refuse orders or ‘get lost’ in the countryside

• Xerxes lost? But he did what Persian kings do (have one victory, took and destroyed some territory and then depart)

  • Killed Leonidas and destroyed Athens!

• Is this text a warning against division? Civil strife as worse than united war

  • And warning against greedy imperialism (Athens…) after see how Xerxes lost

  • Fates turn and cycles continue